#america cash rewards

[eroticdemon]

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[bryanjblog]

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[sabrinachoudhor]

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[qqueenofhades]

Hwy dod we even need to send more money to Ukraine tho like we’ve already supported them plenty! But let Europe pull their weight and we can go back to spending that money on American policies

Do you read like, any news outside Tumblr, any Ukrainian perspectives, any basic analyses of the conflict, any rationale from Democrats or Congress, or anything? Because, in brief:

Ukrainians are currently facing a full-scale genocide. It has been going on for over a year and Russian military leadership has every plan to continue until fruition. If they stop resisting, there will be no more Ukraine or Ukrainians. So all the "appeasers" or "realists" insisting that Ukraine should "give up land for peace" (which notably worked so well with Czechoslovakia and Hitler in 1938) are basically deciding that it's fine to let the genocide be carried out, if it's even minorly inconvenient for us. Putin and cronies have repeatedly stated that if they are successful in taking Ukraine, they will go further. This is the exact scenario that leads to the "escalation" and/or WWIII that various people keep wringing their hands over. It is far more just and safe for Ukraine to be supported now and to stop that before it gets even worse.

America is not actually giving over buckets of black cash, regardless of what various bad-faith takes claim. They are handing over weapons valued at various amounts of money, along with some financial and budgetary aid. A lot of these weapons are older and would cost more to decommission than they cost to give to a sovereign democracy fighting for its life against an imperialist autocratic neighbor. This is some tiny amount like 5% (if that) of America's bloated military budget. And again: it's actual weapons valued at a certain dollar amount. These cannot be spent on American domestic policies.

The idea that helping Ukraine is directly coming out of our own pockets or preventing us from spending as needed on our own needs is propaganda. It is not good to repeat it.

I wrote this post the other day about why Putin is trying so hard to break American/Western support for Ukraine, and why the hard-right MAGA has enabled him in it. Putin's Russia is the motivating nexus, coordination, and funding center for Russian/European/American far-right theocratic fascism. This whole "America Only" is the exact rationale that appeals to said far-right domestic fascists and gives Putin and other imperial expansionist kleptocrats the justification to just throw away post-WWII international order and declare that any larger and more powerful state can systematically eradicate any neighboring country, claim its territory, destroy its government, kill its people, and get away with it. Because why would they stop, if there aren't any consequences and they are rewarded for it?

Putin has repeatedly interfered in American elections to help Trump and the Republicans. That should tell you something about who he sees as most favorable to his interests and what he would do again if allowed to emerge victorious.

Europe IS actually pulling its weight! They just brought all 27 defense ministers to Kyiv, they have been working on Ukraine's accession talks, they have committed all types of weapons (including the long-range missiles that the US still won't clearly authorize), they've committed a new tranche of 5 billion euros in long-term assistance, etc. But the whole "we should pull out of NATO and leave Europe to fend for itself" was a key isolationist and xenophobic Trump idea. We can see what that led to.

American aid is vital to Ukraine's continued existence as a sovereign country, period, and it is in American interests to continue to provide it as agreed upon. Not least because such an egregious betrayal of a democratic ally would empower the fascists of the world, both Russian and American, and because as noted, if this conflict was not stopped and got bigger, it would then involve American troops. It is a moral, democratic, political, and ethical imperative. This is not a difficult call or a complicated situation, regardless of what the Online Leftist tankies and the MAGA-world nutcases (because horseshoe theory) want you to think.

Слава Україні.

The end.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to screw up a whistleblower law

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

Corporate crime is notoriously underpoliced and underprosecuted. Mostly, that's because we just choose not to do anything about it. American corporations commit crimes at 20X the rate of real humans, and their crimes are far worse than any crime committed by a human, but they are almost never prosecuted:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

We can't even bear to utter the words "corporate crime": instead, we deploy a whole raft of euphemisms like "risk and compliance," and that ole fave, the trusty "white-collar crime":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/07/solar-panel-for-a-sex-machine/#a-single-proposition

The Biden DOJ promised it would be different, and they weren't kidding. The DOJ's antitrust division is kicking ass, doing more than the division has done in generations, really swinging for the fences:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Main Justice – the rest of the DOJ – promised that it would do the same. Deputy AG Lisa Monaco promised an end to those bullshit "deferred prosecution agreements" that let corporate America literally get away with murder. She promised to prosecute companies and individual executives. She promised a lot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Was she serious? Well, it's not looking good. Monaco's number two gnuy, Benjamin Mizer, has a storied career – working for giant corporations, getting them off the hook when they commit eye-watering crimes:

https://prospect.org/justice/2024-04-09-reform-groups-lack-of-corporate-prosecutions-doj/

Biden's DOJ is arguably more tolerant of corporate crime than even Trump's Main Justice. In 2021, the DOJ brought just 90 cases – the worst year in a quarter-century. 2022's number was 99, and 2023 saw 119. Trump's DOJ did better than any of those numbers in two out of four years. And back in 2000, Justice was bringing more than 300 corporate criminal prosecutions.

Deputy AG Monaco just announced a new whistleblower bounty program: cash money for ratting out your crooked asshole co-worker or boss. Whistleblower bounties are among the most effective and cheapest way to bring criminal prosecutions against corporations. If you're a terrified underling who can't afford to lose your job after narcing out your boss, the bounty can outweigh the risk of industry-wide blacklisting. And if you're a crooked co-conspirator thinking about turning rat on your fellow criminal, the bounty can tempt you into solving the Prisoner's Dilemma in a way that sees the crime prosecuted.

So a new whistleblower bounty program is good. We like 'em. What's not to like?

Sorry, folks, I've got some bad news:

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/stephen-kohn-on-the-justice-department-plan-to-offer-whistleblower-awards/

As the whistleblower lawyer Stephen Kohn points out to Russell Mokhiber of Corporate Crime Reporter, Monaco's whistleblower bounty program has a glaring defect: it excludes "individuals who were involved with the crime." That means that the long-suffering secretary who printed the boss's crime memo and put it in the mail is shit out of luck – as is the CFO who's finally had enough of the CEO's dirty poker.

This is not how other whistleblower reward programs work: the SEC and CFTC whistleblower programs do not exclude people involved with the crime, and for good reason. They want to catch kingpins, not footsoldiers – and the best way to do that is to reward the whistleblower who turns on the boss.

This isn't a new idea! It's in the venerable False Claims Act, an act that signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. As Kohn says, making "accomplices" eligible to participate in whistleblower rewards is how you get people like his client, who relayed a bribe on behalf of his boss, to come forward. As Lincoln said in 1863, the purpose of a whistleblower law is to entice conspirators to turn on one another. Like Honest Abe said, "it takes a rogue to catch a rogue."

And – as Kohn says – we've designed these programs so that masterminds can't throw their minor lickspittles under the buss and collect a reward: "I know of no case where the person who planned or initiated the fraud under any of the reward laws ever got a dime."

