#heavy truck tax

[artisticdivasworld]

Kickstart Your Trucking Business: Financial Relief and Support Solutions

Renee Williams, PresidentFreightRevCon, a Freight Revenue Consultants, LLC. company The average cost to start a new trucking company ranges from $10,000 to $30,000, not including the cost of purchasing trucks and trailers. Here is a breakdown of the typical startup costs: Semi-truck and trailer down payment: $18,000 Insurance down payment: $4,000 USDOT number registration: $300 Business…

[gwendolynlerman]

Things that surprised me as a European tourist in the United States

This is based on my experience as a Spaniard traveling to the United States (specifically New York City and Washington, D. C.).

Like many people around the world, I have grown up in contact with U.S. culture through literature, film, and music, so I didn't experience much cultural shock, but some things still surprised me.

All vehicles (cars, trucks, school buses...) are huge! Most cars are pickup trucks or SUVs. The most common brands came from the United States, but I also saw many Japanese cars, especially Nissan and Toyota (mostly Prius, USAmericans seem to love this model 😂).

Customer service is great, not only in restaurants or places where one is expected to leave a tip but also in museums and subway stations.

I heard many different languages spoken by locals, including Mandarin, Russian, and Spanish, as well as European languages spoken by tourists, such as French, German, and Portuguese. (I think that this is mostly the case in big cities, and especially NYC.)

People wear face masks more often, although I guess that this is transient due to flu season. Still, way fewer people wear them in Spain.

Taxes are not included in the price. (I was aware of this but used to forget about it at first.)

Toilets are not as deep as in Europe (the water is really close to your butt 😖), and many flush automatically. Public restrooms always have seat covers but normally do not have a toilet lid.

Doors are really heavy! No wonder many people (mostly men) held them open for me. I once had to throw myself against the door to open it. What is the deal with doors in the U.S.? (Is it a NYC thing only?)

People were quite loud (and this is coming from someone who grew up in a country that is renowned for how loud we talk) and played music/videos without headphones in the subway 😑

Cops are surprisingly chill despite the reputation that they have. A guy was insulting a couple of them from across the subway platform, and they just smiled and waved at him. In Spain, it is a crime to insult a police officer, so I was surprised that they were so calm about the whole situation.

On that note, there were a lot of cops around the city at all times (even at 5 a.m.). I counted nine of them in Penn Station!

Drivers honk all the time because of every minor inconvenience. On Thanksgiving Day, there were a lot of traffic jams, and people were honking as if that would magically clear the streets... And, of course, if one person honked, the rest honked as well, so walking on the street on the main avenues was really deafening 😐

Traffic lights are quite far away from where cars have to stop.

Fire truck sirens are really loud and sound like emergency alarm systems. (It reminded me of those TikTok videos ranking them.)

People say "Excuse me" in the subway when going in or out, which was a nice change from the shoving and pushing I'm used to in Madrid.

I saw a lot of people carrying around huge reusable water bottles. (Here's an explanation for why USAmericans drink so much.)

People called me "Ma'am" instead of "Miss". I know it's the polite way to address people, but it was very weird 😂

New Yorkers love to use cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) when giving directions. Someone once told me, "Go west on Broadway" and I was like "I have trouble orienting myself when I use Google Maps, do you think I know which direction I'm going in at all times??".

There are lots of caution signs about worker safety on construction sites, both in English and Spanish, which leads me to think that there are many work accidents 🤔

As a solo female traveler, I was a bit concerned about my security in a city that I have heard is dangerous and in a country where mass shootings are a relatively normal occurrence, but I felt mostly safe. I was surprised to see many posters that read, "If you see something, say something".

Related to the above, I was shocked to see "This is a gun free zone" posters in public places and "No guns allowed" posters on supermarket doors.

I was really surprised to see ads with phone numbers with words in them, like the one below. After doing some research, I discovered they are called vanity numbers and are easier for people to remember. (If, like me, you're wondering how to dial these numbers, apparently you just press the number that corresponds to the letter on the keypad.)

I smelled marijuana everywhere! Although illegal in Spain, you can also smell it sometimes, but it seemed ubiquitous in NYC. (I personally hate the smell, which is why I noticed.)

[maryellencarter]

Will your walkable cities have guaranteed housing for all? Not just "we housed a thousand homeless people but there are 40,000 more waiting for space and nowhere to build", actual available housing.

Will they have safe parking to sleep in our cars without being harassed, and leave our cars at in the daytime to keep our stuff safe while we walk your walkable city?

Will they have plentiful benches, maybe even sheltered from the elements, and will we be allowed to sleep on them?

Will they have plentiful, safe, clean, well-stocked, 24/7 restrooms? Maybe even climate controlled? And will we be allowed to spend as long as we need to in them? Most homeless people have digestive issues because of our limited food access, if for no other reason.

Will they have free foot care clinics and mobility aids? We're already on our feet all day. It hurts. Many of us had mobility issues before becoming homeless.

Will you have free 24/7 transit for all, or will it be means tested, require residency, or have similar arbitrary limitations? How long will we be allowed to ride? Will there be easily accessible restrooms? Will it have posted maps at every stop, or will we have to use cellular data to find our way around? What measures will you take to prevent it becoming a superspreader system for Covid and other diseases?

(Actually, requiring a cellular or cable company to provide free public wifi as a substitute for part of their tax bill would be an interesting experiment. Or you could just make wifi a public utility. Still put up paper maps for transit though, we don't all have wifi capable devices or the ability to use them. Maybe even with Braille overlays on the plastic or something?)

If you're not allowing vehicles other than transit, what allowances are you making for grocery delivery, prepared food delivery (like Doordash type services), laundry service, diaper service, anything that doesn't require mobility-limited residents to use their steps? What's your plan for "I'm moving in or out of the walkable city and I need a moving truck for my furniture"?

How about "I'm buying groceries for two weeks for six hungry people and I can't carry it all home on the bus"? How about "My plumbing broke and the plumber needs his toolbox full of heavy tools and parts that *he* can't carry on the bus"? Will your buses/trains have luggage compartments, and how will the loading and unloading work with keeping a schedule?

[collapsedsquid]

Few countries’ economies are so bound to one resource. Global Witness, an international watchdog that monitors natural-resource exploitation, estimates that Myanmar’s jade trade was worth up to $31 billion in 2014, nearly half the nation’s GDP that year. Yet the industry remains shrouded. The ethnic Kachin, though native to the jade hills, control few of the mines. In the 1990s, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), one of several ethnic armed groups fighting the state in Myanmar’s borderlands, lost ­control of territory around Hpakant. Today most of the big concessions belong to companies or cronies connected to the Burmese military elite. Even as the country has transitioned from five decades of military rule to semicivilian authority, jade has proved the limits of democratic governance. Most stones are smuggled over the border to neighboring China; only a fraction are subject to the tax needed to fill government coffers in one of Asia’s poorest countries. The scale of graft and unaccountability is such that Global Witness calls Myanmar’s jade economy the “biggest natural-resource heist in modern history.” [...] The world’s best jade mines are sealed off to nearly all foreigners. But I managed to access Hpakant to experience a place so beguiling to 18th century Chinese imperial envoys that hundreds perished en route in the malarial wilderness. The scenes before me look like a cross between a magnified ant farm and a Star Wars set. In the distance I spy what appear to be hundreds of tiny insects clinging to a hillside. As we drive closer, I realize they are men. Backhoes, excavators and giant trucks maneuver through a lunar landscape like creatures from an alien planet. Hpakant was once the domain of tigers and verdant foliage. All I see is dust and brown. Where prospectors used to dig by hand, now explosives and heavy machinery, mostly imported U.S. or Chinese brands, are ripping the entrails out of jungle, demolishing entire mountains within months. Already, Hpakant is mostly dead. Fatal accidents mount. Only the biggest, like a November 2015 landslide that killed about 200 miners, make headlines. Township officials have recorded hundreds of deaths in jade-mining accidents over the past year and a half. But locals say the real number is many times that. And in the hills, the Burmese army and Kachin rebels continue to wage war. “If there was no jade, there would be no war in Kachin state,” says Yup Zaw Hkawng, an ethnic Kachin who owned large mining concessions before the Burmese military wrested control of Hpakant. “We are living and sleeping on so much jade in our earth, but jade is Kachin’s curse.” [...] Sequestered from the outside world, Hpakant radiates a gold-rush lawlessness. Unexplained killings occur with regularity. While we are there, a schoolteacher is shot in the head. The day before, a jade trader died from an executioner’s bullet. Last year bombs exploded at the headquarters of two mining companies. In November, a jade scavenger at Hmaw Sisar mine was shot dead by military intelligence or the KIA, depending on who’s telling the story. “There is no real law in Hpakant,” says one of the immigration officers holding us, with a touch of apology. “We don’t know who to trust.”

[necroromantics]

🧺 — Laundry And Taxes

chapter 3. // (masterlist)

Toby stood on the side of the highway, sticking his thumb out eagerly at the passing cars. He had spent two long days bussing, walking, and catching rides down to Alabama. The soft breeze of the approaching autumn flew past him, the sun shone bright in his ambitious eyes. A small black truck slowly rolled past him, coming to a stop a few meters away. Toby grinned with success to himself as he picked up his backpack and ran over to the passengers door.

“Hey, thanks, I’m heading down to Tuscaloosa.” Toby spoke as he climbed into the vehicle.

