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kriize · 28 days

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honestly, this entire situation is just so sick.

please, please, please, don’t rope the group, or any for that matter, into this situation. don’t try to make them all out to be the monster he is by saying “they had to know” “maybe they all do” because we don’t know that, and judging from the way the members instantly unfollowed him, and deleted any and all traces of him from their accounts (tyong) is just a visual expression on how disappointed they are in him. rightfully so… imagine your friend, that you grew up with, met your family, siblings, someone that you consider family. was exposed for doing monstrous things like these. i know they’re so, so, disappointed and disgusted.

i am now a proud ot8 stan, and i stand by that.

i never have (on this account, since it is riize centered) written for him or his, now previous, group. and if i do in the future, just know that he well never, ever, be included, or mentioned along with the members or the group, which is why his name is solo in the tags, he does not represent nct.

he will not get away unscathed from this, there’s no way. he’s completely ruined a girl & mother’s lives, since he grew up with a single mother, you’d think he’d know better and want to treat women better…

i wish for nothing but for him to rot in a cell til his last day on this earth. and i seriously hope that all the victims heal and seek justice.

i seriously hope all my fellow czennies don’t blame themselves, we couldn’t have possibly predicted this, he was quite literally a wolf in sheep’s clothing. little did we know he’d been doing this for the past 6 going on 7 years, maybe even longer.

this seriously makes me question everything about him, when he’s around kids, women, anyone.

he’s a predator, and i really hope that no one is trying to justify none of his actions. if you are, seek help.

he’s a genuinely fucked up individual, and besides the fans, i really want to know how the members are taking this. imagine your oldest friend, a brother figure, someone who you’ve been surrounded by for about (more for some) than half of your life. has just been exposed for something like this, i would want to beat his ass myself, i probably would.

honestly, i cannot stress this enough, we. don’t. know. these. idols. personally.

everything that they give us is a separate identity, the real them is almost never shown. you have your few real ones, ones who you know wouldn’t hurt anyone, or at least that’s what it seems like, for example, hongjoong of ateez (one of my ults, also one of the biggest green flags) supports women, lgbtqia youth, the disabled, and literally so much more. the model role-model (this is me praising him and putting an example into place), but we’ll never truly know him. we’re not on the same level of connection as him and his members are, no matter how much he shows to us his everyday life. we’re just not at that level.

it could’ve truly been so easy for him to hide his private, private life, even from his members. so you all cannot give the whole group the title of “pedophiles” without knowing the truth regarding whether they were aware of this or not.

considering this had been brought to sm’s attention back in june, and they had began investigating since then, i find it seriously irresponsible and fucked up for him to be included in the walk music video and comeback. they’ve done it in (the recent) past with innocent people, removing their voice and images even after they’ve been recorded (prime example, seunghan), i feel like he shouldn’t have been in the music video, even before this news came out, he was supposed to be resting… same for back in fact check era.

(update 09.01.24, i hadn’t realized that this lawsuit had been kept a secret from sm from june & had just been brought to their attention mid august.)

i just seriously don’t understand how he can live his life knowing that he tormented a child and her mother for the past 6 (going on 7), years. gone to fan meets, concerts, and even more knowing what he’d been doing.

it was just recently 127’s 8th anniversary, so this means that this has started a year after he joined 127.

moon taeil is a evil human being,

if you can even call him that.

#taeil #moon taeil #: kriize #: kriize speaks #:p

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entity9silvergen · 4 years

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How to Track Your Gender Fluidity

Recently I made a post with a screenshot of my gender tracker and was asked how I track my gender’s fluidity. I’ve been meaning to make an instructional post on how to set up the app so I redownloaded the app on a spare phone to show you guys.

In this tutorial, I will explain how to edit the MoodFlow App to track the fluidity of gender including changes and intensity, how to keep the app locked so others cannot look at your data, and how tracking genderfluidity can help someone better understand their gender identity. I will also provide some alternatives if you cannot use this app.

This method of tracking can be used by genderfluid, genderfaun, genderfae, genderflor, gendersylph, genderflux, fluidflux, boyflux, girlflux, enbyflux, questioning individuals, or anyone else on the genderfluid spectrum. Some personalization may be necessary but this tutorial will cover it.

Step 1: Downloading

You want to start by downloading the MoodFlow App.

As you can see, it is intended to be a mood tracker but there are customizable features so you can use it to track other things. It is available for free on the App Store and Google Play.

Step 2: Account Set up

The app will ask you to create an account. You will be prompted to put in your name and birthdate. These are optional.

Step 3: Color Palette

As part of the account set up, you will be asked to pick a color palette. You can change these later or customize them but this is the first important thing when it comes to tracking your gender. The app intends these colors to represent how you’re feeling (very bad, bad, okay, good, very good) but we will be using them to loosely represent your spectrum of gender. Later, these colors will make it easy to visually track your gender. There are five colors but it is okay if you have more than five genders. We will get to that later. They’re more like umbrellas for now. These colors will be a broad, simplified representation which gender you are experiencing on a given days. We will now look at the palettes (see below).

As a genderfaun individual, I personally use the "Default-Balance” palette (purple, purple-blue, blue, blue-green, green) to represent non-binary (purple), male (blue), agender (green), and the genders in between (purple-blue for bigender and blue-green for demigender). It is not a perfect system it works for me.

If you are a genderfae individual, I recommend the “Silver to Purple,” or “Sunset” palettes to represent how your gender varies from feminine, to neutral, to faded or whatever else.

If your fluidity covers the whole spectrum, I’d recommend “Farfalle,” “Sea and Sun,” “Pink to Blue,” “Yellows and Blues,” or “Kilimanjaro.” They have a range of masculine and feminine colors as well as some neutral grounds and mixes.

For any boyfluxes or masculine genderflux people, “Grey Means Neutral,” “By The Lake,” “Tea,” or “Into the Distance” could be used to represent the varying intensity of your gender.

For any girlfluxes or feminine genderflux people, “Raise the Lantern” or “All Pastel Everything” could be used to represent the changing intensity of your gender.

“Gray Scale Me” is a good choice for any genderflux individual with only one gender.

“Mojito,” “Outerspace,” and “Into The Distance” are good choices for people who are xenogender, agender, or just do not like the traditional “masculine vs feminine" system.

Again, you can edit these later, make a custom color palette, or you can just ignore using colors and use other features (explained later) but having a color palette to represent the range of your genderfludity is helpful. You don’t have to use these recommendations either. For me, I associate genders with their flags so I pick colors similar to those but you can do whatever feels right. Any color can represent any gender. You can also play around with it later to find whatever colors fit you best.

Step 4: Settings

When you are done setting up your account, you will open the screen to a calendar.

If you tap the three bars on the top, you will be given a sidebar where you can visit your settings.

In the settings, you can change your personal information, log in and out of your account, enable or disable notifications, and change your rating colors (the color palette).

Step 5: Personalization and Security

Within the settings, you will see the options to change your emotions & ratings, background, activities, and add a pinlock.

The background change is self-explanatory. There's a wide variety of stock images that are very nice but you can also add your own. I like using flags. If you’ve seen any of my old posts, I use a design with cats in the colors of the transflag. If you would like any wallpapers, you can ask me, you can check out r/lgbtwallpaper, just use google images, take your own photo, or use your own art.

You can use the pinlock to prevent other people from looking at your data. If you are in the closet, this can be a very useful so people don’t look at your information. Make sure you remember your pin though.

You can also back up data here but that is something to worry about later.

You can make other changes as well depending on preference.

Step 6: Gender(s), Pronouns, Intensity, etc.

Open emotions & ratings to create your genders. You can also add genders later when you are making entries but it is easy to do here.

Here, you can rename your colors. Where it says rating, just tap the words next to it and you can change it.

To make genders, start by picking your layout. The options are grid, mix, segment, and segment #2. I personally like using segment #2. The layout will separate your genders into four categories. You cannot rename the categories (they will be labeled positive & energized, positive & calm, negative & calm, and negative & energized) so if seeing them bothers you, pick mix. For the tutorial, I am picking segment #2.

You will then see a section labeled editor. You will have the option to add emotions and remove emotions. Start by removing all of the emotions. It starts with 60 (the maximum) so this may take some time.

Once you’ve deleted all the emotions, you can add your genders. It will prompt you to name it and put it in a category (positive & energized, positive & calm, negative & calm, and negative & energized). The categories don’t affect anything but it will change the order the genders are displayed and how they will appear in the app’s analysis features.

Since I am fluidflux and like using the segment #2 layout, I like to order them by intensity. I put libragenders and agender under positive & energized, demigenders under positive & calm, paragenders under negative & calm, and “full” genders under negative & energized. If you are not genderflux, I would recommend sorting them by feminine, masculine, neutral/ other, xenogender, unsure, etc. Again, this depends on the individual so you may want to play around with it. Here is mine:

After you create and organize all of your genders, return to your settings and scroll down to activities. Like before, delete all the activities.

Below, there are a collection of icons. Tap one and you will be able to create an activity. I like to track what pronouns I use, the intensity of my gender, and how fluid or static my gender is. You can also add things like how you’re experiencing gender dysphoria or euphoria that day, your gender expression, and how you are presenting that day. There are many icons to choose from so pick which ones you think suit which thing best.

Step 7: Tracking Your Gender

To track your gender, exit your settings to the app’s homescreen. If you are having trouble finding it, tap the middle option on the bar on the bottom that says “Feed.” Then, in the same spot, tap the plus (+) button. You will be taken to a screen where you add your entry for the day. You should ideally add one entry per day. You need to pick a color summarizing your gender for the day and can select the individual genders you are feeling at the time. Here, you can also add or remove genders by hitting customize.

Hit continue to move to activities. Here, you can select pronouns, intensity, etc. You also have the option of adding photos or listing medication. Listing medication is helpful if you are on testosterone or estrogen and the photos are helpful if you want to remember how you are presenting that day or want to track the effects of HRT.

There is also a place to type labeled journal if you would like to write a more detailed explanation of how you’re experiencing gender or if anything noteworthy has occurred.

By hitting customize, you can enable or disable features. A feature you can enable is tracking sleep. Sleep is tracked on a sliding scale so genderflux individuals can use this to track the intensity of their gender as well.

Step 8: Viewing Your Gender

You can best view your gender from the homescreen/ the feed. Any entries from that day will be shown at the top. By tapping it, you have the option of editing it if you would like to change something later. I would recommend not deleting genders from your entry if your gender changes during the day and instead indicating in some way that it changed.

You can scroll down to see the calendar for that month. Each day will be highlighted with the color you choose that day, making it easy to see any patterns. This is why we choose colors representing masculinity, femininity, neutrality, etc rather than having colors represent individual genders.

On the bottom bar, you can tap calendar to see other months’ data.

The journal section is the place to write down any detailed entries. The insight section will provide some analysis of your entries.

The most useful data is at the top. It will display the oscillation of your gender and the spread over an adjustable period of time based on color.

Below, it will also show how many times you selected a specific gender, pronoun, intensity, etc.

Step 9: More Personalization

Everyone’s gender is different. You may need to edit this further to fit your fluidity. Some people have less than five genders they are fluid between so each color could represent one gender, some people may want different colors to represent different umbrellas of gender, and more.

If you are multigender/ experience more than one gender at a time, it can be kind of difficult figuring out how to add an entry for that. Adding more genders and activities can make it more detailed. It just depends how specific you want your tracker to be.

Just play around with it and figure out what is right for you.

Step 10: Why Tracking Your Gender Is Helpful

Pretty much every trans person has those self-doubt moments and people on the genderfluid spectrum often experience that to a greater degree. I think we all know that feeling when your gender changes and you wonder “What if I’ve been this the whole time?” Very scary, especially if you’re just beginning to figure yourself out or if you’ve already come out.

Tracking your gender helps with that feeling. By having something physical you can look at that proves your gender really was a different one in the past and you weren’t faking or deceiving yourself.

You can see my tracking from 2021 above. I started a new gender tracker this year. In 2020, my gender was actually male (blue) most of the time and my gender would change in some way every few days. As you can see, I was non-binary or bigender for pretty much all of January this year and flipped to libramasculine on the final day. That is very unusual for me so if I was not tracking my gender, I wouldn’t know my gender fluidity was following an abnormal pattern and I likely would have doubted myself a lot and questioned if I was ever really a boy.

If you are questioning your gender identity, a tracker can be helpful because it is more reliable than your memory, assuming you don’t delete anything. There is less room for doubt if you are looking at evidence you really did experience something. And, if you are questioning the fluidity of your gender, the same thing applies.

Of course, someone who is not genderfluid can try this and if you later realize you are not genderfluid despite having varied data on a tracker, that is okay as well. This is a helpful tool but it is not for everyone and ultimately you are the best judge of your identity.

If you cannot use this app, you can also use a calendar or planner. If you are in the closet, marking each day with a colored highlighter isn’t that suspicious. You can also write down the genders you experience on different days and such. You could also try using a period tracker but that may be more difficult since you usually cannot change the settings and symptoms on those.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you end up using this. Feel free to ask questions to me privately or in the comments or share this post with others. Have fun tracking your gender guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

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This post is Part 4 of the five-part meta series on the Zhang Zhehan (張哲瀚) Incident, based on what has transpired up to 2021/08/22.

1) The 2nd Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) & the Yasukuni Shrine 2) Post-War Sino-Japanese Relations; “Every Chinese should visit the Yasukuni Shrine” 3) The Summer of 2021: The Brewing Storms for One 4) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part A 5) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part B

4) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part A

Now, I’m finally going to dive into Zhang Zhehan’s incident. They’re, of course, my personal opinions, based on what’s known until 2021/08/22, and I’m talking about them not as a turtle, not as a Gg or Dd fan, not as a fan at all—but as … me. A Hong Konger, half-way American, and representative of neither.

I should start with a confession.

While, in the parts before, I wrote as if there were signs enough that I could see this coming, that I could see Zhang being handed the severe punishment that he had… I actually didn’t. I thought it would stop at People’s Daily critique of Zhang’s apology letter posted on August 13th, and Zhang would lose his endorsements, be forced to lay low for a while. I didn’t expect the all-out invisibility campaign the would happen, including the removal of his already-aired, groups projects such as Word of Honour (WoH 山河令).

Do I feel Zhang made a mistake? Absolutely. I agree with his self-assessment in his apology letter that he had been ignorant and careless. I’d add this as well: he had likely suffered from a certain degree of arrogance. When previously asked by his fans to remove from his Weibo a photo he took of a car painted in a manner reminiscent of WWII Japanese War Planes (and with a Rising Sun flag), that should’ve been a reminder, a warning enough for him to refrain from posting similar materials online. Being politically insensitive as a public figure in China is dangerous, and often costly. And one has to be really, really, insensitive politically, and very, very out of the news cycle, to be unaware of the tension in Sino-Japanese relations in the past decade, with the Yasukuni Shrine being at the epicentre of that tension.

A photo posted on Weibo by Zhang, later deleted at fans’ request and re-surfaced online during this incident (Left). The Nakajima Ki-84 fighter jet, used by the Imperial Japanese Army 1943-45 (Right). (Source)

But ignorance, carelessness and even arrogance are not crimes. These are corrigible traits; late 20’s may be not-so-young for an idol, but Zhang was young when he visited the shrine and took the photos in 2018. He’s still young now, having just reached 30, with lots of years to grow.

From a practical standpoint, I also fail to see Zhang’s behaviour as causing more actual harm to anyone than as the Global Times Network (GTN) piece.

Zhang’s photos had never been widely circulated before the incident. The location at which they had been taken was also not obvious to those who haven’t investigated, or haven’t visited the Yasukuni Shrine. In contrast, the large quantity of photos in the GTN piece, their portrayal of the shrine’s right wing visitors, can arguably be said to be more visually offensive, if visual offensiveness is sufficient to be hurtful, if The Reporter of the GTN piece had, indeed, had his heart sunk just by the sight of the sakuras on the shrine grounds planted by the descendants and friends of those enshrined (reminder: overwhelmingly not war criminals), as he had described in the article.

