#retirement is highly plausible

[blown-blooms]

Learning Jay got kicked out moodboard

[mirixmoya]

adding my two cents to the post-war jobless effie discourse i’ve seen floating around cause i think it’s a really interesting topic ……

personally, i think it’s highly unlikely that a post-war effie would return to ANY kind of formal employment. not because she would be incapable, but because i think she would be highly disillusioned with (a) formal establishments and (b) her previous notions that hard work will always be appreciated for what it is. she lived through a war, and—depending on the canon—she lived through institutionalized torture. i think it’s incredibly unlikely that effie would seek out any kind of formal employment after this.

also, depending on your personal headcanons, effie has been girlbossing in some form of industry since she was veryyy young. my girl deserves a break! and i think she would have very few reservations about an early retirement.

however, i don’t think this lack of formal employment makes her a housewife by any means. i’ve been in hayffie fandom circles for a long time and, generally, post-war effie rarely cooks, rears haymitch’s children, or does any sort of heavy manual household labour. at most she cleans, caretakes, shops, and sews; all of which feel like characteristically effie tasks to take on. it is for these reasons that i think an unemployed post-war effie doesn’t necessarily quantify as a housewife, at least not in the traditional sense.

but, i have always been a proponent of Effie Does Things after the war! providing sewing & mending services, selling dozens of goose eggs, working the counter at peeta’s bakery when he needs it, teaching piano at the local school once a week, etc! i think all of these are highly plausible post-war effie activities that would occupy the “i need to do something!” part of her brain.

they’re not necessarily formalized employment, but they’re something to do with her time whilst also offering her more freedom & flexibility than she ever saw in her former industries.

[docgold13]

Batman: The Animated Series - Paper Cut-Out Portraits and Profiles

Barbara Gordon (New Adventures)

As a young adult, Barbara Gordon divided her time between going to college and acting as the heroic Batgirl.  When Dick Grayson quit in his role as Robin, Batman became more and more reliant on Batgirl’s aide.  Barbara was a brilliant computer programer and excelled at using internet resources to assist in cases.  She and Batman made an exceptional team and succeeded in solving near countless criminal cases.  

Following a particularly harrowing encounter with the villainous Scarecrow, Barbara became more aware of the guilt she felt over the fact that she was keeping her dual life as a vigilante a secret from her father.  She and her father were quite close and essentially lying to him was a matter that was difficult for her to reconcile with.  She tried to tell her father about her being Batgirl but he stopped her.  He already knew, but needed to pretend he did not, or at least needed the plausible deniability of not knowing.  Although her father did add that he was extremely proud of her.  

Barbara would ultimately retire in her role as Batgirl shortly after the terrible events that had so severely traumatized Tim Drake.  Bruce Wayne would no longer allowed himself to put others in harms way in his mission and Barbara came to find a new path.  

She enrolled in the police academy and ultimately went on to become a highly successful officer and detective.  In her later years, Barbara was promoted to Police Commissioner, assuming the same office once held by her father.  

Actress Tara Strong voiced Barbra Gordon/Batgirl in the New Batman Adventures with this iteration of the heroine first appearing in the debut episode of the series, ‘Holiday Nights.’   

[moonshynecybin]

In a reconciliation world, what do you think it would take for Vale’s whole entire brain to jump in there?

Like you say he is repressing the fact that he’s in love with Marc. What makes him say: Ohhhhhhh that’s what that was.

THIS ONE IS HARD ummm see the thing is. they havent reconciled in the last 8 years.... and well. a large amount of history resentment and ego is preventing that from happening. which means we are left to theater of the mind to heal one of the most entrenched sports divorces EVER. one that has become a major part of their respective legacies and has been highly publicized by them both. so theyve got a lot on the line if they want to reconcile. and ive said that i DO think it should be valentino to make the first move here but um. well. i genuinely dont know how to get him to that point ! ive got amporphous ideas about a post-retirement crisis/re-evaluation (helpfully dovetails with marc having the worst time vis a vis his injury), them being in forced proximity and remembering they have insane chemistry/the same sense of humor, marc publicly looking like a slut, and many other somewhat plausible scenarios but until it happens (IT WILL. please please please youre nothing) im just throwing darts at the board.

[ltwilliammowett]

Union Jack taken by Captain Hyde John Clarke from HMS Téméraire, c. 1810

By family tradition this flag was "at Trafalgar", however, as Clarke himself was serving in the East Indies, this seems highly unlikely. More plausible however is the attribution to Téméraire, which Clarke joined in 1810, being promoted auspiciously on Trafalgar Day that year to the rank of Commander.