Kohn points out that under Monaco, the DOJ just ignores the rule that afford anonymity to whistleblowers. That's a big omission – the SEC got 18,000 confidential claims in 2023. Those are claims that the DOJ can't afford to miss, given their abysmal, sub-Trump track record on corporate crime prosecutions.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/15/whistleblown/#lisa-monaco

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Lol.

This will be short. I’ll go on a little tangent but I’ll tie this back to Jungkook and BTS at the end.

You know, I was mostly ambivalent about the feud between HYBE and Min Heejin until I heard her call Bang Sihyuk and his sycophants “bastards” for ‘overpaying for garbage and forcing everyone to eat it because they think the price makes the music good.’ - I’m paraphrasing a bit because her language was more crude. That made me sit up a bit, because her sentiments mirrored my thoughts about the direction Bang Sihyuk has been taking the company in for some time now.

Another random connection is that, to me at least, it seems clear BigHit is still trying to make the HYBE America investment worth it, given:

1. The unnecessarily long credit lists filled with Scooter-linked writers that appear to have become a fixture of most HYBE releases. Bang PD is clearly taking advantage of Scooter’s connections although it’s yet to yield any significant improvement in music quality, and in terms of chart performance the results are mixed at best;

2. The fact that in addition to HYBE paying US$1.05 Billion in cash for Scooter’s company, essentially overpaying for Ithaca Holdings by consensus estimates (a deal Min Heejin also openly criticized as being hare-brained), HYBE America still generated hundreds of millions of dollars in losses as of the last fiscal year, two years after the acquisition was finalized.

But this is old news, we all knew that.

The thing about Min Heejin’s comments that concerned me is that, despite what is now clearly an underperforming investment both in terms of Scooter Braun himself and the man at HYBE that arranged the deal in the first place, Lee Jae-sang, rather than work to correct course and minimize losses, Bang Sihyuk appears to be doubling down on the deal by rewarding these two men in particular with more music and business opportunities within HYBE, even if the music quality suffers as a result, even if HYBE continues overpaying for shit, and even if the artists/idols are negatively impacted in the process. And according to Min Heejin, one big reason Bang Sihyuk allows it is because those men are adept at greasing his arse and eating it out.

Basically, it’s become an expensive joke. But he’s brute forcing the deal to work because so long as BTS is involved and so ARMYs are involved, it’s a joke that Bang PD is guaranteed to take laughing all the way to the bank.

This is where I say I realized shortly after Jungkook’s fan song for Festa was announced, that I wasn’t excited to hear it. I’m saying this only because now that the song is out, it’s confirmed everything I expected. And also because that apathetic feeling was so at odds with how I’ve been feeling about Jungkook as a person for the last year. If it’s not been clear from my reblogs and gush posts, I’ve been spending the better part of this hiatus loving Jungkook extremely. Jungkook is an empathetic songwriter, an emotive vocalist, a talented producer.

But nothing about Never Let Go is exciting. Who wants to listen to a fan song written by people who’ve never had fans? And on top of that, Jungkook is making less money from that song than any fan song he’s written before. Meaning, the song is mediocre, it feels blatantly insincere in ways only a crowdsourced fan song can be, and Jungkook has to split his revenue from the song with about 10 white people. Just look at this.

I’m actually laughing typing this out, but this turn of events is at least a little tragic.

Golden worked as a concept album because it was a collection of songs Jungkook felt represented his taste, he could take on the challenge of putting out a full English album with some help from the writers, and he showcased new vocal techniques and styles that only showed an evolution from his prior work in BTS. The songs themselves were just okay, good decent pop, but as a collection it worked.

Everything about Never Let Go feels almost audaciously soulless. Not quite a slap on the face but it’s like someone coming all up in your face with a bad case of halitosis and their nose barely touching yours, daring you to do something about it.

I have no issue with HYBE working with Scooter-linked writers or producers if it means something actually good comes of it. But it seems HYBE seems to believe their work is better simply because they slap on as many foreign names in the credits as they can fit. It betrays a worrying mentality about the head honchos in the company. Looking at the peak quality in FACE by Jimin, or in Right Place, Wrong Person by RM, which included acclaimed Korean, other Asian, and Black talent supposedly hand-picked by Jimin and Joon themselves, it’s clear HYBE has access to remarkable home-grown and foreign talent that could improve the work of the members. But what I’m seeing with too much frequency is HYBE picking off the bottom of the barrel in the unending list of Scooter’s contractors and otherwise choosing to do the bare minimum.

And that’s how we end up with a Festa fan song with a topline that sounds like an AI-generated jingle written by a soccer team of hired help.

Or idk, maybe I’m being just a bit too full of it. Maybe I’ve been brainwashed by the witch Min Heejin, maybe this was just one more song Jungkook worked on with his Golden team as he had no time to write a proper fan song, nothing more. And maybe as a silver lining, there are no glaring grammatical errors though I found the ones in My You very charming, and honestly part of the appeal. To hear the way Jungkook sees the fans who have been with him till now, even if in English it didn’t quite make sense.

I said this would be short but I’ve rambled, as usual. Sorry for that. When I started out writing this post, I did intend to keep it short.

To end things on a somewhat lighter note, for me the only thing I’m excited about this Festa, is SeokJin coming back. I’ll be working on a deal during the fanmeet so I didn’t bother participating in the raffle, but I’m happy for the ARMYs who get the opportunity to hug Jin, and for Jin who gets to spend time with his fans after so long. With him returning, things are starting to feel more right, even though there are worrying signs in high places. We’ve got about 1 year left to endure most of the members enlisted and then, the crew will be rounded up again.

Now more than ever, I find myself looking forward to that.

[aspiringgirly]

a guide to buying girly in america (or anywhere outside of japan, really)

aspiringgirly here with some tips on how to find girly-esque pieces of clothing in american stores! while many pieces from japanese shops are super cute, they're often expensive (before and after shipping costs) and aren't very size inclusive.

this list is going to have some key words to look up as well as stores i've found that have some thing i think are girly.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────

shirts: button up shirt, ruffled button up shirt, puff sleeve shirt, rugby shirt

skirts: maxi skirt (roughly ankle length), tea length skirt (roughly knee length), suspender skirt, pleated skirt

dresses: puff sleeve dress, maxi dress, tea length dress, poplin dress

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────

good key words to type are gingham, pinstripe, or a color.

sometimes shops dont use the same terms for their clothing items, so dont be afraid to try different things to see what comes up.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────

here are stores i have tried these key words on and have found some pieces that emulate the girly style:

Old Navy - moderate prices, always has deals going on and a point reward system for members (the account is free)

H&M - cheaper prices, has a lot of color variety

Khol's - more expensive, things go on clearance very often and has deals, as well as an in-store "cash" for later discounts

Hot Topic - moderate prices, has a lot of collared shirts with ribbons included and patterned skirts, also has in-store "cash" to use later

Forever 21 - cheaper/moderate prices, has plenty of different patterns and colors

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────

dont be afraid to layer items! a lot of dresses can be worn on top of shirts and vice versa. sometimes i wear a skirt over a dress if i like how the top part looks.

there are more shops to look at, and there might be boutiques around your local areas- dont forget to check those places out !

girly is everywhere if you look hard enough <3 and if you buy basic pieces, then you can blend other styles into your wardrobe as well! ☆

[glasskey]

THT True Love and Double Trouble Remix Part 2.

