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reasonsforhope · 9 months

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"Seven federal agencies are partnering to implement President Biden’s American Climate Corps, announcing this week they would work together to recruit 20,000 young Americans and fulfill the administration's vision for the new program.

The goals spelled out in the memorandum of understanding include comprehensively tackling climate change, creating partnerships throughout various levels of government and the private sector, building a diverse corps and serving all American communities.

The agencies—which included the departments of Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Labor and Energy, as well the Environmental Protection Agency and AmeriCorps—also vowed to ensure a “range of compensation and benefits” that open the positions up to a wider array of individuals and to create pathways to “high-quality employment.”

Leaders from each of the seven agencies will form an executive committee for the Climate Corps, which Biden established in September, that will coordinate efforts with an accompanying working group. They will create the standards for ACC programs, set compensation guidelines and minimum terms of service, develop recruitment strategies, launch a centralized website and establish performance goals and objectives. The ACC groups will, beginning in January, hold listening sessions with potential applicants, labor unions, state and local governments, educational institutions and other stakeholders.

The working group will also review all federal statutes and hiring authorities to remove any barriers to onboarding for the corps and standardize the practices across all participating agencies. Benefits for corps members will include housing, transportation, health care, child care, educational credit, scholarships and student loan forgiveness, stipends and non-financial services.

As part of the goal of the ACC, agencies will develop the corps so they can transition to “high-quality, family-sustaining careers with mobility potential” in the federal or other sectors. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said the initiative would prepare young people for “good-paying union jobs.”

Within three weeks of rolling out the ACC, EPA said more than 40,000 people—mostly in the 18-35 age range—expressed interest in joining the corps. The administration set an ambitious goal for getting the program underway, aiming to establish the corps’ first cohort in the summer of 2024.

The corps members will work in roles related to ecosystem restoration and conservation, reforestation, waterway protection, recycling, energy conservation, clean energy deployment, disaster preparedness and recovery, fire resilience, resilient recreation infrastructure, research and outreach. The administration will look to ensure 40% of the climate-related investments flow to disadvantaged communities as part of its Justice40 initiative.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the MOU would allow the ACC to “work across the federal family” to push public projects focused on environmental justice and clean energy.

“The Climate Corps represents a significant step forward in engaging and nurturing young leaders who are passionate about climate action, furthering our journey towards a sustainable and equitable future,” Regan said.

The ACC’s executive committee will hold its first meeting within the next 30 days. It will draw support from a new climate hub within AmeriCorps, as well as any staffing the agency heads designate."

-via Government Executive, December 20, 2023

This news comes with your regularly scheduled reminder that WE GOT THE AMERICAN CLIMATE CORPS ESTABLISHED LAST YEAR and basically no one know about/remembers it!!! Also if you want more info about the Climate Corps, inc. how to join, you can sign up to get updates here.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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Sympathy for the spammer

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers – not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate "retail investors" who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).

It's ever been thus. The California gold rush was a con, and nearly everyone who went west went broke. Famously, the only reliable way to cash out on the gold rush was to sell "picks and shovels" to the credulous, doomed and desperate. That's how Leland Stanford made his fortune, which he funneled into eugenics programs (and founding a university):

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/9780316592031/

That means that the people who try to con you are almost always getting conned themselves. Think of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) scams. My forthcoming novel The Bezzle opens with a baroque and improbable fast-food Ponzi in the town of Avalon on the island of Catalina, founded by the chicle monopolist William Wrigley Jr:

http://thebezzle.org

Wrigley found fast food declasse and banned it from the island, a rule that persists to this day. In The Bezzle, the forensic detective Martin Hench uncovers The Fry Guys, an MLM that flash-freezes contraband burgers and fries smuggled on-island from the mainland and sells them to islanders though an "affiliate marketing" scheme that is really about recruiting other affiliate markets to sell under you. As with every MLM, the value of the burgers and fries sold is dwarfed by the gigantic edifice of finance fraud built around it, with "points" being bought and sold for real cash, which is snaffled up and sucked out of the island by a greedy mainlander who is behind the scheme.

A "bezzle" is John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." In every scam, there's a period where everyone feels richer – but only the scammers are actually cleaning up. The wealth of the marks is illusory, but the longer the scammer can preserve the illusion, the more real money the marks will pump into the system.

MLMs are particularly ugly, because they target people who are shut out of economic opportunity – women, people of color, working people. These people necessarily rely on social ties for survival, looking after each others' kids, loaning each other money they can't afford, sharing what little they have when others have nothing.

It's this social cohesion that MLMs weaponize. Crypto "entrepreneurs" are encouraged to suck in their friends and family by telling them that they're "building Black wealth." Working women are exhorted to suck in their bffs by appealing to their sisterhood and the chance for "women to lift each other up."

The "sales people" trying to get you to buy crypto or leggings or supplements are engaged in predatory conduct that will make you financially and socially worse off, wrecking their communities' finances and shattering the mutual aid survival networks they rely on. But they're not getting rich on this – they're also being scammed:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4686468

This really hit home for me in the mid-2000s, when I was still editing Boing Boing. We had a submission form where our readers could submit links for us to look at for inclusion on the blog, and it was overwhelmed by spam. We'd add all kinds of antispam to it, and still, we'd get floods of hundreds or even thousands of spam submissions to it.

One night, I was lying in my bed in London and watching these spams roll in. They were all for small businesses in the rustbelt, handyman services, lawn-care, odd jobs, that kind of thing. They were 10 million miles from the kind of thing we'd ever post about on Boing Boing. They were coming in so thickly that I literally couldn't finish downloading my email – the POP session was dropping before I could get all the mail in the spool. I had to ssh into my mail server and delete them by hand. It was maddening.

Frustrated and furious, I started calling the phone numbers associated with these small businesses, demanding an explanation. I assumed that they'd hired some kind of sleazy marketing service and I wanted to know who it was so I could give them a piece of my mind.

But what I discovered when I got through was much weirder. These people had all been laid off from factories that were shuttering due to globalization. As part of their termination packages, their bosses had offered them "retraining" via "courses" in founding their own businesses.

