#its literally less than two million dollars

[obsidiannebula]

Rereading I, Robot as an adult, and many things stick out to me now, but one that I can't get over is what constitutes large sums of money in this (sometimes) future society. Oh, you don't want to scrap a few dozen possibly-dangerous robots because they cost a whopping thirty-thousand dollars? Boo-hoo. Your megacorp sure would miss that drop in the bucket.

[donascozylivingroom]

LET GO OF THE STRESS AND HUSTLE TO 'GET THERE'

I was scrolling through tiktok and i found a post by someone who told me if i am comfortable in my life i shouldn't be, because i am not working on my next level. i got annoyed and skipped, two videos later: "if u want to be more comfortable..." ... skip!

i'm tired of society convincing us where we are is not ok. i either must want to be more or less comfortable, never accept my life and improve upon the life i have right now with as tiny steps as i feel i can right now.

guess what - I AM COMFORTABLE! And I love it.

I used to be a master at hustling, doing everything i can to get my million dollars and NYC Penthouse. Manifesting didn t work for me until i learned to robotically affirm and persist, and since then i am getting everything i want. And yeah I still have resistance to 2 of my only big desires, everything else i'm getting affirming 1-3 times because i assume i only need to affirm once and i get it, i repeated that for a while and ever since manifestation has been so easy.

And yeah just because i didn t get my 2 main desires yet, I AM COMFORTABLE. I understand that those things I want so much are part of my soul lessons and why my soul came here. God/Source/myself before this life decided to make some things harder than others, and that's okay.

My whole life i was either uncomfortable because i didn t get something external, or worried - why am I so comfortable?

I learned to never do anything that is not easy because my plan for this life is to FLOW, but still i was fed by the media that i am not perfect as i am, or where i am. It's not true.

Wherever you are, it's your starting place, your zero point. And if you are experiencing it, you are probably meant to be there. I mean look around u in the present moment, not to your mind. Are you okay? You're meant to be here, boo.

How can you make your life more beautiful where you are? How can you be more grateful for what is around you? What you already have.

There s no rush, you don't have to get there tomorrow. I know when you are young it seems like you have to do everything very fast, and the speed of manifestation on this planet has improved since i was a kid, everything seems to be more light and fast, BUT...

There will probably be a few more years until the speed of manifestation will be instant, especially for every single thing.

You are part of a collective, a collective consciousness, and everyone must be on board until they push the START button from above 🤭😁

We are literally on this mission together, it's not just about you, it is about the ascension of Earth and its citizens.

Don't stress! Make it your job to relax whatever happens and you will see small improvement after small improvement which will lead to an easy, chilled life that is financially supported by the Universe enough that u have time to do your affirmations, your journaling, your shadow work, etc. Make it a habit to not stress, because stress is always misaligned since it doesn t feel good.

My life currently: affirming, journaling and pinteresting most of the day while in bed...earlier i did groceries and got a lot of things i love to eat and would be considered expensive where i live. Spent 120 euro today and i am in europe. I don't work. I only manifest haha. I'm yet to be at the financial level i want (one of my two desires i'm working on) but i still live a comfortable life, a life that energetically i wish i will have once i have lots and lots of money, because the vibes are amazing. I'd rather have this warm house and bed, friendships and good vibes than a view from the last floor in NYC from my bed, while ridden with anxiety and loneliness.

Ya know.. Everything will be ok, if you struggle to affirm meditate and try your affirmations just once to check how it feels with eyes closed within your inner being..and then check more affirmations one at a time... and ask yourself, your inner being: what do i really need? what do i really want? and when you are clear, then start repeating and manifesting.

good luck!

[3liza]

saw a youtube sponsorship for a brand that markets itself as "masculine shoes in small sizes, for trans men" and if the entire idea wasn't already preposterous (this is part of a large scale marketing push to convince trans people that clothing that has been available on the normal heterosexual market for generations is "hard to find" so they can charge you hundreds of dollars for it), it's also ugly, and they have chosen to call their company "Tomboy Toes". if you said those two words to my face in a shoe store i would slap you

$120 for a black or brown version of the standard school uniform brogue which has been available all the way down to toddler sizes since uhhhhhhh approximately 1820.

just to double check my sense of reality i went to the largest single online shoe market on earth besides Amazon (zappos) and typed in "women's brogues" and selected size 5 which would be pushing the lower limit on the larger part of the bell curve of adult AFAB people on earth, or at least the northern hemisphere, and there are many options in approximately the same price range depending on brand name, with sales regularly down to much less, on similar or identical styles. ebay also. Tomboy Toes carries down to size EU33 which is around 3.5 US Women's and again, that's just in the children's section if you need Picture Day/uniform (children)/ Office Whatever (adult) Shoes and they are on eBay lightly used in great numbers because kids grow out of them in 6-10 months.

is it annoying to be shopping in "women's section" or "kids section" for these things when you are an adult man. yes. so i dont understand the marketing impetus to replicate that exact scenario by naming your company for adult trans men something i would assume was a sassy yet misguided terf brand if i found it on a label in a generic wingtip at Goodwill. cis men who are very small also have to shop in the small sections for their small clothes. i am wearing a t-shirt meant for a 7 year old right now, it says so on the label. it fits me better than any of the shirts i own that are made for the standard american adult. i literally have bigger things to worry about

naturally their "vegan leather" selection is much larger but again, it's ugly Trendy Booties that will fall apart in a year and are, i cant emphasize this enough, made of plastic, nothing special, and in standard women and children's sizes which are already plentiful at every shoe retailer. why are we letting these "trans brands" charge us a $100 tax to pretend to take us seriously (while at the same time calling us "tomboys")? does anyone know

i do, its actually because of the learned helplessness issue again. the accepted wisdom at the tumblr layer of transness is 'its so hard to find [item of clothing that is suitable for trans people]" because the knowledge of how to shop for these items in the actual market has completely evaporated within the last ten years, i watched it happen right in front of me. but it's a complete fallacy, you can find this stuff easily. you can find large women's shoes, small men's shoes, women's clothing with wide shoulders or long torsos, there are entire stores for this already and measurements and sectiions within "department stores" (such as they are) and then after that there are one million billion foam inserts and seams and button placements and belts and scarves and gloves and hem lengths and blah blah blah that trans people and also cis people who are not standard-shaped or who just want their shoes or bras or shirts to fit have already been using for thousands of years so ive been mad about this all day. TOMBOY TOES. they are having us for absolute fools. just call me a slur at this point

i already know some nincompoop is going to match me paragraph for paragraph in a heated defense of the hundred dollar jingle keys boring shoes so i just want them to know in advance: we are not the same. i have so many cool shoes it is unbelievable. in every gender imaginable. and i didn't pay more than like $50 for any of them. also no theres no cheat sheet to learning to buy clothing for your body, i do not say this with any rancor either, its just hard, it takes a long time, and i dont have a cheatsheet for it because there isnt one. except rule #1: dont buy $120 boring ugly shoes from someone jingling their keys in front of your face and calling it Queer Fashion when you can get them for a lot less basically anywhere $120 isnt even a lot for a GOOD pair for mid-range, non-designer leather dress shoes. if you know they will last for ten years and stand up to resoling, it's completely fine. but not for thooooooose

[milk5]

THE MILK5 COFFEE GUIDE VOL. 1

REMOVE #BADBEANS FROM YOUR LIFE FOREVER

If you are a #TrueBlueCoffeeHead and subsisting on supermarket beans and/or frequent visits to big chains like Starbucks, PLEASE help yourself (and your local community, the environment, coffee workers, etc) and buy a pour over filter and freshly roasted, quality beans from a local roaster. Explicitly seek out Fairtrade Organic/Smithsonian Bird Friendly certified beans if possible. The taste of shade-grown coffee is incredibly flavorful AND you can be certain that your beans aren't the product of yucky pesticides, actual slave labor, and the annihilation of millions of acres of rainforest.

To start with what you need, a goose-neck kettle and pour over carafe are good purchases, but a suitably sized mason jar and regular kettle still work on a budget. Learning how to make a great pour over will raise your home coffee game to professional standards without needing to spend literal thousands of dollars on a real grinder/steamer/espresso machine setup -- if you're able to buy all of these items new for less than a thousand dollars, you're going to be down a few hundos in exchange for some pretty shitty machines. Regardless, a pour over setup with good beans will pay for itself VERY rapidly, assuming it replaces frequent Starbucks visits or whatever other chain you were going to. If you frequent a LOCALLY OWNED coffee shop that you like, keep going! You're an important part of the ecosystem.

What about grinding the beans? Should I get pre-ground beans? Would a cheapo blender-like blade grinder work?

