#we buy private financing

[novy2sirius]

ᥫ᭡ 𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝖠𝗅𝗆𝖺 𝖺𝗌𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗈𝗂𝖽 𝗂𝗇 𝖺𝗌𝗍𝗋𝗈𝗅𝗈𝗀𝗒 𝗋𝖾𝗉𝗋𝖾𝗌𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗌𝗈𝗎𝗅𝗆𝖺𝗍𝖾/𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗍𝗒𝗉𝖾 𝗈𝖿 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗋𝖺𝖼𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗂𝗌𝗍𝗂𝖼𝗌 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗒 𝗐𝗂𝗅𝗅 𝗁𝖺𝗏𝖾 𝖺𝗌 𝗐𝖾𝗅𝗅 𝖺𝗌 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖽𝖾𝗌𝗂𝗋𝖾 𝗍𝗈 𝖾𝗑𝗉𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗁𝖾𝖺𝗋𝗍 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗍𝗂𝗆𝖾

ᥫ᭡ 𝖨𝗇 𝗌𝗒𝗇𝖺𝗌𝗍𝗋𝗒 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝗉𝗈𝗌𝗂𝗍𝖾 𝗂𝗍 𝖼𝖺𝗇 𝗌𝗁𝗈𝗐 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗋 𝗌𝗈𝗆𝖾𝗈𝗇𝖾 𝗂𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗌𝗈𝗎𝗅𝗆𝖺𝗍𝖾 𝗈𝗋 𝗇𝗈𝗍

ᥫ᭡ 𝖭𝗎𝗆𝖻𝖾𝗋: 𝟥𝟫𝟢 | ᥫ᭡ 𝖠𝗌𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗈𝗂𝖽 𝗍𝗎𝗍

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 1h: Your soulmate will change your perception of life and living. Your soulmate will be the first to approach you when meeting. They will create new beginnings in your life that change you. Appearance wise they could have sharper and more masculine features

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 2h: Your soulmate will bring lots of stability to your life, possibly even financial stability. They will love to spoil you and constantly give/buy you things. Upon first meeting you could be somewhere involving finances or jobs. Appearance wise they could they may have a strong jaw and have a more wide/curvy shaped body

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 3h: Your soulmate will be very similar to you. You could meet on social media. They’ll bring out the more energetic and outgoing side of you. You won’t feel afraid to talk when you’re with them. Appearance wise they’ll look very youthful and may have a baby face (examples of people with a baby face: madelyn cline, alexa demie, jenna ortega, tobey maguire, selena gomez, jack harlow, etc)

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 4h: Your soulmate will immediately feel like home to you when meeting. It’s actually possible you could even meet in a house. This may be someone that brings out your inner child, in a healthy way though. Appearance wise they could have a moon shaped face and curvier body

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 5h: Your soulmate will be someone who’s very talented, romantic, and generous. You share lots of similar hobbies with them. You could meet at a concert, public event, or public place in general. Appearance wise they will have cat-like features and a masculine build

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 6h: Your soulmate will constantly be doing things for you and trying to improve themself as well as your relationship daily. They’re very consistent. They could be a health nut or be involved with health care. Appearance wise they are very fit and look young for their age

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 7h: This is the biggest indication of marrying your soulmate (we don’t all marry one of our soulmates read more about it at the bottom of this post). Your soulmate will be very charming and concerned for you at all times. You could possibly meet them somewhere surrounding fashion, beauty, or romance. Appearance wise they’ll be very attractive and may have a deer-like look. Possibly dimples and fatty too

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 8h: Your soulmate is someone that’s very mysterious because they prefer to keep their life private. They’re quite powerful in many ways and will transform your life for the better. You can make a lot of money with this person and gain wealth together if you do business with one another

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 9h: Your soulmate is someone that helps you grow a lot both as a person and spiritually. They are very free spirited and optimistic. They could bring lots of lucky opportunities your way. They’ll help you gain a lot of wisdom and learn more. You could meet while traveling, near television/media, or near courts (example: basketball court). Appearance wise they’ll have a very athletic or thicker build

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 10h: Your soulmate is someone who’s very successful and has achieved a lot in life. They could possibly be famous. They’re very responsible and will bring out the more ambitious side of you. You could possibly meet through your career. Appearance wise they may have a sharp jawline and dead eyes

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 11h: Your soulmate is likely very financially well off. This could be a friends to lovers relationship. You’ll feel like they’re you’re best friend. They’re very unique, intellectual, and independent. You could meet online or through friends. Appearance wise they may have a unique feature or unique look

જ⁀➴ Alma in the 12h: This indicates an age gap between you and your soulmate since the 12h represents old age. You likely have experienced many past lives together. This can indicate a deep karmic connection. You could meet in an isolated area or near spirituality. You’ll likely be very shy when first meeting. Appearance wise they’ll have a very ethereal look and dreamy eyes

જ⁀➴ Aries Alma: Your soulmate will approach you first when meeting. When meeting you’ll know fairly quickly that you’re soulmate since Mars rules over speed. There will be extreme passionate love between the both of you. This person is someone that will bring the more ambitious side of you out by inspiring you to be better. They will give you a lot of confidence. Appearance wise they’re going to have defined features (examples: a sharp jawline, intimidating stare/eyes, defined eyebrows, etc) and an athletic build

જ⁀➴ Taurus Alma: Your soulmate will be someone who brings stability to you life in many ways. They’re very calm and chill majority of the time but still know how to have fun. They have deep love for you and make sure to show it, likely through gift giving and buying you luxurious things. Appearance wise they may have a strong jaw and have a more wide shaped body

જ⁀➴ Gemini Alma: Your soulmate will share a lot of similar interests you and be someone you can make great conversation with. A lot of people with this placement meet their soulmate online. They’re very smart and will bring lots of excitement to your life. Appearance wise they will look young for their age and may have a baby face (examples of people with a baby face: madelyn cline, alexa demie, jenna ortega, tobey maguire, selena gomez, jack harlow, etc)

જ⁀➴ Cancer Alma: Your soulmate will be extremely caring toward you and you’ll feel an immediate since of comfortability when meeting them. You may still be very shy around each other when meeting though. You’ll likely have a family together and would do really well living together/settling down together. They are someone who will bring out the healthy divine feminine energy in you. Appearance wise they may have a round head (moon shaped) and cute eyes

જ⁀➴ Leo Alma: Your soulmate will be very popular and could even be famous. They’re very confident, masculine, and generous. They are someone that will help you come out of your comfort zone and express yourself in a healthy way. You could meet in a more public place. Appearance wise they may look like a cat/tiger/lion

જ⁀➴ Virgo Alma: Your soulmate has very innocent and sweet energy. They’re going to be more feminine than masculine (depending on the house/aspects to Alma). They’ll bring out the more humble and gentle side of you. You could meet them online or near a place involving health/fitness. Appearance wise they will look very young for their age

જ⁀➴ Libra Alma: Your soulmate is very charming and kind. They will bring more peace into your life and bring out the more kind side of you. They will express their love to you in a very healthy way. You could meet them near a place involving fashion/beauty or romance. Appearance wise they are very beautiful, have a good fashion sense, and have a deer-like look. Possibly dimples and a fatty too

જ⁀➴ Scorpio Alma: Your soulmate has a very intense energy. They will transform your life in a lot of ways and change you as a person for the better as well. When meeting you may both be very shy but then when you start talking you’ll feel a deep connection and become intimate very quickly. Appearance wise they’ll likely have a very intense stare, thick eyebrows, and a mysterious look

જ⁀➴ Sagittarius Alma: Your soulmate is very adventurous and a free spirit. They will help you grow a lot as a person and learn so many things. Your soulmate may be someone that’s from a foreign country or you may have a long distance relationship. You could meet them while traveling. They will bring lots of positive energy and opportunities into your life. They may be on the more muscular side or thicker side appearance wise

જ⁀➴ Capricorn Alma: Your soulmate is someone that will bring out the more mature and responsible side of you. They’re very hardworking, mature, responsible, down to earth, and consistent. They’ll spoil you a lot and could be rich. You both can be very successful together and could even do well working together (work may also be where you meet). A Capricorn Alma indicates an age gap in you and your soulmates relationship (usually them being older than you). They are likely on the skinnier side and have a sharp jawline, appearance wise

જ⁀➴ Aquarius Alma: Your soulmate is a very unique person that will be unlike anyone you’ve met before. They are intellectual and inventive. Your soulmate will bring out the more free spirited side of you and be one of those people that makes you feel like your true self. You could meet them online, through friends, or at a party. They will have a very unique type of beauty or a unique feature that makes them stand out from others

જ⁀➴ Pisces Alma: Your soulmate is very kind and sensitive to your emotions. They’re very selfless and always put you first. They’re also a very spiritual person and may be into astrology. You will feel an immediate spiritual connection upon first meeting. They will have an ethereal beauty that others are fascinated by

— Alma aspecting the sun: the sun represents focal points in the relationship when discussing composite/synastry so aspecting the asteroid of soulmates it can indicate two people being soulmates in both composite and synastry

— Alma aspecting venus: venus shows the type of romantic relationship you both have so aspecting the soulmate asteroid it can indicate being soulmates

— Alma aspecting neptune: neptune is the higher octave of venus and also represents spirituality showing a spiritual connection of two soulmates

— Alma aspecting south node: the south node in composite and synastry can tell if you knew one another in past lives because it not only represents past lives but also familiar energy. when alma, the soulmate asteroid, aspects this it can indicate soulmates that have been together in multiple past lives

— Alma in the 1h: 1h placements in composite/synastry show focal points in relationship and describe the relationship as a whole/their identity together. this can mean you’re soulmates

— Alma in the 4h: the 4h represents the soul and comfortability. it can mean familiarity with each other because of a soulmate connection

— Alma in the 5h: the 5h represents romance itself so this can show a romantic soulmate connection

— Alma in the 7h: the 7h represents relationships so this just means a soulmate connection in a relationship

— Alma in the 11h: the 11h represents soulmates which I made a post about previously so with the asteroid in the house of soulmates it’s a big indicator

AN OBSERVATION I’D LIKE TO ADD

i also want to add that alma can tell about ur souls purpose in meeting in general in composite/synastry if u don’t have any of this indicators. alma means “soul” in spanish

[hamilando]

ੈ✩ red, orange and white (smau) ੈ✩

pairing :carlos sainz x fem reader ( piastri best friend )

summary : the admin is confused whether to support red, orange or white

fc: Thylane Léna-Rose Loubry Blondeau

a/n : This is a series, let me know if you want to be tagged in future parts ! it was requested anonymously, thank you for requesting it 🫶🏻

·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ

liked by user1, user2, user3 and 1,399,278 others

mclaren to have someone look at me like lando looks at the trophy, LANDO NORRIS WINS THE DUTCH GRAND PRIX 2024

view comments

user1 the caption got real chat

user2 admin, we need to talk, YOU DO NOT EXPOSE ME LIFE LIKE THAT

mclaren oops 😬

user3 LETS GO LANDO

user4 admin, can we get more pics of Lando and the trophy ?

mclaren anything for my fans ~ lando

user5 who is the admin!?

user6 @ mcynburger, it’s private tho

user7 the username 🌝

user8 the whole grid follows her 🗿

user9 she is pretty popular with the fans as well, she joined the same year as Oscar, they are besties

user10 friend goals 💪🏻

user11 admin, will you make your acct public ?