The "courses" were the precursors to the current era's rise-and-grind hustle-culture scams (again, the only people getting rich from that stuff are the people selling the courses – the "students" finish the course poorer). They promised these laid-off workers, who'd given their lives to their former employers before being discarded, that they just needed to pull themselves up by their own boostraps:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/#solidarity-forever

After all, we had the internet now! There were so many new opportunities to be your own boss! The course came with a dreadful build-your-own-website service, complete with an overpriced domain sales portal, and a single form for submitting your new business to "thousands of search engines."

This was nearly 20 years ago, but even then, there was really only one search engine that mattered: Google. The "thousands of search engines" the scammers promised to submit these desperate peoples' websites to were just submission forms for directories, indexes, blogs, and mailing lists. The number of directories, indexes, blogs and mailing lists that would publish their submissions was either "zero" or "nearly zero." There was certainly no possibility that anyone at Boing Boing would ever press the wrong key and accidentally write a 500-word blog post about a leaf-raking service in a collapsing deindustrialized exurb in Kentucky or Ohio.

The people who were drowning me in spam weren't the scammers – they were the scammees.

But that's only half the story. Years later, I discovered how our submission form was getting included in this get-rich-quick's mass-submission system. It was a MLM! Coders in the former Soviet Union were getting work via darknet websites that promised them relative pittances for every submission form they reverse-engineered and submitted. The smart coders didn't crack the forms directly – they recruited other, less business-savvy coders to do that for them, and then often as not, ripped them off.

The scam economy runs on this kind of indirection, where scammees are turned into scammers, who flood useful and productive and nice spaces with useless dross that doesn't even make them any money. Take the submission queue at Clarkesworld, the great online science fiction magazine, which famously had to close after it was flooded with thousands of junk submission "written" by LLMs:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

There was a zero percent chance that Neil Clarke would accidentally accept one of these submissions. They were uniformly terrible. The people submitting these "stories" weren't frustrated sf writers who'd discovered a "life hack" that let them turn out more brilliant prose at scale.

They were scammers who'd been scammed into thinking that AIs were the key to a life of passive income, a 4-Hour Work-Week powered by an AI-based self-licking ice-cream cone:

https://pod.link/1651876897/episode/995c8a778ede17d2d7cff393e5203157

This is absolutely classic passive-income brainworms thinking. "I have a bot that can turn out plausible sentences. I will locate places where sentences can be exchanged for money, aim my bot at it, sit back, and count my winnings." It's MBA logic on meth: find a thing people pay for, then, without bothering to understand why they pay for that thing, find a way to generate something like it at scale and bombard them with it.

Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that "you can't con an honest man." But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn't their honesty – it's their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.

These people reason – correctly – that all the people getting really rich are scamming. If Amazon can make $38b/year selling "ads" that push worse products that cost more to the top of their search results, why should the mere fact that an "opportunity" is obviously predatory and fraudulent disqualify it?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

The quest for passive income is really the quest for a "greater fool," the economist's term for the person who relieves you of the useless crap you just overpaid for. It rots the mind, atomizes communities, shatters solidarity and breeds cynicism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The rise and rise of botshit cannot be separated from this phenomenon. The botshit in our search-results, our social media feeds, and our in-boxes isn't making money for the enshittifiers who send it – rather, they are being hustled by someone who's selling them the "picks and shovels" for the AI gold rush:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

That's the true cost of all the automation-driven unemployment criti-hype: while we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The manic "entrepreneurs" who've been stampeded into panic by the (correct) perception that the economy is a game of musical chairs where the number of chairs is decreasing at breakneck speed are easy marks for the Leland Stanfords of AI, who are creating generational wealth for themselves by promising that their bots will automate away all the tedious work that goes into creating value. Expect a lot more Amazon Marketplace products called "I'm sorry, I cannot fulfil this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/12/24036156/openai-policy-amazon-ai-listings

No one's going to buy these products, but the AI picks-and-shovels people will still reap a fortune from the attempt. And because history repeats itself, these newly minted billionaires are continuing Leland Stanford's love affair with eugenics:

https://www.truthdig.com/dig-series/eugenics/

The fact that AI spam doesn't pay is important to the fortunes of AI companies. Most high-value AI applications are very risk-intolerant (self-driving cars, radiology analysis, etc). An AI tool might help a human perform these tasks more accurately – by warning them of things that they've missed – but that's not how AI will turn a profit. There's no market for AI that makes your workers cost more but makes them better at their jobs:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Plenty of people think that spam might be the elusive high-value, low-risk AI application. But that's just not true. The point of AI spam is to get clicks from people who are looking for better content. It's SEO. No one reads 2000 words of algorithm-pleasing LLM garbage over an omelette recipe and then subscribes to that site's feed.

And the omelette recipe generates pennies for the spammer that posted it. They are doing massive volume in order to make those pennies into dollars. You don't make money by posting one spam. If every spammer had to pay the actual recovery costs (energy, chillers, capital amortization, wages) for their query, every AI spam would lose (lots of) money.

Hustle culture and passive income are about turning other peoples' dollars into your dimes. It is a negative-sum activity, a net drain on society. Behind every seemingly successful "passive income" is a con artist who's getting rich by promising – but not delivering – that elusive passive income, and then blaming the victims for not hustling hard enough:

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/12/blueprint-trouble

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

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

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probablyasocialecologist · 13 days

