#just so i can put more of my salary to my tuition

[t-lostinworlds]

~

[fiveraccoonsinatrenchcoat]

Quiet My Fears (With The Touch Of Your Hand) Ch. 2

Steve Harrington x f!reader

Description: You have this amazing talent of knocking the wind right out of Steve's chest with words alone.

Warnings: pregnant!reader, mentions of being sick (among other scarier pregnancy symptoms), language

Word Count: 3614

Previous Chapter! - Next Chapter!

My Masterlist! - Series Masterlist!

Rain slammed against the window panes of the Harrington house like bullets. The cold seeped through the walls and ate straight through Steve’s pajamas, and the cup of coffee in his hands was doing little to remedy it. There was zero hint of sun in the sky, it seemed like there would be none all day, and Steve was really regretting coming out from under his covers. 

Steve had only slept in his own house three times over the past two weeks; he’d made quite the home for himself on your couch, living out of a backpack of clothes he’d stuck in the corner of your living room. You had asked him not to leave you alone, and what kind of man would he be if he had said no to that? He probably wouldn’t even have been able to, anyway.

He didn’t know if he would be allowed to sleep in your bed with you, and he had been too afraid to ask. 

While his father never really bothered to care where his son was, and his mother trusted him enough to let him do his own thing most of the time, he was still expected to show his face at home every once in a while. He’d been stuck with the closing shift last night (even though it was outside of his availability, so thanks for that, Keith), and he knew you’d be fast asleep by the time he made it back to your apartment. You’d called the store after you got home at the much more reasonable hour of six thirty. ‘I think I can live with being alone for tonight’ you’d told him. ‘I’ve got a paper to write, anyway.’ 

Fuck, Steve really needed a better job. Preferably one that paid him more and wasn’t open until eleven p.m. on a Thursday night. 

You worked a big girl job at the Roane County Historical Society museum. You were just a secretary, but you had a salary, insurance, and all that other grown up stuff. Nine to five, four days a week, and they helped with your college tuition, too. Come May, you’d have a History degree and a teaching certification, and word on the street said Hawkins Middle was about to have a need for a  new History teacher. Unlike him, you had the perfect five year plan laid out right in front of you. 

Y’know, as long as Steve hadn’t ruined it for you. 

By the time he woke up on Friday, his father was long gone. It was nearing one in the afternoon, and the big empty house felt extra big and extra empty today. Steve glanced out the window as he poured a second cup of coffee and saw the rain collecting in the bottom of the long-since drained pool in his backyard. A handful of stray leaves sat mixed with the rainwater, some stuck in a brown mass on the bottom, some floating lazily atop the puddle. 

He was startled out of his trance by his mother’s voice and nearly dropped his full mug.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” she said as she walked into the kitchen, heels clicking along the tiles. “Or, good afternoon, rather.”

Meredith Harrington was the opposite of her husband in more ways than anyone could count. She actually enjoyed spending time with her child, for one, but there had never been an angry bone in her body. She wasn’t immune to frustration, or worry, but it was never unfounded. Yet still, for every wild flame of rage that shot from her husband's mouth, she counteracted with calmness. Or, more accurately, quiet, fearful resignation. Her husband never put his hands on her or their son, but Steve could always tell that she had spent her whole marriage walking on eggshells, waiting for the terrifying moment that he did, as if it was a simple inevitability. 

Steve loved his mom, but fuck, he wished she would just stand up for herself for once.

“God, Mom, you scared me,” Steve responded, leaning against the counter. 

“I do live here, too, y’know,” she poked back with a smile. “When did you get so jumpy?”

If she ever found out the real answer to that question, she would probably never let her son out of her sight ever again.

“Haven’t seen much of you these last couple weeks,” his mother observed. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” he insisted. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. She put the pocketbook she was holding down on the marble countertop of the island and crossed the room to lean against it, opposite her son. “I can tell, there’s far too much going on in that big head of your’s.”

Steve snorted at the well meaning insult. 

“It’s nothing mom, I promise.”

“Come on now, you know I don’t buy that,” his mother asked with arms crossed. “Talk to me, kid.” 

“I-I don’t know.” Steve was absolutely, in no way, ready to talk about any of what was going through his head, especially to his mom. ‘You might be a grandma come September’ wasn’t really something he could just drop in the middle of casual conversation.

“Is it a girl, maybe?”

Steve’s quiet was proof enough that his mother was, at least partially, right. She gave her son a knowing smile.

“Tell me it’s not Nancy again, right?” she asked. Meredith was generally a pretty forgiving woman, but Nancy had really broken her son’s heart. So, while she would always show nothing but kindness to the eldest of the Wheeler children, she didn’t have to like her. 

“Oh, no. Definitely not,” Steve assured. “That ship sailed a long, long time ago.” 

“Good,” she replied. “Will I ever get to meet this mystery girl?”

Steve just shrugged, deciding it best to omit the fact that the “mystery girl” had lived across the street for eighteen years and swam in their pool every summer for a decade.

“You should invite her over for dinner some time,” his mother said. She leaned forward and pulled a piece of errant lint off of Steve’s shoulder with perfectly manicured nails. “I’ll roast a chicken. It’ll be nice.”

“She doesn’t eat chicken.”

“She doesn’t eat chicken?” she parroted back. “What kind of person doesn’t eat chicken?”

“She’s a vegetarian, mom,” he explained. 

“Ah,” his mom accepted. “Then I’ll make that broccoli cheddar casserole you like. You know, the one I make during Lent every year? Think she’d like that?”

“Yeah, I think she would.” Steve was trying his best to hide his smile, though he wasn’t doing it all that well.

“Alrighty.” She patted her son’s shoulder as she walked past him and gathered her purse. “Well, I have to go run some errands. You’re more than welcome to join me if you’d like.”

“No, thanks.”

“Right. You’re much too cool to tag along with mom to the grocery store. How could I have forgotten?”

“No! No, it’s not that, I-”

“I’m joking, Steve,” she assured with a smile. “Make sure that cup ends up in the dishwasher, okay? Not just in the sink.” 

“Dishwasher. Got it.”

“I love you! Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone!”

With that, the heavy front door shut and Steve was plunged into the silence of deserted suburbia. 

You were at work, he had the day off with no plans, and the idea of being at all productive sounded absolutely exhausting. He finished his coffee in two big gulps and decided the best way to spend the day would be to crawl right back into bed and wallow in his feelings.

Steve had, very much on purpose, kept most of his thoughts about your current situation to himself. Partially because every time you two did start talking about it, you ended up a slushy pile of tears in his arms. The other reason, though, the bigger reason, was that he was terrified that you would put all of your own wants and wishes to the side and do whatever he wanted you to. The concept of you having a baby you didn’t want just to appease him made him sick to his stomach.

His parents only got married because his mom ended up pregnant at nineteen, and having a baby out of wedlock in 1967 was a social sin of the highest order. So they planned a wedding in two weeks time (a small family affair, exclusively to save face and avoid the questions that arise with courthouse ceremonies), and moved into a big, fancy house so that everyone knew the Harringtons were a normal, run-of-the-mill, perfect American family. His father loved to point out all of the things he didn’t get to do all because Steve came along and got in the way, and his mother. . . 

She loved him. He knew that. He also knew that she had to pack up her life to play house with a man she was always a little bit afraid of, all because of him. His father always resented him for it, but his mom never did. At the very least, she never told him she did. 

The thought of doing to you what his father did to his mom absolutely fucking terrified him, but ‘terrified’ had been his baseline state of being pretty much constantly over the past two weeks.

Steve was no stranger to fear. He’d had extensive experience with the feeling; that sharp heaviness that settled itself behind his ribs and sucked every drop of oxygen out of his lungs. When it came at him hard and fast, that was when he could handle it best. This was not that. This fear was slow and achy, all-encompassing. It sealed itself onto his bones, like some sort of emotional slime. Like a fungus.

And, honestly, most of that fear was for you, not him. The worst thing that could happen to him was that he could end up being a shitty father, and while he would hate that more than pretty much anything in the entire world, it did sort of pale in comparison to your worst case scenario. You could die.

Yeah, maybe he was being a little bit dramatic, but you still could. It wasn’t all that far outside of the realm of possibility. You were already horribly sick, you had been for the past few weeks, and while you had been taking the constant nausea and incessant dizzy spells like a fuckin’ champ, it wasn’t like a positive attitude would be able to save you if you started hemorrhaging. 

Steve really hoped, for your sake, that you had yet to go down this train of thought, but he knew you most likely had. As terrified for you as he was, he understood that you were probably feeling all of it tenfold.

And yet, behind all of that, he was having a very difficult time squashing that tiny inkling of reckless hope that had been planted in the back of his head. He was still a 21 year old dick-head who had zero business taking care of a baby, and he definitely wasn’t allowed to be excited about it. For, like, a million different reasons.

Eventually, he fell back into a heavy-limbed sleep, but was woken up however many hours later by the shrill ring of the phone. A bleary eyed glance at the clock on his bedside table told him it was just passed six o’clock. His mother should be back by now, right? He let it ring.

 A moment passed, and it rang once more. He debated for a moment if he even had the right to answer it anymore, but he begrudgingly pulled himself out of bed and picked it up anyway.

“Harrington Residence,” he grumbled, hoping whoever was on the other side could tell how frustrated he was to be awake. 

“Steve?” Your voice came through the line. It was strained, and he heard you trying your best to disguise the sobs coming from your throat. “It’s me.”

“Hey, woah, what’s going on? What happened?” he questioned, any annoyance gone. 

“Are you able to come pick me up?” you stuttered out between sniffles. “I’m at work. I-I have a flat tire.”

“Yeah, yeah. Of course I can,” he said.  

“Okay.”

“I’m on my way, alright? Five minutes, tops,” he told you. He had the earpiece of the phone tucked between his cheek and shoulder, and the cord was stretched as far as it could go to reach into his bedroom as he haphazardly swapped his flannel pajama bottoms for a pair of jeans.

“Thank you.” Another sob.

“You don’t have to thank me,” he insisted. “Hang tight, I’ll be right there.”

The rain had slowed back to a dismal drizzle that splashed into the puddles stretched across Steve’s driveway. The drive to the museum was usually short, but the evening rush (as if the barely-there Hawkins traffic could ever be called that) slowed him down just enough for it to be annoying. The museum had officially closed an hour ago, though stray patrons and evening administrative duties usually kept you back after hours. 

Steve saw you shivering underneath the awning that hung over the front doors, comparable to a lost kitten stuck in a thunderstorm. The shoulders of your sweater were soaked through, and as Steve pulled into the parking lot and stopped his car, he could see the angry black rivers of runny mascara that dribbled down your face. 

“What the hell are you doing waiting for me out here in the rain?” Steve asked as he jogged up to where you were standing. He removed his jacket and wrapped it around your shoulders. “Why aren’t you inside? It’s freezing.”

“That creepy research assistant is in there and I hate being in the same room as him when there’s nobody else around,” you choked out, syllables broken up by wracking sobs. 

“Alec?” Steve asked, and you nodded. He pulled you tightly against him before adding, “I’ll fuckin’ kill him.”

“Please don’t do that,” you squeaked. 

“Let’s change your tire, huh?” Steve said, though he made no move to let you go. “Do you have the spare?”

“That-” your words were cut off by a pitiful sniffle. “That is the spare.”

“Of course it is,” Steve sighed, though he most certainly should not have, because it just spurred on more crying from you. “Hey, it’s alright. I can take you home and we can get a new tire on it in the morning, okay?”

“I just had a really bad day,” you wept into his shoulder.

“I know, baby. It’s okay.”

“I spilled the hottest tea in the universe all over my legs,” you croaked. Steve winced at the image. 

“I’m sorry,” he said into the top of your head.

“And since it was so hot, I accidentally said ‘motherfucker’ in front of a tour group that consisted exclusively of second graders!” you added. Steve would have laughed at that if you weren’t so wildly upset. “And Creepy Alec was being creepy all day long-”

“My offer still stands.”