“How old are you, kid?” The driver spoke. An older man, wearing a worn out baseball cap and thick gray beard.

“Whats it matter to you?”

The man spoke not another word, scoffing at the younger's attitude, and driving away to Tuscaloosa.

Toby stared through the window out at the passing wide open scenery. His eyes hadn’t witnessed the great vast land of Alabama, and yet he recognized every gas station, town sign, and highway they drove down. Every bump in the road made his stomach turn. It seemed his motion sickness carried to this world with him as well.

Midnight had overtaken the city by the time he arrived at his destination. Toby held tightly onto the straps of his bag hanging firmly on his heavy shoulders as he made his way through the streets. He walked quietly under the streetlamps, noting any flickering, and any faces he occasionally passed by. He always made sure the people he passed had faces.

Just as his luck would have it, Toby's memory of his original life served him as he stood in front of a small abandoned motel on the outskirts of Tuscaloosa. The same motel he had spent many nights in when he was a proxy. He hacked his way through the locked door with his hatchet he had packed in his bag, and made his way into the old, dusty room. Toby exhaustedly collapsed onto the creaky mattress which was painted with stains and dirt, groaning as his tired body hit the bed. He never stopped appreciating the existence of mattresses, back where he was from, he was without them for days on end. It was always a treat to fall asleep on a proper bed.

Toby spent the next day wandering Tuscaloosa, taking in his surroundings. He was in a place he had never been in before, yet he had walked those streets many times, in another world. As he walked down the streets, past houses he had once broken into, past families he had once destroyed, Toby felt a very eerie sensation of being watched. His feet slowed their pace, the quiet early autumn afternoon seemed to slow down with him. His mind staked out for the smallest sound, making a note of everything around him. He decided to stray from his intended route, and made his way through a labyrinth of streets and alleyways, in an attempt to shake off the feeling of being followed. An attempt to make distance between himself and whoever, or whatever, was closing in on him. Left, left, right, left, straight for a few blocks, right, left again.

Toby walked through an alleyway downtown, watching the cars race past through the cracks between old, decaying buildings. It seemed the heart of downtown was dying, and the rot slowly spread itself outwards, like the city itself was sick. Toby felt more at home wandering the maggot-infested carcass that was Tuscaloosa than he had felt spending his nights at his mothers house. He felt more comforted by the idea of being stalked by an unknown stranger, than he did hugging his own family.

Eventually, the boy made his way to the nearby library, an hour before closing. It was quiet. The environment breathed with contentment and history, the books acting as its aching bones. Toby wriggled out a large book on the history of Tuscaloosa and sat down at a table in an isolated corner of the building. His fingers flipped through the pages, gliding over sentences, old photographs, and maps. The last time he touched this book, there was a distinct photograph of Rosswood Park where, if you looked closely, you could see a tall, faceless man-entity. Now, as Toby analyzed the photo, he quickly realized it was an exact copy, but the faceless entity was nowhere to be found. He cursed questioningly to himself as he looked over the photo again. It was completely normal.

Toby placed the book back where he found it, and found himself a phone book. As he came back to the table he was sitting at, his heart skipped a beat for a moment. Laying neatly on the surface was a hastily scribbled paper that resembled a Slender Page. It showed dark, messy sketches of that faceless being, paired with the words ‘LOOK TO THE ROOTS’. The boy quickly turned around, looking around frantically to see anything else out of place. His brown eyes darted across every corner of the room. Everything but him was still. It was quiet, calm. Like the eye of a hurricane. The fact this paper was lying on this table meant that somebody left it there, which meant there existed somebody else in this world who knows about The Slenderman.

While spending most of their time in a forest, the proxies became familiarized with the different animals that lived there. Mostly birds, and the different symphonies they’d sing. Only they knew the call of a Northern Cardinal, and only they knew how to replicate it.

Toby whistled out the call, in hopes to get a response, and identify a potentially familiar coworker. There was no response, for a minute. He stood idle, still keeping an eager eye on his surroundings, and a desperate ear open. Then, from a few aisles down, he heard a whistle in response. The call of a Northern Cardinal.

He rushed over to the source of the sound, quickly, and prepared himself to fight. Though he may have worked with this person in a previous world, there was no guarantee they were friendly. A lot of people despised the boy and his loud mouth, his violence, his arrogance.

When he approached the aisle the whistle came from, he found no person, but another sheet of paper. As he picked it up off the floor, he noticed it was scribbled with Slender Symbols, a circle with an ‘x’ through it. The sign of the proxy.

He whistled out again, and for another moment, received no reply. Again, louder, Toby whistled out the call.

“Excuse me, you can’t be doing that in here,” a short, old lady approached the boy, making him jump. He was ready to knock her out. Irritated, he mumbled out a ‘sorry’, and made his way back to his seat. The book was flipped open to the ‘W’ last names, with a page rashly ripped out. Exasperated, Toby slammed his hand down on the table and groaned to himself in annoyance. It seemed that no matter the steps he took, the stranger was always one step ahead of him. The boy wasn’t fearful, no, he was far too cocky for that. He was frustrated, aggravated. And he had an idea of who was getting in his way.

As the night approached, Toby decided to put an end to his day, and made his way to his abandoned motel room where he had put together a makeshift shelter. The boy climbed through the broken door he had previously axed his way into. He threw himself on the dirty bed, tossing his backpack to the side. Toby stared up at the darkness, to the water-damaged ceiling, it looked as if it was about to collapse at any moment. He breathed in the smell of age and history long beyond his years, closing his heavy eyes as he inhaled. Slowly, his hand raised up to his cheek where his scar used to reside, and he traced his fingers across his skin. His thick brow furrowed as he thought of his past. Drool that would leak from his gash as he huffed, repeatedly hacking at a bloody body. The screams, begs for mercy, to which he always teased, or ignored. A sick satisfaction. It seemed to have disappeared with that scar of his.

Cradled by the darkness of the midnight hour, he slowly drifted off to sleep. That night, he dreamt he was standing in a burning building, and he couldn't get himself to move. He begged, pleaded at his body to move, but he was frozen in place. He had no choice but to stand still as the flames engulfed him, and everything around him. It suffocated him, he couldn't catch his breath. Toby groaned, and fought with himself, as the air escaped his lungs. His throat felt like it was being crushed.

Toby’s eyes shot open as he stared up at the hooded figure sitting over him, gloved hands strangling his neck. Toby dug his knees under the assailant's body and kicked them off, jumping to his feet, and catching his stolen breath. Before he could attack back at the intruder, his eyes examined the figure as it ran out through the hole in the door. Yellow hooded sweater, black mask. Brian Thomas.

“Holy shit.”

A sick, twisted rage built itself up inside of the boy as he shouted out to himself in frustration, driving his foot to kick the wall. He would’ve put a hole in that wall if he wasn't saving his fist for Brian’s face. An old colleague of his, a man who had taught him the ins and outs of surviving the cruel world they were from. Before any more destruction could be done as a result of Toby’s wrath, he noticed another piece of paper left behind. This time, it was a messy sketch of Slenderman crossed out, and words that read ‘THE CHAINS HAVE BROKE. BUT ARE YOU FREE?’

Toby scoffed as his lip twitched, there was lightning inside of him, left behind as residue of his morning adrenaline. He crumpled up the page, tossing it to the ground with disregard, and grabbed his backpack. The boy proceeded out of the front door and into the cool, early morning. The birds were singing, the leaves were beginning to turn a soft green-yellow. His eyes felt heavy, his chest felt weak. But he pushed himself down the street, and he pushed his burning body into the post office, where he found himself a new phone book.

He slammed the large book down onto the desk and flipped it open to ‘W’ last names, dragging his finger with his gaze as he scanned the pages for a particular name and address. It was only a few seconds before he found it, before closing the book and making his way back out onto the streets, and towards his destination.

Toby slowly strided up to the doorstep of a tiny, quaint house in a peaceful neighborhood. He held his breath every step he took, only his burning desire for answers moved his hesitant feet forward, and raised his fist to knock on that dreadful door. His throat tightened as he awaited a response. Toby heard shuffling from within the house for a moment, before the front door slowly creaked open.

The boy was met face to face with the barrel of a twelve gauge shotgun.

“Oh shit-”

“What the fuck are you doing here kid?”

“Woah, woah, get that shit out of my face first” Toby said, putting his hands up in surrender.

The gruff, older man glared daggers at the boy as he huffed in frustration and lowered the shotgun, stepping to the side and nodding his head as to tell Toby to come inside. With a smug grin, Toby nodded back and slid himself into the others house.

The two stood facing each other, the boy stuffed his hands into his jean pockets, and the older crossed his arms with clear annoyance at Toby’s presence.

“So, what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in Colorado?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t stand to be there. But hey, good to see ‘ya, Tim.”

“Sure, kid.”

There was a moment of awkward silence that lingered between them, a layer of tension bubbling under their tongues and through the daggers they glared at each other.

“What do you want from me, Toby? Get your ass back home already, there ain't nothing here for you,” Tim said, breaking the silence.

“I’m trying to, that's why I’m here.”

“I meant back home to your mother.”

Toby shuffled his feet for a moment, looking down and sinking into himself.

“I’m not going back there yet. Not ‘till I have my answers,” he lifted his head and looked up again at the man before him, “what the fuck happened? I mean, why are we here?”