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Libraries have traditionally operated on a basic premise: Once they purchase a book, they can lend it out to patrons as much (or as little) as they like. Library copies often come from publishers, but they can also come from donations, used book sales, or other libraries. However the library obtains the book, once the library legally owns it, it is theirs to lend as they see fit. Not so for digital books. To make licensed e-books available to patrons, libraries have to pay publishers multiple times over. First, they must subscribe (for a fee) to aggregator platforms such as Overdrive. Aggregators, like streaming services such as HBO’s Max, have total control over adding or removing content from their catalogue. Content can be removed at any time, for any reason, without input from your local library. The decision happens not at the community level but at the corporate one, thousands of miles from the patrons affected. Then libraries must purchase each individual copy of each individual title that they want to offer as an e-book. These e-book copies are not only priced at a steep markup—up to 300% over consumer retail—but are also time- and loan-limited, meaning the files self-destruct after a certain number of loans. The library then needs to repurchase the same book, at a new price, in order to keep it in stock. This upending of the traditional order puts massive financial strain on libraries and the taxpayers that fund them. It also opens up a world of privacy concerns; while libraries are restricted in the reader data they can collect and share, private companies are under no such obligation. Some libraries have turned to another solution: controlled digital lending, or CDL, a process by which a library scans the physical books it already has in its collection, makes secure digital copies, and lends those out on a one-to-one “owned to loaned” ratio. The Internet Archive was an early pioneer of this technique. When the digital copy is loaned, the physical copy is sequestered from borrowing; when the physical copy is checked out, the digital copy becomes unavailable. The benefits to libraries are obvious; delicate books can be circulated without fear of damage, volumes can be moved off-site for facilities work without interrupting patron access, and older and endangered works become searchable and can get a second chance at life. Library patrons, who fund their local library’s purchases with their tax dollars, also benefit from the ability to freely access the books. Publishers are, unfortunately, not a fan of this model, and in 2020 four of them sued the Internet Archive over its CDL program. The suit ultimately focused on the Internet Archive’s lending of 127 books that were already commercially available through licensed aggregators. The publisher plaintiffs accused the Internet Archive of mass copyright infringement, while the Internet Archive argued that its digitization and lending program was a fair use. The trial court sided with the publishers, and on September 4, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reaffirmed that decision with some alterations to the underlying reasoning. This decision harms libraries. It locks them into an e-book ecosystem designed to extract as much money as possible while harvesting (and reselling) reader data en masse. It leaves local communities’ reading habits at the mercy of curatorial decisions made by four dominant publishing companies thousands of miles away. It steers Americans away from one of the few remaining bastions of privacy protection and funnels them into a surveillance ecosystem that, like Big Tech, becomes more dangerous with each passing data breach. And by increasing the price for access to knowledge, it puts up even more barriers between underserved communities and the American dream.

11 September 2024

#books #library #libraries #internet archive #ebooks

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batboyblog · 8 months

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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #3

Jan 26-Feb 2 2024

The House overwhelmingly passed a tax deal that will revive the expanded Child Tax Credit, this will effect 16 million American children and lift 400,000 out of poverty in the first year. The deal also supports the building of 200,000 housing units over the next two years, and provides tax relief for communities hit by disasters.

The Biden Administration has begun negotiations on drug prices for Medicare. Earlier this year the administration announced it would negotiate for the first time directly with drug manufacturers on the prices of 10 common medications. This week they sent their opening offers to the companies. The program is expected to save Medicare and enrollees billions over dollars over the long term and help push down drug prices for everyone.

The Department of Transportation has green lit $240 Million to modernize air ports across the country. Air Ports in 37 states will be able to get much needed updates and refurbishment.

The Biden Administration announced 10 sites across America as sites for innovation investment. They will receive up to 2 billion dollars each over the next 10 years. The goal is to stimulate economic growth and innovation in semiconductor manufacturing, clean energy, sustainable textiles, climate-resilient agriculture, regenerative medicine, and more.

The State Department reviews options for recognizing Palestinian Statehood. While as of yet there's been no policy change this review of options is a major shift in US diplomatic thinking which has long opposed Palestinian Statehood and shows a seriousness of reported Biden plans to push for Statehood as part of a post-war Israel-Saudi normalization deal.

President Biden imposes sanctions on Israeli settlers who have engaged in violence against Palestinians and peace activists. This marks the first time the US has leveled sanctions against Israelis and sets up a standard that could see the whole settlement movement cut off from the US financial system

the Department of Energy has tentatively agreed to a $1.5 Billion dollar loan to help reopen a Michigan nuclear power plant. This would mark the first time a closed nuclear plant has been brought back online. Closed in 2022 it's hoped that it could reopen in time to be generating power in late 2025. This is part of Biden's plan to decarbonize the electricity grid by 2035.

the Internal Revenue Service launched a program to allow tax fillers file for free directly with the government. In 2024 its a pilot program limited to 12 states, but plans for it to be nation wide by tax day 2025

The Department of Health and Human Services announced $28 million in grants to help with the treatment of substance use disorder, including a program aimed at pregnant and postpartum women, and expanded drug court aimed at directing people into treatment and out of the criminal justice system.

The Department of Energy announced $72 million for 46 hydroelectric projects across 19 states. This marks the single largest investment in Hydropower in US history.

The Senate confirmed President Biden's 175th federal judge. Biden has now appointed more federal judges in his first term in office than President Obama did in his, however still lags behind Trump's 186 judges. For the first time in history a majority of a President's nominees are not white men, 65% of them are women and 65% are people of color, President Biden has appointed more black women to judgeships than any administration in history.

#Joe Biden #Thanks Biden #good news #us politics #politics #Democrats #Poverty #Climate change #nuclear power #Israel #israeli settlers #Palestine #israel palestine conflict

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flowerfreya · 19 days

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A lowlevel mafia man took my baby!

All fics masterlist

This is really just for fun lol. CW:Kidnapping Reader is in debt to a mafia boss (not Price) and when the low level mafia men come in with Price's baby , the reader makes a decision

“You took who?”, you exclaim.

“James Puck”, the dumbasses say. They look over at you like you’re the one being annoying. They are holding what looks to be a three year old boy, dressed in a mini-suit, like they just took him from church service. He is the calmest baby you have ever seen. He’s just looking around, observing everything, and soon he’s going to figure out that his father is not here. And he’s going to throw a fit.

“Why?” , you ask. Like who’s dumbass idea was this. Taking a mob boss's son in the middle of the day is not the smartest idea. At.all.

“What the boss wanted”, they shrug. God you hate it here.

You got dopped into being across this empire by accident and maybe by desperation. You really needed money,so you signed your life away. At least only for three years. You’ve been doing odd jobs at the house for the past two years, just cleaning up and picking up groceries. You haven’t been paid since you were because according to your “boss”, you’re paying off your debt, you know it’s bullshit but the way your credit was looking you wouldn’t have gotten a loan for the amount you needed.

The baby starts crying an hour later , dumb and dumbass look flustered. The are holding it like they don’t know what to do with him.