NEVER touch a blade grinder again. It doesn't matter as much if you have #BadBeans, but if you have good beans, ALWAYS use a grinder with a burr; blade grinders just chop up your beans randomly into particles of massively varying sizes, leading to simultaneous over-extraction and under-extraction, generally leading to wildly inconsistent flavors and low repeatability. Burrs will always grind the beans into uniform particles and ensure that you're always (more or less, every cup is different to an extent) getting a consistent flavor. Don't buy a burr grinder -- just bring your beans to a local coffee shop, buy a drink, tip well, and ask the barista if they could grind the beans for you when you can clearly tell that they aren't busy. I have NEVER been refused, just go to a place with less sour employees if they won't help you out. Specify the coarseness that you'd like; smaller grounds have a greater surface area, so they're extracted to a greater extent, resulting in a more intense flavor; coarse grounds are the inverse. Lots of people recommend medium-coarse for pour overs (about 80% coarse 20% fine), but I prefer the stronger flavor of medium/drip (dead middle, 50% coarse 50% fine). It's also better to grind your beans periodically, as freshly-ground beans will taste better, but it's fine to have it pre-ground or ground all at once if you aren't able to easily make coffee shop trips every week or two. As far as roasts go, there's an entire gradient for you to explore -- not just the few that I list here; light roasts have a more sour, fruitier flavor, medium roasts are well rounded, and dark roasts are rich and smokey. Medium-dark is my personal favorite.

Experiment!!! It's all about your own taste, after all.

How do I make a good pour over?

Again, it depends on your taste. My go-to is a vigorous fourth-cup of grounds to 300ml of water; this is easily on the stronger end, but it's what works for me. More common ratios are usually weighed out on a kitchen scale, so consider picking one up if you don't already have one. Document your process until you get to your favorite! I always stop the kettle a little before it gets to its terminal temperature, then pour just enough water onto the grounds to let it bloom -- wait for one minute, and then start pouring a small-ish portion of the water onto the grounds every 20 seconds (this is where my own technique varies the most, it usually takes between 3-4 minutes to finish since I'm not pouring standard amounts; some people DO measure their pours for even greater consistency). Use the stopwatch on your phone, it's much better than keeping track in your head. Make sure to distribute the water evenly over the grounds, particularly making sure to wash the grounds off the sides every pour. When I'm finished, I like to immediately take a sip to see if a splash of milk or half-and-half would help or hurt the cup -- I think a very good cup of coffee can easily stand on its own without anything else, but additives can absolutely help depending on your personal preferences. Just be sure to taste the black coffee before you add anything.

What if I like the syrupy sweet drinks? What about iced coffee?

From my experience working at/visiting coffee shops, Monin is the most common syrup brand I see at local places. As far as iced coffee goes, coldbrew would be probably be the superior option -- it's also pretty easy to make at your home. I'm not going to be writing a guide for coldbrew any time soon, so you're out of luck there. I also never steam my milk if I'm doing a pour over, so I can't really point you to an inexpensive way to do that. Just know that the cheap handheld stick-frothers do not do the same thing as an actual steamer.

What was that about certifications?

Fairtrade is a pretty notable certification for food items produced in areas that have a history for being exploited (so pretty much the bulk of the global south), it can get very complex -- read more about it here. The goal is to ensure that the workers and communities involved in the production of the product receive fair, livable wages, that labor conditions are safe and reasonable, and that the decisions around the production of the product are made by those directly involved in the labor. FTO refers to Fairtrade Organic, which just means that it meets the standards of both Fairtrade AND organic production -- I'm not exactly sure if the organic standards are based on where the coffee is sold, produced, or both, but regardless, it's still a bonus; organic coffee will almost ALWAYS be shade-grown, which is the way that coffee grows naturally. Since coffee is an understory tree in nature, shade-grown coffee is produced more slowly and under a canopy and thus does not require the forest to be damaged or destroyed to grow; however, not all organic coffee will necessarily take place in a completely natural, untouched rain forest setting. Industrial non-organic coffee is most often produced under direct sun in gigantic clear-cut monocrop rows and usually with massive usage of potentially harmful inputs like, such as various pesticides and fertilizers. Direct sun coffee grows faster, but it has a distinctly different taste and is easily the most damaging method of coffee production to both the environment and the local communities. Smithsonian Bird-Friendly is the most rigorous certification for coffee in particular; FTO is more or less a pre-requisite to achieve SBF. Coffee likes to grow in tropical, equatorial environments -- these environments are also the areas of the greatest bird diversity in the world (and, really, biodiversity in general) and the destination for most migratory birds during the winter. The coffee industry has destroyed literal millions of acres of rain forest across the world, which has resulted in the death of billions of birds worldwide over the past 50 years. SBF guarantees the FTO criteria PLUS the additional criteria that the coffee must be produced in forests that are more-or-less in their natural state with thriving diversity of endemic species of flora and fauna. It's harder to find SBF-certified coffee than FT(O)-certified coffee, but the Smithsonian website has a handy vendor locator here. I'm not confident that it works beyond U.S. vendors, so I apologize to anyone interested abroad. Note that some of these certifications may be exclusive to particular continents; I need to do more research on the subject, but the tropical forests around the world vary wildly -- this adds a level of complexity to the goals and criteria of a particular certification. I am confident that all of the certifications that I have mentioned apply to South and Central America (and most likely the Caribbean), so keep that in mind. Also, watch out for phony certifications; big corporations frequently buy out existing certification organizations and/or create new green-sounding organizations to fool well-meaning consumers.

Where should my brand new beans come from?

Like wine, the exact qualities of a bean depend on its terroir, or the specific methods and geographic factors involved in its growth. However, some countries have trends in how the coffee is generally grown; some counties will practice shade-growing more than others and some countries will practice direct-sun industrial methods more than others. As a rule of thumb, Arabica beans are mostly grown in shade or partial shade, while Robusta is generally grown in direct sun. Defer to certifications if applicable.

The following areas primarily practice shade-growing:

Mexico

El Salvador

Peru

Panama

Nicaragua

Guatemala

Cuba

Timor

New Guinea

Ethiopia

Burundi

Rwanda

Tanzania

Zambia (*)

Zimbabwe (*)

Papua New Guinea

Sulawesi

Timor + East Timor

India

The following areas primarily practice direct-sun growing:

Colombia

Brazil

Costa Rica

Hawaii

Yemen

Kenya

Angola

Benin

Central African Republic

Congo

Gabon

Ghana

Guinea

Equatorial Guinea

Ivory Coast

Liberia

Nigeria

Sierra Leone

Togo

Cameroon

Madagascar

Malawi (**)

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Sumatra (***)

Java

Vietnam

China

Jamaica

Again, this is just a rule of thumb; there are exceptions to both and I'm sure that I've left out several production areas. Most of this information comes from the blog Coffee and Conservation, written by ornithologist Julie Craves. I've only tried a very small percentage of these origins; so far, my favorites are Sumatran (Arabica, of course) and Peruvian.

*The source that I got this information from mentioned that some avoid Zambian and Zimbabwean coffee due to concerns of it helping fund violent conflict in the area; this particular article, however, is from 2006 and may be wildly out of date. I couldn't find much more info on this topic when I searched elsewhere.

**They primarily produce Arabica with organic methods, despite the sunny conditions.

***Sumatra is likely the most notable coffee-growing island in Asia; while the majority is Robusta grown on plantations that have deforested a horrifyingly large percentage of the island, the Arabica grown in the north is well-known for its far healthier growing conditions (shade + organic, usually) and extremely distinct flavor.

Volume 2?

I may eventually add on to this post, most likely with a Turkish coffee guide coming next. I used to make Turkish coffee quite frequently, but I would need to dig up my old favorite recipe and cezve first. French press and coldbrew stuff will be in the more distant future if at all.

If any of this info looks wrong, let me know and I'll edit the post :-)

Enjoy your cup!!!!

[dear-ao3]

can you pls do an f1 race summary from this weekend i'm literally living for your f1 lore stories

ABSOLUTELY

ok so while i will not go into Everything from this weekend (cause there was a lot) i will do my best to talk about the last 10 laps because wow.

so!

here's what you need to know:

heading into the last race of the year (abu dhabi), the standings for the constructors championship were as follows:

red bull: 822 mercedes: 392 ferrari: 388

so while redbull had secured the win several races ago, ferrari and mercedes were still duking it out for 2nd (keep in mind, were talking several million dollars difference in prize money here)

heading into the race the two teams were about even. charles leclerc was starting p2 on the grid with his teammate carlos sainz starting an abysmal p16 after crashing in practice (this is the same guy who ran over the manhole cover in vegas and narrowly avoided getting royally and permanently fucked). on the mercedes side george russell was starting p4 (mostly thanks to lando norris fucking up his qualifying lap but landos abu dhabi race is another story entirely) and lewis hamilton was starting p11.

heading into the final 10 laps the two teams were neck and neck for second in the constructors championship. but, carlos sainz had once again been fucked over by ferrari strategy because while he had already pitted once, he was on hard tires both times (you have to run two different compound tires during the race as per rules) so he still needed to pit again to put on a set of medium tires. so while he was hovering around p10ish, ferraris baller strategy of "wait for a safety car to pit" was looking grimmer and grimmer as no one crashed into each other and therefore there was no safety car. so heading into the last 10 laps, it was pretty clear that carlos was not getting any points to help the team (points are scored if you end p10 or higher), leaving it all down to charles leclerc.

sainz ended up pitting on the last lap and finishing in a horrendous p18 (tho technically it was a dnf because of the tire thing).

charles leclec was chilling up in p2, about 16 seconds off of max verstappen (the least important person in this story). behind charles was george russell, lando norris, then sergio perez.

lap 47. perez tries to pass lando norris. he is unsuccessful and they bump into each other. its kind of unclear who causes the accident (the announcers debated fiercely over it) but lando gets pushed off the track, still ahead of perez. race control debates it and end up giving perez a 5 second time penalty.