To put it in Chinese state media lingo, the GTN piece could arguably be said to have done more to 冒犯國人情感 (“offend the feelings of the country’s people”) (from People’s Daily critique piece against Zhang) and 輕佻地傷害中國人民的情感 (“flippantly hurt the feelings of the Chinese people) (from 中纪委 Central Commission for Discipline Inspection’s critique piece) than Zhang’s photos.

A thing to mention, perhaps: the phrase “hurting the feelings of Chinese people” (and its close cousins) has somewhat of a ... celebrity status among Chinese politics watchers, with ample articles and statistics dedicated to it for the sheer number of times it has appeared in China’s foreign policy materials, as well as the multi-purposeness of its application. Another example of “hurting the feelings of Chinese people”: an English Mercedes-Benz ad, posted on Instagram (a blocked site in China), featuring a quote by Dalai Lama. The phrase has become a bit of a joke in anti-CCP communities, not because the feelings of Chinese people aren’t legitimate or important, but because a regime that doesn’t allow voting, that suppresses the freedoms of speech and press, is hardly an expert on the feelings of its people.

An entertaining infographic about China’s “hurt national feelings” (high-res version). Japan has consistently ranked 1st in the number of times it has hurt China’s national feelings (upper right corner).

And, speaking of “flippant”, I find flippant perfectly described the tone of the GTN piece, which I, as a reader of Chinese descent, was perhaps even more embarrassed by than the fact that The Reporter visited the shrine. The Reporter admitted he already had a “fight-picking heart”, had chosen to act confrontationally; the article he’d write later reflected that, was filled to the brim with bravado. However, as I mentioned before, he never did what would’ve mattered if he had elected to fight, made the cause of his troublemaking clear—he had said nothing about the war criminals, or the revisionist material in the museum. Statements of protests needn’t be physical or violent; they simply had to be communicated, and to the right audience—which doesn’t include his translator, or the staff at the Yasukuni Shrine.

The American tourist could’ve been a potential target; wouldn’t it be interesting to find out what they knew about this piece of history, how much they knew about the controversies surrounding the shrine? But The Reporter only told them Americans were not welcomed—a statement automatically doubtful by the presence of … an American next to him. If The Reporter’s account were true, then, to the staff, the tourist who interacted with him, The Reporter behaved just like … a passive-aggressive, very rude Chinese tourist. He had scored zero victory for his cause—if he did have a cause—during his visit.

If the defence was his fight-picking heart, no one asked Zhang if he had harboured a fight-picking heart when he had visited, taken the pictures.

That’s double-standard. That’s hypocrisy.

Personally, I would’ve left out the Yasukuni Shrine from my Tokyo itinerary — as much because of the two thousand war criminals there, and the 2 million+ not-war-criminals there who deserve respect and peace. If I’m not a descendant of those enshrined there; if I’m not worshipping; if I lack deference for the shrine and the Shinto religion it represents, then, I have no business to be at the Yasukuni Shrine.

There are beautiful sakuras all over Tokyo.

Sakuras along Tokyo’s Meguro River (Source)

Okay. Back to Zhang. I personally believe he made mistakes. Do I feel, then, that Zhang’s punishment was appropriate, or was it too much?

As someone whose family was mostly spared from the pain and suffering caused by the acts of the Imperial Japanese Army during the 1930s and 40s, I don’t think the answers to these questions are up to me to decide. It’s inappropriate for me to decide.

But I’ll follow my answer with this question: whoever are deciding now, are they the people who should be deciding, whose lives have been truly impacted by the war? Those screaming on social media that Zhang is a traitor, a 漢奸 hanjian—a term originated from the KMT and Sino-Japanese War era to refer to persons who have illicit relationships with the enemy of, specifically, the Han Chinese ethnicity—those wanting to destroy not just Zhang’s career, but Zhang himself … do they really believe visiting, taking photos at the Yasukuni Shrine are acts enough to warrant those accusations, bearing in mind that treason is, perhaps, the most unforgivable crime in China?

Is Chairman Mao, a Han Chinese, a hanjian when he thanked the Japanese prime minister? Why not? What he said could’ve been out of pragmatism, but did he hurt the feelings of the Chinese whose family had died from Japanese military brutality during the war, of the comfort women who, at the time of the meeting, were still living in significant numbers? Why, when a post quoting Mao’s words in defence of Zhang surfaced several days ago, the vast majority of online reactions was “here goes another brain-disabled fan”, until one netizen whispered it had actually been spoken by a Great Figure, without naming, without daring to name the actual speaker of the quote?

Why have those quotes been buried in the graves of the Chinese internet?

And the netizens who went on to “dig up”, spread unsubstantiated rumours about Zhang’s being 精日 (short for 精神上的日本人 “Spiritually Japanese”), being a secret right-wing Japanese, even—were they patriots or were they cyberbullys? Were they out to defend their country, or were they out there torturing someone they didn’t like for their own enjoyment? For their own potential gains?

They called Zhang a 行走的五十萬 “Walking 500,000” — the number referring to the sum of money (500,000 RMB, ~ 77,000 USD) the Chinese government rewards someone who reports, offers tip-offs on a foreign spy. If Zhang’s family happens to be Japanese too, they said, the reward could be 500,000 * n !!

An Anti-Spy Law (反間諜法) advertisement. 12339 is the phone number and website for reporting / making tip-offs on foreign spies. (Source)

One would say, of course, that these netizens were only joking.

But are jokes jokes if they can ruin someone for good? Same goes with every one who attempted to connect whoever, whatever they didn’t like with Zhang, @ ing the state agencies on the Weibo posts to call the latter’s attention to connections, wishing for the government and the platforms to remove these whoevers, whatevers along with Zhang.

These whoevers, whatevers have included: Zhang’s former work associates; CP supertopics; Danmei and Dangai; Dangai dramas before WoH; actors involved in Dangai dramas before WoH; supertopics of these actors; the fans of these actors; fandom in general …

(To the Anon who asked: this is how the rumour that all CP supertopics may be removed came about. So far, there are no evidences that the invisibility campaign related to Zhang is heading in that direction.)

These “soft reporting” attempts—soft, in the sense that they were reporting to the state agencies, but not using the state’s formal system—conjures a scene like this in my mind: a class of small children, all with little to no power on their own, pointing their stubby fingers to whoever they don’t like in front of who they perceive as absolute authority. “But (S)HE did this!! “ screams a child who tries to borrow the teacher’s “knife” to take down their enemies, not understanding what it’ll mean to themselves if the teacher does yield to their demand, does punish their “enemies” based on their words alone: that the child can themselves will be punished when another child points their stubby fingers at them.

Perhaps, here’s the resemblance of the scene: when absolute authority exists, critical thinking tends to go wayside, even if the capability to critically think exists—because what’s the point of thinking? The opinion of the authority is the only thing that matters in the end. Mob mentality and actions take over: mobs of not only netizens, but mobs of companies, mobs of platforms.

And so, when it rained for Zhang, it poured.

===

The Zhang Zhehan Incident Meta Series:

PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 <- YOU ARE HERE PART 5

#pie metas

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nut0rnot · 2 years

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II. Princess & Conquest

Play If: You like fantasy settings, dungeon crawling, clever writing, and fucking dragons

TW: Public sex, Breeding, Slavery, W*ndigo mention, Noncon

Have you ever found a game that would literally be perfect if not for the inclusion of just one horrible aspect? That’s how I feel about Princess & Conquest. You play as a chivalrous knight who is tasked with uniting a kingdom on the brink of total war. At a glance, the kingdom seems to be your typical D&D type world, but once you make it out of the tutorial, you’ll find that it more closely resembles a sexed-up version of Adventure Time’s Ooo. Each kingdom is run by a different Princess, and you’ll have to decide who you’ll ally yourself with in order to keep things running smoothly. There are a ton of different endings in this game; each princess has a story you can follow, as do many other side characters. While you don’t have much control over your character’s appearance, you do have plenty of input as to their backstory and stats. There are some light political tactics mechanics that I never bothered to get the grasp of, because I was too busy railing Mouse Princess.

Once the player does manage to get some succ, it’s possible for your companions to become pregnant. The game features a suspiciously in-depth system for character pregnancy. Princesses have menstrual cycles, and they suffer stat penalties while pregnant. It is kind of neat to be able to add your kids to the party, if you ignore a lot of obvious red flags there. IT IS WORTH MENTIONING THAT THE GAME KNOWS WHO YOUR KIDS AND AND DOES NOT ALLOW FOR HAVING SEX WITH THEM. THANK CHRIST, IT IS ABSOLUTELY TRAGIC THAT I NEED TO BE IMPRESSED BY THAT.

The art style is adorable most of the time. When it isn’t adorable, it’s kinda hot. Unfortunately, this RPG Maker game does commit the most grievous of sins: It uses some of the RTP assets included with the RPG Maker program. I’m willing to excuse it since the game is still in early access, but it does make a lot of the backgrounds really ugly. If you can look past that – along with the somewhat boring battle system – you’re bound to have a great time.

Some of my highest praise is for P&C’s replay ability. You have plenty of options for your character’s backstory, but there are also ways to customize a playthrough before it begins. You can randomize where you start, pick a specific kingdom, or just play through the original story. It guarantees that no two playthroughs will be the same. I’d also like to give a special mention to the level up system, which is way better than traditional RPGs where a character has a predetermined stat curve. At the end of the day – yes, the game has a functioning (and customizable) day and night cycle – you and your companions rest by the fire and burn “Candies.” These are the equivalent of souls from Dark Souls. They act as both EXP and currency. Character’s have stats that affect combat, but also stats that affect how open they are to romance and sex.

Unfortunately, not everything is all cum and roses. The base game features a mechanic called “Sex Fight” that essentially allows enemies to fuck the character you’re playing as if they hit you. THIS FEATURE CAN BE DISABLED BEFORE THE GAME EVEN STARTS THROUGH THE OPTIONS MENU. There are also mechanics that allow for Princesses of razed kingdoms to be sold into sex slavery, or to unload your own offspring into sex work (they fully mature and stuff, so it isn’t pedophilia, but it still feels like something they should not include in the game). LUCKILY, THIS CAN ALSO BE AVOIDED BY SIMPLY NOT ENGAGING WITH THE GOBLIN PRINCESS’S SLAVE MARKET. UNFORTUNATELY, I DO NOT THINK THERE IS ANY WAY TO REMOVE THIS ASPECT FROM THE GAME ENTIRELY. THIS IS THE MAJOR BLIGHT THAT EXISTS, AND IT SADDENS ME EVERY TIME I REMEMBER THAT I PURCHASED THIS GAME ON STEAM AFTER LIKING MY INITIAL RUN ON MY PIRATED COPY.

Princess & Conquest has a lot to unpack. It has rough edges. But I’ll be damned if the character interactions aren’t fantastic. The art is so stylized, and it’s easy to fall in love with the world’s characters. In general, I give it a 6/10, because good writing can’t save bad combat mechanics and problematic themes. From the lens of an RPG Maker game, I give it an 8/10, because I’ve played way too many bad RPG Maker games. If you’re willing to avoid the problematic content in the game, I definitely suggest at least going through one character’s route. The writing is so fun, and each of the princesses is so unique. Maybe don’t buy it though.

#video games #review #rpg maker #adventure time #indie games

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tsarisfanfiction · 4 years

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Desert Sands: Part 5

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Scott, John, Alan, Virgil, Gordon

Back with another section, just to prove I’m still alive. RL is throwing me through several loops and with uni just around the corner I’m a bit too busy freaking out about that for my muses to want to work, apparently (it’s hardly my first degree but apparently that’s not stopping them from shutting down). I have some backlog to post, still, but at least for now the days of near-daily updates are over. Hopefully once I get into the swing of uni my muses will come back...

<<<Part 4

Alan reached across him to place the first cool pack on Scott’s forehead, and they were rewarded with another groan and flutter of eyelashes.

“Scott?” John tried again, aware of Alan echoing the name. “Are you with us?”

His lips moved slowly, but no sound came out.

“Come on, Scott,” Alan pleaded, placing a second pack by his neck. Whether it was Alan’s words or the pack, John wasn’t sure, but blue eyes opened a crack.

Scott didn’t look at either of them; his eyes were so clouded and unlike their usual vibrant hue that John suspected he was barely awake, and probably entirely unaware of his surroundings. Still, it was a sign of life, and he renewed his attempts to remove as much of Scott’s uniform as possible.

“No, no, Scott!” He paused and looked back up at Alan, who had paused in packing a cool pack under Scott’s left armpit to pat his brother’s face lightly. “Stay awake!”

Scott rolled his head away from the stimulation, his groan sounding more like a moan of protest than an unconscious sound, and John abandoned the half-cut uniform at the hip to join Alan.

“Scott?” he called, cupping his brother’s face in his hands and wincing at the clammy skin. “Can you hear me?” He turned to Alan briefly. “Keep going with the packs.” The teenager nodded, his face troubled, and John saw him carefully place one over the broken collarbone before returning his attention to Scott, who was still making small, half-conscious noises of the protesting variety and closing his eyes again. “No you don’t, Scott. Keep those eyes open.” It took a couple more pats, but Scott responded, opening his eyes again. They were slightly clearer, a hopeful sign that awareness was returning to him, and John took the chance to accept a bottle of clean water from Alan and gently wash the worst of the blood from his face, looking for the source.

That got more of a reaction from Scott, who rolled his head into the cool stream. John caught his chin and kept him still before he put his mouth and nose into the water.

“Easy, Scott,” he soothed, finding a nasty cut above his left eye and carefully bathing it with water to wash out any foreign objects.

“-n.” Scott’s next moan almost sounded like an attempt at speech, but for all his multilingual fluency, John couldn’t decipher it. That wasn’t particularly unusual with semi-conscious individuals – John had heard Scott himself returning to consciousness with incoherent sounds over the comms before – but it gave him hope that Scott might not have been fully unconscious the entire time. After all, the raised shoulder restraints implied that Scott had got himself out of his chair. Whether that was before or after the head injury was another matter entirely, but that was a consideration for later.

At some point Alan had reclaimed the cutting tool and was continuing the task of stripping off the flight suit, leaving Scott in just his underwear and revealing a multitude of bruises. John checked the scan’s results again, just to double check that no internal injuries had been flagged up. They hadn’t, but Scott was still going to be sore for some time until he healed.

It was still too hot inside Thunderbird One, but they had nowhere better to move to and John watched anxiously as the medical scanner recorded Scott’s temperature inch up to one oh five. The cooling packs were slowing the increase, but doing little to stop it. They did, at least, seem to be helping Scott remain semi-conscious as he made another nonsensical noise.

“We’ll have you out of here soon,” John reassured him, placing some gauze over the gash and securing it in place with medical tape. They could do a better job later, but it would at least keep it clean until Thunderbird Two arrived. “Alan, how far out are they?”

A roar of engines answered him before Alan could, and Virgil appeared over the red comm.

“We’re coming in to land now; how is he?”

“Broken collarbone, minor head injury and a temperature of one oh five,” John reported. “He’s semi-conscious but I don’t know if he’s aware of his surroundings or just responding to the stimulus of the cooling packs. We can’t cool him down, though; Thunderbird One’s temperature regulator is offline and it’s baking hot in here.”

“Can he be moved?” Thunderbird One juddered slightly as Thunderbird Two landed beside her, and Virgil’s hologram went through the motions of leaving his seat and heading for the module.

“We’ll need a stretcher,” John sighed. “I don’t think his shoulder should be moved more than necessary, but I don’t know how you’ll get back out of the dorsal hatch with a stretcher.”

