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nyaagolor · 2 years

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metadede and/or darkroach??

Darkroach on top, Metadede on bottom, thoughts under the cut bc I don't wanna clog the dash, yall know the drill

Darkroach: Imma be honest with you I am not a fan of Darkroach in a romantic context. I wouldn't say I dislike it because it's all fine and good and I would really have to wrack my brain for a ship I actively dislike, but this does nothing for me. It ends up feeling like "oh, two adult men, let's ship them together" just bc they happen to be in the general vicinity of each other, and while the resulting fanworks end up being really cute and sweet (i've read more than my fair share of fics abt it for sure) it doesn't really do it for me personally. Kinda ambivalent overall, I'll still enjoy content

However in my interp I think Daroach and DMK both have a dramatic streak, and while Daroach's is more of performance than DMK's spur of the moment grittiness, it's still there and I think that's a reason for them to bond. While I don't see them as like. Ultimate besties or anything and can't really see them having any kind of emotionally vulnerable conversation, I do think they love being adventure / battle buddies and frequently team up. Exchanging banter and blows, working with each other to piss people off, plunging into the darkest caves and looking for treasure together, that's the kind of stuff I think they would enjoy together and be in their element

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Metadede: If you look up bromance in the dictionary there is a picture of the KF2 boxart. I cannot stress enough how much I adore the duo between these two. A king and knight. Two people with similar stories working to better themselves after doing terrible things they regret. Silly and serious. Tall and small. Tank and glass canon. Both caring so deeply about their underlings. Ough.

I 100% think they have a really rocky history that kinda extends throughout the franchise, initially built on this cold, mutual disrespect and eventually, as they both grow, forming this really deep bro-bond. By the time RTDL rolls around and they really learn who the other is, they develop this incredibly deep connection to each other.

While I can totally see them in a romantic context, 98% of the time when I write / think about them it's in more of a best friends / homies / bros context. Do they kiss? Probably. Kissing the homies goodnight energy. But generally my brain defaults faster to a friendship. I think these two are the epitome of best friends. They spar all the time, they can communicate without words, they understand each other's strengths and weaknesses and always have a way to help (or hinder if that's what their feeling) whatever issue their buddy might be having

I think their mutual competitiveness and overabundance of energy means they got and get closer mostly through competitions and fighting. Shit like Battle Royale and KF2 happens far too often if only because both of them need to throw down with SOMETHING once a week or they'll go stir-crazy. They crave enrichment in their terrarium. They're the few people who can put up a fight against the other, and I think that having someone who is their equal both physically and intellectually is something they really value and it allows them to get over what would SEEM to be an initial clash of personalities. Bonding via swordplay is always an option and MK has mastered it

Also in general I think they share both that desire to tussle and also a deep and overwhelming love and respect for their underlings which gives them another reason to bond. I will never shut up about that one star allies novel scene where Hyness is hurting the mages and it's meant to directly contrast how DDD and MK treat their underlings. Watching the two of them finish each others' sentences because they are so deeply disgusted by Hyness and how he treats the people who are loyal to him drives me buckwild fucking insane and it will always be something I see as a major connection between the two. They sit around having a cup of coffee just gushing to each other about how dependable and strong and precious their underlings are. Meta Knight brags about how well Axe and Mace are doing in weapons training and DDD pulls out his wallet that's filled with 4,869 pictures of Waddle Dees and gushes about every single one of them by name

The homies. the bros. The bromies, if you will

#negative #not really but like. Just in case #daroach #dark meta knight #meta knight #king dedede #metadede #mod vex #duo bingo

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seymour-butz-stuff · 3 years

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The administration has just finalized Donald Trump's perhaps greatest infrastructure achievement, rolling back water efficiency standards to allow rich people to waste more water than you do.

Specifically, the new rule keeps in place Congress' mandated 2.5 gallon-per-minute maximum water usage for showerheads—it being required by Congress, after all—but modifies the rules so that "fixtures" with multiple showerheads can have each head dispensing that maximum amount, side-by-side-by-side, rather than having to limit itself to 2.5 gpm in total. Put four showerheads on the same bathroom "fixture" in past years, and the fixture would still be required to use only 2.5 gpm when fully open. No longer.

As you can tell, this is a rule that will apply almost exclusively to people with Much Better Showers Than You. The current trend in fancy is to fill a shower with six or eight heads, all from different directions, so that the showerer does not have to rotate their lazy ass even slightly in order to be fully immersed in water. If you have any bathroom not custom-constructed to your specifications, you probably don't have this. It's largely a luxury feature, though you can recreate the experience rather easily with a bucketful of pipe fittings or, if that's still too much work, a yard sprinkler and a hose. To each their own.

The best part about this new rule, however, is not the Trumpite Energy Department skirting prior congressional mandates through creative tweaks of language, it is the sheer, raw, soggy pettiness of the move. It comes from Donald Trump, personally. Donald Trump had the powers of the presidency handed to him, and he was apathetic at best about pandemic deaths, saw national security primarily as a tool for self-enrichment, and showed such complete disinterest in each underling's policy moves that he was at near-total loss to explain any of them during public appearances.

But this? This, Donald Trump insisted on. Given the supreme powers of the United States presidency, Donald Trump used them to apply pressure on regulators over all matters of housely excretions. He had strong opinions on the flushing power of toilets. He returned time and time again to anecdotal housewife complaints about washing machines and clothes dryers. He complained bitterly to public audiences about The Showerheads These Days.

A hotelier and off-and-on casino kingpin, the man was obsessively interested in using his new powers to create bathroom fixtures more to his own personal liking. He had to flush toilets twenty times after using them, he groused. Rather than seeing a doctor about that, he declared that America must instead develop new toilets capable of handling his wealthy byproducts.

And by God he actually followed through. He had his underlings follow up on those things. He demanded it. His disinterest in the plight of U.S.-allied Syrian Kurds, his unwillingness to even acknowledge foreign bounties on U.S. troops, the government-wide enforcement of his own personal belief that a worldwide pandemic was being acknowledged and responded to primarily as partisan measure intended to make him look bad—the man could not be coaxed into learning about any issue or any crisis that his staff could not provide in picturebook form.

But given the power to bend all of U.S. government to his will, he set about to nickel-and-dime the Secret Service into renting carts at his private clubs, nudged supplicants to purchase club memberships or book events in his Washington, D.C. hotel, and launched a rally-based crusade to demand that things that spray water at him spray more water at him, and things that flush water away from him flush more water away from him.

Nobody was asking. There were a few conservative diehards, perhaps, the sort that declared new lightbulb efficiency standards to be treason and who adopted as ideology the notion that making any acknowledgement of the dangers of humanity's planet-deforming footprints would somehow lead to communism, and they were happy to let Trump borrow a cup of spittle for that particular cause, but the Toilet Crusade and Battle of the Bulging Showerheads both were Trump inventions.