perez passes norris, then moves on to pass russell. hes now in 3rd. but, he still has the 5 second time penalty, meaning that if he wants to be on the podium he needs to be at least 5 seconds in front of george russell. perez zooms on, now trying to pass leclerc.

lap 58. the last lap. george russell is in 4th (but will end 3rd because of perez's time penalty) and hamilton is in 9th. this will put mercedes just 3 points ahead of ferrari and they will take second in the constructors championship. charles leclerc, who has been getting fucked left right and center up the ass with a fork by ferrari strategy all season long says fuck it what do i have to lose. he has no chance in hell of passing verstappen (who is still 16 seconds ahead of him) but he may have a shot at knocking russell back to 4th (with perez's time penalty) and if he knocks russell back to 4th, ferrari will just narrowly take second in the constructors championship.

so, with all the rage of a man who was deemed ferraris golden boy but hasn't won a single race all year, charles gets on his radio and says the following:

"tell me the gap between checo (perez) and russell. if theres less than 5 seconds ill give him the place (?) and i will let us switch for the last sector. hes got 5 seconds anyway."

the gap between russell and perez is 2.7 seconds. at this rate, russell will still get third and mercedes will take second.

ferrari doesnt exactly tell charles to let checo take p2, but they also don't tell him to not let checo take p2. and boy, charles has already been through the wringer this season, its the last race, he might as well give it everything hes got.

and right now, everything hes got is to let checo pass him, increasing the gap between him and russell. because, 5 seconds will be added on to checos finishing time, and, if he is more than 5 seconds ahead of russell when he finishes, this will keep russell in fourth place. charles will still take p2 with checos time penalty and if all goes according to plan he will be able to singlehandedly secure ferrari second in the constructors championship.

its so genius that you wonder why the ferrari strategists didnt think of it themselves.

but alas, the plan does not work. checo only finishes about 3.7 seconds infant of russell, meaning that with his penalty russell still takes p3, and allowing mercedes to come second in the constructors championship by only 3 points.

charles, rightfully, is fucking pissed. hes done the job of himself, carlos, and the strategists and it still isn't enough to pull out p2.

after the race is over and charles curses spectacularly that they come in 3rd overall, he thanks everyone at ferrari for "this difficult season" (he doesnt sound very thankful at all) and ferrari don't really even acknowledge him

if you want to hear his radios from the last lap they are here

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity finally delivered Sarah Palin's death panels

Tonight (Apr 26), I’ll be in Burbank, signing Red Team Blues at Dark Delicacies at 6PM.

Remember “death panels”? Sarah Palin promised us that universal healthcare was a prelude to a Stalinist nightmare in which unaccountable bureaucrats decided who lived or died based on a cost-benefit analysis of what it would cost to keep you alive versus how much your life was worth.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Palin was right that any kind of healthcare rationing runs the risk of this kind of calculus, where we weight spending $10,000 to extend a young, healthy person’s life by 40 years against $1,000 to extend an elderly, disabled person’s life by a mere two years.

It’s a ghastly, nightmarish prospect — as anyone who uses the private healthcare system knows very well. More than 27m Americans have no health insurance, and millions more have been tricked into buying scam “cost-sharing” systems run by evangelical grifters:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/health/christian-health-care-insurance.html

But for the millions of Americans with insurance, death panels are an everyday occurrence, or at least a lurking concern. Anyone who pays attention knows that insurers have entire departments designed to mass-reject legitimate claims and stall patients who demand that the insurer lives up to its claim:

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/khn-podcast-an-arm-and-a-leg-how-to-shop-for-health-insurance-november-24-2021/

The private healthcare sector is designed to deny care. Its first duty is to its shareholders, not its patients, and every dollar spent on care is a dollar not available for dividends. The ideal insurance customer pays their premiums without complaint, and then pays cash for all their care on top of it.

All that was true even before private equity started buying up and merging whole swathes of the US healthcare system (or “healthcare” “system”). The PE playbook — slash wages, sell off physical plant, slash wages, reduce quality and raise prices — works in part because of its scale. These aren’t the usual economies of scale. Rather the PE strategy is to buy and merge all the similar businesses in a region, so customers, suppliers and workers have nowhere else to turn.

That’s bad enough when it’s aimed at funeral homes, pet groomers or any of the other sectors that have been bigfooted by PE:

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

But it’s especially grave when applied to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

Or emergency room physicians:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

And if you think that’s a capitalist hellscape nightmare, just imagine how PE deals with dying, elderly people. Yes, PE has transformed the hospice industry, and it’s even worse than you imagine.

Yesterday, the Center for Economic and Policy Research published “Preying on the Dying: Private Equity Gets Rich in Hospice Care,” written by some of the nation’s most valiant PE slayers: Eileen Appelbaum, Rosemary Batt and Emma Curchin:

https://cepr.net/report/preying-on-the-dying-private-equity-gets-rich-in-hospice-care/

Medicare pays private hospices $203-$1,462 per day to take care of dying old people — seniors that a doctor has certified to have less than six months left. That comes to $22.4b/year in public transfers to private hospices. If hospices that $1,462 day-rate, they have lots of duties, like providing eight hours’ worth of home care. But if the hospice is content to take the $203/day rate, they are not required to do anything. Literally. It’s just free money for whatever the operator feels like doing for a dying elderly person, including doing nothing at all.

As Appelbaum told Maureen Tkacik for her excellent writeup in The American Prospect: “Why anybody commits fraud is a mystery to me, because you can make so much money playing within the guidelines the way the payment scheme operates.”

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-26-born-to-die-hospice-care/

In California, it’s very, very easy to set up a hospice. Pay $3,000, fill in some paperwork (or don’t — no one checks it, ever), and you’re ready to start caring for beloved parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles as they depart this world. You do get a site inspection, but don’t worry — you aren’t required to bring your site up to code until after you’re licensed, and again, they never check — not even if there are multiple complaints. After all, no one at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has the job of tracking complaints.

This is absolute catnip for private equity — free government money, no obligations, no enforcement, and the people you harm are literally dying and can’t complain. What’s not to like? No wonder PE companies have spent billions “rolling up” hospices across the country. There are 591 hospices in Van Nuys, CA alone — but at least 30 of them share a single medical director:

https://auditor.ca.gov/reports/2021-123/index.html#pg34A

Medicare caps per-patient dispersals at $32,000, which presents an interesting commercial question for remorseless, paperclip-maximizing, grandparent-devouring private equity ghouls: do you take in sick patients (who cost more, but die sooner) or healthy patients (cost less, potentially live longer)?

In Van Nuys, the strategy is to bring in healthy patients and do nothing. 51% of Van Nuys hospice patients are “live discharged” — that is, they don’t die. This figure — triple the national average — is “a reliable sign of fraud.”

There are so many hospice scams and most of them are so stupid that it takes a monumental failure of oversight not to catch and prevent them. Here’s a goodun: hospices bribe doctors to “admit” patients to a hospice without their knowledge. The hospice bills for the patient, but otherwise has no contact with them. This can go on for a long time, until the patient tries to visit the doctor and discovers that their Medicare has been canceled (you lose your Medicare once you go into hospice).

Another scam: offer patients the loosest narcotics policy in town, promising all the opioids they want. Then, once their benefits expire, let them die of an overdose (don’t worry, people who die in hospice don’t get autopsies):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

You can hire con artists to serve as your sales-force, and have them talk vulnerable, elderly people into enrolling in hospice care by convincing them they have nothing to live for and should just die already and not burden their loved ones any longer.

Hospitals and hospices also collude: hospitals can revive dying patients, ignoring their Do Not Resuscitate orders, so they can be transfered to a hospice and die there, saving the hospital from adding another dead patient to their stats.CMS’s solution is perverse: they’re working with Humana to expand Medicare Advantage (a scam that convinces patients to give up Medicare and enrol in a private insurance program, whose private-sector death panel rejects 13% of claims that Medicare would have paid for). The program will pay private companies $32,000 for every patient who agrees to cease care and die. As our friends on the right like to say, “incentives matter.”

Appelbaum and co have a better idea:

Do more enforcement: increase inspections and audits.

Block mergers and rollups of hospices that make them too big to fail and too big to jail.

Close existing loopholes.

They should know. Appelbaum and her co-authors write the best, most incisive analysis of private equity around. For more of their work, check out their proposal for ending pension-plan ripoffs by Wall Street firms:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/05/mego/#A09948

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Burbank, Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: An industrial meat grinder, fed by a conveyor belt. A dead, elderly man is traveling up the conveyor, headed for the grinder's intake. The grinder is labelled 'HOSPICE' in drippy Hallowe'en lettering. It sits in a spreading pool of blood.]

Image: Seydelmann (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpghttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[youcouldmakealife]

LBTE: Jared (149-150)

In which Jared is the last to find out about his sister's new boyfriend, and he takes it just as calmly as you'd expect.

If you would like to follow along the series page is here.

“Um,” Jared says, when he opens the front door of their apartment to find Bryce beaming right at him.

Like, right at him. Like if Jared had swung open the door without paying attention he might have smacked Bryce right in his beautiful face.

Literally ran to the door like a puppy hearing its human come home.

“I’m allowed to train again!” Bryce says.

“Like,” Jared says. “Very carefully?”