They look over to you, “you're a woman, you know what to do”, handing you the child, and then walking out.

You automatically feel that his diaper is wet and probably has been for a long time and he’s probably hungry too. Inside the kitchen , you look in the pantry to see if there is anything that he can eat , that hopefully won’t cause any allergic reaction if he has any.

“Here comes the airplane”, the spoon coming from up high and a brmmmmm making James giggle.

You’ve been trying to distract James for the past three hours and nothing is working. You’ve tried to hold in sitting on the couch, walking around with him, even giving him some warm milk. Nothing is working.

From upstairs you hear your boss yell, “shut him up!”.

You roll your eyes, “Oh, I’ll shut him up alright”. Then you come up with another idea. Maybe you could just return him.

Muttering to yourself as you try to sneak out of the compound is a bit of an issue. The kid won’t stop crying and it’s going to alert them if you can’t shut him up.

You're not really a mothering type. You're probably holding the baby wrong and the diaper is on backwards.

“What do I need to do for you to be quiet”, you say to the baby. Like it will talk to you when it cries in an answer, you nod to the baby, “I should have known that”.

You just start moving as quickly as possible thinking …maybe if you move fast enough people will think it's an animal crossing in the night.

Finally getting past the gate and getting on the main road , you start just walking along the road, hoping that the 141 gang is just driving around looking for the mob boss's baby. Hearing a car coming fast down the road and skrrrting next to you.

“Oi!!”, you look over and see a man with a skull mask holding a gun and of course it's pointed at you. You mean you're not surprised, since you're the one walking around with James Puck Price.

“Hi”, you lower yourself so you can see through the window and do a small wave, ”I think I have what your baby”, and then you lift up the baby, so he can see him.

“Get in the fucking car”, he growls at you.

“Yeah , of course”, you slide into the back of the car. Looking around, “Do you have a car seat or anything”, pointing to the child, “we do have a baby in here”.

Looking at you through the rearview mirror, “that is the least of your worries” ,he says.

#task force 141 #mafia!141 #captain John price #John price x reader #possible reader x simon ghost riley

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kakiastro · 3 months

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Lunar Return-Your month ahead

Solar return is talked about a lot but did you know that you have a Lunar return too?

What the difference?

Solar- when the Sun orbits back into the sign & date you were born in, Aka, your birthday. Solar returns happen every year. It shows the outlook of your year ahead until your next birthday comes.

Lunar - when the Moon orbits back into the sign you were born in. Instead of a yearly analysis like the solar, this will be a monthly analysis. Every 29ish days, you have a new lunar return chart.

How do I read my lunar return chart?

- The same you would any other chart but you have to read it from a moon point of a view.

-the Moon rules over our private and home life. It rules over our family and other loved ones. It rules over our emotional needs and wants. It’s our most intimate and safe space from the outside world.

*THIS DOES NOT CHANGE YOUR NATAL CHART! Your natal chart will always be the same forever. Return charts are to show the themes of our lives. I just wanted to make that clear.

The breakdown of the chart

For example: Scorpio rising

South/North Nodes- this is important because this shows you what you learned from the previous month and early on in this month (SN) to what you want to learn at the end of this month(NN). SN Taurus 7h /NN Scorpio 1h, this shows the you learned how to connect with people in a surface level and the material side of relationships. Now you you’re learning about how you emotionally connect with others but you’re looking deep within yourself first. “What do I need to feel intimacy on a deeper level”

Ascendant & Chart ruler - overall outlook for the month and what the theme is. Let’s say you have a Scorpio rising with ruler Pluto Capricorn in the 3h for this month. Themes of power, money topics such as loans and debts, sex, intellectual and emotional bonds, research, grandparents/elders, career, siblings, cars related topics, short travel and your local neighborhood will be the main topics

Moon- since this is a Lunar chart, the moon is the first planet after the chart ruler that we should be looking at. The moon sign will always be the same as your natal moon, hence “lunar return” the house the moon falls in is the most important. If you have a Libra moon, it would be in your 12h for this month. So you may feel like going into hermit mode, being more creative, traveling to a foreign unknown land or territory, if you’re interested in spirituality or holistic, traveling to the beach or being near water, going to the hospital, prison visit(hey, you never know)

Sun- this will be the not so private part of our lives out in the open. The Sun is the one that highlights everything in our life. It’s our life force. Let’s say the Sun is in Gemini 8h. This really enhanced the Scorpio energy so reread those themes that I wrote above now add the Gemini energy. This may be the month a lot of secrets or just deeply hidden emotions boil over to the surface. It’s giving death and rebirth season

Mercury-this will show your daily routine(s) throughout the month. It’s your health and possible health concerns, what you’ll be mostly thinking, talking about throughout this month. It also rules over your pets. If Mercury is in Gemini 8h along with the Sun then this could be time you really talk about your fears, worries, trauma, your healing growth journey, money problems or blessings, you may change something drastic about your routine, getting 2 new pets or giving one away, your hands such as breaking a nail or finger, getting new rings .

Venus- this will show you what your relationship(s), finances, your physical home and your personal possessions in it, food habits . Let’s say you have a Venus Virgo 11h. Posting a life update on social media, changing up your diet, you could be more vocal about your struggles or just struggles in general on social media, being of service and helping strangers more this month

Mars- this will show you where you’re putting your most energy in this month. Mars rules over our physical body and what get us up and moving. Mars is in Aries 6h for this month, yore putting a lot of your energy into yourself, your health, your job, your pets,it’s all about healing you this month, keep in mind too mars is also your chart ruler because it also rules Scorpio.

Jupiter- this will show you where you’re doing too much lol jk..sort of😅 this can show you where in will be expanded upon, your faith, what you’ll learn, your ideals, long distance travels, court case(if you have one), your good luck for this month. Jupiter Aries 6h with Mars, remember when I said you’ll be focused on you lol, oh with Jupiter, it’s even more intense and heightened

Saturn-this will show the sucky but rewarding parts of the month. Saturn is always trying to teach us some lessons which is never fun. However, if you applied what you know then this is growth which is the goal right? Saturn in Pisces 5h, getting serious about your creativity projects, expressing yourself in a more fluid but serious. You know you could express more of your subconscious thoughts to others

Uranus-the shocking and I didn’t see that coming moments for the month. Where you will want to progress. Uranus Taurus 7h, you may have a different outlook on relationships, meeting someone unexpectedly, unexpected money or buying something you didn’t think you would where.