“Thunderbird One’s already unable to fly, more damage won’t make a difference,” Virgil pointed out. The idea of cutting up one of their Thunderbirds made John wince, but Virgil was right – Thunderbird One was already disabled, and they had to get Scott out as soon as they could. “Scans put Alan and two other life signs in the cockpit?”

“We’re under the pilot seat,” John confirmed.

“Under it?” Footsteps echoed through the hull of Thunderbird One as someone – presumably Virgil – walked over the top.

“It looks like Scott tried to get out,” John explained. “The harness is up and we found him on the floor.”

There was a familiar grumble at that as Virgil presumably once again had some choice words to mutter about idiotic brothers making themselves worse under his breath. “Okay, stay where you are. I’m cutting a way in.”

The high-pitched whine of a laser started up as the communication dropped, and John glanced back to see a glowing red spot several paces back at the side of the fuselage. Scott made another noise of distress as metal clanged down and sunlight streamed in through the new hole in Thunderbird One, silhouetting Virgil and Gordon’s outlines before the last brothers made their way inside. Gordon was towing the stretcher, but hung back as Virgil nudged Alan out of the way and joined John by Scott’s head.

“Scott, can you hear me?” he asked, leaning over to plant himself in front of hazed blue eyes and extracting a penlight from his toolbelt, which he shined into them. Scott sluggishly attempted to turn his head away, making more noises of complaint, but Virgil cupped his chin and held him still. His pupil constricted slowly, confirming John’s fears of a concussion, and Virgil put the penlight away again. “Scott?”

“Vrrr.”

“Okay, let’s get you out of this heat,” Virgil decided. “Gordon, get that stretcher over here.” Knowing that his brothers had far better experience dealing with extraction, John backed off and let his aquanaut brother take his place. He found Alan and watched from beside his youngest brother as Virgil manipulated Scott’s right arm into a sling before gently sliding their eldest brother onto the hover stretcher Gordon had laid down. “John, Alan, go on ahead. There isn’t room for four of us to move the stretcher in here.”

Alan hesitated, but it was true that there was very little room to manoeuvre inside Thunderbird One, and a single nudge from John had him scrambling out of the hole in her side. Thunderbird Two was settled only a few feet away, front hatch lowered, and they headed for it, waiting in the shade beneath the green ‘bird for Virgil and Gordon to emerge with Scott’s stretcher.

It was a long half minute before the bright green of Virgil’s baldric emerged into the blazing sunlight, and John noticed that a foil blanket had been loosely draped over the top of Scott, presumably to protect him from the sun as they hurried the short distance to the platform. All five of them fit on, although it was a tight squeeze with the stretcher, and John couldn’t help the sigh of relief as they entered the blissfully cool cockpit of a Thunderbird with working aircon.

He was once again bundled out of the way as the hoverstretcher was attached to the ports at the rear of the cockpit and the foil blanket was whisked away. Alan edged forwards next to Gordon as the aquanaut kept talking to Scott, keeping up a steady stream of chatter even as he replaced the cooling packs Alan had applied with fresh ones, pausing for breath whenever Scott made a noise. Virgil had busied himself with an IV, and was setting it up in Scott’s left arm. John assumed it was to rehydrate him, and came up behind Alan to look at Scott’s face.

His eyes were still open, and to John’s delight they were no longer staring blankly at nothing, but sluggishly attempting to look around as Gordon finished replacing the old cool packs and kept packing any exposed skin with fresh ones. After a moment they met his and stopped.

“-on?”

That could almost have been an attempt at his name – or Gordon’s – and he stepped closer, Alan stumbling out of his way.

“Scott?” he asked again, resting his hand lightly on what little exposed skin he could reach between cool packs on his brother’s shoulder. Scott blinked at him, and John could see his eyes clearing. A quick glance at the medical scanner’s data told him that his temperature was finally starting to fall.

“Whyrrere?” Scott blinked again, and then to John’s delight attempted to sit up, left hand raising to his head. Virgil was quick to put a stop to the movement, a large hand gently on his chest too difficult for their weakened brother to fight.

“Are you back with us, Scott?” their younger brother asked, guiding his arm back down. “Don’t move.” John found himself the target of brown eyes. “Don’t let him.” He nodded in understanding, returning his attention to Scott as the man groaned.

“W’appened?”

“What do you remember?” John asked, as Virgil busied himself with more medical equipment.

“One sh’down,” Scott slurred, blue eyes fixed firmly on John. The lack of any further attempts to move concerned him – it was well known that to keep an injured Scott in one place, restraints were often required. “N’repon’ing. Gonna crssh.”

“You did crash,” John confirmed, letting Gordon move him to the side so he could clean and redress the head wound, to Scott’s disgruntlement. “How are you feeling?”

Scott frowned, closing his eyes briefly, and Virgil nudged him. “No sleeping, Scott.”

“N’sleeping,” Scott protested, opening his eyes again. “Hot. Cold.”

“That’s the heat exhaustion,” Virgil told him. “We’re bringing your temperature down. Once it’s below a hundred I’ll give you something for the pain.”

“Wha’ pain?” Scott groaned, and despite the situation they all managed to find a small smile. Typical Scott. “M’n’urting.”

“Sure you’re not,” Virgil humoured him. “Well, as you’re ‘fine’, I’ll leave you in John’s hands while I get us ready to go home. Come on, Gordon. You, too, Alan.”

“’brrd One?” Scott asked suddenly, turning his head to watch them head back to the hatch and dislodging the cooling pack on his forehead. John retrieved it and held it in position for him.

“They’ll get her home,” he promised. “Relax, Scott. We’ve got you.”

Scott looked back at him, brow furrowed underneath the cooling pack. Sensing that his big brother was about to try and get up again, John rested his palm on his chest in a mimicry of Virgil’s earlier action. He wasn’t as strong as his younger brother, but with heat exhaustion and pain working against him, Scott was still unable to fight him and surrendered with a dark look.

“Whyyre you here?” he asked, and John shook his head fondly.

“Rescuing my brother,” he said, and Scott fixed him with a Look, glancing up meaningfully. “Thunderbird Five lost your signal,” he admitted. “I was more use down here.”

“And we will be having a discussion about your travel arrangements,” Virgil cut in, reappearing into the cockpit. “Sit down and strap in while I get us in the air.” John took one look at his older brother and fastened the straps to keep him from moving around before obeying, to Scott’s disgruntlement.

“My brrd?”

“We’re not leaving your girl behind, don’t worry,” Virgil assured him. “She’s a bit battered, but nothing Brains can’t handle once we get her home.”

John didn’t think Brains was going to be particularly pleased about constructing an entirely new sweep wing, especially not on top of replacing at least half the external panels and the entire electronics system, but said nothing. He was well aware that he was in for more than one lecture about the crippled space elevator, and with Thunderbird Shadow also in need of major repairs, keeping Brains sweet was going to be all but impossible.

Part 6>>>

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #Tsari writes fanfiction #Scott Tracy #John Tracy #alan tracy #Virgil Tracy #Gordon Tracy #Desert Sands

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joie-university-rp · 4 years

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OOC Statement:

Hello, All.

My name is Moe, or Admin/Vice Provost O, and it was brought to attention of myself and Daisy/Admin/Vice Provost D that there was a list of claims about us, the admins, and Joie as a whole, posted a few hours ago.

Part of me worries that addressing this will create a sort of opposite-Streisand Effect where acknowledging this brings it to the attention of a multitude more people than who would have seen it if we chose to simply ignore it. But the main goal and mantra of this RP from day one has been transparency, and I refuse to renege on that now.

The tl;dr is that these claims are falsified. They come from ex-members who, for any number of reasons, left or were removed on poor terms.

Now that the tl;dr is out of the way, please take a breath and prepare yourself for the tl.

Utilizing everything that I have at my disposal, I will dispute each of these claims to the best of my ability.

For all screenshots, I will block out the names/icons of other people since at the end of the day, the point of this is not to expose anyone. We simply want to clear our name of these false claims. The ace flag Grant Gustin icon is me. The Andy icon is Daisy.

During these refutes, I will be picking out specific screenshots, but, for the sake of transparency, in the morning, I will edit this post to post the full conversations at the very end.

I will be jumping around a bit, but I will start in reverse order after the cut.

False Testimony 4 has a lot of moving parts, but I will do my best to address each one. (With screenshots, when applicable.)

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #1: “It became very clear within a matter of a few weeks that they didn’t really like minority characters. I was among one of two minority charcters among mostly white males who were gay.”

To say that we don’t/didn’t like minority characters is absurd. At Joie, we have always loved and cherished all of our characters, but especially muses that tend to be neglected in the community, such as POC, nonbinary/genderqueer, and muses with disabilities. We even do our best to celebrate that by having the ability to sort our followlist via some of those identities, and by doing our best to suggest POC FCs when our current members consider picking up additional characters.

As anyone who runs an RP for a while knows, the makeup of an RP moves in waves. For example, there are definitely times when there are far more male FCs in comparison to other genders--especially in an RP like ours that doesn’t believe in placing bans on certain types of characters. With that in mind, without being able to go back and see exactly who was apart of Joie when this player joined, they are more than likely correct that there were few other POC muses. But in no way does that translate into saying that we ‘don’t like’ or are somehow against POC muses.

Similarly, I am a black female myself. Not only that, but I am plus-sized, and considered Mercedes to basically be my mirror while growing up. (Picture of my hand below as evidence.) Meaning that false claim hurts in more ways than one.

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #2: “Both an admin and another character wanted their character with Sam but Sam was interested in Mercedes.”

This claim is solely their word against mine, and it is definitely small potatoes in comparison to some of the larger claims, but I find this important to dispute for two reasons: 1, it continues to break apart this false claim that the admins in some way ‘didn’t like’ or ‘had it out’ for this player, and 2, it showcases that the person making this claim is, unfortunately, an unreliable narrator.

My dispute to this is the following: At the time that this Mercedes player was with us, I had 2 characters and Daisy had only 1. My first character and Daisy’s single character where in a slow-burn ‘will they, won’t they’ plot with each other that lasted the entire time Mercedes was there and then some. My 2nd character, Spencer, was/is a lesbian. If anything, I feel that maybe this player felt I was interested in having Spencer be with Sam because they were best friends. However, as previously mentioned, Spencer is and always has been a lesbian. So that simply is not the case.

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #3: “ It all came to a head when Jeff and Mercedes got into a fight because Jeff’s new boyfriend had hurt Sam’s feelings and Mercedes took up for her boyfriend. Jeff started being really disrespectful to her and then wrote a text to his boyfriend saying if Mercedes showed up to the sorority house he would kick her ass and kick her out by her nappy ass weave. That pissed me off. I felt like that was extremely disrespectful and racist. You don’t say things like that. It hurt me OOC as a black woman and IC as a Mercedes player But the admins did nothing.”

Thankfully, we’re to our first claim with hard evidence to dispute with. While it is true that this situation did, unfortunately occur, it is completely false to say that the admins did nothing. Here is a conversation between myself and the player showcasing the exact opposite.

(The text conversation in question was unfortunately written over so I cannot link to it, but I’d like to mention some additional things about this situation:)

Much like I said in the conversation, I originally didn’t read the texts to be inherently or explicitly intended to be racist. I read it more in the way of how talking about ‘weave’ and the like has/had started to become just as prominent in the gay community as it is the black one. But, also like I mentioned in the conversation, I recognized that she more than likely had a different background/history with the word than I did, so I wanted to still address the situation however I needed to in order to make sure that she, as the victimized party, still felt comfortable.

As seen in the conversation, she said all she needed was to get it off her chest. And even with her saying she did not need any more action to be made, I still took it a step further and spoke to the other party, gave them a strike (Joie works on a 3 strike policy except in the case of egregious offenses), and had them remedy the situation by changing the text.

To say we did nothing is, once again, just simply false.

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #4: “Then the player and their friend started harassing me. I told the admins over and over and they said there was nothing they could do. The player even lied on me with no proof ( I showed the admins proof of the hate) and the admins basically pressured me saying I was welcome to leave if it bothered me so much. I was really upset and hurt. The hate just continued and I finally had enough and left.”

Once again. It is false and unfair to say we did nothing. Even though we could not get an understanding from either party of where this quarrel came from, we kept an eye on this quarrel at all times.

The tl;dr of this quarrel is this: The harassment was something that was almost non-stop from both sides, and it would come in waves. We would be approached by one of the two players, we would diffuse the situation, and then a few days would pass, and another would spring up. It was a constant thing.

While I don’t have many screenshots, I do have some screenshots of things started to reach its peak. Within this screenshot, you can see that we did do everything in our power to fix this situation by urging the two to try to finally talk things out with admin moderators present instead of continuing to hash things out unhealthily on the dash via character bleeding.

(This came up as part of a larger conversation regarding this character’s lack of general activity and choice to bubble and have Mercedes be extremely argumentative/aggressive whenever they were on. This is the most relevant part, but, again, for the sake of transparency, I will post the entire conversation after this full statement is done)

Quick clarification: “We can see your custom status” refers to the custom status on discord. The status vagued about the situation in same way, although it’s been months so I can’t remember exactly what.

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #5: “I hadn’t even thought about Joie after I left. But they hate continued. One of the admins ( I recently found out) joined a group pretending to be me with my name and was extremely rude playing Mercedes as a stereotype, thank goodness a few people who knew me told me about it and the admin left the group. Turns out she was just there to spy on their group so they could steal ideas. ”

This claim is just straight up false. It is not even ‘misremembered’ or ‘unreliable’. It is just false.

Since Joie started, I have not joined any other RP of any kind. Daisy has joined other RPs, but none of them have been Glee RPs, and none of them have been this weird ‘stereotype/stealing information’ claim.

Also, if one thinks about this claim for a few seconds longer, the whole thing makes less and less sense. If someone’s goal was to ‘steal ideas’ from an RP, why would they draw attention to themselves by: A, pretending to be someone else in the community--Especially someone who plays a rarely-picked up character? and B, playing a black woman as a stereotype--something that almost all admins would address immediately? Additionally, what ‘ideas’ would someone be stealing from an RP? And additionally, additionally, if there were somehow ideas to steal, why would someone need to join an RP to see them? Nothing regarding that claim stands up to logic.

I have come to the table with screenshots left and right. I encourage this player to please give screenshots of whatever group this supposedly is/what, pictures of the supposed blog, and/or more information about which admin this supposedly was and how they know.

Because on the off-chance that this isn’t just a completely falsified statement pulled out of thin air, it is definitely a situation where this player simply thought that we did something when we absolutely did not. Which brings us to claim 6:

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #6: “Then they started sending hate to the Sam player pretending it was me mad at a new ship. I tried explaining that I didn’t even follow Joie anymore but the damage was done and I lost a friend and writing partner. The group the admins they are all toxic and I am still paying the price for making the mistake of joining that group.”

Much like claim 5, this claim is just false. Straight up, 100% false. Not ‘misremembered’, not ‘unreliable’. False.

And also much like claim 5, if this is not pulled completely out of thin air, it is a situation where this player simply thought that we did something when we absolutely did not. And for this claim, I actually am leaning a bit more towards it being this one.

It is obviously difficult to prove that you didn’t do something, but I have proof that the Joie main was also receiving odd and hate anons talking about Mercedes/this Mercedes player.

I logically have my suspicions that this is the Mercedes player themselves because on August 3rd, they had been away from the RP for over 7 months, and I highly doubt a ‘friend’ would be able to know we even had a Mercedes--let alone specifically her--after all that passed time, but this is about disputing claims, not making them myself, so I digress.

If nothing else, this screenshot shows that if there was someone other than the player sending weird Mercedes-specific anons, it was not us.

With ‘Testimony’ 4 out of the way, I will move my attention to ‘Testimony’ 2.