“Very carefully,” Bryce confirms, and then, as if he’s trying to completely undermine Jared’s confidence that he’ll take that advice seriously, bolts into the living room at high speed.

A puppy with the zoomies.

Jared catches “—sorry, had to tell Jared—“, which he thinks means Bryce literally dropped everything to tell him, everything presumably being a call with Elaine. Though it could be someone else, Jared supposes. Theoretically.

“—love you too, mom,” Bryce says, then reappears so quickly Jared thinks he bolted right back.

Zoom zoom. (To no one’s surprise, he did — albeit with ‘one sec I think Jared’s home’ first. Elaine didn’t mind)

“Come on!” Bryce says, and that’s how Jared caps off an entire day at the gym by going to another, closer gym, and trying not to helicopter husband, partly because they’re in public, and partly because Bryce might bite his head off if he gets between him and the equipment after a long absence.

Relationship with Jared over, now gym equipment is Bryce’s best friend.

Jared says nothing, even when a piece of penne lands on the carpet. Bryce is too happy about all the complaining he’s doing to deflate him. And it’s not like Jared’s worried Bryce is going to go hungry.

He does, however, make Bryce clean the pasta up, because if he didn’t he’s pretty sure Bryce would literally not even notice it was there. He has to do it again himself after Bryce does a half-assed job and then puts his nose right in his phone. Thank fuck it wasn’t a tomato based sauce or their carpet would be toast. Why do they even have a carpet? They’re clearly not responsible enough for one.

Seriously, carpet should have disqualified the place.

“Uh, J?” Bryce says. “You might want to check twitter?”

“Signing?” Jared asks on his way back from the kitchen. It’s getting around that time where some of the stragglers realise a contract-less season is imminent and take whatever offers are still available. That or teams realise they’re missing a key piece of the picture and start looking into what’s available and affordable. “Trade?”

“Um,” Bryce says, his whole body a wince, which is — concerning. “Just look?”

No fucking way Bryce is telling him, you can’t make him.

“Did they trade Gabe?” Jared asks.

They can’t trade Gabe. Gabe’s franchise, one of only two players from that Cup season still on the Canucks. He’s a fan favourite, and a sizeable contingent of their younger fans don’t remember a team without him. It’s pretty much an open secret he wants to spend his entire career in Vancouver, and that’s mutual. Also Stephen would fight management. Possibly literally.

Also Jared would be sad, so clearly it’s not allowed.

It has to be someone on the team who means more to Jared than they do to Bryce, considering it’s something Bryce thinks Jared needs to see for himself, which leaves Gabe and —

Literally it’s just Gabe.

Also Stephen, but Jared’s pretty sure Brian can’t trade him.

“Nobody’s traded!” Bryce says. “Just. You need to see it? Instead of me telling you about it?”

Not for a million dollars will Bryce tell him.

If people on the internet are talking about how hot they think Jared’s dad is again, he swears to god —

One of my favourite subplots that doesn’t make the main narrative — Don the DILF.

“Erin’s trending again,” Bryce says.

Jared’s sister trending on twitter is really not something that Jared expected to happen twice. Like, even in a big Canadian market, that’s getting slightly absurd for a the sister of a middle-six forward.

Imagine how she feels. (She again thinks it’s funny)

Bryce gently kicks him in the shin. “You might want to look it up.”

“No thanks,” Jared says.

Bryce kicks him again. “Seriously, though.”

“If I do will you stop kicking me?” Jared asks.

“Yeah,” Bryce says.

Please look this up out of your own volition so you won’t shoot Bryce Marcus, Messenger.

“J,” Bryce says. “He’s clearly not going to pick up.”

Jared hits ‘end’ and then ‘call’ for the fourth time.

Surely he will pick up the fourth time you call to yell at him.

“Maybe just leave a message?” Bryce suggests weakly.

“Are you fucking my sister?” Jared asks when the operator’s finished telling him the number he has dialled is currently unavailable, because Julius couldn’t even be bothered to set his voicemail message after literal years in Canada. “And pick up your fucking phone, Halla, I swear to god.”

Bryce regrets his suggestion.

“What,” he says.

“He’s probably not going to want to call you back?” Bryce says. “If you sound like that?”

“Nobody cares what Julius wants!” Jared says.

“Um,” Bryce says. “Are you — okay?”

Bryce increasingly realising Jared was completely blindsided by this and mentally rewinding to every time he thought Jared was just ignoring the relationship out of pettiness.

“You knew about this,” Jared says with dawning realisation.

Bryce looks shifty.

“You knew,” Jared says. “And you let me find out from twitter.”

“I didn’t know know,” Bryce says.

They have not been formally told, but nobody has been hiding this from them. See: several parts ago, when Erin was visiting a friend in Edmonton (nobody told Jared it was a university friend, as he stated, Jared just assumed it must be because he knows Erin didn’t keep in touch with anyone from high school or earlier. Neither Matheson sibling is a big friend maker)

“Jared,” Bryce says, then, from the other side of a slammed door, “Hey, that’s my room!”

Jared is sulking, so by all rights the sulking room now belongs to him.

He’d ask if the picture was misinterpreted, like it was with Bryce, but there really aren’t that many interpretations for a kiss. Sure, some cultures greet one another with kisses, but as far as Jared is aware, the Finns are not one of them, and neither are the Mathesons.

Ah yes, the famed Matheson culture. Signs of affection are ribbing, mockery, and snide.

And even if a kiss on the mouth was a Finnish greeting, it’d be one Julius would pointedly not do. Julius doesn’t like participating in things.

This is so accurate but hilarious from Jared because it’s one of the reasons they get along so well.

He’s not your liney anymore. Erin replies. P sure both your current lineys are already taken.

Also he’s literally on a rival team now? That’s like the anti-liney.

Ene-liney.

So you’re not denying it. Jared texts. He originally ended the text an exclamation mark, but that looked too dramatic. He’s fine. He’s chill.

So you’re not denying it!

Is this a thing? Jared writes, after deleting the two extra question marks that somehow popped up.

Is this a thing???

How long has this been a thing? Jared asks.

Officially? Like two weeks.

Before this there was some hanging out. But the euphemism-y kind of hanging out. And some texting while Julius was away. But Julius came back from Finland early, even before it was ‘officially’, which makes it a full-on Thing.

Unofficially? Jared asks.

Idk. You know how it is, Erin replies.

Jared does not know how it is. He can’t even begin to guess what she’s referring to, he has so little awareness of how it is. He met Bryce and that was it for him. Well. Give or take a few weeks and a minor grudge.

Oh we’re calling it a minor grudge now?

Wait no you don’t you were engaged at my age hahaha

Erin obviously knows Jared was engaged at nineteen, and gave him shit for it at the time (her ‘I can’t believe you’re going to be a child bride’ is one of my favourite lines in the entire series) but now that she’s nineteen herself?

His phone lights up with another text, which is just hahahahahaha and crying laughing emojis.

She’s dying what were they THINKING.

“Can I come in?” Bryce asks meekly.

“Fine,” Jared says, since it’s not like he’s talking to Erin anymore. Though he doesn’t know why Bryce would want to. This is the sulking room, and Bryce doesn’t seem sulky about this at all.

Only Big Sulky Babies allowed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you?” Bryce says, perching on the bed beside Jared as Jared tries to forcibly wipe his brain clean. “I just — kind of thought it was something we both knew but we were like, pretending we didn’t know so you could ignore it forever.”

Look at Bryce supportively pretend something doesn’t exist because he fears for Jared’s sanity.

“Don and I are cool now,” Bryce says. “Sort of. Mostly. He hasn’t insulted me to my face in like – a while. Huh. That’s a good sign.”

Don did mean it about Bryce being a member of the family after he married Jared. You don’t insult family. Mock? Sure. Tease? Absolutely. But insult? Absolutely not.

“Why didn’t someone actually say ‘hey Jared, you do know this is a thing, right?’” Jared asks. His immediate family and Julius all know that Jared can be, well —

Someone should have made sure he was aware, is the point.

“I honestly think Erin just wanted to see how long it’d take you to figure it out if no one actually said ‘hey Jared, Erin and Julius are dating’,” Bryce says. “And apparently the answer was a picture on twitter?”

Everyone assumed Jared already knew and was pointedly ignoring it. Except Erin. She knew that Jared would yell at her or Julius when he knew, and therefore he was still in the dark.

Bryce looks shifty again. “Ash told me that Erin said that?”

Which means Ash knows, obviously. And that Ash and Bryce have discussed this. So Chaz must know. And Maia. Not that babies know things, just —

Don’t worry, Jared, I promise Maia didn’t know before you.

Fucking Oilers fans found out about this before Jared did. Flames fans did.

He doesn’t know why, but the fact Flames fans knew this before Jared did makes this so much worse than if it was just Oilers fans.

This is simultaneously a weird thing to get stuck on, yet also totally understandable. Oilers fans are Julius fans. Flames fans are Julius haters. But also may remember Erin from Bryce drama. Also fuck Flames fans, all Jared’s homies hate Flames fans.

Jared’s phone buzzes from where he tossed it after the last emoji round. He bets it’s more hahahahas. Possibly some skulls. Erin likes to die laughing.

She can’t hahaha any longer, she’s already dead from laughing.

150. Affront

Jared thinks people are supposed to be afraid of death. He’s pretty sure that’s common, reasonable. When threatened with death, people should feel fear. But what is Julius Halla doing right now? He’s laughing. At Jared.