Neptune- your subconscious thoughts for the month, only you will see this side of you. Neptune Pisces 5h, diving into unknown territory with dating, your dreams, new locations.

Pluto- transformations that we go through this month. Saturn is the hard but rewarding lessons while Pluto is the lessons that damn near breaks us and put us in a fetal position while crying with a blanket over our head, but he transforms us(up to us if it makes a good or bad one). Our fears and traumas live here so it’s not easy to go through. I don’t need to put an example here since it’s our chart ruler.

If you want to see how this plays out, keep a journal and just document the important parts that resonate with you that month. Then go back and look at your lunar chart and start connecting the dots. I would recommend to look at your lunar chart at the beginning of the month then relook at the end to see the storyline of that month in the chart. I’ll bet you 5$ you’ll be blown away!

I’m open for readings!

#astrology #astrology community #knowledge #astro observations #advanced astrology #birth chart #kakiastro #tropical astrology #lunar return #lunar return chart #the moon in astrology

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carry-on-my-wayward-butt · 4 months

Text

Search Parameters:

Part Time

Remote, Any Location

Entry Level

No Experience Required

Search Results:

MORTGAGE LOAN ORIGINATOR - 5 years experience required

REMOTE CSR-HVAC/Plumbing Service MUST BE INTIMATELY FAMILIAR WITH EVERY HVAC SYSTEM BUILT IN THE LAST FIFTY YEARS

The Actual Perfect Job - Location: Bumfuck Nowhere, 350 miles away (Required)

Customer Service Rep - In-Office, Full Time, 9 dollars an hour

LICENSED REAL ESTATE AGENT (MUST HAVE A DOUBLE MAJOR IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION AND CYBERSECURITY)

Roadie for my Band - "My last guy died of chirrosis, RIP Brad Jones aka Remote."

Email Inbox:

Sender: Canadian Government Subject: Special Limited Time Offer! Body: We know you're American, but we noticed through highly unethical but still very legal data scraping technologies that things are pretty bleak for you! Have you considered killing yourself?

#op #im so close to criminal acts im SOOOO close

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iridessence · 1 year

Text

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge myself and say that I am elated and proud to have manifested some of my major goals since 2018-2019. Basically before then, 2014-16 I struggled with depression and suicidal ideation quite frequently due to not having steady income, as jobs in retail seemed the only available and “safe” options, but long shifts standing at a registers or posts were damagingly hard on my body. In 2017 I got a desk job that set me on the path of financial stability and reduced physical load, which did absolute wonders for my mental health but it was an absolute blight to my existence over time due to terrible management and the usual corporate garbage. I knew that staying there was fine for a time but not sustainable in the long run, so change must come eventually.

also around then, I continued to explore self portraiture and personal style but I really wanted to perform/create Burlesque acts and book them, and invest in and actually have choreography/technique and beautiful costume pieces that looked like the visions refining themselves in my head through research. I was also perpetually struggling in the dating sphere with the deficit of romantic fulfillment that I deeply wanted. and while they weren’t hostile, things were definitely weird with my family (dysfunctional, literal small town energy, upset that I didn’t want to be around them more in the suburbs but lots of interpersonal toxicity and lack of emotional growth).

I knew that in the coming years I wanted to…

quit my soul sucking job and set out to be a full-time or at least professional level burlesque performer, creating the qualitative and classic show girl acts I dream to see on stage

work on the floor at a boutique or mom-and-pop type shop that sells goods or services that are interesting to me, especially aesthetically, such as an antique shop or a jewelry boutique etc., but a place where I could sit intermittently as needed for my physical disability. Also, ideally it would be a position where I could express myself through style at my choosing and it would be received well, and also my hours would not be very early or very late.

find a loving and supporting partner who I could lavish equal amounts of love and support on to, live with and hopefully marry

Achieve/maintain financial stability enough that I have a reduced risk for homelessness and sometimes treat myself to things that I enjoy.

Figure out why the relationship with my family was such a struggle and do things within my power and desire to fix it.

In a world that isn’t a corporate machine devoid of empathy, none of that seems like a tall order to ask… but I live in America so… It took some time, but I’m starting to see the fruits and returns. Honestly sometimes things feel like a blur and I’m not exactly sure I could say there was a huge system to what I did overtime to make it work, but I know the work was there.

As of today, September 9, 2023:

I am a respected professional burlesque performer with costumes I figuratively gag over and acts that come closer and closer to hitting the aesthetic nail on the head for what I want to embody. (I quit that shitty desk job at the beginning of 2019 and haven’t looked back since. Sent a whole ass company wide message with a long and detailed “fuck you” too.😂🙈)

i’ve managed through burlesque, social media work, donations and savings, and —since the global pandemic—,odd jobs and grants/minimal loans, to continuously pay rent and ward off homelessness

I live with the love of my life, to whom I am engaged and actively planning our wedding (we looked at a venue yesterday!)

I’ve helped my mom on the growth of her emotional intelligence and commitment to learning more about values under the race, gender, and sexuality umbrella, as well pushed her to examine the enabling and entitlement dynamics with her adult children that take advantage of her. While my relationship with my brother and sister is not great, my relationship with my mom has been steadily getting better since the pandemic. we had a breakthrough at the beginning of this year where she acknowledged and apologized for guilt tripping me for not being around the family more, when I was (she quoted) “actually protecting myself like she should have been.”

and litcherally within the past week I was offered the job at a local boutique I interviewed with a year ago and didn’t get, and I signed an offer letter to begin work within the month.

To say I’m happy with the way things look right now is an understatement. The world still terrifies me, but I have no choice but to carve out a sliver of its beautiful experiences for myself, and I am doing just that. It may not be perfection, but it’s pretty damn good and I’m going to do everything in my power to keep it that way and make it even better. I am living my ancestors' wildest dreams!!

for anyone reading who might be struggling right now to make things work, I hope you hold on to hope that it can get better. A beautiful life is possible even on this hell scape, even for the marginalized.