He seems to have left the navy soon thereafter making this a likely souvenir which, because of Téméraire's history, family folklore fused together.

The Naval system of retired officers continuing slowly up the promotions ladder on half pay was still used and Clarke was made Captain in 1840, his final promotion.

[thosearentcrimes]

Not sure how you solve the whole "shareholder value maximization" thing. It seems fairly obvious that CEOs being very highly paid for overloading perfectly functional and profitable businesses with debt they can't really service long-term to pay for stock buybacks and pointless acquisitions is a bad thing on balance, but a good thing for everyone who gets to decide if it happens or not. You start with a functional productive enterprise and end with a yard sale, with the now shambling frankencompany being re-carved up and bought piecemeal by other companies still in the "fanatical acquisitions" stage of the process. At best you end up with consolidation/monopolization and displacement of profits onto the finance industry. But how do you stop it? Will it wither away as increased interest rates compel more judicious application of capital?

I do wish it were practical for workers at companies being liquidated due to inability to service debt to buy the company free of debt at a steep discount and run it as a cooperative. Realistically, this sort of resolution has only been remotely plausible in situations with sufficient political agitation (LIP type) or established union power and wealth. But in the case of unions, often the funds they have available are pension funds and such, and it's generally not great if they burn people's retirement trying to make a company doomed by macroeconomics beyond their control work, and presumably that would be the case at least some of the time.

[waheelawhisperer]

pointing a gun at you. tell me about Bluebonnet I want to Know

The RWBY version of Bluebonnet is a Huntress from Vacuo who graduated from Shade Academy and remained active in the Kingdom. She's one of the Kingdom's top Huntresses and is well-known for hunting down both dangerous Grimm and dangerous criminals. Bluebonnet has a reputation for taking jobs others are afraid to tackle and is popular among those who live outside the main city as a result. She fights with a pair of revolvers that fire specially modified Dust rounds with various effects, but she's no slouch in melee, as more than one opponent has found out - get close enough to nullify her guns and she'll just beat the shit out of you with her bare hands, just like she was known for doing during her stint in Vacuo's underground fighting rings. She hates Atlas and the Schnee Dust Company for what they did to Vacuo and might be just a little bit of a Qrow Branwen fangirl.

The Arknights version is a Kuranta bounty hunter whose family moved to Columbia early on in the nation's history. She joined the military when she was young and patriotic, but grew disillusioned with military service and left after her third tour of duty, having distinguished herself well enough to have a chest full of medals that always travels in her luggage. She retired to the vast Columbian frontier and busied herself guarding travelers and hunting down criminals trying to hide outside the cities.

Bluebonnet joined Rhodes Island after being hired to guide a team led by Saria through the wilderness to locate a highly-dangerous test subject that had escaped from a Rhine Labs experimental site and offer her sanctuary before either Rhine Labs or the Columbian government could recapture her. She sent in her resume partly because she felt joining Rhodes Island could let her do good on a larger scale and partly because the team she assisted included Saria, Schwarz, and Hellagur and Bluebonnet is very bisexual.

Operator Bluebonnet still fights with revolvers and is one of the few non-Sankta in the setting to show significant aptitude with firearms. She's also skilled at unarmed combat and can frequently be found sparring with the other martial artists in the landship, though she has to be very careful to avoid revealing that sometimes she lets herself get pinned on purpose.

Regardless of setting, Bluebonnet is 5'10", has long, blonde hair, eyes the color of her namesake and a little bit of a tan from spending a lot of time outdoors, and dresses like she just walked off the set of a Western (boots, longcoat, pants, cowboy hat, etc.), except unlike most outfits of this nature, hers includes a titty window (presence of fishnets tbd). Her outfits tend to feature a lot of blue, as befits her name. She's bright, bubbly, and has a Texas-sized heart contained within a Texas-sized chest, and she has to fight to keep herself from falling for any remotely-plausible sob story anyone tries to feed her. She will hug people at the slightest provocation and has gotten punched at least once for ignoring someone's personal space.

Bluebonnet is very friendly and flirty but she's also extremely and tragically single because while she can flirt pretty well, she cannot close to save her life. If it looks like she's about to seal the deal, the universe itself will conspire to prevent her from getting a date. She's frequently hit on and is generally receptive as long as her potential partner isn't throwing up red flags, but she has outright bad luck and things tend to go comically wrong before either she or the person hitting on her actually reach the point of scheduling a date.

Bluebonnet has high INT and decent WIS, but she's somewhat impulsive and sometimes her WIS score will randomly crater. "It seemed like a good idea at the time" is a common Bluebonnet phrase, usually when the medics are patching her up.