“And then I came out here and my fucking tire was fucking flat!” you exclaimed, punctuated by another bout of wailing, the kind that made your whole body shake and your voice stutter. Steve took it the best he could, petting the back of your head and holding you tight, wishing he could go into your brain and dig all of the bad bits out. 

“Let me get you home, and we can get you into some dry clothes and deal with your car in the morning, okay?”

“Okay,” you whimpered. 

Steve let you go, but when he went to pull you along to his car so the pair of you could leave, you stayed planted right where you were. You lifted your watery eyes to meet his, and he gazed at you from where he stood.

“Steve?” you quietly asked him. 

“Yeah?” Steve responded. A silence fell between the two of you, though the lazy rain and evening downtown traffic poked holes through it.

“I wanna keep the baby.”

You had this amazing talent of knocking the wind right out of his chest with only words alone.

“That-” came out of fucking nowhere, holy shit!, he didn’t add. “Really?”

“Yeah,” you muttered over a wobbly lip.

Steve was paralyzed. The soles of his shoes had been superglued to the pavement and his arms had been turned to stone. It was somehow both exactly what he did and did not want to hear all at the same time, because deep down in his gut he knew he wanted that too, but there was a laundry list of reasons why it was a bad idea, why it was irresponsible, why it was maybe everything he ever wanted, and- 

“Steve, if you don’t want to do this, that's okay, but I need you to tell me. Now.” Your voice, shaky and full of fear and yet so, so determined, pulled him up and away from his thoughts once again. 

“I do!” he exclaimed, maybe with a bit too much fervor. He regained his ability to move and closed the gap between the two of you in one wide step. “I do.”

You stood silent with your glassy eyes staring bullets into his. 

“Look, I’m gonna start talking, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stop, so if it gets to be too much, just shut me up, okay?” Steve said. He brought his hands up to grace your shoulders.

“What?” you questioned, confusion laced throughout your miserable expression.

Steve had spent the last three and a half years doing everything he could to drown out the sounds of his feelings for you, and Robin was right. It was destroying his brain. 

“I’m really, really in love with you,” he said. “And I have been for a really, really long time. Since way before this, fuck, since before Starcourt, and I’m so fucking sorry for not having the guts to say it until now. I’m the universe’s biggest coward for that-”

“You are not a coward!”

“-And I know you deserve better, but for some reason that still eludes me, you’ve stuck with me through all the bullshit, anyway. You could’ve run away whenever you wanted to, you could’ve gone with your parents when they left, but you didn’t, and that has to mean something, right?”

“Steve,” you wept.

“I promise, there is nothing in this world that I want more than to do this with you, alright? Not a single fucking thing,” he assured you. “I meant what I said. Holding your hand the whole time.”

Steve took your trembling hand into his own, fingers fitting together like lock and key. 

“If you’ll have me,” he added.

Your lips wobbled, you let out another shattered sob, and you kissed him like it was the only thing keeping you alive. Like you would drop dead right on the spot if not for his lips on yours. Steve kissed back, because he knew he would drop dead if he didn’t, and now he had tears to match your own.

“I’m really, really in love with you, too,” you blubbered after the pair of you pulled apart. You had a hand on either side of his face, fingers ghosting over the junction of his jawline and neck, and Steve had his wrapped delicately around each wrist.

“You really wanna do this?” Steve asked you. “You really mean it? You’re not just saying it?”

“I really mean it,” you said definitively. You were still very much crying, though you were infinitely less miserable than you had been five minutes ago. The pair of you stayed swaying in each other's arms, protecting each other from the cold.

“Good, because I really mean it, too,” he responded. 

The thick, foggy haze of emotion was beginning to dwindle, and despite the warm bubble of affection the two of you had created, you were still standing out in the rain. And Steve was pretty sure he could see Creepy Alec spying on them through one of the second story windows.

“Let’s go home. I’ll make you dinner,” Steve murmured to you, and you nodded in agreement. 

Steve drove you both back to your apartment and made a feast of plain scrambled eggs and buttered toast, because it was all your stomach could really handle right now. Turns out, he very much was allowed to sleep in your bed with you, and after he’d finished doing the dishes in the sink, he joined you under the pile of blankets that adorned your mattress. Your cat curled itself up at the end of the bed as you drew yourself into his side. He didn’t remember you being this cuddly, but it was a change he was more than happy to welcome.

After a few minutes, when he’d thought you had fallen asleep, your voice pierced through the quiet of your bedroom.

“You’re gonna be someone's dad,” you muttered into his pajamas. Fuck. He was, wasn’t he?

“You’re gonna be someone’s mom,” he shot back.

“Weird,” you responded. “I think you’ll be really good at it.”

“You think so?”

“Mhm. Definitely.”

And of course Steve was still fucking terrified. Terrified of the monsters, and of his dad, and of all the different ways this could go south, but he had you tucked up against his chest, and he was gonna be someone’s dad, and he couldn’t really bring himself to care about any of the scary stuff. In this moment, for the first time in as long as Steve could really remember, the underlying current of fear that ran along his thoughts was finally overpowered by just how much he fucking adored you.

Tiny Little Taglist: @sheisjoeschateau @hazydespair @damon-loves-pie @pariahsparadise @anislabonis-love @e0509 @alexa4040 @starsforviolet @jennaaaaaaaaaaaa @plk-18 @hoesbloated

[jasperisabisexualmess]

Don't Worry

Mob Boss!Wanda x Rival Mob Boss's Daughter!Reader

Summary: Maybe you should listen to your father more often.

Warnings: Reader kinda spoiled, Kidnapping, Drugging I think, Readers not very smart, Mobs, Drinks, Reader serves alcohol, Reader is depicted with naturally curly hair but straightens it, Wanda is very flirty, I think that's it.

A/n: You guys voted for this so... Here it is. Hope you like it I was very tired while writing it so there might be grammatical mistakes.

Your father (Marco) is one of the most known mob bosses in the area. He isn’t very talkative with his job around you though. He has never and plans to never tell you the truth about his money. You never questioned his job, you just always thought he was a doctor or something that has a big salary. In his eyes you do not have any reason to know. You are 21 and in college studying business for reasons you do not know. Your father paid for your college tuition and you picked the major that is most helpful for your current job, bar tending. You love bar tending as your father helped you get a job at a popular club that has a very good salary you make from 100 dollars to 800 dollars in a single night.

The club works with some of the most famous people in the area. Your father is a frequent visitor and a member of the club. He often has meetings in the club. You are often flirted with but do not realize or understand. Even though you work at a club you are still very innocent and not the smartest on topics outside of books/school. That's why you never saw the signs. It all started one night.

Your father was having a meeting with Wanda Maximoff. The most feared and ruthless mafia boss known. But to you she was just probably one of your fathers business associates. You came up to the table personally to get their orders because that's how most of the VIP’s were treated. As you walked over there you were entranced by the woman's beauty. When you got to the table you could tell that their conversation from before was a little heated as your father was a little red on his cheeks which only happens when someone makes him mad. So you decided to try and get him a drink to calm him down.

You asked your father and the woman, “Have you decided on drinks yet?”. The woman looked at you and was instantly in a better mood. Your father answered,”Can I get an old fashioned please.” You nodded and looked over to the lady, “And for you?”. She smirked and seductively said, “What would you recommend, sweetheart?”. You smiled and politely responded with, “Oh I don't drink”. She made a confused face and asked, “What bartender doesn’t drink?”. “Me I guess.”. She smiled and then asked,” Can I have a vodka spritz?” You nodded and said, “Is that all?” They all nodded and you said,” Okay well I will go make those for you.” When you walked away you felt eyes burning into your back. You made the drinks and came back not wanting to upset them. You walk up to them with the drinks but they don’t seem to notice you. So you clear your throat to try to let them know you're there. Your father thanks you and grabs his drinks as he gets up to talk to one of his men that had to talk to him really quick.

You put the drink in front of Wanda, “So how do you know Marco?” She asked while checking you out while you're oblivious to her actions. You were confused how she knew that he knew me outside of the club. Maybe he said something about it. You answered with,” Oh he is my dad.” This seemed to interest her. A lot. “I didn't know he had a daughter.” She said, “Yeah that sounds about right, He doesn’t like me knowing much about his work and the other way around.”. She continued to stare at you while you continued to talk to her. “So what do you do for work?” You ask innocently. She bites her lip slightly and responds, “I have my own business and me and your father have had some differences but we are trying to work out a compromise. You nodded just in time for your father to stop talking to the man.

He comes back with an unpleasant look on his face as he sits down and orders you to leave. Which he almost never has used this tone with you. You grabbed the napkins that were not being used and left. Wanda gave you a wink on the way out. Your father got into a heated argument and left but you didn’t know that all you knew was that Wanda had left her number on one of the napkins with a note that said, ‘Call me, please;)’. You decided to text it since why not?

Wanda Maximoff 🙂

Hey this is Wanda right?

Sorry, who is this?

Y/n, from the club. I was the bartender.

Oh, Y/n the hot bartender.

Thank you but I'm not hot.

Your funny sweetheart. Did you want to get Some coffee?

Sure, when and where?

Tomorrow, I can come pick you up whenever.

Could you pick me up around 9am then? I have a class around 1:30.

Yeah sounds good sweetheart :)

Can't wait :)

You stole my line ;)

You got the final text when your father came into the kitchen and said he needed to talk to you. “Yes dad? What did you have to talk to me about?” He stood across from you. “I need to make one thing clear. If the woman I meet with today ever tries to talk to you or meet with you, you need to text me and try to leave in the quickest way possible. She is bad news.” You were thoroughly pissed off. He can’t tell you who you can and can’t hang out with. “No dad, you can't tell me what I can and can’t do. If I wanna talk with someone I will talk with them.” Maybe if he brought this up earlier you would listen but you had already taken a liking to her. You went up to your room and got ready for tomorrow. You feel asleep after reading some of the hunger games that you read every night.

When you awoke you checked the time which was already 7:45. You took a shower and when you got out you straighten your curly hair. You decided to go with tan pants and a white blouse under a tan sweater vest. A very cute but classy outfit. You did your makeup, brushed your teeth and put some deodorant on and grabbed your purse with your air pods. You listened to music while trying to finish one of your paintings as you had 30 minutes until she would be here. You heard your phone go off with a text message with her saying she was here. You grabbed all your stuff and saw a fancy black BMW. You saw Wanda waving from the front seat and opened the passenger side door and got in, “This is fancy.” You say as she looks at you as if she is waiting for something. You then feel a wet rag wrapped around your nose and mouth as you try to escape from the hands covering your face with a rag. Your vision slowly disappears as you begin to pass out. “Don't worry sweetheart.” Is the last thing you hear before you're no longer conscious.

A/n: Part 2?

[everythingpresley]

Don't You Kiss Me Once or Twice - Chapter 6

Character/Fandom: Elvis - Elvis (2022)

Prompt: Jessica Anderson is Elvis Presley's assistant and after months of working together, slowly something sparks between them. Friendship? Or is it more? [ Fem!Reader ]

Rating: Explicit/Mature (NSFW, 18+), Slowburn

    ||     Word Count: 3,116

A/N: Please let me know what you guys think of this chapter! I'm really proud of it and would love to hear your feedback!

Masterlist

Don't You Kiss Me Once or Twice - Chapter 6

We had one week before we were due to go on tour so I decided to go visit my parents and siblings. My parents constantly complained that I didn’t visit them enough and I really did miss them but sometimes I hated whenever I was there they had to bring up money and Ella’s tuition, asking me to let Elvis pay for her tuition instead saying he had the money, also saying that he has a lot of money that he doesn't need and that infuriated me. No one is entitled to talk about people’s earnings, Elvis worked very hard and continues to kill himself for his fans and his career.

I had to divert my career and plans to pay for my sister’s tuition, I had a plan of moving to New York when I saved up enough. I planned to start working in one of the big 4 auditing companies and work my way up to being a partner.

Working for Elvis allowed me to save almost my entire salary for Ella since I get the benefits of living rent free at Graceland and not having to pay for the necessities.