Tim chuckled angrily to himself and pressed his lips before shaking his head. He had no intention of digging himself a grave next to Toby.

“Your stubbornness is gonna get you killed some day, kid. Assuming you even care.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Toby raised his voice, and Tim matched his tone.

“It means that I don't got your fuckin’ answers, Toby. I don't know why we're here, but I’m sure as hell not complaining.”

Toby stared Tim down, anger grimacing on his young face. He couldn't be in the same room for more than a minute with that man without fury sparking from their mouths, war raging between them. They both sunk their teeth into fatality. They both had a taste for tragedy.

“Seriously? That's it? After everything that happened?”

“Yup, that's it.”

“And what about Brian, huh?”

“What about him?”

Toby dug into his pants pocket, and pulled out a crumpled up piece of scribbled paper Brian had left for Toby yesterday, and threw it at Tim.

Catching it, Tim unwrapped the wrinkled ball and glanced over it, before crumpling it back up and tossing it into the garbage, brushing it off.

“That's his problem, not mine.”

Toby dragged his hand over his mouth, taking a deep breath to collect himself. The two were stubborn, and neither were about to budge.

“You're happy like this then? Living in this stupid house, in this stupid city? Surrounded by all these stupid people who think they know shit they don't?”

“You know what Toby? Yeah, maybe I am happy like this. I'm happy that I don't have to worry about whether or not I’m going to wake up in the morning, I’m happy to have a roof over my head that isn't leaking or collapsing. I’m happy to have that fucking static out of my fuckin’ head,” Tim began to shout.

“Well you can pretend all you want, but I’ll know what you’ve done, Tim! I’ll know all the shit we’ve done!”

“Jesus kid, quit it.”

Toby slammed his hand onto the table next to him as they shouted back and forth in that tiny house.

“No! You wanna run off into this fantasy world? You're a fucking pussy!”

“You listen to me. We finally have something good here, and if you want to destroy that like you always do, fine by me. But leave me the fuck out of your mess.”

Infuriated, Toby laughed to himself at the insanity of the words his colleague was speaking.

“You think any of this is good? Like everything is fine and great because we're not in that warzone anymore?” He took a step towards Tim, gesturing at the man. “Look at you! You can't even answer the fucking door without a shotgun in your hand.”

Tim lunged at the boy without another word, grabbing him by his shirt collar, and slamming his body up against the wall.

“Take your bullshit somewhere else,” he said in a low tone, dragging the boy out of his house as Toby screamed and struggled before his body hit the ground of the front step.

“Fuck you! You fucking traitor!” Toby yelled out, pounding and kicking at the now closed and locked door of Tim’s house. He ran his hands through his messy brown hair, he hadn't washed in days. Toby shook off the rage that lingered as he turned away from everything he knew, and towards his last resort.

Toby stood silently at the edge of the forest surrounding Rosswood Park, a place he had never been, yet had been to hundreds of times before. A place he had lived in for years, a place he knew to be the direct source to the Slender Forest.

He yelled out at the vast nothingness.

“Alright you eldritch fuck, where the fuck are you, huh?”

Toby picked up a rock and chucked it hard at a tree, stopping for a moment afterwards to stay aware of his surroundings for any response.

With every second of silence, the hopeless frustration within the boy only grew louder. He shouted again, and kicked a tree. This time, he didn't stop.

“Come on!”

Toby desperately clawed at the forest around him, kicking at the ground, hitting the trees, throwing rocks. He slammed his body against nature, he demanded answers. Yelling out until his voice went hoarse. He fought against that dead forest until he couldn't anymore. Until he was nothing but an exhausted mess, leaning up against a tall evergreen, and allowing his weak legs to fall from underneath him.

Toby placed his head between his knees, he could barely move his overworked body. All he was left with was nothing. He used to have everything, and now he sat leaned weakly as he drifted off to sleep, with absolutely nothing.

Encased in sleep, his mind replayed moments of his past. Toby dreamt of himself throwing up blood in a disgusting gas station bathroom, confessions of sin scribbled on the walls around him from those before him. He dreamt of himself scribbling his own confessions on that wall, but the only thing he could write was that he didn't regret a thing, and he would take it all with him to his grave.

He dreamt of dizziness, a loud ringing in his ears, a command, an intrusion. The sickness surrounded him, suffocated. Screams of his victims coming out of his own mouth. Television screens in his eyes playing nothing but static. He dreamt about the burden of murder. He dreamt that he would do it all again. He dreamt of a life that nothing could save him from.

[ddaz3d-and-cc0nfused]

༉‧₊˚. 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 || 𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐢𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐞

— pairing: maggie greene & fem!plus size reader (platonic)

― era: end of s2 / beg. of s3

— summary: living during the end of the world was never easy, but losing all of the mental process that you had made was even harder.

— warnings: ANGST!!!!! heavy tw for things like panic attacks, a strangely detailed walker attack, hurt/comfort, trauma recovery, dissociating + fluff(?) at the end bcs i'm not a monster.

— wc: 1017

⋆ a/n: this is for @cmfan2005! i don't really have anything to say about this other than the fact that it was nice to work with old characters :']

masterlist | AO3

You thought life on the farm would last forever.

You thought that you would be able to wake up every day and peacefully witness the sun rise over the expansive Greene farm. It was nice to be able to experience life the way it should be, like it used to be. 

A time where the dead weren’t walking and where your trauma didn’t haunt you from every corner of your life. Though the path of getting to a point where you didn’t shoot up from your bed in a cold sweat was long and hard, the only reason why you were able to get to that point was because of the eldest Greene daughter, Maggie.

It was funny really, because when you had first met, the two of you were like night and day; she was a spit fire while sometimes you couldn’t even find it within yourself to be able to talk at all. 

You must admit that you held some sort of envy ridden grudge against her because of the fact that she hadn’t seen what you saw, that she was able to still carry that blissful ignorance that maybe the world wasn’t so bad.

You grew accustomed to being on the farm, you loved tending to the crops and feeding the animals. Being needed meant that you had a purpose. You had a reason to look forward to the next day.

You remember the day that everything went to shit and you were already swimming with anxiety. There was fire and guns and you couldn’t find anybody until Maggie’s truck swung around. Seeing her face was like a blanket of relief, and in that moment you realized the only person that could make everything seem okay was her.

Being out on the road again was not only taxing physically, but also mentally as well. You could feel yourself slipping, days felt longer, your speech shorter, and that familiar but forgotten feeling of  hunger twisted in your stomach. 

Your eyes were set on the burning fire in front of you, the daylight was slipping away from your group with every minute that passed and you were feeling completely and utterly useless. You were mentally – and desperately – fighting against the dissociation that threatened to overcome you. You could feel the disconnect between your brain and you.

You knew that Maggie would want you to stay where you were sitting because she was worried about you. You could feel it in the way she made sure that you were fed, clothed, and warm during the night and safe during the day.

Rick had decided that the best course of action ccwas to stop for the night, so Maggie was off making sure that her father and sister got settled in comfortably. She had asked you many times if you were okay being by yourself for a short amount of time and you had found it within yourself to shoo her away and quell her worrying for a few minutes.

A part of you wanted to continue to use her as your safety net, but there was a piece of you that knew you should fight to stay independent.

With a sigh and one final look around the janky camp, you got up.

“I’m going to go get some more firewood.” You half-heartedly said to the others before stalking off into the nearest wooded area.

Being able to breathe in the few of the grass was refreshing. The wind swayed between the leaves of the trees, bringing you much needed silence.

Maybe being out on the road would be different this time, maybe this was another new beginning that you needed –

You hadn't heard come up behind you let alone grab onto your shoulders before you found yourself being pushed to the ground.

A scream forced its way out of your throat. You fought to turn around, hands slipping from your hold on its rotting corpse. It was so decayed that there was barely anything to hold onto and you stared right at its teeth ferociously bit at the air.

“Fucking - Help! Someone help me!” You cried.

You hadn't gone too far away from camp, so someone must have heard you, right?

You were losing your grip and with every chomp of its jaw got closer and closer to biting you on the face. “Please - I can’t -” And like a prayer that was answered, the thing was pulled off you, a nasty squish following a knife being put in its skull.

You could already see the dark spots in your vision, feel the suffocating tightness in your chest. Your lungs were filling up with water. You were dying, suffocating, practically drowning. You couldn’t bring yourself to speak even as you were being desperately shaken by what sounded like… Maggie?

“C’mon, breathe for me.” Her beckoning was blurred, falling on what seemed like deaf ears. 

“I -” You choked, forcing yourself to swallow the spit curating in your mouth. 

She takes your hand and places it on her chest where her heart rests under the flesh, and you can feel the rhythmic thumping under your fingertips. It helps ground you.

“Do what I do.” Maggie takes a deep breath and you attempt to follow, and as soon as the oxygen hits your brain, you can feel the rapid amount of tears that have managed to fall down your face.

“Good, good. You got it, honey.” A sob tears its way through you, and you all but throw your body into her arms. She rubs your back to help push away the possibility of hyperventilating, because she needed to get you off of the grass and back to camp fast.

“I need you to stand, can you do that for me?” She asks gently.

You weren’t going to lie and say your body didn’t hurt, the struggle and emotional exhaustion taking control of your already weak body.

“Yeah…” Your words were meek.

As you walked, your arm slung around her shoulder, you continually had to remind yourself that you were there with her and you were safe.

“Mags?” 