Other national leaders have brought their extensive knowledge of our nation's legal systems, regulatory structures, economic premises, or mere raw charisma to bear on the nation's problems. Trump knows color swatches and plumbing. His innovation on border security was to demand the border fence be painted black, so that it would get hotter. His innovation on energy and resource extraction was to demand that his bathroom fixtures be Made Great Again.

C'mon now. You can't say that isn't a fine capper to the worst presidency in American history. Even know, we are left wondering how many times Biden will have to flush before Trump spirals out of the White House; the man is committed to the bit.

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murderluv23 · 4 years

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Piano Demon Headcanons (1)

Rarely does anything aside from practicing piano. Is often found glued to his instrument and doesn't make eye contact when spoken to.

Very reclusive. Prefers to be left alone 99.9% of the time. He really enjoys quiet time with his music.

Really invested in musical theory. If someone were to start speaking to him about melody, rhythm, counterpoint, harmony, form, tonal systems, scales, tuning, intervals, consonance, dissonance, etc, he would listen very intently. He'd barely say a word as the person is speaking but take in every aspect of the conversation. It's the quickest way to get him to pay attention to you, as he usually doesn't enjoy talking to others.

If you're lucky and I mean really lucky, he'll become extremely talkative and start going off about how music can enrich everything in life if used correctly. He would offer his two cents on musical theory and start going deep on what works, what doesn't, how it can effect others' moods, etc. While you may be lucky to get him to talk like this, you won't be so lucky with getting him to stop once he's started. I hope you're just as passionate as he is because buckle up sugar, you're gonna be there awhile. Alastor has seen this side of him and finds it adorable. Honestly, it's in those moments where their bond really comes to the forefront. Many view their relationship as cold and distant due to The Piano Demon's personality. But behind closed doors and when The Piano Demon rarely opens up, Alastor and him couldn't be more in sync. Often cutting each other off or finishing the other's sentence when discussing music, having epiphanies at the same time that just escalates their passion. Every instance this occurs, Alastor falls even more in love with him. Granted, he's as stoic as ever, there's no changing that. But he wouldn't have it any other way.

Tea is his favorite thing to drink. He'll pretty much take whatever you give him but he prefers it to be hot.

Isn't a fan of alcohol. Could drink the hardest of liquor and be completely underwhelmed. He just dislikes the taste.

He is a lover of Jazz and Swing.

He adores chocolate truffles. He mentioned he liked them once very casually and Alastor showered him with them. He may not care for sweets himself but that doesn't mean he won't buy them for his Darling!

He very much enjoys spicy food. Do not ask to have a bite from his plate unless you want your jaw to melt off. He is willing to share but he is one of those people who eats the equivalant of the sun, looks you in the eye and says "This? This isn't even hot."

He knows how to cook. When Alastor can actually rip him away from the piano, they often cook together and sit with one another for dinner. It's a very good bonding experience for the both of them. Though again, it is a rare occurance. Getting that man away from the piano is nearly impossible.

He dislikes loud noises and loud people.

He's often told he chose the wrong spouse, then.

He dislikes any physical activity that is exhausting, especially dancing.

He dislikes being touched. He is fine with Alastor hugging him or linking their arms together. He is also fine with others showing him affection if they ask for it and are close to him. Though touch is something he mostly can do without.

He severely dislikes Rap and Hiphop. He believes all music should be respected but if asked, he'll criticize it very harshly.

Social gatherings are his kryptonite. He'll omniously stand in a dark corner if he is forced to go to a party if he can't find a piano he can glue himself to.

He dislikes his Overlord status. When asked why, he'll simply answer that he loves music. It is believed that he does not concern himself with doing things out of ego and distants himself from the others.

He dislikes arrogance.

He dislikes sleeping. Evidenced by his constant practice and performances.

"Dear, are you sure you're getting enough rest?"

"I occasionally close my eyes when I sneeze."

If he is not able to practice his music, he becomes agitated.

He does not like to be interrupted. If he is, he'll let the person finish but will be very annoyed afterwards.

He has a very positive relationship with Rosie. They share lunches together and chat on their off time.

Mimzy sometimes joins him for a walk or to think about the old days.

Though Charlie's enthusiastic nature is a bit much for him, they get along rather well. He likes her appreciation for music and will instruct her if she asks for tips.

Husk can actually sit down and talk to him. Most of it is just ranting and drunk grumbles but still a conversation. He can actually relax around The Piano Demon. He creeps Husk out a lot, with the mask and barely saying a word. But he doesn't piss him off which is refreshing. Husk would even says he likes the guy.

Mainly because he's very different from Alastor and other Overlords in a lot of ways. He will often scold Alastor if he tries to mess with him and treats him with respect. Alastor barely pushes his buttons when he's around. Husk is more likely to listen to him because of this. Not by much but it's something.

Niffty adores him. She'll often bounce around him while he walks or ride on his shoulders. The Piano Demon will sometimes read while she cleans to keep an eye on her. She loves the sound of his voice! If Niffty finds the time, she'll sit beside him as he practices and will listen quietly, kicking her feet.

Stolas is good friends with him. He will request his company at random times when he gets lonely. Stolas can get really flirty a lot of the time. Though he respects his boundaries. While The Piano Demon can do without the advances, he does enjoy the time he spends with him. Though he constantly has to reel in Alastor's jealous temper whenever he so much as mentions the prince.

The Piano Demon has access to the living world.

He, Alastor, and Mimzy knew each other when they were alive.

The Piano Demon and Lucifer have an odd relationship that even Alastor doesn't know the full extent of. It is implied they hold conversations in a void where no one else can hear them. What do they talk about? One can only speculate.

Only Alastor has seen his real face. No, he will not be providing details.

He is open to modern technology. He owns a smart phone that his underlings at the I.M.P company gifted to him. He mostly uses it for business, though.

Blitz calls him "Boss-Man" despite it being techinically incorrect. He's scared to death of him.

His cause of death is unkown.

He is indifferent to Vox and Alastor's chaos and rivalry, including Vox himself. They could be destroying a city behind him while bickering and he'd just sip his morning coffee while looking over his piano sheets.

The nature of his and Vox's relationship is odd. Vox despises his lover and causes him trouble yet the guy has literally zero reaction to his presence. Even Vox is perplexed on their dynamic. All in all, they're neutral to each other.

He would create a social media account out of curiousity. However, he is busy a lot of the time so he wouldn't manage it very well.

Would converse in a group chat with other Hotel residents, though. The others would tease him for being an old man for refusing to use anything other than proper grammar and puncuation.

Is known for roasting people's entire souls without knowing what "roasting" is. He'd probably respond by saying he does not eat other sinners and everyone would die laughing.

Him and Alastor have a relationship like Gomez and Morticia. Though he isn't very outwardly affectionate, Alastor is able to pick up on the sudtlies of his behavoir and react accordingly. Even if to outside viewers his feelings appear to be unreciprocated and delusional.