He basically lived with you, Jared, he knows just how little true bite there is in you.

“Stop laughing,” Jared hisses. “You traitor.”

“Who am I a traitor to,” Julius says. He sounds vaguely curious, like someone who’s been accused of something ludicrous, and is interested to see how you came to that conclusion. Which is rich, for a traitor.

But who is he a traitor TO, Jared?

“Me!” Jared says. “And friendship! And lineys! And — there’s a code!”

I do enjoy Jared continually using Julius being his liney as a reason when they have now been divisional rivals longer than they were ever linemates.

“You think it’s the definition of toxic masculinity,” Julius says. “And that it frequently treats women as objects and prizes to be won, and also acts like showing affection towards your friends is gay. And you’re gay, and you think showing affection is disgusting, so obviously there is no connection.”

He listens <3

“She’s like, ten!” Jared says. “She’s way too young for you.”

Julius is very quiet. “How much older than you is—“

There’s about a two and a half year age difference between Erin and Julius. Bryce and Jared’s is just shy of four years. As Julius well knows, the bastard.

“Eating my food and dating my sister,” Jared says. “Who is a child.”

“How old were you when you got engaged?” Julius asks.

Jared can only an inarticulate sound of rage in answer, because Julius knows exactly how old he was when he got engaged.

The answer is ‘exactly as old as Erin is now’. As Julius is well aware, the BASTARD. Also, a missing word, my bad.

“Wait,” Jared says, suddenly horrified. More horrified. “You’re not engaged, are you?”

“No!” Julius says, sounding equally horrified.

This question isn’t the reason Julius doesn’t want to get married, but it certainly did not help.

“How did this even happen,” Jared moans. “Wait. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know anything. Why didn’t you tell me.”

This feels like a trick question.

“I wanted to wait to tell you in person,” Julius says. “Because I was concerned you’d be, well. You know.”

People keep telling Jared he knows things that he does not know.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Hysterical,” Julius says.

“I am not hysterical!” Jared says.

This might be more believable if Jared hadn’t shrieked that last bit.

The fact Bryce bursts out laughing in the living room contradicts that statement, but Julius can’t hear him. And maybe it’s coincidental laughter. Maybe Bryce is watching something funny. Because Jared is not hysterical.

“Wait, Erin didn’t think I’d be hysterical?” Jared says.

Look, Jared may deny he’s hysterical, but also — why didn’t Erin think he’d be hysterical? Even if he isn’t. Because he is not. But also — really?

For all of Erin’s many…many…many faults, an inability to predict Jared’s behaviour is unfortunately not one of them. She used her predictive ability for blackmail purposes way too much when they were younger, always caught him in the act when he was breaking the few house rules he ever broke then threatened to snitch if Jared didn’t do shit for her. He made her so many grilled cheese sandwiches. To this day he associates grilled cheese with smug smiles and extortion.

Admission of hysteria. Also Jared makes an excellent grilled cheese sandwich. Worth surveillance for blackmail purposes for sure.

“But I was in Finland at the beginning of summer,” Julius says. “And then Bryce injured his shoulder, and you went to Vancouver, and there was no good time. And then twitter.”

Julius, if asked, would say they were a thing months earlier than Erin would. But they had not yet defined the relationship.

“She’s fine,” Julius says. “She thinks it’s funny.”

He sounds faintly scandalised. Which is understandable, because it’s not funny.

“Did you tell her it’s not funny,” Jared says.

“I did,” Julius says. “She says she gets to decide if it’s funny or not.”

“But it’s not funny,” Jared says.

“I know,” Julius says.

Counterpoint from Erin: it’s fucking hilarious, you’re both just boring.

“Don’t like —“ Jared says, then pauses, because there are a lot of different demands warring in him right now. “That’s my sister, Halla.”

“I know,” Julius says. “Would it help if I told you I have…strong…feelings—“

“Gross,” Jared says. “Stop talking.”

“Okay,” Julius says, sounding greatly relieved.

I love their friendship. Every time feelings are involved they both react like cats getting sprayed with water.

“No,” Jared says. “Obviously it is. Did you know that they were together?”

There’s a silence.

“Mom?” Jared says.

“…did you not?” his mom asks. “Jared!”

NOBODY was hiding this from Jared. Nobody.

“Erin’s spent more time in Edmonton than Calgary since her semester ended,” mom says.

“She has a friend there,” Jared says, then, “Oh.”

Yes.

There's only one direct reference to Erin and Julius’ relationship before Jared finds out in the series, because I had to ride a careful line there, as Jared hadn’t noticed anything, so his POV wouldn’t really reflect the information he wasn’t paying attention to.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jared demands. ‘Friend’ is not telling him. ‘Friend’ is a euphemism you use when the other person already knows.

“I thought you knew!” his mom says. “And were just immaturely pretending that as long as you didn’t acknowledge it then it wasn’t actually happening!”

Jared thinks it might be a concerning sign that the two people who know him best both assume he thinks that if he pretends something hard enough, it won’t happen.

Yes that might indicate something about you, Jared.

“Yes!” Jared says. “Why aren’t you mad about this? Your daughter’s dating a hockey player. A hockey player. And you’re letting her?”

“You’re a hockey player, Jared,” his mom says. “As is your husband. And literally all of your friends.”

This isn’t exactly Grace’s mom upon finding out she was dating Raf.

“That’s just people in general, sweetie,” his mom says. “And we know Julius is a nice young man.”

“He is not,” Jared says. Julius is many things, but he is not nice.

“You know what I mean by nice, Jared,” his mom says.

He’s not a nice boy, but he is a good one. Also he speaks Matheson quite fluently.

“You can’t just assume that I like him.”

“Jared,” his mom says. “You love that boy. You brought him home for Christmas.”

“Out of the kindness of my heart,” Jared says.

“You brought home someone you don’t like for Christmas out of the kindness of your heart,” his mom says. “And then you invited him to your wedding. As one of the handful of guests who wasn’t immediately related to you or Bryce. Out of the kindness of your heart.”

Jared, we all know there is not even close to that much kindness in your heart.

“Obviously you like him, or he wouldn’t be one of your best friends,” his mom says. “And since you’re choosy about who you’re friends with, that means a lot. You have extremely good taste in friends, when you actually bother to make them.”

Jared picks at the hem of his shorts.

Jared thinks it’s quite rude for his mom to use facts and reason against him when he is intent on being unreasonable.

“Gross, love,” Jared says.

“I won’t tell Erin you love her, I promise,” his mom says.

“Good,” Jared says. “Ew.”

How dare anyone say he loves his (demon) sister.

“Jared,” his mom says. “Are you making this all about you?”

“No,” Jared says.

“Jared,” his mom says.

“Well it’s a little bit about me, isn’t it!” Jared says. “He’s my friend. And liney.”

“Former liney,” his mom says. Everyone’s so fixated on that part. Liney status can last past being teammates. Look at Jared and Chaz: linemates for life. Even though Bryce subsequently stole Chaz a little, despite the fact they played on completely different lines on the Flames. Not that it’s stealing. Couples share.

Jared can share. Look at how good Jared is at sharing. He only holds Bryce befriending Chaz against him a little, years down the line. That’s sharing.

Eventually Julius is going to get exposed to Erin’s sparkling personality.

He’s had some exposure therapy, rooming with Jared.

Jared would mention that long-distance relationships are highly prone to failure, but he’s pretty sure mom would bring up how much of his relationship with Bryce involved long-distance, and Jared is frankly sick of people reminding him of his own extremely successful relationship, and not letting him be hypocritical.

What bullshit.

He hates arguing with his mom. It’s like arguing with himself, except worse, because at least when he argues with himself, he always technically wins.

The best kind of argument.

“You remind me so much of your dad right now,” mom says.

“Mom!” Jared says.

“A little Don in the making,” his mom says. “He’d be so proud.”

Jared tries to tell her to take it back, but all he can manage is an inarticulate sound of rage. Again.

The cruelest thing you could say to him.

“I got Thai from that place on Burrard you really like,” Bryce says, then, all in a rush, “Sorry for assuming you knew about Julius and Erin and were just pretending you didn’t instead of like, actually not knowing. If I knew you actually didn’t know I would have told you. Or made Erin tell you because it wouldn’t be my place to tell you or. Are you mad at me?”

Sala Thai, for anyone curious. Also, poor Bryce. He really did think Jared knew.

“Did you get me soup to shut me up?” Jared asks.

“I got you it because it’s your favourite?” Bryce says, looking both hurt and confused.

Poor, poor Bryce.

“—and doesn’t he realise what Erin’s like?” Jared says. “Because he is going to be unpleasantly surprised when he gets to know her a little better.”

“Uh,” Bryce says. “I think he’s had a pretty good preview of what Erin’s like?”

BRYCE, NO. I mean, you are 100% correct, but NO.

“We are nothing alike,” Jared says.

“Erin made the exact same face when I said that,” Bryce says. “Like. That’s almost creepy.”

“You’ve said this to her?” Jared says.

“Yeah, because you’re both—“ Bryce says, then, “Ow! She did that too!”

Why do Mathesons keep smacking Bryce’s arm when he tells them the truth?

“We’re nothing alike,” Jared mutters.