[quill-of-thoth]

Letters From Watson: The Adventure of the Second Stain

Published: 1904 Set: October 1886 [Baring-Gould] any time in the fall of 1886, 1887, or 1888 by my timeline. Remote possibility that it’s 1885 or earlier.

Publication Dates A fun note on publication timelines before we get into my analysis of the actual year this was set: this is the final short story in the second batch of published short stories. The first batch was collected into two groups (Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes) and published on a more or less monthly schedule from 1891 to 1893. There’s a five month gap between the stories published as Adventures, and those published as Memoirs, but between Memoirs and the first publication of the stories that would be in Casebook, there’s a full decade, interrupted only by the serial publication of the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. So instead of my usual supposition that all cases have to have occurred before 1891, our now absolute latest possible date of this case is the date of its publication, 1904, though from the introduction in this very story, Holmes has been retired long enough that none of the cases Watson relates are likely to have occurred in 1903.  Another reason to fudge details Based on the more highly secretive nature of this case, it’s unlikely to be recent. We can start from the assumption that if Watson is talking about it, even if the details are heavily fictionalized, the case here is probably at least a decade old. As we can rule out the period of 1891-1894, when the first twenty five cases were published, for reasons I’ll discuss when we get closer to that point in the timeline, it is not unreasonable at all for Baring-Gould to assume that this case occurred sometime between 1881 and 1891. (Year and decade that will remain nameless indeed...) We can, however, track the decade by Lord Bellinger, which is not the actual name of any Victorian politician. However, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil fits the bill as a man who was Prime Minister twice during the reign of Queen Victoria. His terms were June 1885-January 1886 and July 1886 to August 1892, meaning that he lasted significantly longer than a head of lettuce. Presuming that Baring-Gould takes “Bellinger” as his pseudonym and that Watson intends to tell us that the man is already in his second term, October 1886 is a plausible date. Additionally, the sitting room at Baker Street is referred to as “ours,” so according to my count this has to be before Watson’s marriage. The case is also stated to take place in Autumn, which is likely not revealing enough to be intentionally misleading. On the other hand, we have three cases crammed into October 1886 according to Baring Gould, presumably to fit all of the cases that mention Holmes and Watson living together in before the first marriage that Baring-Gould proposes for Watson. It is not certain that Watson left Baker Street before 1888. It is also possible that the case predates “Bellinger’s” second term in office. Watson is writing this up at least fifteen years later, and has good reason to fudge the details: giving details referring to the politician being fictionalized that would not have been known at the time of the case is a plausible way of doing that.  It’s also possible that Watson indicated the wrong politician entirely, to throw us all off the scent. Yes, he may have had less professional reputation to go on, but if Roylott recognizing him in 1883 in The Speckled Band wasn’t entirely invented, Holmes wasn’t completely unknown. He could have a reputation for detection good enough to attract government attention years before Watson’s marriage. Plus, you must remember that his brother was very well regarded within the government before 1991: perhaps if Mycroft was in the know about this particular problem and recommended Holmes to solve it, that may have elevated his reputation.

[just-some-random-blogger]

What’s you favorite Sandman issue?

Ohemgosh hello my dear. I'm honored to receive such a question.

I got to say, I was trying to remember that issue that was so cathartic to me that I cried but... I think that was my memory fogging the experience of reading the sandman comics in the school library. It's genuinely been such a comfort for me because I feel kind of lonely in college.

Enough of that sappy stuff you didn't ask for though

I really REALLY liked the book/issues that follow Dream through his blip dominion over hell. I'll now proceed to talk about why i liked it so if you plan to read it and your're not into spoilers skip this paragraph now. When lucifer was like 'lol i hate you. im retiring both out of spite XD alsi because I deserve it. here' then hands over the key to dream, i was like ??????????? The whole thing got very introspective and i was honestly at the edge of my seat trying to figure how the fuck he was gonna get out of that.

Neil gaiman is nothing short of a big brained megamind, that issue in particular really got me. He made such a beautiful world with such compelling, highly intelligent and realistic/plausible-- i forgot the world but like 'no duh thats so what's gonna happen' whatever that word is-- plot points and i will never be the same because of that issue, but really thats all the issues ive read thus. My fav low key self-insert fanfic writer <3 lolololol

I also really liked the issue with nada. I think reading that after watching the show and writing/reading all the fics i have gave me a really good idea of what kind of person (entity lol HAHA) dream is. It really helped paint a vivid image of him in my head and his entire thing with nada showed me his humanity. What can i say, I have a soft spot for characters who are starved for love, cause aren't we all?