mclaren can’t take away all the attention from little lando and oscar

user12 WHA-

user13 I can smell tea ☕️

oscarpiastri Admin, this a professional account, meet me and I will show you who’s little

mclaren chat, things got serious

user14 COMING TO HELP YOU ADMIN

landonorris aren’t you supposed to be Oscar’s best friend y/n?

mclaren who is that ? It’s just admin here

user15 not lando exposing her

user16 I wonder how Zak feels after seeing his company account used for bestie fighting 🫶🏻💀

liked by ospastry, chillijr, hamsandwich and 178 more

mcynburger mama @ lilyz and papa @ ospastry please buy brother a shirt

view comments

norizz you are just jealous of my muscles

mcynburger shirtless picture coming up

ospastry Y/N NO! LANDO CAN YOU NOT !? Y/N STOP DOING SHIT THINGS AND NO NUDE PICTURES FOR GODS SAKE !

chillijr blonde really suits you !

mcynburger thank you so much Carlos 🧡🫶🏻

lordperceval lando, mate you just got lucky 🫷🏻

mcynburger YOU DID NOT JUST -

norizz bury your grave mate

lordperceval what-

mcynburger WE STAFF WORK SO HARD TO GET THE BEST CAR, AND YOU CALL IT LUCK !? THE engineers WORK THEIR BRAIN OFF, THE PR’S MANAGE ALL THE SPONSORS, THE finance TEAM MAINTAINS THE BUDGET AND THE SOCISL ADMINS ENSURE THAT THE FANS GET JOY AND YOU CALL IT LUCK !?

lordperceval o my lord, I am extremely sorry

mcynburger wait, till I post a Ferrari hate post in the official account

hamsandwich please don’t hate Ferrari 👍

mcynburger only because the goat it going to Ferrari 😤

chillijr my unemployment ?

albono hellooo!?

chillijr forgot I joined Williams

mcynburger it’s ok, I will post a william love post because Carlos is going there 🫶🏻

liked by chillijr, alexmieux, ospastry and 247 others

mcynburger hate the tifosi driver, not the tifosi red

view comments

chillijr me too hermosa?

mcynburger YOU ARE NOT TIFOSI ANYMORE 🫶🏻😤 I will never stop loving you 💪🏻

ospastry can you like stop romancing him ?

mcynburger stawp, I need to find a date to go for your’s and lily’s wedding

lilyz aww, Oscar is all giggly now

mcynburger send pics * money on the way *

lilyz I would never - * sent *

ospastry I have said it hundred times, STOP STEALING LILY

mcynburger my ring finger is for lily, middle one is for you

norizz index for me ?

mcynburger how does the index even work ?

norizz number 1?

mcynburger number 1 what ?

maxtheax driver? No.

hamsandwich fashion sense ? No.

ospastry best friend ? HELL NO.

georgie British accent ? No.

chillijr romantic? No.

norizz I AM BRITISH 🙄

mcynburger ok stop, no one bullies norris and oscie if it ain’t me 😗

alexmieux you look hot

mcynburger out of context but not more than you

lordperceval my gf is the hottest

albono 👀

max1 👀

mcynburger NOT ANOTHER FIGHT

mcynburger ALL GIRLIES ARE HOT, MEN ARE EW ( EXCEPT OSCIE AND CARLOS )

liked by user1, user2, user3 and 1,484,389 others

mclaren the end of this season is sneaking up like the third pic 😮‍💨 8 more races before the constructors 🧡

view comments

user1 admin favours Oscar 💀

user2 well, she is his best friend ?

user1 huh?

user2 he said in an interview, his best friend joined mclaren because of him

user3 a girl bestie ?

user4 RED FLAG OSCAR

user5 can you guys let one couple of friends stay sane ? not all men cheat with the girl bf

user6 I think Oscar should be the worried one because y/n is always after lily

user7 Zak will cut her salary after the last pic 💀

mclaren I got a bonus 🧡

user8 ADMIN, MORE LANCAR CONTENT

mclaren done, your majesty 🫡

taglist : @sainzzreputaticn @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy @goldenmclaren

@taliya8346282844eliviahdgdajs @formula1-motogpfan @npcmia @hc-dutch

@nuccibeboo2 @amberjazmyn @nataylia-f1 @fastfactory @sltwins @hoeforlifee

@scarletwidow3000 @kissesandmartinis @d3kstar @mayusaatma @willowsnook

@forza-dolce

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.

Take "leveraged buyout," a polite name for stealing a whole goddamned company:

Identify a company that owns valuable assets that are required for its continued operation, such as the real-estate occupied by its outlets, or even its lines of credit with suppliers;

Approach lenders (usually banks) and ask for money to buy the company, offering the company itself (which you don't own!) as collateral on the loan;

Offer some of those loaned funds to shareholders of the company and convince a key block of those shareholders (for example, executives with large stock grants, or speculators who've acquired large positions in the company, or people who've inherited shares from early investors but are disengaged from the operation of the firm) to demand that the company be sold to the looters;

Call a vote on selling the company at the promised price, counting on the fact that many investors will not participate in that vote (for example, the big index funds like Vanguard almost never vote on motions like this), which means that a minority of shareholders can force the sale;

Once you own the company, start to strip-mine its assets: sell its real-estate, start stiffing suppliers, fire masses of workers, all in the name of "repaying the debts" that you took on to buy the company.

This process has its own euphemistic jargon, for example, "rightsizing" for layoffs, or "introducing efficiencies" for stiffing suppliers or selling key assets and leasing them back. The looters – usually organized as private equity funds or hedge funds – will extract all the liquid capital – and give it to themselves as a "special dividend." Increasingly, there's also a "divi recap," which is a euphemism for borrowing even more money backed by the company's assets and then handing it to the private equity fund:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

If you're a Sopranos fan, this will all sound familiar, because when the (comparatively honest) mafia does this to a business, it's called a "bust-out":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

The mafia destroys businesses on a onesy-twosey, retail scale; but private equity and hedge funds do their plunder wholesale.

It's how they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And it's what they did to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

It's what happened to nursing homes, Armark, private prisons, funeral homes, pet groomers, nursing homes, Toys R Us, The Olive Garden and Pet Smart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

It's what happened to the housing co-ops of Cooper Village, Texas energy giant TXU, Old Country Buffet, Harrah's and Caesar's:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

And it's what's slated to happen to 2.9m Boomer-owned US businesses employing 32m people, whose owners are nearing retirement:

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

Now, you can't demolish that much of the US productive economy without attracting some negative attention, so the looter spin-machine has perfected some talking points to hand-wave away the criticism that borrowing money using something you don't own as collateral in order to buy it and wreck it is obviously a dishonest (and potentially criminal) destructive practice.

The most common one is that borrowing money against an asset you don't own is just like getting a mortgage. This is such a badly flawed analogy that it is really a testament to the efficacy of the baffle-em-with-bullshit gambit to convince us all that we're too stupid to understand how finance works.

Sure: if I put an offer on your house, I will go to my credit union and ask the for a mortgage that uses your house as collateral. But the difference here is that you own your house, and the only way I can buy it – the only way I can actually get that mortgage – is if you agree to sell it to me.

Owner-occupied homes typically have uncomplicated ownership structures. Typically, they're owned by an individual or a couple. Sometimes they're the property of an estate that's divided up among multiple heirs, whose relationship is mediated by a will and a probate court. Title can be contested through a divorce, where disputes are settled by a divorce court. At the outer edge of complexity, you get things like polycules or lifelong roommates who've formed an LLC s they can own a house among several parties, but the LLC will have bylaws, and typically all those co-owners will be fully engaged in any sale process.

Leveraged buyouts don't target companies with simple ownership structures. They depend on firms whose equity is split among many parties, some of whom will be utterly disengaged from the firm's daily operations – say, the kids of an early employee who got a big stock grant but left before the company grew up. The looter needs to convince a few of these "owners" to force a vote on the acquisition, and then rely on the idea that many of the other shareholders will simply abstain from a vote. Asset managers are ubiquitous absentee owners who own large stakes in literally every major firm in the economy. The big funds – Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street – "buy the whole market" (a big share in every top-capitalized firm on a given stock exchange) and then seek to deliver returns equal to the overall performance of the market. If the market goes up by 5%, the index funds need to grow by 5%. If the market goes down by 5%, then so do those funds. The managers of those funds are trying to match the performance of the market, not improve on it (by voting on corporate governance decisions, say), or to beat it (by only buying stocks of companies they judge to be good bets):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/17/shareholder-socialism/#asset-manager-capitalism

Your family home is nothing like one of these companies. It doesn't have a bunch of minority shareholders who can force a vote, or a large block of disengaged "owners" who won't show up when that vote is called. There isn't a class of senior managers – Chief Kitchen Officer! – who have been granted large blocks of options that let them have a say in whether you will become homeless.

Now, there are homes that fit this description, and they're a fucking disaster. These are the "heirs property" homes, generally owned by the Black descendants of enslaved people who were given the proverbial 40 acres and a mule. Many prosperous majority Black settlements in the American South are composed of these kinds of lots.

Given the historical context – illiterate ex-slaves getting property as reparations or as reward for fighting with the Union Army – the titles for these lands are often muddy, with informal transfers from parents to kids sorted out with handshakes and not memorialized by hiring lawyers to update the deeds. This has created an irresistible opportunity for a certain kind of scammer, who will pull the deeds, hire genealogists to map the family trees of the original owners, and locate distant descendants with homeopathically small claims on the property. These descendants don't even know they own these claims, don't even know about these ancestors, and when they're offered a few thousand bucks for their claim, they naturally take it.

Now, armed with a claim on the property, the heirs property scammers force an auction of it, keeping the process under wraps until the last instant. If they're really lucky, they're the only bidder and they can buy the entire property for pennies on the dollar and then evict the family that has lived on it since Reconstruction. Sometimes, the family will get wind of the scam and show up to bid against the scammer, but the scammer has deep capital reserves and can easily win the auction, with the same result:

https://www.propublica.org/series/dispossessed

A similar outrage has been playing out for years in Hawai'i, where indigenous familial claims on ancestral lands have been diffused through descendants who don't even know they're co-owner of a place where their distant cousins have lived since pre-colonial times. These descendants are offered small sums to part with their stakes, which allows the speculator to force a sale and kick the indigenous Hawai'ians off their family lands so they can be turned into condos or hotels. Mark Zuckerberg used this "quiet title and partition" scam to dispossess hundreds of Hawai'ian families:

https://archive.is/g1YZ4

Heirs property and quiet title and partition are a much better analogy to a leveraged buyout than a mortgage is, because they're ways of stealing something valuable from people who depend on it and maintain it, and smashing it and selling it off.

Strip away all the jargon, and private equity is just another scam, albeit one with pretensions to respectability. Its practitioners are ripoff artists. You know the notorious "carried interest loophole" that politicians periodically discover and decry? "Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest on a loan. The "carried interest" rule dates back to 16th century sea-captains, and it refers to the "interest" they had in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Private equity managers are like sea captains in exactly the same way that leveraged buyouts are like mortgages: not at all.