‘Testimony’ 2, Claim #1: “Hey! I just want to warn people about Joie. I honestly thought it would have died by now with the toxic admins. I joined that group near the beginning and was kicked without a single word from the admins AFTER they internet stalked me and found out my exact location. They held, and probably still hold, a grudge against me for no reason, or at least none that has ever been explained to me. It's super creepy and I'd be wary.”

There’s actually two false claims in this one statement. I will refute them in opposite order starting with the bit that’s bolded.

The tl;dr is that no one internet stalked anyone and, more importantly, no one has their exact location. (I will explain that further after giving background to the whole situation.)

This situation is another long one, but here’s the gist: The reason Daisy and I (and originally two other admins, but they are long gone) created this RP was to leave a different RP where the admins and some members were not kind to us. Not too long after Joie got off the ground, we received 3 new apps which we then accepted. Within a few moments of meeting them in the OOC, suspicions were DMed to us (both by one of our now long-gone admins and another regular player at the time) that at least one of the 3 apps was actually a person that I’ll call Z for the rest of this story, trying to pass as someone else by using a different alias and a brand new fake Discord account. Z had a negative history with one of our players, was a part of the group all 4 admins were fleeing from, and additionally had a particularly negative history with one of our long-gone admins.

Like implied in the story, we already had a history with this person, so we knew vaguely where the person lived (in the same way that all internet people talk to each other). In order to see if this person actually was Z, we checked the ping that submitted the app (more on that in a second), saw it was from the same country we know Z had mentioned living in, and then approached them about it.

While talking to Z, G (another one of the 3 apps) came forward to admit in a rage that they and the 3rd app, X, were all people with similar negative histories all doing the same thing in order to try to sneak into our RP.

Z and G left on their own accord while X was told by admins that they were going to be removed (more on that in a second).

You can see these conversations below.

Here’s Z’s convo:

Two quick clarifications: “Why both of you?” is me asking why both Z and X did this (we did not know about G’s involvement at this moment).

“There will be.” was me in the middle of preparing a server with all the admins in it so they could all be in the loop about this situation.

Here’s G’s conversation:

Two more quick clarifications: One, this is in the middle of a larger conversation where G came to me discussing IC problems with the player that all three of them had a negative history with (At this time, I had no clue G was with X and Z, so I was handling it like I would a normal quarrel.) Like others, I will put the whole conversation as a footer at the end, but above is the relevant part.

Two, like I said before, I am about transparency, so I’ve posted this conversation piece as a whole even though there is false info it in. Much like I will explain further in a second, no one stalked anyone. Nor was anyone harrassed past asking them why they chose to do this instead of just being truthful from the jump.

Now, onto addressing the “stalking” claim head on:

No one was stalked, nor did anyone find anyone’s ‘exact location’. We realized who Z and X were by looking at their pings.

For those who do not know what pings are, pings are the little dot that shows up when you go on a blog that has the ‘[blank] people online, [blank] total visitors’ code on it. This thing here:

A majority of Glee blogs nowadays have them. If you click on the links, it takes you to this page where you can see your ping.

The ping above is mine on Seblaine RPH’s blog. And I have no problem showing you this ping because it is nowhere near my real location. These pings are based on cellphone towers, so they’re vague to begin with (the really only show the state/country, and they also are usually fairly off (at least a few cities away in any direction).

This, completely readily available information that almost all Glee blogs have, is all the information that was used. The only reason it helped at all was because Z did not live in America. Something we already knew. And it confirmed that the alias we were suspicious of also didn’t live in America.

Otherwise, it told us nothing. No city, no IP address, and definitely no exact location.

To give further context, people get more personal information when they reverse search anon hate than someone could get from this ping. And people give more personal information when they simply post a picture of themselves than someone could get from this ping.

And since there are probably some people who didn’t know that’s what happens when you go on a blog, I want to add this:

In addition to this being something many Glee blogs have, we also (again in the efforts of transparency) have never shied away from explaining this process to our members when they ask.

I have screenshots of me explaining this to a member in more--and arguably, better--detail below (and this is the only conversation I will not post in full because they have nothing to do with the larger convo, and their reason for asking was personal.)

For a bit of context, using this same tactic, we found, months later, that a different player had created a fake alias and was playing more roles through that account after she was told to up activity before applying for another on her main account.

Now moving on to the other half of that false claim:

‘Testimony’ 2, Claim #2: “Hey! I just want to warn people about Joie. I honestly thought it would have died by now with the toxic admins. I joined that group near the beginning and was kicked without a single word from the admins AFTER they internet stalked me and found out my exact location. They held, and probably still hold, a grudge against me for no reason, or at least none that has ever been explained to me. It's super creepy and I'd be wary.”

Unfortunately, my conversations with X (the person I’m assuming sent this, as G and Z left in a huff on their own accord) are long deleted and gone, but I can assure that we explained to them the reason why they were removed. And the reason why I know is that because, like I said before, Joie’s mission has always been transparency.

So once they left/were removed respectively, we explained the situation to the main OOC as well. Most of it was via VC for ease on my poor fingers (unlike right now), but there’s still enough to hopefully get my point across.

Moving on to false Testimony 3 and 1:

‘Testimony’ 3, Claim: “If you are not a gay or bisexual white Male then stay away from Joie they pretend to be accepting but are not. As a minority female I was bullied constantly and the admins did nothing. But the moment the same person bullied a white male they kicked that person out. Joie is toxic.”

Much like previous false testimonies, this never happened. It’s as simple as that. This is false.

Much like mentioned before, whenever there is a situation, Daisy and I work hard to make sure that things come to a resolution as soon as possible.

Additionally, as I also mentioned before, I am also a minority female--specifically a black female. Why would I ever do something like that?

‘Testimony’ 1, Claim: “Joie Academy treated me like crap as well and practically told me that 'I seem like the kinda person no one would get along with in the real world'... I am surprised people are still there cause the admins are the worst and put me through so much.”

This is another testimony that is just completely and utterly false. Not ‘misremembered’, not ‘unreliable’. False.

I don’t have much to say on the topic past that that I haven’t already said multiple times over in other places throughout this.

In closing, I would just like to say that although I recognize and appreciate what Seblaine RPH is trying to do by warning people of problematic/toxic RPs, I am pleading that they please get both sides of a story before making such a bold post with such bold claims as he did.

False claims travel 6 times faster than real ones, and if the trend becomes that all it takes to get an RP to be considered blacklist-able is people sending false claims about it, Joie will unfortunately not be the last RP to fall victim to this.

To those of you who read this whole thing, I thank you.

~Vice Provost O

---

Full conversations will be posted here in the morning. I will indicate that this post is edited at that time.

#seblainerph #glee rp #glee rpg #ooc statement #joieuniversityrp #vice provost o

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crescentbunny · 4 years

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Do you want to know what makes me most mad about this coup attempt? It’s not the sheer nerve of overly privileged adult children who are let casually into our nation's capital, near welcomed in because our nations police force is on their side to fly the fucking confederate flag in a place it never was even during the civil war. No. I'm mad that no one at all will face ramifications. That this coup attempt will be marginalized in white right wing history books, that they themselves at this moment are marginalizing and DEFENDING these actions against our very democracy.

And you might think “There’s no way for the republican party to recover from this” But they will. The blinders they have on cannot be removed through any rational, realistic means because these people do not live in reality.

And the most maddening thing of all is that they will be absolutely fine and stronger than ever, and over the next four years us traumatized youths are going to have to find the energy to keep this level of vigilance and mobilization of all of our disenfranchised selves to keep them down again and again! We can’t relax now that Biden is in and Mitch is out. We can’t just rest and assume the people around us are level headed, reasonable people.

Because they aren’t.

The people who elected Trump are still out there and if we get even a smidge complacent we will have him back in four years. And it's exhausting. I’m so exhausted and I’m a person of privilege. This doesn't have to affect my daily life if I don’t want it too. Many can’t say the same. I can only slightly imagine the exhaustion of POC, and queer, and disabled, and disenfranchised, and poor people across this nation. This is their lives. Every. Day.

It’s not FAIR that we have to maintain this fearful level of attention. We have all been irrevocably hurt by this. Where do we find the energy to keep fighting like this? Because it’s not like we have a choice.

#america #america politics #capital coup #trump supporters #trump #It is a tragedy what we've had to endure since 2016 - and earlier #we've been hurt #look #I hope Im wrong #and they will all face consequences #and the right will learn and grow from this #but #yeah right

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thesims4blogger · 5 years

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The Sims 4 on Xbox & PlayStation 4: New Game Patch (July 16th, 2019)

There’s a Sims 4 update available for players on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Update: 07/16/2019 – v1.16

It seems like only yesterday when we added Mouse & Keyboard support to The Sims 4 but that hasn’t stopped us from making improvements based on your feedback while preparing for Island Living. The team has also been hard at work on new features and have addressed some long standing issues so let’s dig in, starting with the new stuff.

New Console Features

Mouse & Keyboard can now be used to bypass the “Press START” screen rather than requiring a controller to get to the Main Menu. That means you can start and finish your Simming session using the control scheme you prefer. Now, where’s the any key?

I’m on a boat… Oh I’m not?!?! Seems that going into First Person view didn’t agree with all Simmers and left some feeling a little ill. Worry not, head to Options > Game Camera and Disable First Person Head Bob for that more on rails feel while you are inside your Sims’ heads.

When entering cheats, Sims would continue their day as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Using a controller, adding cheats could take most of a Sim day if you were unlucky. Now, when entering cheats, the game will pause letting you add all the cheats you want without missing a second of Sim life.

Randomize Traits Button

We all get creative block sometimes, other times we just look for a challenge. Whatever your approach you can now hit the Randomize Traits button in CAS to get a set of traits you might not usually pick for your Sim. Will your Sim be a Jealous, Lazy Goofball or a Genius, Slob who Hates Children? Let the dice decide.

Lounge Chair

Everyone (even you) gets a FREE LOUNGE CHAIR! That’s right, we’ve added a delightfully Portable Lounge Chair, so you can now lounge by the pool they way you’ve always wanted and you don’t even need to wake at the crack of dawn to put your towel down.

Pride Content

Created in partnership with the It Gets Better Project you can show your pride with some fantastically colorful new clothing. From the rainbow leggings to the body suit and new t-shirts your Sim can show their Pride. In addition, we’ve also included a selection of decorative Pride flags for hanging on your Sims’ walls. Finally, we’ve updated our bathroom door sets in-game so that every bathroom door also includes a gender-neutral version for builders, and includes a full suite of color swatches for mixing and matching to your heart’s content. Happy Pride Month everyone, even if we did get here a little late!

Stilt Foundations

Or as we like to call them, High Heels for your House. Or House Heels. These things don’t need to be limited to just the tropics. Stilts are a great partner in crime to terrain manipulated and flat lots, in any biosphere. You can find them in Build Mode alongside all the other regular Foundation types. Now go get your stilt on.

Further Eaves Extension

Now you can pull your Eaves… further.

Freelancer Career

Freelancer is a brand-new type of career. Sims can choose to be a Freelance Artist, Programmer, or Writer, and will work through an agency that will connect them with a variety of gigs. Unlike other careers, there’s no defined work schedule to worry yourself over. Need some extra Simoleons? Smash through a few gigs in a single day and get paid! Need some time off? No problem – plenty of gigs will be waiting for you when you’re ready to get back to work. Your office is wherever you want it to be. Perhaps a quiet corner in the local library, or maybe you’d prefer a home office decked out in the new set of office furniture? You’re your own boss, so the choice is yours! Completion of gigs across the different agencies will lead to a variety of rewards, and ever-increasing pay.

New Objects

This free set of home office furniture and decor is ideal for your burgeoning Freelancer Sims!

Bookcase: Edgier LadderCase

Desk: Anglette Desk

Desk Chair: The Professional

End Table: A Cute Anglette

Decor: Not So Simple Pen Holder

Decor: Hand Reference Model

Decor: Robo, The Friendly Circuitry Kit

Decor: The Note Book

Laptop: FreeRoam Portable Computing Device

Wall Decor: Better As A Pair Of Paintings

Wall Decor: Supreme Freelancer Award

Doors of many Colors

Knock knock! Who’s there? Color! Color who? 350 new color swatches spread across all of the doors. Yeah, maybe the future as a stand up comedian isn’t in my future after all.

New Lot Traits

Clothing Optional: This new venue-only lot trait will inspire your Sims to — you guessed it — get nude.

Off-The-Grid: Now you can live out your nomadic fantasy on any lot. Applying this lot trait will remove your Sim’s use of power and running water, but on the upside it keeps your bills down. Keep a lookout for existing objects with the “Works Off-The-Grid” note in the Buy Catalog.

New Clothing

Freelancers tend to want comfy, but professional outfits. We’ve got them covered with the following new pieces of clothing.

Women

Men

A cable knit cardigan outfit

A sweater and skirt outfit

A layered sweater

A pair of flats

A collared sweater

A button up shirt

A crewneck sweater

A pair of drawstring pants

Immaculate White Shelf

According to SimGuruGraham, Simmers really REALLY wanted a plain white version of “The Immaculate” shelf available in Buy Mode. Who are we to argue with what SimGuruGraham tells us?

More Toddler Diaper Colors

We added some L’il Swimmies Splashy Diapers! You don’t necessarily have to use them for splashing in the water, but that’s where our brains were at when we made them. We made these not only in anticipation for Island Living, but we also thought you’d appreciate more swimming options for your toddlers to use in the Seasons Kiddie Pool.

Back Float

A new Back Float interaction is available for Sims swimming in the pool. Select the water. Try it out. Take a load off.

Fishing Additions

Brace yourself, we’re about to cast you into a deep dive…

We added several new interactions to allow players to fish in different ways and interact with other Sims around fishing activities.

Sims can perform a few new Fishing-based socials to gain useful info (via UI TNS/Notebook) and push NPCs to Fish.

Fishing is now joinable.

Improved fishing interaction tuning and autonomy to make the interaction more efficient and fun.

Upper skill levels now provide more meaningful rewards, with new Interactions added to Fishing skill levels

New high skill cast interaction “Angle for Big Catch” increases chance of getting rarer fish.

New high-skill VFX visuals on Rare fishing spots.

Ability to now “Mentor Sims in Fishing.”

Fishing UI has improved information, including Notebook info with Bait information.

Tuning for fish that can be caught is unique per world & more fishing spots added to some of our previously shipped worlds.

New bait preference system applied to most existing fish that modify catch chances.

Ceiling Fan Updates

Ceiling Fans will now cool a room if you have Seasons and the fan is on. Oh yeah, speaking of which, we also added the ability to turn them On and Off. And while we were at it, we figured we’d make them dry off damp Sims too.

Ceiling Objects Build Sort

We also added a new Ceiling Objects Build sort category to make things like Fans easier to find.

Swimming Things

There is now a chance for interesting things to happen to your Sims while swimming, like getting a cramp or losing their suit (eek!). Swimming also now gives your Sims a boost in Fitness skill gain.

Part-Time Jobs Update

And last but not least (you still with me?) all existing Part-Time Jobs are no longer just for Teens. That’s right, now elders could work as Fast Food Employees. Young Adults could be Babysitters if they want. Why not? The Part-Time world is your oyster. Oh oh oh — and one last thing on that note: You can now have two Part-Time Jobs at once and pick between shifts. Wowee.

The green pulsing of the snap cursor would previously appear every 20-30 seconds for some players even if you were using a Mouse & Keyboard. That pulse is under control now, unless you are using snap cursor in which case you should expect to see it.

Rooms can now be resized with the Mouse & Keyboard control scheme.

Talking of Mouse & Keyboard, if you use them you can live drag objects now.

Simmers using a Mouse & Keyboard can now make use of edge scrolling. We had the option before but it didn’t work as you might have thought.