Bryce says nothing, but he’s got this look on his face like ‘I’m humouring you right now by not arguing, but you know and I know that you’re full of shit’.

“Stop — looking at me with that face,” Jared says.

Bryce huffs out a laugh. “Erin said—“

Jared can’t hear him.

“Jared,” Bryce says, muffled. “Jared, I know you can hear me.”

Jared cannot.

Erin wasn’t immature enough to put her hands over her ears though, that one’s all Jared.

“Take it back,” Jared says.

“No,” Bryce says. “I’m not pretending something isn’t true just because you don’t like it, that’s ridiculous.”

Jared picks up his noodles.

“I got you soup,” Bryce says sadly as Jared stomps right back to the sulking room, this time with dinner.

Poor, poor Bryce.

[autisticsupervillain]

Now that Zero Punctuation is over, I want to immortalize it with some of Yahtzee's best quotes. God speed you magnificent British bastard.

"Those who had the random chance of being born white in the first world are the most privileged fucking people on this unequal fucking planet and Call of Duty is just those people complaining about how hard life can be when everyone's jealous of you."

"We live in an age where mass communication has counterintuitively turned all attempts at verbal debate into a basketball game where the teams are on different courts, racking up meaningless points and throwing shit over the dividing wall. That's why the only way you can safely express your politics these days is to anonymously spend money. That's how homophobic pizza joints can mysterious aquire a million dollars in donations. So two groups of middle class people annoy each other, Hatred makes tons of money, and the world at large gives less of a toss than a quadriplegic shot putter, good night!"

"The only reason I wanted to talk about it was the depressing inditement of modern gaming it creates. Not by itself, but by Value's indifference to this waterfall of piss trickling down its legacy's nose. Twenty years ago, Half Life was a focal point in gaming's ever-growing development as an artistic medium. The next few years saw a slew of titles that combined triple A game design with genuine emotional story. But what happened between then and now?! Why are the games rewarded with triple A status and income exclusively loot box infested live service bullshit designed not to stimulate our emotions, but to numb them and hypnotize us into lab rats mindlessly pawing the button that makes treats come out while games created with love drown beneath bottom feeders like Hunt Down the Freeman as Valve themselves, once habitual founders of new eras of narrative gaming just waves them on, barely glancing up from their tax paper work. What happened to you! What happened to us!? To the people we were supposed to become!"

"Hogwarts Legacy is by every definition of the phrase, a game made by cunts. As well as very literally a game made by a cunt."

"We really need a better term for shit like Gotham Knights than 'live service'. It sounds too much like a good thing. Being alive is good and so is being serviced. We can't let the publishers control the narrative on this one, they'd call a kick in the bullocks a key entertainment reinvigoration scheme. Hmmm, how about... cunts. Games made by cunts. Evil money grubbing cunts who make soulless, emotion deading skinner boxes deliberately designed to foster addictive behavior. Demonitize me YouTube, I don't care. And neither does my editor. Probably."

"We as gaming audiences have always separated games into the worthies and the unworthies. My dichotomy is this. Games that make you feel vs games that make you numb."

*Begins review* "Undertale is a good game." *Ends review*

"Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything, tee hee hee!"

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

I mean a lot of people aren’t just mad that it’s been like a year since lore relevant content, and over two since a Sides labeled episode, they’re frustrated by the lack of communication and Thomas’ lack of ability to take criticism. He has shamed fans on Twitter for being disgruntled about the long waits, he says things that imply he’s starting the script only to later once again imply he’s starting the script

And the hiatus is made a lot worse by the string of broken promises, like the Asides being shorter unconnected content that could be produce more often as well as the promise that patreon would definitely speed up content (which, since it has opened, content has slowed down.)

It’s not just “This wait is too long and I’m bored!” It’s also “You dance around the status of te show, won’t admit it’s on hiatus while still plugging it for merch and theming your entire patreon around it, and shame fans for thinking it’s ridiculous”

do you hear yourself? this is exactly what i'm saying. REAL SHOWS, that air ON TELEVISION, that have full production crews and budgets of millions, do this all the time.

things go on hiatus. things get caught up in development hell for decades (cough cough, Avatar: The Way of Water). things start, and stop, and get moved around, and priorities shift and stuff has to get pushed back because of unforseen issues. LIKE, for example the office flooded in a hurricane and they had to replace thousands of dollars worth of equipment

and the fact of the matter is, i AM side-eyeing people for being disgruntled about the long waits. i DO think its a ridiculous non-issue that's absurd to be upset about. i went through gigapause, the four year gap between the OG inuyasha series and The Final Act, saw the bbc sherlock hiatus and lived through the tv writer's strike of 2007 without making dramatic five-paragraph essays about how Betrayed I Was by my favorite content creator, which is objectively unhinged, childish and wildly entitled behavior

TL;DR literally none of this matters. it is less than nothing in the grand scheme of your life. get other hobbies besides hounding a man on twitter for updates.

This is the final thing I have to say on this topic and all further asks will be deleted without responses

[fratboykate]

so with the strike, are you going to have time to write more... I can't think of a better word, "proper" entries to kyfbau? Like I'm rereading the wedding and I can't really cry anymore for some reason, but the idea of these two dealing with the asshole Bishop parents is just... its so good.

If we strike I won't have shit to do for however long we're out so...yeah. We should've had a strike in 2020 but these greedy fucks were SO LUCKY with the pandemic. Our contracts are negotiated every 3 years so the last time it was up was May 2020. They played victims with their "oh no the pandemic we can't do anything for you" and obviously the world was in shambles then so we gave in. The work conditions have only deteriorated since then. With inflation, TV writer pay has gone down 23% in the last five years and 17% for films. Showrunners are making less money now than lower levels were ten years ago. A LOT of the people writing your favorite shows and movies are literally on food stamps. The model is abusive and it's not sustainable. Pretty soon only the kids of celebrities and other nepo babies will be able to afford to make a career out of this. That's the last thing we want. There's this huge misconception that everyone who works in the industry is rich and a lot of shitbags on twitter are ragging on writers for wanting to strike and calling us greedy/elites/whatever. That idea is WRONG. Probably less than 1% of all actors, directors, writers get paid millions of dollars. Everyone else was supposed to be "middle class" but that has disappeared in the last decade. Ten years ago a fraction of people worked for minimums (basically the equivalent of union minimum wage) and now MOST people including showrunners work for minimums. Minimums used to be the floor of what writers got paid and studios have now turned it into the maximum regardless of experience or previous success. They've been trying to hide behind the "streaming is not profitable" to do ENDLESS shady shit that I won't go into but that you can find if you scroll through the union tag on twitter. We don't even really get residuals for streaming. If a writer writes for a streaming show, your show could be watched millions of times across the world and you quite literally get residual checks worth cents. Meanwhile people who write for broadcast or cable get a hefty check every time their episode airs. That's one of the least offensive things they've been doing for the past few years.

All of the unions have contracts up this year and it's so bad that you might just see a cascade of strikes back to back. But writers are known to not be afraid to shut shit down so, while we're never the first up to negotiate (that's typically the DGA) other unions this year delayed their negotiations to see how it would go for us so they can basically ride our coat tails and get better deals for everyone. The 2007 strike lasted 100 days and it was so devastating many writers even lost their homes because they couldn't pay their mortgages. Writers are terrified but based on everything I'm seeing, when the Strike Authorization Vote results come back on Monday it's going to probably be close to 100% yes. We're fucking fed up and we're willing to risk everything because if we don't fix this shit now, it's only going to get exponentially worse. It's going to be devastating for a lot of people who are already financially struggling but this is the best long term alternative. No way around it. Soooo if we do strike…be kind to writers. Be kind to writers in general, all the time. People online love to pretend they know how this industry goes but you have NO CLUE unless you work in it. None. If you don't like what happened on a show or you have opinions, pretend it's 2001 and keep it to yourself. We get enough shit from the business to also have to deal with pedantic idiots online.

[mariacallous]

The tragic shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ club in Colorado, is the latest event to transpire in a year marked with a jump in anti-LGBTQ legislation and sentiment, according to LGBTQ advocates.

The shooting, the deadliest attack on LGBTQ people in the U.S. since the Pulse shooting in 2016, occurred on the eve of this year's Transgender Day of Remembrance. Just days earlier, the National Center for Transgender Equality released a report finding that at least 47 transgender people were killed in the past year.

And research is painting a bleak picture when it comes to the lives of LGBTQ Americans: The rate of suicidal thoughts among LGBTQ youth is also on the rise, and is particularly affecting both queer people of color and trans youth.

Meanwhile, across the country, legislators introduced more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills across 36 states in the past year, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group.

Some advocates say violence can be the end result of political efforts geared toward removing protections from LGBTQ Americans.

"You tolerate hateful language, it leads to hateful legislation and it leads to hateful violence," Kevin Jennings, the CEO of Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ civil rights organization, told NPR. "This is not an accident."

In Florida, legislators passed the controversial so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill into law, with Alabama following suit with its own version. In Virginia, the education department's new policies reverse the rights of trans students in bathrooms.

And in the courts, the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade is putting gender-affirming health care in jeopardy.

The year of political action was a strategic move, according to some advocates, ahead of the year's midterm elections.

"It is so cynical, but it is true," Sam Ames, the director of advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, said. "LGBTQ youth, particularly trans youth, have been identified as a very effective wedge issue in a very contentious electoral season."

