#5000+ votes

[sillylotrpolls]

Deepest apologies, everyone. While I do on occasion deliberately leave out popular choices, that was actually not my intention here. Rather, there was simply such an abundance of possibilities that I had to cut myself off from imagining even more and focus on choosing from among the ideas I already had.

Yes, "meat's back on the menu!" would have been a great choice, but - which option would you have removed to add it? "Kingsfoil" placed last with 3.7%, but among book readers was still quite popular judging by the comments and tags. So let's just say this was a case of me leaving the most popular/obvious choice off to give the others a fighting chance. :)

I don't think there's much to analyze here beyond being glad so many of you enjoyed this very silly poll, so I'll just note that yes, as of 2024 the Swedish Chef really has been in every Muppet movie to date, if only for very brief cameos.

Some of my favorite tags and comments from the notes:

@bloggingwithoutpants reforging Narsil#Like Elrond just kinda tosses the bits intk a bucket and hands them off#“TODEE WE FORGEE ANÜE DE SWERD THAT WAS BROKEE!”

@camgirlpanopticon It's important to me that you all know that in Sweden he's called the Norwegian chef

@maggiemayhemnj “verdeskuugen orc orc orc”

@selifator Looks like Swedish meatballs are back on the menu boys!

@chemistry-sherlock-whatever i genuinely thought that pelting tomatoes would be the pacific ocean of this poll

@smoothjazzdigit The prancing pony was my first thought but I realized the prancing pony HAS to be rowlf’s big scene. It’s a bar in a muppet movie, rowlf is legally obligated to be there

@bitterfucked everything galadriel down is very much a contender#but i really feel like you missed an opportunity#by not suggesting he replace the orc that really wants to eat merry and pippin#merry and pippin keep crawling away while he's prepping them#the same combat is ongoing and merry and pippin are very concerned about it#but the swedish chef uses it opportunistically ie disarming foes to use their sword to chop veggies etc#and the scene ends when he tries to grab a leaf from an ent as an ingredient and it bops him on the head knocking him out

And finally, two bonus Swedish Chef/LotR memes are below the cut. Please enjoy my simple photoshop photopea.com efforts, and feel most welcome and encouraged to share your own.

Getting back to serious topics today.

[cirrus-grey]

[laniemae]

Ok so yeah here’s gonna be my write up of my theories for the chapter 4 murder case and who could’ve done it because the trials super soon and I always do this. Idk how much of a mess this analysis will be this time there’s so many possibilities for what could’ve happened I’ll explore every one.

(T/N at the bottom of this really long essay I recap my thoughts on the timeline of events and the killer so if this feels too long to read just skip to there)

So where to start, I don’t exactly have a clear idea of who I think could’ve murdered Watari, and a lot of my analysis could be changed if one of the students involved was the culprit. But I’ll try.

Perhaps let’s first look at the timeframe. To start let’s mostly focus on what happened at nighttime as that’s where we can narrow events down the most. Around afternoon Hama got a note supposedly written by Watari to meet in the sewing room an hour past the nighttime announcement, I have more thoughts on that but this isn’t relevant at the moment. All we need to know is that Hama went up there at that time and met with Hiroaki, who he chatted with for a bit and left shortly after. We know Hama was telling the truth about that as Hiroaki said in [Recognition Test] “I already told you I didn’t see her!”. So then 30 minutes pass and Hiroaki leaves the sewing room, I don’t think where he was planning to go was important but notably Tamba was in the area when she bumped into him and attempted to push him down the stairs. This diverted both of them away from the 3rd floor where Tamba ran to try to get Hayashi and Hiroaki idk went to complain to Yanagi or something. 15 minutes later we’re with Hiroaki and Yanagi in the dining hall when they start to smell smoke coming from upstairs and notice the fire. Then after all of the panic that ensues the two of them find Watari’s body in the computer lab 14 minutes later.

To give a simplified version of the timeframe, it’d look something like this:

23:00-23:30 Hama goes to the sewing room as instructed by note, finds Hiroaki there but not Watari, left shortly after

23:30 Hiroaki leaves sewing room to go downstairs, Tamba tries to push him

23:45 Hiroaki and Yanagi talk in dining hall, notice smoke and find the 2nd floor on fire

23:47 people gather to deal with the fire, Hama and Watari are missing, Hayashi, Yanagi and Hiroaki run off

23:57 Wada, Hasegawa, Tamba and Ojima hiding in the pool

23:59 Hiroaki and Yanagi find Watari’s body in the computer lab

The timeframe between 23:30 and 23:45 is what we should focus on the most as this is when the fire would’ve been set. So to lay some ground rules down, it’s very likely the fire had started in the sewing room. The gasoline on the floor heavily hints to that plus the floor had collapsed, likely from the fire which had fallen down into the computer room and burnt the 2nd floor down, along with some fire damage from the initial fire on the 3rd floor. There’s also the mystery of how the fire started. I believe the jagged piece of metal found in the sewing room must’ve been the source, and the killer used it as a makeshift flint and steel or fire starter to start the fire. Which that and the gasoline must mean the killer was at the sewing room in those 15 minutes.

