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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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Sympathy for the spammer

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

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

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

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

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

http://thebezzle.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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giorno-plays-piano · 6 months

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Favors and Debts

Part II

Pairing: fae!Yuji/Sukuna x reader

Warnings: noncon, yandere, a bit of smut, murder, captivity, stalking, violence (not towards reader), Sukuna having a purity kink.

Words: 1.4k

Summary: Of all creatures fickle and cruel, the fair folk are the ones inspiring fear and awe alike. You were unlucky enough to save one of them from captivity, and now you must pay for it.

Part I

________________

He lied to you. Since the night he ordered all his captors slaughtered, he has been following you like a shadow, waiting for you to slip up and finally let him in. Have you drown in your nightmares until you'd crack under pressure and take down your door clad in iron, throw away the mirrors of all shapes and sizes hanging down the walls of your tiny apartment.

You have resisted thus far. You've learned to live with a wicked fae breathing down your neck.

At first, you only saw him in your dreams. A response to a severe trauma, the doctors said, nodding knowingly. You haven't told them Yuji was one of the little folk: it was futile. Men of science would think you damaged beyond repair if you believed in elves and fairies. An abused man dreaming of revenge for 7 long years? Now, this was something. Of course, he could have found accomplices. Of course, they could have murdered men and women of the village. You kept quiet, letting police and doctors make their own conclusions. Nothing could be done to help dead villagers, anyway.

Then, one day, the fae boy came to the apothecary, where you worked as a junior pharmacist. He has been wearing the face of an unremarkable city man who needed his stomach pills. When you turned away to the shelves and reached for them, he caged you with his body, somehow slipping through the counter, and murmured against your ear, "I'll eat your heart, little bird."

When you turned around in frenzy, hands shaking, expecting to find Yuji with his six horrifying hands ready to tear you apart, you found only an average-looking city man trying to hide a yawn behind the counter. He wasn't a fae. He was human, just like you, and yet Yuji found a way into him like found a way in your dreams.

You were never alone. He has been watching you like a hawk, making sure you never grew close to anyone, especially not men. Once there was a handsome boy with whom you exchanged pleasantries far too many times for fae's liking, and he took over him for a couple of seconds, face changing to Yuji's, black symbols appearing on his skin as he looked you up and down, the corners of his mouth tugged just slightly upward. "Keep yourself pure for me," the fae whispered into your ear as you stood frozen, afraid to move until the boy became himself again.

Least to say, you could afford having neither lovers nor friends. God knows what that fae would do to them if he could force himself into their bodies without much of a struggle.

Sometimes, you dreamt of different Yuji. That Yuji was just a kind fatherless boy who made jokes when you bandaged his hands and thanked you so sincerely when you gave him the ointment for treating his wounds. He nealry cried when you brought him your food and hid his face in his palms out of shame for having to rely on a young woman's pity. He was gentle with horses and dogs, and they flocked to him like he was their master, only enraging the villagers further.

Although you tried not to think of it much, you missed that boy. If it were him visiting your dreams, you wouldn't even mind.

The years are flying by, and soon the promised time will be up, but you aren't afraid. Your room is full of iron and mirrors. The door and every window are lined with a thick layer of salt. There's a sack of dried rowan berries under your pillow. Your stomach doesn't let you have as much sleeping pills as you like, but dreams are just dreams. He can't drag you away through them to his realm, or he would've done it already.

But it's the last night of the seventh year, and when you are running the streets of the city back to your safe heaven, you know you aren't asleep this time, the fairy catching up with you, his speed utterly terrifying. You barely have time to fly up the stairs, trying to lock your heavy door, but he is behind you, forcing you inside: the gushes of wind swipe the layers of salt you so cautiously poured on the floor, and the mirrors fall down the walls, all cracking like they're made of thin ice.

"I've waited for so long for you to show me the way," he says in a low voice, a grin lightening up his handsome features, and you see he is no longer a boy but a man, his shoulders a mile wide, his two heavy arms splitting in six again in front of your very eyes. "I have been patient, little bird."

You weren't, you want to say, but your tongue is numb, and so is your body as the fae advances on you, reaching out his many hands to place them on your face, your waist, and your hips. He seems content with how much you tremble before him.