It’s time for part 2 of our love triangle remixes and let’s not fool ourselves, from the moment we saw this one flexing in the garden in front of June, we knew he was nothing but trouble. He’s the customary “bad boy” portion of this love triangle, as such he’s required to be broody, romantic and pensive. As with all who occupy this coveted position: Black wardrobe IS optional, but preferred.

NICK

From seasons 1-5 Blaine plays the role of the reluctant loyal knight flawlessly, he’s constantly conflicted and repeatedly says that he’s just trying to “survive” and “stay out of trouble”. As such I was instantly reminded of the classic Leia / Luke and Han Solo love triangle, with the loveable, uber-cocky Solo constantly claiming he wants nothing to do with the rebellion and that he urgently owes some cash to a giant space slug. In the end Solo redeems himself, runs away with the girl to join the rebellion, and Luke, well Luke turns out to be her brother…..which was just weird. However in the Handmaids Tale, Nick is far more than simply the “loveable rogue”. He represents part of the masses of America, specifically lower working class males that were manipulated by right wing factions into doing their bidding in order to seize power. He is first introduced as someone of “low status” engaged in manual labor, he dresses in more casual attire and lives above the garage instead of the main house. It’s a statement about separating the wealthy from the working class.

These individuals are usually targeted because they’re vulnerable, disillusioned and therefore easy to recruit and manipulate. They’re searching for any kind of answer to their problems and as such they are susceptible to propaganda. They’re easy to mold in one’s own image due to the absence of sufficient guidance, thus Nick’s unending search for a father figure. Like many others Nick was “groomed” into this cause at a young age, a method tantamount to abuse or cult like programming. Photographs of Nick shown in S4 depict him to be in his early to mid 20’s, during his introduction to the Son’s of Jacob, a highly impressionable and vulnerable age.

These types of individuals are unquestioningly loyal because, having lived in poverty their entire lives, they respond to the slightest reward. Throughout the seasons we witness increasing servitude, as position and thus personal debt rises. Privilege, guilt, fear and incremental freedoms are all effective ways to drive devotion to a cause. When Nick is promoted to Commander, it is done not so much as a reward for service, but rather as a means to tighten the leash for his recent insubordination. Seeing their wayward son’s rebellious act, Gilead’s response is simply to clutch him tighter.

As diminutive as Nick’s role in the current role of Gilead government appears to be, his importance is huge conceptually. His original role is as one in the Sons of Jacob and his journey represents the rise of the next generation of political power. Nick personifies a level of compliance in young men that grows from simply turning up to a rally to military force and deadly violence. Nick, like those around him lives in a state of somewhat coercive control. They’ve been isolated, denied support, monitored, tracked and intimidated. Nick’s given only as much freedom as someone ALLOWS and there are always limits such as curfews, check points, and a heavily patrolled border. Having possessed freedom once before, the memory is still quite vivid, and the lure to return to it is extremely strong. He’s depicted as scared, servile and at times cowardly but despite this, Nick slowly begins to make increasingly impactful decisions of his own accord that signifies a rising tide of rebellion. He’s identified clearly throughout both texts as a member of Mayday, an underground secretive operation that June later leads, and consequently Nick is portrayed as mysterious and irresistibly drawn to June.

To Nick, June is freedom and enlightenment; she is constantly haloed in glowing light and speaks with an unvarnished truth and compassion that shames his fear or ignorance. She represents a choice that he must make between servitude to a dictatorship or freedom and democracy. Throughout the seasons we witness his constant inner conflict as his sense of commitment and fear battle with his heart and his better angels. As such Nick views June as a savior, much like a broken country views the voice of liberation, serving her out of love and conscience rather than obligation or fear. Blaine is constantly shrouded in black, seeping out of the shadows rather than actually ever entering a door. However his moments of connection with June are bathed in a dreamy “golden hour” lighting: the brief and beautiful window of time during sunrise or sunset. It highlights the ethereal romanticism and the inevitable brevity of their precious moments together.

It’s no coincidence that he conceives Holly with June, who leads directly to the downfall of Gilead. During S1 we witness Nick somewhat content to survive within Gilead’s bounds, but when June becomes pregnant with his own daughter, Nick realizes what his involvement with Gilead may personally cost him. The progress of June’s pregnancy and Holly’s presence signify a growing bond between them, and increasing level of loyalty from Blaine. In S5 when Tuello tries to enlist Blaine’s help he specifically asks if he would like to hold his daughter instead of asking about her, an allusion to freedom and an increased commitment to Canada. “Children look to their fathers” June reminds Nick in 5 09, Holly is watching….waiting, so too is his country.

Nick Blaine has continuously displayed the need for a father figure, it’s common trait amongst young recruits of these right wing factions; the desire for a dominant figure to guide them. This longing is a sign of Nick’s lack of self-esteem and personal strength. Throughout the seasons we’ve observed this figures personality changing over time as his loyalties shift and he slowly gathers strength. His break with Lawrence to make a deal with Tuello indicates a transition from a mere subordinate to a respected partner, a bridge to his future family.

In S5, we get a rare glimpse inside Blaine’s mind’s eye, as he fantasizes about a passionate exchange between June and himself. They are flooded with a blinding light, a sign of the intensity of his obsessive love for her. There is almost an uncontainable sense of appetite in the way Blaine physically connects with her, as if constantly waiting for the briefest opportunity to breathe her in, like free air. Blaine is written to be an enigma, he embodies a theme, but defies solid definitions. He’s intentionally elusive, almost impossible to pin down because he’s constantly shifting and wrestling with his inner demons. Contrary to popular belief it is actually June who saves Blaine, for from the beginning we’ve seen him barely keep his head above water. His lack of self-worth constantly tempts him to submit to Gilead’s influence and it is only her presence that keeps him from doing so. Given the themes that these two embody it’s logical to see Gilead thrive when these two are seperated. In S5 we saw him lose hope in June’s absence, fall under Lawrence’s spell and acquiesce to Gilead’s will. In S 5 Blaine appeared like a figure caught in a rushing river, in 5 09 June reached out a hand, only to find him already drowning.