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

ೃ⁀➷ my lovely taglist!: @alina02 @louderfortheback @minervadashwood @fandomsarelifee @theendofthe70s @nomajdetective @mgg-theprettiestboy @phoenixblack89 @murdadixon

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

The Biden administration on Friday tightened vehicle fuel mileage standards, part of its strategy to transform the American auto market into one that is dominated by electric vehicles that do not emit the pollution that is heating the planet.

The new mileage standards announced by the Transportation Department are among several regulations the administration is using to prod carmakers to produce more electric vehicles. In April, the Environmental Protection Agency issued strict new limits on tailpipe pollution that are designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032, up from 7.6 percent last year.

In addition to the regulations, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, championed by Mr. Biden, provides tax credits for buyers of new and used electric vehicles, along with incentives for charging stations and grants and loans for manufacturers.

The push for more E.V.s comes as the world’s leading climate experts say that retiring the internal combustion engine is critical to staving off the most deadly effects of global warming.

But Mr. Biden’s efforts have become a meaty target for former President Donald J. Trump and other Republicans who frame them as the federal government taking away consumer choice. The oil and gas industry is spending millions on advertising that falsely calls Mr. Biden’s policies a ban on conventional cars.

The new standards require American automakers to increase fuel economy so that, across their product lines, their passenger cars would average 65 miles per gallon by 2031, up from 48.7 miles today. The average mileage for light trucks, including pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, would have to reach 45 miles per gallon, up from 35.1 miles per gallon.

The standards will also require heavy-duty pickup trucks, such as the Chevrolet Silverado 2500 HD, and large vans, such as Amazon delivery vans, to reach 35 miles per gallon by 2035, up from 18.8 miles per gallon today.

The E.P.A.’s emissions rule and the Transportation Department’s mileage standard were designed to achieve similar results through different means. The E.P.A. rule lowers the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from a vehicle’s tailpipe. The Transportation Department rule lowers the amount of gasoline, the fuel that produces the carbon dioxide pollution, that a vehicle can burn in order to move.

[paragonrobits]

story idea for a Transformers continuity based on Aligned focusing on a human companion (not sure who) that acts as an outside observer who has recently met Grimlock, who in this context has recently rejoined the main Autobot team. In this continuity, while it follows the Prime/RID2016 implicit meta plot with beastformers becoming very common after Optimus restores life to Cybertron, the implication is that they did NOT exist prior to Shockwave's experiments and Grimlock is, at least for Autobots and their descendants, the first beastformer. Bonus points if its frequently emphasized how powerful he is in comparison to all the other Autobots, his body redesigned for maximal efficiency, maximal power, maximal endurance, and so on, and Wheeljack and Ratchet discussing ways to refine the process that remade him to create future Transformers without the pain involved, and Grimlock muses on what will once be

the obvious implication is, for those familiar with Beast Wars, that this is the creation of the Maximals in terms of being an upgrade from the Autobots, and that much as Grimlock was arguably the first true beastformer in the franchise (depending on whether you think Ravage and similar minicons count), here he is specifically the Father of the Maximals. The first of a new kind

so anyway Grimlock has a conversation with the human companion, emphasizing Grimlock's newfound verbal problems as a result of the cruel methods of rewiring him, with Ratchet taking care to try to mend the damage done to his processor and give him more control over the power redistribution (as channeling almost all his power to physical strength is severely taxing Grimlock's mind, and its a testament to how absurdly intelligent he is that he can speak mostly fine in this state if he's not stressed), but Grimlock admits in a strange way, despite all the pain, he's... happier now.

Emphasis: beastformers are completely unknown outside the Insecticons and now Grimlock and the other Dinobots. His existence is a completely new thing.

Grimlock admits, the surgery was horrifyingly painful, and he still hates Shockwave with all his Spark but... he likes what he's become. It feels... right.

He admits that he's never been much for his original alternate mode, a Cybertronian truck modified with onboard weaponry to act as a tank. He honestly hated assuming it, and for a long time people thought he was a monoformer; one of the few extremists that only assumed one form whenever possible.

But now... it hurts. His fingers are claws now, his arms are top heavy and its hard to walk without hunching over because he's got so much mass compressed into his torso from his beast mode head and body smashed up into it, but it feels GOOD even though it hurts. He feels comfortable in himself. Like whatever Shockwave did to him, even if he didn't understand what he was doing, Shockwave hadn't mutilated Grimlock into a living weapon like they both thought.

Shockwave had given shape to something inside Grimlock; the real him, if that made sense. Letting the impossible be alive, and now other Autobots were thinking about it. Wondering if they could be modified to assume forms like Earth's animals, or alien beasts from other worlds. Some of them thought it would be an interesting experiment, and others felt inexplicably drawn to it as if possessed, feeling the spark of something new and somehow right in the thought. Of taking a form that didn't have wheels or rotors or jets but... legs of a different shape, or wings or flippers. What would they become. What were they understanding?

And for them, and Grimlock, it feels... right.

[mariacallous]

Farmers in Greece and Romania are protesting, joining a wave of unrest in the farming community that has affected several countries in Europe.

In Karditsa, Evros, Patras, Peloponnese, and in Serres, northern Greece, farmers took to the streets on Wednesday with tractors. They have also threatened to close highways, media reported.

A bigger demonstration is planned for Friday in Thessaloniki on the occasion of the 30th Agrotica, the largest exhibition of the agro-economic sector in the country. Farmers warn that if the government does nothing by next Monday, roads will be closed.

Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said things should not go to such extremes. “No matter how serious the demands of a professional group are, they must not lead to the punishment of all citizens and violate the rights of society. This government has proven that it is trying, without leading to extreme tension, to solve problems,” Marinakis told the public broadcaster ERT.

Farmers, among others, demand compensation for those who haven’t received it for the damage caused by Storm Daniel, which destroyed houses, businesses, animal and plant production and roads in Thessaly region in September.

They want the construction of infrastructure projects to protect against weather phenomena, reductions in production costs and a change in the Agricultural Insurance Organisation’s regulation so that the production and capital are compensated 100 per cent for all such risks.

The Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection has already granted 33.9 million euros to 16,400 agricultural holdings and livestock units that applied for “first aid,” with payments to be completed in the next period. PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said there will be a second cycle of aid worth 5,000 to 10,000 euros for farmers affected by the extreme flooding of September 2023 in Thessaly and other areas.

Farmers in Romania meanwhile continue to protest and demand relief from high fuel and insurance prices and better selling prices for their products. The government has devised some solutions to the demands, but many are unconvinced and continue to protest.

Large-scale protests took place on Tuesday in Brasov and Sibiu, central Romania, whwre farmers took 50 agricultural machines to the streets and staged a march. An authorized protest was also organised by farmers from Sibiu, who started in a column with tractors, trucks and cars across the municipality.

Such protests are taking place in all major cities in Romania, including on the ring road of Bucharest, where farmers have been protesting for weeks and hindering traffic. They were not allowed to enter Bucharest to protest in front of the government building to avoid disrupting the already heavy traffic in the capital.

Farmers in France, Belgium and Germany have been holding demonstrations blocking highways, with Reuters reporting that Spanish and Italian farmers will now join the movement.

They are complaining about EU measures to create “solidarity corridors” in order to provide Ukraine with income from agricultural exports, especially wheat. These products have flooded neighbouring countries and caused local production prices to fall.

The protesters also demand the cancellation of measures to limit agricultural production due to its carbon footprint and affect on climate change. They want the restoration of fuel tax exemptions. Far-right parties in Germany and in France have expressed vocal support for farmers’ demands.

[youronlybean]

🕸️🎃🕸️Trick or treat?🕸️🎃🕸️

An excerpt from an unfinished PR1 camping one shot, in which Shubble, Jeremy, Platy, Ze and Vik would eventually go ghost hunting in the woods. Didn’t quite get to that part lol but here’s what I wrote

[driving scene, Vik, Ozza, Platy and Tay in one car. Vik and Platy are singing obnoxiously. Tay is sleeping, Ozza is driving and swearing at them]

Vik tumbles out of the car, gracefully landing on one foot before he loses his balance and flops into the mud below. He hears several people chuckle at his clumsiness but a lot of the others are busy hauling their things from the trucks to the site.

[description of scenery, everyone is fumbling with their bags and such, Chilled drops and smashes a plate and stay berates him]

Vik stands up, cleans the bulk of the mud off his jacket and sticks a feisty middle finger up in Ozza’s direction, since he had been laughing the loudest. Ozza blows a raspberry back at him and wanders off into the forest with three different heavy looking rucksacks slung over his shoulders. Vik sighs and grabs the rest of the gear from Ozza’s trunk, holding a bag of marshmallows between his teeth. He elbows the trunk shut and scurries off to follow Ozza and the rest of the gang.

It’s a taxing walk from the car park to the campsite, but luckily it’s hard to miss. There’s a well-trodden path through the dense clumping of evergreen trees that leads him directly to a clearing in the woods, where people have begun to dump their stuff.

“I’m cold.”

“Suck it up,” Kara snaps, whipping around from where she’s glaring at a set of instructions for setting up a tent. Chilled, taken slightly aback by the sharpness of her tone, promptly sucks it up.

“Make yourself useful and come get firewood with me,” Skadj declares, gesturing further out to the woods. Vik quickly decides that if he had to pick one person to go into the woods alone with, Chilled would be his absolute last choice.