And it's not like private equity is good to its investors: scams like "continuation funds" allow PE looters to steal all the money they made from strip mining valuable companies, so they show no profits on paper when it comes time to pay their investors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

Those investors are just as bamboozled as we are, which is why they keep giving more money to PE funds. Today, the "dry powder" (uninvested money) that PE holds has reached an all-time record high of $2.62 trillion – money from pension funds and rich people and sovereign wealth funds, stockpiled in anticipation of buying and destroying even more profitable, productive, useful businesses:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

The practices of PE are crooked as hell, and it's only the fact that they use euphemisms and deceptive analogies to home mortgages that keeps them from being shut down. The more we strip away the bullshit, the faster we'll be able to kill this cancer, and the more of the real economy we'll be able to preserve.

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/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

[sxsilly2]

ed distractions

all of this is from distractions.carrd.co!!

out and about - ☆ people-watch ☆ sit outside ☆ go window shopping ☆ try out clothes w/o buying them ☆ get a mani/pedi ☆ cloud-watch ☆ make a shopping list ☆ go on a shopping spree ☆ find a new location in your city to visit on google maps ☆ go stargazing ☆ go to the library ☆ go thrifting ☆ pick flowers ☆ go to a new coffee shop you haven’t been to ☆ go camping ☆ go to a museum ☆ go to a park and draw people walking by ☆ see a movie in theaters

moving - ☆ play tennis ☆ ride your bike ☆ go swimming ☆ make your own workouts ☆ swing ☆ make a playlist of workouts ☆ climb something ☆ go for a jog ☆ take a walk ☆ go hiking ☆ do some yoga ☆ do your work out routine ☆ pilates ☆ stretch

creative - ☆ draw, add a pos over it and draw all over again ☆ make a collage out of book pages ☆ make flower arrangements ☆ style your school uniform ☆ copy celebrities’ signature looks w things in your closet ☆ draw many puzzle pieces ☆ make your own zentangles ☆ create your own signature symbol ☆ dry flowers and make a flower diary ☆ learn to crochet ☆ make gift cards for your friends ☆ make a google docs template ☆ copy tattoos w a marker ☆ make stickers ☆ create your own digital museum ☆ make friendship bracelets ☆ make a diy bath bomb ☆ make a movie ☆ tye dye a t-shirt ☆ make playlists for moments ☆ write a letter ☆ decorate an envelope ☆ write jokes ☆ scribble and turn it into a drawing ☆ splash paint onto paper ☆ try to recreate art ☆ recreate notion/carrd pages you see online ☆ make a graphic novel ☆ build a fantasy world ☆ draw a map ☆ draw a webtoon ☆ decorate a notebook ☆ collect dried leaves ☆ make tattoo ideas ☆ do commissions ☆ draw pixel art ☆ make powerpoint templates ☆ make a subliminal playlist ☆ make edits of ppl ☆ make a notion template ☆ write a cringey wattpad novel ☆ write fanfiction ☆ decorate flower pots ☆ paint your phone case ☆ make diets for your fav characters ☆ write a love // hate letter ☆ make lyrics out of random words ☆ paint rocks ☆ decorate a hat ☆ cut out your clothes to make new ones ☆ up-cycle thrifted clothes ☆ draw on your wall ☆ make a bullet journal ☆ doodle on anything around you ☆ memorize a poem/song ☆ come up w original thread ideas ☆ make jewelry ☆ make soap ☆ crochet // knit ☆ draw a self-portrait ☆ draw w your eyes closed ☆ scrapbook ☆ paint some cloth ☆ animate something ☆ start a dream journal ☆ start a blog ☆ bake a cake ☆ cook something new ☆ create new outfits ☆ color ☆ learn origami ☆ draw an original character and give them their own backstory ☆ color-code your google calendar ☆ draw your dream home in detail ☆ paint on a canvas bag ☆ make a jar filled w movie titles and pull one out randomly to watch ☆ start your own private instagram account as a digital diary ☆ write a screenplay ☆ direct your own movie ☆ make lists

educational - ☆ research a random topic (then make a presentation on it) ☆ learn all the countries on a certain continent ☆ learn all countries’ capitals ☆ educate yourself ☆ catch up on current events ☆ go on a study space and study ☆ join a google classroom ☆ take a masterclass ☆ sign up for a course ☆ practice public speaking ☆ finish your assignments ☆ improve your memory ☆ memorize things ☆ organize your notes ☆ learn a new study technique ☆ learn morse code ☆ annotate a book ☆ learn curse words in other languages ☆ learn how to play an instrument ☆ pick up a new skill ☆ learn some psychology tips ☆ learn some cool facts ☆ learn a new language on duolingo ☆ learn about finances

hang out with yourself - ☆ induce a glow-up ☆ induce your honeymoon phase ☆ choose a signature smell ☆ interview yourself ☆ write about your day ☆ figure out a crisis you’ve been having ☆ romanticize your life ☆ get a signature look ☆ get on another twt side ☆ use subliminals ☆ put all your thoughts on paper ☆ decorate your personal journal ☆ watch a childhood movie ☆ go through your old playlists ☆ discover a hidden talent ☆ ask yourself weird questions ☆ write a love poem to yourself ☆ make a goal list ☆ create a vision board ☆ make a time capsule ☆ look at old photos ☆ write a will ☆ practice gratitude ☆ declutter your phone ☆ practice meditation ☆ make an online quiz about yourself ☆ create a five-year plan ☆ plan out your week ☆ write three short-term goals ☆ work on current goals ☆ use a body scrub ☆ do a hair mask ☆ take yourself out on a date ☆ plan YOU days ☆ journal your feelings ☆ write letters to your future self ☆ make a top-10 list of your fav anything ☆ examine your birth chart ☆ color or cut your hair ☆ start a happiness jar ☆ write down your manifestations // affirmations ☆ watch self-improvement videos ☆ give yourself a spa day ☆ update your resume

social life - ☆ facetime your friends ☆ interview someone ☆ do a virtual meet-up w friends ☆ get a penpal ☆ learn about recent drama ☆ boost your socials ☆ talk on spaces w your moots ☆ volunteer ☆ contact an old friend ☆ plan a meet-up w friends ☆ call a relative ☆ plan fun outings // themed nights for you and your friends ☆ hug someone

at-home - ☆ take a cold shower ☆ re-organize your bathroom ☆ try on your clothes ☆ take a bubble bath ☆ visit a digital museum ☆ paint your nails ☆ do a movie/book/game marathon ☆ clear out your closet ☆ drink water ☆ put together a skincare routine ☆ go through your emails ☆ use a bath bomb ☆ do a face mask ☆ plan your meals ☆ re-arrange your books ☆ clean your room ☆ have a picnic on the floor ☆ stick pictures to your walls ☆ organize your drawers ☆ redecorate your room ☆ clean your makeup brushes ☆ declutter your makeup ☆ organize your photos ☆ clean your electronics ☆ do your laundry ☆ take a nap ☆ make a fort ☆ clean your desk area ☆ print posters and decorate your walls ☆ brush your teeth ☆ back up your laptop and phone ☆ update your passwords ☆ clean your car

just for fun - ☆ pretend you’re vlogging ☆ plan a trip ☆ copy ppl’s insta stories ☆ pretend you’re a model ☆ plant a flower/tree ☆ play uno or another card game ☆ play scrabble ☆ make a tournament of a game like ���true american” in new girl ☆ make an amazon list ☆ learn dances ☆ do a makeup tutorial ☆ play loud music ☆ do buzzfeed quizzes ☆ read a webtoon ☆ look at memes ☆ look at thinspo ☆ make a youtube channel ☆ watch vlogs ☆ count your money ☆ discover new makeup styles ☆ tweet something stupid ☆ google yourself ☆ read fanfiction ☆ find new music ☆ write online reviews ☆ read shein reviews ☆ sing karaoke ☆ play never have i ever ☆ play with bubbles ☆ try to rap ☆ recreate your fav movie scenes ☆ make a shrine ☆ make a treasure hunt ☆ play chess // checkers w yourself ☆ start a controversy over a stupid topic ☆ donate some money ☆ learn to hula-hoop ☆ do a sudoku ☆ save tweets to your bookmarks ☆ make a tbr list ☆ go through old ana forums ☆ take a survey ☆ make a wishlist for when you reach your ugw ☆ make an elaborate conspiracy theory ☆ play w legos ☆ start a new show ☆ make a new playlist ☆ listen to a podcast ☆ surf pinterest ☆ read a book ☆ make a bucket list ☆ shop online ☆ sell clothes online ☆ test out a new hairstyle ☆ look up recipes online ☆ watch true crime ☆ watch a rom-com ☆ play video games ☆ redo your phone layout to a new theme ☆ watch a yt documentary ☆ start your own cult ☆ try dimension shifting ☆ record your own videos of you talking to yourself ☆ re-organize your pinterest account and all your boards ☆ scream into a pillow ☆ go through the app store and look for cool apps

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I the asshole for buying one of my sisters-in-law coffee but not the other?

So at the time I thought I was firmly not the asshole but in thinking about it more I might be, so let's let the court of public opinion decide!

A few months after I (early 30s, f) married my husband, we traveled to visit his family including his two sisters, K (early 30s) and C (late 20s) for a week at K's in-laws hunting lodge. My in-laws are upper middle class in the rural West of the USA. K married into money and is a stay-at-home mom. Her married family is so wealthy they own several properties including the 8 bedroom hunting lodge we were staying at when this story takes place. C is also married with kids but her husband does not have the bank account behind him so she and her husband both work to make ends meet and rely on my in-laws to watch her kids while she works.

I am very different culturally from my husband's family. Because I was raised working class and my parents both experienced some pretty extreme poverty and privation as kids themselves, I have a different relationship to money and finances. I graduated college and work in the tech industry, so my current income level is upper middle class. My younger sister lives with me rent free and I regularly pay for her food at restaurants if we're eating out, including buying her coffee if i'm in the mood for it and she's with me. Sometimes, my sister or my husband (who is disabled and does not work) will pick up the tab, but I don't keep score or concern myself with "fairness" or crap like that. As I see it, debts between family don't exist. There were times in college I only ate because my thesis advisor (who knew how poor I was) bought me lunch or gave me food his wife made for me. Even with friends I pay for food for the whole group, and all I ask is that they "pay it forward" when they have the ability, because I'm paying it forward myself now.

Okay, so culture explained, while out on the town with my sisters-in-law, K (the wealthy one) was craving coffee and asked C and I if we wanted some. I expected K to pay for it and said sure, as did C, although she was reluctant and agreed after some cajoling. After putting in the order, K turned to me and said I could venmo her for the drink. I was shocked but thought "oh, I'm just her sister-in-law, so of course she isn't buying me a drink" and because it wasn't a big deal overall, I pulled out my phone to open up venmo. As I was doing that, I overheared C and K talking about how C will pay K for her drink after her next paycheck.

I was livid! I didn't show it or anything, but I couldn't believe that K expected her little sister, who lives paycheck to paycheck, to pay back a coffee. So I told C not to worry about it and sent K money for both my coffee and C's coffee. When K made a joke asking if I'd buy her coffee too, I laughed it off and said no. C thanked me for the coffee, and the conversation moved on from there, even if I could tell K was upset that I didn't agree to buy her drink too. I was so frustrated with K! I know it was probably just a cultural difference between us, but still I wonder - was I the asshole? Coffee isn't that big of a deal. Should I have just bought coffee for all 3 of us?

What are these acronyms?

[lemonhemlock]

what are they doiiiing, man

The more I believed I wasn't a book puritist, the more this show is trying to make me one because what are they doing?