He is not fond of Alastor's dad jokes.

Alastor will often tease him with some just to get a laugh.

This may or may not end well in The Radio Demon's favor.

He is the only one who can reel in Alastor's chaotic impusles.

"Alastor, no-"

Is a very common thing to hear. Only difference with him is Alastor actually listens. ....Most of the time.

When he doesn't? The Piano Demon can at least convince him to stop before things get too messy.

He can play multiple instruments but sticks to the piano.

He is also asexual.

#hazbin hotel #alastor #the piano demon #hazbin headcanons #piano demon headcanons #alastor x piano demon #alastor x oc #helluva boss mention #alastor hazbin hotel #I love this mysterious reindeer too much guys help-

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1time2study4ravages · 5 years

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subversive subtexts (or readings of resistance) in the sheer plurality and proliferation of Ravages goon fashion

I contend that the unnamed extras with noticeable non-uniform clothes (and there are more of them than there are named figures in The Ravages of Time) are more than just superficial and superfluous providers of ‘fan service’, and that they also help enrich the story-world and the textual contours of the series

first, minions flaunting their stylish apparel flout the strictures of military discipline and bureaucratic regulation (in-universe, they stand out from the sea of uniforms, while on a more meta note, they signify in an anachronistic fashion how images of neatly uniformed troops are simplistic and simply anachronistic)

second, underlings with outstanding outfits ignore the protocols of the imperial court and disregard conventional markers of rank and lineage (now for all we know, those lackeys may very well occupy privileged positions given that the series still features uniform templates for rank-and-file personnel... but what’s really intriguing is that these fashion models erase or at least conceal various hierarchical boundaries and clan affiliations on the level of aesthetic appearance since one can’t tell from the visual styles which nameless extra has which exact portfolio for which camp, instead inaugurating alternative forms of distinction)

third, henchmen wearing fancy attire sidestep considerations of narrative significance and name recall (to the point that a bunch of them despite not performing that many deeds on-panel even look more glamorous and ostentatious than named characters big and small, and arguably it can be said that many of the more famous faces in the series in effect use design combinations similar to those also showcased in minion pageants)

fourth, fashionable goons help pave the way for a more democratized manner of attending to the series beyond merely looking out for moments of character grandstanding (on a side note, there lurks the risk of fetishizing abstract commodities such as cool armor sets and setting aside the laboring masses producing and consuming them in favor of a narrower horizon involving merchants and elites with purchasing power, though this can be mitigated when one observes the circumstances of the impromptu fashion shows and considers how a number of goons despite their limited panel time are not just product placements but are also participants in battle scenes and planning sessions)

last but not least, these unsung heroes with their own untold stories provide a lighter form of visual entertainment (and a wholesome alternative to sexualized images pandering to male gazes), demonstrating that Ravages for all its complexity and intricacy remains accessible to more casual audiences

#the ravages of time #ravages of time #火鳳燎原 #火凤燎原 #masterpiece

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voidsentprinces · 5 years

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Voidsent Warden of Despair

What faith will you cling to when the very ground around you turns to dust? What hope will you have when all your friends, family, and loved ones vanish in an instance? When the one you looked up to succumbs to the dark. When all has failed and turned to ash? What can you say is done?

The Warden of Despair, has a singular goal. To ensure that the Voidsent Princes do not get out of hand. And to maintain balance in Eorzea by constantly being at odds with her savior. Even if that means she will have to slash his throat as many times as it takes to stop him from moving. No matter how brief a respite it might provide.

When the Warriors of Light in Tartarian were chosen. Two of these adventurers were stationed in the Church grounds when they gained their calling. The knight and his priestess. The priestess was chosen to be a crutch for the group. To maintain faith in the Mother Crystal and the light that shone. She was the lynchpin that held them together and the chain of fate that bound them.

She healed their wounds, bandaged their gashes, and enriched them with knowledge. Cheering and supporting them from behind the enemy’s lines. When the mage fell to Mammon. It was her who pushed the group on to fight the Great Serpent. To strike down the Daemon of Tindress. To combat the shadow as it slithered into the hearts of the desperate and down trodden. And even when the world fell into darkness, she held tight her faith. It was the only thing keeping her from being consumed by the void like the others had.

Falling unconscious in the deep, deep dark. Protected by her knight’s armor which became twisted as he consumed the dark to save her.

What he had become in exchange.

Having abandoned his light and sacrificed himself. She would awaken and keep her promise. As the last, untarnished Hydaelyn bearer from Tartarian. She followed the dark path her knight left behind and entered into Eorzea. Immediately she was able to smell seven scents of the dark. And the Mother Crystal would contact her stating that her new mission was to ensure the corruption didn’t spread.

The priestess traded staff for blade.

First she met the Prince of Envy. An insidious and malicious foe, the humanoid tainted form of the Great Serpent, her group faced in yore. On a battlefield near the very edges of La Nosca, that did battle. Blade and spear struck as a monsoon blew in. The prince calling upon the water to aid him and in turn the Warden called upon the light to pierce Envy’s heart. Painting her black armor red, she took his heart to ensure his obedience. Much to his chagrin.

Next, the tracked the Prince of Lust. A flamboyent and fiery soul. He was a simplier case as he merely wished to find his sister. Giving the Warden, his heart at her very firm request. Lust pointed her into the direction of the Black Shroud. The gloom only made by the presence of the Primal, Odin. Is where she ran into an old friend turned feral.

The ranger formerly a Warrior of Light was turned made and ravenous by consume voidsent flesh. For thirteen days and thirteen nights, the two matched wits. Hunting and being hunted by one another. Each one of them come close to killing the other. On the forteenth day, near the sylph encampments. She was able to finally ambush her tainted companion of old. Carving out his heart by losing her right arm in the process. As he devoured it up to the shoulder.

Luckily for her, the Voidsent Prince of Greed was a more willing sort than he was when her group came to seal him. Offering her, his support and heart as a sign of goodtidings. Even though he technically wore her mage companion as a meat suit. The next mark would take her months to track down. As they could only be tracked in her dreams.

Soon enough while laying under a Doman sky, she met the Voidsent Prince of Sloth. And after a game of riddles, which she barely managed to win. Belphagor gave her their heart and the schematics to a genius piece of magitech to replace her right arm. Bringing the design to Cid with a hefty bag of gil and a contract forcing him not to allow any other to use its design even threatening Nero at blade point to ensure it. She gained a new arm and went to the most difficult task.

Following the corpse pyres left behind in and around Ul’dah of gang members and criminal kingpins brutalized. She finally came face to face with Gekido, the Voidsent Prince of Wrath. And it was a long battle. For next nine months, the Warden would find herself in constant conflict with Gekido. Fighting his lackies, assassins, and people under his thumb. Coming close to dying herself when she faced his personal onslaught. But, she adapted and hardened. A previous woman of the cloth, becoming a veteran of the battlefield.