So within this period of time, the killer must’ve been hiding in the vicinity to watch Hiroaki leave and set up the fire in the room. They poured gasoline on the floor (likely prepared in advance) and left the note for Hama to find, causing him to run downstairs. The killer then proceeded to use the flint and steel to start the fire then probably retreated downstairs.

This is the basic jist of what happened between when Hiroaki left and noticed the smoke. I’d say this is a concrete base to go off on but there is a lot of dangling threads left by this. To first solve some things we can assume that the gasoline and flint and steel were prepared in advance, having being bought up beforehand to the 3rd floor. We can most likely assumed they were hidden in the floor’s supply closet as it’s close enough to the sewing room that the killer would’ve been able to set up the fire in the 15 minutes plus the storage closet was noted to look a bit different than before, probably from stuff being moved around.

So there’s a few routes we can take from here which all lead in very different directions. We have either the possibility that Watari was killed before Hiroaki left the sewing room and her body was likely hidden in the closet. Either that or she was killed in the fire. There’s also the other related question of whether Hiroaki or Watari was the intended victim. Hiroaki could’ve definitely been targeted for murder here as it feels strange that the murder was set up in the sewing room, which everyone knows he always is. But Watari ended up dead instead and there was a note to Hama addressed by her requesting to meet up in the sewing room right before the time of the murder.

First lets start with the idea of Watari being killed beforehand and held in the supply closet. This could definitely make sense in quite a few ways as it’d explain why she didn’t run away the fire and had died in the same place where it started. The killer could’ve been stalking Hiroaki and hiding in the supply closet with the body, and when he left to set up the gasoline, and after they lured Hama away to move her body to the sewing room which they started the fire. This was a theory I was going by for a while but thinking about it feels kinda weird.

First off, how was Watari killed exactly and why was there no blood found? It’s most likely going by this theory that she had died during the night which water supply is turned off so you wouldn’t be able to efficiently clean up blood. Plus there were no notable injuries on her body but at that point it was so heavily charred that it was hard to tell. There’s also with why they decided to set it up in the sewing room in the first place. It would’ve been really risky killing someone on the same floor that someone else is always on without being noticed. And they would’ve had to have been waiting in the supply room for who knows how long waiting for Hiroaki to leave. Which they wouldn’t have been able to predict at all and not know if he’d return back on them setting up the crime scene. The whole plan of starting a fire in the sewing room like this just feels way too risky going by this logic the more I think about it.

So then there’s the other possibility. Watari was killed in the sewing room after Hama had left the second time he came in. This is difficult to think about as the killer would’ve had very little time to pull this off, but it’s still a possibility worth considering if the other one doesn’t make too much sense. So first off, why was Watari in the sewing room? Perhaps instead of going to the conclusion that she was killed beforehand we could assume that she was knocked out. But since I had previously discussed how it would be very risky to hide in the supply closet with her body (alive or not) if she was knocked out she must’ve been on the 3rd floor after Hama had left. But her going up to the 3rd floor like this would’ve been a really rare coincidence if she was called up or just came up there at that specific time right after Hiroaki left. I’ll get to that in a minute because I feel I have a reason for that. But back on track using this theory we can assume that she was alive in the sewing room right as the fire started and burnt to death/died from the smoke. I can assume that the gasoline was probably set up in a circle so that the fire would’ve completely trapped her. But assuming she was still conscious being in the same room as the killer like that the floor covered in gasoline and them trying to start a fire you would’ve been able to flee. Unless the killer was holding the door shut in which how would they have gotten the fire started with the flint and steel inside the sewing room? I feel as it’s likely the killer probably had knocked her out when she was around that area and placed her down on the floor and set the fire, which explains how she wasn’t able to escape. How she was knocked out was likely with an object of some sort which the killer could’ve just used anything around them in the sewing room and it’s not like we’d be able to tell as everything burnt down. So I feel that’s a good enough explanation for this in particular.

So then this leads me to my next question, was Watari or Hiroaki the intended target for this murder? To start of with Watari, she was the person who was killed in this murder so it seems so, and with the note to Hama saying to meet up in the sewing room after night and then the sudden note saying she was going to her room to kill herself. Aside from that a lot of things fall apart using this logic. First off, the sewing room is absolutely one of the worst places to hold a meeting in or plan a murder because everyone already knows that Hiroaki is in that room, and he has insomnia so it’s not like it’s likely he’s going to be sleeping during nighttime hours. So either way even if the note was legit or a ploy by the killer the sewing room feels way too strange of a location if you’re planning to kill anyone who isn’t Hiroaki.

There’s also assuming how the killer would’ve actively had to wait for Hiroaki to leave to set up the whole murder without knowing when and for how long and especially his run in with Tamba. As that’d would’ve been super risky to do without getting caught and with the short period of time they could’ve done it. Plus with the mystery of why Watari was up in the 3rd floor or moved there without Tamba or Hiroaki noticing beforehand.