Everything is inconsistent from episode to episodo and from season to season, like they're not even trying to make it believable

The only good thing is fr Daemon plot and this does shock me because I wouldn't have believed it before lol

And they're kind of making me feel angry about the green (alicent the most, because what are you doiiing? Not even on a book!alicent point, but from the same shows, she is always something different and it's humiliating really)

Idk, i try to take all with a light heart but... it's still able to make me quite mad

And sorry for all the typos and errors, I'm in a rush dhsjal

i mean it's a really disappointing season

i've said it before in my critiques, we can argue all day about characterisation (maybe some actually see aemond as an emotionless psycho, maybe some actually buy that alicent would sell out her own sons for rhaenyra), but there is little to no buildup for these HUGE changes and they don't even make sense in the context of the story. the greens are so, so emotionally flat and one-note melancholy with stunted dynamics. if they don't give a shit about each other, why and even HOW could the audience? where is the tragedy? ok, you want to make those changes from the books and create completely different versions of these characters: you have to make me believe it, man. you have to put in the work.

but these writers don't even understand the politics of the world they are inhabiting. they're not fixing any plot holes from the books, they're creating more. how the heck is house hightower JUST fine with having TWO members of their family dismissed in quick succession from the small council? who is financing this war? uncle hobert should be writing angry letters to aemond demanding appropriate reparations or else the hightower armies go back to oldtown. if they are not going to advance their own interests further as a house, why are they fighting this pointless war? tyland lannister should have given aemond some lip back for his attitude since house lannister has resources (i.e. armies, ships and gold) that aemond needs. these people have power! we've already seen the riverlords take no shit from daemon and he has a dragon too!

i've said this already to our dear @stannisfactions, so i'm gonna repeat myself here, but if alicent somehow became convinced that aemond was so off the rails he was going to get helaena killed................ there are ways around that that DON'T involve selling out your entire family to rhaenyra (certainly your male relatives, even the ones who didn't do a damn thing to you, like your brother, your uncle, your cousins, YOUR OTHER SON (THE NICE ONE), who are only following YOUR lead at the end of the day, because YOU put aegon on the throne and told them to mobilize forces and declare for him and now rhaenyra will see them all as traitors.

has everyone forgotten how to stage a castle coup? i know vhagar is big and scary, but she's parked way outside KL and aemond is just one man who was NOT shown to hustle for his own connections and personal network of friends. smack him in the damn head and throw his ass in jail!! tell everyone else the now-conscious KING aegon told you to! alicent was ruling queen for many years, it makes no sense for her not to have her own resources and courtiers who could help her do this.

can you imagine joffrey baratheon, surrounded by lannister guards loyal to and paid by tywin lannister, whose war is financed by the lannisters, dismissing tywin or cersei (or even tyrion) from his small council? are you laughing yet? why doesn't alicent have her own private army of hightower guards loyal to HER? unless you want (and need) her to be the stupidest person alive so that you can write your rhaenicent fanfic 🤌

they want to humiliate alicent so much to „punish” her for ~choosing the patriarchy~ instead of her bff rhaenyra and girl power. it's such an overdone storyline. other shows, books, media have done it to death, why is it in my dragon show, too? she can't have been a competent regent for viserys and not know how to do these things or not have acquired the resources to do them if necessary. how can she be both competent and incompetent when the plot requires it? it's giving wanting to still have the cake after eating it and throwing it into outer space

[razorroy]

Before: Gonna Drain The Swamp

Now: Tariffs Will Make China Pay Taxes

Donald Trump’s tariff proposal is worse than even his critics say. Much worse. Trump keeps telling audiences that he’s going to make China and other countries pay taxes to the American government. As even right-wing economists are acknowledging, that’s utter nonsense—as fanciful as his claims that he would make Mexico pay for a wall on our southern border.

A tariff is, in effect, the equivalent of a national sales tax on imported goods, as any economics professor will tell you. Think of it: If we impose a 10 percent tariff on a dishwasher made in China, the manufacturer or importer just raises the U.S. price by 10 percent.

But it’s much worse than that because of how domestic manufacturers will react should the Trump national sales tax tariff be imposed. The Trump tariff will make people who own domestic manufacturing companies rich beyond their greediest dreams, aggressively redistributing wealth and income upward in the United States.

How would the Trump tariff do this? Imagine for a moment that you own a company that makes cars. And let’s assume, to keep the math simple, that each vehicle coming out of your factories sells for $10,000, of which $1,000, or 10 percent, is your profit.

Chinese carmakers sell their cars in the U.S. for the same price.

Trump then imposes his tariff. He doesn’t need to ask Congress to do this. Lawmakers have already granted presidents broad authority to impose tariffs. Trump says he will slap a 60 percent tariff on imported goods from China.

The dealers who sell Chinese cars in America will have to raise their prices to $16,000. If you buy a Chinese car, you will pay that tariff, not China. Indeed, the only harm to China would be selling fewer cars because the tariff would make Chinese cars too costly for many Americans.

But remember, you own an American car company. Will you continue selling your cars for $10,000 to earn a $1,000 profit per vehicle? Not a chance. A fundamental economic theory is that capitalists seek to maximize profit. Every business and finance school teaches this bedrock principle: profit maximization.

Trump’s tariff means you can raise the price of your vehicles to $16,000 and not lose any market share. However, the Trump tariff doesn’t apply to you since you are a domestic carmaker. That means you will collect not $1,000 profit per car but $7,000, all paid by your customers.

But because profit maximization is your goal, you will likely undercut the Chinese car companies. To simplify the math, you would charge $15,000 for each car. That’s a large enough discount that some people who want a Chinese car will purchase your American-made car instead.

That $1,000 profit you made on each car will skyrocket to $6,000. That extra profit comes at no cost. You won’t have to hire more autoworkers, engineers, and salespeople, or spend money on enlarging your factories, or add alluring bells and whistles to your vehicles. Thanks to Trump, you will pocket six times as much profit per car. Sweet.

You can see why people who care only about money and have no social conscience would be eager to support Trump’s campaign and donate millions of dollars. Even if car sales fall by half, they will pocket more money than today.

Trump’s tariffs stand to make you so much money that you’d be laughing not just on your way to the bank but on your way to your megayacht, private jumbo jet, private Caribbean islands, and your many mansions.

Businesses in America typically earn profit margins of between 5 percent to 15 percent of revenue. Companies with little competition typically collect larger profits.

Digital companies often earn vastly higher profits because they have almost no labor costs. That’s because they get you, the customer, and software to do the work. We don’t call this a slave labor economy because the digital companies don’t own you. But they own a piece of your time, and, like Tom Sawyer getting other kids to whitewash the fence, they get you to do their work for zero compensation.

At $15,000 a vehicle, thanks to Trump, as the owner of a car company, you will pocket 40 percent of the sales price as profit.

The Trump tariff would definitely reduce the volume of cars sold. Many people won’t be able to afford cars that cost 50 percent or 60 percent more than today. Therefore, they’ll keep their cars longer. Trump’s national sales tax will benefit auto mechanics as people spend money to extend the life of their cars. Since you own a car company, this will bring you a different stream of profits—from the spare parts you sell to mechanics to repair and maintain the cars you sold in the past.

So the net effect of Trump’s tariffs would be to raise the price of goods made in China as well as goods made here in America.

Whether buying single-use wooden utensils for a backyard barbecue, computers for your children to do schoolwork, or new shoes, you will pay much more to buy Chinese or American-made goods.

Now, if you think America’s problem is that the rich don’t have nearly enough—well, please vote for Donald Trump, because he has an effective solution for that problem. Just don’t complain later that you didn’t understand that the reason you are driving an old beater and forgoing vacations with your kids to make payments on your new superpriced domestic car and other goods is that you didn’t know that Trump had a plan to stealthily siphon money from your pocket so the already superrich could be even richer.

[cthonic-bunny]

hay what do you think of 8h stellium in a composite chart??

If this relationship ends, you will probably never be the same. You two are transformed into two unrecognizable people as a result of the lessons you learn from one another. Your shadow sides can deeply resonate with one another. You two get a lot out of your private time with one another. You can just sense what the other person needs and wants on a primal level. You never want anything to happen to them. They are your most prized possession, one that no amount of money can buy. I feel like there is a higher chance of codependency with this set-up. You two might feel like a shell of a person when you’re without the other. You two have an immediate agreement that this relationship is not to be taken lightly. “We either merge completely or you leave me alone.” You two might have your finances become completely entangled if you don’t monitor this enough. You can become addicted to one another’s energy. You want to possess them mind, body, and soul. If there were more than just mind, body, and soul, you’ll want to possess that too. You guys will never hesitate to share with one another. “What is mine is always yours.” You two construct your own void to escape in to, a cave that can only be roamed by one another. The sex here can be transformative and bring about changes in your perception of pleasure. You guys might dabble in kinks you once were hesitant to explore with others. Once you two can fully give yourselves to one another sexually and let loose, the sex can be extremely vulnerable and beautiful. You will find it difficult to leave one another even when issues pop their head in. If toxicity begins to control the reigns of your relationship, get ready for the uncontrollable tears, screaming, destruction, and exposure of all your ugly sides. You will shoot to k*ll. Saying the most horrendous things to one another, getting into their psyche, and then still feeling like you are unable to leave despite your resentment and disgust can be a possibility with too much 8H influence playing out in a dynamic. Breaking up feels like you can be preparing to mourn a real death. Just know that you can take the lessons you’ve learned and take on a fresh, healthier approach to life once you’ve moved on. Do not encourage toxicity in anyway because it can get out of hand and it won’t be “cute” or “sexy.” Your safety and wellbeing matters, and you do not need to compromise it to keep anyone around. On a more positive note, I feel like you two can share a lot of interests or have parts of yourselves you only feel comfortable revealing to the other. I feel like you can confide in one another and share secrets you don’t feel like you can tell others. This is another match that wouldn’t be phased by period sex. I feel like 8H relationships can be apt to get each others names tattooed. When you two are not together, I think you can easily find things to remind you of your partner. “I look for you in everything.” You two can really get each other the most wonderful sentimental gifts. I feel like people underestimate how great Scorpionic energy can be when it comes to giving gifts. They know what screams “you,” because they’ve made the time and effort to psychoanalyze you. You want to know what makes the other “tick.” You are keenly aware of any shift in the other persons mood, and want to right it immediately. You can dive deep into each others brains and work passed any trauma you may have. You two can experience infinite deaths and rebirths by being together. This couple could feel like their partner is the only one who truly “sees” them and understands them on a deep level. “You are the light at the end of this dark tunnel.” If the other one hurts you or acts out of malice, this will feel like they legitimately tore your heart out of your chest. Any sort of betrayal is extra hurtful, and can lead to irreconcilable differences. “I’ll never forget what you did to me, even if I’ve forgiven you.” I feel like these two can become more antisocial once they are together.

“I’d live off the grid with you.” (Funny enough, I wrote this sentence in January of 2024; in March of 2024, i reconnected with someone I have an 8H composite stellium with, and within the first day of reconnecting he made this joke to me lol)

[y2ksnowglobe]

I love the dissonance that happens when the players have a different interpretation of certain characters than Anthony and you can tell.

Like Veronica Marlowe, I love her, but she formed a band as a teen and yet won't let Scary play guitar? She's fairly chill about Scary running off to Seattle but has an opinion on torn up jeans?