“‘Kay,” Chilled hums gloomily. It had taken a lot of convincing to get Chilled to even come on the camping trip since Chiled was basically allergic to fresh air, but Shubble had promised she’d come so he kind of had to.

Vik figures that he ought to do something so as not to get yelled at by Kara and kneels down in the dirt where Ze is fumbling around with a bunch of metal poles.

“Fuck off, Vikram,” he mutters. “I’m doing this myself.”

Vik frowns, raises an eyebrow at Jeremy who’s spectating with the sort of look on his face he might give his misbehaving cats.

“Ze, buddy, I love you,” Jeremy begins, speaking in a tone that perfect matches his face. “But you cannot possibly assemble the entire tent by yourself.”

“Stop doubting me,” Ze orders, only to have the large pole he’s trying to put together flop into the many metal pieces attached by elastic it came in. Ze gives the pole a seething look. “Fuck you.”

[sequinsmile-x]

Home Is Just Another Word for You

The Hotchners move house.

-x-

Look, I think we all know I owed you some fluff. So consider this your fluff tax.

-x-

Words: 2.5k

Warnings: Pregnancy, brief references to infertility

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

Emily hated moving.

She was good at it. Ruthless in disposing of her belongings that she felt she no longer needed, something she knows somewhat horrified her husband when they went through their shared office. He’d watched her wide-eyed as she threw away things once she determined they had no real long-term purpose whilst he struggled to do the same, his ‘keep’ pile twice as big as hers. 

She could pack a box like a pro, excellent at finding spots others would say were too full, which is why she knew on some level Aaron had left her to pack away their 12-month-old son’s belongings, although she knew the majority of his reasoning was because he didn’t want her carrying anything too heavy. 

The team were helping them pack everything away, yet again bribed with the promise of beer and pizza just as they had been a few years ago when they moved in here, and she could hear them all downstairs, helping Aaron and the movers they’d hired get everything into the moving truck. It’s how Emily finds herself in Harrison’s nursery, the baby sitting on the floor with the few toys they hadn’t packed away, as she finished sorting through the last of his things. 

She was good at moving, but she hated it. 

It always reminded her too much of her childhood, how there were always some boxes she would never unpack because she knew there was no point, that they’d be taken from her room by someone she had never met before and put into storage or flown somewhere new. Even now, even when she knew moving was a good thing, the next step for their family, the thought of it brought back memories of a time she’d never quite be able to escape. It was something she knew she didn’t want for her children, a cycle she wanted to stop, and the concern that she was continuing it when they first started to discuss moving half a year ago had burned at her insides. 

Aaron had reassured her without her even putting her fears into words, a soft smile on his face as he told her it wasn’t the same thing, that they were moving because it was the right thing for their family.

Their growing family. 

She smiles as she places her hand on her stomach. She was three months along, and whilst the tiny bump under her hand could still be mistaken for bloating it was more distinct than it had been at this stage during her pregnancy with Harrison. The idea of moving first came up when they started discussing having another child when Harrison was 9 months old. Emily knew she wanted another baby and that time wasn’t necessarily on their side. She loved their current, soon-to-be old, house but they needed more space. A bigger yard. Things that hadn’t been part of their consideration when they initially moved to this house. 

Emily had been told in Paris that having children was something that was unlikely to happen for her as a result of her injuries, something that, she had since learnt, was obviously incorrect. At the time, it had broken her heart, left her muffling her sobs into her pillow in a nondescript apartment as she mourned yet another thing she believed Ian had taken away from her. She’d quietly admitted it to Aaron when they first got together, sure that it would be a dealbreaker, but he’d been nothing except understanding and loving as he kissed her, his explanation that he loved her and nothing would change that soft against her skin. 

In the end, they found their first house together quickly. A perfect home that matched all of their specifications that Penelope had found for them. Emily and Aaron had silently agreed not to ask too many questions about how she had done it, not wanting to pull at that particular thread and find out something they didn’t want to know. She remembered moving in, thinking it was perfect and picturing herself living there forever. 

The moment she found out she was pregnant with Harrison, the test something she took purely to absolutely rule it out because she knew it was the first thing her doctor would ask, was something she’d never forget. The shock had briefly paralysed her, her eyes wide as she shook the test as if it would change the result. She’d called Aaron into the bathroom with her and then forced him to go out to buy more tests, convinced that the positive result in front of her was wrong. 

She still made gentle fun of him even now at the number of tests he came back with, boxes and boxes of them that she knew the poor clerk at the pharmacy must have raised an eyebrow at. It felt oddly fitting that it was one of those tests she’d used to confirm her current pregnancy. 

The thought of it was still overwhelming at times, even weeks after the doctor confirmed she was pregnant, again, and that she was having twins.  They were going to have three kids under two and a small part of her worried it meant she wouldn’t be able to give Harrison everything he deserved from her. 

She wished she could go back to her past self, to the broken woman who was dead to almost everyone who knew her, even herself, and tell her what she had ahead. 

As if he somehow knew she was thinking about him, Harrison squeals for her attention, the mostly nonsensical babble that he used to communicate filling the nursery. Her, Aaron and Jack understood the 12-month-old, the three of them the only people who could make sense of what he wanted, but he still hadn’t said his actual first word. It had become a family debate over what it would be, and Emily was pining all her hope on it being ‘Mama.’  She looks over at him, smiling as her eyes meet his from where he was sitting on the floor, surrounded by toys she knew would be some of the last things they packed away, thrown into her purse so she could easily locate them when they get to the new house. He lifts his hands up and grasps his tiny fists in the air, a silent request for her to pick him up. 

She doesn’t need asking twice. She abandons her task immediately and she walks over, already speaking to Harrison as she picks him up. Aaron always said he looked like her, and the little boy had certainly inherited the deep dark brown of her eyes, but to her everything else was Aaron. She’d somehow given birth to a mini version of her husband, and whilst she loved that, she secretly hoped that one of the babies she was currently carrying would end up looking at least a little bit like her. 

“Hi Harry,” she says, resting him on her hip as she kisses his forehead, he rubs his eyes and presses his face into her chest. A sure sign he would need a nap soon, “You tired, sweet boy? Moving is boring, huh?” 

She was glad they’d managed to have his first birthday in this house. The place they’d brought him home to from the hospital, his nursery a room that they had initially decorated as a guest room. The first year of her little boy’s life had been bookended by a house full of people who loved him. It made her sad if she thought about the fact he wouldn’t have any memories of this house, of the rooms she’d paced with him in her arms for countless hours as he refused to sleep. 

“We’ll get a nap sorted for you soon,” she whispers, shifting back and forth on the spot out of habit, rocking her son in her embrace, “You might have to sleep on Mama though,” she says, looking at the deconstructed crib, already taken apart by Derek, leaning against the wall. 

“You say that like it isn’t his favourite place in the world to sleep.”

She turns to face the door and smiles at her husband, “True,” she replies as he walks towards the, dropping a kiss to their son’s head before he kisses her, “Although he’s going to have to learn to share soon.” 

Aaron smiles as he places one hand on her stomach and the other on the back of Harrison’s head as he snuggles deeper into Emily’s embrace, a familiar sleepy look on his face, “Are you ready to share Mama?” 

“Mama.” 

It takes a moment for it to register, for her to realise the sweet little voice she’d heard was that of her son. She freezes on the spot before she tilts the little boy far enough away to look at his face. 

“Did you say, Mama, sweet boy?” She looks up at Aaron who was similarly frozen in place, his eyes wide, “Did he say…” her voice trails off as it gets tight, tears she knows she can’t entirely blame on her pregnancy hormones immediately flooding her eyes, her vision blurry as she looks back at her son. 

Aaron nods, kissing her temple before he leans into their son, his own eyes shining as he talks to the little boy, “Who’s this Harry?” Aaron asks, his hand sneaking around his wife’s waist to pull her closer, “Is this Mama?”

There’s a moment of silence before Harrison snuggles into her chest, rubbing his face against her as he mumbles, “Mama.” 

Emily’s breath catches in her chest and it escapes her as a sob, unable to process her pure joy in any other way. She holds her baby impossibly closer and kisses his dark hair, inhaling the comforting scent of his shampoo. She’s glad it happened here, that his first word took place in the room where she learnt how to be a mother to a newborn. In the house where thats what she became for Jack too, just down the hall from where he’d tentatively asked her if he could call her mom. 

“Mama loves you so much sweet boy,” she says, leaning into Aaron’s embrace as he wraps his arms around her, she turns to press her face into her husband's shoulder, “Oh my god these kids are going to be the death of me.” 

Aaron chuckles and runs his hand up and down her arm, “Harry and Jack love you, sweetheart,” he shifts so he’s looking at her look at their son, “And you’re this one’s favourite person in the world,” he places his hand back on her stomach, “Hopefully I’ll be the favourite of one of these two.” 

She chuckles, removing one hand from their son’s back to wipe tears from her cheeks, “In your dreams, honey, if they come out of my body I have to be their favourite,” she quips, her lower lip trembling with the overwhelming emotions of the day, “It’s in the rules.”

He winks at her, shrugging one shoulder as he replies, “Well we’ll just carry on going until one of them prefers me.” 

She laughs loudly, shaking her head at him. She was well aware that if it was up to him they’d have as many kids as they could, his love for her and their family one of his main driving forces these days. Whenever she saw him with Harrison, the baby she was told she’d never be able to have, it reminded her of the conversation she had when she told him that this was something that wouldn’t be possible. 