A year of gains and setbacks

But the year has also been one with other milestones, including a "rainbow wave" of openly LGBTQ candidates who ran — and won — this election year, including the first out trans man to elected to a state legislature.

The number of people identifying as LGBTQ also rose to 7.1%, according to a Gallup Poll, from 5.6% in 2020.

"One thing we've seen is the number of queer and transgender people who feel comfortable and safe to come out continues to grow even in the face of an escalating and violent backlash," said Gillian Branstetter, communications strategist at the ACLU's Women's Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project. "That's because people see more hope in living an authentic life than in living an inauthentic one."

Some advocates say backlash is a standard response.

"In this country, we go two steps forward and we often end up going several more steps back," Ames said. "We have seen incredible gains made legally in the last 10 years, 15 years. And we're starting to see the backlash against those gains and backlash so often falls heaviest on the least powerful."

Jay Brown, senior vice president of programs, research and training for the Human Rights Campaign, said that it's typical to see "this kind of vitriol rise" during an election year, though it seemed less effective this time around.

"We saw millions of dollars be poured into anti-trans campaign ads during this election," Brown said. "Fortunately, many of those elected officials lost their races."

And that is enough to inspire others to keep going.

"People, as what happened in Colorado Springs last night, are literally dying because of our society's failure to do the right thing," Jennings said. "We can't accept that. And we have to keep moving forward. It would be disrespectful to the memory of the people who died."

[bllsbailey]

Who Owns America? Oligarchs Have Bought Up The American Dream

“The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear… They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else… It’s called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.” —George Carlin

Who owns America?

Is it the government? The politicians? The corporations? The foreign investors? The American people?

While the Deep State keeps the nation divided and distracted by a presidential election whose outcome is foregone (the police state’s stranglehold on power will ensure the continuation of endless wars and out-of-control spending, while disregarding the citizenry’s fundamental rights and the rule of law).

America is literally being bought and sold right out from under us.

Consider the facts.

We’re losing more and more of our land every year to corporations and foreign interests. Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land has increased by 66% since 2010. In 2021, it was reported that foreign investors owned approximately 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, which is more than the entire state of Iowa. By 2022 that number had grown to 43.4 million acres. The rate at which U.S. farmland is being bought up by foreign interests grew by 2.2 million acres per year from 2015 to 2021. The number of U.S. farm acres owned by foreign entities grew more than 8% (3.4 million acres) in 2022.

We’re losing more and more of our businesses every year to foreign corporations and interests. Although China owns a small fraction of foreign-owned U.S. land at 380,000 acres, less than the state of Rhode Island, Chinese companies and investors are also buying up major food companies, commercial and residential real estate, and other businesses. As RetailWire explains: “Currently, many brands started by early American pioneers now wave international flags. This revolution is a direct result of globalization.” The growing list of once-notable American brands that have been sold to foreign corporations includes: U.S. Steel (now Japanese-owned); General Electric (Chinese-owned); Budweiser (Belgium); Burger King (Canada); 7-Eleven (Japan); Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge (Netherlands); and IBM (China).

We’re digging ourselves deeper and deeper into debt, both as a nation and as a populace. Basically, the U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card, spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford. The bulk of that debt has been amassed over the past two decades, thanks in large part to the fiscal shenanigans of four presidents, 10 sessions of Congress and two wars. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is more than $34 trillion and will grow another $19 trillion by 2033. Foreign ownership makes up 29% of the U.S. debt held by the public. Of that amount, reports the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, “52 percent was held by private foreign investors while foreign governments held the remaining 48 percent.”

The Fourth Estate has been taken over by media conglomerates that prioritize profit over principle. Independent news agencies, which were supposed to act as bulwarks against government propaganda, have been subsumed by a global corporate takeover of newspapers, television and radio. Consequently, a handful of corporations now control most of the media industry and, thus, the information dished out to the public. Likewise, with Facebook and Google having appointed themselves the arbiters of “disinformation,” we now find ourselves grappling with new levels of corporate censorship by entities with a history of colluding with the government to keep the citizenry mindless, muzzled and in the dark.

Most critically of all, the U.S. government, long ago sold to the highest bidders, has become little more than a shell company, a front for corporate interests. Nowhere is this state of affairs more evident than in the manufactured spectacle that is the presidential election. As for members of Congress, long before they’re elected, they are trained to dance to the tune of their wealthy benefactors, so much so that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money. As Reuters reports: “It also means that lawmakers often spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”

In the oligarchy that is the American police state, it clearly doesn’t matter who wins the White House, because they all work for the same boss: a Corporate State that has gone global.

So much for living the American dream.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

We’re being forced to shell out money for endless wars that are bleeding us dry, money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply, and on and on.

This is no way of life.

It’s tempting to say that there’s little we can do about it, except that’s not quite accurate.

There are a few things we can do: demand transparency, reject cronyism and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people, but it will require that “we the people” stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.

Unfortunately, we’ve become so invested in identity politics that label us based on our political leanings that we’ve lost sight of the one label that unites us: we’re all Americans.

The “powers-that-be” want us to adopt an “us-versus-them” mindset that keeps us powerless and divided. Yet, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the only us versus them that matters is “we the people” against the Deep State.

(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)

═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and The Erik Blair Diaries are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org. Publication Guidelines / Reprint Permission: John W. Whitehead’s weekly commentaries are available for publication to newspapers and web publications at no charge. Please contact staff@rutherford.org to obtain reprint permission. 

[emblazons]

(You can answer this as a Private Ask, if you want)

I agree with you about hiring one's partner who's not qualified. It's like the nepo baby convo in the entertainment industry: untalented actors are getting jobs because of their parent, leaving actually talented actors starving. And what the heck, a chef in architecture? I'm in IT, and if a chef was put into cybersecurity because their partner hired them, that would be disastrous. It'd be like having a less competent Snowden or something in your team. I hope you'll be okay in your job in the short-term; I just wanted to reach out to you after seeing your post because I work for a company where hiring family members is actually commonplace ☹️

lol its okay! And thanks for looking out~ I can answer it openly! I'll keep it vague haha (cut for length)

Honestly I'm not really concerned with my job being threatened atp, given I (transparently) run the entire department and have done such a good job they've given me two 8% raises in only the 2 years I've worked here. My main issues with this, outside of my general (extreme) distaste for nepotism (which is, tragically, super common in upper management at this company as well) are:

1) as far as I know, she's not qualified for the position (given her background and the needs of the role); she was solely hired because she's his wife, and is a "nice person" to have in the space

2) no one, including people who will actively work with/sometimes oversee things regarding the showroom manager (like me) was informed when this decision was made—I found out because we are mutuals on social media; and

3) There isn't even a delineated job description built for this role yet, which means she was hired solely on "vibes" and her relationship with my boss + his friends, and I (who is also hiring a marketing coordinator as we speak) don't even know where the relationship with this role starts and ends...even though the person there will spend quite literally 24/7 with my boss, and will expand as they see fit, rather than based on needs of the people who work re: the showroom.

Now, could this turn out to be just fine in the long run? Sure. I have no issue with her as an actual person (see: we are mutuals on social media lmao). My main issue is that no one thought through how absolutely insane a decision this is from a business perspective—or how it might affect the other departments (me and sales) who will regularly have to work with the person in this role.

Transparently: the same woman who was telling me about how excited she was to sleep with my boss on the kitchen floor when he works from home at a Christmas party is now not JUST my boss's chronicaly oversharing wife, but the underqualified person who I coordinate with to craft events with multi-million dollar magazines in our industry. That to me is batshit insane, if not highly distasteful.

I'm reserving judgment on how this might go in the long run, but I have already told HR plainly how I feel about this happening, and they understood (and related to) my issues with it, which was encouraging.

I just...yeah I'm annoyed as fuck and a little disappointed in my boss atp, which I'll have to work through lol. I get paid a lot of money and have a lot of freedom in this role though, so. While a point in the "I don't like this" corner is clear, its not enough to get me to quit lmao

[pipelinelaserraygun]

The San Diego Padres rolled out NEW 2024 hand signals, DIFFERENT from last year, displayed when ⚾ a hit is made: A symbol representing MONEY. It held a DOUBLE meaning, the 🆕✋🏽 gesture, when facing the accursed 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers, in what has now become 1 of the greatest regular-season games in ALL of Padres history.

1) Manny Machado, ⚾ the Dodgers' SINGLE-HANDED PERENNIAL 💥 ASSASSIN THROUGHOUT his career, LITERALLY "⚾ drove OUT the money changers".

2) Pete Rose Otani: AS IF $700 million ⚾ dollars WASN'T enough, Shohei 💰was OUTED in a scandal that could tarnish his career, permanently. Yakuza 👹 bill?

You have to live your life for MORE than table scraps.

🆓 📚 BOOK PREVIEW and MUST 📖 READ: Soledad and I took Mom and Dad to see "Dune Part 2". Religious fanaticism is a BIG part of its 🎬 narrative 🧵🪡 thread.

DON'T miss the introduction by Frank Herbert's son Brian, and Death Cell interview with (character) Bronso, of IX ⬆️.

You have to live your life for MORE than table scraps.

MUST 👁️👁️ SEE‼️

You have to live your life for MORE than table scraps.