But the dissonance can be fun! I'm sitting here poking it like it's a stir fry and listening to it sizzle.

So...now that I've let it cook, I present: Some Veronica Marlowe head canons.

We see in Hell, the projection version of Scary's dad asking for money, due to her past history of lending him money when she probably couldn't afford it means that money is tight in the Marlowe household.

Having her ex depend on her for money in the past means she feels really uncomfortable with Terry Jr. helping out with the finances. So when it comes to things for herself or for Scary, Veronica wants the money to be from her own account.

This is probably why Terry had to tell her where he hid the "in case I die" money, because she wasn't going to be okay dipping into any of his cash while he was alive.

And if you think Scary is going to accept any gift from Terry Jr. if he decides to buy things out of his own money, that's not a thing.

So she sees Scary's rebel phase and recognizes it as something similar to what she went through, and is pretty sure it's not going to last a particularly long time. So is she going to dish out for a guitar and private lessons from her own tight budget when she can't be sure Scary will even still be interested in guitar in five months? She can, however, handle renting a cello and knowing that Scary will be able to get free lessons in Orchestra at school.

Money is tight and you can't untear jeans. She doesn't want to have to buy a whole new bunch of pants when Scary decides she's over the goth thing. Scary only recently finished a massive growth spurt and those pants were supposed to last!

Not spending money on a tongue piercing that probably isn't going to be a thing her daughter will want later (and add a dash of the same reasons Freddie's dad says it's a bad idea to get piercings around the mouth and nose.)

So in essence, these are not a conflict in values, per se. It's a financial problem getting in the way of a situation that Veronica otherwise would probably be very willing to empathize with her daughter over.

*cracks knuckles* Now did I really need to take the time to make those things line up? No, but it's fun and helps flesh out a character with a shameful lack of air time.

[nolanhattrick]

if they can afford teslas and 55k wedding venues, they can afford to pay their employees. otherwise, they wouldn't be buying those things. unless they're giving themselves luxuries before they pay their employees, which would also make them bad.

people usually save up for or finance large purchases. they don't just... drop a wad on these types of things. wedding venue prices fluctuate depending on time of year/day of week/guest list size/time spent at the venue/a number of other factors, but even if ryan or shane DID spend $55,000 USD on their venue... 1: their spouses also work, and 2: that's not unheard of. people finance their weddings all the time, and that's a pretty normal number to spend on a venue. it shouldn't be, but it is.

i also don't know if you've checked the price of new cars lately, but what tesla is charging isn't... out of the ordinary. they're priced like normal fucking cars dude. you guys are so hung up about the prices of this shit when teslas cost just as much as every other new car. hell, $30,000 usd is pretty normal for a used car in this market.

but no matter what you're still missing the fucking point. this is not the type of class warfare we need to be doing. a tesla is not a luxurious purchase. getting married is not a luxurious purchase. would you like to know what is? your fifth private plane. your third home. a second apartment building you lease for twice the average rent of the area.

this is the type of class warfare eat the rich bullshit corporations and billionaires WANT you to be doing. this is infighting. this is cutting off your nose to spite your face. this is distraction. collectivism is destroyed when we are too busy arguing with each other to take out the ACTUAL problems. ryan and shane and steven are not the problems. they experienced significant oversight and immediately course corrected, so y'all need stop acting like fucking children and move on. go read some actual theory instead of getting all of your information from hasan piker and the amazing atheist. it'll do you some good.

[indybob]

As I begin finalizing my current long fic, Maybe We Were Always Meant To Be I have come to the realization that I have 20 one-shot/significantly shorter story ideas for Hangster. I know which one I’ll write first, but after that I have no idea. I’m going to list the top 10 I’m most excited to write below with a brief synopsis and you can vote in the poll for which one you’d like to read the most!

(I may or may not follow this, but it’ll give me an idea of what people would like to read and a starting point😄)

Story Ideas:

The Ball’s in Your Court: A few years pre-canon, Bradley and Jake hook up every year at the Navy Ball. They spend the night making each other jealous with other people, even though they know they’re going to fall into bed together when it’s all said and done.

Chasin’ That Desire: Set immediately post-mission, Bradley undergoes a minor surgery for a dislocated shoulder from ejecting. He and Jake patch things up, and Jake helps him through his rehab as their feelings for each other grow stronger.

Forever’s in Your Eyes: After an outdoor barbecue party in their backyard, Jake and Bradley lay in their hammock sipping the left over wine. Bradley realizes he can’t wait another second before asking this man to be his forever.

Bubbles and Bubbly: a smutty story that is essentially just Bradley throwing Jake a surprise anniversary dinner and a night of romance at home.

Hey Stranger, This is Your Stop: After being stood up on a date, Finance Worker!Bradley and Business Executive!Jake meet when Bradley falls asleep on his shoulder while on the subway in NYC. They hit it off and Jake asks Bradley out on a date. (Part of a series of AUs set in New York City).

Through a New Lens: Photographer!Bradley meets Model!Jake at an underwear shoot for a fashion brand. Jake inquires about a private photo shoot with Bradley one-on-one once the underwear shoot is over. Potentially smutty, I’m not sure yet.

It’s a Date: Author!Bradley meets Journalist!Jake at a coffee shop while dodging a stalker. Jake buys Bradley a latte, and they hit it off. (Part of a series of AUs set in New York City).

Sparks Fly: Based on “Sparks Fly” by Taylor Swift, Bradley has been trying to figure out how to tell Jake how he’s been feeling for a long time. Bradley decides the best way he knows how to be sincere is through music, so he plays a song dedicated to Jake one night at the Hard Deck.

No title for this one yet, but a sickfic where Jake gets sick for the first time in years and refuses to accept help. Thankfully Bradley is too stubborn to let Jake handle it all alone.

Everything Gets Hotter (When the Sun Goes Down): A fic about Jake and Bradley’s honeymoon, featuring some of their activities during the day, and their time in the bedroom at night.

[odinsblog]

I think the thing that's important for us to remember is that cost volatility is actually all about fossil fuel dependency.

The more that we are dependent on fossil fuels, it means the more we are dependent on global events. As we saw with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as we see with the choices that come out of the UAE, as well as many other regions of the world, oil and gas development and drilling in Latin America, as well as in the United States. The more dependent we are on oil and gas, the more crazy our prices are going to be, and the more up and down our prices are going to be. And the fact that, for example, we have not developed electric or alternative energy vehicles earlier is one of the reasons why we pay such close attention to gas prices to begin with.

And we would not be as sensitive to the changes in energy costs if we weren't so fossil fuel dependent.

And Donald Trump knows that.

The oil and gas industry knows that.

And that is why they finance huge parts of lobbying our government in order to keep the country entirely dependent on fossil fuels.

Now, if you prefer gas cars and gas stoves, you're free to make that choice.

But what we haven't had is accessible and broad choices for something else. EVs have been in development, but for a very long time, they've been financially inaccessible to a lot of people in this country. The Inflation Reduction Act helped change that. We got huge tax breaks for both new and used EVs. If you're trying to buy one off your neighbor or whatever that may be, as well as many other things that are accessible, whether it's induction stoves, heat pumps for one's home, et cetera. But the oil and gas industry is deploying all of their political and special interest money towards one central goal, which is to keep virtually every American completely dependent on their product.

And Donald Trump is very closely aligned with them.

And not only that, but the larger point is that it's not a coincidence that his authoritarian tactics are tied to fossil fuels.

This is a global phenomenon.

And what we are seeing is authoritarianism is very, very closely linked with oil and gas interests around the world.

That's Putin, that's Trump. That's folks like Bolsonaro. That's a lot of the political instability we see out of Saudi Arabia, the UAE.

And I believe that it is not a coincidence, because you have one central industry that has a clear vested, both political and financial interest, and an authoritarian…that is also increasingly becoming politically unpopular, by the way, because the vast majority of Americans believe that the U.S. should start winding down our subsidization of the fossil fuel industry. They want to see clean energy alternatives available to them and financially accessible to them. And they understand that it's just more volatile to be so chained to fossil fuels.

And so the only way that you can really empower both financially a political sect, is through the fossil fuel industry, the oil and gas industry.

The Koch brothers are an oil and gas dynasty who had such large influence on our political system. They come from an oil and gas dynasty, or rather, came. One of them has passed, there's that, but then you see that link crossing across the world, and the ascent of authoritarianism, paired with the fact that every single one of them is very closely aligned to the fossil fuel industry.

And the ascent of the fossil fuel industry is not a coincidence. It's not a mistake.

And in fact, the democratization of our energy system, which is a means of production that has been privatized and concentrated into the hands of the very few, the democratization of our energy system means that people have the potential. We're doing this in Puerto Rico. When you have a battery pack on your house, when the power goes out, you're not as dependent on a central system. You have a backup reserve in case of an emergency, you can give energy to your neighbor.

This is what the democratization of our energy system looks like.

This is also what a fairer economic system that is less volatile for everyday people looks like as well.

And that is a direct threat to authoritarianism.

It's a direct threat to the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few.

But it also represents a shift for the betterment of mankind and our democracy.

—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, noting the link between the fossil fuel industry and authoritarian regimes

[partyanimal167]

Stubborn as a Bull- Doflamingo x F!Reader

I have so many ideas for Doffy. It's crazy I haven't really written anything about him in almost a year. (I want to explore my dilfs more this year lol) I also want more chef/restaurant related fics because I have no concept of work-life balance and will indulge in my career-related fantasies. This will be a quickie

cw: modern au(?), fem reader, stubborn reader, rich af Doflamingo, mdni

You had never met a many so annoying yet tempting as the one before you. However, your stubbornness was a strength, so you knew you could play that game.

You had received an array of gifts and praises for your culinary feats. You had awards, interviews, glowing reviews in multiple restaurants. You were sent wines, knives, and books.

You stayed humble as you knew some celebs and politicians on a first-name basis since they were regulars and knew that the attention could bring both good and bad.

You had expected your ego to come and slap you in the face. All people tried to lure you in and trap you. It'd be a normal descent from success.

Instead, after service that you thought was normal, one Doflamingo Donquixote was asking for your number offering a job in the private sector as well as inviting you on a date. You graciously declined. You thought that'd be it.

It was not.

Because even though there was a three month wait list for your restaurant, you went out to a nearly-deserted dining room where only Doflamingo sat glancing at the menu and sipping the priciest wine.

"I thought that work had been your excuse. I can take you somewhere far from this, and you won't have to worry about the finances of your business." He was a mad man. A rich one, your business partner corrected, but you ignored him again.

Doflamingo bought the restaurant out for a week, and when you stopped going to the dining room after day three, he was shocked at where he found you.

You were all smiles and rainbows serving the less-fortunate at a local soup kitchen. You laughed when you saw the filthy rich man decked out in suits and jewelry standing in the less than stellar facilities. When you were done, he asked you why you were there instead of resting at home or something. "I live to feed people." was all you said.

Doflamingo stopped buying out the restaurant, but still floated in and around before and after business hours. You ignored him while you directed your cooks and tested recipes. Doflamingo admired the structure silently and wondered how far you would have ended up if you were in the corporate world. The skills were definitely transferrable.

You nearly lost it when the man bumped into your china--shattering it again--and brushed it off with a check. You knew replacements would be there by morning, but that wasn't the point. "Stop being so wasteful." So to get him out of your space, you let him take you out. You could hold up against fancy meals and shopping sprees.