In 5 10 we saw him claw and fight his way out from the murky depths, reborn……and angry. Nick’s words to Tuello on the bridge: “she has a family who cares about her. I’m nothing” echoes the lack of self-worth that made Nick such easy prey for Gilead. “No you’re not Commander, not to her” Tuello replies; Nick is still part of her countries lost masses, she will not forsake him for her own new found freedom. Blaine may have chosen to break his bond with Gilead when he walked across that bridge, but the reality is he’ll need June and her rebellion to truly claim his liberty and pride.

At the risk of drawing some heat, I’ll share some personal thoughts on the Nick we’ve seen thus far; while he’s certainly gone above and beyond to protect June and his own daughter, he’s continued to participate in the goings on of Gilead. It’s important to acknowledge Nick’s role as one that was active and continuously conflicted, and not entirely romanticize his character or simply paint him as a victim. He was intentionally created as a complex and multi-faceted character designed to depict someone with choices, regrets, vulnerabilities and the ability to grow and change. It’s what humanizes him and allows us to connect, because let’s be honest, sometimes as human beings we aren’t our best selves, we fuck up….and Nick Blaine did….and sometimes he still does.

He’s designed to personify an entire section of society, their choices and their role in this regime. As such it’s a mistake to be reductive about who he is and what he’s done. It’s wrong to minimize his incredible journey of personal growth in the face of so much adversity. He’s the perfect “diamond in the rough”, but the nature of this character is that they’re good hearted, seriously flawed, conflicted and take a fair bit of time to get to where they need to go.

He’s the classic enigmatic, noir type character; silent and stoic, but revealing so much with a word, a gesture or even their silence. These characters allow the viewer to project their own perspective upon them based on the smallest of cues. As such the hopeless romantics see him as a lover, the suspicious see him as a traitor, and the pragmatists, like myself, see him as a simple man. Looking back, I see now I have projected so many of my own strengths and vulnerabilities onto Blaine, and I’m left wondering; where does it end and the writer’s intent begin? Perhaps mine and Millers concept of Blaine are an ocean apart. For me the beauty of Nick Blaine, as with most of these characters, is in his journey; he sometimes DOES fail to listen to his better angels, but most of the time he tries.

He’s not an untouchable prince or a pre-packaged hero, he’s real, a fail able human being trying to be better. At times June IS disappointed in him and we do see her call him on his shit because, well to be honest sometimes he deserves it, but deep down Nick Blaine is essentially a good and caring soul who ultimately succeeds. Nick represents a faction of emotionally vulnerable individuals, manipulated and mobilized, through the use of propaganda and fear, by those with a hateful agenda. He’s a young man who falls in love, becomes a father and realizes the personal cost of war. There are “a thousand choices” Lawrence says, and in 5 10 Nick finally makes the one we always knew he would. At the end of the day, June loves Nick because she knows that he is a good man who will ultimately make the right choice, and he loves her because she is the right choice that he always wanted to make.

For part 1 and other bloggy goodness, head over to my page. Back soon with part 3.

[pbees]

Marechi!

[𝙐𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙢𝙤𝙤𝙣𝙨! 𝙓 [𝘽𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧!]

Part 1 ☆

WARNINGS!; future parts will contain Nsfw content!!

This part contains

- Blood

- Violence

- Self Harm [unintentionally ]

Want:

/𝘸ä𝘯𝘵,𝘸ô𝘯𝘵/

𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘰 (𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨); 𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘧𝘰𝘳.

⏝︶︶⏝︶ ୨୧ ︶⏝︶︶⏝

強くて美しい

  It was cold.

The blanket you had did not provide much warmth in the freezing temperatures. If you were to die here you would have no one else to blame but yourself- you should've known traveling this far from home would be dangerous, but the promise of a cash reward kept you blind-sighted.

The group you traveled with had called themselves the 'je te l'avais'. They came upon the docs of Nanets boasting about the "créature inquiétante du Japon"

[disturbing creature from Japan]

and promised a hefty cash reward for whoever helped them capture and find it. They said the creature was found in the waters of Japanese shores and would pull people under if they dare come through. The sarcastic tone the group used to boast about the commission piqued your interest making it seem as though it weren't true.

They seemed happier to receive gold than to believe such fictitious monsters existed- So you bought in. You were the last one needed in the party to carry out said commission, no more than a party boat was allowed to attend- either out of fear or greediness to keep their coin.

The boat approached the shore, and they bought a room to rest whilst they stayed in such a foreign place. It was 4 men and 4 women to keep the party equal, the entire sail they would not take what you said into consideration which already -irked you. The only reason you were still on the trip was for the gold, living in France may have been easier than the Americas for someone like you, but you were still largely hated by people you had know bearing with - so getting a job became harder.

After your mother had passed away you were left with debt- paid off with most of the furniture and jewelry she had left behind. You didn't want the house to be taken as well so you took it upon yourself to find any way to make money, you strongly refused to sell yourself to any of the bastard men here so you had to take on harder jobs than what the ladder provided.

'CHO-!"

Snot was now the warmest thing on your body funnily enough.

The feeling in your hands lessen by the second as the snow increased, the party had led you out here in the forest just to be murdered leaving you behind. Even to the end when you commented that they should head back because "they were losing sunlight" they ignored you- and when it seemed like they finally listened and started to head back they were attacked. Someone's head came clean off fresh sprays getting across a woman's face.

Another Woman seemingly flew into the air.

2 men were ripped apart and the last remaining few ran off their cries of "HELP!" being distant please before they too were cut off.

You were sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the group before, and now it had to be even worse. Stricken with fear you couldn't move, hyperventilating being your only call of fear. When you finally had the courage to move everyone was dead, no idea how it happened you tried to pull through. Looting their bodies for food and other small items it would be easy to carry you started to head back silently- but the snow started to pick up leaving you lost.

Once warm blood-soaked parts of your skin as you tried to make yourself warmer. You couldn't even bring yourself to cry in fear of dehydration as you heaved in place of a sob.

Why were you the only one left?

Why couldn't whatever "créature inquiétante" that ate them eat you?

Whatever the afterlife holds, if your mom were there would she laugh at you for such an unfulfilling and pitiful death? You couldn't even call yourself a coward because when you faced the threat you didn't cower frozen on the spot.

Placing one purple hand on the rock you were laying on you shouted ripping your dry lips.

"IT'S NOT FAIR!- I WANT TO LIVE- I want to live my life the way My mother wished!" you coughed watching blood fall from your cracked lips. Standing up on frozen shaky legs you got 2 steps ahead before falling on your face the feeling gone from both feet.

The last thing you remember before your vision finally blurred out was black pants squatting down toward you, you couldn't see what he was doing before you grabbed onto his pants leg and heaved out your final.

"𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦"

__________________________________________

𝘕𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘴; is a City in France

'Je te l'avais; Means "I told you-"

_________

Authors note: Dammmmn I've gotta learn NOT to write on docs the whole time. It doesn't convert my italicized font so the italicized font looks super silly right now😭

-super short future parts will be longer no worries

[brb-on-a-quest]

The Toxic relationship between America and England As Told by Me Which Will Have Many Questionable Oversimplifications Due To the Lack of Time I Currently Have Before My Last Final Paper For A Different Class is Due: a story told by me. Tagging @igotthisaccountunderduress bc she asked for this specifically and now must suffer the consequences

Source: My history notes and a chat where I have infodumped all this to my best friend who has somehow still put up with all of my ramblings. If people would like I can and will make a series out of this with more actual research because Damn History is so much more interesting when it's not for the grade and stress and finals (like I love the tea, love the reciepts, but to memorize all of it on top of other things? *stress ensues*

((Under cut))

There was a war. There have been many wars. But during this period of like literally forever ago England, Spain, and France really just couldn't stop bickering at each other like siblings. This became more problematic when Spain started getting Colonies in this New World after the whole Christopher Columbus shenanigans (Fun fact: Isabel and Ferdinand really only sponsored like 20% or 30% of Columbus' original costs; Columbus still had to like find the other major chunk of it through sponsorships and donations). But anyway Columbus Task Failed Successfully and discovers Not India/Spice Islands but ~a whole new world~ (so many more shenanigans with that Columbus had to straight up lie to his crew multiple times to stop mutinies from happening I want to read his diaries at some point bc the more things I hear the more intrigued I get). But anyway Spain gets a lot of shiny new income in plenty of resources, spices, diseases, tomatoes, chocolate, etc.

England and France get jealous. France is like "omg I want some" and they go to Not The Spice Islands via the fabled "Northwest Passage" and get to canada and make bank off fur trading. England however in true Chaotic Sibling Fashion originally goes "why would I need to go over to America when I can just steal from France and Spain"

and thus PIRACYYYYYYY yo ho ho ho and a bottle of rum for meeeee

Spain and France are (unsurprisingly) Not Cool with this whole "sharing is caring" attitude of England and again more wars start. England in the meantime decides it wants to get its stuff together and allows the prototypes of corporations called Joint Stock Companies (basically a bunch of people would share the risks and the reward of running a business) that lead to the Virginia Colony. There were also people who were cashing in royal debts in exchange for land in the new world (the Calverts who started Maryland who wanted to Bring Back The Feudal system and that went so well for them *cough cough*/sarcasm) and a bunch of people who wanted to ability to Practice Their Religion Better than Other People (there was religious persecution when Queen Elizabeth was reigning during the Great Migration of people to America but from my understanding it was more like she didn't care what you did if you were loyal to England but also that is literally only from my professor and I have heard conflicting stories with other professors soooooo take this with a heavy grain of salt).

Anyway now with income coming in from the Americas both Spain and France and England are doing relatively well for themselves. And then guess what happens. Ah yes, more jealous and fighting. In this case, it's over the Ohio Valley Area because both countries wanted to expand their holdings in the new World. Basically this area touched Canada and France is like "C’est à moi" and England's like "GET YOUR TOASTY BAGUETTES AWAY FROM MY LAND" This leads to what we call here the French and Indian War (also called the Seven Years War in Europe I think, a lot of wars have American Names vs European names). Despite being called "The French and Indian War" here, it was fought by England and their Indian Allies and French and their Indian allies. England wins but at what cost?

The cost is money. It's always money. Now everyone has super heavy debt as a sum of like four(five?) wars that are fought in this period of time. England is now trying to raise funds to help get themselves out of the mess they put themselves into. Their solution: make America Pay Rent. Kind of a "we fought this war for *you* actually now give us money for it.

Note: they were only trying to raise part of the money for it via Direct Taxes which are taxes added on top of the price (which btdubs they were paying taxes to England already they were pay just English Version of Taxes which are built into the price so you don't know how much if it is taxes. They were fine with that. They just didn't want extra taxes. So this made them reevaluate their whole relationship with England. It didn't also help that England was starting to revoke some of the major perks like support past the appalachian mountain range, and among other things).

this tulmultuous period can be summed up with (an overgeneralization):

England: *tries to control America over much by being like 'you have to pay taxes on this this and this*

America: fine *just doesn't buy anything from England period until England recants and is like fine you don't have to pay this tax*

England: *plays the jealous girlfriend card* "you can only trade with England!!! No one else!!!

America, the two-timer: *increases smuggling* Also radical terrorists//the sons of liberty start crying for independence (Takes a Long Time For anyone to Listen to them Because Why Would They Rebellion is a stupid idea)

The East India Company thing was such a whole thing that kinda highlights this to an extreme. East India Company was part of the joint stock company that was about to go under because they had taken loans from like literally almost every bank in England. Which if they failed would be REALLY bad news for England. So in an attempt to lower cost, England told East India company that they could bring their tea from india to America directly instead of having to go through british ports as was custom. America took one look at the now So much Cheaper Tea and was like "mmmm sus" and didn't buy it in favor of dutch tea so RIP east India Company. Also Terrorist Group from before burned several of the ships while being disguised as Indians (no one was buying it) and that's what we call the boston tea party. England shut down Boston as they should and basically war ideas were spreading really quickly through new england and further onward (south was less so but they came around).

Anyway. I realize this comes off as very-anti American and it's really not meant to be, both countries were really annoying to each other throughout this whole process. But yeh then theirs gunshots and a declaration of independence and then we barely win by the skin of our teeth (that's mainly bc british merchants were like stop this we can't make money if you're fighting with our best customers at the end) and things get only stranger from there. First modern Democratic Republic so things were bound to get...very wonky.

[queenofbaws]

heyyy queenie hope ur doin well!! bit of a curveball but im Curious since ive been brain rotted with it lately, so could i ask for whump prompt 13 for the scream franchise?? any characters/movie u want, but id love u to take a stab (tee hee hee) at it :]

not-quite-six sentence weekend :P

There were a lot of emotions playing across Mindy's face as Amber pulled the knife out: doubt, intrigue, disbelief, something that could only be described as pre-schadenfreude...but worry wasn't among them. Neither were its closest cousins, concern and fear, so Tara had to figure the sudden uptick in her pulse was, in fact, solely her issue. If Mindy wasn't worried, then there probably wasn't anything to worry about. Period.

Probably.

Probably.

"Sick, right?" Amber flicked her wrist, a flourish that immediately came across as practiced even to her untrained eyes, and the butterfly knife click-click-clicked around her fingers before snapping back into place. "Copped it at a gun show this weekend with my dad. Guy running the stall said I was a natural."

"Why am I not surprised?" Tara snickered, then feigned a frightened little noise and pulled away when Amber turned, holding it out towards her. "You know if anyone catches you messing with that thing, like, right outside of school, they're gonna take it, right? You do get that? It makes sense to you? In your brain?"

She pulled a face, scrunching her nose up. "Uh, no they won't."

"Uhhh, why not?"

With another click-click-clack, she spun the knife around. "How're they gonna take it from me? I've got a kniiife."