Cutting her way through a hundred score of minions and underlings and right hand men. Eventually facing off with Gekido one last time. The hulking beast of rage fighting and not letting up for a second. And she treating him in kind. Until at last her blade broken and her ribs were shattered. At the last possible moment, she stabbed her broken blade through the beasts heart. Paralyzing him long enough to carve it out of his chest.

With six hearts now in her possession. She began to heal and prepare herself for her final mark. For two years she listened for the smallest hints of a dark being roaming the outskirts of Eorzea. Leaving imps and creatures from the void in his wake. Appearing as a Paladin to some or a devil to others. Upon buying a new blade and honing it properly for six days. She began her search for her fallen knight.

Eventually, she found him in an Ala Mhigan mountain range. Feeling immense sorrow, she had her duty to see to. She must never waiver from her path in the light of the crystal. And so, with no words and a heavy heart. The Prince of Pride and the Warden of Despair. Both beings who had lost so much, clashed. Heavy blade meeting Doman craftsmanship. The resounding of these failed heroes of Tartarian meeting in the bloodsoaked country of the downtrodden.

No drawn out or climatic finished. No brilliant tactics or monologues of greatness. Nor memories of the past. In six minutes, her knight fell before her. And she tore his tainted heart out as well. With them, she bound the seven princes to herself. Their hearts now placed in her body as she would become their prison, their jailor, their warden. She would keep them in check and succeed where she had failed. Her white hair turning black, her silver eyes becoming heterochromic as her body was imbued with their void. A sliver of the Mother Crystal in her heart to maintain her station.

The Voidsent Princes would beckon to her call. But only when she hunted the Ascians who had plunge her own world into the dark. And so she began to wander the realm. A lone warrior who said little, once a priestess who supported her companions. Now a jailor of the Sins. Doomed to pay for her failure to see her task through on Tartarian. And keep three of her companions from tainting others. A deep melancholy worn on her face and an endless road ahead of her.

Discarding her name and marking herself as the Eighth Voidsent.

#{ VIII }

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queenbabyqueenbaby · 3 years

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How anybody is reading with any regularity or gusto during this pandemic is beyond me. My brain won’t give in to the printed word, which pains me because I have concrete memory of how perfect a place to hide a book or essay was before this tinnitus-like hum of *global sickness global sickness avoidable death superspreader parties bodily failure government incompetence global sickness*. This bad spoken-word poetry reading has been getting in the way of everything else

Nonetheless, a medium form essay or article is manageable in chunks. M (for the record, an entirely different M from all past Ms mentioned here) sent me a Granta article written the year after I was born on one of the few times a British person has had a stab at chess grandmaster status. Nigel Short played the Russian Gary Kasparov in 1994 and it was televised. Most of the article, by Julian Barnes, is about how gay men’s chess can be. The way Short speaks about opponents is tantamount to dirty talk in a bad porno, one of the ones my first boyfriend D used to show me starring a general or lieutenant forcing his military underlings to run an obstacle course and then “suck my cock”

I could say more on D’s still-questionable sexuality and how he once jerked off a dog but these are the kinds of thoughts that take me away from reading and into panic about whether I should still ask him to drum for me when I play music live. He’s such a good drummer

The title of the article was “Trap. Dominate. Fuck.” which M, after I remarked how intense that is, went into a #metoo flavoured string of mea culpas (mea culpae?). I guess this is what the white-hot cancellation era has done to men, especially ones who don’t know I’m a degenerate myself. It was so well-written, self-aware in its futile efforts to read chess tactics through Freudian trauma

I want so badly for men to open with the French Defence because they wet the bed as a child and only for that reason, but they don’t. They seem only to want to sodomise, or at least talk about sodomising to offset their birdwatcher / trainspotter status

It’s hard to tell from the essay, between the British tabloids and the players themselves, which faction wanted chess to be sexy the most. I wonder what Julian Barnes thinks of the Queen’s Gambit captivating quarantined citizens 27 years later via Netflix, how they made the protagonist so needlessly hot when in the book she’s described as decidedly unattractive

I only watched the thing because L said I reminded him of the child version of Beth Harman who it turns out is addicted to tranquillisers, orphaned, and never smiles. Not once. The show fails, still, to make the male players hot - they’re all tenured philosophy professors or creepy government agents or gangly teens. They’re not as gay as in Barnes’ article, but instead asexual, cucked by a child prodigy with big naturals

I subscribed to Granta and know in my heart that I can’t even take my London Review of Books out of its biodegradable cellophane most fortnights, let alone Harper’s each month, so will probably accumulate unread stacks quite quickly. I make a point of staying home today to break the habit and read an Adam Phillips piece on FOMO which is really about Kafka and too dense and masturbatory

I read a takedown of the NY Times’ debunked podcast Caliphate and the star journalists who prioritise Twitter engagement over fact-checking rigour. The left talk a huge game about fake news in the alt-right but never acknowledge their own part in it, that anybody with any value system can be seduced by the immediacy of social media blah blah blah

I keep forgetting that the truth is nowhere, that conspiracy theories are fun, that reading enriches the mind but that non-fiction is really just an oxymoron masquerading as genre

Apparently it’s possible now to buy shares in the newly-public Soho House and B says “SohoCoin” and I put down my printed media to laugh

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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The Boys Season 2 Unveils the Daddy Issues Behind the Toxic Masculinity

https://ift.tt/2GXXppR

This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 2.

Most male monsters in fiction are made by women. Or, at least, it’s women who tend to get the disproportionate share of the blame when their creations turn out to be significantly less than civilized (perhaps because, historically, most of them were written by men). The most famous examples of murderer-moulding mothers are probably Norma Bates, Cersei Lannister, Olivia Soprano and, of course, Mrs. McAllister (momma raised a real little trap-setting psycho there). In real life, too, serial killers like Ed Kemper, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy and Dennis Nilsen were all brutalized or disappointed by their mothers to such an extent that to some people the link between their formative maternal experiences and their misdeeds seems as tight and as strong as a steel cable.

This isn’t the case with Amazon’s The Boys, where it’s bad or inadequate fathers who provide male characters with the bulk of their nefarious neuroses and murderous motivations. Wee Hughie (Jack Quaid) inherited and internalized his father’s cowed outlook on the world to the point where he almost didn’t fight back when Vought tried to brush his girlfriend’s death in an A-Train wreck under the carpet. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) was raised under the fast fists and hot temper of his old-school, tough-guy dad, whose mantra seems to have been kick first and don’t ask questions later, unless the question is: “Do you want me to fucking kick you some more?” “John” a.k.a Homelander (Antony Starr) doesn’t have a father in the conventional sense – as far as we know – but he was treated coldly, cruelly and dispassionately by his scientist ‘dad’, Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman). So to what extent have failed father figures forged the monsters who sit upon the show’s chessboard? What else is missing from their lives? And what could prove the key to their salvations?