She knew they would have been happy without what their life had unexpectedly turned into, that the three of them, her, Aaron and Jack, would never have felt like anything was missing. But she was beyond grateful that this is what they now had. The little boy falling asleep against her chest and the two additions they’d have later in the year were parts of the puzzle that she couldn’t imagine her life without. 

She shakes her head at him, “You’re insatiable.” Any further conversation is cut off by a crash downstairs, followed by Derek yelling at Spencer, and she groans, “Those idiots better not be breaking my furniture.” 

___

She releases a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding when the team leave, the click of the front door indicating she and her family were alone for the first time since they’d walked into their new house with the keys clutched in Aaron’s hand. She takes a few steps into the house and looks around sighing at the amount of work that was left to be done. The furniture was in place and there were boxes everywhere. All of the photos and trinkets they usually would have on display still packed away. 

Despite that, despite the blank walls and lack of a personal touch that she knows will slowly come over the next few days, it still feels like home already, because she knows that feeling has nothing to do with the walls that surround her or where she wakes up in the morning, but everything to do with the two little boys asleep upstairs and her husband. She’d found in them what she’d always been looking for, everything she’d been through on her journey so far another step towards them.

She smiles as she feels a familiar presence against her back, and she leans into Aaron as he wraps his arms around her from behind, his hands on her belly. 

“You three doing ok?” He asks, kissing her temple. She chuckles and places her hand over his on her stomach as she links their fingers together. 

“Hungry. But we’re ok,” she replies, turning her head to look at him, capturing his smile in a kiss, “Of course that’s mostly because you’ve barely let me do anything all day.”

He kisses the tip of her nose, laughing when she scrunches it up in response, “Because you’re pregnant, Em. With twins.” 

She rolls her eyes at him and stops herself from replying that she’s aware of that, the expanding stomach and sore boobs more than enough to ensure she never forgot, and instead she looks around their new house. She can picture their family living their life here, the currently quiet rooms filled with the laughter and happiness she realises she’s been chasing her whole life. 

“I’m glad we did this,” she says, leaning further into his embrace, “It’s a beautiful house.”

He hums and kisses the top of her head, one of his hands rubbing circles on her stomach, “It’s gorgeous,” he says, shifting to kiss her neck, “Lots of spare bedrooms.” 

It takes a moment for his words to register, for the not-so-hidden meaning to sink in, and she scoffs, pulling away from him with a look of outrage on her face. 

“Fucking hell, Aaron at least let me give birth to these two first,” she smiles, giving away that she was amused, not angry, and she playfully narrows her eyes at him, “You animal.” 

-x-

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[essaarweigh1]

What are the uses of a Weighbridge?

A weighbridge is a large industrial scale used primarily for weighing trucks, trailers, and their contents. Here are some common uses of a weighbridge:

Weight Verification: Weighbridges are used to accurately measure the weight of trucks and their cargo to ensure compliance with legal weight limits. This is crucial for safety reasons and to prevent damage to roads and infrastructure.

Trade Transactions: Weighbridges are often used in industries where goods are bought and sold by weight, such as agriculture, mining, waste management, and logistics. They provide an official and accurate measurement of the goods being traded.

3. Inventory Management: Weighbridges help businesses manage their inventory by accurately measuring the weight of incoming and outgoing goods. This information is essential for stock control, logistics planning, and financial reporting.

4. Quality Control: In industries where product quality is closely tied to weight, such as food processing or manufacturing, weighbridges ensure consistency and adherence to quality standards.

5. Taxation and Fees: Governments may use weighbridge data to levy taxes or fees based on the weight of goods transported, especially for heavy vehicles that put more strain on infrastructure.

6. Safety and Compliance: Weighbridges help enforce safety regulations by ensuring vehicles are not overloaded, which can lead to accidents, road damage, and environmental hazards.

7. Data Collection and Analysis: Modern weighbridges are often equipped with software that collects and analyzes weight data. This data can be used for trend analysis, forecasting, and optimizing operational efficiencies.

8. Security Checks: Weighbridges are sometimes used at security checkpoints to verify the weight of vehicles and detect any anomalies that may indicate unauthorized cargo or activities.

Overall, weighbridges play a crucial role in various industries by providing accurate weight measurements that are essential for compliance, financial transactions, operational efficiency, and safety.

For more details, please contact us!

Website :- https://www.essaarweigh.com/

Contact No. :- 09310648864, 09810648864, 09313051477

Email :- sales@essaarweigh.com

[junk-and-disorderly]

He Ain’t Heavy - 1984 - 14

1984 - 14

Rain pattered against the window, softened only by the crooning of Marty Robbins and his gunslinger ballads. Had he known he was gonna have a kid in less than twenty four hours, he would have picked better music. Not that it would have made a lick of difference--he had no idea what the youth of today listened to. Besides, who didn’t like ‘Big Iron’?

Wayne drummed his fingers along the steering wheel, focusing on the maw of darkness stretching before them, instead of the heavy gaze coming from the backseat.

“You like Marty Robbins, boy?” He looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see the kid’s gaze drop.

“Marty Robbins is fine, sir.”

Wayne huffed in amusement---sir. Nobody had called him that since his military days. “Uncle Wayne or Wayne will do just fine.”

“Yes sir--I-I mean Wayne. Uncle.”

He turned the mirror to get a better look at the kid. An angry purple welt nearly engulfed his left eye, leaving a sliver of brown to peek out from the swollen skin. He had such large eyes, dark and deep, and so full of fear---just like his mama’s.

A lump formed in his throat. Shoulda been there sooner.

“You still go by Edward?” The question came out gruff, all rough edges. Maybe with time, he could wear those corners down.

Tension bled into the silence as he watched the kid gnaw on his lower lip. The skin was chapped and red--a repeated habit. Then his hands scrubbed through the stubbly buzz cut, his eyes darting back to Wayne, then back to his chewed nails and ragged cuticles.

He tried again, softer this time. “What do you want to be called?”

As expected, the kid responded with a full body flinch before blurting out, “Eddie.” A moment later, softer and quieter, “Can I go by Eddie?”

Right. Edward was his daddy. “Sure, Eddie.”

Wayne sighed. How is it that of all the relatives, extended families, and aunts once and twice removed, Eddie ended up here? Sure, Maybe Wayne wasn’t the worst option-- he had a steady job, lived a quiet albeit isolated life, and paid his taxes-- but that only confirmed that the standard set for guardianship was abysmally low.

Of course, he had to consider who had set the standard in the first place. He didn’t need to ask his nephew who’d given him the black eye and put the fear of God in him.

At least Wayne had enough sense to snap the branches of their family tree. There would be no more fuckups from the Munson family, no-siree. Just himself, a barren limb all on its own.

Well. Alone with the newly grafted sapling currently withering in the backseat. He turned his focus back to the road, watching daylight slowly creep over the horizon through the gloom.

They still had a long drive ahead of them.

+++++++

It was late morning by the time they arrived at the trailer park. The rain had stopped, leaving the air heavy with the promise of a muggy afternoon.

He pulled up to the trailer, throwing the truck in park. He couldn’t imagine what was running through his nephew’s mind. Eddie had bounced from a house (if you could call it that--his brother’s house was borderline condemned), to a foster home (which Wayne had thankfully not visited) to a trailer. It was a nice tin can, nicer than wherever Eddie had laid his head, but still a tin can nonetheless. It would have to do, at least until the kid was eighteen.

In the meantime though, he had no clue what to do, outside meeting basic needs.

That was the main problem; he had no idea what Eddie was actually thinking. Sure, he could read the kid--it didn’t take a genius to see the boy was terrified out of his mind--but that didn’t tell him what Eddie wanted, what he needed, or who he was. The kid had spoken all of four sentences on the way down, only speaking when spoken to.

The thought made his gut clench.

It wasn’t that he minded the quiet--Wayne wasn’t much of a talker himself. Too many people were doing the talking already, so he was more than happy to do the listening. What bothered him more was the fact that the teenager in the backseat was worse than a stranger--he was a ghost. There was no trace of the little boy who doodled in the margins of his mother’s postcards.

Those wide eyes had remained shuttered the drive over and remained closed to observation.

Wayne cleared his throat, watching as Eddie tightened the grip on his seatbelt. “It ain’t much, but it’s home.” He gestured out the window. “Folks typically keep to themselves here, but they’re nice enough. Might even be a few people your age around.” Hopefully something different would be good--for both of them.

They loitered in the cab a moment, waiting each other out. A beat passed before Wayne broke the stalemate. If he wanted the car unloaded sometime in this century, he’d have to make the first move. “C’mon, let me show you to your room.”

There was a tell-tale click of the seatbelt, followed by an even longer pause. “...My room?

He shrugged his shoulders. “Teenagers need their privacy.”

Wayne was already unpacking the other side of the truck, pulling a battered cardboard box from the seat. The rain may have stopped, but wasn’t about to be lulled into a false sense of security. Better to get things squared away and start on the next task at hand: what the hell was he supposed to do with a teenager?

Eddie oozed out of the backseat, hands clenched around the neck of an acoustic guitar like a lifeline. From the moment Wayne came to pick him up, the guitar had been tucked protectively against him by a makeshift strap. Even now, it bobbed unsteadily against his back when he stooped to grab a box.