So I feel like with a bunch of this stuff it’s most likely that the killer had planned to kill Hiroaki in the sewing room, but something must’ve happened that messed with the plan and they ended up killing Watari instead. This would make sense why they chose to target the sewing room because instead of wanting to kill Watari in there it was to kill Hiroaki, as he was in a spot where it was easy to target him anytime.

So first off lets address the notes. I feel that the first note that was written to Hama supposedly by Watari was by the killer. Once again the sewing room would be a weird place to have a private conversation because of Hiroaki so it feels odd. And knowing Watari if she wanted to talk to him she’d just bash on his door and tell him in person. The killer must’ve known to go to the sewing room so it couldn’t have been written by anyone else. So if they’re targeting Hiroaki why invite Hama up there? I feel as though you can assume that he was supposed to be framed or something like that. But notably enough when Hama went up to the sewing room at that given time only Hiroaki was there and nothing was off. I’m not too sure about this but perhaps this was intentional unless the killer couldn’t kill Hiroaki beforehand. So Hama leaves and after then the killer has their supplies ready and is plotting to attack Hiroaki in the sewing room, set up the fire with the gasoline they had and call it a day. But something unexpected must’ve happened, perhaps their plans were thwarted when Hiroaki had left the sewing room unexpectedly and had gotten into a small fight with Tamba then both of them to run downstairs. Messing up the plan right when they were planning to kill him.

But then why was gasoline placed on the floor anyway and how did Watari end up there? Personally I think it’s likely that Watari had received a note on her own instructing her to come up around that time where coincidentally Hiroaki had left, perhaps like with Hama to frame her as well. And especially using fire in the murder plan with Watari’s history of arson she’d be a prime suspect. Her and Hama both being lured to the same location through similar notes but at different times to influence their actions, like SDR2-2. But after they had gotten Hama to show up for whatever reason Hiroaki had left right as they were planning to kill him and Watari showed up after that. I can imagine the killer didn’t just wan’t to leave things at a failed murder attempt so they quickly knocked her out and switched things up on a dime. They got the gasoline they had hidden in the supply closet and the flint and steel and had set up the fire the same way they were intending to do so with Hiroaki. But there’s a problem. Since Hama had left still looking for Watari he could’ve walked back in on the room and spotted the killer. So the killer quickly sketched out a fake suicide note that would lure Hama away from the sewing room so they’d be able to start the fire. Hama ended up walking in and I can imagine that they had hid somewhere along with the body until he left, which would’ve been easier since the entire school was blanketed in darkness. So then he leaves, the killer sets Watari up in the middle of the room, lights the fire, and lets her burn to death while they escape.

So with the idea that Watari was alive when the fire started and that Hiroaki was the intended victim I think I’ve managed to tie all the loose ends on what happened in the sewing room comfortably. But even though this might’ve been solved, we still have to find our killer. I’ll do a proper rank down of everyone and go over how likely they would’ve been to kill Watari but there are some theories and clues we could have to figuring out who the killer is.

First off there’s the method of starting the fire. I’ve already mentioned how it’s very likely that the jagged piece of metal found was part of a flint and steel but that has me wondering. Who would know how to start a fire like this? Of course there’d be Watari as the Ultimate Fire Dancer she knows how to start fires and said that even after her lighter ran out she still can start fires which she used to light up dark rooms. So Watari could’ve definitely been able to start the fire like that and that’s why I believe she was originally going to be framed. But with the others it’s kinda hard. A flint and steel is a simple way of starting a fire which they would’ve had the tools to just by going to the engineering lab but the killer must’ve been knowledgeable enough to start the fire quickly using it. I don’t believe Watari started it from what I have gathered so it has to have been someone else who knew. We don’t have a good idea of who else it could’ve been but I could imagine that Watari taught Hama and Wada to start a fire like that as she was hanging out with them a lot. I could also imagine that someone could’ve gone up to Watari and asked her how to start a fire and it wouldn’t be too suspicious as since it’s so dark having a way to starts fire to give light would be normal. But assuming the killer did this it could be anyone.

Another important part to this case that I haven’t mentioned but think is noteworthy is the body discovery announcement. After chapter 3 we know that the BDA rules changed from one innocent person discovering the body to set it off to three people discovering the body. But only Hiroaki and Yanagi set off the BDA so with what we know someone else must’ve found Watari’s body beforehand. I feel like it could’ve been Hama. He was running around the school looking for Watari and was notably absent when the fire started up until the point the BDA was set off. Perhaps he was on the 2nd floor or something when the fire was set and ended up finding Watari having burnt to death. The reason he didn’t tell anyone about this and was absent is that since none of the students knew about the new BDA rules he felt as if he told anyone they’d assume he was the killer. Same for anyone else really but Hama’s absence makes me think that it was him.