You were not expecting an intimate setting in one of his homes where he cooked you his mother's favorite meal--the only thing he could make. You knew about the man's harshness, how he ran businesses. And while the food was delicious, you would never admit it.

"Too much salt." was all you said even after you cleaned your plate. You were stubborn to say things like him, but if he noticed that you stopped by his place to cook and gave him basic lessons, then he never said anything either.

You just ended up with a rich man ready for your call--a partner--but he wouldn't exactly say his feelings either.

Guess he was stubborn too.

~~~

Cheesy, yes but I will indulge! I was thinking about how chef people cook to feed others because we definitely don't get a luxurious paycheck from it. I wondered how Doffy would go about that difficultness.

I will write him more! Thanks for stopping by!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

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

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

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/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

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

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

--

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

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

[britt-kageryuu]

The stream has started, and the scene changes over to Donnie, model dressed in a purple to black ombre suit, black shoes, and his bandana with goggles, standing on a stage like he was about to give a presentation.

"Greetings Balemates! I'm sure many of you saw our post about an announcement. Well don't worry it's not very big. We're just releasing access to a game that many in the Patreon discord has known about since the private game servers were launched." Donnie grabs a tablet to que up the reveal, "Now those on the servers know that it's not what you're playing, but I don't think the legal team wants to try fighting the company that owns the original that's on the server. Clears Throat. Well on to the announcement."

On a screen next to them is art of a bunch of cartoony turtles, with different accessories, infront of three different environments, a small city, a sewer/subway, and a pizzeria. There's a mock up of a game name, there is clearly a sign that reads 'Club Turtle' underneath a taped on piece of paper that says 'Placeholder: Turtle/Reptile/Amphibian City'.

"So many of you saw me working on the mock up on stream not to long ago. And Yes, it is a blatant Club Penguin clone, with some differences of course. It initially was just going to be Turtles, but as you can see, we're thinking of adding more varieties of possible avatars." Donnie switches over to a video.

The video is just basic gameplay of a Pink Dressed Turtle goes into a shop and buys a new outfit, then the same turtle in its new outfit goes to play a mini that was a simple ball toss. The video goes on to show the turtle buying a 'house', they chose a Train Car, and do some basic customization. Then the video follows the turtle to a small crowd of other Turtles who are doing different emotes, before a spray paint can goes across the screen to cover a 'Club Turtle' sign with Turtle City(W.I.P.).

"Well as you can see, it's not going to be a highly, how do I word this? Original? Super high quality?" Donnie stops to mutter about his wording, and then goes on a slight under his breath tangent about not writing a full script and only going off bullet points. "Anywho! The game is basically a free to play game, but really the only thing that paying and money with do you is the 'VIP' shop features, and customizations. Heck you're not buying any in game currency, the shops with just have an extended inventory of VIP items."

Donnie brings up an example, showing how with a VIP pass there's like 10 extra items on the daily inventory. Because this implies a rotating inventory of different items, there was even a tab marked 'seasonal items' on the shop menu.

There are mixed reactions to this announcement, if only because of some confusion on how this will work. While others are questioning if the VIP pass is like a one time thing, or subscription type thing.

"I see some questions, and to answer the one about the VIP, the price hasn't been figured, but it will be a monthly thing. It's inclusion is mostly because some people can't grasp a free to play game with no adds, or some weird way to work in making people pay." Donnie looks to their side, and after a second glares at something, and gives a gesture that reads 'well what should I say?!', "Sorry, one of my siblings was commenting on how I would make a FTP game, and not find a way to charge the players lots of money. Well the answer is. We needed a legit semi waste of money to offset something weird, finance wise. Yeah it makes no sense, but it's nothing illegal, just... the finance people are weird. They sometimes make no sense, even when I can understand them."

After another short rant Donnie remembers that they're still live, on stream, to multiple people who are now going to think their possibly doing something illegal.

"Clears Throat. Once again, this may not be the most original idea, but it's the best way to give our audience a Club Penguin like experience. We don't have all the expansions figured just yet, and it won't be live until we finish getting the servers set up, and properly secured." Donnie switches the screen to show a web page with the w.i.p. logo and a coming soon with multiple robot turtles moving wires, circuit boards, and boxes around the page. "This page is live, but there is no connection to the game yet. I hope you all will enjoy this, and give us feedback on what you think."

Donnies model suddenly changed clothes to his hoodie, tech pants, and boots. They let out a breath, and look a bit more relaxed. The background changes to the studio with beanbags, pillows, and blankets.

"Now that that announcement is out of the way! Alright everyone get in here, we're playing that sidescroller beat-em-up I found with the turtles!"

Raph, Leo, and Mikey quickly claim their seats, and controllers eager to start the game.

----------------

Masterpost

I had multiple Club Penguin videos recommended to me by the algorithm, and I thought about Donnie making his own version because of how popular it was. Yeah one of the secret patreon game servers is Club Penguin.

And the weird finance thing is just some odd logic that was made up, because I don't think Donnie would actually trust investors, but there is technically a finance person on staff.

[mariacallous]

Last February, as the sound of automatic weapons erupted in the early hours before dawn, Amina Museni hurriedly packed a bag while her husband, Joseph, shook their three children awake. They were joining a group of neighbors fleeing their hamlet as the front line between the Congolese army and rebels of the March 23 Movement, or M23, crept closer. For days afterward, they walked across the hilly landscape of Masisi, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, before reaching one of the camps that have sprung up around Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. There, they pitched their tent, a young family of five among more than a million people displaced by the resurgence of a conflict that has ravaged Congo for nearly three decades.

When Foreign Policy visited the camp last July, Museni sat amid an undulating sea of white tarpaulins stretched over eucalyptus sticks. “When I was little, I lived in a tent with my parents,” Museni said, her youngest child, Nestor, cradled into her neck. “Now my children have to endure the same. It feels like a curse.”

Why Congo has been in a perennial state of upheaval since the mid-1990s has been the subject of much debate, but no other narrative has cut through as much as that of so-called conflict minerals. In the 2000s, the link between markets’ demand for minerals and the war in Congo helped bring attention to the conflict in an unprecedented way. Western organizations such as the Enough Project and Global Witness mobilized around the seductive proposition that the solution to one of the world’s deadliest conflicts was within the grasp of consumers and policymakers, triggering a series of laws and regulations beginning with, in the United States in 2010, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The logic behind the legislation was simple. “Armed groups finance themselves through the exploitation of cassiterite, gold, coltan,” Fidel Bafilemba, a Congolese researcher who used to work for the Enough Project, told me at the time. “By stopping the export of these conflict minerals, we dry up their resources and lessen the violence.”

Section 1502 required companies to conduct due diligence checks on their supply chain to disclose their use of minerals originating from Congo and neighboring countries and to determine whether those minerals may have benefited armed groups. The legislation didn’t outright ban the sourcing of minerals from mines contributing to conflict financing but instead intended “this transparency and its attendant reputational risk” to pressure companies to stop buying them voluntarily, according to Toby Whitney, one of the authors of Section 1502.

What followed is an important lesson for a world rushing to secure critical minerals for the energy transition. Western advocacy led to policies focused on derisking supply chains and virtue signaling to consumers, rather than improving artisanal miners’ living conditions or addressing the conflict’s root causes. That narrative continues today: An Apple store in Berlin was vandalized last week by Fridays for Future activists accusing the tech giant of sourcing so-called conflict minerals from Congo.

ITSCI, the region’s leading private traceability scheme, is facing criticism about the validity of its work—and that it has not improved the lives of artisanal miners in the region. ITSCI stresses its limited mandate and that it is working as intended. But in a cruel twist, the cost of the due diligence program has been shouldered by Congolese miners themselves, effectively asking the world’s poorest workers to pay for the right to sell their own resources to Western companies.

This week, industry leaders and activists gathering at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris for the annual Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains will need to reassess their approach. “We welcomed Dodd-Frank,” said Alexis Muhima, a Congolese researcher, during a meeting in a cramped office in Goma. “But what it did is outsource complex issues to the private sector, and we’ve been paying for it ever since.”

“The Americans didn’t think this through.”

There was a time in the 1970s when the quarries of Nyabibwe, a mining town in South Kivu province, were run with enough capital to employ 500 workers and to invest in semi-industrial machinery. Every month, the French company in charge shipped 20 metric tons of cassiterite ore—a component of tin—back to Europe for cans, wires, and solder. Safari Kulimuchi was a worker at the mines, starting at age 17, who quickly rose through the ranks to become a manager. “It was an exciting time. … Things seemed to be working out,” Kulimuchi recalled to Foreign Policy over dinner in Nyabibwe. But, he said, “it didn’t last.”

In the years that followed, Kulimuchi witnessed the economic unraveling of Congo (then Zaire), rotten under decades of rule by dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who presided over the country from 1965 to 1997. Amid a global economic downturn in the mid-1980s, the French company departed, abandoning its workers to fend for themselves. “Overnight, we had no wages, no tools, no structure,” Kulimuchi said. “We used to have a stone crusher. Now we had to crush rocks with a hammer.”

Nyabibwe was far from an exception. Across the country, as investment dried up and the state abdicated its responsibilities, people resorted to making ends meet any way they could. An informal economy based on débrouillardise, or resourcefulness, sprouted in the ruins of Mobutu’s derelict regime. That informal economy is estimated to account for more than 80 percent of Congolese economic activity today. Nyabibwe grew into a town as people came from far and wide to work in the mines. They replaced the industrial machinery with picks and shovels, a low-capital, labor-intensive extraction called artisanal mining, as opposed to industrial mining. “Artisanal mining is the heart of our economy. It’s the reason Nyabibwe became this big center,” Kulimuchi said. The World Bank estimated in 2008 that up to 16 percent of the Congolese population depended on the sector. “For us, it’s a lifeline,” Kulimuchi added.

Mobutu was finally ousted in 1997 by a coalition helmed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel army led by Paul Kagame. Kagame had just seized power in Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide there and was intent on chasing after Hutus responsible for the massacres, many of whom had crossed into Zaire. What became the First Congo War brought Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a Congolese rebel, to power.

Kabila’s allies in the RPF quickly turned into foes when they refused to relinquish control over an area where instability threatened their security and interests. The Second Congo War began in 1998 with the creation of the RCD, a Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed armed group that quickly gained control of a large swath of eastern Congo. The rebels began shipping cargo loads of coltan and cassiterite ores out of mines such as Nyabibwe’s into Rwanda just as the price of coltan, a key component of capacitors used in mobile phones and most electronic devices, soared with the demand for electronic goods at the turn of the century. A 2001 United Nations report estimated that Rwanda made at least $250 million during a temporary spike in prices in late 1999 and 2000. A popular formulation in Western campaigns at the time linked the violence in Congo to “blood phones.”