#text post #life #faq #long post #well long-ish

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ms-demeanor · 1 year

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$7.25 $1231

Apply today Sign up for text alerts to see drive-thru pantries in your area Join us after services for a homemade meal and prayer support Limited to single mothers, the elderly, and the unemployed Sign up for a backpack plan: food assistance for low income families If you are in need of a hot meal join our waiting list Include your email for notifications if your cart is funded Your application will be reviewed in 7-10 business days Weekly shared meals on Tuesday at 2:30pm Those with current government ID and a local address are welcome What documents you need to sign up for SNAP benefits LEARN: click this link for tips on nutrition LEARN: where to find coupons online LEARN: penny-pinching tips at the grocery store LEARN: how to start a saving plan LEARN: part-time jobs that will work with your schedule r/personalfinace r/povertyfinance r/randomactsofpizza r/beermoney First time Donor? What you need to know First weekly visit: $40 Second weekly visit: $70 How to treat a hemotoma at home Can meditation lower your resting heart rate? Five foods high in iron Three signs that you might be dehydrated Securing a loan is easy and fast Available to consumers at all levels of credit To help cover life's little emergencies Your title is returned when the lien is released Get approved in minutes Apply today

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natsunenuko · 5 days

Text

TW // mental issues, mental absue, harassment, surgery/blood

I'm sorry this one is so long, but please carry on reading. It's a chance for me to not only speak about the situation but let out some steam too. It is unfortunate this announcement comes at the same time the flood occurs on the south of my home country (Poland) and I'm in the endangered zone, luckily so far safe, as I feel my head can't handle more stress.

It's been so long since I've been this personal online. I realized how I didn't feel the urge to vent for 3-4 years by now which is a sign of improving mental health. But my healing is still a process, and I'm afraid it's too hard to carry this rock alone at this point. I fought my thoughts if I should do this and I think just as deeply as I write right now. Yet, I know it's better late than never and I thank deeply my friends for helping me out recently as well as in the past in my lowest. I wholeheartedly owe my life to you.

I couldn't ask for better friends. As years verified, even long lasting relationships might be nothing but a mask and I had to learn the hard way. I ended a friendship of 13 years at the time over a misunderstanding. Other person I put my trust on was nothing but a groomer with morally corrupted sexual tendencies who would take advange of a group of minors while being the only adult among them, yet acting like a person much younger than all of them and pressuring all their mental issues on children instead of seeking help. The latter, I might speak of more in detail when I'm ready.

Long time ago I tried calling out for help but back then, the intrusive thoughts won; "Others have it worse, just work harder.", "No one will give you anything for free, no one will care.", "What people will think of you?". and I would only speak about these things in a closed circle of my friends.

I tried my best in silence by not giving up on my creative passion, working restlessly for years, improving. Hoping I could reach the point I can sustain myself purely on what I make.

But the problem is not being self-sufficient. And it's not about my art...

All of my life it has been me, my momma and my granny. The other two important figures weren't there for us, by choice. (which is hard to say if losing someone you loved is worse than not being cared for in the first place) My rather young self at the time didn't put much thought about it as I didn't understand it but something always felt wrong; my only issues at the time was being "that weird, quiet kid with little to no friends". But despite the hardships, my momma has always been my hero, working without a time for a break or rest so we could live happily, to afford something special from time to time.

However in 2014 my momma has been hospitalised and almost lost her life to wrongly treated ovarian cyst (cyst rapture), with enough blood loss to require emergency surgery...

From that point on things went downhill and the result of that we feel to this very day. To stay afloat we fell into a severe dept. (We didn't have any savings, could only rely on borrowing money or loans) And since I was a child as all of this happened, I've only learned about it all throughfully as I entered adulthood, so I wouldn't need to worry about anything and "just be a kid". Which I really understand, but it doesn't make it easier to handle.

And by now, for several years I keep on trying to earn money, so I could free my momma from this chain and let her live, not survive. I always wanted to get through this quietly, because I never, ever wanted to burden anyone with my home problems. But it grew to a point I might need to grab anything to climb towards the light

The goal is $10 000... which is scarily large number.

I list all the options but Kofi is preferred to keep track of the funds!

My commissions are HERE! (the sheet will receive a slight update in upcoming days) My Kofi is HERE! (Level 4 Tea is free headshot drawing every month!) HERE's other services I do (adopts, brushes, etc) I plan to do paid requests for my friday streams on occasion! Anything else I come up with I hope to include in here! Every person who donates will be part of "Thank you" list where I hope to shoutout everybody, cause every penny matters. I want this situation to end...

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 6 months

Note

WIBTA if I started doing sex work while still living with my mom?

Warning for sexual mentions(nothing heavily explicit though)

I (18F) can't get a typical job like working in customer service or physical labor because of a mix of reasons. I'm both physically and mentally disabled, for one. I have chronic pain & chronic fatigue so extensive physical labor or any job that requires being up for a long time is out of the question for me, as it would cause me a lot of pain and put me at risk for collapsing or falling asleep due to exhaustion. I also have heavy social anxiety and sensory issues, and despite being in therapy since I was around 11, this hasn't gone away. I still have problems with stuttering when talking to people I don't know, and feel on the verge of panic the entire time. I also can't handle loud noises well- I carry around a pair of headphones constantly but that does mess with my hearing so I couldn't really use those in a customer service focused environment. I'm a full time student as well, and will be for several more years, as I'm going straight into college out of high school. On top of all that, I can't drive yet, as the process was delayed due to concerns that my health issues would make me a hazard on the road, so I won't have my full license until late this year.

I've tried looking for other job types before, but nothing I've been able to find works. I've tried doing art, but it's not easy to get people to actually commission you- I've only gotten 1 so far and I've had commissions open for almost half a year. I've tried content creation but have yet to build a platform big enough to make money from it. I've looked for online focused jobs such as creating captions or proof-reading others work but realized very quickly I'm not equipped/qualified for that job due to my problems with processing audio correctly, and my problems reading and writing correctly first try- I often have to re-read things many times over and re-type things at least once to get it at all correct, as words and letters get mixed up in my brain sometimes or I just accidentally skip over entire words or even sentences. And even then I sometimes still get it wrong. So I'm a pretty slow worker with things like reading, and something that requires listening to something and then writing what was said took so long it wouldn't meet the time requirements a lot of places are looking for in workers for that (that I've seen).