Before she could pull away, Amber took one of Tara's hands in hers, laying it flat on the table they were sitting at. She laid her own hand perfectly on top of it, lining their fingers up until Tara's hand disappeared entirely.

"Want to see the coolest trick?"

"Uh." That was it. That was all she had time to say before Amber flexed her hand - both their hands, really - and their fingers spread wide, and...and she understood what she was about to do. Her eyes widened. "Hey, wait, nononononono!"

"Chillax, I've been doing it all week and I've still got all my fingers. You're in good hands."

"Famous last words." Though she'd been going on quite the face journey across the table, Mindy had been awfully quiet until then. Now, as Amber switched her grip on the knife, holding it more like a caveman getting ready to strike, she leaned forward with her elbows on the table, pointing her phone down at their hands.

Pre-schaudenfreude. Yeah. Tara had been right on the money with that one.

"Seriously?" Amber scoffed, "What? You think I'm gonna get performance anxiety or something?"

She sniffed once, Mindy, then shrugged one of her shoulders. Her phone didn't budge. "Nah, I just want to make sure I get this clusterfuck on video so there's evidence in the inevitable personal injury suit Tara's gonna file against you when you slice her open like an Amazon box."

Amber raised her eyes to Mindy's, her expression inscrutable. "I'd stab myself first, duh. That's the whole point of putting my hand over hers."

"Oh yeah, totally," she nodded. "The whole point, mhm. Well this is for you too, because when you stab yourself, then, I can send it to America's Funniest Home Videos. They give out cash rewards for the really funny ones, don't they?"

"Hilarious."

Tara braced herself as Amber readjusted, rolling her shoulders and assuming her focus-face. Ooh, she didn't want to be a part of the finger-stabby-knife-game-thing, she didn't want to be a part of that at all, but what choice did she have? If she pulled away, it'd knock Amber's concentration off! If she just sat there and took it, the risk of getting stabbed was literally exactly the same! There was no winning here, no getting out it, no -

"Hey guys!"

The choice was made for her.

Wes slammed his hands on the table as he joined them, sliding up from behind to sit on her other side. It startled her so badly that she could only pull away, jolting like a cat with its tail stepped on. Across the table, Mindy groaned, and beside her, Amber similarly jumped, and while her poor, asthmatic little lungs really didn't appreciate the sudden scare, her poor, unstabbed little fingers sure did.

"What's going on? Why're we all hunched over and whispery?" he asked, but the only answer she had for him with a quick smack on the wrist. "Ow?"

"Why would you do that?" she breathed a second later, the tension leaving her in one huge whooping rush. "That wasn't cool! You could've - " But as luck would have it, that was where her lecturing came to a close. Her eyes had flicked to the side for just a second, a natural human reaction, and what she'd seen...well, she wasn't sure what to make of it. "...what?" Tara asked, glancing between Amber and Mindy.

"So America's Funniest Home Videos then, huh?" Mindy's eyebrows went up as her phone went down. "If I was a pettier person, just so you know? This is where I'd be saying I told you so. But I'm not! Lucky you."

It took her a moment longer than she would've liked to figure out what that could've possibly meant. When she did, she startled all over again, almost jumping out of her seat as she spun to look at Amber. "Ohmygod - did you - ?!"

"I'm. Fine," she said through gritted teeth, looking anything but.

She did get up then, standing from the table's bench to circle around and - the noise that came out of her was a little too embarrassing to describe. "Fine? You're fine?! You have a goddamn knife sticking out of your leg!"

Wes paled immediately, turning to Mindy with wide eyes, no doubt hoping she'd shed some light on the situation. She didn't, surprising no one, and instead glanced towards the front doors of the school, waving Chad over to join them when she spotted him across the way. "Well here's the good news, Am," she said, not even trying to hide her amusement, "I think you can definitely still salvage that psychosexual homoerotic tension you were going for with that brilliant stunt. Just yank that puppy out, let Tara stick a finger in there and wiggle it around a little. No harm, no foul. Everybody wins!" Then, under her breath but still more than loud enough for them all to hear over Amber's harsh breathing, "Especially me, once your idiot-ass goes viral."

[mightyflamethrower]

Shortly after the terror attacks of October 7, the United States’ position initially appeared to be very clear. This was Israel’s war to fight and we would provide material and vocal support, but allow them to handle it as they saw fit. That lasted for about two weeks. By this past weekend, the situation had shifted noticeably, with threats of escalation showing up to the north of Israel from Hezbollah and rocket attacks on American posts in various places, including Iraq. And now both the Secretary of State and the Defense Secretary are clearly preparing the country for the possibility that the entire situation may blow up and our military is “ready” to go to war if we must. That’s a lot to soak in on a Monday morning, but a wider war may turn out to be inevitable unless Iran can be convinced to back down. (Associated Press)

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Sunday that the United States expects the Israel-Hamas war to escalate through involvement by proxies of Iran, and they asserted that the Biden administration is prepared to respond if American personnel or armed forces become the target of any such hostilities. “This is not what we want, not what we’re looking for. We don’t want escalation,” Blinken said. “We don’t want to see our forces or our personnel come under fire. But if that happens, we’re ready for it.” Austin, echoing Blinken, said “what we’re seeing is a prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region.”

I’m not going to criticize Blinken, Austin, or the Biden administration for facing reality and saying that we are “prepared” for war. It’s a crazy world, and we should always be prepared to go to war if we must. But we must also keep in mind the fact that war is and always must be the course of last resort. (Did we learn nothing from Iraq?) Diplomacy is always the preferred option if possible.

Sadly, diplomacy with Iran may not even be possible. They remain the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism and they are already at war with us, Israel, and the West in general. They just fight their wars in an unconventional fashion. If Hezbollah opens up a full attack on Israel from the north and attempts to move into Israeli territory, we will know immediately that it was Iran that equipped the terrorists and gave them the green light to go in.

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In this regard, Joe Biden does bear a significant amount of the blame. It’s difficult to argue that we didn’t see this level of unrest and fighting in the Middle East during the Trump administration because we were cracking down on Iran, enforcing the sanctions on their oil exports, and taking out leading terrorist figures with missiles when they misbehaved. That all changed as soon as Joe Biden took office and began begging Iran to restart Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal. Iran has grown fat with cash under Biden’s watch, shipping massive volumes of oil to China and other destinations, all of which should have been blocked under the existing sanctions.

Biden’s timid and conciliatory approach to Iran was not rewarded with cooperation or better behavior. The Mullahs simply pocketed our cash and used it to ramp up the capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah. And now they have launched a full-fledged war on Israel that threatens to embroil the entire region if not the world. (Russia has already been threatening Israel and China is now making similar noises and they have dispatched warships into the region. This could still go global.)

It didn’t have to be this way. These bad actors, particularly Iran, do not respect tokens of friendship or efforts to bargain. They only understand and respect strength. When America fails to lead with strength, our adversaries take note and have shown that they are willing to seize the opportunity, potentially to horrific effect. It may be too late to dial this back at this point, but unless Biden shows a significantly stiffer spine, the entire world may wind up changing significantly, leaving America’s days as a global power and thought leader in the dust.