Many experts have criticized the advocacy of the 2000s for sometimes going so far as to suggest that conflict minerals were the root cause of the violence, painting armed actors as merely bloodthirsty, greedy militias—instead of considering real, historical grievances. The Enough Project campaigns, leaning hard on celebrities such as Robin Wright and Ryan Gosling to spread the group’s message, obfuscated the nuances of the conflict and the vital place of artisanal mining in the local economy. “The ‘conflict minerals’ label was problematic,” said Sophia Pickles, a former Global Witness campaigner and U.N. investigator. “This isn’t just about Congo—it’s a global issue.”

The campaigns succeeded in putting the issue on U.S. legislators’ agenda, but Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act was both too specific—singling out the so-called 3T minerals (tin for cassiterite, tantalum for coltan, and tungsten) in eastern Congo—and extremely vague on execution. It deferred the drafting of rules to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), leaving companies with no clear guidelines to report on their supply chain.

The law created a panicked scramble in the industry, said William Millman, a former technical director at Kyocera AVX, a leading manufacturer of electronic components and major coltan buyer. “Everybody was ignorant about the specifics. We just relied on our smelters.” Unlike an oil company directly operating its wells or a sneaker company outsourcing production to a sweatshop in Asia, electronics companies have virtually no way of knowing where the minerals in their products come from upstream of the smelters or refiners that have turned them into smooth metal—unless the smelters themselves know. “I visited all my suppliers to gather information. They knew very little because it was all largely bought on the spot market with international brokers,” Millman said. As a result of Section 1502, companies liable to fall under the SEC rule demanded that their suppliers simply stop buying from eastern Congo.

The result? A de facto embargo dropped like a bomb on the mining communities of North and South Kivu, just as the region was emerging from its latest cycle of violence. Nyabibwe had navigated two major wars mostly unscathed, but when I visited in June 2012, the town was in the midst of an existential crisis. Businesses dependent on the cash flow generated by the mines were closing down one by one, unable to sell stockpiles of rubber boots and shovels, blacksmithing services, or simply food. Tellingly, the local nightclub had shut its doors. More concerning were thousands of families’ insufficient funds to access health care, forcing women to give birth at home. One study found that the boycott increased the probability of infant mortality in affected mining communities by at least 143 percent.

Kulimuchi, who was then 54, was still managing a small team of undeterred miners. “The Americans didn’t think this through,” he said. His team had three metric tons of ore stored in a warehouse in Bukavu, South Kivu’s capital, waiting to be bought and shipped. “School is about to start again. Where are we going to find the money to send our children?”

Though U.S. lawmakers had struck out on their own with Section 1502, industrywide talks to create guidelines for the responsible sourcing of minerals in high-risk areas globally were already underway at the OECD. The OECD guidelines, adopted later in 2010, ended up becoming the foundation for the SEC rules, released in 2012. “The choke point in the supply chain is the smelters—everything has to go through them, and there aren’t many smelters in the world,” Millman said. “The OECD came up with a standardized protocol to audit and certify the smelters on an annual basis to know that they have control and knowledge of their supply chain.”

According to Millman, a handful of downstream companies seemed genuinely interested in doing things right and getting involved at the mine level. In 2011, together with Motorola and the Washington-based NGO Resolve, what was then AVX launched Solutions for Hope, a pilot project in Congo’s Katanga (now Tanganyika) province, where there was no conflict. They created a closed-pipe supply chain, sourcing from artisanal mines through a company that sold directly to a Chinese smelter and then onward to AVX, which manufactured components for Motorola and Hewlett-Packard.

Solutions for Hope also decided to hire the services of ITSCI. Its “bag and tag” traceability scheme set up by the International Tin Association (ITA) promised to trace minerals from the mine and guarantee their origin to buyers through a paper trail associated with sealed tags affixed on bags. According to Millman, Solutions for Hope was successful largely because its integrated supply chain bypassed traders and brought end-user companies closer to the miners. Replicating it would take time and effort. But, Millman said, “what other companies who had sat back saw was that, suddenly, with ITSCI there was a way for their CEOs and CFOs to sign off on their SEC statements. … And so everyone piled in, and it became the easy option.” ITSCI’s first project in eastern Congo was implemented in October 2012 in Nyabibwe.

“Do you think these people stopped working?”

Ten years on from when we first met, Kulimuchi came down from the mountainside where he had been working with his son on a sunny day last July, his broad smile still intact. The mining site hadn’t changed much either. Around us, men wearing flip-flops were using the same basic tools to split the earth open, with no protective equipment.

Initially, Kulimuchi recalled, the artisanal miners had been relieved when a large delegation showed up to officially launch the traceability scheme. “It meant we could finally start selling again. All my financial worries would be a thing of the past,” Kulimuchi said he thought at the time.

Instead, an elaborate public-private bureaucracy emerged, driven in part by regional governments intent on bringing the artisanal mining sector under control but quickly superimposed by foreign private sector initiatives like ITSCI, responding to market demand for paperwork required by end-user companies to file their reports to the SEC.

“We started selling again, but it’s a cacophony. There is a ton of admin, taxes after taxes, and prices have gone down. We have been weakened by all this,” Kulimuchi said.

As the de facto embargo on eastern Congo’s minerals lifted, by 2012 thousands of small sites across the region found themselves effectively outlawed by a new mine site validation process. To be able to sell, Congolese mining sites must now be inspected by a delegation of government representatives, NGOs, and U.N. agencies. At sites given the go-ahead from that audit, the Congolese artisanal mining agency carries out its own checks while also tagging and recording the minerals in logbooks for ITSCI. There are other records kept by the provincial government’s Mining Division and a regional body. Many sites are still waiting for an audit. For those that don’t conform, the consequences are devastating: “You are destroying the livelihood of hundreds or thousands of people,” said Maxie Muwonge, who was a program manager for the International Organization for Migration between 2013 and 2018 when it was tasked with coordinating the validation process. “This excludes entire communities. What are they meant to do? Do you think these people stopped working?”

In fact, even under the de facto embargo, the minerals trade never really stopped. It just went further underground. Rwanda’s export statistics, which experts say don’t match its reserves, suggest that smuggling to neighboring countries spiked during the period. While the volume of trafficked minerals has fallen with the reopening of the legal market in eastern Congo, smuggling is still an issue, not least because of the market distortion caused by heavy regulation and taxation in Congo of small businesses. “Many collapsed because they couldn’t meet the requirements, and the investment in the sector decreased. It broke down artisanal miners even further,” Muwonge said.

Joyeux Mumpenzi followed in his mother’s footsteps when he decided to become a négociant, an intermediary who buys minerals from the creuseurs, or diggers, and transports them to export companies in large cities—a reflection of the highly organized division of labor in the artisanal sector. “To begin with, we have no say regarding the going price—the London Metal Exchange sets it, and it fluctuates constantly,” he said. “Then there are all the taxes, and finally, the export company retains a penalty on my payment for ITSCI.”

Today, 99 percent of ITSCI’s revenue comes from the levies it collects from upstream actors based on the volumes of minerals tagged and exported, ITSCI program manager Mickaël Daudin said in an interview. The organization says artisanal miners are not supposed to pay for the scheme. But the cost, or at least a percentage of it, is passed down the supply chain to the négociants and ultimately to the miners. “I have no choice” in doing so, Mumpenzi said. “I end up earning little more than they do, and I take huge financial risks.” The 33-year-old trader says he earns about $300 a month, while an artisanal miner’s household makes $200 on average.

ITSCI, which operates in both Congo and Rwanda, applies differentiated levies to businesses in the two countries. Daudin said that’s because “the cost of implementation … remains much higher” in Congo than in Rwanda but declined to disclose the levies’ rates; a Congolese government official called it a “conflict tax.” The rate discrepancy effectively encourages trafficking to Rwanda for Congolese mining operators keen to increase their margins.

A report published in 2022 by Global Witness cited “[s]ome industry sources” alleging that ITSCI was in fact set up to facilitate the laundering of Congolese minerals smuggled into Rwanda. Foreign Policy hasn’t been able to confirm the claim, but the tagging system that ITSCI created does offer the perfect cover for smuggling, in Rwanda or Congo. The integrity of the scheme relies entirely on the integrity of the people implementing it; the tags themselves offer no guarantee. In a statement released in response to the report, ITSCI wrote that it “strongly rejects all Global Witness’ stated or implied allegations of wrongdoing, facilitating deliberate misuse of ITSCI systems or illegal activity.” If ITSCI had aimed to maximize smuggling into Rwanda as alleged, a spokesperson wrote to Foreign Policy in an email, “ITSCI would not have launched in Katanga in 2011 nor in any other adjoining locations at other times. During 15 years of implementation, ITSCI has continued to expand the programme in [Congo], now supporting more than 1,500 sites across 8 Provinces.”

The Global Witness report also documented how the system can be breached without ITSCI’s cooperation. For starters, the tagging is not performed by ITSCI but by Congolese government agents who earn less than the miners themselves and sometimes go for months without pay at all. From bribing agents to trading in tags, the number of ways to circumvent the system is almost limitless—as Mumpenzi demonstrated to Foreign Policy. The négociant stood up from the sofa in his living room and walked to a corner where sturdy white plastic bags had been stacked. “See the tags? The bags were sealed by an agent before I picked them up yesterday,” he said. “The mineral sand now has to be washed, so when I’ll bring the bags to the washing station, the tags will be removed. When minerals are washed, the weight goes down, so this is a perfect time to smuggle in minerals before a new tag goes on. As long as the bag weighs less than it did initially, no one will say anything.”

ITSCI doesn’t rebuke such allegations categorically. The organization says it was aware of many of the incidents documented by Global Witness and had already addressed them. “The program isn’t perfect. There are issues, and there always will be,” Daudin told Foreign Policy. “But from my point of view, it wasn’t better before.”

Kulimuchi and other artisanal miners might beg to differ. Rather than improving their living conditions, the “increasing regulation of the artisanal mining sector and responsible sourcing efforts, have rather had a negative overall effect on the socio-economic position of artisanal miners,” analysts at the International Peace Information Service (IPIS), a leading minerals research institute, wrote in 2019. Guillaume de Brier, a researcher at IPIS, told me that “working in an ITSCI or a non-ITSCI site doesn’t change anything. Conditions are dismal in both cases. There’s no difference in terms of child labor, and miners don’t earn more.”

When asked by Foreign Policy about this criticism, an ITSCI spokesperson stressed the organization’s limited mandate as a traceability and due diligence not-for-profit initiative. “It does not function as a certification mechanism,” the spokesperson wrote, and the organization’s focus “does not extend to working conditions.”

However, evidence suggests that responsible sourcing efforts have failed to shift conflict dynamics. A 2022 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), part of its mandate to evaluate the impact of Section 1502, was titled “Conflict Minerals: Overall Peace and Security in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo Has Not Improved Since 2014.” Violence has instead risen, remaining “relatively constant from 2014 through 2016 but steadily [increasing] from 2017 through 2021,” GAO wrote.

Arguably, some measure of progress has been achieved at the 3T mining sites targeted by Dodd-Frank, where the presence of armed groups has decreased. But while ITSCI claims to have played a role, de Brier says the scheme merely implanted in sites where the situation was already better. Overall, this demilitarization has largely been the result of Congolese policies and the evolution of conflict dynamics themselves: The defeat of the M23 rebellion in 2013 (the armed group changed names multiple times as it successively integrated into and rebelled against the national army) led to the dismantling of one of the country’s most predatory mafia networks. Today, for instance, Bisie, once an iconic mining site under the control of Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda, is operated by the Canadian company Alphamin. (Ntaganda is serving a 30-year prison sentence in Belgium following his conviction by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.)