The Virtual Cursor may be virtual but it doesn’t mean it was meant to disappear after you came out of build mode.

Sims will travel to the correct venue when invited out to an event by a NPC Sim.

Fixed an issue where the UI would occasionally indicate that a Sim was at work, when they were actually at home, which would block access to the Sim’s inventory.

Sims will no longer receive random phone calls from other Sims between the hours of 8pm and 10am, allowing them to enjoy a full – and speedy – night’s sleep.

Fixed an issue where multiple music tracks could end up looping and playing simultaneously.

Expecting parents will once again be able to “Take Family Leave” via their phone to take time off from work.

Fixed an issue where a Sim who had cheated with another Sim romantically, were then unable to successfully propose to that Sim and get married.

Fixed an issue where Sims in the eSport Gamer branch of the Tech Guru career were not earning money when programming video games.

The Pick Up Serving Together interaction will no longer cause one of the Sims involved to fail to route to the food.

Fixed an issue where interactions on the Digitalistic Sketchpad object would disappear if a Sim’s actions were canceled while they were picking up the Digitalistic Sketchpad.

Updated the Digitalistic Sketchpad object so that creating paintings on it will satisfy Aspiration goals and work tasks that involve painting.

Fixed an issue with the Lin-Z Smart Speaker, where the interaction to hire a Gardener would remain unselectable, even when the home had a garden that needed tending.

Sims will now look at the Lin-Z Smart Speaker when speaking to it.

The “Pre-Owned Painter’s Easel”, that’s unlocked via the Painter career, will now provide an Inspirational emotional aura, instead of a Focused emotional aura.

Fixed an issue where staircases were not rendering properly while held by a mouse cursor.

Adjusted icons of Lunar New Year recipes to better display what food you’re looking at within an inventory.

The children’s Yin & Yang Necklace will no longer clip into their neck when wearing a shirt that’s tucked in.

The “CleanRoom” wall pattern, which was previously missing a name for its 5th color variant, has now had that specific color variant named “Like Sand”.

A new content alert icon has been added to individual careers within the Select a Career panel, to help players find new careers that have been added to their game.

“Shift clicking” with the controller (X and Circle (PlayStation 4) or A and B (Xbox One)) at the same time on the Age Up menu will no longer cause menus to overlap.

Note: If a save file created prior to this update contains a Sim that’s already in this bad state, simply traveling to another lot with that Sim will permanently fix this issue.

As far as I’m aware, this is the only instance in the game where a color variant has been given a unique name. Huh… neat!

Scientists will once again wear an appropriate outfit when going to work even if StrangerVille is not installed.

The “Chemical Analyzer” object can now be purchased from Build Mode without having to use a cheat.

Made updates to the list of valid objects that can be selected as the outcome of the SimRay’s “Transform Object” interaction.

Fixed an issue where objects from multiple festivals were appearing on top of each other in the neighborhood simultaneously.

Apartment landlords will now leave the apartment immediately after addressing a tenant’s complaint.

Added the ability for Sims with the Vegetarian trait to hire a Vegetarian Caterer by clicking on Stoves or Refrigerators.

Vegetarian Sims will no longer enjoy eating Mud Carp.

Fixed an issue where hungry pets would not eat from food bowls autonomously.

The pet toy box will no longer have its position rotated in a random direction when a Sim returns home from an active career.

Fixed an issue where the “Litter-Matic Scoop-Free” litterbox wasn’t looking clean after cat poop had been removed.

Fixed an issue with the Pet Adoption Agency, where they would occasionally show up at a Sim’s home without any pets to adopt, and would simply stand at the home’s front door and not do anything.

The Hide/Show filter now does as you’d expect while using the Simstagram pet interaction.

Fishing in Brindleton Bay shouldn’t have your Sim facing the wrong direction. No more fishing the land and wondering why the fish aren’t biting.

Updated the Gardening career so that Sims will earn more than 10 Simoleons per completed work shift.

Fixed an issue where on days where no holiday was set to occur, a Sim’s work schedule would update to falsely indicate that the day was a Holiday just prior to going to work, causing the Sim to stay home for the day.

Fixed an issue where NPC Sims were not autonomously using the skating rinks that appear in certain neighborhoods.

Toddlers will no longer attempt to queue up behavior to “Run Inside” during bad weather conditions if they’re already inside.

Fixed an issue where Sims voices could not be heard when Singing Together around a Holiday Tree if City Living was not installed.

You’ll now be able to cancel the Compel to Drink interaction after choosing to feed on a Scarecrow.

The Acting career task to “Get Into Hair and Makeup” can be successfully completed once again.

Fixed an issue where celebrity Sims who had been set to use their normal walkstyle were switching back to using the celebrity walkstyle after traveling to certain types of venues.

Three star celebrity Sims will no longer use the celebrity walkstyle.

Your Sims can now pester… er… visit, any campers of their choosing in Granite Falls.

Fixed an error where Sims would get stuck in the Forest Hideaway lot in Granite Falls.

Simmers who have City Living installed can now put the Siopao and Ensaymada dishes on their restaurant’s menu.

Bat!

Grand Master Vampires know all, or so they thought. Now they can continue to earn points. Does that make them a Grand Grand Master?

Vampire NPCs shouldn’t get appear at a venue and prevent you from saving.

Vampire NPCs shouldn’t have their Vampire Energy drained after a load which allows them to continue with their expected autonomous behavior.

Sim Form!

The following environment objects, which were created for StrangerVille, have been added to the Build Mode debug catalog to allow placement on lots. Players must enter the bb.showhiddenobjects cheat before they can be seen in the catalog.

Added proper images to the Officer and Covert Operator branches of the Military career.

Removed the “Question about Spores in Lab” interaction for Sims who have already acquired the Modified Hazmat Suit.

Removed the “Heart of the Pack” styled look from Create a Sim, as it was authored using clothing that’s only available to Sims that have joined the Military career.

Updated the pack information panel on the main menu to not display world objects under the Build Mode Items.

10 different cacti

3 different Joshua trees

3 different RVs

2 clusters of rocks

2 junked cars

A group of desert flowers

A military truck

A tire

A parking stop

Holiday Celebration Pack

The Crown Roast platter will now show a partially eaten state when half of its servings have been taken.

PlayStation 4

Some makes of keyboard are extremely fancy with lots of features, one of those features appears to have been the ability to prevent the mouse from being used. We’ve made improvements in this area.

As usual, we have new creations which were created and shared by members of the Sims Community. You can find them in My Library.

There we are, a lot of changes to take us further into 2019. Now I’m off to get my Sims some sun, sea and fun in The Sims 4 Island Living.

SimGuruLegacy

#news #the sims 4 #ts4 #sims 4 #xbox one #playstation 4

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phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess · 6 years

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why doesn’t the current employment system work?

easy, it’s a half-assed one-solution-fits-all approach made by rich people who have NEVER used the employment search system.

How does it work?

You want centrelink? You get assigned a job-search centre, there’s always 4-5 in even small towns now. It’s a lucrative business.

You’re told ‘search for 20-40 jobs per month’ based on your area. They have to be jobs you could reasonably do (one or two assholes made sure the whole system was tightened bc they’d apply for things they had no qualifications for).

These are entered online, on a special governmental site. Failure to locate the right amount gets you a strike, or more than one.

Which is hard because there are only so many jobs in smaller towns, right?

So let’s say you have no luck, you hand in the 20 for that fortnight, and ‘report’ online to centrelink that you are following the rules.

They also make you do mandatory courses such as the 2-day ‘Resume Writing Course’ that you can do up to twice in 6 months. It’s as stupid as it sounds, and you learn nothing but that you hate the place.

Also, 3-day mandatory ‘Communication with People’. How to talk to people. Literally. 3 days of your life gone. Gee, wish I’d done some sort of degree around literally talking to people and using analysis... hmmm...

They do not Recognise Prior Learning, at all. Because each person they make attend gets them more and more money.

New rules allow for them to identify a job you HAVE to apply for -even if you must write a new resume and cover letter. Which, in some cases, is a little fair. Maybe you’re using one from years ago.

New rules can make them demand you call the HR of a certain place in front of them, to prove your resume went in, and to ask about the position. Of course, this will slap you on the Hell No list, but at least they’re satisfied.

New rules allow them to make you change your existing resume -e.g. they can demand you remove your degree/qualifications to make you more attractive to retail employers (always wary of taking on someone who might move on quickly).

That only works for 6 months these days.

- - -

After 6 months, they send you on a Work-for-the-Dole assignment to a local charity.

They’re supposed to do risk assessments, and follow up on allegations of groping weirdoes and pedophilia (looking at you, Salvation Army*). But they don’t. [ *that person who did it was literally the Community Member of the Year until the truth of what the local SA was covering up came to light. Fucking creep of a man, so many flags that Jesus absolved him of.]

That nonsense injured two members of my family directly, as well as others; at the same place, at different times, and both were deemed ‘our fault’. Despite that the first incident involved an unqualified asshole making a teenage boy hold a fridge, then deliberately dropping the truck tray fast so it yanked the ligaments in the kid’s shoulder so badly it took 6-12 months to heal with physiotherapy.

And the second time, a bookshelf held up with STICKY-tape was broken by a customer, and fell off slamming into my knees and feet, causing untold agony... resulting in a fractured patella in one knee and severe bruising/clicking/weird shit that persists even a year and a half later... but that was my fault.

-----------------------

In short, each person is assigned up to 55 hours per fortnight that they have to undertake with a charity of some formation. OR ROADWORK - they can also make you do roadwork. Like they tried to do to the just-healed teenage boy the minute his medical exemption period was up, even though he couldn’t raise his arm all the way yet. It’s Making Money, not Helping People Find Jobs.

They also made an app, that the person attending MUST download (even if you have to delete just about every single other thing on the cheap phone to make room for it).

It’s called Jobapp or some shit. Basically, when you get there the manager or head volunteer (often tech illiterate) HAS to print a QR code for you, and only you.

You sign into the app, this takes a while bc it’s not well designed and cuts out often. Finally, you find the hard-to-locate-and-ambiguously-named part where you can ‘sign in’ as being at your ‘activity’.

If you’re there all day, and you will be, there are Two Codes.

You scan them to separate locations in the app. And boom, you’re registered as there. It only takes one missed QR code or app failure to land you in shit, though.

And then you spend all day cleaning, on the till, arguing with people over op shop items bc they feel certain prices are too high even if it’s less than a third the real price. And you’re not allowed to sit or chill or anything... unless you’re a volunteer. They can get away with murder.

So that goes on for six months, slowly draining the will to live from your bones.

All the while, you still have to do the 20-40 jobs things and find time for their Training Modules that you already did but hey, you’re a moneymaker. Sometimes they will NOT count the training days towards your Total 55hours per fortnight, so you lose the one free day a week you had...

---------------

It sucks... but I think the other thing we should mention is that this doesn’t really exclude any jobseekers.

Disabled? Elderly? Medical Issues? Can’t speak english very well? Other issue?

Get in there. We get paid to supervise your activity!

Like, there are a lot of people doing job seeking activities who are unfit for the position they are forced into. For many reasons.

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The thing I found laughable was that they could apply for you, without your knowledge, and if that resulted in an interview you HAD to go. If they feel you tanked the interview, they can penalise you...

There are ways to tank an interview, though. Trust me. Especially for telemarketer interviews, just have an awkward phone manner, like you’re trying but it’s Weird. And boom, no. [Not that there’s anything wrong with that job, but they signed me up for it without my permission and some dangerous clients worked there, I would not have been safe, they didn’t care tho].

Also, you can’t apply for certain positions for someone with a degree. Our ability is measured in the way we respond to the questions and assessment requests... you can force us to apply to them, but trying to write in for us is just ridiculous.

They might also call and call and call anyone on your applied-for list that they directed you to apply for... which of course, can tank your chances. Very annoying.

And if you get a job, on your own merit, they take credit for it immediately. I assume there’s a bonus or something.

- - - - -

The agency I was sent to, MaxEmployment, was actually THROWN OUT OF ANOTHER STATE FOR COMMITTING FRAUD AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT.

So naturally, QLD said ‘yeah, let’s have that one’.

M.E. allegedly used to claim they had held mass training events with 80+ people every few weeks, doing those awful little courses listed above. Except, on inspection by confused governmental officials..,. they discovered the room would barely hold 5-6 people including a trainer. Therefore, fraud.

Also, M.E. has failed to catch fake-ads (resulting in free 2-hour work ‘trials’ for a certain cafe that went over a year, fraud) and even sent an unaccompanied 15 year old girl to a fucking BROTHEL after identifying a clearly-not-for-an-admin ad for ‘an admin’ at that location.

IT’s always MONEY.

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If you are in charge of the poor, the ill, the desperate... then it should not be for money incentives. You should get a flat wage and that’s it.

Why? Because then people who are actually able to do the job, and willing to help people, will do it. Not just people who see dollar signs when they look at the tired, the unemployed and the ill.

And they need to actually fire bad people.

Let me tell you about this woman I had to deal with in a 6 month break from my fucking uni degree due to illness. Automatically, they threw me into job seeking. I didn’t have a voice for like 2 months, but that didn’t matter.

This huge, hulking, rotund potato of a woman, balding ranga and a face as mean as a bulldog’s arsehole... was my caseworker person. She was a nightmare.

I would find 20 jobs, and hand in the sheet, she would yell at me, that I was being smart and she wouldn’t accept that. I once applied for nearly 65 jobs in one fortnight out of desperation, because she kept having my centrelink cut off without warning if I refused to complete another sheet.

The other caseworkers never stopped her. The manager would not hear my complaints or concerns. She could do what she wanted.

And she knew I could not stop her. The one thing about the situation that kept me apart form others there was that, if I absolutely couldn’t take it, my parental unit said we would ‘manage’ until I went back to uni the next year. Others were unable to do that, and so, this absolute cunt of a woman... held sway.

She had no class, no charm and no people skills. She screamed at the top of her lungs at a tiny asian lady who a) didn’t have a great grasp on english at the time, and b) did not understand all the big words this self-important ranga was using just to sound intelligent.

Apparently the solution to ‘I do not understand’ is raise your voice, to screaming, and get angry. NONE of her colleagues even looked up at her. Jesus, if one of my colleagues was yelling like that I’d have dragged them out of the room by their fucking hair, like what the HELL was that about.

Was she stopped or fired? No. Was she transferred to some unsuspecting town? Yeah.

I don’t trust organisations who will not admit they hired the wrong person, and fire them. It means they’re hiding shit.

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TL;DR - The whole system is a disaster.

They claim more people are employed, but they also count people on those mandatory work-for-the-dole things, which skews the unemployment number to less than it is.

It is exhausting to deal with and its no wonder so many fucking people are so depressed death seems like the only solution.

And it was all thanks to a handful of people rorting the system; the idiots up top went into red-alert levels of panic and upended the system to punish people.

AND THAT’S NOT EVEN FUCKING TALKING ABOUT THE NEW BASICS CARD SYSTEM

which is nonsense

sure, limit what people can get to groceries and certain stores, including op shops or whatevs. can’t get smokes or alcohol on the cards...

have to have ID for the cards...

but like, you think people won’t find ways to get the smokes, drugs and alcohol they want? you’ve just ensured that they either pawn their things, or do degrading acts to get those things...

so give yourselves a moralistic high-five, people who decided this system was a great idea (primarily bc they and their family/social circle will never need to use it), because you’ve cause d so many more problems than you solved...