“I’m reapplying for a scholarship and now since my grades are way up, I’m hoping I’ll get it but I have to wait till the next semester.” Ella said, shuttling around the pasta in her plate as she sat opposite of me.

I smiled softly “That’s great Ella.” I shoveled pasta into my mouth “But please don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself just for the scholarship.” I know the anxiety that comes with grades and getting a certain GPA. I hated it. I even considered completing my masters but after I was done with my bachelors, I changed my mind.

“I know Jessie.” She grinned at me. I could tell she feels guilty.

“How’s Mr. Presley?” Jack asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Goood. Why?” I asked, looking at him suspiciously.

“Nothing.” Jack chuckled.

“Jaaack, what?” I asked, shoving him from where he sat next to me.

“No shoving each other at the dinner table!” Mom said.

“Nothing! It’s just I get this weird energy from you and him whenever I’ve seen you guys together.” Jack replied.

I furrowed my eyebrows “What weird energy?”

“Ignore your brother, he just wants to rile you up.” Dad replied.

Jack chose to shove me back, tipping my chair almost sending me flying to the floor if I didn’t grab onto the table.

“Asshole.” I mouthed to him. He stuck his tongue out at me and continued eating his dinner.

“Wow. I’m way mature than both of my older siblings.” Ella said with a huge grin on her face. Jack and I stuck our tongues out at her making her giggle.

Even though it had been a week since I left, I really missed Graceland and everyone. However, I was slightly dreading going on tour in three days. Those were the most hectic, tiring days and we never get to actually see the cities. Joe had picked me up from the airport, going through the gates of Graceland I spotted Elvis and a bunch of kids probably some of the Mafia’s kids on the golf cart.

“Jess! Look at this flower!” One of the girls, Sofia said running up to me.

I gasped and bent down to her height “Wow, that’s beautiful! Just like you.” I grinned at her “Do you want me to put it in your hair?” I asked her.

She nodded excitedly “And you can put this one in your hair so that we can be matching!” She jumped up and down. I laughed and took the flower from her hand to put it in my hair.

The cart zipped by us, driven by Elvis.

“Slow down!” I yelled. He loved scaring the kids and all of them were yelling happily.

“Jessica!” Elvis yelled back, slowing down and returning to where I was standing “You’re back! The Colonel was really aggravating me.”

I laughed because I knew the Colonel hated doing what I did, he didn’t like to get bossed around plus he knew I could get Elvis to finish his work. Like signing posters, going through his mail with him, making sure he makes his appointments etc. I was also in charge of booking everything such as hotel rooms and transportation.

“Good. So that you don’t take me for granted.” I grinned.

“Get in!” He nodded his head back.

“There’s no room. I have to go unpack anyway.”

“There’s plenty of room.” Elvis grinned mischievously. 

He had parked the cart so close that he was able to swoop his arm around my waist and tug me onto his lap.

I gasped “Elvis!”

Elvis laughed at my flustered face “Get comfortable doll.” He said and sped off. He placed his chin over my shoulder to be able to see. He was so close, my back was touching his chest and I could smell the woodsiness of his shampoo and scent. He smelt amazing. 

I was so uncomfortable, not knowing how to sit. I was scared to be too heavy on his lap, I kept shifting back and forth.

He released on of his hands from the steering wheel and wrapped his arm around my waist, tightening his arm. “Stop movin’ around doll, I’m about to crash the damn thing.” He whispered in my ear, his hot breath caused the hairs behind my neck to stand up. My cheeks flushed when I felt his bulge poke my ass.

I cleared my throat.

Elvis chose to speed over a little hump on the grass, making us all jerk up and land down hard. The kids all shouted as if they were on a roller coaster while Elvis groaned when I slammed down on him.

I laughed “You had that coming.”

“Evil.” He replied, parking up by the stairs that led to the house. I quickly jumped out of his lap, grabbing my suitcase that I abandoned by the stairs and rushed into the house.

Janice and I were supposed to hang out before we leave for tour. We decided to go line dancing and drinking at a honkytonk bar. I threw on a short, flowy sundress with an open back and red cowboy boots and a white cowboy hat. I was about to leave when the phone rang and a drowsy sounding Janice spoke letting me know that she wasn’t feeling well. She had a stomach bug and thought it would go away but it hadn’t. I offered to go over and see her to make sure she was okay but she didn’t want me to catch anything especially since I had to be on the road in a few days.

Instead of feeling down that I won’t get to see Janice for a while, I went outside to go see the horses and pretend that I’m actually a cowgirl. I leaned against the wooden fence, pouting slightly that I didn’t know how to ride a horse. I had my hat in my hands looking out at the horses trotting around.

I spotted Elvis walking out of the stables, he smiled once he noticed me “Well isn’t that the saddest little cowgirl I’ve ever seen.”

I smiled when he came and leaned on the fence next to me.

“What is this getup?” He asked.

“Janice and I were supposed to go line dancing but she’s sick.” I replied.

“Is that why you’re pouting?” He chuckled.

“That and also I wanna learn how to ride a horse.”

“Never picked you to be a horse girl. Miss California.”

“Oh if it were up to me I would be a cowgirl with my trusty steed and a cowboy husband.” I replied.

Elvis chuckled and shook his head.

The sun was setting and the sky was transformed into a warm orange tinge. I turned and looked at Elvis, he really was the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen and the orange sun illuminating his face made his blue eyes brighter and clearer. He felt me staring at him and turned to look at me, I didn’t bother looking away because I had already been caught. He smiled at me and poked my cheek, turning my face away from him. I did notice a slight flush to his cheeks. I grinned and went back to looking at the horses.

“I can take you.” He said, his voice barely a whisper.

“Where?”

“Line dancing.” He replied. His eyes strained on the horses, not turning to look at me.

“Really?” I asked excitedly.

He nodded and shrugged.

“One problem.” I pointed.

“What?”

“You’re forgetting who you are.”  He was Elvis Presley for crying out loud, there’s bound to be someone who will recognize him. And I honestly didn’t want to have to see my face plastered on magazines and newspapers.

“It’s fine. I’ll wear a disguise.”

“Like a fake mustache and glasses?” I chuckled.

“No.” He grumbled “I’ll change and then we can go.”

I stayed by the stables when I heard Elvis’ shoes shuffle on the sand. I turned and grinned when I saw him decked out in a black cowboy hat, black cowboy boots, a chunky belt, black jeans and a black jean jacket with a white button down shirt underneath. Fuck. He looked so hot in all black. He also had a red bandana wrapped around his neck as a little scarf.

“You need to lose the rings.” I pointed out when he got closer.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not taking them off Jess. Let’s go.”

“You need to dress down and look like us peasants.”

“Fine.” He stepped forward, getting very close to my face “I got you this, to go with your red boots.” He said and pulled a red identical bandana that he had wrapped around his neck from his pockets.

“Lift your hair up.” He said.

I listened and wrapped up my hair, placing my hat that was in my hand on the ground. He reached over and wrapped the red bandana around my neck “There, we’re matching now.” He whispered, his hot breath hitting my cheeks. Then he bent down, picked up my cowboy hat from the ground and placed it on my head “We can live your fantasy of being a cowgirl with a handsome cowboy husband for the day.”

“I never said he was handsome.” I smiled softly at him because how cute was he being right now.

“I’m just filling in the blanks doll.” He grinned.

Taking Elvis’ old truck we headed to the bar, the sun nowhere to be seen and the moon shone brightly instead. Hopefully by now people were drunk and no one would recognize Elvis. This oddly felt like a date. Us being alone without the mafia around was very weird. Elvis placed a hand on the small of my back to lead me into the bar. I felt tingles shoot up my spine the moment his hand came in contact with my bare back and took a deep breath.

“They have a mechanical bull?” Elvis asked, dipping his head close to my ear.

I grinned and nodded. I loved getting on that bull, it was so much fun. The bar was huge, the bull was placed on the side and a big dance floor was in the middle. It was already jam packed with people, some were already on the dance floor and some were standing around watching people fall off the bull.

Heading to the bar to order drinks, we both chose to get beer.

“Hey man, has anyone ever told you that you look like Elvis Presley?” The bartender asked.

“Yes, he gets that all the time.” I said and threw an arm around Elvis’ shoulder “Isn’t that right honey?”

He turned towards me and grinned at the nickname “That’s right sweetie.”

“Jess?” A voice rang from behind us. Elvis and I both turned to find a guy with shaggy light brown hair.

“Colt?” I grinned. He grinned back at me and nodded.

“Hi!” I said and slipped my arm from Elvis to hug him.

“Janice not here with you today?” Colt asked after I pulled away from the hug.

“No, she’s not feeling well.”

“Who’s your friend baby?” Elvis asked, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, tugging me back to him.

“Oh this is Colt, he’s a regular here.” I said “Colt this is …. Aaron. Aaron, Colt.” I introduced.

“Hi I’m Jess’ boyfriend.” Elvis said causing my to start beating rapidly. Why did him saying he’s my boyfriend get me excited in a weird way?

Colt smiled “You look cute together.”

I smiled as I felt Elvis removed my hat, bend his head down and planted a soft kiss on the top of my head before placing my hat back on my head. Oh what is he doing to me right now. My cheeks and neck were on fire.

Should I tell Elvis that Colt was gay and that he was openly checking him out as we speak?

We got our drinks and headed over to the mechanical bull to watch people.

“Go on!” I nudged Elvis who shook his head no “Why?”

“I’ll go on if you go on.” He replied.

“Okay fine. I’ll go. Hold my beer.” I handed him my beer and got on.

I jumped on the bull, huffing slightly since I had to jump a few times to get on. I spotted Elvis laughing at my attempts to get on. I adjusted my dress, pulling it down but I knew I would flash everyone once I fall off. Thank god I decided to wear little biker shorts underneath.

“Let’s go Jess!” Elvis whooped from the side lines.

The operator started it slow at first but slowly he increased the speed. I held on tightly as he jerked the bull up and down.

Unbeknownst to Jess, seeing her riding the bull made Elvis’ jaw tighten and his cock twitch.

I laughed when I flew off the bull and landed on the inflatable ground. I got up and jumped off.

“You did great! You lasted longer than half the guys in here!” Elvis grinned.

Elvis went next, he looked really cute while focusing so hard on trying not to fall off but he ended up falling off pretty quickly.

“Again!” Elvis’ competitive side jumped out.

“Sorry man other people are waiting” The operator replied.

He grumbled and stomped off. I laughed at his child like behavior “Sore loser.”

“We’ll have a rematch later.” He replied taking his drink from my hand.

Shania Twain’s “Man! I feel like a woman” blasted through the speakers of the bar.

“I love this song!” I jumped up and down.

“You’re gonna spill everywhere!” Elvis pointed at my drink.

“Best thing about being a woman! Is the prerogative to have a little fun and!” I shout/sang, singing directly to Elvis, swaying and shaking my shoulders. He looked at me with a goofy smile on his face, sipping his drink while leaning on the table next to us.

“Cowboys and Cowgirls please line up on the dance floor!” The speaker announced.

I grinned placing my drink on the table, Elvis doing the same. I then grabbed his hand and pulled him to the dance floor.

“I don’t know how to do this!” Elvis yelled over the music. It was packed so we were stuck to each other’s sides.

“It’s okay, just keep your eyes on me. I’ll tell you what to do.” I replied.

“You’re actually good at this! How many times have you done this?”

“More times than I can count.” I laughed.

At one of the steps we had to move right but Elvis moved left, slamming into me and sending me to the ground but he quickly pulled my arm and straightened me out.

“I’m so sorry!” He laughed. I was also giggling along with him and shook my head.

I ended up drinking a little more but Elvis was driving so he didn’t drink along. We were both giggling and dancing to the music.

“I haven’t had this much fun in so long!” Elvis said over the music “I feel like a kid again.”

“I’m glad you’re having fun Elvis.”  I smiled softly, my heart aching for him. I know he loves being in the spotlight and he adores his fans but at the same time I knew he wanted a sense of normalcy in his life.