So the only idea I have left for making money so I at least have something to help pay for college and to go towards me being able to move out someday is some sort of sex work. I'm not planning on doing anything super risky, like meeting up with real people or anything that would show my face. So I wouldn't be worried about this bothering my mom since she's not really sex negative or strictly against sex workers or anything if it wasn't for one thing. I'm not sure if this will work either. I have a lot of acne problems all over, and problems with picking at my skin that leave scratch marks in a lot of places. And I'm not sure anyone would be willing to pay to look at that. It's not something that bothers me on an individual level, it's just a part of me, but that doesn't really change what other people do or don't find attractive. So it just kind of feels disrespectful to be selling that kind of thing in my mothers house if it's not even going to be significant enough for it to matter financially. And, of course, there's always the risk my mom could see it, and I worry it would upset her to see her daughter selling that kind of thing. But I don't see other options left for how I could make enough money to not end up drowning in student loans down the line, or end up living with my mom for many years into adulthood- which wouldn't be fair to her since she's not financially well off either. I don't plan for it to be a permanent job, just something to help me through my college years till I can start working in the field for what I'm getting a degree in or until my issues get well enough I can work a more typical job.

WIBTA?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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turtlesandfrogs · 4 months

Text

So, here's the problem: the longer I work in gardening and landscaping, the more I care about the ecological impacts of native plants, and the less I care about aesthetics. Which is a problem, when most clients' primary concern is that their yard looks nice. Which, fair, I just don't care as much about it as they do and I feel like I could be making a bigger impact than I currently am.

So I'm thinking of quitting this job and going one of two entirely different directions, and for some reason it's rather hard to choose.

Option A is starting my own native plant nursery, which would focus on small (4 inch and gallon pot sized) native plants, with a focus on plants that are most important for native pollinators (especially those that are endangered or threatened where I am). There's some competition, but mostly at selling-to-landscapers level and not retail, and I'd want to focus on retail sales.

Option B is to get a job with the state doing some kind of ecological restoration work. The problem with that is my bachelor's degree is over a decade old and I don't actually have the kind of experience to put on my resume that would likely convince them that I can do the work (unless a combination of teaching and being self-employed as a gardener that helps people incorporate native plants and removes invasive species counts, which maybe?). So I'd probably have to take a lower level job and one that's further away to get in, and then work my way up.

Option A has the upsides of: completely setting my own schedule, getting to work with plants most of the time, getting to work with my partner, flexibility to decide I want to start teaching classes again or something. It has the down sides of having to do taxes multiple times per year, and not being guaranteed to work, and either needing to take out a business loan to get started or work at a day job to fund starting it up. Also if it fails I'll have to get another job without have professional references again, which yikes.

Option B has the upside of once you're in state work, it's way easier to get other state jobs so if I burn out of one job, I can hop to another relatively easily, will almost certainly make more money, comes with health insurance and retirement savings, and is likely the more stable option. On the down side, it would mean working 40 hours a week without getting to pick my schedule and it would be harder to take time off than it is now, I'll have to work my way up to a comfortable salary, and there's a lot less autonomy than when self employed. But I'll also have professional references out the wazoo, so finding new jobs should be easier?

One of the things that concerns me is I have ADHD and up until teaching, the longest I ever stayed in one job was almost 2 years. I taught for 4 years, then was self-employed as a gardener for 4 years, and now I've worked for this landscaping company for just over a year (and am grumpy about a) not making much money and b) aesthetics and only providing services to people who can afford us, rather than say, improving the environment for everyone). So I'm actually kinda afraid that if I started the native plant nursery, I would get sick of it after less than 5 years and be starting from scratch again. Whereas with a state job, I can pop over to a new job fairly easily. On the other hand, maybe I'm just doubting myself too much because all of those other jobs were actually really bad matches for me.

Anyway, my brain is going in circles over this. I mean, really, part of me thinks I should stay at this job even though it doesn't pay much compared to what I could make elsewhere (I have learned a lot though, which can be transfered to other jobs) just because it's so low stress compared to any other job I've had in the last decade & because the people are great and the work isn't bad. It just galls me that occasionally clients have ideas that I strongly disagree with, like cutting down a very nice magnolia tree because "it's too big" and I just have to do it because I'm an employee now. Ugh.

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msmpictures · 2 months

Text

[☬ Ramshackle O.C ☬]

•{☬Basic Data☬}•

[ Name ]

Astrid Voldemort

Storm > Work's Pseudonym

[ Age | Birthday ]

23 - 27 | October 1st

[ Family ]

Robert Voldemort - Father

??? - Step Mother

[ Job ]

Hired murderer.

[ S.O ]

???

[ More detail of the wound ]

Second degree burn | Cuts = Enucleation (Eye removal).

•{☬ Likes - Dis. ☬}•

[ Likes ]

• To sleep [her only one 'escape']

• To draw [In her days of rest, she draws her father to remember him, even if she is not a very good artist] Although she doesn't show anyone her drawings.

• To smoke

• 💐 [She can describe them as the rainbow of her grey, so that relaxes her a bit]

• ☕ [She is addict at the coffe]

• To stare at the stars [ that makes her forget her shit of job for a while ]

• Children [Doesn't show it, but she really likes children.]

• Rural spaces [That relaxes her]

• 'Acid Candies' [I hope you understand what I mean] Although, she doesn't eat them often.

• Boxing [Is not really something that she likes, but she practices boxing often]

• Agriculture (frustrated dream)

[ Dislikes - Hates ]

• [H] HeR bOsS

• [D] To socialize [She can't actually do it, Astrid just talks with the people when it's about the business and when it's her next victim, so it's kinda awkward for her to get a conversation for more than 30 minutes]

• [H] Her own job [ She is forced to do it, she has no other choice. ]

• [D] Alcoholic drinks [ She says that tastes horrible ]

• [D] Her work partners

• [H] Did I say her Boss?