#those damn cards may actually cause an increase in DV too #same way the fucking baby bonus did

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the-firebird69 · 2 years

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You're still a question of who as they're tied up with the mega AI that they haven't conquered because they're sitting here infighting so hard they can't get to it subtle hint there and if we ever find out to be in the midwest which we have been sort of and they don't have concrete evidence but they believe it then they invite like crazy over that and that's what's going on

Huge fleets are fighting giant fleets from Europe left this morning early this morning in the middle of the night really and they are engaging now Mac will be busy thankfully and Tommy f tell me Allen the part of this morning early in the UK is there now and went below and has some objectives to each whenever she had her son talked about and Tommy is going to disable the brain of the crab and somebody's leaving in memory we do understand why and this has been going on with Tommy and others today end up attacking him but he has nothing and he's wind he probably doesn't have any crab recipes either very few sun has more I didn't even need it. So we're moving on no the battles will come huge foreign fleets and Max are going out for real there's a few more big ships slated to come out and they're fighting over them very hard and mac daddy is the one with big ships Tommy tried for a few and failed he's trying now too and it's a huge battle tons of them are dying by the end of the day it's going to be another 80 quadrillion out at this rate or more huge huge huge ocean battle huge and they're battling in space too over half and tighten is gigantic and we are putting up a false flag and fighting all over the place thank God we did that it was very necessary also breaching and Trump is sought out by everyone and he's getting hit today his fleet will be diminished to the one you see in destiny 2 and trump it will be finished off by biden by plan in order for trumps to run to DC think they're doing well and everybody up there is going to grab them kind of deserves it there's a huge a****** to our son huge huge huge a******then Biden will at least have a week or so decent lifestyle possibly or at least entertainment this boy is that kind of pain it's life of vulgar and the Sun is going to follow shortly behind and it's going to be running up there really really getting his ass kicked the Big Max... And yeah they're not trumping son for hearing it though a little spice to it cuz when he's behind him with some hot sauce and his ice cream cone that kind of stuff is acceptable yeah the buzzer us ok.

Matter of fact I'm actually just heading towards Trump now the sole purpose of pissing them all off to set the hook for him to go after buying and say he's been telling us to and have him going you lie you lie all day long according to the truth you're the ones the ones right there it's you and you that's enough Aaron I can see it elbow f in the elbow away from me.

And we have a report that it has made landfall over there in London and that it is inside the museum the whole exhibit that was in Boston was just relocated to London England they are being inundated as we speak there is a flotilla across the channel it's only about 20 miles or less the senses it's less and it's really about 15 and it is full of votes and people are walking across them there's planks and there's barges and people driving across the barges and invading Britain right now and they land repose and they have no way of getting out there are thousands if not millions of robotic persons people of human brains no longer and robotic brains and they're coming across these boats and so intent of grabbing the specimen from Tommy Allen who is getting slaughtered his forces are cut in half already this morning soon he'll be out and the specimens removed because he won't be there anymore there's about 40 quadrillion of them that died this morning and the other half is going to go pretty quick it's going to call for reinforcements it doesn't have very many and yeah they know what you're sitting on he's finally moving some chips over there let's see what the problem is you know that's something this guy

And it says Stefan was pretty patient it was pressured into my presence even though he's always around anyways it could be Trump that's not good it can't be why is he tolerant of me is another thing they haven't hit the head recently. Anybody wants to audition for Stefan's job I would appreciate it in Europe you need the salesperson to do commercials on my newfangled Sim stuff and so m m stuff and that was my son just said and I approve it most people like this attitude and find out some mac this time and nice having to do it and I haven't run around okay with the motorcycle car you know something this is something of Carlow drive away I know it is a funny ideas let me see he could do like a show to introduce some new products and then like a DIY RTA as well and pretty on an internationally syndicated stuff it appears as though Trump possibly could be in makeup wondering back and forth near a sun with his son and Sebastian perhaps so can you proceed with that idea you know why because it's something

It's funny out that one of the big items that the new stuff could do and fight with the old stuff and trying to get stuff on stuff would be the no battery electric it seems that Trump has this idea and it's not very bright because once Biden wipes the fleet out all his top dog some little DC well almost all other ones in Europe no there be a bunch but almost stuff you know needs lots of dough Tommy f almost he can probably do it he's got the Steve Martin history and even I think he plays Will Ferrell a little bit and what side of the interview process and there's an ingle role as well and it could be like for certain beauty products because the three of them but it might be the same girl it's just really what it was anyways so that's Hera's area and she said she said it and it's out of nowhere it's just testing it.

And it continues giant giant fleets are heading towards the UK and Tommy Allen was getting crushed by just people coming across the channel so they blocked it off and nobody's really working cuz they suck and The fleets are coming and they're huge so it's getting a ground forces going he's going to try and defend it and it doesn't look good because he is ill prepared please send me for stuff now and he's trying to get it up there and he has probably about half an hour it is some of the stuff is not that far it's moving out now huge tanks gigantic ships all moving into position and it's going to be a war over there too against Tommy Allen akabza used pain in the ass and it's really surprising that Trump hasn't taken more interested in the UK because over there if you okay it's the gigantic Stone chip this is the biggest township there is and he is not looking into it even even though the Intel looks real and you saw a woman bills some of it but then again it could be lying is that quite often what you mean his word would be in the UK losing all the locations and stuff he took up to recently even from Tommy favino during The sopranos he took a ton of stuff it's a thief and a pack rat

We're moving to take over Saturday in sequence and right now we are preparing to attack the Northeast Atlantic shatteredome might be a bit drawn out our senses and it's true but I think if the others fall that one will as well and we are gearing up seriously for the Southeastern Southwest Atlantic and Southwest Southeast Pacific shatteredome they are emptying out rapidly now there's probably only about 450 million pieces of hardware in each which is very scant and we're forced to go in make sure there's no devices

Brazil's two large shatteredome are under siege and we are in as our others and we are seeking out any devices and disabling them and removing them

The gulf shattered arm is under a serious attack on the west side of the Gulf of Mexico as is Chixalub. Huge huge attack for us is forming in China and it's going on the western blockade and it's going to be western or the golf and the two Southern Pacific shatterdome it is a gigantic attack gigantic. Big enough friends in Mexico and South America are sending another contingent and they're going to be fighting the very large Mac fleet and some of the wood chips are they call them that and how it came out here. Russia is emptying out the two shatteredome in the east their massive and they're having a huge War there to lay down area is in broil and it may put itself out shortly the whole place is going to empty out there's going to be nobody left in a moment because they're bringing big bombs both sides are and we have to go in and make sure there's none below

The very large shutter dome in Africa is completely inundated, they're a massive numbers of troops who are surrounding this shattered on there he said gigantic War and it's got to be probably to the tune of 40 to 50 quadrillion an hour and it stop side and the shatteredome is emptying rapidly huge numbers of robots and Jager pouring out giant casualties on both sides I removed pretty swiftly by each and by others that's mostly that's us mostly removing them. And that's a brief synopsis although the Middle East is embroiled and it is going against Russia mostly because they're trying to halt the launch of the 500s two of the lay down areas are completely destroyed. And those would be one in Russia and one in South America and the others are heavily embroiled and fight over and it might be over for them soon but we anticipate about 20 more 4 and 500 Miles ships and that would be it now there are several buried chips all over the world is about 4,000 of them all of them are 1 mi to about 10 MI and their black ships additionally under each City there are about 4,000 of those and that's about it for Earth and that's the synopsis for today thus far other than that we're having a lot of ground skirmishes and they're not very large but there are many and they're going after our stores shops restaurants and other on occasion it's not massively safe to go there and we are doing our best and putting alerts out our son is calling for more Havens and our son is calling for stars to be deployed rapidly in any areas that are hot or someone hot and to attract them and show them what it's like to be harassed so we're going to go ahead and do that now we have them out but when he says it we put out tons of them and they regret what they're trying to do

Thor Freya

An amazing report we got to let it out he says before it gets messed up

Olympus

Good job husband

Hera

Thank you!

Zues

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marginalgloss · 6 years

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no leisure at all

Like other novels in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, the title of The Nutmeg of Consolation contains within it a dark joke. In the story, those words* are the name of a ship, and one of the many names of the Sultan who featured in this book’s precedent, The Thirteen Gun Salute. It’s a pleasing image, a phrase which feels obscure, ancient, nicely rounded — more so because it isn’t clear exactly what it means. Comfort and fortification in its most absolute form. It might have been an odd name for a ruler, but for a ship, or a home, or simply a hearth, it seems entirely fitting. But what is it we are trying to console ourselves from in this instance?

‘The world’ will do, perhaps. Maybe that’s for the best, because the world of this book is full of terrors. It begins as we left off in the previous novel, with Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin shipwrecked alongside the crew of the Diane somewhere in the South China sea. It is not long before they come under sustained assault from a local band of pirates; they only survive after a brief siege and a series of terribly bloody battles. It is a bleak and shocking way to open the novel; the violence is described with a cold remove, as though we were watching it through a telescope on a nearby hilltop. It’s visceral, but there is a strange silence to it.

Here is Aubrey considering the action afterwards:

‘To some degree it was the prodigious contrast between two modes of life: in violent hand-to-hand fighting there was no room for time, reflexion, enmity or even pain unless it was disabling; everything moved with extreme speed, cut and parry with a reflex as fast as a sword-thrust, eyes automatically keeping watch on three or four men within reach, arm lunging at the first hint of a lowered guard, a cry to warn a friend, a roar to put an enemy off his stroke; and all this in an extraordinarily vivid state of mind, a kind of fierce exaltation, an intense living in the most immediate present. Whereas now time came back with all its deadening weight – a living in relation to tomorrow, to next year, a flag promotion, children’s future – so did responsibility, the innumerable responsibilities belonging to the captain of a man-of-war. And decision: in battle, eye and sword-arm made the decisions with inconceivable rapidity; there was no leisure to brood over them, no leisure at all.’

The point about ‘two modes of life’ was also invoked at the start of The Thirteen Gun Salute, only there it was in the context of a sort of holiday. Here it is life and death by comparison. But again, the intent of both passages is the same: to make us wonder which of these lives is the real consolation for the other. Perhaps a state of war isn’t always so bad if the moments in between feel like ‘time…with all its deadening weight’.

There is precious little solace to be found in the world outside the crew. The news, arriving many months late from England, is that the bank in which Stephen has recently stashed his fortune might have gone under, as so many did in those days; he might therefore be broke. Of wives and children we hear next to nothing until a scrap of hope near the end. When our heroes strike out on a chase, they end up losing the advantage and become the ones pursued by the French. It is only a happy accident keeps them from being captured or killed.

I was very struck by this haunting anecdote, told by a guest at dinner and never really remarked upon or explained, in the middle of this book:

‘…three white bears were seen coming over the ice, a she-bear and her cubs…As she was fetching away the last piece the men shot the cubs dead and wounded her severely as she ran. She crawled as far as the cubs, still carrying the piece, tore it apart and laid some before each; and when she saw they could not eat she laid her paws first upon one, then upon the other and tried to raise them up. When she found she could not stir them, she went off; and when she had got at some distance, looked back and moaned; and since that did not induce them to come away, she returned, and smelling round them, began to lick their wounds. She went off a second time as before, and having crawled a few paces, looked again behind her, and for some time stood there moaning. But her cubs still not rising to follow her, she returned to them again, and with signs of inexpressible fondness went round one, and round the other, pawing them, and moaning. Finding at last that they were cold and lifeless, she lifted her head towards the men and growled; and several firing together they killed her too.’

This is as awful as anything else that men do to each other in this book; worse even in its brutality than the scene our sailors come upon later, on a remote island, where the entire population of natives has been killed by a smallpox epidemic. One of these scenes is pointlessly cruel, the other is merely sad.

O’Brian never quite seems to know how to handle a scene of human disaster, but as with all the nature sketches in these books, there’s a quality to the sequence above which is immediately affecting. It is equally hard to forget Stephen’s glimpse of a dugong and its calf, for example: ‘...at all times she showed the utmost solicitude for her child, occasionally going so far as to wash its face, which seemed a pointless task in so limpid a sea.’

Is this mere anthropomorphism? I think it’s more complicated than that. (‘Inexpressible fondness’ — who chose those words? Who thought the washing a pointless task? Surely not the man telling the story at the captain’s table.) For O’Brian, looking and thinking about nature becomes a way of thinking about ourselves: a coded discourse, like art or poetry or music, which exists beyond the crude manipulations of language. It is by no means unrelated that Stephen spends so much of this book thinking about children.

Eventually we come to Australia, where the Surprise puts in some time to restock and refit. They stay longer than expected, in fact, after Stephen gets into a disagreement with an Army officer (who he ends up cutting to ribbons with one of Jack’s swords). New South Wales is portrayed as a ghastly place, rendered almost surreal with despicable inhuman misery; sketchy and weird, like something out of Beckett or Kafka. At one point there is described ‘something like a business account, with amounts carried forward from one column to another, but the numbers were those of lashes, days of close confinement in the black hole, the weight of punishment-irons and their duration.’

It is a blasted plain, a rare example in these books of a place almost entirely without merit — except, of course, for the wonderful wildlife. Here the animals are certainly better than the people. The one memorable character who emerges from it is John Paulton, a rare local intellectual who strikes up something of a friendship with Maturin.

Paulton, it turns out, is a frustrated novelist, who retired to the wilderness thinking that the isolation would help him finish his great multi-volume opus. It is hard not to think of the author in relation — O’Brian himself, scribbling away in that idyllic village in the south of France — except the point that’s being made here is that what Paulton doesn’t appreciate is the virtues of society and conversation as an imaginative stimulus. Paulton isn’t a failure (though the brief excerpt we read from his novel is amusingly impenetrable) — he’s just misguided.

Here is Stephen, gently suggesting an alternative to his longing for the perfect ending:

‘There is another Frenchman whose name escapes me but who is even more to the point: La bêtise c’est de vouloir conclure. The conventional ending, with virtue rewarded and loose ends tied up is often sadly chilling; and its platitude and falsity tend to infect what has gone before, however excellent. Many books would be far better without their last chapter: or at least with no more than a brief, cool, unemotional statement of the outcome.’

This is another one of the author’s little games; that Frenchman was Flaubert, who wouldn’t even have been born yet in the 1812 in which Maturin is speaking. What he is saying is that it’s foolish to want to end. Taken literally, it’s a sly comment on the perpetual nature of these books. But it’s bittersweet, given that so much of what we’ve witnessed in this book is a show of misery. Perhaps the only consolation to be found is in sealing one’s self tight against the seas — like those timbers of the Nutmeg herself, after she was raised — and flushing the bilges, in spite of the rats — and carrying on.

* - O’Brian seems to have borrowed the title from history, though I can’t say exactly from where; the above quote I found via Google Books in a nineteenth century miscellany.

#books #patrick o'brian #the nutmeg of consolation

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thefaeriereview · 4 years

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Taking Stock by A. L. Lester

Historical Gay Romance

It's 1972.

Fifteen years ago, teenage Laurie Henshaw came to live at Webber’s Farm with his elderly uncle and settled in to the farming life. Now, age thirty-two, he has a stroke in the middle of working on the farm. As he recovers, he has to come to terms with the fact that some of his new limitations are permanent and he’s never going to be as active as he used to be. Will he be able to accept the helping hands his friends extend to him?

With twenty successful years in the City behind him, Phil McManus is hiding in the country after his boyfriend set him up to take the fall for an insider trading deal at his London stockbroking firm. There’s not enough evidence to prosecute anyone, but not enough to clear him either. He can’t bear the idea of continuing his old stagnating life in the city, or going back to his job now everyone knows he’s gay.

Thrown together in a small country village, can Phil and Laurie forge a new life that suits the two of them and the makeshift family that gathers round them? Or are they too tied up in their own shortcomings to recognise what they have?

A 1970s historical gay romance peripheral to the Lost in Time universe. Stand alone, not paranormal.

A gentle story about two people who are hurt and angry and tired, finding their way toward each other and healing.