"The brat misses you," he whispers, his hand tender on your chin as he makes you look up at him, and you raise your brows, unsure you heard him right. He laughs as you. "The boy. Yuji."

You blink. Isn't Yuji just a false name the villagers gave a fae to hide his true one? Why does he refer to him as his own person?

Because he is, the realization strikes you.

"Are you using Yuji's body?" You whimper, eyes already wet as you think of the tremendous difference between a gentle boy in the barn and a cruel creature taunting you in your dreams.

The fae smiles back at you, his face inches away from yours.

"If only you knew how much he pleads me to let you go," he bares his sharp teeth at you like a predator ready to pounce on his prey. "Poor child. He's been in love with you ever since you kicked away that iron girdle."

Horrified, you feel blood rushing to your head as you frantically think what to say, not realizing the fae keeps nudging you towards your bed, towering over you like a giant, mirrors coming further apart under his feet. His fingers are rough and calloused, but he is strangely gentle as if a part of him wishes you well. Is it him? Yuji, the kind boy, trying not to hurt you? Or is it his frightening master trying to trick you into submission?

When the fae lifts up your cotton dress, he tenderly strokes your skin until he reaches your waist, relief strangely washing over his sharp features. "You aren't wearing a girdle."

Biting down on your lips, you look at your ceiling, tears trailing down your cheeks. You thought of it. Iron was convenient to use against the fair folk, and many maidens in fairytales wore them as a protection against the fae charming their way in girls' bedrooms. Surely, with your rooms stuffed full of anything made of iron, it only made sense to wear something as well. And yet... and yet every time you went to blacksmith to commission a piece, you thought of wounded Yuji, his face pale, palms bleeding from the iron girdle forced into his hands.

In the end, you never bought it.

"My pliant little bird," he whispers against your bare skin and you squeeze your eyes shut, thinking how foolish you were to believe you can fend him off with your heavy iron door and mirrors hanging down your walls.

He lays you on your bed, carefully avoiding its iron frame, and soon you realize you are no longer in your room, your bed simply levitating somewhere in the dark, the fae your only companion. You're gone. Your time is finally up, and no one will save you from the monster who has been chasing you since the night you freed him from his shackles.

"Why are you cruel to me?" You ask him in a small voice, head on the pillow as he caresses the inner side of your thighs. "I've done you no wrong."

The fae laughs, "Cruel? You are to wed the Fairy King, little girl. I'll even give you that human brat as a wedding present. Now, stop crying and spread your pretty legs for me."

THE END

__________

Tags: @minshookie29

#sukuna x reader #sukuna x you #ryomen sukuna #sukuna ryomen #sukuna #yuji itadori x reader #yuji itadori #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #yandere

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balkanradfem · 5 months

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It was a while ago I read this tumblr post, which still comes to my mind every time I think about the future. It was explaining in an insightful way, how it's not a violent revolution that will bring forward the better future, it's slow and consistent change of our everyday life, of our habits, the resources we use and the way we go about achieving things. If we're hoping for a future where we're not dependent on capitalism, not destroying the environment, not robbed of our labour for a fraction of the money we need to survive, we'll have to slowly die capitalism out, by changing our own living habits.

If a sudden shift happened, and capitalism stopped functioning overnight, for most of the people that would be unsurvivable, all of the resources, food, jobs and life-sustaining services would stop. And we can't afford that. But, if instead we slowly backed away from it, generated alternatives, created communities and systems that can sustain us without capitalism, then it would only be a matter of time before capitalism is fully dead, with everyone alive, everyone safe. And this slow shift would be able to happen through decades and generations, and it would still be a great positive shift, with a future in sight. Capitalism offers no survivable future, seemingly ready to last as long as it can by destroying whatever is left from the environment and people alike, for the benefit of the few.

So let's see how we got here, or how I feel, looking back, we got here.

People used to be less dependent on a global system of distribution of resources, even just a 100 years ago; survival and trade skills were passed down in families and communities, and people would be able to make inside of their home and communities, a big percentage of things that we today would buy at the store. In those times there was no other way to gain those resources but by relying on people's knowledge, skill and labour. The future, however, promised a more convenient and easy way to gain all those resources, because they would be made by machines, and thus cheaper. And things kept coming in cheaper, for no visible labour required; you just needed to have money to buy them, which not everyone had.