I take photos of panels that I really like. Ive deleted some of them, but here are a few that ive kept cos i wanna show you cos they make me happy (:

The last one is not a very good photo but a screenshot because i didnt finish reading the whole book in the lib like i normally do and finished it on my phone lol

Thank you for the ask my love. 🥺🥺🫶🫶💗💗💗 I appreciate it so much.

[capriclone]

The Batch Batch Season 2 Finale Predictions

The Summit being a summit meeting and not the summit of mount tantiss is wild, i didn’t think of that. that being said it’s definitely going to happen with a lot of empire personnel (obvi) including hemlock, emerie, tarkin, maybe palps and maybe rampart? Tbh i’m hoping we see young dr. pershing bc then it could connect to mando and cloning. It would also make sense as to why mando and tbb release r overlapped

The summit meeting will be about the cloning experiments and we’ll get to know more about what those entail including zillo beast experiment, the experiments on clones, and the need for Omega besides just blackmailing nala se.

Plan 99 is definitely a rescue plan and it will be crosshair who ends up getting rescued. it will be the ultimate we are rescuing crosshair mission instead of the wow i accidentally stumbled upon crosshair we should ask if he need saving.

^^That being said, if Omega is captured and the season is left on a cliffhanger we will get season 3. if everyone returns happy and healthy, s3 is debatable…kinda related, i did some math and if star wars is going to announce s3 it’ll be the day before the finale so March 28th

I doubt we will see cody again this season which makes me mad bc why just tease him. If we do tho, he’ll be on tantiss and need rescuing along with cross. If Rex comes on the mission, it’ll be highly plausible

Echo won’t stay with the batch :( it just makes sense for them to go separate ways right now. i have 2 ideas rn

1. echo will go back to his clone networking thing with rex and the rest of the batch will try to settle down on pabu. Given that omega has already been on so many of the batch’s missions and she loves being a part of the team, i wouldn’t be surprised if we see her ask the batch to come out of retirement. if not then she will go find echo and work on getting clones out and maybe she’ll go on to join the rebellion

2. omega gets captured or hurt by the empire and hunter loses it (think joel in the hospital) and that’s his breaking point when he realizes he can’t relax till the war is over. then the batch joins rex and echo

if any one of the batch dies (manifesting they don’t, i want a big happy family at the end of this) it will push the batch into joining Rex and helping end the empire. if it does happen, i kind of want to see omega go revenge mode🫣

[narcoticwriter]

About putting Xiao out of his misery, that’s a fair perspective and honestly makes it better if we did have to, but I still think I’d cry lol

(it’s banterismylovelanguage btw)

Continuing unpopular opinions, which five characters do you think would find peace in death in endgame (including or excluding Xiao, your choice)?

Okay, this is quite the ask and I have opinions on this. It's in descending order as well.

5. Bennett

Before I'm crucified, let me explain this one a bit.

One of Bennett's character stories brings up the implication that he can't hope to die an adventurer's death that cements him into any legend or lore.

That would be 'too fortunate' for someone with his bad luck.

So if he went out knowing he gave his all and in a really epic and badass way, he'd be able to rest easy.

Why do you think he runs headlong into every conflict and fight? It's not like he's going to actually die anyway. It'll hurt, but he'll be alive.

Will his death actually happen? No, as I am highly doubtful of the fact. But would it be cathartic and ironic if it was the case? Yes.

4. Lisa Minci

You should be expecting this one as the librarian canonically doesn't have that much time left.

Her attitude of helping out with everyone else, and making sure they're okay is what she lives for while she still can.

The way that she interacts with others as well as teaches Razor, gets some of the Knights to take breaks and rest, and even pushes Kaeya towards reconciliation with Diluc (in 3.1 I think) shows how she's no longer afraid to show others that she cares about them.

And if Celestia put a warning on you in the form of taking half of your lifespan, you can bet that the philosophy of "fuck it we ball" is going to apply in this sense.

She'd pass on knowing that she did what she loved, and that was taking care of others and watching them grow and learn.

She'll be a little sad that she can't see it for herself, but she feels confident that they'll be in good hands and I love that for her.

3. Zhongli

This one, I am admittedly less enthused to talk about, but it's starting to feel like that may be the case.

Starting off, this guy is super old and may be older than Teyvat itself, so at some point, he will croak and die.

Second of all, this guy has a forced non-disclosure agreement that doubles as a gag order from The Heavenly Principles, so if he broke it (which he might, given some things he's implied) he would be silenced for good.

And last, but certainly not least, one's retirement is a stepping stone that's much closer to death than not.

He's at a point where he's simply enjoying the feeling of being alive in his twilight years. He's also expressing the fear of forgetting certain memories and as he wanes, so will those.