The previously mentioned The Sopranos is a ripe comparison, being that it also deals with familial legacies, internecine struggles, and toxic masculinity. The hallmark HBO show took the bold step of sending its proto-typical alpha-male mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) to a shrink to deal with his panic attacks and baseline depression. His sessions with his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Braco), teased out the revelation that the root of his anguish and anxieties was his own mother, the irascible and melodramatic Livia (Nancy Marchand), who in the first season shifted her life-long modus operandi from trying to kill his spirit to literally trying to kill him. It’s not hard to trace a direct line from that callous maternal influence to Tony’s behavior, and its internal and external consequences (especially when you’re dealing with Melfi’s favoured Freudian approach, for which parental trauma is its raison d’etre). But as the series – and Tony’s therapy – progressed it became clear not only that Tony’s life was richer and darker than his mother’s input allowed for, but also that Livia herself wasn’t the two-dimensional, havoc-wreaking demigod of Tony’s fears and imagination.

She, too, had been a victim of sorts; a slave to poverty and discrimination (on grounds of both race and gender); in thrall to a violent, charismatic criminal, a man who thought nothing of throwing men a beating, chopping off their pinkies or shooting them dead; a man who was out with one of his many mistresses on the night that she miscarried a baby and needed him by her side. Tony, his son, takes these revelations and buries them, as deep as they’ll go, partly because Tony’s world is a man’s world and men get a pass, but mainly to avoid the bright bulb of introspection from falling upon his own, very similar behavior. His mother gets the blame, but who really made Tony?

The world of The Boys is, to an extent, a man’s one, too, except that the boys here don’t get a pass. Given its title, it’s a surprisingly feminist show for one that is also, on the surface at least, a testosterone-fuelled superhero show (albeit one that takes an anti-superhero stance). The female characters are strong, but not inhumanly, infallibly strong like some of the Marvel heroes they parody. They’re flawed, human, and fascinating. They kick ass, they fuck up, but they’re never one-note or scapegoats. Of course there are bad women and mothers out there in the real world, and we shouldn’t shy away from imagining or creating those kinds of stories, but what we’ve seen on TV and film over the last decade or so is the steady opening up of a multiplicity of perspectives that’s been busy enriching our cultural currency. We should roll with that for a while. There’s a lot of lost ground to catch up on.

The Boys Season 2 Succeeds By Allowing Its Female Characters to Shine

By Lacy Baugher

The Boys Season 3: What to Expect

By Lacy Baugher

Perhaps much of the appeal of stories about bad mothers relies on our preconceptions of motherhood and the expectations that have always been laid upon women to be not just good mothers, but perfect ones. A bad mother stands out more than a bad father because for much of human history it’s been almost impossible to be classed as a bad father.

Let’s take Butcher. Without his own father’s brutality he mightn’t have been capable of becoming the effective, remorseless killing-machine we know and love, but, on the other hand, without his father’s brutality, he mightn’t felt the urge to pursue his vendetta in the first place. He might have been more like an immediately post-A-Train Hughie. But here’s the rub, because, arguably, a world with Homelanders needs Butchers, and plenty of them. There’s a weird and tragic duality at play here. Homelander is who he is largely because of his own failed father, so really the two men are destroying each other, and the world around them, because of their daddy issues.

Butcher himself is a flawed father figure. He uses a grief-wracked Hughie as a pawn to pursue his own vendetta against The Seven, showing the same sort of callous disregard Homelander might show an underling. But through Butcher’s influence Hughie learns to be (or is forced to become) bold, assertive, even brutal; the sort of son his own father could never have let him be; wouldn’t have known how to kindle. In time, almost despite himself, Butcher comes to care about Hughie, albeit not always in a conventionally paternal way. Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) tells Butcher early on this season that Hughie is his ‘pit canary’; if something bad happens to Hughie, then Butcher will know he’s gone too far. So if Butcher can be said to be the kind of father that Hughie never had, then Hughie, in turn, can be said to be the conscience that Butcher long forsook in favor of bloodshed.

For better and worse the men in The Boys are made by their fathers, but that only tells half the story. Their fathers, and they themselves, are aided in their osmotic, Franken-Freudian fuck-ups by the sometimes literal, sometimes figurative absence of a mother figure. Hughie’s mother? – MIA; Butcher’s mother? – passive; Homelander’s mother? – accidentally hugged to death by a young Homelander (she was a scientist Homelander had thought of as a mother, not his biological mother).

The lack of a maternal presence bleeds most noticeably into Hughie’s and Homelander’s lives. Hughie is insecure and desperate for attachment. His romance with Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is sweet, but carries a mild undercurrent of mommy issues. What Hughie really seems to want from Starlight is words of encouragement, validation, co-dependency and a tuck-in at bedtime. Even though their relationship is sexual, there’s something charmingly chaste about it at the same time.

It would be impossible, though, to trump Homelander’s mommy issues, manifested as they are by a fierce predilection for suckling, and a fondness for warm titty milk. Homelander may be peerlessly physically strong, but of all the show’s characters – and this is perhaps something of an understatement – he’s the most psychologically fragile.

Dr. Vogelbaum laments that the lack of a mother in Homelander’s life made him aggressive and full of hate. Putting aside for a moment this rather idealized notion of women and motherhood, if we assume that in Homelander’s case the observation is correct – and that Homelander is also on some level aware of how he’s been warped by this absence (the roots of his fetish surely can’t have escaped him) – then it’s interesting that he would choose to rob his own son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), of the loving maternal influence of which he himself was deprived.

By stealing Ryan away from his mother near the end of season two – by fracturing their bond and their reality – he risks making Ryan as miserable as he was as a child; worse, in truth, because Homelander never had a loving mother to miss. While The Boys deals very well with its female characters, it hasn’t yet explored motherhood in any great depth, except to show the consequences to fatherhood when it’s absent. Season 3 may very well add some texture by exploring in flashback form Stormfront’s (Aya Cash) relationship with her now-departed daughter, or by bringing Hughie’s mother into the fold, now that we know she isn’t dead.

While Homelander’s actions vis a vis Ryan are fuelled by his malignant, myopic selfishness, and his screaming God complex, the evolution of his feelings towards the boy hinted at a capacity for redemption. As hellish as the family unit Stormfront manipulates Homelander into creating – Nazi eugenicist mother, psychopathic father, and kidnapped child – the experience of being in that family seems to soften something in him, at least for a short while. He appears receptive to and empathetic towards Ryan’s fears, and even appears not to relish the idea of Stormfront filling his head with racist propaganda. Just for a moment, salvation seems possible.

Ultimately, though, no one can allow Homelander to guide Ryan’s destiny, potential for change notwithstanding. Ryan is too powerful and volatile to risk Homelander stamping his skewed outlook upon his soul. Ironically, the act of saving his mother from Stormfront propels Ryan along the same trajectory as his father – both have now killed their mothers. I wonder if Ryan, like Dexter before him, will be born in blood, the splatter pattern arranging itself into the shape of Homelander’s cape.