Whatever Happened to "Give Peace a Chance"

[bryanjblog]

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[ceresfromnationstates]

Henry's condensed backstory (Fan canon)

Related post: Henry's ref sheet.

Born in the city of Carlsbad, New Mexico, Henry was born in late 1991 to a middle income family who had just moved from Provo 1 year after he was born. An only child, Henry was fortunate enough to have a loving family that rarely gets into fights even to this day.

From a young age, Henry was known to be a quiet kid and also a troublemaker, but despite the numerous bruises and disciplinary actions he got for his behavior, he continued doing what he did best, mainly out of the sheer fun and thrill he gets from it. Though Henry did have a bit of an unsavory reputation, he also formed a close circle of friends with his other schoolmates and neighborhood kids, something that he would strive to uphold for as long as he could.

By middle school, Henry started moving away from causing trouble and focus more on making friends, as well as learning to stand up to the tougher kids. He also developed a knack for picking up abandoned money that he found and would later use to buy things whenever he's short on pocket money, over time, he would go on to even picking pennies on sight. By now, his greed is now growing.

Henry now knows how to live on his own by the time he graduated to high school, meaning that he could do more things in private without his parents' prying eyes. He had moved on from taking just pennies on the ground to small-time theft, mostly small items from stores or somebody's unattended trinkets in one place or another, suffice it to say, he was never ashamed of it.

It was also at this time where he vividly remembers experiencing his first temporal phenomenon, what he describes as "the same day repeating over, and over, and over, and over again, but increasingly fast forwarded every time I wake up again". Though he'd considered the possibility of it being a very realistic dream, Henry adamantly believes that the event was a temporal phenomenon of sorts, though he could not explain how he acquired the number of supernatural abilities he would soon have.

By the time he went to college in Austin, Henry's habitual stealing had died down, as he was more occupied with his studies than he does with the former. At this time, he also met his two close friends Calvin and Chris, where they would continue being close friends even today.

A year after he finished college, Henry is now 19 and back in Arizona, now living on his own in Phoenix. Unfortunately his part-time job didn't pay him very well and he is short on cash, so he had to resort to stealing. This attempt failed, and he soon found himself in West Mesa Penitentiary, where he would somehow escape after 9 months spent in there.

Some time after his close brush with the law, Henry swears to never commit thievery again. This wouldn't last very long as just 1½ years later, he would steal the Tunisian Diamond and reap his ill-gotten rewards. Henry even has the audacity to call the heist "The single most greatest achievement in my life as a petty criminal.".

Eventually, he would be recruited by the Federal Government to assist Cpt. Hubert Galeforce in taking down the Toppat Clan's airship division from the inside. Afterwards, he was granted amnesty by the government for his service.

Life would go on normally for another 4 years before he was taken from his home to rural British Columbia to be brought in front of the warden of The Wall and imprisoned, where he also met with Ellie, where the both of then would go on to spark an all out riot in the complex and successfully flee from it in the process.

2 days after the inmate outbreak, The Wall is put under the control of the Canadian Forces and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, consisting of a detachment of the Canadian Army, Royal Canadian Navy as well as several elements of the RCMP. After this, chaos energy levels in southwestern British Columbia have dropped significantly.

Henry and Ellie, who by now had crossed into South America and have been closely followed by surviving Wall Group elements had intended to join the remnants of the Toppat Clan and give the Romanian Ruby back to them, but at the last second, defected to U.S. forces and took down the Toppats once and for all. Both Henry and Ellie are then officially pardoned by the Government and offered monetary compensation.

It is because of Henry's actions that the last remnants of the Toppat Clan are now scattered across Europe and North America, and Wall Group are now under investigation by Interpol.

It has been one year since. Life for Henry and Ellie have been relatively normal ever since their escapade in South America.

Or is it?

Masterpost | Henry's main page

[qqueenofhades]

I got a new mattress last year after putting it off for several years longer than I should have, and it’s amazing to not have to be careful with how I lay (my previous mattress had a sizable divot) and to consistently wake up without back pain is amazing! Congrats on your new mattress!

Aha, I inherited my previous crapbox when I moved back to America totally penniless post-PhD in 2019, and I'm fairly sure it was older than me, possibly by a sizeable margin. It had no padding, it was very thin, there was a hole in the covering above the springs (you could feel every. single. one. of those motherfuckers every time you lay on it) and it required to be layered with a foam pad/blankets/quilts etc in order to make it BARELY sleepable. I duly endured it for the next 5 years due to being broke as fuck, and whenever I got a chunk of money (i.e. tax return), there was either something else I needed to pay off or to just cover basic living expenses. So yes. It was grim.

However, I am finally making a bit more money in my day job, I can thus use extra money for things I actually want (praise jeebus) and I was eyeing up the Annual Exam Grading Fiesta for MONTHS as "okay I will do this to make a little extra cash and then get a new mattress FUCKING FINALLY." So I did that, and lo, now we have reaped the rewards at long last. Praise.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Wall Street Journal goes to bat for the vultures who want to steal your house

Tonight (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Tomorrow (June 6), I’m on a Rightscon panel about interoperability.

The tacit social contract between the Wall Street Journal and its readers is this: the editorial page is for ideology, and the news section is for reality. Money talks and bullshit walks — and reality’s well-known anticapitalist bias means that hewing too closely to ideology will make you broke, and thus unable to push your ideology.

That’s why the editorial page will rail against “printing money” while the news section will confine itself to asking which kinds of federal spending competes with the private sector (creating a bidding war that drives up prices) and which kinds are not. If you want frothing takes about how covid relief checks will create “debt for our grandchildren,” seek it on the editorial page. For sober recognition that giving small amounts of money to working people will simply go to reducing consumer and student debt, look to the news.

But WSJ reporters haven’t had their corpus colossi severed: the brain-lobe that understands economic reality crosstalks with the lobe that worship the idea of a class hierarchy with capital on top and workers tugging their forelacks. When that happens, the coverage gets weird.

Take this weekend’s massive feature on “zombie mortgages,” long-written-off second mortgages that have been bought by pennies for vultures who are now trying to call them in:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/zombie-mortgages-could-force-some-homeowners-into-foreclosure-e615ab2a

These second mortgages — often in the form of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) — date back to the subprime bubble of the early 2000s. As housing prices spiked to obscene levels and banks figured out how to issue risky mortgages and sell them off to suckers, everyday people were encouraged — and often tricked — into borrowing heavily against their houses, on complicated terms that could see their payments skyrocket down the road.