It has a slightly higher chance of being in-game than I want to think about, but I can't deny its plausibility at any rate.

2. Tartaglia

You heard me the first time I don't need to repeat myself.

"Sure, I might have fallen into the Abyss as a kid, but I became better for it, I swear!"

Yeah, sure you did and you think Celestia won't get around to putting you in check as you collect forbidden powers and techniques like they're fucking Pokemon cards?

This guy's got the survivability of a goddamn babirusa because not only does everything want to kill him, but if that doesn't do it, he'll eventually kill himself with his entire approach to living.

Boy literally throws himself at the most dangerous creatures and people under the sun and still has the audacity to say "Another round!" even those he's been reduced to almost-a-corpse.

I don't care what you say: HIS 👏 ASS 👏 IS 👏 DYING 👏 YOUNG

Honorable Mentions (and some crackery) -

Qiqi - No one deserves to live as a result of being caught in the crossfire combined with adeptal collateral damage. Homegirl needs to rest for what's left of time.

Xiao - Obviously, as living is suffering and he'll finally have peace.

Yelan - Nerfing her bloodline was a contingency measure and breaking some of her spirit in the Abyss was a reassurance, so what makes you think they won't put her on a shirt if she presses?

Albedo - If you have an Archon, an assassin, and a Khaerni'ahn nervous as well as asking the Traveler to kill you if things get out of hand, things will happen to you.

Mona - She will see something she isn't meant to and she will be dealt with accordingly.

Kaedehara Kazuha - It would be off-screen and no one would know until someone stumbled across a rotting corpse in the wilderness.

Kaeya - It'd be real funny if there was an active political faction in Khaerni'ah that wanted the Alberichs exterminated for usurping the throne Hoyoverse please I'm begging you-

Diluc - It would be partially due to his own stupidity and partially due to the Harbingers making sure he died properly this time.

Shenhe - It would be without her red ropes and she will never feel more alive again.

And now, without further ado, we have number one on this list . . .

Venti

Bet you didn't see this one coming, did you?

I'm sorry, but this little guy has about as many death flags as Eula does grievances towards most of Mondstadt.

He has: talked to the Traveler before the events of the game, witnessed some real heinous shit in the Calamity (Cataclysm?), got his gnosis snatched (maybe on purpose??), and has increasingly been showing up more and more as time goes on.

Why are these points relevant? Because at some point he will spill the beans and will be punished severely for it.

I would make the argument that he's the closest Archon to the Traveler as well as one of the oldest, and as such, it would be that much more powerful if he was killed off in the greater sense of things.

I'm sorry, but I just can't see him surviving to endgame. He's living on borrowed time and he knows it.

Tell me what you think!

[supertrainstationh]

This is some interesting timing on Charles Martinet retiring.

Even going several years back, I wondered if Martinet had recorded a certain "bank" of vocal samples for Nintendo to use following his retirement, or as a contingency in case of his unexpected demise.

And that was before the gigaleak proved that for every several seconds of Martinet audio actually used in a game, there could be MINUTES of other takes and versions that never made it in.  

Its interesting that for the SMB Wonder reveal, Nintendo seemingly rather swiftly replaced Martinet with someone similar sounding enough that it was highly debatable, though plausible, that it was still Martinet providing the vocal performance.

I’m a bit sorry Martinet wont be in Wonder, it would have a perfect final platforming game to go out on.

I find it interesting that Nintendo and Martinet are interested in Charles having some residual/ceremonial role within Nintendo.

Especially since such an indefinite role within Nintendo could potentially bind Martinet from speaking freely about his opinions of the company or specific issues as a private citizen.

Reggie Fils-Amie for instance is completely separate from Nintendo, and has spoken openly about some controversial or potentially touchy subjects like labor issues within Nintendo, his role regarding certain behind-the-scenes decisions, and the MOTHER 3 localization topic.  

[gatekeeper-watchman]

Let’s be honest now, how many times have you run a trial or an experiment and have had to deal with missing data? The data could be missing for several reasons, missed measuring opportunities, individuals dropping out of a trial, experimental units dying or getting lost, the list goes on. In the end, our datasets may not be as complete as we wish them to be.

So, how do we deal with subsequent analysis? If you’ve run any sort of statistical analyses in the past, you are already too aware that for most statistical analyses, missing data results in dropped observations and a decrease in the power of our results.

A second way of working with missing data is to impute data, or in layman’s terms let’s create some plausible and credible data for those that are missing.