Another popular theory that I’ve seen going around is that Watari did in fact kill herself. From how I’ve pieced together the case so far I don’t think as it’s too likely especially once again if she were to kill herself why do so in the sewing room? Why do so by burning to death in a slow and painful manner like that? We have seen that Watari’s mental state has been declining a lot in chapter 4 but nothing makes me think too much that she was on the verge of suicide, especially since the last time we saw her around midday she seemed okay enough.

So with all that out of the way I’ll get to my rank down on the students and who I think is most likely to be the killer and then afterwards try to do a closing argument style recap with what I’ve gathered so far.

——

Hiroaki & Yanagi: I’m lumping these two together as I feel they can be cleared off easily. It’s very likely from what we know that Hiroaki was the intended victim and we saw quite a lot of his actions leading up to the BDA. Yanagi is also here as well as Hiroaki was with him in the dining hall complaining about Tamba trying to push him down the stairs when they noticed the smoke. Because they were together it’s safe to say that they have an alibi for those 15 minutes.

Hama: Hama comes off as suspicious at first but the more I thought about it I definitely think he’s involved but not the killer. Going off my theory which I think could be likely we already would know his actions with his encounter with Hiroaki, looking for Watari and perhaps being the first person to set off the BDA.

Tamba: Tamba as well also comes off as a likely killer as the motive with the dark has been affecting her a lot plus she could’ve had the time frame. But her encounter with Hiroaki makes me think otherwise. Why would she have yelled that she wanted to go find Hayashi and ran down the stairs if she were to immediately go back up them and kill Watari. Plus the whole Tamba thing makes sense to why the killer’s plan was messed up.

Ojima: So now onto people who weren’t involved in the sewing room incident. I feel as Ojima is one of the less likely people to have commited it mainly as if the killer sent the note to Hama around midday, we know that during that period of time he was completely spaced out and dissociating for hours as well as Hiroaki was with him, which would’ve made it basically impossible for him to have sent the note and known to go to the sewing room. Ojima was spaced out from morning to the end of the investigation when he almost got crushed by a wall. A lot of people suspect that Ojima may have been faking dissociating but I feel that’s really unlikely and wouldn’t matter anyway because even if he did kill he would’ve still been dissociating from the stress of doing something like that. People have also theorised that he killed while dissociating which is impossible since he barely moves when he’s like that. So I feel from his alibi with Hiroaki midday plus his mental state he most likely didn’t do it.

Hasegawa: Hasegawa was notably acting off in the investigation with how he was so bent on investigation the student profiles plus the basement kitchen instead of the kitchens closer to the source of the fire itself. But this isn’t the first time Hasegawa has acted super suspicious during an investigation. Plus there’s really no evidence against him in this case and he’s already locked himself in his room after being devastated from Kamimura’s death, so I don’t feel he’d have the motivation to kill and escape after all that.

Wada: From all of the evidence I’ve collected Wada is definitely a top suspect. He would’ve had the time to pull something like that off and since he was with Watari quite a lot she could’ve taught him how to start a fire like that. But there are some pieces of evidence that makes me feel Wada couldn’t have done this. First the killer had to have used the supply closet to hide their tools and likely to hang around that area. We already know that Wada has really severe claustrophobia to the point in the past he’s been too afraid to enter supply closets. There’s also how like Wada is super tiny and frail I’m honestly not too sure he’d be able to carry a whole gasoline canister up a flight of stairs like that.

Hayashi: So that leaves us with one person, Hayashi. From the process of elimination she’s the most likely to have set up this whole murder. There’s no concrete evidence that she couldn’t have done it nor had an alibi for any specific time. Her attitude within this investigation also felt quite off, as she was notably more snappy this time compared to all the other times in investigations she’s managed to keep her cool. Although I wouldn’t say behaviour is too much evidence to suspect someone in an investigation, she’s my top suspect because everyone else has reasons why they couldn’t have done it except for Hayashi. If there’s one thing odd about this it’s the motive. Hayashi has shown to be a very strong and bold person and has always been the one up to protect people within the killing game, so why would she kill like this? And especially with the motive being darkness, there wasn’t a time limit like previous motives in this case. It just feels odd for her to snap at this time especially when we’ve seen people like Tamba and Ojima be more affected this time. But in the end just because she wouldn’t do it doesn’t mean she couldn’t, and all the evidence stacks against her in that other regard. One particularly interesting thing is that she ran into the fire when it was noticed claiming to look for the others that weren’t accounted for. This would feel odd if she was the culprit and I understand why. Perhaps she ran up there to hide evidence which is unlikely from what I’ve established might’ve happened. Or she could’ve done this to make herself seem less suspicious, but I’m not sure.

——

So let’s do a quick recap of this case from how I’ve deduced it.

It was midday when the killer first set the ball rolling for what was intended to be at that time, Hiroaki’s murder. Around midday they had sent a note to Hama supposedly addressed from Watari to meet in the sewing room at an hour after the nighttime announcement. Watari also received a letter of her own telling her to meet up at around 15 minutes to half an hour after an hour after the nighttime announcement.