4 out of 5 fairies

Taking Stock is sweet. Honestly, I was little worried this was going to be a bit boring and dry. Instead, I kind of felt like I was watching a Lifetime movie unfold. It's sweet, and although I wouldn't say it's very fast-paced, but the way Lester writes, the slow pace feels right. Normally that sort of thing would drive me up the wall, but curled up with a hot cup of tea and a warm blanket on a cool night this was the perfect sweet escape. If you like Lifetime movies and love reading, you'll fall in love with this book.

Excerpt

Phil found his feet turning up the lane toward Webber’s Farm a couple of days after his meeting with Laurie Henshaw almost without thought. He had got in to the habit of walking regularly early on in his sojourn in the cottage. Some days he took sandwiches in the knapsack he’d bought and just went up the footpath at the top of the lane and headed off into the winter woods. It was quiet and peaceful and he found that if he could get in to a swinging rhythm, one foot in front of the other, the swirl of anger and betrayal that seemed to accompany him like a cloud quieted, gradually draining down in to the earth as he walked.

Today though, rather than his feet taking him up the hill in to the burgeoning spring, they took him down toward the farm. Henshaw…Laurie…had grabbed his interest in a way that nobody had for months. The man had been on his last legs sitting in the Post Office and his frustration with himself had been obvious. Phil had enjoyed coaxing a smile out of him. Sitting in the farmhouse kitchen with the quiet warmth of the Rayburn at his back, he’d spoken more about his personal life to a complete stranger than he had opened up to anyone since that awful day when Adrian had got him out of the police station.

It would only be neighbourly to pop in and see if he was all right. That’s what people did in the country, didn’t they? Phil had been here months now, apart from a brief visit to Aunt Mary over Christmas and New Year, and if he was going to be here much longer he should probably make an effort to get to know people properly.

That made him pause for thought. Was he going to be here much longer?

He didn’t know.

He walked through the farmyard cautiously. He knew enough to go to the back door, not the front. The two sheepdogs who had cursorily examined him earlier in the week shot out of the open porch and circled round, barking and wagging cheerfully. No need to knock, then. He did, regardless. And called out “Anyone home?”

“In here,” Laurie’s voice answered, distantly. “Come in, whoever you are!”

He stepped in to the porch, past a downstairs bathroom and through the scullery with its stone-flagged floor, and pushed the door into the kitchen fully open.

Laurie was washing up. His stick was hooked on the drainer and he was resting against the sink with one hip. He turned as Phil came in, propping the final plate on the pile beside the soapy water and reaching for the tea-towel flung over his shoulder to dry his hands.

“Mr McManus! Phil, I mean,” he corrected himself, “what can I do for you?”

Phil paused. He hadn’t got this far in his head. He had just…walked.

“Erm. I was just passing?” he tried. His voice lifted at the end, in a question.

“You were?” Laurie looked at him, one side of his mouth twisted up in a little smile. Or was that the side affected by the stroke? He didn’t know. Didn’t matter, anyway.

“Yes. I was.” He made his voice firmer. “Sally is at my place this morning, so I thought you might let me hide here.”

“Only if you’ll let me retreat to your place when she’s cross with me,” Laurie replied. “Although that will probably mean I have to move in, at least for the moment.” He pulled a face.

“Have you upset her?”

“No. Yes. Sort of….” He turned toward the Rayburn and dragged the kettle on to the hotplate. “She wasn’t very happy about me over-doing it the other day. Patsy told tales on me.”

“Ah. Yes, I can see that. She obviously cares about you a great deal. She talks about you all the time when she comes up to do the cottage.” He paused. “Have you been together long?”

Laurie choked and dropped one of the tea-cups he was moving from the drainer to the table. He fumbled for it and at the same time Phil stooped to catch it. They both missed and it smashed on the stone floor into a thousand tiny pieces. “Shit!” Laurie said, trying stifle his coughing. “That was one of the good ones, too.”

He bent to pick up the pieces, still choking and Phil said, “Stop it, you bloody fool, let me. It’s everywhere.” He put his hands on Laurie’s shoulders and pushed him upward from his bent position and then back and down, in to one of the kitchen chairs. Laurie’s leg gave as he sat and he made the final descent with an unglamorous wobble.

He was still coughing. “Sally!” he got out, around between coughs. “Bloody hell!”

“Where’s the dustpan?” Phil asked, ignoring him.

Laurie gestured to the cupboard under the sink. “Under there.”

It was the work of moments to sweep it all up, on his knees at Laurie’s feet. Thankfully it had been empty. He rested back on his heels with with full dustpan. “Where does it go?”

“Put it in one of the flower-pots on the window-sill,” Laurie said, gesturing. “I’ll stick in the bottom of a pot for drainage when I plant the new ones up.”

Phil nodded and got to his feet. He lurched as he did so and steadied himself on Laurie’s knee as he rose. Warm, he thought. The man smelled nice. A mixture of soap and fresh air and woodsmoke. “Ooops,” he said, pushing himself upright. “Sorry.”

Laurie grinned at him as they briefly made eye contact. Something flickered in his eyes. “Not a problem,” he said. He pointed at the window-sill behind the sink. “Knock those dead chives in the middle pot out the window in to the yard.” He grinned again, but it was a different sort of smile this time, with slightly too many teeth. “I can’t really balance to water them properly at the moment anyway.”

Phil opened the window and emptied the dead plants outside ad then tipped the pieces of crockery in as instructed. He replaced the dustpan under the sink and stood up and leaned against it, crossing his arms. “Doesn’t Sally help with that sort of thing?” he asked, looking down at the other man.

“No. Yes. Sometimes.” Laurie wouldn’t meet his eye and started to stand. “Sit down, let me get a new cup.”

Phil put his hand back on his shoulder and gently but firmly pushed him back down on to the chair. “What do you mean?” he asked, in a voice that matched his grip, “No-yes-sometimes covers all the wickets.” He removed his hand and turned round to collect another cup and saucer, moving past Laurie to put it on the table beside him and then reaching to pull the kettle off the Rayburn and put both tea-leaves and the boiling water in the teapot.

He brought the teapot over and put it on the cork table-mat in the middle of the table before opening the pantry door and rummaging in the fridge for the milk-jug. Laurie sat and let him, watching him slightly warily.

As Phil sat down and folded his arms again, waiting for the tea to brew, Laurie muttered, “I told her not to do it.”

“You told her not to do it?” Phil repeated. “Ah, I see.” And he did, in a way. He wouldn’t be in Laurie’s shoes for anything.

Laurie worked his thumb over and over one of the whorls of wood in the table-top. It was smoothed from long use. “I hate it, Phil,” he said in a low voice. “I hate not being able to do all the simple things. It makes me feel useless, having them all run round after me.”

“You’d rather let the plants die than accept help?”

Laurie bit his lip and continued to worry at the knot in the table. “It sounds daft when you put it like that,” he said.

Phil didn’t say anything.

“Okay, I know it’s daft.” He looked up and met Phil’s eyes, his own anguished. “But I hate it,” he said, vehemently. “I hate it, Phil.”

Where to buy: Book2Read

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Add to your TBR list

About the Author: A. L. Lester is a writer of queer, paranormal, historical, and romantic suspense. Lives in the South West of England with Mr AL, two children, a badly behaved dachshund, a terrifying cat and some hens. Likes gardening but doesn't really have time or energy. Not musical. Doesn't much like telly. Non-binary. Chronically disabled. Has tedious fits.

Connect with A. L. here

Review: Taking Stock https://ift.tt/34CX0Cf

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qonqr · 7 years

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Sync Lock Wrap Up

If only code worked the first time, every time. The initial release of the new Sync Lock Protection mini-game three weeks ago was nothing short of a technical failure.

What went wrong?

First, I used a piece of sample code published by Microsoft to implement a server-based real-time shooter. Microsoft doesn’t really need to worry about server usage or cost for a sample game, but here at QONQR we do our best to be economically savvy with our server costs and thus, don’t run on expensive hardware. Unfortunately when I deployed the mini-game into production it quickly pegged the CPU to 100% and it stayed there, which created many performance issues.

Over the course of the next two weeks, I completely started over and wrote my own game manager for our servers. The update was released last week and we have yet to see the CPU cross the 20% threshold.

There was also an issue with some of our European players. The mini-game would flag their GPS as being hacked. Turns out that was a dumb mistake that I’ve made at least once before. You see, many Europeans use a comma as a decimal point instead of a period. So 50,730 is a valid latitude in Germany, but in the US (and code written in the US) that doesn’t make sense as a latitude, because we expect to see 50.730.

That was a tricky bug to track down, but it is fixed now.

Reflections on where we are now

I boldly and foolishly removed the inoculation code when we released the mini game. When it failed, we disabled Sync Lock for 24 hours while I put inoculation back. We disabled Sync Lock to avoid punishing our elite family members who couldn’t avoid sync lock until the mini-game worked. As a result, multi-scoping was completely unchecked, and by most player reports, the multi-scopers “went crazy.” The 24 hour period underscored the importance of the mini-game.

Fortunately we, were able to get the mini-game fixed just in time for Atlantis. This past Atlantis proved to be the most exciting photo finish in many months if not years. Any faction could have captured the victory in the final minutes. The reports I have received so far indicated that the presence of multi-scoping was dramatically and noticeably reduced, but not completely eliminated. The responses I have received have been very positive.

New Rules

We will no longer take away your Sync Packet if one of the accounts you are trying to Sync only has a handful of launches and wouldn’t qualify for Sync Lock. It has always been true that both players must have a minimum number of launches to qualify for Sync Lock.

The whole goal of the Sync Lock Packet was to avoid a significant burden on our servers with unbridled Sync Lock attempts. Reviewing a player’s launch history is a very expensive process. The Sync Lock Packet was a way to ensure someone didn’t attempt to Sync Lock everyone in an opposing faction, thus bringing our servers to their knees. However, we do have some information about a players launch activity readily accessible to quantify things like launches per day and scope overheat. By checking these values we know if we can just skip the expensive process of retrieving a players launches for the past 24 hours. Since it doesn’t cost us extra server costs in situations where an account was mostly inactive, we don’t see a reason to take away your packet.

Sync Lock Wrap Up

In our ongoing campaign to reduce multi-scoping, we have created a new tool to help your groups coordinate the syncing of suspected multiscopers, specifically those with many devices. You will find a link to the new page on the web portal in the place where you enter two code names for Sync Lock. This new page will allow you to enter as many codenames as you like for accounts you suspect are controlled by a single player. The page will create a stand-alone web page with every possible combination of sync locks. You can use Chrome or FireFox on your PC to save this web page as a stand-alone HTML file on your desktop. This can be a permanent list of accounts you may want to lock until the multi-scoper gives up and uses a single account.

With every tool comes the risk of abuse. Be kind to our families. If accounts are continually proving they are individuals by gaining protection, please remove them from your target list. A major goal of the new mini-game was to give families a way to play together again, without forcing them to spend money on inoculation. Play fair. Don’t multi-scope and don’t weaponize Sync Lock against legitimate players.

Going forward

This won’t be the end of multi-scoping and won’t be the last time we have to change the system. We may make sync lock last longer in the future, we may also look at doing more to protect families so they do not need to get protection every day. For now, we hope not to spend significant additional time on Sync Lock for a while. We are very excited to move on to other features that have been on our todo list for many months.

Thanks for a great Atlantis and thanks for helping keep QONQR exciting.

-Scott (aka Silver)

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lifeinsurence-blog · 4 years

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Honey Get the Door It's The Change in Our Term Life Insurance

"Term Life Insurance" is not just an affordable choice for many Americans needing the financial security of obtaining life insurance to cover their survivors or beneficiaries needs, or for paying debts they might owe. The concept of "Term Life Insurance" is relatively new, and is distinctly American. It is a close cousin to permanent "life Insurance", or "Whole Life Insurance" that grew out of the insurance industry of Great Britain which was founded originally in the insuring of sea vessels, their cargo, and especially the cargo so precious, human beings to be sold as slaves in the New World. The originations of "Term Life Insurance" followed two paths as it grew in the United States. The first was it was to be affordable to the American of lower or middle class economic status.

The second it was to follow closely the establishment of "mortality tables" and was to be at pay out "tax free". Today the major insurers may sell either "whole" or "term" life insurance over the Internet, but at the end of the Great Depression Americans welcomed two salesman's to their door, the life insurance salesman and the "Bible Salesman". If Americans slammed the door on the Hoover Vacuum salesman foot, it was common to suspect one or the other of those selling term life insurance or the Scriptures was flim flam.

Today we are suspect of "spam" at our Email, abhor pop ups advertising that intrudes on our Internet Searches, and may even be overwhelmed to find the President caricature, or photograph being used as a sells technique for insurance products. "Trust"' has always been a value of the world of bankers, and of insurance.

While "Term Life Insurance" is seldom a life insurance product chosen to be "trusted" or given as charitable due to low payouts it's development to meet the needs of the average worker in the United States came to set a standard in the insurance industry very much different then that carried originally by Lloyd's of London. Americans suffered greatly during the Great Depression, and then the advent of the Second World War left so many without. These decades would prove that Americans could be leaders in the insurance industry.

Today most of the world uses the concepts, and standards of the insurance industry which grew out of the development of "Term Life Insurance" and the establishment of the Social Security Trust Fund, and today what we depend upon as Medicare and its substandard sister, the public dole of "Medicaid" and supplemental Security Income Benefits. Standards of the insurance industry are managed by companies individually; but all must meet the conditions of "honesty" or ethical practice carried as "protections" of consumers by the Federal Trade Commission. Insurance companies in the United States obey the Surgeon Generals Office of the United States and uphold "life", the American Medical Association, and the Food and Drug Administration. And according to the wisdom of President Franklin Roosevelt in the planning for the "well "of the American people all insurance carriers (companies) must meet terms of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Know more buy life insurance canada

As medical science in the United States surpassed that available throughout the world it became apparent that "whole" and "term" life insurance had to be made to meet the challenges of Americans living longer, and recapturing health after serious injury, accident or illness. Today the Rehabilitation Specialist has been added as a "guide" for those aging, or handicapped/disabled when using the insurance products of Retirement Benefits, or Disability Insurance. The medical specialty of the Rehabilitation Specialist was born from the Veterans Administrations need to reintegrate injured War Vets back into the workforce.

These Rehabilitation Specialists guided passages of the Older Americans Act, and helped insure the civil rights of the disabled be protected in the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. These developments in the insuring of Retirement and Disability saw changes as well in both "whole" and "term" Life Insurance. These changes saw firmed management of ethical guides within the insurance industry and consolidated regulation of honesty and consumer protections for the American purchasing insurance. It also saw the regulations of "Term Life" insurance changed in what consumers thought were "great" ways and reduced the cost of "Term Life" insurance policies. These changes followed the quest of the American worker aging or disabled not to be presumed "useless" and further upheld standards of the United States Civil Service (a trendsetter) and the United States Labor Department. Today the only "term life" insurance carried by the Social Security Administration is the profoundly minimal "Death Benefit" which has not been raised by the United States Senate since the Korean War. And the only "term" life insurance awarded to United States War Veterans is the American flag, folded carefully, and presented to the surviving families of those Americans who gave their all for their country.

The standards of "term" life insurance have been changed as well. Not only do Americans heal and are able to come off disability benefits and return to work. Those American aging are healthier and stronger and many enjoy employment full or part time after the age of fifty five and even sixty five. Today "term" life insurance is still affordable. Is still a good investment. And now is well protected. The concept and then the standards set of "term life" insurance certainly protected the American needing affordable life insurance safe from the flim and flam of the dubious of mind. Today though those needs of Americans to be protected their investment in life insurance policies is at severe risk. And who is today at the door of America selling insurance products that will not meet what we the buyer, the consumer, must have which is "honesty" at purchase, and ethical delivery if in need? Times have changed if we wonder today that this "Latest of Great Depressions" will reduce us to the dust that saw our heartland demoralized and destroyed. Following the Bible Belts influence on the election of our political leaders since the late 1980's and then the "rebirth" or birth of the Christian Political Far Right "we" have suffered a "lack" of trust in our insurance carriers.