How do we impute data? There are several different methods of imputation and the route you take will depend on the structure of your missing values. I had to learn that The highly sensitive person who internalizes their emotions suffer internally, within themselves. As they divert their anger towards themselves, they often suffer from depression, anxiety, and somatisation (emotions turning into bodily pain or physical ailments).

People with repressed anger may find that they rarely feel angry, but experience chronic lethargy and numbness. The problem is that whilst the process is largely unconscious, it takes a lot of energy to suppress and re-divert anger. They are tired because a lot of their essential life force is consumed to deny what they ought to naturally feel.

Another problem is that on the flip side of anger are precious human feelings such as joy, excitement and passion. When a person suppresses anger, they may find many of their other desirable feelings get numbed out too. They find it difficult to get excited or passionate; they may be disconnected from their own needs and desires. They may even find it hard to feel or express affection for others. “I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight… I have to deal with my anger with care, with love, with tenderness, with nonviolence.” Sometimes it voids our compassion for each other and sends the wrong signals to our babies. Steven Parker Miller Retired in Jacksonville, Florida and Special Operations

eggshelltherapy.com

Why Do I Feel Empty and Emotionally Numb?

Feeling empty and emotionally numb is the experience of feeling disconnected, surreal, and unable to feel emotions. See what you can do.

[surpluscornbread]

Backing the Bosses Might Lose the White House in 2024

I think democrats might wind up really fucking themselves in 2024 based on their actions with the rail strike. That won't be apparent at first, I'm not talking about union supporters hating them. I think there's a good chance they'll fuck themselves over with 2024 inflation.

First, lets note they're not going to pass any legislation that will help rail workers for the next 2 years. There is zero reason for Republicans to help them do that and Dems won't have the House. So that's off the table. But it's going to be hard to keep railworkers. With how cut to the bone the staffing is with rail companies, and with how much of their experienced work force was hired in 2004 with retirement benefits after 20 years (a lot of those hired in '04 were in the 40s) 2024 might lead to a railroad Great Resignation. So rail service will get worse over the course of 2024. Which will cause supply chain issues. That will bring inflation back up just around the timeline the Fed is currently expecting to lower rates, which will then be out the window. If '22 is an indicator, they'll raise rates because any inflation, no matter the cause, must be fought with rate rises.

With an economy that lacks the momentum of the 2020-21 stimulus boosts and weakened by 2 years of higher rates already, this is far more likely to see drastic unemployment and business failure issues than we're seeing now. AKA, stagflation just in time for Biden's re-election.The Dems got by in '22 because of 1) the Dobbs ruling and 2) an economy more resilient than many thought. 1 will be old news in 2024 and 2 is unlikely to still be true. Which raises the question, why back management in the strike then?

The cynical answer is they're bought off. But I think actually something else is at play.

Democrats believe management more than they believe workers. When management says workers are being lazy and everything is fine, they believe that because they think of management as like themselves. They often ARE management. So they see these people who have highly paid analysts torturing data into the story that the bosses are right and are fine, and they think that's reality. They really do think they saved US railroads and the economy by crushing the workers. Which means the rail road problems of 2024 will be a surprise which Republicans, especially those who just voted against the bill to avert the strike, will be able to take full advantage of that.

And when Republicans get in office, they'll probably actually do something to address the issue, possibly even a temporary railroad nationalization. Certainly not permanent but temporary management reorganization to get enough staff to make the trains run on time. Afterwards, they'll ride high off of that and pass whatever fascistic shit their most deranged minds come up with. That'll be unpopular but if the wave backing them is big enough because the supply chain problems got big enough, that may no longer matter. A sufficiently sized and motivated majority might decide to make good on the promises of really curtailing liberal democracy.

Admittedly, this is a pessimistic scenario in a few ways. But not implausible ways as far as I can tell.

1st, maybe the wave of resignations in 2024 is smaller than I anticipate. Possible, but consider that these workers just got a lot of money but nothing when it comes to shitty working conditions. When you're paid well but life is awful what do you do? Retire!

2nd, maybe Republicans will care enough about the impacts of the economy to help Democrats pass effective legislation mitigating the problem. To which I say...ha...ha ha...ha hA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

3rd, Republicans may find a way to be so obnoxious and evil that they can't pull off a win in 2024. This is the most plausible potential saving grace for the Dems, but they'd probably have to work REALLY hard to overcome the advantage they get from a stagflation recession directly traceable to the Democratic party.