“My cowgirl.” Elvis grinned, opening the car door for me. I got an overwhelming feeling to just reach over and kiss him. Shaking off that feeling, I smiled and ducked into the car.

Getting out of the truck, Elvis threw an arm around my shoulders while I wrapped my arm around his waist. We were talking about when Elvis was a kid and how he loved listening to gospel music, I was learning a lot about his childhood during the drive from the bar to the house.

The house was very silent, we walked in and plopped down on the couch still talking about anything and everything. It was so easy talking to him.

“Thank you for taking me Elvis.” I smiled “I really, really had fun.”

He turned his face towards me and smiled back softly “You don’t have to thank me. I have to thank you, ‘cause I had so much fun.”

We stared at each other silently, his eyes drifting down to my lips. I wanted him to kiss me so bad this time.

“Are you drunk?” He asked, somewhat out of breath.

“What? No. Maybe a little tipsy but I’m not drunk.” I replied, really confused.

Was I acting drunk?

“Good.” He replied biting his lip and reached his hand, running his thumb over my lips “You have something on your lips.” He smirked faintly.

“What?” I asked. I held my breath, not knowing how to react.

“My lips.” He replied, crashing his lips onto mine.

My eyes widened, I was frozen on the couch. I was able to react quickly when he started to pull away. I place my hands on the lapels of his jacket and pulled him back, kissing him. He grinned against my lips and placed a hand on my waist, while the other cupped my cheek, drawing me closer to him, almost desperately.

Fuck. His lips were just as soft as I imagined. Holy hell. My chest was heaving. A small gasp escaped my lips when he bit my lower lip, allowing him access. His tongue was warm and persistent against mine.

Any common sense I had was out the window. This was wrong but it felt oh so good.

Months of burning intensity that has been building between us just exploded.

[racefortheironthrone]

Hey Steven, maybe you can help me with something I'm trying to articulate, but I'm not even sure is accurate, just seems like something I've observed, but I could be wrong.

So I've often heard about how the STEM fields are becoming more and more prioritized over the humanities in colleges, and that seems broadly true to me (though there's also other stuff that gets promoted over the humanities like business and law, it feels, though they might qualify as humanities, I don't know), and yet, in my opinion, it seems too broad, cause it seems less STEM and more TE, with the S and M put next to the humanities as fields you shouldn't bother with if you want a profitable career.

Technology and Engineering, it seems to me, are boosted over all else. I don't exactly see people saying get a job as an astronomer or a physicist or a biologist or a mathematician unless it's specifically to "contribute towards society in a profitable way (like, I hear geologists can get employed to help find new sources of fossil fuels, for example)," but meanwhile I hear people say, "just learn to code!" or get a degree in some engineering field or something like that. Basically, a focus on fields that contribute directly to someone making a profit instead of enriching society through the arts or through new discoveries. I don't know if what I said made any sense but I wonder your thoughts on all of it.

(Business I grant you, although a lot of that is due to employers subsidizing MBAs for their white collar workers. However, while Law used to be quite profitable for both parties, it's been in a bit of a demographic crisis for a few years now due to the fact that the number of legal jobs that pay well enough to afford law school tuition have declined massively and the number of people applying to law schools started to nosedive as well. Paul Campos, my colleague at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, has been on that beat for years.)

With regards to STEM, I think it is true that these things are pushed only in so far as they can be harnessed to the generation of profit. Technology and Engineering we agree on; these workers are highly prized by existing industries, they lend themselves well to both start-ups and spin-offs, and their work can be patented in ways that generate profit for both corporations and the university.

However, when it comes to Science, you need to remember that the "S" includes both applied and theoretical sides - and applied sciences look a lot like Technology and Engineering when it comes to industry demand for skilled workers, the potential for start-ups and spin-offs, and the profitability of patents. Think bio-medical, think bio-chemical, think Pharma, think materials and nano-tech and on and on. However, you are quite right when it comes to the theoretical sciences; you do that for the love of the game.

It is true that Mathematics is the most abstract, the most academic, and the hardest to monetize in the ways described above. However, as I learned from my union colleague who was in the Math department (who ironically went on to a career as a union organizer rather than attempt a career as a mathematician), there is one avenue for money-making with a Mathematics degree:

Finance.

I don't know whether this is still as true as when I was in grad school, but it used to be that Wall Street would throw very handsome salaries indeed at anyone with quant skills from any branch of STEM. (In fact, I remember complaints from some Engineering professors that industries that actually make stuff couldn't get enough engineers because they could make more money working for a hedge fund than actually engineering things.)

[qqueenofhades]

May not by your wheelhouse, but regarding ever-increasing college tuition, where does the money go? Why is college so much more expensive than it was a few decades ago?

I have indeed written several posts about the college affordability crisis, which are probably to be found in my "ronald reagan burn in hell" tag. This is because, as with most of the batfuckery of the American economy since the 1980s, it is indeed Ronald Reagan's fault. The overall causes of college skyrocketing in cost include, but are not limited to:

1) Huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, gutting the funding that public education systems/public universities previously received from the government;

2) This in turn increased the costs at private universities, which had always been more expensive than public universities anyway, and besides, they were now free to put up their prices as far as they wanted;

3) The "unregulated free market trickle-down capitalism for everyone!!" Reagan-era mentality led to the explosion of costs in healthcare, housing, education, etc etc., and drastically widened the level of income inequality between rich and poor;

4) The replacement of grants (which you don't have to pay back) with loans (which you do), which incentivized unscrupulous loan companies to increase the burden of debt on students and for colleges to charge more and more tuition in the form of loans;

5) A bachelor's degree was once supposed to guarantee you a job, and now does nothing of the sort, and because the market has become so crowded and oversaturated with generally unsatisfactory and unstable job options, you are expected to pay for multiple degrees and go even DEEPER into debt;

6) Obviously, because of this total rejiggering of the economic landscape, everything costs a fuckton more than it used to 40 years ago, so colleges can't return to their 1970s-era fee structure;

7) As an academic, I can promise you that very little of this money is actually going to faculty salaries or the development/sustainment of new programs. Yes, obviously it costs money to run a quality educational institution, and I also obviously want all universities to be funded properly and for academics to be paid what they deserve. But the actual distribution of this money is... less clear.

8) Schools with giant well-known Division I sports programs tend to get all or most of the money that comes into their institutions, leaving relatively little for academic or faculty development;

9) For example: I work at a large, fairly prestigious, private university with very high research activity/classification, and we don’t even have a football team sucking up the money. But still, every single quarter, my department has to go through the budget with a magnifying glass, cut low-enrolled courses, argue constantly with the dean about which courses we do get to teach, etc. Our adjuncts also get paid literal peanuts for taking on a lot of work, and because we're so low on core faculty and just had to cancel another faculty search because of budget reasons, probably 50% of our schedule in the upcoming quarter is being taught by adjuncts. This is... not ideal.

10) Student debt is now such a lucrative part of the American commodities market, is so embedded in the financial system, and constitutes (at last glance) up to $1.8 trillion of outstanding debt, that when Biden tried to cancel even some of it, the Republicans immediately lost their minds and sued him to stop it. As of now, that case is still pending before SCOTUS, and because they're the literal worst, nobody hold your breath for a good outcome.

In short: college is one of the areas that has suffered the most from unregulated Reagonomics over the last 40 years, has been repeatedly incentivized to become and to stay extremely expensive and to represent a long-term burden of debt, and while you would hope that the money was being responsibly reinvested into actual faculty hiring/retention/academic program development etc, that is... not usually the case. The big Division I universities that serve as farm team training programs for the NFL, with a little academics on the side, also tend to have tons of investment in sports and not nearly as much in the classroom. But I'm sure this is fine!

[enchantedmirage]

New Living Conditions | Katsumi Story 2 (pt.3)

--- later ---

I: Wake up~! We've arrived.

--In front of them is a large apartment complex with large windows and balconies.--

K: Not bad… (yawn) Huh.. wait, what is this? I: Let's head inside shall we? To your new apartment.

K: H-HUH? Isn't this all too fast?

I: What is it? I chose a place closeby for convenience's sake.

K: Don't leases take a while usually before they're accepted?

I: I pulled a few strings, so don't fret over the details. It isn't furnished yet, we can arrange that over the weekend while you remain in Seisoukan.

K: I see.. well I looked into listings before, the closer to the heart of the city, the more expensive it is.

I: Ah yes, well the rent will be taken from your salary—

K: But! I told you that I-

I: —is what I would usually say, but given you expressing how it's for your tuition.. This is only a hypothetical but would you consider moving to Shuetsu?

K: And away from Anzu? Hard no.

I: I'd thought so.

K: I know it was probably a lot of work trying to do this for me, I'm surprised you did it this quickly..

I: You didn't want to stay in Seisoukan, right?

K: All that from a comment..? You know how I am, I'll protest but I'll still do it anyway. You're awfully considerate, Mommy.

I: Would it kill you to not say that name after a compliment~?

K: But that's what we call people who take care of you, don't we?

I: ..I wouldn't know what it's like to have a mother.

K: I can say the same for me as well.

I: Pfft. K: What's so funny?

I: Our existences are both pitiful and yet so different.

K: Maybe it's because you're an only child, you learn to accept hardships when you have siblings.

K: Not to mention.. you can deny love all you want, but you'll grow up to become bitter and grumpy. I'm honest to myself — I want to be loved, so please dote on me some more, okay?

I: Your words are more befitting for an idol, a shame I won't be able to harness that.

K: Hm? Ah, my words echo Ohiisama's a lot don't they? But I've long held this belief since I was a child. Working hard to get the perfect grades.. Putting my all in unnecessary extracurriculars.. I t's unfortunate that I'm the eldest, I was more of a third parent to my siblings.

I: Oh~? Does that explain the way you advertise yourself as an adorable little sister?

K: I'M JUST SHORT—and I'm older than you by a few months too! If Mommy thinks I'm adorable, then I'm glad.

I: Call me that one more time and I'll send you to an enemy stronghold by foot.

K: Ueeh~ If that means I can call you that all the time, I don't think it would be too much of a bother.

I: ..

K: "you're putting your life in danger, are you crazy?" is what you're thinking right? It's not like I haven't been living in risk for all this time, I'm used to it.

K: There's a lot of things you can exchange by putting your life at risk, giving away your body for example..

I: You—

K: Oh, don't worry, I never did anything of "that" sort. But many girls I worked with had to in order to survive, I was just simply lucky. I'm a coward who doesn't like to be hurt, so I never partook in those jobs. I tried to be earnest by working honestly.

I: Did you now? You were underaged, that's illegal.

K: Sure, by law, but it's honest to put in hours of my time to get paid, right?

K: I was introduced to Neesan, and got a brush with something far darker I suppose. Blackmailing those high up in the corporate ladder, you know how, right?*

I: ..So I've heard. K: The drug was rather fast-acting so they weren't able to touch me, Neesan prioritized us after all.

(note: the blackmail procedure here often involves soliciting those men into "sleeping" with them. Often a drug is slipped into their drink that acts later, letting someone cards or take photos that can be sent to their family if they refuse paying the requested amount)

I: Fine, I get your point. Though, how did you get away from that?

K: Neesan let me, after paying off my dues at least.

I: How awfully anticlimactic, it's a bit odd given how organized crimes are handled.

K: Reality is often stranger than fiction, isn't it?

I: Well, nothing is impossible as they say. I think we've discussed for a while now, let's head back.

K: Ah right! I told Ohiisama I was going to help him with his routine..

I: So we'll have to hurry along now don't we~?

K: -pushing him out the door- Let's go now!

---

H: Welcome home!

K: Oh, thank you for greeting us Ohiisama~

H: Ibara notified us that he found you a place, so I'll be sure to cherish our remaining time together!

K: Aha...

J: It's not like she'll be disappearing yknow~?

K: Ohiisama's sentimentality is endearing though.

K: Yknow.. we could probably hold sleepovers once I'm settled in the apartment, since it's pretty spacious.

N: That sounds wonderful actually..

J: Are you sure you'd want to sleep with a bunch of guys though~?