• [H] Her step mother [She is the reason why Astrid is here]

•{☬ Origins ☬}•

Warning: so long xd

( I don't wanna write a shit but this is how u could sorta understand x,d )

- Astrid Lived with her father in the Ramshackle Streets. Robert was a miner, so they were low class, despite that, they always had enough to survive without ever starving.

- She didn't care about her economic status, since she was working by selling lemonade (as a lil child) and saving her cash to buy a little house In the countryside. Besides, her father always loved her, there was nothing that someone could consider a problem between them.

- Although, Robert couldn't help but feel lonely, so he decided to look for a new lover. A woman who appeared in their life, when Astrid was about to 14.

- The woman was an alcoholic one, always spending the cash into whims and useless things, she was kinda aggressive alone and because of that never had a good relationship with Astrid, but Robert never knew about the circumstances, so he didn't do anything.

- Since the woman appeared, The small family began to have debts, so both Robert and Astrid had to work twice as hard, which did not prevent the debts from increasing drastically, in just two years. For this reason Robert decided to go with a 'friend' (who was a member of a criminal association), to request loans with the condition of paying later, but it never happened.

- This 'friend' He decided to collect everything Robert owed, and as a result of having empty pockets, he kidnapped Astrid (she was 16).

- At first they planned to use her as bait to get the money and then kill her, But after pleas from the minor, they decided to recruit her at a low level, as a kind of servant for anything basic, even burying corpses that they eliminated.

- All this in order to be the one to pay Robert's debts. But it would take a long period of time until now.

- As she grew older, the members began to promote Astrid's position, from making her infiltrate meetings to extract information to turning her into a hitman, having to sell this service to others, In order to recover the lost money.

- The rest, is History..

[⛈️] = Sometimes, she pretends to be mute, so she doesn't need to talk with anyone [That's until she finally she likes u]

•{☬Additional Data☬}•

[🌪️] = The grey hairs are sign of her stress x,d

[🌪️] = She could know everything about weapons and how to play them, but she doesn't know how to cook.

[⛈️] = I don't know what to add about her biological mother.. I'll say she divorced Robert and he won the custody of Astrid 👌.

[🌪️] = Astrid just knows Vinnie, and that because she tried to steal her and found a gun in her purse. (In that moment, Astrid was infiltrated, Vinnie too)

[⛈️] = They're not so close friends, but they help each other sometimes. Either to get information or to get beans.

[🌪️] = Once she finished paying the debts, she will go away from Ramshackle, and live her dreamed life in a house in a rural space.

[⛈️] = Astrid doesn't tell her affection with words. She does it with flowers. If she gives you a daisy, she considers you as her family. If she gives you a rose, she loves you <3.

[🌪️] = She is the kind of person who doesn't understand the jokes. She doesn't have a sense of humour. (She tries man, she tries 😞)

[⛈️] = In an attempt to kill A drunk scammer, this one stroke her with a vodka bottle in her face, and as she failed on the floor, he tried to let her blind, burning her face with a lighter.

[🌪️] = Robert doesn't know if Astrid is still alive, but he is still trying to report her missing, no matter what.

[⛈️] = I could tell she is depressed, and because of that she eats the acid candies. I thought, as Stone with Pebble, she could have an 'interior Demon', with a similar appearance to her 14-year-old self. Despite that, I can't find a name for her..

The whole pic

THREE DAYS DOING THIS SHIT I GIVE UP

#ramshackle #ramshackle oc #artists on tumblr #my ocs #oc lore #oc art #killme

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chaotic-archaeologist · 3 months

Note

Do you have any advice for someone who has most of an archaeology degree, but following some health problems during covid foricng me to withdraw from some classes, I didn't meet pace of progress and lost my financial aid and now owe my university $13k for the semester i didn't complete. I'm a 3.8gpa student and was deans list, but I have an enrolment and transcript hold until I pay them back. I will never have $13k at my disposal to pay that off without haivng my degree to make me employable, so I'm not sure how I can ever go back and finish my degree.

Do you have any advice for how someone in my position should proceed? I thought about merit based financial aid/scholarships with my high gpa, but I've never had any success finding those.

This is a tough one, since I don't really have any direct experience with a similar situation. If anyone has specific advice, please let me know.

Education loans/debt are special legal creatures, and perhaps the most important thing you can do is educate yourself on the legalities of your particular situation and what options are available to you. Here's a page I found that talks about the legal precedents for certain types of education loans. From what little I understand, the school is not looking for you to pay the $13k back all at once. There may be payment plans or settlements available to you.

The first thing that comes to mind is to contact your school's ombudsman. This is an office whose single purpose is to help students navigate institutional bureaucracy and pursue grievances against the institution. They are probably the best bet for finding ways to mitigate this debt, set up options for payment, etc.

Similarly, I would recommend making an appointment to talk with someone in the financial aid department if you haven't already. It might be painful and embarrassing, but I can guarantee you that you aren't the first person who has had this exact issue, and you won't be the last. They might also be able to help you navigate ways to deal with this debt.

Some schools have policies that if you have to withdraw for health reasons before X point in the semester, you can get your tuition refunded. This is what my family was able to do when I had to drop out during my sophomore year. Whether that would be an option for you depends 1) on your school, and 2) on if you have to apply for that forgiveness within a certain window. Still worth a shot though—this is something you can ask the ombudsman about.

If you were registered with your school's disability services (provided that you're in the US, which is where my experience comes from) before you had to withdraw, they may also be able to help you advocate for yourself based on having a disability. If this is something that applies to you, it's possible that you have some protections based on the ADA, although this will depend on the nature of your financial aid, and whether you were registered beforehand. Accommodations are not retroactive.

Finally, I hate to say it, but working in archaeology—with or without a college degree—is going to make it difficult to pay off these loans. Entry level archaeology jobs pay notoriously poorly, and other positions generally require some sort of postgraduate degree. You are employable without a degree, but it may not be in your chosen field. That's shitty news, I know, but it's something you need to consider in order to start dealing with this.

Best of luck, -Reid

#he speaks #he answers #academic advice #financial advice #student debt

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