Once the bubble popped in 2008, the value of these houses crashed, and the mortgages fell “underwater” — meaning that market value of the homes was less than the amount outstanding on the mortgage. This triggered the foreclosure crisis, where banks that had received billions in public money forced their borrowers out of their homes. This was official policy: Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boasted that forcing Americans out of their homes would “foam the runways” for the banks and give them a soft landing;

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

With so many homes underwater on their first mortgages, the holders of those second mortgages wrote them off. They had bought high-risk, high reward debt, the kind whose claims come after the other creditors have been paid off. As prices collapsed, it became clear that there wouldn’t be anything left over after those higher-priority loans were paid off.

The lenders (or the bag-holders the lenders sold the loans to) gave up. They stopped sending borrowers notices, stopped trying to collect. That’s the way markets work, after all — win some, lose some.

But then something funny happened: private equity firms, flush with cash from an increasingly wealthy caste of one percenters, went on a buying spree, snapping up every home they could lay hands on, becoming America’s foremost slumlords, presiding over an inventory of badly maintained homes whose tenants are drowned in junk fees before being evicted:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

This drove a new real estate bubble, as PE companies engaged in bidding wars, confident that they could recoup high one-time payments by charging working people half their incomes in rent on homes they rented by the room. The “recovery” of real estate property brought those second mortgages back from the dead, creating the “zombie mortgages” the WSJ writes about.

These zombie mortgages were then sold at pennies on the dollar to vulture capitalists — finance firms who make a bet that they can convince the debtors to cough up on these old debts. This “distressed debt investing” is a scam that will be familiar to anyone who spends any time watching “finance influencers” — like forex trading and real estate flipping, it’s a favorite get-rich-quick scheme peddled to desperate people seeking “passive income.”

Like all get-rich-quick schemes, distressed debt investing is too good to be true. These ancient debts are generally past the statute of limitations and have been zeroed out by law. Even “good” debts generally lack any kind of paper-trail, having been traded from one aspiring arm-breaker to another so many times that the receipts are long gone.

Ultimately, distressed debt “investing” is a form of fraud, in which the “investor” has to master a social engineering patter in which they convince the putative debtor to pay debts they don’t actually owe, either by shading the truth or lying outright, generally salted with threats of civil and criminal penalties for a failure to pay.

That certainly goes for zombie mortgages. Writing about the WSJ’s coverage on Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith reminds readers not to “pay these extortionists a dime” without consulting a lawyer or a nonprofit debt counsellor, because any payment “vitiates” (revives) an otherwise dead loan:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/wall-street-journal-aids-vulture-investors-threatening-second-mortgage-borrowers-with-foreclosure-on-nearly-always-legally-unenforceable-debt.html

But the WSJ’s 35-paragraph story somehow finds little room to advise readers on how to handle these shakedowns. Instead, it lionizes the arm-breakers who are chasing these debts as “investors…[who] make mortgage lending work.” The Journal even repeats — without commentary — the that these so-called investors’ “goal is to positively impact homeowners’ lives by helping them resolve past debt.”

This is where the Journal’s ideology bleeds off the editorial page into the news section. There is no credible theory that says that mortgage markets are improved by safeguarding the rights of vulture capitalists who buy old, forgotten second mortgages off reckless lenders who wrote them off a decade ago.

Doubtless there’s some version of the Hayek Mind-Virus that says that upholding the claims of lenders — even after those claims have been forgotten, revived and sold off — will give “capital allocators” the “confidence” they need to make loans in the future, which will improve the ability of everyday people to afford to buy houses, incentivizing developers to build houses, etc, etc.

But this is an ideological fairy-tale. As Michael Hudson describes in his brilliant histories of jubilee — debt cancellation — through history, societies that unfailingly prioritize the claims of lenders over borrowers eventually collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Foundationally, debts are amassed by producers who need to borrow capital to make the things that we all need. A farmer needs to borrow for seed and equipment and labor in order to sow and reap the harvest. If the harvest comes in, the farmer pays their debts. But not every harvest comes in — blight, storms, war or sickness — will eventually cause a failure and a default.

In those bad years, farmers don’t pay their debts, and then they add to them, borrowing for the next year. Even if that year’s harvest is good, some debt remains. Gradually, over time, farmers catch enough bad beats that they end up hopelessly mired in debt — debt that is passed on to their kids, just as the right to collect the debts are passed on to the lenders’ kids.

Left on its own, this splits society into hereditary creditors who get to dictate the conduct of hereditary debtors. Run things this way long enough and every farmer finds themselves obliged to grow ornamental flowers and dainties for their creditors’ dinner tables, while everyone else goes hungry — and society collapses.

The answer is jubilee: periodically zeroing out creditors’ claims by wiping all debts away. Jubilees were declared when a new king took the throne, or at set intervals, or whenever things got too lopsided. The point of capital allocation is efficiency and thus shared prosperity, not enriching capital allocators. That enrichment is merely an incentive, not the goal.

For generations, American policy has been to make housing asset appreciation the primary means by which families amass and pass on wealth; this is in contrast to, say, labor rights, which produce wealth by rewarding work with more pay and benefits. The American vision is that workers don’t need rights as workers, they need rights as owners — of homes, which will always increase in value.

There’s an obvious flaw in this logic: houses are necessities, as well as assets. You need a place to live in order to raise a family, do a job, found a business, get an education, recover from sickness or live out your retirement. Making houses monotonically more expensive benefits the people who get in early, but everyone else ends up crushed when their human necessity is treated as an asset:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Worse: without a strong labor sector to provide countervailing force for capital, US politics has become increasingly friendly to rent-seekers of all kinds, who have increased the cost of health-care, education, and long-term care to eye-watering heights, forcing workers to remortgage, or sell off, the homes that were meant to be the source of their family’s long-term prosperity:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

Today, reality’s leftist bias is getting harder and harder to ignore. The idea that people who buy debt at pennies on the dollar should be cheered on as they drain the bank-accounts — or seize the homes — of people who do productive work is pure ideology, the kind of thing you’d expect to see on the WSJ’s editorial page, but which sticks out like a sore thumb in the news pages.

Thankfully, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is on the case. Director Rohit Chopra has warned the arm-breakers chasing payments on zombie mortgages that it’s illegal for them to “threaten judicial actions, such as foreclosures, for debts that are past a state’s statute of limitations.”

But there’s still plenty of room for more action. As Smith notes, the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement — a “get out of jail for almost free” card for the big banks — enticed lots of banks to discharge those second mortgages. Per Smith: “if any servicer sold a second mortgage to a vulture lender that it had charged off and used for credit in the National Mortgage Settlement, it defrauded the Feds and applicable state.”

Maybe some hungry state attorney general could go after the banks pulling these fast ones and hit them for millions in fines — and then use the money to build public housing.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/vulture-capitalism/#distressed-assets

[Image ID: A Georgian eviction scene in which a bobby oversees three thugs who are using a battering ram to knock down a rural cottage wall. The image has been crudely colorized. A vulture looks on from the right, wearing a top-hat. The battering ram bears the WSJ logo.]