I: Sleepovers don't necessitate the host sleeping in the same room. Besides, the place isn't furnished yet to even hold such festivities..

K: Well, Mommy told me that we'll be furniture shopping over the weekend soo..

H: Hmph, no fair! I'd advise you to have someone who knows their aesthetics come join as well. Of course, that would be me.

J: I'm sure we'll all end up coming along anyway.

N: It'll be fun with us together.

H: Mhm~ I can't wait!

I: Shouldn't we keep it down? We're not the only residents here after all.

K: Pfft—

N: Katsumi?

K: Nothing, just.. You guys are the best. Thank you for everything, Eden.

[freeworldallahexecutivembaclass]

California followed suit with the fair chance act to compete for a job act of 2019 that me and Mayor Bill De Blasio put in to place if you know the story I got that from Michelle Alexander book the new Jim Crow of mass incarceration of the so called poorer people of America that law is suppose to help their chances of gaining employment and not facing discrimination in getting their housing apartments applications and a license to be a counselor , casac , security guards, even a barber or any other job needing licensure you can hit that with Article 23A and get your license and job , I still say we should ban the conviction box on the job application I think I taught you how to get out of that and get a job just scroll down on this page , recently California just raised their minimum wage following suit from me and Governor Andrew Cuomo minimum wage salaries raised program in New York City California went as much as $ 20 Dollars an hour that is very good better than New York but Kathy Hochul the Governor is fixing that for New Yorkers she is pretty good a friend of mines true I always say they should cut how much taxes they take from a person paycheck it is sad to see people working that can't afford child support let alone support themselves they can't afford the rent , food for the week or give their spouse support and even transportation and they work provide services for their employers and their city or town and they have a job providing services to make life better for the people's that is bad help them keep more of their paycheck in their pocket and bank accounts and boost their salary funny thing is employers that get in on that there are tax breaks and tax cuts for them and tax benefits for them where was they at before I came along being that the cost of living is okay in California other states should follow suit now imagine if they did that in regions like Louisiana , Atlanta , Texas , North Carolina , Delaware , Chicago , Boston , Baltimore , which they should being that you can get an apartment for $ 400 to $ 800 monthly that leaves money for transportation , food for the week , school tuition private school tuition for their kids to afford their kids a great future better city services like sanitation services and cleaner and better parks like New York City which now how laps and miles counters and city shelters have water fountains that save for recycling with their bottle refill machines , the wages has been stagnant for decades in those regions I propose we raised the National minimum wage level to $ 20 - $ 25 dollars an hour to better assist in the states creating a better quality of life for it's citizens and beautify their neighborhoods with Citibikes like New York City got now and legal recreational Marijuana stores on every corners and guardrails in our train stations ensuring the safety of the people .

I dedicate my life to Joyce Meyer my pastor and my mom and now she is a pastor of yours now and also a mother of yours now , the new Mother Teresa of our times on a serious note New Yorkers are using voodoo like it is the new cool even kids are using voodoo witchcraft now no the new cool is learning your religion all over again it is okay you are redeemed , restored and forgiven and love being one of Gods favorite people no matter what religion you consider yourself to be in you could be anything you want except a knowingly evil person the holy spirit will get you everytime and that is promised and is what is promised .

I'm inviting you and introducing you to some of my favorite people Joel Osteen of Lakewood church in Houston Texas get all his books your best life now and change your life your rusty old foul self into a beautiful beautiful beautiful human being and read my mom books and you can call her your mom now Joyce Meyer the new Mother Teresa of our times and the Joyce Meyer ministries read their books and follow their show that is what I do and so should you , get the books you are going to love the books that is on their bookshelves .

Introducing

National minimum wage salaries raised to better pay and quality of life bill .

Just scroll this page to learn more .

24 × 7 = 168 hours

In 1995 Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people poor soul

Columbia Presbyterian hospital is on 168th street and 168 is the end of the C train line

I am blessed and happy and to be envied because my iniquities are forgiven and my sins are covered up and completely buried . The Lord will take no account nor reckon it against me . - Romans 4:7 - 8

I am useful and helpful and kind to others , tenderhearted ( compassionate , understanding , loving - hearted ) , forgiving others ( readily and freely ) , as God in Christ forgive me . - Ephesians 4:32

All my children are christians and have christian friends , and God has set aside a Christian wife or husband for each of them . - 1 Corinthians 15:33

BE like this please 🥺 it works you love the lifestyle .

My children are not unequally yoked with unbelievers . - 2 Corinthians 6:14

My children walk and live ( habitually ) in the ( Holy ) spirit ( responsive to and controlled and guided by the spirit ) .

My children obey me in the lord , for this is right . They honor their father and mother - which is the first commandment with a promise - " that it may go well with them and that they may enjoy long life on the earth . " - Ephesians 6:1 - 3

I do not exasperate my children : instead I bring them up in the training and instruction of the lord . - Ephesians 6:4

God is good if I hear other humans talking to me 24 / 7 and is still able to do miracles like that and this page then I know God is the winner and not Satan in the end though and I choose to go the way of God not other forces .

Normal person hear cars and buses and trains go by them me I hear the sounds of the city but with me a tape is playing 24/ 7 in my head a verbal abusive self hating tape in my head it is people from the street crowd or rough and dirty crowd only dirty people do stuff like that it is sad that voodoo has become their way of life and no religion , no thank you since I became Talented Tenth now I judge other humans by the content of their character not the color of their skin , good luck to me and ridding myself of that auditory world of my own no thank you to those voices and bad people and their cognition distortions .

Thank you for Joyce Meyer and her books go get them they will change your life .

Thanks Governor Andrew Cuomo for my incubator in Brooklyn I'm keeping it and heeding to his advice , I'm good and enjoy the page .

[muzdiir]

i transferred 4 times when i was working on my bachelor's (bc of crippling anxiety). it took me a total of 7 years to finally get the fucker. things i would recommend to others in the college realm:

FILL OUT YOUR FAFSA. even if u think u won't qualify for any financial aid, do it anyway! i forget what age u can do it as an independent but it helps A TON. (i'm sure fafsa may be well-known to most college-age ppl but it sure wasn't to me. if i knew fafsa was a thing, i woulda gone to college right outta high school but i didnt & i thought i could never afford it)

if u qualify for federal loans, ALWAYS choose them over private. theyve got better interest rates & terms. ur loans will come outta their grace period 6 months after u graduate; if u don't have a job/enough income to pay the monthly balance, LET YOUR LOAN SERVICER KNOW. you can put them into deferment and/or forbearance (i dont remember the exact difference rn) until you're able to afford it. even then, federal loans can (usually) be adjusted for your salary.

start off with community college, esp if you have anxiety/financial concerns. the tuition is usually dirt cheap (for US college), the admissions process is infinitely easier, you can get all your basic degree requirements done, it is completely fine & normal to only do it part time, (most) instructors are super chill, & (probably my favorite aspect) it is full of non-traditional students (ie older folks ranging from "just past ''''normal''''' college age" to "retiree just here for a good time). nontrad students are the best bc 1) they have so much real world experience that they bring to the classroom 2) they easily keep class discussions going 3) they are frequently very helpful/encouraging towards younger students 4) they genuinely give a fuck about their education & don't waste anyone's time

make sure to have fun with your electives. pick what you like but also try new things. you never know what will suddenly spark your interest & perhaps become your major.

keep your mind open irt majors. it's okay to change your mind!!! just keep pluggin' along & sticking to classes you enjoy. if it sucks, drop them! talk to department advisors about changing ur major. (i would recommend you do this BEFORE you graduate--fafsa/federal finaid only really works for ur 1st bachelor's but you can milk it if you're careful & paying attention to tuition/fees/room&board)

make sure you're aware of what help the school offers irt mental/physical/financial well-being. if ur struggling w certain academics-related stuff, u can usually find help to make it easier on yourself. (the uni in the UK i went to had this whole thing where u could get specific accommodations if u had physical/mental limitations which was Neat)

im sure i have more but i'm tired & its almost 4am as i type this lmao

[ao3cassandraic]

Hi! You were really nice about answering my last question about applying to get my MLIS. After reading (and reading and re-reading) your response, I was wondering - what are certain "niches" you see in professional information work, and what schools cater to them? For example, I'm applying to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign because it's in all the top ten lists - but I've only just heard from someone who works there that they wouldn't consider it the best school to go to if you want to get into rare books and archives. Is there a way to find out these sorts of things other than frantically interrogating any vaguely associated acquaintances?

Yeah, that's a great question!

Let's start with those "top ten" lists. They're bogus. They're HORSECRAP. They're total bushwa. Put absolute zero faith in them. (Not absolutely zero: absolute zero. Minus all the Kelvin, baby!) And I do not say this because they've snubbed the place I teach in; we actually rank tolerably well (undeservedly well in one area, frankly) in our areas of strength.

Most employers are not going to be impressed by what school you went to. (This is partly due to the unshakable hatred so many info pros have for the schools they attended. No school could ever impress them!) They want to know what YOU, you yourself, can do to solve their problems, and they can't reallly tell based on where you went to school. So put this particular worry aside.

Let's go on by saying this: salaries in the information professions being what they are (i.e. sucktastic), it is VASTLY more important to AVOID STUDENT DEBT than to go to a supposedly "top" school. If you have a school in-state, or your state has a tuition-reciprocity agreement with an out-of-state school, that school should frankly be high up on your list unless they do absolutely nothing in your desired specialty. DEBT IS REALLY BAD. DEBT CAN CHAIN YOU TO CRAPTASTIC JOBS YOU WOULD OTHERWISE LEAVE. AVOID DEBT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT. I can't say this loudly enough!

Now, to your actual question. How do you find out whether a school is good at something you care about? There's a few ways:

Call the school and ask. (There'll be a graduate coordinator or admissions coordinator or somebody you can talk to, guaranteed.) "What areas of librarianship would you say are this program's strengths?" is a fine question. (If they say "we're good at everything!" um, that's a bad answer and they kind of suck.)

Or call the school and ask if they can connect you with a current student studying what you want to study. Perhaps even an alum working in that area. Or whoever advises students in that area. This is a common ask and shouldn't be difficult for the school to accommodate.

Look at the school's faculty page. Who teaches in the area(s) you're interested in? Check 'em out on Google Scholar -- have they published anything interesting? Or are they active in the appropriate professional organizations or conferences? If you find The Person, it's in-bounds to email them directly, explain your interest, and ask what they'd recommend if you matriculate in their program. (We're busy people, so there's a good chance you won't get an answer, or only a very brief one -- but a prompt and/or kind answer should lift a school on your list. You want to know you'll be treated decently as a student, you know?)

Also, be generous in how you construe "your area." Okay, maybe a school doesn't have a bunch of courses in rare books -- most won't, frankly, it's a niche interest and a poorly-marketable one, which I will definitely have more to say about momentarily -- but they've got a crackerjack digitization instructor. That school should stay on your list! Digitization is a Big Thing in rare books, special collections, and archives!

Check course listings, not just for what courses are on the books, but for which courses are actually being taught. These are not necessarily the same thing, institutional red tape being what it is.

No matter what professional areas you're interested in, you will learn most in library school if you play AWAY from your existing strengths. This is counterintuitive to a lot of people! But it can really work to make you an all-round standout. If you know your tech savvy isn't great, you can see what a school will do about that. If you know you need more management skill-up, again, look for coursework and/or extracurriculars that will help.

Okay. Rare books, special collections, archives. This is perhaps the commonest area people entering a master's program want to specialize in. Bluntly, this means there is WAY TOO MUCH COMPETITION for any job you'd actually want. Employers have taken absolutely ruthless advantage of this! Search Google Scholar for "archives precarity" or the "UCLA Six."

I actually got in trouble once for telling our school's archives students quite bluntly that the archives job market sucks so bad that if there's anything else in the information professions they can imagine doing, they should do that instead. You aren't my student yet, though, so I can still tell you, DO SOMETHING ELSE IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. At the very LEAST have a backup career plan, okay?

I warn because I love.