So that time hits and Hama arrives at the sewing room as said by the note, only to find Hiroaki there instead of Watari. They chat for a little while and Hama leaves to go look for her. While this was happening, the killer was hiding in the vicinity with the gasoline canister and flint and steel they had prepared earlier and set in the supply closet. Some time later they were just about to go into the storage room and attack Hiroaki, but something unexpected happened. Hiroaki had left the sewing room to make his way downstairs, bumping into Tamba on the way where she pushed him and Hiroaki only wasn’t injured from grabbing the railing. Both of them ran downstairs and it didn’t look like either were coming back anytime soon.

The killer at this point, was left in a dilemma. Their intended victim had left and they had only a short amount of time before Watari would enter the sewing room. Which they had planned at this point for Hiroaki to already be dead and burning. Instead of just giving up and being found out for their attempted murder the killer changed their plans, and their target.

Watari arrived at the sewing room in which the killer snuck on her and knocked her out. They got the gasoline and the flint and steel and poured the gasoline on the floor. During this time they probably expected Hama to return looking for Watari. In which they quickly forged a quick suicide note saying that Watari was going to kill herself in her room. Eventually Hama entered the sewing room and found the note left by the killer, this was to get him as far away from the crime scene as possible. During this period of time, the killer was probably hiding somewhere in the sewing room with Watari’s unconscious body, with the darkness aiding them in this.

After Hama left the killer got to executing the rest of their new plan. They laid Watari down in the middle, still unconscious, then started the fire with the flint and steel and made a run for it. Watari was quickly engulfed in flames and from being knocked unconscious was not able to escape the fire, and burned to death.

During all this, the fire got so intense in the sewing room that the floor collapsed down into the computer lab, which the body was found and the fire spread to the rest of the 2nd floor. Hama was all around the school looking for Watari at this time and came across the fire, in which he discovered Watari’s body first. He panicked and didn’t know what to do as the alarm didn’t go off and wasn’t present when the others were panicking over the fire.

Hiroaki and Yanagi were the first other people to notice the smoke and see the fire. And soon after Hayashi gathered everyone to deal with the fire. She then proceeded to run upstairs into the fire, Yanagi following behind to make sure she’s ok then Hiroaki following to stop him. During this frenzy, Hiroaki and Yanagi found themselves in the computer lab, witness to Watari’s charred dead body.

So from all I’ve deduced so far it seems that one person is far more likely to have done it than anyone else, and that person is Hayashi Mai, the Ultimate Bounty Hunter!

[soup-mother]

don't wanna learn lancer? here's how to homebrew d&d 5e into being about social democrats in space voting really hard

[pearsandrust]

hi all! a few of you have mentioned that you'd read long-form hsr analysis from me (this means so much to me btw you don't even know :')). well. end of this week i am finally free from the horrors of exams and hope to work on an hsr essay!! help me choose a topic? <3

[thatscarletflycatcher]

"average town listens intensely to 1000 artists a year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average town listens intensely to just a couple hundred artists per year. Provo, Utah, which apparently listens to all kinds of music 24/7 through several devices at the same time, is an outlier adn should not have been counted"

[greenisinnocent]

I know this is me personally but I have to say it's been kinda quiet that they've been doing this that it's still something that is being kept on the radar even after the big one failed and I just benefited from the government keeping it a priority

I'm just trying to let people know that it's out there and look into the SAVE REPLAYMENT PLAN if possible I am disabled and unable to work and I will never have to worry about this again this is why voting matters because while I find a lot of issues with our government and what's happening there is still a silver lining and positive outcomes

[unopenablebox]

:) :) :) union contract for me

[artielotl]

suck a huge dick snp

[texastendy-29]

CLOPFUCKER 5000 GO GO GO

THE TUMBLR HORSE DERBY

WELCOME TO THE FIRST TUMBLR HORSE DERBY (that i know of, anyway)

HOW TO HORSE: 🐎🐎🐎 - Vote for your FAVOURITE horse to make them go faster! (yknow, like those carnival horse derby games!) MAY THE BEST HORSE WIN

(also sample size reblog yadda yadda yadda HORSE)

[girlfriendftm]

Detrans note game: getting real

I will count all notes - yes, spam encouraged - for the next 48 hours.... but for every 500 notes, i will double the duration. This is also compounding (i.e., 500 notes -> from two to four days, 1000 notes -> four to eight days, so on)

Closed at 1930 notes! Final period was from approximately noon April 14 to noon April 16 April 30

Im also already somewhat down the re-feminization path, so you can go ahead and assume anything you expect to see as a goal but don't (like growing my hair, shaving legs, etc) is something i already do.