Now though, with the resurgence of the M23 rebellion since November 2021—which has displaced Museni, her family, and more than 2.5 million others—even that small measure of progress is under threat.

“This is how the armed groups are paid.”

Belgian colonial administration profoundly altered the Congolese relationship with the land, introducing private ownership and displacing people for commercial exploitation. Since independence, who has the right to own land—and by extension its resources—has remained an unresolved existential question. “The main resource driving conflict isn’t coltan,” said Onesphore Sematumba, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “It is the land. It’s material ownership, of course, but also who has a legitimate right to be here.”

In the borderlands of eastern Congo, these questions have been exacerbated by intertwined histories with neighboring countries. Hutus and Tutsis, who arrived from Rwanda in successive waves throughout the 20th century—first brought by Belgian colonialists to work on plantations in the territories of Rutshuru and Masisi—have struggled to find acceptance and secure land rights. Rwanda, meanwhile, a small, densely populated country with little resources of its own, largely depends on economic ties and access to Congo’s resources. These two dynamics have helped create the vicious circle of the last three decades. Backed by Rwanda, the RCD rebellion and its successors claiming to fight for Tutsis’ rights have helped entrench tensions along ethnic lines while facilitating land grab by a small elite.

“Indigenous communities in Masisi were dispossessed of their land during the war,” said Janvier Murairi, a Congolese researcher. “Today’s farm and mine owners are people who had links to the RCD. Everything from Mushaki to Masisi town belongs to hardly more than 10 people.”

One such owner was Edouard Mwangachuchu, an aspiring Tutsi politician and a member of the RCD’s political branch, who was awarded a concession covering seven mines in Rubaya by the rebel administration in 2001. Two years later, the Sun City Agreement, a peace deal negotiated between rebel factions with little regard for social justice or community grievances, endorsed Mwangachuchu’s ownership over the mining sites as a prize of war for the RCD, granting his company, MHI (now SMB), control over what have become the most productive sites at Congo’s largest coltan mine. Today, Rubaya accounts for about 15 percent of global coltan production.

Rubaya is emblematic of the way ITSCI, and more broadly due diligence as it is practiced today, treats “conflictual issues, such as concessions and land ownership, … as a black box,” Christoph N. Vogel writes in his 2022 book, Conflict Minerals Inc., turning a blind eye to political issues around social justice and equity, even as those are drivers of the violence it means to help prevent.

In Rubaya, Mwangachuchu’s plan to turn the quarries into an industrial mine spurred a backlash from local communities. “The artisanal miners didn’t accept that this family [the Mwangachuchus] who had come into the possession of the mines through the conflict could take away their livelihood,” Murairi said. The government mediated a deal: The miners were allowed to continue mining SMB sites but had to sell exclusively to the company.

ITSCI began operating in Rubaya in 2014, tagging minerals from both SMB and peripheral sites belonging to a state-owned mining company, SAKIMA. But the situation unraveled as the scheme was embroiled in a tit-for-tat commercial war in the years that followed.

Suspecting that ITSCI’s tags were being used to launder the sale of its minerals to a rival trading company, SMB eventually turned to ITSCI’s main competitor in the tag-and-bag business, Better Mining. The move should have represented a major financial blow to ITSCI, the loss of roughly half its revenues for Congo. Instead, as production at the SAKIMA sites kept growing while SMB’s dwindled, ITSCI’s business was preserved. According to an internal U.N. report provided to Foreign Policy, “Only about seventeen percent of the production that officially originates from the SAKIMA concession has in fact been mined there.” The report noted that “[s]uch discrepancy between official data and reality is only conceivable if a structured mechanism of fraud is established.”

Daudin, the ITSCI program manager, responded that ITSCI is “confident about its data.” He argued that the production increase was due to the higher level of investment going to SAKIMA sites when local miners turned away from SMB.

The M23’s resurgence dealt the last blow to Mwangachuchu, who was arrested in March 2023 and charged with treason after weapons were allegedly found on the grounds of his company’s facilities in Rubaya. According to the prosecutor, Mwangachuchu intended to support the M23 rebellion. The government has since revoked SMB’s mining permits. Few people in North Kivu will feel sorry for Mwangachuchu, “but one of the protagonists was pushed out in favor of the other, and that never works,” said Achile Kitsa, a former private secretary to the provincial mines minister.

The Congolese army took full control of Rubaya last spring, leaving the former SMB concession at the mercy of local armed groups it used as proxies on the front line against the M23. “This is how the armed groups are paid,” said a Congolese researcher who spoke on condition of anonymity. ITSCI resumed its operations in June, tagging minerals from the SAKIMA perimeter up until November, when the road was cut off by the fighting, according to Daudin. “We relaunched our activities after evaluating each site with the government services,” he said in July. “There are no nonstate armed groups in our sites.”

In a December report, the U.N. Group of Experts on Congo contradicted Daudin, establishing that between June and November, the “production from [the former SMB] sites was either smuggled to Rwanda or laundered into the official supply chain using [ITSCI] tags for minerals produced in [the SAKIMA concession], where mining activities were still authorized.”

“ITSCI recognizes that there have been, and remain, ongoing risks regarding fraud and presence of both non-state and state armed groups in the area of Masisi territory, North Kivu,” the ITSCI spokesperson wrote. “These risks are regularly reported through ITSCI’s OECD-aligned systems.”

Muhima, the Congolese researcher, sees the possibility of tainted minerals in the ITSCI supply chain as inevitable, given its built-in conflict of interest. “Their income depends on the volume they export. They cannot stop tagging minerals, or their business will collapse.”

“We don’t need another scheme.”

Congolese activists were not pleased with the Global Witness report exposing the shortcomings of ITSCI when it was published in 2022. They felt that the research mostly rehashed criticisms and evidence that they had presented for many years without being listened to and that the report failed to draw the necessary conclusions, ending with tepid recommendations to reform ITSCI or consider options to replace it with another independent scheme. “We don’t need another scheme,” Murairi said. “We don’t need more foreigners who think Congolese can’t do anything.”

Global Witness’s cautiousness should perhaps not come as a surprise. The activist organization played no small part in paving the way for today’s conundrum, and the risk of triggering another de facto embargo on Congolese minerals hangs heavy. “We’ve learnt some very difficult lessons, and as an activist, I’m not the one who bore the consequences of bad policymaking,” said Pickles, the former Global Witness campaigner.

When I pressed Daudin last July about ITSCI’s resumption of its activities in Rubaya, even as armed groups were swarming the mining area, he dodged: “If we don’t start tagging again, mining communities will be the first ones to suffer from not being able to carry on their activities.”

ITSCI suffered a major setback in October 2022, when the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), a member association of more than 400 of the world’s largest corporations, announced that it was taking the scheme off its list of recognized upstream due diligence mechanisms. ITSCI had failed to submit an independent assessment of its alignment with the OECD guidelines in time. When the organization eventually released an independent audit in June 2023, it failed to assess ITSCI’s activities in Congo, focusing solely on coltan production in Rwanda. The RMI has offered to pay for three site visits in Congo, including in Rubaya, but ITSCI has so far not agreed. (“Site visits outside alignment assessments are not explicitly required,” said the ITSCI spokesperson, who noted the terms of such a visit are nonetheless under negotiation with RMI.)

“They are holding everyone hostage,” an industry insider close to the RMI process told Foreign Policy. “There is so much pressure on the RMI to capitulate and say we need this system. But this isn’t a technical issue.” To many experts and industry insiders, the resurgence of the M23 conflict has at least had the benefit of clarifying the situation. “The system cannot withstand what it was built for. It can’t withstand the conflict. We are back to square one.”

Breaking ITSCI’s quasi-monopoly is often presented as the solution in minerals circles, but SMB’s switch to Better Mining solved none of the problems in Rubaya and only created more confusion. Better Mining’s for-profit business model and its reliance on technology make it hard to scale and mean it is explicitly designed for larger companies with capital, not artisanal miners. “The problem with all these initiatives is that no one is there to control them,” said de Brier, the IPIS researcher.

Who is supposed to exert this control is part of the problem. Much like the fragmented nature of the supply chain, the nebulous ecosystem of public and private actors involved in responsible sourcing means that responsibility befalls no one in particular. In a July 2023 report, the GAO noted that the number of companies filing conflict minerals disclosures to the SEC had been steadily declining year-on-year since 2014, in part because “companies perceive that they are unlikely to face enforcement action by the SEC if they do not comply.”

Pickles noted that, unlike Dodd-Frank, the European Union’s own conflict minerals regulation, which came into force in 2021, avoided the trap of focusing only on Congo but equally fell for industry schemes such as ITSCI. “I’ve spoken to the competent authorities of three member states, and they said that the reports they receive from companies don’t tell them anything. They don’t actually know what’s happening along the supply chain,” she said. “So where does that leave us?”

For Congolese, ending this hypocrisy is a necessary first step but requires trust and support on the part of international partners. “The Congolese government has its own traceability system. All the necessary documents are delivered by Congolese state agencies. They tell you where the minerals come from just as reliably as ITSCI’s tags, which is to say it’s not perfect but it’s no worse,” Muhima said. “The same state agents deliver these documents and implement ITSCI’s program—for free I might add, since ITSCI doesn’t pay for them. What needs to be improved urgently is their payment.”

These lessons are relevant beyond the specifics of the 3T supply chain. The attention around cobalt—the conflict mineral du jour thanks to its use in electric vehicle batteries—is a case in point. While there is no conflict in the area where cobalt is extracted, working conditions and child labor have been discussed in much the same way as conflict minerals were back in the 2000s: in decontextualized and sometimes inaccurate reports that fail to examine the complex ways in which minerals interact with people’s livelihoods. Instead, such reports paint artisanal mining as illegitimate, something to eliminate. They have been used to justify land grab by large mining companies whose supply chains are easily traceable for end-user companies.

“We haven’t learned from our experience with diamonds or 3T minerals. With cobalt, it’s as if those experiences never existed,” said Joanne Lebert, the executive director of IMPACT, a nonprofit organization working on natural resource governance. “Instead of supporting communities, we’re just monitoring. There is no connection in my view between a clean supply chain and governance and security outcomes. Maybe you take kids out of your supply chain, but they’ll go to agriculture, to domestic work. They’ll go to another mine. They’ll sneak in at night. Clean supply chain is about eliminating the risk and not necessarily about doing good. And it’s the doing good we have to get at.”

Following the same pattern, an EU law aimed at preventing products linked to deforestation from entering the European market is pushing coffee companies toward industrial producers able to generate the paperwork and sidelining small farmers from Ethiopia to Brazil. Private companies will always take the shortcut, while black markets, exploitation, and conflict feed on exclusion.

Whether Western consumers like it or not, artisanally mined minerals will continue to find their way into the supply chains that fuel the energy transition and consumer products. Investing in mining communities’ welfare, education, and businesses is indispensable.

Museni is still living in the refugee camp on the outskirts of Goma with her husband and young children. Surrounded, the provincial capital has been struggling to absorb and provide for the constant new waves of displaced families reaching the city as the M23 is inching closer.

Even as evidence of Rwanda’s support to the rebellion has been mounting, the country has still not been sanctioned. In February, the EU signed an agreement “to nurture sustainable and resilient value chains for critical raw materials” with the Rwandan government, calling the country “a major player on the world’s tantalum extraction.” Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi described the deal as a “provocation in very bad taste.”

In Nyabibwe, Kulimuchi took me on a final walk around the town, waving around at the myriad businesses and hard-working people in the streets. “No one here has a bank account, for example. We can’t save. We can’t build,” he said. “We don’t require much—a road to Bukavu, a little boost, you know. Then, we’ll take it from there.”