[roseriot2191]

Entry 1/Introductions

hey!

so i really havent used tumblr before really so im not sure if this is the best place for what im doing but regardless im posting it here

~welcome to my blog~

the purpose is to document my life as a whole but its also my senior year so even more reason to record it!

this blog will be my safe space to spill anything, the good and the bad, of my upcoming life. in all honesty im not sure how well ill keep up with posts or how much effort ill end up putting into them but i will try to update at least once a week for sure.

ok so now onto me :)

hello again! im rose, i use he/they pronouns and i am 17. for anyone wonder, which i dont know why but i guess i can just state it to get it out of the way, im a cis queer guy. i use queer as my label because i very much dislike labels for myself lmao. im attracted to men way more often than not but if the right person for me isnt a guy the im not going to let gender/sex get in the way of love and im not sure pansexual really fits the way i feel. queerness ill say is a part of me but not something i identify with as much as i did in middle school. ill make a separate post about this perhaps. (ill mention that my name isnt actually rose irl and its just my pen name for the blog. i have no reason to be secretive really besides to hide my identity from friends, family and people who think they might know me, especially with the topics i might write about, but also i didnt put too much effort into disconnection rose and myself so if youre one of my irl friends, hi :p ) i am a high school student, but i am mostly taking college classes at a community college. im a photo major! photography is a recent thing that i started basically the same time i started college. i sorta took a leap into photo classes and decided that i might as well major in it since ive always been a creative person and since my high school was paying for my tuition. honestly college has been really fun but its school and sometimes i get burnt out really easily which sucks. ill probably talk about this more some other time. i havent really decided on a style of photography that i prefer yet but this fall ill start a portraiture lighting class as well as a color theory class, both im really excited for.

recently ive found myself changing or perhaps growing into a more typical "teenager" recently. this growth is a drastic change from who i was as a kid and that sort of scares me but i think i like the idea of who i can become. i started taking an interest in cars which sort of came out of know where. it might be because i got my license last december and have been driving a lot more but its also rooted in my ex too. (at the begging of this summer i got into a relationship with this guy who was my first everything, and we also ended it in july which hurt hella but again this is a topic for another post later) he was a total car guy and it was something we were bonding over. he would teach/talk about cars and i listened and started to take an actual interest. we went to a few car shows and it was honestly a prefect date/hangout for us because he liked cars of course but i also got to bring my camera and take photos. definitely something i miss doing. my first car was a 2004 honda pilot. it was a manual and i tried learning how to drive it and i got the gist but ended up selling it and getting an automatic 2006 honda pilot lol. this car ive had since february and its lowkey dying now which pisses me. my grandpa was the one who ended up buying it for me which i appreciate very much dont get me wrong but he bought it off these sketchy guys and didnt get it checked out right away for any problems and now im paying extra money in repairs. currently im trying to save for something more "extra" like a mustang or a bmw or honestly an older honda like a prelude or accord, though on my salary as a host in a small restaurant i have barely $4.5k saved and i started work about the same time i got the 06 pilot. i know these cars are a bit on the pricey side but im giving myself till new years to save for something and if i dont find anything by then, ill keep my money in savings for college after i graduate. (that is with the hopes my 06 pilot lasts me through that long :,) )

so yeah. i work as a host at a restaurant. its my first job and i honestly really like it. i get paid $16.50 an hour and i get tipped out by the waitresses on top of that. on average i make about $500 in a pay period which is two weeks. i wish i had more hours but also i dont. i usually use work as an excuse to procrastinate or completely ignore school work which is really self destructive because i convince myself that im productive but in reality i need to be more focused on school. my work ethic is pretty good though i think. i always say yes if someone needs a cover or if i need to come in ealry/on a day off. after the break up i took a bunch of extra shifts and started taking caterings for longer hours and to keep me busy. in the past 2 pay periods i clocked about 50 hours each and made $850 each. this has again been really nice for savings but not for my summer classes. this pay period i had a double catering and i should clock in about 40 ish hours. ill have one more pay period after this one before i will talk to my manager about scheduling me only friday-sunday and see about scheduling me caterings more rather than hosting since i make more that way. theyre pretty good about accommodating hours/days which is really cool but my manager always complains. i feel bad but also i really shouldnt because i need to do better in school first and i already do so much more than what i get paid for honestly so she really doesnt have any reason to say anything. (especially since we just hired 3 new girls after the summer hires left) all my coworkers love me but also everyone shit talks eachother behind their backs so i always wonder if they say anything about me lol. if they are then they should put that energy somewhere else because how are you guys gonna shit talk a 17 year old when you all are 25+???

my music taste is the opposite in regards to changing drastically. i find myself returning to the music i grew up with and even expanding with similar artists. for a quick family overview my step dad who raised me since i was three was/is a tattoo artist and very much in the punk scene. my mom was in the artistic performance and alternative scene. both these adults raised a very punk baby with all the classics and now like i said, after not really interested or listening to music often for awhile, im back to my roots. this is very comforting however when me and my ex were dating he was a big influence in the reintroduction. so do i corrilate some music to him? yes. does it hurt? im not sure. its very confusing but i listen to it on blast regardless and will most likely have hearing problems by the time im 30 T~T a lot of what ive been listening to on repeat is radiohead which was "our band" and i still think it is. im a very sentimental person and cant/wont diconnect these feelings probably ever. i do this a lot. this time though i havent had the urge to stop listening which is a reliefe because i enjoy the music but also because i think itd hurt me if i found hate or sadness in the music rather than the love and bond we once shared through these songs. something ive been considering is posting a song with every post or at the very least at the end of the week. maybe even a playlist at the end of the month? not sure yet. i think music tatse is something that changes with me all the time so its something worth recording here. oh also i def will post cd hauls here too! i have a small collection started but definetely wanna get more.

lets see i dont read often but my favorite books are alice in wonderland, the warden's daughter, they both die at the end, coraline and currently i am reading solitaire by alice oseman. ive read her heartstopper series and have taken a serious interest in tori's story. for my favorite shows i binge watch shows so often and then forget about them just as fast as i watch them lol. i really like soul eater, downtown, daria, the midnight gospel, the walking dead, initial d, madoka magica, and some others i cant think of right now.

hmm~ i cant really think about anything else to write at the moment, plus ive been typing for awhile and should get to bed, so i think ill end it here.

i dont really expect anyone to read this blog in all honesty but its something i wanna do for myself and if a few people take interest or relate to anything i talk about i think thats enough :)

[sportsgeekonomics]

The prepared version of my remarks to the Faculty Athletic Representatives Association annual meeting

My actual talk today veered from these prepared remark more than usual, but here is the version I prepared in advance:

I’d like to start my talk out today with a question: since we are on the topic of NIL, how many of you think it’s morally wrong for a college football athlete to choose his university, at least in part, on the basis of financial considerations, such as how much better off he and his family will be if he chooses School A over School B?

So is it fair to say a number of you think this is a real problem – that it’s wrong to choose a university based on financial considerations? 

Ok, so let’s explore that -- do you feel the same way about that for FBS as FCS?  If an FCS athlete is choosing between two schools and factoring cash flow into the decision, is that wrong on some deep level?

Is it the same for FCS as D2?  D2 as D3?

What about for other sports?  What about for a women’s rower?  If a women’s rower is factoring in her financial benefit from attending one college versus another, is that problematic in any way to any of you?

Are there any of you out there who would agree that money should never be part of the college choice process?

Now what if I told you the women’s rower is a walk-on and the financial decision is whether to go to a state school that is offering an in-state academic scholarship that won’t cost the family anything versus an out-of-state private scholarship that will put the family in debt $50,000 a year for the 5 years it will take her to finish her pre-med degree?  If the family tells the young woman she has to go to the state school over the private for financial reasons, are they committing a moral offense?

If there are any of you out there who answered yes when I was asking about the football player, when you thought the flow of money was outward from the university, but who have changed your mind now that I’ve contextualized it as a women’s rower where the flow of money is outward from the family, I would challenge you to rethink your moral code.    

I believe it is totally appropriate for that young woman and her family to weigh the financial toll her education choice may take on her family’s financial health.    The burden she might impose on her family from $250,000 of debt might very well outweigh any of the benefits of that elite private school education, and it absolutely needs to be factored into the decision.

Moreover, if a product or service like education is being sold in the marketplace now, with schools putting a price on it, so that they are asking families to choose among options with different financial impacts, then flipping the script and asking the school to pay them instead is morally identical.  It is just a negotiation over which party ultimately values the agreement more.  Unless you think there is something morally wrong with a family choosing not to bankrupt itself by selecting a less expensive college for their child, I posit that there is nothing wrong with making that same decision when the flow of money to the family is positive.

Treating Education as a Unit of Exchange is simply part of the economic system that our society has chosen – putting a price on education is not a moral crisis, it’s just a consequence of living in capitalism.  Politically, I can tell you that I would prefer to change our country so that education were either taken out of the economic decision space altogether for families or at least far more heavily subsidized, to go back to the days where the University of California was free for all qualified Californians, but if we choose as a nation to adopt a system where schools charge tuition, then selecting which college to attend is always partially an economic choice.  Your salary is funded by asking students to make that choice, so for your moral consciences I sure hope you agree with me that money and education are compatible.

But the thing is, the morality of a commercial exchange doesn’t change when you switch who is paying and who is receiving.  When the flow of money changes direction so a school pays a family instead of the other way around, it does not suddenly become a moral travesty, where moments ago it was just a business decision.

Ok, another check in.  Am I right that everyone here is ok with a full athletic scholarship, also known as a GIA?  A Full GIA is sort of the halfway point, because essentially you’re offering a talented athlete a discount of 100% to attend your university.  You are offering a financial inducement, but just enough to make the transaction cash-flow neutral to both parties.  But that is a huge net outflow from the university relative to the status quo, so to an economist, that represents a payment, it’s just one we don’t see because it’s only a payment relative to a status quo that didn’t happen.

Am I also right that most of you have gotten okay with Cost of Attendance stipends, which turns the corner just a bit, i.e., paying a small positive amount to the athlete?  How about if your school now offers so-called Alston Awards of around $6,000 a year.  Now your athletes are being paid above and beyond any semblance of what it costs to attend school simply because they bring value to your institution. 

Was this the bridge too far? 

Or perhaps it was the fact that Athletes are being paid for their NIL now.

Have you sworn off college sports now as having been forever ruined?  Are the athletes now corrupt?  How many of you have watched a college football game this year?  Was it palpably different?  Did you hate it?  Or was it the same game as ever?  Did the fans seem just as jazzed as ever?  To my eyes, people simply don’t factor in Alston Awards or NIL compensation when they watch sports.  Anyone telling me otherwise really needs to show me some tangible evidence because ratings are at their highest since about 2017, and I was told that if athletes got paid more than a scholarship, no one would watch.  Yet people still watch.

You may think I am exaggerating about the “no one will watch” part, but I am not.  Let’s stop for a moment and review some of the very intelligent people who have made these sorts of claims.

In O’Bannon, my former boss, Professor Daniel Rubinfeld of NYU and UC Berkeley, former Chief Economist of the Department of Justice, stated under penalty of perjury that college sports WOULD NOT EXIST without the rules in place as of 2013, which prohibited any NIL compensation and didn’t even allow Full COA scholarships.  Slide 1 please.

Four years later, Professor Kenneth Elzinga of the University of Virginia submitted, again under penalty of perjury, the claim that COA was a bright line, so that even a penny of pay unrelated to COA, like Alston Awards or NIL, would put consumer interest in college sports at risk.  Slide 2 please.

What these claims have in common is that they were extremely definitive statements about consumer conduct, based entirely on fiction.  Paying athletes more makes no sense if you know that by paying more your costs will go up and your revenues will go down.  This would be the equivalent of Starbucks asking customers if they would like some plutonium in their coffee, having customers say no, then Starbucks spending money to add in plutonium anyway, right in front of their customers, knowing sales will decline as a result.  It’s not how businesses behave if they know their customers’ preferences as well as the NCAA claims.  If paying athletes is really poisonous to consumer demand, you really don’t need a rule against it – just like the Coffee Retailers Association of America has never needed an antitrust exemption to ban its members from adding plutonium to coffee.  Firms do not need to collude to avoid adding expensive demand-decreasing features to their products.  They only need to collude to avoid adding expensive demand-INCREASING features.  And this is how I know that the NCAA actually knows that fans will flock to games if athletes are paid, because they collude to prevent it.