Butcher isn’t Ryan’s father, but his fealty to his dead wife and her cast-iron concept of family helps raise him from the swamp of his primal urges, resulting in him doing the right thing by both her and the boy who is the son of his greatest enemy. Clearly Butcher isn’t his own father either, his selflessness here indicating an encouraging break from the poor way he was parented.

Perhaps The Boys isn’t trying to communicate anything about solely fatherhood or solely motherhood but rather family itself; its power to make someone belong; its power to save. The family Homelander experienced was predicated on a falsehood, but he liked the feel of it nonetheless, and it threatened to humanise him. Butcher has a family now, too – his friends, The Boys, the people around him who would die for him, and vice versa – and a surrogate son in Hughie. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and Frenchie (Tomer Capon), whatever faint promise of romance swirls around them, have found for now a joyous familial bond, like brother and sister. And Mother’s Milk is now back in the bosom of his estranged family, a moment that must rank among the series most touching.

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All Happy families, then? For now. But Homelander might have something to say about that in season three.

The post The Boys Season 2 Unveils the Daddy Issues Behind the Toxic Masculinity appeared first on Den of Geek.

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wsmith215 · 4 years

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How Cinelytic is using AI to help Hollywood reboot for the streaming wars

While Hollywood giants have plunged into the streaming wars with massive vaults of content, they still face a yawning consumer data deficit as they try to catch up to industry leader Netflix. Cinelytic wants to help them level the playing field.

The L.A.-based startup has compiled a broad array of data to fuel its platform that helps studios understand in real time how choices ranging from scripts to actors could impact a project’s risk profile and revenue potential. While Hollywood studios have been making bets based on box office data and audience surveys for decades, they still have nowhere near the audience insight that Netflix has at its fingertips.

With subscription-based streaming set to become the primary way consumers discover and experience Hollywood’s content, traditional film and TV producers will eventually be awash in new forms of behavioral data. Studios are starting to turn to AI to help manage and analyze the data in a way that can actually drive more effective and profitable decisions.

“We launched over four years ago with the aim to bring best practices from different industries like finance and tech to build what we call a film business intelligence platform,” Tobias Queisser, CEO and cofounder of Cinelytic, said. “I went into the film industry for two years and I thought there was lack of data and insight to improve how value was assessed.”

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Of course, the creative side of filmmaking has been transformed by the technology and graphics behind special effects and the use of drones for filming. But Queisser said he found that the business side remained stuck in the past. He had previously worked in finance, a world governed by real-time data analytics, before trying his hand at films, where he found himself looking at basic Excel spreadsheets and attending meetings over several weeks to make decisions.

Frustrated by the antiquated methods, he teamed up with cofounder Dev Sen, who had worked at NASA for 15 years building risk assessment models. They eventually brought in Christian Monti, a former studio executive at Paramount and Warner Brothers, to be COO.

Together, they built a platform that offers a handful of different features connected to different parts of the filmmaking process, from greenlighting a project to distribution and marketing.

Underling the platform is data Cinelytic has drawn from different sources. Much of it is historical data that it has licensed from third parties about a film’s performance at the box office, paid TV distribution such as HBO, the rental market, and DVD sales. That data is then matched alongside categories such as the film’s themes, the actors, and the directors.

From there, the platform acts like a fundamental business intelligence dashboard. For instance, sitting in a meeting, an executive can swap in and out the names of different actors for a project to see how that might impact the revenue forecast.

The system also crunches script summaries, character description, and length. Overall, there are 19 attributes the platform analyzes to project its box office performance and other future revenues. In these extremely complex calculations, executives try to estimate how much a film may earn across a wide range of territories, what kind of deals to sign with distributors, and how to create a reasonable budget that maximizes chances of success.

“This tells you what risk you’re taking and what is the marketplace,” Queisser said. “And anything you want to know, you don’t have to wait days for an answer. You just change the parameters and it adjusts automatically. The benefit of the system is that it’s real time.”

Up to this point, studios could likely generate some limited version of this analysis on their own. But the company’s algorithms promise to allow not just for more complex number crunching, but more accurate and faster, Queisser said.

Even if studios could find a way to duplicate some of this analysis, the move into streaming puts them at a disadvantage compared to Netflix and Amazon. These companies have amassed data on users for more than a decade. Typically, studios wouldn’t have access to the underlying data, just the information related to any royalty payments they receive.

As services such as HBO Max, Disney+, and NBCUniversal’s Peacock launch, they face the challenge of paying huge sums to acquire customers. And it will take them years to generate enough data to match that of Netflix and Amazon.

Cinelytic is helping address this issue by gathering its own data on illegal downloads of content on P2P pirate networks. Queisser said the company has found that this offers a highly reliable layer of data that enriches the other sources. Feeding that into the company’s other data on content performance and its algorithms gives producers a window into how a film may perform on their streaming service.

“Nobody really knows what works on the streaming platforms,” he said. “So we monitor illegal downloading of content and found there is a very high correlation between what they watch.”

So far, Cinelytic has raised $2.3 million in venture capital. And in January, it signed a notable deal with Warner Bros. Pictures International.

But to continue making inroads, one of the challenges the company faces is how such data is presented and used by people involved with the creative side of the entertainment business. As studios got bought and rolled up into giant corporations starting in the late 1970s, Hollywood has been increasingly criticized for being too motivated by the bottom line. In recent years, the industry has turned to film franchises, big special-effect tentpoles, and sequels because they offer a measure of predictability.

Queisser said there’s always a risk that AI-driven data analysis will just be used to reinforce the filmmaking culture at studios. But he also argues that better forecasting could liberate producers if they feel more secure that a smaller, more experimental project could make a return with some adjustments in budgets, marketing, or casting.

“If you have more information and can see a broader picture, then the better your decision making can be,” he said. “And that allows you to take more risks because you are more comfortable with the models. But yes, the simplest way to do something is to just replicate something that has been done before.”

Likewise, he emphasized that Cinelytic doesn’t touch the creative side of a project. It doesn’t suggest script or story changes, or how a scene should be filmed. He knows the topic of AI is bound to make actors and directors wary.

“When it’s about algorithms and words like AI, it sounds scary,” Queisser said. “But I think once people understand what the limitations and the benefits really are, then we win them over. This is really about giving them the opportunity to take a deeper dive into the financial side, how to optimize that, see what the risks are, and decide if this is the best way to proceed. We think it’s a very pragmatic use of AI.”

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imagine--drv3 · 7 years

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Do you have one with the boys reacting to if their s/o did competitive swimming? If not could you try to do it for me :3

Oh for sure, I have a lot of ideas for this!