They walked towards the trailer, Eddie trailing half a step behind. Balancing the box on his hip, Wayne undid the various locks and nudged the door open. They were immediately dumped into the living room, and greeted by the oppressive silence of a house half-lived in.

Wayne set the box down on the threadbare couch with a grunt, flicking on a nearby light. An orange glow illuminated the space, softening the edges of the room. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was tidy, old habits instilled in him from his military days. Once he’d gotten the news of his brother’s incarceration (from a message left on his answering machine, no less), it’d been a mad dash to find his nephew. Ideally he would have had more time to spruce up the place, but he was more focused on meeting with social workers than playing house.

“Your room is down the hall.” It was impossible to miss, seeing as it was the only room in the entire trailer, minus the bathroom.

As expected, Eddie wordlessly shuffled down the hall, guitar bouncing with each step. Wayne’s heart leapt to his throat every time the pegs scraped against the wall, threatening more permanent damage to both his home and the instrument.

Jesus, he was not prepared for a kid. When did people stop child proofing the house? He shook his head, leaving the boy to his lonesome to unpack his thoughts. Wayne could unpack the physical shit. There were still a few boxes and a garbage sack to unload--nothing his old bones couldn’t handle.

The caseworkers had warned him--‘Eddie will be a troubled young man, he might be a handful. Are you sure you want to take him on?’.

He couldn’t help but snort. Had he been ready to go to Vietnam? Hell no---but he did that shit anyways. Life wasn’t in the habit of handing out choices; you did what could, and took the lumps that came with it. Besides, Eddie’s welfare was his concern, and the kid had been dealt a shit enough hand.

Wayne was strong enough to carry him--he ain’t heavy.

It took no more than thirty minutes to carry in the wreckage of the kid’s life. He shuffled along the well worn path from the living room to the front door, mumbling a familiar song from his youth. There hadn’t been a peep from his nephew, which while not surprising, signaled he could do with a check-in.

The last box landed with a thud against the floor. “You still alive in there, Eddie?”

No response.

Wayne stretched, popping his back, before walking down the hall. Sure enough, the door to the bedroom was closed. He rapped his knuckles against it and tried again. “Eddie?”

The door swung open, bringing him face to face with the wild-eyed teen. Instinctually, he took a step back; never corner a frightened animal.

“Truck’s unloaded—your stuff is in the living room if you want help.”

Eddie took the opening to wriggle out of his room, snapping the door shut behind him. The guitar was still strapped to his back, and let out a painful discordant twang as it knocked against the door that caused them both to wince.

“You might want to find a spot for your girl in your room. Not sure how many more knocks she can handle.” He motioned to said instrument.

Eddie swallowed, nodding his head, but only tightened his grip on the handle more. She’d certainly seen better days: Multiple strings had been broken, curled around the chipped fretboards. Damaged, but not broken. With time, maybe they could fix her.

They stood there a moment, not making eye contact with one another. They may as well be strangers.

Finally, he let out a sigh, trying to breathe life into the awkward stalemate between them. “Listen, kid. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. But I ain’t your daddy.”

A hand flew up to the guitar strap, knuckles white. That got Eddie’s attention.

“People have told you a lot of bullshit, broken a lot of promises, and caused a lot of hurt. I ain’t dumb enough to think I won’t do the same somewhere down the line.”

The boy’s gaze was jittery, looking everywhere but his face.

“...But I’m going to do right by you, the best I know how.” Despite the wide berth he’d given the boy, he still flinched when Wayne motioned closer to the knob.

“There’s a lock on the door—“ he didn’t miss the way Eddie’s eyes jumped to his face with terror. A pit formed in his stomach, but he pushed through it. “—-you can lock the door from the inside. If you need to lock it to feel safe, you do that. Just don’t lock me out all the time, okay boy?”

Words had never been his strong suit, better at using his hands to do the talking for him, but he hoped it was enough.

He turned back towards the living room, bypassing the boxes and going straight to the kitchen. Boy could probably do with some food.

To his surprise, Eddie was in the living room, hovering over the boxes. Their eyes met over the cutaway in the kitchen, and for the first time, Eddie held his gaze. There was something different to him, eyes wide and searching, studying him.

He must have been satisfied by what he found, because his face split into a small tentative smile. “Want to help me unpack? It’s your only chance to be super nosy.”

God, he was going to absolutely ruin himself for this kid, wasn’t he?

Wayne returned the smile, “Okay, Eddie. Let’s do that.”

[rametarin]

Capitalism is not inherently bad.

There’s nothing inherent to capitalism that says it will be only interested in profit, at the expense of everything else. No more than the idea society will always turn you into a prisoner just for society existing.

In fact, it is through good faith regulations and sensible practices in law that capitalism is the superior system. Provided certain parties are not imposing rules and regulation on it that don’t exist for ideologically driven moralism, but practical and pragmatic safety, then the system works perfectly.

However, take the example of the ‘enormous truck’ in the United States. Smaller trucks used to be more popular state-size. Do you know what happened?

People that hate trucks decided those ‘darned truck drivers’ needed to go away. So they made it impossible to affordably have a little truck. In the interests of, “emissions standards,” they had the government penalize truck manufacturers and truck sellers, so if they tried to make and sell small trucks, they had to pay a large fee. They could still sell them, they just had to pay the government more to do so to offset what they were told was some bogus emissions problem.

But the thing is, the charge is bogus. What wound up happening because of shitty, bad faith policy because of people that don’t like trucks, was people decided to get more truck for their money, as the artificial penalty just for selling a truck that they tried to normalize to naturally select out trucks from the market, just meant consumers bought bigger trucks to get more truck for their dollar. The truck buyers and sellers had no reason NOT to push for bigger trucks, which ironically used more fuel to move more truck and more people elsewhere. And were less useful for a working man to move things.

This is why the American truck got so big. It wasn’t “YEE HAW” 10 pound Texas shaped belt buckle Americans just deciding to overcompensate alone, it was helped by people who hated a product and hated the culture of people that consumed it, trying to train them out of having a product by artificially making it more expensive. Not too dissimilar from trying to price out Asian or Hispanic foods, purely to try and “Anglicize” them, or something. Put that way, doesn’t it just strike you as disgusting someone would politicize something that’s supposed to be practical and good faith, like emissions standards, purely to penalize a product that they don’t like and attack both the culture and wallets of people they hate to make them change against their will?

But you can’t call that the fault of capitalism. Small trucks and their consumption existed BEFORE these overly expensive regulations. Expensive automobiles hurt the poor. And they’re used to try and incentivize communities and societies investing (with tax dollars, against their will) in public transport. But expensive automobiles are exactly what a lot of this shit tries to impose, extra-financially. With arbitrary environmental tax.

This isn’t a failure of capitalism, it’s a failure of respecting peoples choices and good faith policy. This is entirely a failure on the civic side, exploiting currency and finances for its own benefit. This is a failure of governance.

In a proper expression of a capitalist system, the government is still there to enact poliies and use bureaus to develop legislation and apply it, but certain people that do not like capitalism wouldn’t be there to punish things that just so happen to align with anti-capitalist ideological values. Like hating automobiles for being personal means of conveyance, and pushing for state or federally owned transportation systems.

Environmentalism itself is not the great big weapon and limiter that certain people hope it will be, necessitating heavy government hands over industry for extra taxation and draconian controls. Because industry can micromanage everything from particulate waste to sequestration. From the forge, to the dump, everything that is produced can be taken apart and recycled without forever lasting byproducts.

It’s not a matter of inevitability, it’s a matter of technology and knowledge to be able to mitigate and transmute, innovate. And then with industry standards and regulatory bodies, there won’t be pollution or environmental contamination to worry about, because one doesn’t need to worry about the radioactivity of a tapioca pudding explosion or the caustic results of a spill of baby powder- because those substances are by nature benign and harmless.

To some, capitalism is synonymous with smog spewing factories and radioactive green sludge on every corner. Those same people have the audacity to moan and whine about “propaganda” and “the red scare” when it comes to anti-capitalism.

Capitalism is the superior system when you have good faith governance that isn’t trying to destroy capitalism or build up enough government capital and power to subvert and destroy capitalism. Because capitalism is financial democracy and liberty, when expressed and respected to its fullest extent.

And any complaint you can have about it can be summed up as, “criminals subverting the law that didn’t account for the manner in which they’re breaking it,” which is true for any system, ESPECIALLY anti-capitalist ones historically, and, “it doesn’t address the things I feel are social problems that society should be solving without money.”

Or the always classic, “I moved for the capitalist company to be corporatized and effectively made federally run, and then it got government protections and sponsorship to just do what it wanted. Therefore proving capitalism corrupts government.”

No. What you’re seeing there is the government wanted something and gave the company carte blanche to make it happen. You’re blaming capitalism for the government’s giving the company infinite resources to make what it demanded happen in regulations, happen, whether or not it was ethically or economically reasonable or possible. And blaming capitalism for that as the corrupting influence. When the reality is, when the government is behind a company, legally and/or financially, that is no longer a company existing in a system of private markets. That’s a socialized business. That’s a business that doesn’t have to adhere to the market economy ecosystem. That’s a bear in a forest with infinite food to grow fat and strong, among bears that have to find their own food and compete with that bear with supplementary fish that can not only eat all they want, but compete with bears that don’t get free protein and springwater. It has an unfair advantage in bear business.

Overly expensive domestic medical equipment? The fault of a socialized monopoly in the US.