Repeating

Every 100 notes: wearing bra and panties for one day (final: 19 days)

Every 250 notes: keeping face shaved for one week (final: 7 weeks)

Every 300 notes: telling another friend or colleague that I'm actually a girl (final: six people)

Every 500 notes: as mentioned, extending the game duration! See above (final: increased to sixteen days)

Main Goals

✅ 75 notes: get a pretty pink manicure

✅ 150 notes: let tumblr pick a new girly name for me (voting complete! It's Lucy 💖💖)

✅ 300 notes: listen to detrans/feminization hypno and audio nightly while falling asleep, for the duration that it will take to complete every other goal

✅ 500 notes: piss on my old binder

✅ 750 notes: make myself cum in a mens room stall (Depending on how this game goes, this might end up my last ever visit to such a place...)

✅ 1000 notes: cut up and destroy my old binder

✅ 1500 notes: stuff my bras when i wear them to ensure people notice my tits

2000 notes: replacing as many of my shoes as i can with girly heels

3000 notes: buy a girly swimsuit and wear it at a public pool or beach

4000 notes: only wear skirts and dresses for the next month

5000 notes: tell my parents i think i want to detransition

[thewynne]

There's a great story in the You're Wrong About episode on homelessness about him and his family welcoming one of the homeless folks the host spoke with to their farm to give them a safe place to detox until they could get back on their feet. I don't know if it's verified, but his brother and nephew both dealt with addiction.

the only things i know about jimmy carter are:

-he looked straight up dead when he turned 100 and voted early cos he was straight up dead and now he's actually dead dead

-was president during the three mile island reactor partial meltdown incident and because he had worked on nuclear subs before he knew that shit was fine and went over there to be like lalala i <3 reactors while the media were shitting their britches over a teeny tiny amount of radiation

[sealsdaily]

Ahmed's family needs your help!

The last time I made a post about his fundraiser, I attached a poll. Let's see how that did!

4842 votes! That's almost 5000! And when we compare that to the fundraisers goal of €50000, if everyone donated just €1, we'd already be 10% closer to the fundraisers goal!

And once you start to think of some people donating even more than €1, just imagine what we could do together...

If you have the time and money, consider donating to Ahmed's fundraiser to save his teeth and his family.

[dropoutpresentsdo]

Today is the last chance to vote for Dropout Presents: Courtney Pauroso: Vanessa 5000 for the Webby Awards' Video & Film - Comedy & Stand-up category!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.

Take "leveraged buyout," a polite name for stealing a whole goddamned company:

Identify a company that owns valuable assets that are required for its continued operation, such as the real-estate occupied by its outlets, or even its lines of credit with suppliers;

Approach lenders (usually banks) and ask for money to buy the company, offering the company itself (which you don't own!) as collateral on the loan;

Offer some of those loaned funds to shareholders of the company and convince a key block of those shareholders (for example, executives with large stock grants, or speculators who've acquired large positions in the company, or people who've inherited shares from early investors but are disengaged from the operation of the firm) to demand that the company be sold to the looters;

Call a vote on selling the company at the promised price, counting on the fact that many investors will not participate in that vote (for example, the big index funds like Vanguard almost never vote on motions like this), which means that a minority of shareholders can force the sale;

Once you own the company, start to strip-mine its assets: sell its real-estate, start stiffing suppliers, fire masses of workers, all in the name of "repaying the debts" that you took on to buy the company.

This process has its own euphemistic jargon, for example, "rightsizing" for layoffs, or "introducing efficiencies" for stiffing suppliers or selling key assets and leasing them back. The looters – usually organized as private equity funds or hedge funds – will extract all the liquid capital – and give it to themselves as a "special dividend." Increasingly, there's also a "divi recap," which is a euphemism for borrowing even more money backed by the company's assets and then handing it to the private equity fund:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

If you're a Sopranos fan, this will all sound familiar, because when the (comparatively honest) mafia does this to a business, it's called a "bust-out":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

The mafia destroys businesses on a onesy-twosey, retail scale; but private equity and hedge funds do their plunder wholesale.

It's how they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And it's what they did to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

It's what happened to nursing homes, Armark, private prisons, funeral homes, pet groomers, nursing homes, Toys R Us, The Olive Garden and Pet Smart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

It's what happened to the housing co-ops of Cooper Village, Texas energy giant TXU, Old Country Buffet, Harrah's and Caesar's:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

And it's what's slated to happen to 2.9m Boomer-owned US businesses employing 32m people, whose owners are nearing retirement:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

Now, you can't demolish that much of the US productive economy without attracting some negative attention, so the looter spin-machine has perfected some talking points to hand-wave away the criticism that borrowing money using something you don't own as collateral in order to buy it and wreck it is obviously a dishonest (and potentially criminal) destructive practice.

The most common one is that borrowing money against an asset you don't own is just like getting a mortgage. This is such a badly flawed analogy that it is really a testament to the efficacy of the baffle-em-with-bullshit gambit to convince us all that we're too stupid to understand how finance works.

Sure: if I put an offer on your house, I will go to my credit union and ask the for a mortgage that uses your house as collateral. But the difference here is that you own your house, and the only way I can buy it – the only way I can actually get that mortgage – is if you agree to sell it to me.