Korekiyo Shinguuji

he thinks you’ve picked a very honourable and beautiful field of competition!

the way the body moves while swimming is incredible, especially yours.

he constantly compliments your figure and form, comparing you to a mesmerizing siren, to a beautiful mermaid, to a graceful koi fish.

he has a million things to compare you to, and a million compliments to shower you with.

he really loves to watch you compete live, but he doesn’t like the large crowds that come with that.

so even though he’s really proud, and loves you so much, he doesn’t come to a lot of competitions...

or at least, not in the building! he watches the live stream outside from the car and comes in to congratulate you when it ends!

he can do that much, at least.

he’s very proud of your amazing talent! you can accomplish anything, you’re an incredible human.

Rantarou Amami

very supportive!

he brings up your swimming success at parties and in group conversations, he wants to show you off, he’s just so proud!

he’s willing to pay for anything you might need to succeed, and pretty much devotes himself to coaching you.

he learns everything he can about swimming to help!

he also manages your workout regime!

he comes to every competition, and makes sure you’re well fed and well hydrated before every swim.

above your success, he cares about your safety.

when you win, he’s so excited!

he hugs you, kisses you, congratulates you, even cries a little! he’s just so proud of you for working so hard and having it all pay off!

he thinks your talent is really something incredible, and does his best to enrich you!

Kokichi Ouma

basically the overly supportive soccer mom of the group.

he comes to every competition and cheers for you at the top of his lungs, ordering members of his secret society to take up as much of the audience as possible and do the same!

empty seats? god no, not to YOUR competition! all ouma’s underlings!

the crowd is absolutely ROARING with your praise!

if anybody else in the crowd dares to cheer for somebody else louder than he’s cheering for you, he will silence them.

you do not need to hear that. off they go now.

will pick a fight with ANYBODY who claims you aren’t the best swimmer i the entire world. Children, elders, animals, anybody! nobody says that about you without going through him!

you have to make him promise not to rig the competition or injure any of the other competitors.

when you win, he bawls.

he’s out of his seat, applauding and screaming your praises, telling everybody sitting around him that you’re his S/O and also the best.

however, when you meet up with him after, he says you were...alright.

but that doesn’t stop him from shouting how fantastic you were at every swimmer who passes.

Shuuichi Saihara

tries his best to be supportive, but really doesn’t know the first thing about swimming.

and it doesn’t help that he doesn’t like the big crowds of people, so he actually doesn’t go to any of your competitions, which he feels terrible about, honestly.

but he wants to hear all about them when you get home!

eventually you show him the live streams, and he is fascinated! he could have been watching all this time!

so he starts watching every single stream, cheering you on from home and smiling proudly the entire time.

he’s just so, so impressed! you’re so talented!

he hugs you so tight when you get home, you did such a good job!

he never misses a competition now, and is always cheering for you, whether you can hear him or not.

Kaito Momota

cheers loudly for you at every single competition!

makes sure to bring friends, so you always have a large crowd of fans!

he meets up with you the second you’re out of the pool and puts his jacket over your shoulders, so everybody knows who the incredible swimmer who just owned that competition came here with!

he brags about your win pretty loudly, but he can’t help it! he’s just so proud!

he keeps asking you all sorts of questions, he’s very curious about your practice, he doesn’t know much about competitive swimming.

but he wants to!

he does your workouts with you, including your laps of the pool, but he’s not as fast a swimmer as you, so you take it easy on him.

he likes to cuddle you a lot after your competitions to help you unwind, and because he’s so proud of you.

Kiibo

he can’t get anywhere near the pool, so he can’t go to your competitions, but...

he watches the live streams avidly, and he’s very proud of you no matter if you win or lose, because your skills are so impressive!

he knows he could never do that, so the fact that you can amazes him.

he tells you how impressed he is after every single competition, just to make sure you know!

he made sure to do lots of research on competitive swimming, so he knows what everything means and what’s going to help you compete.

he makes sure to give you lots of tips when you need them!

he also provides you with some very good stretches and exercises, which definitely help your performance!

he just wants to be able to help!

likes to segway conversations with others towards you being a competitive swimmer, because secretly, he does like showing you off a bit.

you’re just so incredible, he has to!

Gonta Gokuhara

does your training with you every morning, for encouragement!

he also makes sure to come to every single competition, he’s so interested in what you do!

his cheering is adorable. never intentional, he just gets completely swept up in the excitement and starts cheering for as loudly as he can! you’re his star!

he absolutely drowns you in affection after every competition, constantly hugging and holding you, kissing your face and head constantly, but it’s particularly bad after a win!

he won’t put you down or leave your side, interrupting his own sentences or your sentences occasionally just to kiss you!

he’s just so proud of his beautiful S/O!

he works out with you all the time, just to be sure you’re doing your workouts right!

that’s his area of expertise, he can help you out there if not with swimming!

really, he doesn’t actually know how to swim that well...

he can doggy paddle??

not much else-

Ryouma Hoshi

the only time you see him so enthusiastic is when he’s cheering you on!

he’ll gladly fight anybody who insults your skills, right on the spot. won’t even take it outside, just fight them right then and there.

makes sure to always get front row seats to your competitions, won’t settle for less.

because he wants a good view of you!

and because he can’t see if he doesn’t sit in the front.

but people think he’s a toddler so they usually let him take the front seat if he tries to take it.

brags shamelessly about being your S/O, which embarrasses you but he’s just so proud to be the boyfriend of such an incredibly talented person.

he comes to every competition, and always takes you out for dinner after to eat and talk about your competition!

#mod ouma #danganronpa #drv3 #drv3 imagine #new danganronpa v3 #imagine #self insert #korekiyo shinguuji #rantarou amami #ouma kokichi #shuuichi saihara #kaito momota #kiibo #gonta gokuhara #ryouma hoshi

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annoyingwerewolfwizard · 6 years

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UBI, Money for Nuthin’?

#LemmingsLeap 16: UBI, Money for Nothin’?

The State of Capitalism

This is the first in a series of articles I am doing on UBI, Universal Basic Income, a system where everyone gets a basic income whether they work or not. It is certain that something needs to be done. The present system is wrecking the environment and concentrating political power in the hands of the wealthy with 50% of the world’s wealth in the hands of just 4 or 5 people. In the US, the top 1% owns most of the wealth. If that wasn’t enough, many of the people once needed for production will be phased out and, sooner than most people think, be replaced by robots. The research on robots and artificial intelligence is progressing at a mind blowing rate. When the robots come what will a person do to support themselves or their family?

Back in 1975, I worked in a plant that made TV dinners. The job was strenuous, long hours and had a different start-up time each day according to the plant schedule. After coming up with ideas to make the job more efficient and seeing my supervisor get the acclaim and the check, I went into a period of four months where I worked six or seven days a week and no less than 12 hours a day. There was no life for me during this time. I was not able to see friends or family. I had no other purpose than to either be doing my job at the factory or be preparing myself to be fit to work.