So I think the Democrats made an error this week, and I mean that as in an error on their own terms. I don't mean they accidentally stabbed workers in the back, they think that was necessary. I mean they're going to find out not to trust the promises of the bosses.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

House sales are cratering but inventory is soaring

When I moved to the UK in the early 2000s, nearly everyone I met fancied themselves a real-estate investment genius. Young people all had plans to “get on the housing ladder.” Each of these schemes was more crackpot than the last — the most plausible involved buying minuscule flats, “doing them up,” and flipping them. The weirder ones involved buying unbuilt holiday homes in Spain or Croatia — places these people couldn’t afford to visit, especially not after assuming crushing debt to buy these homes — waiting for them to “go up in value,” and selling them.

No amount of debate or discussion could dissuade these young people from pursuing these highly speculative, highly leveraged bets. They had been subjected to a yearslong barrage of assurances of the inevitability of house prices rising, including no fewer than three public TV shows about house-flipping — that is, publicly funded propaganda to make risky, speculative financial bets look “safe as houses.”

But as weird as my conversations with young people were, they were nothing compared to my conversations with people of their parents’ generation. Without exception, every older person I talked to about the housing crisis — for that’s what it was! — was convinced that they were the second coming of Warren Buffet, a genetic sport born with the mutant power to unerringly spot underpriced homes.

Their evidence for this? They had bought homes in the 1970s and 1980s for less than £100k, and now those homes were worth £2m. For them, this was a sign that they had “bought well.” No amount of debate could convince them otherwise, not even discussions of how the surreal, high-risk bets their children were making were feeding a bubble that saw all homes soaring in price.

Buying into a bubble doesn’t make you a genius — it makes you a gambler in a rigged casino. Now, lots of people make money in a rigged casino, and not just the casino’s owners. Marks who luck out on their entry and exit can walk out with some of the loot, too. In fact, it’s to the casino’s advantage to have a pool of satisfied marks walking around in the world, boasting of the incredible (and fair) opportunities to be found at the casino’s tables.

This is especially visible in the world of crypto speculation. The multibillion-dollar “stablecoin” Tether has long been understood to be a scam — but enough people were able to profitably use it that every time someone pointed out the incoherence of Tether’s claims to reserve assets, a bleating chorus of Tether boosters appeared to drown them out.

The original “airdrop” actually took place in the UK housing market, when Margaret Thatcher killed the idea that shelter was a human right by selling council flats (public housing) to their residents. A generation later, those flats were mostly in speculators’ hands, the money from sales was long gone, and the children of those former council tenants had nowhere to live.

The people who bought and held onto their homes through the housing bubble considered themselves to be genius investors, even though their “strategy” consisted of “living somewhere, while forces they didn’t understand drove trillions into the housing market and inflated the price of every home.”

Housing is a uniquely dangerous form of speculation, because shelter is a primary human right, and being unsheltered is catastrophic. When a nation replaces labor rights and a social safety net with speculation on housing, it pits the living conditions of everyone who doesn’t have a home against everyone who does. A country whose residents’ dignified retirement depends on house prices going up is a country whose government is committing to making shelter more expensive.

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Imagine if the only way people in your town could experience upward social mobility was if the price of food went up, and if your local, regional and national government committed itself to a policy of making food as expensive as possible. Life without food is harder than life without shelter — but a society that fails to provide stable housing to its people is still an abject failure.

Here in the USA, we’ve just been through yet another housing bubble, driven by a combination of offshore speculators, overall asset inflation from Trump’s quantitative easing, NIMBYism, and 15 years of failure to build new housing since the Great Financial Crisis. House prices have soared to levels that dwarfed the runup to the 2008 bust.

The entire asset bubble — stocks, crypto, baseball cards, art, wine — is bursting, and its taking the housing market with it. April saw the largest decrease in house sales in US history, a month-on-month drop of 16.6% and a year-on-year drop of 26.9%.

https://wolfstreet.com/2022/05/24/housing-bubble-getting-ready-to-pop-unsold-inventory-of-new-houses-spikes-by-most-ever-to-highest-since-2008-sales-collapse-below-400k/

Even those shocking numbers don’t convey the true scale of the collapse, because they obscure variations by region and sale price. For example, the US south experienced an annual drop of 36.6%. Unsold inventory in the south rose by 59%. Sales of homes listed at $200–300k fell by 71%.

One of the defining characteristics of a bubble is leverage: when people have to borrow to place their bets. Leverage makes bubbles a lot bigger. Credit gives bidders access to more money, so the prices go up as they outbid one another.

But leverage also makes bubble burst a lot harder. The people who loan money into the bubble want to make sure they don’t lose everything if prices go down, so when things look bad, they call in their loans. The banks that provided the leverage for the 2008 crisis used unregulated financial products in a bid to contain their risk (most “financial innovation” consists of finding ways to market prohibited products by rebranding them as something else).