The very fact that the NCAA NEEDS to ban schools from paying their players, is strong economic evidence that the theory that paying players will hurt business is false.  Quick; ask yourself what would happen if the rules went away and schools could offer money to athletes.  Would LSU say, well gosh, my fans would hate it if we paid players so we’ll stay out of that market and let the other SEC teams commit business suicide, while we stay amateur and reap the commercial benefits of that decision.  Or would they assess their fan base and decide to compete using pay?

I think most of you would agree with me that they would look out at what their fanbase wanted and decide to do it, NOT to damage their business prospects but because they foresaw a business ADVANTAGE from paying money.

But it hasn’t just been pointy-headed economists who have said silly things under oath.  There were also the people who run college sports.  There’s Mark Emmert – still NCAA President at least as of last time I checked -- who testified under oath that receiving NIL money would render an athlete forever unable to be part of an academic environment.  Slide 3, please.

And of course, who could forget former Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, who said if the Big Ten had to give any more money to athletes than they were giving in 2013, pre-COA, pre-Alston Awards, pre-NIL, the Big Ten would leave D1 for D3 out of principle. Slide 4, please.

Back in 2013 or 2017 when these statements were made, they were unfalsifiable, because the NCAA rules in place meant they were, as Jim Delany said, entirely hypothetical.  There would never be a way to test whether the cockamamy demand curves of Professors Rubinfeld and Elzinga existed or not, or whether an athlete could do a commercial for an HVAC company and still go to English class like Mark Emmert said was impossible because under the rules that existed no one was able to pay athletes for their NIL or give them academic payments above COA.  But the cool thing about the state NIL law experiment that I asked Nancy Skinner to let us get started in California is now we get to test all these claims.    Slide 5 Please.

Everyone knows NIL is unrelated to education.  NIL is above COA.  NIL is about raw, crass commerce.  Mark Emmert’s shills and pitchmen are now Big Men and Women on Campus.

But that’s the thing, those athletes with NIL deals are still on campus, going to class as much or as little or on UNC paper as before, majoring in majors just as real or fake as before.  This theory of demand concocted by the NCAA wilted at first contact with a market test.  It’s bogus.  It always was but now you have to be willful to ignore the truth, not just unimaginative.

Fans haven’t lost interest.  Boosters haven’t lost interest.  TV networks definitely haven’t lost interest.  Just ask Kevin Warren and he’ll give you one billion examples per year of how network demand for college sports has not decreased in the era of NIL.  Last weekend’s news that the value of the Big 12 rights grew despite losing Texas and Oklahoma should tell you that NIL has not decreased demand for college sports broadcast rights.

The economic justification for the cap in the first place, the “if we don’t fix prices, we’ll ruin the product and consumers will flee like we’re selling plutonium-laced coffee” excuse turns out to make as much sense as the plutonium example I concocted.  There has never been a product whose consumers have boycotted it because the workers make Too MUCH money.  Maybe they would boycott if you underpaid them, but can you imagine a protest outside of a garment factory with outraged consumers saying they won’t buy another Polo shirt until Ralph Lauren agrees to pay his immigrant seamstresses a LOWER wage?

This is why I think that if Courts were fully rational, the current Collegiate Model would be gone already.  Conservatives like Justice Kavanaugh have certainly seen through the charade – amateurism is just price fixing dressed up in the language of morality.  Isn’t it just a matter of time before the other conservatives on the court see it that way too?  And as for the shrinking liberal wing of the court, the fact that amateurism’s price fixing taxes poor black athletes and redirects the money to mostly white male coaches can’t possibly be on their list of deserving targets for economic redistribution.  Do we think Justices Samuel Alito and Ketanji Brown Jackson are likely to find a consensus to support the idea that keeping Najee Harris poor so that Nick Saban can earn $10 million was the one spot where affirmative action was still needed in America?

But I do think the fact that amateurism redistributes wealth away from young black men is a reason why a Republican take over of Congress is the NCAA’s best bet.  Because rhetoric aside, nothing is more consistent with the party of Trump and McConnell than making sure that Gen X and Baby Boomer coaches keep earning millions while Gen Z athlete pay is fixed at less than market rate.  So for the next two years, I think your business model is probably safe.  

But let’s assume at some point in the next decade Congress finally wakes up and recognizes that being paid to play D1 college football is no more or less moral than paying a school to play D3 college football or being paid to play NFL football.  In which case, taking the next step and offering FBS athletes a market rate becomes a business decision just like charging a women’s rower a market rate, no more of a moral outrage than sending a chemistry major a tuition bill at the start of every semester. 

Hence, the current worry about whether NIL payments might possibly be used as so-called inducements to encourage an athlete, especially a football or women’s or men’s basketball athlete, to enroll as a freshman at, or transfer to, a school miss the mark completely.  I’m even less worried about whether a payment prevents an athlete from transferring or leaving college altogether.   If I told you that college sports had found a way to lower the incidence of athletic transfers and to prevent athletes from leaving school early for a dubious shot at going pro before they are ready, wouldn’t you normally cheer that?  What is it about an NIL deal that makes a longer college tenure suddenly a sin?

Paying someone to play football is not an outrage.  Taking away a right that the rest of us enjoy, simply because colleges don’t want to have to pay market rates for valuable services is an outrage.  We need to stop confusing the two.

Speaking of outrages, I’d like to take a look at the current NCAA Interim Policy on NIL.  Even as modified last week it’s still trying to legislate a moral line where none actually exists.  The policy’s big picture take away is (and now I am quoting) Slide 6 Please

“The NCAA is committed to ensuring that its rules, and its enforcement of those rules, protect and enhance student-athlete well-being and maintain national standards for recruiting. Those goals are consistent with the NCAA’s foundational prohibitions on pay-for-play and impermissible recruiting inducements, which remain essential to collegiate athletics.”

So there we go, the NCAA has “foundational prohibitions” on recruiting inducements.  Luring someone to your school with financial benefits is prohibited.  Well, except it’s not, right?  Because a GIA is a financial inducement.  If one school wants me to be a walk-on and another offers me a GIA, that’s a recruiting inducement.   If you look closely, the NCAA is not banning recruiting inducements, but only “impermissible” ones. 

To the NCAA, it does matter whether the flow of money is into the university or out of the university.  A cynic will not be shocked that the NCAA, an organization made up primarily of colleges and universities, finds it to be totally appropriate if a transaction results in cash flowing into a school and “foundationally” wrong if a transaction results in too much cash leaving one of its member schools.   So is all of this moral outrage just a veneer to paper over naked price fixing?  I think that’s a lot closer to the truth than most people want to admit.

Let me offer up a better bright line for a new version of the collegiate model.  College Athletes should go to college.  Period.  Beyond that requirement that college athletes be college students, then there is no need for them to follow any specific rule, restriction, limitation, etc., that is not also applied to the coach or the Athletic Director, at least not without a valid negotiation with an empowered athlete representative body. 

Now, to be fair, there are other approaches than what I believe in.  Andy Zimbalist here, unless I am being unfair to his view of things, has proposed the other version of my “If it’s good for the coaches, it should be good for the athletes” rule, which is not to free up schools to compete for athletes, but instead to allow schools to collude to cap coaches pay too.  And presumably Athletic Director pay, though I have trouble imagining successful cartel meetings when the ADs get together to suppress their own pay.    So yes, a different solution is not to start treating athletes like adults, but to start treating coaches like children too, thus growing the list of second-class citizens disempowered by collusive conduct of the NCAA.

I’ve heard this justified as a way to let schools devote more of their resources to academics, but I would submit (with due respect to Andy and anyone else here in favor of this plan), that while treating professors as having superior rights to coaches may feel like some sort of high school revenge fantasy for all the times we intellectuals got shoved into lockers by the future football coaches of America, it’s still an injustice to tell one group of people they deserve fewer rights than others.  Coaches are people too! 

Just to be practical for a moment, unlike with athletes, the Courts have actually recognized that fixing prices for coaches pay is illegal, so to get to this outcome, we would need congressional intervention.  Do we really think Senator Tommy Tuberville is going to support a legalized wage cap on his former colleagues pay, just to support the priorities of a bunch of liberal college professors who think too much money is being spent on football?  Call me a pessimist, but I think you’ve got a tough slog ahead on that one when we can’t even get Kristen Sinema to support a tax on Hedge Fund managers.

I’ve also heard it justified by the fact that the NCAA and schools do a great deal of good with the wealth they extract from athletes by means of their collusive conduct.  I call this they “yes, we robbed the bank, but we donated most of the money to Maria Theresa’s orphanage” defense.  Its all fine and good to do good works, but if you’ve engaged in wrongful conduct to take the fruits of someone else’s labor to get that money in the first place, the good works do not erase the original sin of theft.

So, with the five minutes still allotted to me, perhaps I should actually address the question of the future of the collegiate model.  I’ve told you I think the current model rests on a false claim of moral superiority, namely that the current practice of preventing athletes from being induced to attend a specific university with some forms of money, but allowing them to be induced with other forms of money, isn’t a moral distinction, it’s just price fixing in fancy wrapping paper.  I think ultimately my understanding is going to become Federal law, either through the Courts or through Congress.  It will stop being legal to get together here in Indianapolis and decide as a national body on the maximum amount an FBS school can offer to an athlete, just like it’s currently illegal to agree among schools on how much to offer to coaches.

What will happen next?  Within minutes, the earth will spin out of its orbit, crash into Mars, and humanity will cease to exist.  “See,” Wally Renfro will scream from his retirement home in Arizona, “I told you so!” 

No, what will actually happen is that the negative impacts of amateurism depicted on Slide 7 will slowly unwind. Slide 7 Please.

Player compensation will normalize so that quarterbacks will get paid about the same as what offensive coordinators get paid today, but that money will come from a sharp deceleration in the rate of coaching pay. 

That pay may not decrease right away, but it will flatten out, and maybe even start to decline, as boosters realize it’s easier to just pay the players directly than to pay the coach in hopes he can recruit the players. 

Spending on lavish facilities whose primary purpose is to recruit players will decline rapidly.  This is already happening.  Take a look at Auburn University, where a new practice facility for the men’s basketball team was approved by the Board of Trustees, but recently head coach Bruce Pearl announced it was being mothballed because he wanted donors to redirect their portion of the money needed to fund the facility into a collective that would pay recruits directly instead.   Slide 8 please.

This is great news for those of us who have been saying that the so-called “arms race” in facilities was just a symptom of the price-fixing in player salaries to begin with, and it’s evidence that if the price fixing stops, we can redirect the excess spending from benefiting the shareholders of large construction firms to go instead to the talented young men and women who actually drive the value of college sports.

I’ll even go one step further.  Asking for a level of professionalism among people representing our universities is a good thing.  I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of glorifying an amateur operation; an amateur hour is not a positive thing.  This is the future of the collegiate model: that collegiate no longer is confused with amateur.  You are all professional professors yet nothing could be more collegiate.  Your best graduate students are university employees.  The undergraduates on work-study are university employees.  We ask all of them to be professional in their conduct, and to represent the university as collegiate employees in one aspect of their lives, but they still go to class as students.  College athletes will interact with the system in the same way.   This will be the collegiate model.  Like the old joke about a Mullet being all business in the front, all party in the back, college athletes will be all College in the classroom and all business on the field and in the marketplace.   

And people will love college sports identically to today.  Sports will change because of the changes in how society consumes sports generally, not because of how college athletes are compensated.  Mark Emmert will pontificate his way into retirement, but his erroneous predictions, and all of the other self-serving and highly compensated opinions of defense experts will all turn out to have been so obviously false everyone will wonder who would have been so gullible to have believed it.  Certainly, none of YOU fell for it, right?

[thepsychvet]

Feeling stuck in life at the moment...