Owner-occupied homes typically have uncomplicated ownership structures. Typically, they're owned by an individual or a couple. Sometimes they're the property of an estate that's divided up among multiple heirs, whose relationship is mediated by a will and a probate court. Title can be contested through a divorce, where disputes are settled by a divorce court. At the outer edge of complexity, you get things like polycules or lifelong roommates who've formed an LLC s they can own a house among several parties, but the LLC will have bylaws, and typically all those co-owners will be fully engaged in any sale process.

Leveraged buyouts don't target companies with simple ownership structures. They depend on firms whose equity is split among many parties, some of whom will be utterly disengaged from the firm's daily operations – say, the kids of an early employee who got a big stock grant but left before the company grew up. The looter needs to convince a few of these "owners" to force a vote on the acquisition, and then rely on the idea that many of the other shareholders will simply abstain from a vote. Asset managers are ubiquitous absentee owners who own large stakes in literally every major firm in the economy. The big funds – Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street – "buy the whole market" (a big share in every top-capitalized firm on a given stock exchange) and then seek to deliver returns equal to the overall performance of the market. If the market goes up by 5%, the index funds need to grow by 5%. If the market goes down by 5%, then so do those funds. The managers of those funds are trying to match the performance of the market, not improve on it (by voting on corporate governance decisions, say), or to beat it (by only buying stocks of companies they judge to be good bets):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/17/shareholder-socialism/#asset-manager-capitalism

Your family home is nothing like one of these companies. It doesn't have a bunch of minority shareholders who can force a vote, or a large block of disengaged "owners" who won't show up when that vote is called. There isn't a class of senior managers – Chief Kitchen Officer! – who have been granted large blocks of options that let them have a say in whether you will become homeless.

Now, there are homes that fit this description, and they're a fucking disaster. These are the "heirs property" homes, generally owned by the Black descendants of enslaved people who were given the proverbial 40 acres and a mule. Many prosperous majority Black settlements in the American South are composed of these kinds of lots.

Given the historical context – illiterate ex-slaves getting property as reparations or as reward for fighting with the Union Army – the titles for these lands are often muddy, with informal transfers from parents to kids sorted out with handshakes and not memorialized by hiring lawyers to update the deeds. This has created an irresistible opportunity for a certain kind of scammer, who will pull the deeds, hire genealogists to map the family trees of the original owners, and locate distant descendants with homeopathically small claims on the property. These descendants don't even know they own these claims, don't even know about these ancestors, and when they're offered a few thousand bucks for their claim, they naturally take it.

Now, armed with a claim on the property, the heirs property scammers force an auction of it, keeping the process under wraps until the last instant. If they're really lucky, they're the only bidder and they can buy the entire property for pennies on the dollar and then evict the family that has lived on it since Reconstruction. Sometimes, the family will get wind of the scam and show up to bid against the scammer, but the scammer has deep capital reserves and can easily win the auction, with the same result:

https://www.propublica.org/series/dispossessed

A similar outrage has been playing out for years in Hawai'i, where indigenous familial claims on ancestral lands have been diffused through descendants who don't even know they're co-owner of a place where their distant cousins have lived since pre-colonial times. These descendants are offered small sums to part with their stakes, which allows the speculator to force a sale and kick the indigenous Hawai'ians off their family lands so they can be turned into condos or hotels. Mark Zuckerberg used this "quiet title and partition" scam to dispossess hundreds of Hawai'ian families:

https://archive.is/g1YZ4

Heirs property and quiet title and partition are a much better analogy to a leveraged buyout than a mortgage is, because they're ways of stealing something valuable from people who depend on it and maintain it, and smashing it and selling it off.

Strip away all the jargon, and private equity is just another scam, albeit one with pretensions to respectability. Its practitioners are ripoff artists. You know the notorious "carried interest loophole" that politicians periodically discover and decry? "Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest on a loan. The "carried interest" rule dates back to 16th century sea-captains, and it refers to the "interest" they had in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Private equity managers are like sea captains in exactly the same way that leveraged buyouts are like mortgages: not at all.

And it's not like private equity is good to its investors: scams like "continuation funds" allow PE looters to steal all the money they made from strip mining valuable companies, so they show no profits on paper when it comes time to pay their investors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

Those investors are just as bamboozled as we are, which is why they keep giving more money to PE funds. Today, the "dry powder" (uninvested money) that PE holds has reached an all-time record high of $2.62 trillion – money from pension funds and rich people and sovereign wealth funds, stockpiled in anticipation of buying and destroying even more profitable, productive, useful businesses:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

The practices of PE are crooked as hell, and it's only the fact that they use euphemisms and deceptive analogies to home mortgages that keeps them from being shut down. The more we strip away the bullshit, the faster we'll be able to kill this cancer, and the more of the real economy we'll be able to preserve.