It was during this time that I realized that I was living for the convenience of my job. In short, I was a wage slave. The wage I was receiving was only enough to pay my basic costs with damn little left over for anything else. My break from the job was one week of vacation the first year and two weeks after that. Freedom for such a short time each year in exchange for working at a wage that is just enough to keep one going seemed very limiting. Slavery. What amazed me the most was that when I shared my revelation with my co-workers, I found that only a few recognized that we were slaves and that was with a shrug of the shoulders as if to say, “What can we do about it? This is life.”

It took me a few years more to understand that the form of capitalism we were practicing was leading to an ecological and political disaster. I saw that everything was being reduced to money. What’s it worth? From our present perspective, it doesn’t take a genius to see that we have ruined much of our natural world. In addition, we have managed to increase production thousands of times. Just think of how long it takes someone to knit a sweater and compare the days it took to the minutes it now takes to make thousands of the same sweaters. At the same time that production and profits increased a hundred fold, workers’ wages barely increased at all. This also increased profits. The shareholders were mostly ecstatic, until, that is, the blush of the new money wore off and new ways of making profits were sought. New markets were explored to sell more goods. Now that most of the new markets are saturated, the capitalists are seeking to privatize everything they can to keep the profits rolling in and increase their wealth. Medicine, water, the military, education- nothing will escape them. But what will they do when everything is privatized?

The planet and its resources are finite. We can’t seem to get this through our heads. Finite! That means limited. There’s an end. We have nearly reached that end and if we continue to seek it out, it is at the peril of our species and all the other species of life on earth. It’s inevitable that capitalism will go bankrupt. Part of the reason lies in the fact that the economy has to keep expanding its profits. Part of the reason is that the distribution of wealth and goods and political power become too concentrated to exist. Too few own too much and too many have nothing. When the economy goes bankrupt, the means of distributing wealth that we have depended on will have resulted in wholesale destruction of the environment and war. It is a fact that capitalism results in a concentration of wealth and power to the detriment of the rest of the population as well as the natural world.

What Is Work?

In the past, work has been described as something that causes the brow to sweat. Then we discovered intellect. With this discovery, what the mind could do was sometimes described as work. In today’s world, work can be described as what makes money. Someone sitting in a room all day reading magazines and waiting for something to happen that will require their skills is working. No sweat here. However, taking care of a family member with an illness so that they don’t have to be hospitalized and cost the government thousands of dollars, though it is difficult and requires a lot of effort, is not work as there is no pay for this and no tax exemption that one can claim.

Obviously we need a new definition of work. So, what is work? Is it something we do for eight hours or more a day, five or more days a week for a week or two off during the year and a salary that pays us for our trouble? Perhaps work is a term that should be broader than this, especially since jobs in the traditional sense are going to be difficult to find. It’s a fact that a large part of the labor force has already given up trying to find work. There are also those people who provide services to society that are not recognized as work. For instance, a person who goes out of their way to be a friend to one who needs a friend is not considered work despite the fact that it takes time and effort to be a friend. By being a friend to someone in need, one will be lessening the social isolation that the lonely person feels and could deter someone from doing something harmful to themselves or others as a result. This definitely has some value to society, but we do not recognize this as work that should result in a pay check. Artists have a difficult time as well. What they do is not always categorized as work. A few are able to make a lot of money but most people who create art or writing don’t make enough to live on. A UBI could spur a new era of artistic accomplishment.

In addition to the definition of work, we will also have to redefine the value of one kind of work to others. One would be forgiven if when comparing the worth of a CEO to a janitor, they chose the CEO. The real answer is surprising. The janitor is more useful to company production than the CEO and that is because the janitor keeps the place clean and organized. Disorganization and dirty work areas lead to lower production according to a study done some time ago. The CEO's job can be done by some of their underlings, but don’t expect anyone else to know how to clean a carpet or do high dusting.

Can We Afford It?

Universal Basic Income is where every person in the country receives a basic income whether they work or not. The amount of money could be reduced or eliminated so as not to further enrich the rich and save a bit more for those further down the ladder. The money is distributed from government funds. The government could get these funds in part from the money usually spent on food stamps and other welfare programs as well as a wealth tax on the very wealthy. It could also be boosted by cutting some of the military budget, much of which is not needed.

Let’s look at some of the figures. The budget for food stamps is $80 billion and welfare tops out at $668 billion. Another $63.24 billion is spent on housing. In addition, $100 billion is spent on corporate welfare, most of which is not needed as the corporations are making money hand over fist and don’t need Uncle Sam to stay profitable. That’s a total of $911.24 billion dollars to start with. Now a look at the military. Our military budget is inching toward $1 trillion dollars a year, more than the next ten or so countries down the list from us. We spent $12.9 billion on an aircraft carrier that we don’t need and has had problems getting to the field at over $100 million per carrier. Then there’s the F-35, a boondoggle if I've ever seen one, which we’ve already spent $1.45 trillion on. We have military bases all over the world, 4,702 of them, that cost us $5.9 trillion dollars. It costs $100 to $150 billion a year to maintain them. Then there are the 400 bases that we aren’t supposed to know about and have no figures on operational costs.

In addition to the above money, we give the wealthy quite a tax break so that they remain wealthy and remain in charge of our government. Through tax loopholes and the small capital gains tax their portion of the tax bill comes out to only 10-15% of what they make each year. It wouldn’t hurt them at all if an additional tax were added on to their total income. They would still be able to afford caviar, world travel and their collections of fancy rides. With closer scrutiny, I’m sure we could find additional funds that are being wasted.

The Gross National Product is over $17 trillion. Ten percent of this country holds around 75 to 80% of the national wealth. They don’t work to keep it and many of them didn’t work to get it to start with. Labor costs in the US are about 16 trillion and the top 10% take home a whopping 47.21% of this income. Those same people also own 80% of the stocks and bonds. When you consider that 40% of the population lives on $35,000 or less, this is quite a haul.

I’m no economist, but it’s clear that the top earners and holders of wealth have taken more than their share. It’s also clear that a redistribution is in order and that we have the funds for it. We do have to be careful how we structure the economy in the future. In order to maintain fairness, the system will have to be designed to prevent a wealthy minority from owning all of the means of production. We will also have to change our views on work and what is valuable to our society as well as our way of distributing the profits on what we produce.

Some possible points to debate in regards to UBI are

1. Its name could be changed from UBI to Production Dividend which will neutralize the welfare state connotations inherent in the Universal Basic Income title.

2. We will have to decide if the income will be graduated with those who have the most getting the least or possibly nothing at all.

3. To pay for it, we have to decide which programs will be cut or eliminated and how high the taxes will be for the super-rich. It might be a possibility to have a ceiling on how much a person or their family can earn or own. The rich could still remain rich but not rich enough to buy up the government.

4. The means of production will be a major bone of contention. Worker owned? (Remember there will be fewer workers when robots are more in use). Will the government own the means of production or a portion of it?

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