Overly expensive pharmceuticals in the US? The results of a socialized corporate monopoly in the US

The necessity of insurance in the US? A symbiotic relationship between hospitals and insurers, necessitating socializing and putting people into programs to make medicine more affordable- and the fake ass “free market” of needing medical care but the price of medical care being tied to what people are capable of paying, changing this to what millions of people could pay.

So hospitals raise their prices to absurd amounts individually and can write their own checks, while insurance companies can talk them down with contracts and collective bargaining and get discounts. Our entire medical system is overly expensive because of this bogus socialist get-around of a buyer’s market designed to make it impossible for an individual to afford medicine, and the intervention came purely because it was signed into legislation that a person could not be turned away from medical help from the ER regardless of whether they could pay or not. So they’d get tens of thousands of dollars of help, whether or not they could pay tens of thousands of dollars for the care.

Multiply that by a few million times a year, over the course of sixty years. It was a change to the system designed to take consumer power out of it and defacto backdoor socialize it.

However, we can fix this. We could even make the necessity of insurance go away. We just need to kind of.. ‘finish’ medical research. Or get it to where the cost of researching the ins and outs of every single chemical and compound, every single new virus, can be mechanically and electronically researched with algorithms and instruments until what used to take years of careful human professional research could be rendered into data in days, hours, or seconds. And derived solutions from that, which then go into manufacturing of everything from retro virals to vaccines to medicines to fix it.

When you really examine the most expensive aspects of American life, they only superficially look like the result of capitalist excess. And attributing corporate greed to capitalism when the government demands results that CAN’T exist without easing the barriers between government and private business and weighs results at the cost of separation between them, thus incorporating the business and giving them economic overtures, is blaming a fat, bratty child for the negligence and abuse of a parent. The kid didn’t get that big and spoiled rotten without being enabled. Which is exactly what socialism is. The state and the government being the ultimate authority over business and capital and deciding where shit goes, and thus, the corruption of the state and those regulators being the ultimate arbiter of exactly how corrupt the system is. They get the demon they see in capitalism, through their own state ambitions.

But so long as we have ideologues that despise private property and despise that any one individual might succeed harder than a company entity with tens of thousands of employees behind it, and sees even the possibility an individual may possess a billion dollars as someone failing to tax it out of them as corruption and evil, we will never have good governance or economy. Their principles are short sighted, spite fueled, and suck. Seeing someone with a million dollars and grousing because they aren’t using that money for someone else is like seeing someone with enormous boobs and being mad that they aren’t letting you fondle them.

Heh. Finan-cels.

[triune-god]

i love public transportation and i live in los angeles which has a burgeoning system, so there’s bound to be kinks and learning curves. we weren’t lucky to get a great society metro, most of the city proper is single family housing outside of wilshire, dtla, and some properties in westlake area, and la was built with the car as the main resident within the city, so no matter what, public transpo & pedestrian oriented infrastructure will be an uphill battle. i will always applaud metro for /trying/, but it’s just frustrating sometimes.

i’ve been late to work & school more times than i’m comfortable with because the e line has no signal preemption so we have to wait at jefferson, pico, western, vermont, and crenshaw for four minutes each like a car and then we have to wait at the station for 10 minutes for some unexplainable issue. and then because of that, i miss my bus which wasn’t there anyway because of bunching and poor infrastructure so now there’s 100 people at the bus stop cramming into a bus to get to their jobs, but cars are clogging the roads and making it near impossible to travel more than 20 miles an hour for much of the trip there.

cars are the least efficient form of transportation known to man and one of the greatest cities on earth, my hometown, where i was born and raised, was not built for and will continue to denigrate humans and pedestrian alike. and, car drivers will continue to demean and fear monger about walking and public transportation. the suv & light truck arms race is turning thoroughfares which should have multitudes of modes of transport within and serve people into raceways where you can go 45 with no repercussions. right hand turns on red have nearly hit me more times than i have fingers.

i live in a city where we can afford to widen the 405 into oblivion and bloat lapd’s budget yearly and yet we can’t provide good enough infrastructure for angelenos?? this is a major policy failure and we are living with its effects. i’m so tired of living in a city built for the wealthy and for the vehicle. we need to change los angeles zoning codes, enforce rent caps, institute a low income rent moratorium, tear down the 110, 10, 710, 101, 405, and 210, institute a robust commuter rail system, publicize the railroads, remove eighteen wheelers as the primary mode of freight movement, expand heavy rail through urban core, increase density along metro corridors and use property taxes to pay for projects and maintain system, increase metro ambassadors, clean the cars, update the rolling stock, rebuild union station, create streetcar suburbs in la county, increase density in the suburbs, turn all boulevards and avenues into mixed mode thoroughfares, increase cycling network, create a statewide engineering and construction firm instead of outsourcing, produce american made rolling stock, create a high speed rail system, and turn cities back into thriving hubs of culture where we can afford rent, create art, live lives, move freely, build community, and live healthier, more fulfilling lives.

sorry for any typos, inconsistencies, or any oddities. i’m typing this while walking 25 minutes late to my public policy class.

[raccoon-formality]

2024 Commitment

(this is a re-post from Patreon)

Hello,

This is Matthew and I am here to talk about some stuff regarding this Patreon account.

Let me start with the less than good news. I would like to apologize for neglecting my obligations near the end of last year. Parking Ticket Mayhem and Scaling Up Industries did not include Patreon member mentions and I also didn't release early access versions of those games either. Although right now I believe most people supporting me are friends who would support me anyways, it is still a level of disrespect and negligence to your support that I would not like to continue going forward.

So, that leads quite smoothly into the changes I am making. Starting 2024, I am making a commitment to myself to be more professional. I will be taking my commitments more seriously and will be moving forward with more transparency. This restructuring coincides with the rebranding I am doing.

Games from now on won't be published unless the Patreon member mention is added somewhere. I will also been setting a reminder to publish regular written progress reports (either monthly or bi-weekly, to be determined). These reports will be public and probably will be able to be posted on multiple platforms for your convenience. At the same time, the most recent early access versions of my games will be published if applicable. Game jam games or short projects (under 2 weeks) won't get early access versions.

To that point, I want to do more long term projects. Heavy trucking was the only project I spent more than a month on and I think it would be a good idea for me to do more of them. This type of project would be what I would be releasing early access to. I have a couple ideas for larger projects I want to make. That is part of the reason why I am making these changes. Whatever I do end up making, I want to make sure that this is sustainable for long term commitments. 

You may have also noticed the new logo and redesigned website, this is part of the rebrand I mentioned earlier. I really want to make this year the year I do big things. I want to make this dumb hobby project mine into a brand that can be recognized for it's quality, consistency, and commitment to transparency.

So, with all that out of the way, let me get into what I'm actually doing.

Yesterday, I published The Pig Pen, a small, minimalist arcade action game. This game is a landmark for, among other things (First to fulfill the commitment of patreon thanks, first to have the new logo. first game I've made to have an online leaderboard, First godot 4 game, ect.), being submitted to the first ever game jam I have hosted. The jam was called One Last Game 2023 and it took place between the 29th of December to the 1st of January. This game jam was not only a success, it completely blew expectations out of the water. With over 100 people joining and over 30 entries.

As for my other projects, Scaling Up Industries was a ton of fun to make, gained me a bunch of experience with working in teams, and I believe we made a really quality game considering the time restraints. Parking Ticket Mayhem exploded in popularity right after it's launch, it is now sitting at ~8,700 views on itch.io and another 8,100 views on newgrounds.

Heavy Trucking has made $304.69 (USD) to date, most (about $208.59) of which coming in the first few weeks. It has also gone on sale during itch.io's offical halloween sale and winter sale (which is still going on during the time of writing), making $46.60 and $24.50 (gross USD) respectively. Leaving $25 of copies that were sold for full price. Of this, ~7% goes to payment processors, ~10% has been chosen to go to itch.io, and then ~24% is taken by the tax man. Leaving ~$200 net. ~$40 went to getting me a new mouse after my dumb stupid razer mouse started double clicking and flaking out one me.

I am planning on making and maintaining a page on my website for statistics for people to look at so they can see how many videos, downloads, money, ect. my games make. Transparency is important to me because I believe withholding information only leads to speculation and conspiracy. Which is why (most of) my projects are on github.

Speaking of github, that is another thing I would like to talk about. All of my projects will be published publicly on github with two exceptions. One, if the game has online or proprietary software in it (such as The Pig Pen with it's online leaderboard or if I published a game on console, which i doubt will happen this year, that will probably not be allowed to be published). This is to ensure safety with these online services and so I don't get sued by Big Nintendo. Two, if a game contains NSFW (adults only) content. Github has a strict content policy and because of that games with NSFW content would be violating their policy if I were to publish them there. So, to solve that problem, I have made a git.gay account for if I want to do that.

Also, late last year I uploaded the source code for an unfinished project I was working on titled Cranky Raccoon for playdate. I had no plans on finishing it any time soon, so I thought it would be best to publish it on github and let people study it if they wanted to.

Alright, I've been rambling for a while now, so I will give a TL:DR and see you in the next progress report that will hopefully not be as lengthy as there won't be as much to catch up on.

TL:DR - Thank you for your support. Sorry for not doing the things I said I would. 2023 was a great year and I plan on making 2024 even better. More frequent updates are to come.

https://raccoonformality.com/stats