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/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

[sillylotrpolls]

No surprises here. Everyone loves Sam, and "There's some good in this world..." is everyone's favorite quote by Sam. No wonder it took first place with 20.5%, and was probably all over your dash in motivational poster fashion besides.

"I wish it need not have happened..." came in second at 15.8%, which A) legit, I am also exhausted, and B) is actually indicative of the overall hope present here on Tumblr.

If you combine all the non-hopeful options, you get 15.8% + 7.8% + 1.8% + 14.2% = 39.6%. That's nowhere near a majority, and if we remove the votes by people sick of the quotes entirely, is only 29.6% of the total (15.8+7.8+1.8 / 100-14.2). Less than a third! Galadriel was absolutely right; hope does indeed remain.

If you take the time to peruse the ~1900 replies and comments (which, good lord, that's a lot for this blog), you can find many more messages of such hope, plus thankfulness for Tolkien and suggested quotes that didn't make it into the poll. Two of my favorites:

@thevillainofthisstory #i will be a healer and love all things that grow and are not barren#let us cross the River and in happier days let us dwell in fair Ithilien and there make a garden

@cleanfreakandshittyglasses #in place of a dark lord..you wOULD HAVE A QUEEN#not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn!!!#treacherous as the seas!!!#stronger than the foundations of the earthhh!!!#all shall love me and despairrrrr….

Not gonna lie, that second one hits especially hard given, you know. The possibilities. First woman US president when?

Last, I want to get into the performance of "If I see one more quote..." This option started at around ~10% of the vote, climbed to ~12% by day four, and eventually finished at 14.2%. That might not seem like a big difference, but as you may know if you pay any attention to the aftermath of an election, it's quite difficult to make up ground as votes are counted. A detailed explanation of how this works is under the cut below.

Let's say Blorbo and Shitto are both running for Mayor of the Shire. It's election day and the votes are being counted. When 1000 votes have been counted, Blorbo has 60% of the vote, because this is convenient math land (home of the friction-less plane and spherical cow!). Shitto has 40%, because in this example there are no third parties and no one left their ballot blank or filled in two bubbles or anything else.

Let's also say that 3000 votes total were cast in the election. It's the end of the day and the polls are closed, so the total number of votes is known. It's only the contents of those votes that's still being tallied.

The timeline then looks like this:

Zero votes counted Blorbo needs 1501 votes to win (50% + 1) Shitto needs 1501 votes to win (50% + 1)

Local hobbit reporters are hanging around polling places and doing exit interviews, but nothing is yet known.

1,000 votes counted Blorbo: 600 votes (60%) Shitto: 400 votes (40%)

Blorbo needs 901 more votes to win, ~45% of the remaining votes Shitto needs 1101 more votes to win, ~55% of the remaining votes

Shitto's campaign manager says "It doesn't matter; the votes from Buckland aren't even in yet!"

2,000 votes counted Blorbo: +500 = 1100 votes (55%) Shitto: +500 = 900 votes (45%)

Blorbo needs 401 more votes to win, ~40% of the remaining votes Shitto needs 601 more votes to win, ~60% of the remaining votes

Shitto's campaign manager says "We're trending in the right direction!"

All 3,000 votes counted Blorbo: +450 = 1550 votes (~52%) - WINNER Shitto: +550 = 1450 votes (~48%)

Shitto's campaign manager sends out text messages asking for donations to pay for a recount (that, mathematically, is extremely unlikely to succeed).

As you can see, once you have a deficit, it's extra-hard to gain ground in an election (or tumblr poll) where what matters is not the number of votes but the percentage of votes gotten. Given infinite time and votes, Shitto could potentially have pulled out the win, but there was a very finite number of votes cast with a very specific deadline.

Similarly, Tumblr polls may not have a cap on votes, but they do run for a limited amount of time. And when you reblog a poll for "awareness" or a "bigger sample size" or to try and propagandize in favor of your favorite, yes, you might get more votes for your preferred choice, but at the same time votes are still coming in for the other option(s).

Anyway, given the large number of votes (for one of my polls) and the clear pro-Tolkien leanings of most voters (who were also the most likely to see this poll), not to mention the 12-way race, it's actually very impressive that "If I see one more 'inspirational' Tolkien quote on my dash today I might hurl" made up as much ground as it did.

However - and this was not intentional, but you better believe I'm gonna remember it - at least some people who voted that they were sick of the quotes still reblogged the poll. They did so with a comment or tags that indicated their irritation, but - they still reblogged and shared the poll, spreading the inspirational quotes they themsleves were so sick of.

When I create poll options, I usually try to cover as many bases as I can (unless it's funnier not to). Frequently, I'll throw in an "other" as a catch-all. This is because I'm trying to capture the electorate (so to speak) as best I can and am genuinely interested in the results and what voters think. But, if I simply wanted a poll to spread as far as possible because I had delusions about the advantages of going "viral" on tumblr, there's clearly a case to be made for including an option that boils down to "actually, I hate this poll and everything about it." A hate reblog is still a reblog, after all.

Use this information as you will.