You have to live your life for MORE than table scraps.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, July 16, 2023

World adds 165 million more poor as debt consumes governments’ funds (Washington Post) A punishing series of economic shocks over the past three years drove 165 million people into poverty worldwide and left debt-swamped developing nations unable to afford adequate schooling, medicine and other social services, according to a report from the United Nations Development Program. Some of the world’s poorest countries borrowed heavily since 2020 to cope with the pandemic, soaring food and fuel bills caused by the war in Ukraine, the fastest inflation in four decades and higher interest rates. Now, dozens of governments—most in Africa and the Middle East—are spending more than twice as much of their revenue repaying debt as they do on social programs. About 3.3 billion people live in countries that spend more on interest payments to banks or official lenders than they devote to educating or caring for their citizens. “What this means is a government that can no longer pay its teachers; a government that can no longer employ doctors and nurses in hospitals; that cannot provide the medicines for rural health centers,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator. “And this is what it translates into: less health care, less education, no social safety nets that are able to provide temporary relief for people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in a situation where they literally cannot feed their family anymore.” Battered by repeat economic challenges, governments throughout the developing world find their financial resources exhausted. Unable to fund necessary social and economic programs, they risk sliding into disarray.

Bargain-hunting Uruguayans are flocking to Argentina as its peso slides (AP) On a recent cross-border shopping trip, four friends from Fray Bentos, Uruguay, visited the nearby Argentine city of Gualeguaychu, where they could afford to live lavishly and snap up eye-popping bargains, thanks to a huge disparity in the two South American countries’ currencies. With its economy faltering, Argentina’s peso has plunged against the U.S. dollar and its annual inflation is 115.6%, one of the highest rates in the world. In contrast, Uruguay’s economy is more stable, with low inflation and a stronger currency. The result has been a huge flow of shoppers from Uruguay throwing an economic lifeline to struggling Argentine stores and restaurants in cities like Gualeguaychú, Concordia and Colón. But there’s a downside for Uruguayan businesses along the border: In the provinces of Salto, Paysandú, Río Negro and Soriano, municipal authorities say 170 stores closed in the first five months of this year. Businesses still open complain they hardly have any customers. The price differences between the two countries can be staggering. A liter of sunflower oil that costs $5 in Uruguay is 50 cents in Argentina. A jar of skin-care cream that costs $10 in Uruguay can be had for a dollar across the border. And a liter of gasoline in Uruguay is close to $2. In the Argentine province of Entre Rios it is 52 cents.

European heat wave sparks multiple warnings, shuts Greece’s Acropolis (Washington Post) Parts of southern Europe are sweltering under a heat wave, with a historic monument forced to close in Greece as authorities in several countries issued warnings over the high temperatures. Cyprus’s meteorology department warned of extreme heat on Saturday, with temperatures expected to reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit (44 Celsius) in inland areas, while Italy’s Health Ministry issued red alerts for over a dozen cities, including the capital Rome, and warned people to avoid heat and direct sun during the hottest hours. Germany, meanwhile, announced heat warnings for about half the country. In Greece’s Attica region, home to the capital Athens, temperatures were predicted to reach up to 104 degrees (40 Celsius) on Saturday. Extreme temperatures on Friday prompted authorities to temporarily close one of the city’s most recognizable monuments, the Acropolis, as Red Cross staff handed out bottled water to tourists waiting in line. The Spanish island of Mallorca could see temperatures as high as 102.2 degrees (39 Celsius) on Saturday, according to the country’s Weather Service. The heat wave over many parts of southern Europe has been caused by a high-pressure system that has been nicknamed Cerberus after the multi-headed dog said to guard the underworld in ancient Greek mythology.

Ukraine’s Forgotten Villages (NYT) Leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium and turn west onto rougher roads, where dead trees and twisted power lines give way to a string of shattered villages. These enclaves, once the backbone of Ukraine’s agricultural eastern steppe, were reduced to ruin as the war passed over them like a flood tide. Despite being recaptured by Ukraine’s military last fall, the villages of Sulyhivka, Virnopillia and Kamianka are now at risk of being lost—not to artillery or pitched battles, but to overgrown weeds, wildflowers and minefields. They are another kind of casualty in a war that has claimed many. The few residents who returned home after the Russians retreated are struggling to live. They have waited 10 months, in vain, for electricity to be restored, for their fields to be cleared of explosives, and for neighbors to come back to restore some semblance of community.

Torrential rains in South Korea kill at least 26 in landslides and floods (AP) Days of heavy rain in South Korea killed at least 26 people and left 10 others missing in landslides and floods, the government said Saturday. South Korea has been pounded by heavy rains since July 9. The ministry report said the rainfall had forced about 5,570 people to evacuate and left 25,470 households without electricity in the past several days.

Syria’s “sovereign decision” (Foreign Policy) Syrian officials announced on Thursday that they will continue to allow United Nations humanitarian aid to enter rebel-held northern areas of the country through the Bab al-Hawa crossing but with government oversight, thereby giving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad control over almost all aid deliveries in the north. This comes after the U.N. Security Council failed, thanks to a Russian veto, to extend a 2014 agreement on Thursday allowing international relief access to Syria’s rebel-held territory without Syrian government involvement. Damascus’s announcement is a “sovereign decision,” wrote Bassam Sabbagh, Syrian ambassador to the U.N., to assist the roughly 4.1 million people in northwest Syria dependent on these humanitarian supplies. Syria maintains that the U.N.’s aid mechanism violates Damascus’s sovereignty and that Assad’s regime should have control over how aid enters the country. However, some U.N. Security Council members were quick to denounce Syria’s decision, with British ambassador Barbara Woodward warning that “without U.N. monitoring, control of this critical lifeline has been handed to the man responsible for the Syrian people’s suffering.”

Israeli Unions and Military Reservists Renew Resistance to Judicial Overhaul (NYT) Union chiefs, business leaders and military reservists in Israel have warned the far-right government that proceeding with its plan to limit judicial powers without a social consensus will open the door for another wave of national strikes and business closures. The country’s largest labor union, the Israeli medical association and thousands of military reservists have all said that they could go on strike, scale back operations or refuse to volunteer for army service if the government’s plan goes ahead. “The option of general strike is on the table,” Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Histadrut, Israel’s largest labor union, said in a phone interview on Friday morning. The latest warnings set the stage for a showdown comparable to an earlier wave of social turmoil in March, when labor strikes, disquiet in the military and mass protests destabilized large parts of Israel’s economy, security services and infrastructure. The unrest shut down universities, municipal authorities, stopped departing flights from the main airport and prompted the government to suspend a previous iteration of the judicial plan.

Nigeria: Soaring costs for food and transport (NPR) The cost of food and transport in Nigeria have soared since the end of May. The trigger was the removal of a fuel subsidy that dates to the 1970s and kept fuel prices artificially lower than the market rate and lower than in neighboring countries. But in his inaugural speech on May 29, new president Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared an end to the subsidy. It had become too expensive—rising to $9.7 billion last year, a quarter of Nigeria’s budget— all while government revenues were stretched thin. The ripple effects were immediate. Fuel prices almost tripled overnight, from roughly 180 naira (23 cents) per liter in May, to roughly 500 naira (70 cents). Fuel prices are expected to rise even further to account for the depreciation in Nigeria’s currency since May. The impact of the subsidy has been profound in a large but challenging economy with 70% of people living in poverty. The World Bank says an additional 7 million people in Nigeria could be plunged into poverty by the end of the year—driven by a combination of a painful cash crisis earlier this year, high inflation and the fuel subsidy.

South Africa deploys army over burning of trucks, braces for unrest over ex-president’s court case (AP) South Africa deployed the army to help secure four provinces Friday, after at least 21 delivery trucks were set on fire in the past five days and amid concerns of unrest over a court decision that could send former President Jacob Zuma back to jail. The deployment of soldiers came a day after South Africa’s apex Constitutional Court ruled that Zuma’s early release from prison on medical parole in 2021 was invalid. The Department of Corrections has not said if it will order Zuma back to jail to serve the remainder of a 15-month prison sentence for contempt of court, but his initial jailing two years ago sparked a week of violent protests that left more than 350 people dead in some of the worst violence South Africa had experienced in 30 years. Police said they had no evidence that this week’s torching of trucks was connected to the 2021 unrest or to Zuma, but the decision in Zuma’s court case clearly has put the country on edge.

The Whitest of White Paints (NYT) Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, didn’t set out to make it into the Guinness World Records when he began trying to make a new type of paint. In 2020, Dr. Ruan and his team unveiled their creation: a type of white paint that can act as a reflector, bouncing 95 percent of the sun’s rays away from the Earth’s surface, up through the atmosphere and into deep space. A few months later, they announced an even more potent formulation that increased sunlight reflection to 98 percent. The paint’s properties are almost superheroic. It can make surfaces as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air temperatures at midday, and up to 19 degrees cooler at night, reducing temperatures inside buildings and decreasing air-conditioning needs by as much as 40 percent. It is cool to the touch, even under a blazing sun, Dr. Ruan said. Unlike air-conditioners, the paint doesn’t need any energy to work, and it doesn’t warm the outside air. In 2021, Guinness declared it the whitest paint ever, and it’s since collected several awards. The paint is at least a year from being ready for commercial use, and work is underway to increase its durability and dirt resistance.