So let me break this down...

Career-wise, I'm starting from scratch. Why? because when I started my vet med journey, I stayed with the company that has no career progression but pays well so I can fund my studies and still support my family. But when my partner and I decided that we would like to explore the opportunity to live abroad, we decided that I would pause my vet med journey and focus on gathering funds for our plans. So now, while waiting for offers for my partner to come, I'm currently looking for a job that will give me more experience and exposure, but I'm having a hard time looking for one because the current salary that I have does not par with the current employment experience that I have with my current company. Some companies are shocked when they see my salary versus the responsibilities that I have at my current company. And it saddens me because there are times when I really like the role, but they won't choose me because they can't offer the same salary that I currently have. Now I'm still job hunting sending my resume left and right finding the right employer who will take me.

And since I already mentioned my vet-med journey, I will also put it here. I'm still sad that I have to take a pause on my vet med journey, and I can still remember how painful it is when I have to let go of my 3rd year white uniform and sell some of my vet med materials because I know it will take some time for me to get back. Now I'm trying my luck applying to vet schools with scholarships internationally, so I do not need to worry a lot about how I will pay my tuition fee. I'm hoping that I can get back as soon as possible. 

Financially, I'm still far away from my goal, but I'm slowly getting back on track with my finances. Cutting back on some expenses and focusing on what really needs to be spent and on our savings to grow, our current goal this year is to pay off our house and save enough for renovation. Hopefully, before we leave our condo, there will be some improvements. We are also saving for paper processing once we receive a job offer.

Sometimes I find myself comparing my life to others; some of my college psychmates are already big in the field, taking their MA's, getting promoted, and having a good role in the corporate world. My vet-med batchmates are already on their way to their fourth year. Some of my friends and other batchmates have settled down to building their families. Though I know I shouldn't be comparing my life to others, sometimes I just can't help it. But every day I try to remind myself the excerpt from Matt Haig's book The Midnight Library is one of my favorites. "Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad."

I'm so thankful to my best friend/accountant/gym buddy/food buddy/partner in crime/partner for keeping me sane with all the things that are happening around me and my super-wired brain thinking everything at once. I know he also has a lot of things on his plate, but he still has the time to keep up with my craziness and all my mood swings.

[coolcoelacanth]

i wrote a long diary entry basically about my cat findings and financial life so i will put under the read more if you are interested in the tea LOL

update on my cat again: luckily the gabapentin made her sedated enough so they could take the chest x-rays w/out having to fully sedate her. bad but expected news, she has patchy lung infiltrates in both lungs, and her bronchioles were opaque. this means there is definitely irritation/inflammation in her lungs. i was hoping it would just be a pulmonary issue, since the vet said her heart murmur sounded quieter while she was on the gabapentin (possibly indicating a stress murmur), but we did a proBNP test and the results were abnormal :/. it didn't say low-high which is kind of annoying (esp considering how much i'm paying...), but that means i have to do the echocardiogram now to finally see if there is something wrong w/ her heart/what it is. if there is something wrong w/ her heart, the coughing and the lung x-ray could indicate pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs due to all the blood in the left ventricle not being expelled to the body, causing regurgitation into the lungs).

i am praying that the echo is normal and she simply has like bronchitis from allergies, or asthma or something with a better prognosis than a heart condition. i'm also going to be 1.2k in the hole after all this testing, but i'm already in a massive amount of debt from going to pharmacy school so i figured why the fuck not who cares lmao just tack it on. plus it's better to figure it out now than to wait until she's in terrible condition and on her deathbed. and i will have some sort of salary after this final year of pharmacy school, so i don't have to make it too much longer. (either a salary from doing a residency or if i'm desperate, signing onto walgreens or some shit and hating my life). but i also have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to even take the naplex (pharmacy board exam basically), and i have to pay to take the MPJE (NYS law exam for pharmacists). i'm pretty sure the total will be like $700, and. that's if i pass the first time....and my tuition is crazy high, and the last year i'm literally not even in the classroom bc we just do straight rotations onsite for the last year WHICH WE ARE NOT PAID FOR.

i'm tired of getting boned economically by my stupid ass school. i'm not so upset about the vet bills tbh, for some reason i literally don't care. i have enough savings (although most of them are from my graduate plus loan to pay form my rent LOL RIP) and i can always TAKE OUT ANOTHER LOAN if i need more money for rent or something, so i at least i'm fortunate enough to have that option. i am just so ready to be free from all this bullshit and have an actual goddamn income. i'm going to treat mirabel anyway, but now i'm worried how much treatment is going to cost, i only had my mind on the tests we had to do. and i really really really hope it's something curable/manageable and NOT a congenital heart disease. or if it is heart disease, it's not severe. i did have hope from the chest x-ray, b/c the vet said that her heart did not appear abnormally large or shaped, and i read that a positive proBNP test can also indicate other stressors like bronchitis so it's not a guarantee that it's her heart.

also it's literally just my luck that i pick out the congenitally sick cat from the shelter. i love her and she's my bff at this point, but it's like yeah that's about right for my track record. they didn't even mention a heart murmur on her vet notes from the shelter, which i'm confused about. did they just not write it down, or did they straight up not hear anything? b/c the vet said it was grade 3/4 which means its pretty goddamn loud. i'm like, did i get lowkey scammed by the shelter? i mean i love mirabel, but idk seems a little shady to me. but i am at least glad that i chose a good paying career so this is all (hopefully) a temporary issue, which a lot of people do not have that saving grace.

sorry i literally just wrote like a diary entry i did not plan on writing this much LMAO. if you actually read this, bless you. if you didn't, that's okay i'm fine w this being my echo chamber.

[macroeconomicclassblog2023]

Chapter #9

Question #1:

You do need to do a little math to ensure this chapter makes sense.  Think about the logic though.  Why do you save?  Why does a firm need to pay you something to use your "extra" money? (The rate of return on bonds is generally positive.)

My Answer:

I save in order to afford goods and services in the future. It also allows you to relax about any future emergencies because you have money saved up if something does happen. Firms need to pay an interest rate to encourage people to let someone else borrow their money in return for more money in the future.

Question #2:

How do you balance risk and return when you make investments (or how will you do that in the future)?  Right now you are making a significant investment in your own level of human capital.  Did you think about potential jobs/salaries when you chose your major?  How about risks associated with the strength of the economy?   Find the salary of a job you think you will be qualified for when you graduate and compare that to the salary that you might make without a degree.  Then compare the different to the cost of your degree.

My Answer:

You can balance risk and return by not investing in just one investment. For example, buying into multiple stocks instead of putting all my money into one and hoping for the best. 

When I chose my salary, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and I knew that business would contain good knowledge for any future careers. So, I did not think about any future potential jobs, but I did think about how I might make more money starting out than someone who doesn't have a degree. I also did not think about the risk associated with the strength of the economy because I chose business to learn more about the economy and jobs I would be interested in. 

For this I chose the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When I graduate I will be qualified for an entry level sales account manager position that makes a salary of $44,883-46,901 (Sales). Without a degree the median entry level salary in Milwaukee is $33,318 (Entry). The cost of my tuition is $6,000 for the two years. I have been able to cover that by FAFSA, grants, and scholarships. I chose Colorado Mountain College because I did not want to start my career in education debt. With my student refunds I am either going to use it for a down deposit on an apartment or use it to go to a bigger college for a bachelors. So, with me not paying any loans or anything out of pocket, there is no difference with my degree and salary. 

Question #3:

What do you think  - good investment? Or should you change majors?  How do you value the non-monetary aspects of your potential career?  Does that change your results?

My Answer:

So, with that being said, I believe that I am making a good investment. Instead of starting working without a degree, I will already have a foundation to build off of. I don’t think I will change majors since I picked a good one to transfer with if I choose to do so.  There are a lot of non-monetary aspects to the job I chose as an example. One that stuck out to me was a continued education. If I were to apply to this job and get the job, I would be able to continue my education and that would help with future jobs after that. This does not change my results.

Works Cited:

Entry level salary in Milwaukee, WI $30,168. Ziprecruiter. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2023, from https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Entry-Level-Salary-in-Milwaukee,WI

Sales manager jobs in Milwaukee, WI. Indeed. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2023, from https://www.indeed.com/q-Sales-Manager-l-Milwaukee,-WI-jobs.html

[em4442]

Chapter 9 Reflection

I save for two reasons. One being that I want to be able to afford larger investments such as a house or a reliable vehicle in the future. The other reason is to compensate enough money for my future self in which I can have a comfortable lifestyle in which any instance of an emergency, I won't be financially unstable. I am young and just beginning adulthood so I'm still grasping the concepts of how to use the money I earn. Since I began working at 16, I had a strong mindset of saving and would set a goal of putting 50% of my paycheck into savings until I turned 18 and took over my own bills. I did this and still do this to help my future self. Because I established this mindset at 16, I was able to afford my own vehicle at 17 and have enough saved for a downpayment on a relatively affordable house at 18.

Relative to risks and returns, a firm needs to pay me something to use my "extra money" because my goal of investing into this firm would be to gain something out of it in the future especially when it comes to how risky that investment was. Because they are using my savings to build their business and considering the unpredictability of market risk, I am obligated to receiving compensation. Not only that, but intermediary financial institutions such as banks that give out these loans to firms also benefit from my savings through interest rates paid by the firms thus they are earning extra money from the money I earned therefore making me entitled to some of the compensation. Clearly, a responsible investment decision would be one in which the present value of the money invested exceeds the future value. This means that the most adequate firm I would be investing in would consider inflation rates as well in order to avoid the possibility of the value of my invested money to diminish overtime.

I would describe myself as a risk-averse person when it comes to saving and investing my money. Because of this, I am likely to choose the "safe route" 90 percent of the time. Because of this, I know I may be more likely to choose government bonds over company stocks despite the lower rate of return. I avoid high risk situations because of my financial stability. Once I become at least a little more financially stable I will be more comfortable taking more risks when it comes to investments. Still, when this happens and I start involving myself in riskier investments like company stocks, I plan on obtaining a financial advisor as well as diversifying my portfolio to avoid firm-specific risks. Indeed, when I get older and closer to retirement and considering my gain in wealth, I will become more risk-averse and hope to gradually slow down on risky investments hence putting that responsibility on my younger self for the benefit of my older self.

I have thought about my future a lot when it comes to jobs and salaries. I have come to the assumption that going into fields that are growing in popularity may be the best option for me. Particularly, computer science and IT. This field is growing fast and will continue to grow tremendously making it a great career choice for my to get my bachelors degree in. Because of this, my decision to pursue this career is the safest option for me even considering the fluctuation of the economy and the risk of the unstable job market. Adding school into this equation, it's roughly $18,000 a year. Multiplying that by 4 years to get to a bachelors degree gets me to $72,000 in college tuition. The average salary for IT is approximately $91,250 annually.

Cost of College: $18,000 x 4 years = $72,000

Annual Salary: $91,250

Total Retirement: 65-(18+4 year program)= 43years

$91,250 x 43years = $3,923,750

Present Value: $3,923,750/(1+0.3)^43 = $1,100,780

Actual Present Value: $1,100780-$72,000=$1,028,780

If I chose to remain at my current job with no degrees required the average salary I would earn would be approximately $42,550.

Annual Salary: $42,550

Cost of College: $72,000

Total Retirement: $42,550 x 43 years = $1,829,650

Present Value: $1,829,650/(1.03)^43= $513,295

Actual Present Value: $513,295-$72,000=$441,295

Overall, I think getting a bachelors in IT is a great financial option because of the lower cost of schooling, higher pay range for jobs, and the growing popularity and need for IT jobs considering societies advancement in technology.

Thinking about the non-monetary value brings up some tough decisions for me. Although I am great with computers and love learning about them, I am more passionate with traveling. Despite that, setting up a career in IT would allow me flexibility in expressing my hobbies outside. For instance, I would be more financially stable to be able to take a vacation compared to if I remained in the job I have now. So, IT is a great career choice for me in that I not only love it but it also offers so much possibility for me in the future.