That risk-containment strategy was built on contracts where borrowers promised not to seek bankruptcy protection if they got into trouble. This meant that when prices went down and lots of gamblers found themselves needing to cover their bets, they were unable to renegotiate their debts in bankruptcy court — instead, they had to sell off their assets for whatever they could get (remember “short sales”?).

This meant that as soon as house prices dipped, lots of houses were forced into the market, which drove house prices down even further. Those falling prices triggered another wave of sell-offs, and another drop in prices, and more sell-offs. No wonder that regulators sifting through the ashes of the 2008 collapse called these unregulated risk-containment strategies “suicide notes”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/02/shadow-banking-2-point-oh/#leverage

These price-annihilating “fire sales” are a feature of every bursting bubble, though they’re an especially grave risk in crypto, where smart contracts are designed to force instantaneous, automated loan liquidations when the value of the loans’ collateral drops:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4038788

Asset bubbles drive all kinds of risky behavior. As the current housing bubble has gotten bigger and bigger, house-buyers have held off on selling their old houses. In other words, if you buy a new house and move your family into it, you don’t sell the house you just left — you leave it empty for months, or even a year, borrowing to cover two mortgage payments.

Why would anyone do this? Because housing prices kept going up — and up — and up. By “hodling” onto that old house, you could ride that upward trend “to the Moon.”

Like the older Britons who were convinced that having a place to live made them financial geniuses, even though they had no theory to explain rising house prices and thus no way to predict when prices might fall, the people who hodl’ed their old houses mistook the dividends of a massive asset bubble for their own financial acumen.

That was a harmless delusion, so long as house prices kept going up. Once the market cooled, it was a disaster. As Barry Ritholtz describes, the people who held onto their former residences have run out of rope and can’t afford to keep up two homes anymore, and a flood of new listings is landing on the market, even as it collapses:

https://wolfstreet.com/2022/06/02/suddenly-here-comes-the-inventory-homes-listed-for-sale-jump-amid-price-reductions-and-sagging-sales/

Last month, new house listings went up by 26% month-on-month, and 8% year-on-year, the first annual increase in listings since 2019. It’s worse than it looks: rising mortgage rates mean that buyers are leaving this market, reducing demand for the (increasing) supply. Closing sales have declined for nine consecutive months.

Prices are falling: 74% more homes were relisted at lower prices in May than in April. The collapse is (unsurprisingly) worst in the cities that inflated the most during the bubble: Austin, Phoenix, Sacramento, Riverside, Denver and Raleigh.

The original sin here is to conceive of homes as assets first, and human rights second. Asset bubbles are hugely destructive, but they don’t have to implicate shelter. That was a policy choice, and once again, we’re learning that it was the wrong one.

Image: Tony Mariotti (modified) https://www.rubyhome.com/

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[Image ID: A Spanish Mission-style bungalow with a FOR SALE sign out front; it is sinking into a dark and stormy ocean.]

[ailuronymy]

What do you think of the concept of matriarchs? Not in like a she-cat that stays around the nursery after her kits become apprentices, but more like a rank. They could be an older she-cat with experience in taking care of kits, could serve as babysitters (maybe even for she-cats that are leaders/deputies) and also someone which the clan mollies can come to and ask for advice, and vent about what troubles them more privately. She could also keep them in line so things like forbidden relationships with cats from other clans don't occur. I find the concept interesting, but could be difficult to implement if their authority overlaps the leader's.

Hello there! In my opinion, what you have described here already exists and is called an elder. 

These are all duties that I think would are perfectly plausibly attributed to elders within a clan and it is absolutely how I intepret some of the responsibilities of the elder rank. They are highly ranking cats with significant experience and authority whose guidance is considered to be a valuable resource, which seems to me to be exactly what you’re describing. 

That’s not to say every elder has this particular wealth of knowledge or skill-set, because some cats will excel in this area, whereas others might be more inclined to spiritual insight, or tactical planning and strategy, or mentoring, so on.

But given that I’m quite certain that there would absolutely be elders in every clan (probably retired queens more often than not) whose experience raising kittens is highly venerated and sought out, I don’t personally see any value in inventing a uniquely titled rank when “elder” already works for this purpose. 

To me, the existence of such a rank prompts a lot of questions. For example: when would a cat be decided to be a “matriarch”? One successful litter? Two litters? Would every -flower cat be immediately made a “matriarch”? Is it a rank only available to queens? Does the leader decide and have a ceremony for the chosen cat? Does the clan always have to have a matriarch? Can only one cat be the matriarch? 

Of course, mileage may vary and some people might like having a special title in their clans, but it’s not something I would use in my own world-building personally. Elder feels far more appropriate and useful to me.