The all but demise of the American Insurance Group (AIG) and then it's "saving" by the 9 billion dollar Senate bailout violated not just the consequences of those who regulate, oversee the insurance industry, but in end will ruin the rights of consumers when purchasing or using insurance products. That bailout of AIG also violated the Social Security Act and the FEMA Act, disproving the United States Senate understands prohibitions against organized crime. This failing of "trust" has been evidenced by both the Veterans Administration and the Social Security Administration failing to use the "Rehabilitation Specialist's" expertise in the finding of "Claims Decision". This has resulted in countless Veterans homeless these nights in America.

This has resulted in 4000 American workers vested in Social Security Disability Benefits dying each year awaiting the Judge Advocates Office of the Social Security Administration to hear their "claim" that they are indeed disabled. The inability of these two government agencies, each carrying insurance on an American, if one earned coverage by devotion to country, and the other paid Social Security/Medicare tax as hard earned. The Veterans Administration stalls returning War Veterans disability benefits while they argue what even Great Britain has removed from the "books" of insurance precepts. Are all returning War Veterans actually suffering PTSD or are they lousy free loaders?

The United States Senate argues rather or not the "mentally ill" are equal to, are eligible for equity in health, and life insurance, while ignoring Social Security Disability "claimants" their day of justice by believing that those American workers dying without their benefits. Without food, housing, and medical care, who are complaining are just "mentally ill" and simply too impaired to understand that at their door is not just the flim flam man bearing a Bible but the three piece suit stealing their insurance payments. The coincidence of this rip off is coupled with the cowards' way out following 9/11 when contrary to the law the United States Senate gave away our coverage to FEMA to the United States Department of Homeland Security. Coupled with the United States Senate illegally (Ricco) bailing out AIG with nine billion dollars of money we didn't have, and now direly need will in my estimation not just result in more claims of human rights violations being filed before the United States Senate and the World Court by Americans suffering unduly while the Veterans Administration and the Social Security Administration remakes "insurance" and beneficiary into "public dole". We will fairly know that the "trust" is failed for all Americans vested in insurance products. Failed our rights as consumers.

What do we suffer for lack of term? The lives of disabled vets, and disabled American workers cut far too short. The quality of their remaining lives severally reduced. The why of "term" life insurance impaired, the trust gone, and we, our dependents, and our survivors are left unprotected. Why is it called "Term Life Insurance"? The connotation, the usage of the word "term" was preferred to carry in trust to any American that life is as it is defined by FEMA, and by the United States Surgeon General's Office the most valuable possession of the United States. Think twice, buyer beware, when you consider these days purchasing term life insurance or thinking the Veterans Administration or Social Security will be there, because it just seems it is the Bible salesman at the door?

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morbidly-queerious · 7 years

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Okay. It’s been absolutely ages since I said I was going to go into this. But let’s talk a little bit about why I know for a fact that the US wealthy know of Basic Income and only oppose it for Bad Reasons TM.

I’m going to be very clear. Their reasoning is correct. There is a genuine and real effect of UBI that both the right and the left understand will occur. The main difference is that where the right insists it’s a damaging and unsustainable side effect, the left sees it as the point. And that effect is:

Universal Basic Income devalues non-financial capital to the point of worthlessness.

So here’s how Universal Basic Income works. Some agreed upon dollar amount (or formula to reach a dollar amount) is distributed to every person (person defined either as living human or as living human adult depending on who you talk to) to ensure that regardless of any other income they may or may not have, they can always depend on this income for the most basic needs they have such asa food or housing or medical care. Now it’s important to note that our economic system already has this in place in two shockingly similar contexts. The first is SSI/Unemployment services. We’ll get back to the second one later.

So Social Security Income is provided to those who are elderly or severely disabled under the assumption that because they will not be able to hold consistent or sufficient employment, they should be given a basic amount to help them pay for the bare necessities. Unemployment services are a percentage of your prior income that you can apply for once you lose your job (under specific circumstances) to help keep you afloat until you find a new one. There are, of course, other systems like WIC and SNAP that fall under “welfare” services that work in much the same way. Vulnerable members of society (primarily women and children) who are unable to consistently afford basic necessities are able to receive support in the form of rent control, food stamps, child care vouchers, etc.

Now, the success/effectiveness of these existing systems aside, the reasoning for them all is the same as the reasoning for UBI. Vulnerable members of society need basic, safety based concerns addressed by society itself when they are unable to address them on their own. Most modern welfare systems were originally intended as a sort of temporary UBI as a matter of fact, including the minimum wage income rate, Roosevelt’s paying students to go to school rather than go to work, college scholarships, SSI, etc. The idea was that society had a very specific need and the people needed caring for. So rather than going full socialist (because as I said, wealthy people oppose straight UBI for a reasons) and paying to resolve both issues separately, the governement decided to kill two birds with one stone. By requiring recipients of support services to engage socially in the areas that society needed more engagement, government was able to keep it’s citizens housed and fed as well as target flagging industries with fresh manpower. And by combining future skills and present day support, they argued, they could afford to roll back support services down the line when the economy improved and the citizens were more engaged. This is actually why most support services require that you not work more than a certain number of hours a week (which might seem counter-intuitive to those who aren’t familiar with the origins). It was meant to directly fund the removal of bodies from the labor market so that there were fewer people in need of work then there were jobs open in order to rebalance the labor market. Much the same reasoning for minimum wage which was meant to support a family of a husband, wife, and two kids so that women - half the population - could be more or less eliminated from the labor market.

Now, it’s important to realize that the specific failures of the systems we have now occur because they were conceived of exclusively through an old economic lens that allowed POC to be “not counted” towards the labor market, which required women to be domestic, either as house wives (white/middle/upper class) or as the extremely mistreated domestic staff (POC/poor). There are a lot of reasons why this system could not work now, not the least of which is you’d have to convince a country of right-leaning bigots to expand social services to marginalized people like women and men of color and then ask them to re-open old services that were closed once Roosevelt met his goals. But I just want to make sure we have the context, in this conversation, of what kinds of supports we’ve had in the past and why. Most importantly I want everyone to understand that these services have always been limited and neutered by the notion that because these people were vulnerable and marginalized (poor, POC, unwed mothers, queer people, disabled folks, etc.) they ought to be made to jump through hoops for any support to prove they were more worthy of it than their counterparts.

So now we get to the 2nd context our society has for a version of UBI. This one is exclusively available to the wealthy and is somewhat less fettered by hoop-jumping than it’s counterparts. It’s significantly less effected by the idea that it should have to be temporary as well, because it’s privately funded (in the most direct sense anyway, we can talk another time about how the governement subsidizes this particular form of UBI). Additionally, because of how inaccessible it is to middle and working class communities, it is incredibly misunderstood by those groups. The number of people who don’t know how this system works is truly unfortunate, because if more folks were familiar, I guarantee you, it would be much harder for the right to argue against UBI.

This system is called trust funds.

And I know that as soon as I said that, several of you suddenly imagined the Hollywood and television caricature of a trust fund baby. I want you to set that aside for a while, because it genuinely is a caricature in the original sense of the word (a comical but recognizable exaggeration of the original concept). Let’s talk a little bit about trust fund law. Trust funds are contracts with banks. They are typically investment accounts and they are most commonly written in such a way as to provide a certain dollar amount (or formula for a dollar amount) per month in income, plus the occaisional approved additional expense. Every state has their own standards for what is “normal” for a trust fund. For example, California trust fund law considers living expenses, medical expenses, and educational expenses to be standard approved expenses. However, a person creating a trust fund contract can add or subtract items from that list as they feel appropriate.

Because a trust fund is a contract with a bank, the expectation is that the bank’s board of trustees will approve any expenses beyond the monthly distribution (we’ll talk about that in a moment” if they find it reasonable. So an approved expense category is the only kind of expense they can agree to cover. ,If your trust fund documents exclude educational expenses, for example, then you can request help paying for your college tuition or your books, but they are legally prohibited from approving your request. Meanwhile if medical expenses are approved and you end up in the hospital, they can approve that expense. Whether or not they find it reasonable to is usually based on the amount of money being requested, the amount of money the account is worth, how much money has already been approved that fiscal year, and how much money can be approved while still ensuring that the trust fund can sustain itself throughout your lifetime.

As for regular disbursements, this is where it bears the most resemblance to the concept of UBI. A board of trustees is legally required to pay out a certain minimum amount dictated by the creator of the trust, or the amount of income from the account, whichever is higher. For the sake of an example, let’s say that a trust contract set the minimum yearly income at $12,000 after taxes. That would be $1,000 per month. Now, the “or the actual income of the account” is legally required for any trust fund that is in the form of an investment account because while trust funds are, technically, not the legal property of their beneficiary, all of it’s income is. Which means that in our example where the minimum income is set at $1,000 per month, on a very bad year, the income on the account might only be $10,000/year instead of $12,000. On this year, the trust fund would still be required to pay out more income than it actually earned in order to ensure that the beneficiary still has access to a set and reasonable amount of income. And because it’s classified as income, what you spend it on is not monitored by a third party. Of course, most boards will take that money into account when they’re deciding whether or not to approve additional distributions under the system we described earlier (if a beneficiary were to ask for $1500 in rent money, they would likely ask what the monthly $1,000 was being used for that it couldn’t be applied to the $1500 first, reducing the request to $500 for rent money, for example) but technically it is available for the beneficiary to use as they would wages from their place of employment. Your boss shouldn’t be forbidding you from buying lotto tickets with your wages (yes, I know some companies attempt to do this through various measures, but that’s a different conversation), so neither should your board of trustees. On a good year, however, the account might actually earn $24,000 in income. In which case, the beneficiary is legally entitled to that whole amount, or $2,000 per month, to use as income.

So, let’s close the loop on why trust funds are functionally basic income. The above systems remain completely unaffected by a person’s other sources of income. Get a job part time as a receptionist? You’ll still earn your yearly income from the trust fund. Get married and add your spouses income to your monthly expenditures? Your trust fund distributions still come through. Become CEO of Daddy’s company and earn billions of dollars a year in “wages”? That $1000 a month will still drop into your bank account every single time.

Because most trust funds are set up by relatives, most trust fund’s “minimum yearly income” is determined by what that relative thinks is the bare minimum you need to pay your bills. You will very rarely find a trust fund that has a minimum income that comes out to tens of thousands a month, despite the television tropes. It’s typically somewhere in the range of “minimum part time job” to “full time salaried job”. It’s intended as a fallback, and the income is designed to be available from the day of the fund’s creation until the day it’s beneficiary dies. If the fund is created by a grandparent on the day of the child’s birth, than the child’s parents will be recieving that minimum income every month as the child’s legal custodians to help pay for any expenses the child incurs as it’s being raised. If the fund is established on the day of a child’s 18th birthday, then the income will go directly to them to help them pay their way in the world. It’s extremely common for the minimum income to basically be meant to cover rent/mortgage so that housing will never be a concern for a beneficiary.

So. In the private sphere of the wealthy, relatives have, for generations, been ensuring that their descendents would always have access to a basic amount of money so that they will never starve or become homeless, even in the event of extreme financial hardship. Which is basic income. The only difference between this and UBI is that UBI is not privately funded and is available to everyone.’

So let’s talk about why it’s not. When a person from a wealthy family is the beneficiary of a trust fund, what tends to happen? If their basic needs are met, then that means they can afford to choose between taking out loans to go to college and not having to work as well or working while they go to school so that they leave loan free, but either way they can afford to go to college and get a degree with no question of whether or not they’ll be able to pay tuition. It means that they can take that unpaid internship in New York to build connections in their field of choice. It means that they can afford to take extremely underpaid positions in order to build references and gain experience. It means that they can afford to save up the down payment for a mortgage while they’re still young. It means that if they get extremely sick and end up in hospital for three months straight, rather than having to take out predatory loans to pay their medical bills, they can reach out to their trustees and ask for help paying them down. It means that if their car breaks down one day and they need to pay $1000 to get it repaired, they can do so or seek support in doing so. It means that, no matter what financial situation they find themselves in, if they need it, there is a pool of capital that can be accessed (with the consent of the trustees) to ensure that they do not have to engage in predatory practices like high interest loans or credit cards, and so that they do not suffer consequences such as starvation, homelessness, or lack of medical care. Because they can rely on support for these kinds of situations, they are able to take financial risks like going to college, opening a business, buying a house or a car, etc, with the assurance that even if it breaks bad, the consequences they suffer will never be life-threatening. And when their risks pay off instead and their college degree gets them a good job, they own their home and cars outright, and their business becomes successful and starts to grow, that basic income can be funnelled into growth rather than safety. Now, instead of using that basic income to pay their rent, they can use it to invest in other companies, to put into trust funds or college funds for their children, or to invest in additional forms of capital like income property, infrastructure, or the growth of their business.’

Let’s be clear: that end result is the goal of a trust fund. Get the beneficiary through the stage in their life when they have none of their own capital to rely on yet so that they are able to reach the ownership stage of the life quicker, more safely, and more successfully. Cash is the least efficient form of capital our system has, but it is the cost of entry to all the other, more densely valuable forms of capital. Land, ownership of an income generation machine, access to the social capital of certification and networking, these are intensely valuable specifically because they are necessary to everyone and can be turned into profit for the ownership community when offered to those who are barred from entry to the whole system. So if UBI is instituted and suddenly everyone in the country is able to go to college, to take unpaid internships, to open business, to freely access the entire system of capital, then those things become less valuable because they can no longer be used to profit from the lower classes because there is no more lower class. Cash’s value is raised and the value of non-cash capital is lowered, so that the two classifications are equalized. Most of the predatory ways in which the wealthy have earned their money become unprofitable because there is no one left to prey on. The economy is forced to reinvent itself into a system under which it is acceptable to have exclusively a middle and upper class rather than a poverty class.

So rather than allowing that, the wealthy turn that cycle into “boom and bust” by changing the goal posts of wealth and capital as soon as middle classes earn access to the old forms of capital, plunging the middle class into sudden and devastating poverty in order to restart the cycle with hundreds of millions of people becoming exploitable overnight. This is what happened with the stock market crash in the 20′s, and with the housing bubble in more modern memory, and what I suspect will be happening with “start up culture” or with college education fairly soon.

UBI as a permanent and open system would make it extremely challenging for the ownership class to move the goal posts successfully in future, since the current economic system depends on cash as the cost of entry. There’s an extremely high chance (by no means a certainty) that UBI would allow people to anchor the economy solidly in the realm of accessability rather than in exclusivity, and generally speaking that allows vulnerable members of society to force systemic changes that undo their marginalization. Consider what tends to happen in communities of color where POC owned business become successful and are able to specifically recycle capital back into the community.

Of course, this is all a fairly simplified conversation, and there are a lot of different places for a wrench to be thrown and for UBI to stop being a tool of empowerment for the marginalized. I by no means think that it is enough, on it’s own, to end marginalization and poverty. But everyone, including the wealthy right, are aware that it would make such goals significantly easier. And in their minds, that is a problem.

Mainly, what I want people to take from this isn’t necessarily that UBI is a perfect, golden solution or anything like that. What I would like to make sure people know is that the wealthy right does not believe that people are inhernetly going to abuse or take advantage of UBI, because if they did, they would not build trust funds for their descendents. They either believe that the poor and marginalized are inherently so morally bankrupt that they cannot be trusted with the same systems that the wealthy right have access to. Or they believe that without the ability to exploit the poor and marginalized to the point of death and devastation, the systems they have spent generations building would not be successful.

So when you hear the wealthy right arguing that welfare and UBI are bad, remember that trust funds exist and that you are either listening to a bigot or to a fucking monster.

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