But this too, would change as cheaper and cheaper things arrived, and it became less convenient to make those things yourself or within your community, and more convenient to just trade some money, and have it all be done for you. For people then, it could mean less energy spent on survival, more leisure time, more health and longer lifespan – except, it didn't, because the jobs that they needed to earn that money, tended to take all of that away. So still, there was a lot produced at home or within the communities, independent workshops and artist shops, so people within in the community would benefit from each other, instead of benefiting some faceless global corporation.

And now we know where this went; conveniences started lining up to the point where not having a certain convenience meant that you were below the norm. They sometimes got mixed up with inconveniences, but those inconveniences were 'necessary'. For instance, pollution became necessary, highways, huge trucks delivering goods, the oil industry, destruction of forests and habitats, exploitation of the poor, extinction of certain animals, and by the end of it, the climate change.

When I was born, my mother and grandmother still attempted to pass some skills that their mothers taught them; I remember being taught how to knit at the age of 5, the activity which at that age, seemed awfully tedious and was soon abandoned, and my grandmother showed me how to crochet, which I also soon forgot. After the age of small child, they both looked at the world, shrugged and decided 'she won't need it', and they have stopped trying to teach me any skills of the sort.

Buying things, rather than making them, already seemed the norm. People were readily telling you that you are stupid for trying to make something, when you could get it in the store, for very little money. Having animals at home, or growing food, was slowly getting replaced by buying it cheap, or buying tons of snacks, and biscuits and cakes, which now you could get pre-packaged, readily available to consume at your leisure. If it brought lots of waste from packaging, plastic and other non-degradable materials, nobody cared, it was new, convenient, and available, and we would have it, and live luxuriously.

Soon nobody seemed to talk anymore, about what we used to do before we were able to buy anything we could possibly need at the store; nobody would tell me what were the names of the native plants, and which ones I could make into teas, I was instead told to change my priorities because this kind of behaviour will never get me any money. All of my efforts to do arts and crafts, to forage, to make things from scratch, to paint and invent stories, were called frivolous, because they would not generate the one thing that was now the only thing worth generating: money.

It simplifies things a lot, instead of making various, interesting, self-made and beloved items that would all require different knowledge and skills, a human is now required to put all of their talents into 1 thing that would generate revenue, and then do that one thing, for entire life, and this would present a normal life on earth now. This was how it was presented to me, and it was before I found out that keeping one job for the whole life, was no longer an option, that changing jobs was the norm and was not often volountary. I did not, however, understand how doing that one job would not make someone go insane, and nobody was explaining that to me, it was just, the life.

So while the world was shifting into this new concept of 'make nothing but money', the first millionaires started to appear, the billionaire was not even conceptual, having 1 million was equal to being the richest person on the planet. That is pretty laughable to us now. Back then, it felt like heading into a new exciting world, but we know better now. We understand that lives consisting of a job and thousands of conveniences, easily sends a human being into a depression. We understand that relying on a job to keep us alive, and having constantly to compete with everyone else unemployed, to get one, has brought us to a place where others are a competition, not a resource, not a community. We understand that living in a world where we have to market ourselves as a resource, causes a lot of us to lose self confidence and the feeling of value, while it sends others into obsession with becoming popular, gaining perceived value, gathering a public image, that would later prove to be profitable.

By this time, unknown to us all, this life of convenience and consumerism had caused immense damage to the environment, and we were mostly kept in the dark about it, so we wouldn't complain. We learned about the holes in the ozone layer, but were told it was merely the fault of certain aerosols, and the rest of the stuff was fine. We would in the future get to watch oil spills and devastation of animal habitats, never fully connecting it to corporations who were responsible. Acid rains were mentioned, but we were told they caused by the new pesticides, but it was the fault of the farmers, they said, who simply used too much of it. Now we know it was the exhaust fumes from cars, factories and coal power plants. Climate change was barely mentioned, and even less believed in. And now, we can no longer ignore it.

So, what do we do in order to progress? We obviously can't go back to where we came from, but we are now made aware that the amount of energy and resources we're consuming, and the amount of toxic waste we're creating, will devastate the planet to the point where a big chunk of it will become inhabitable, millions of both people and animals, will end up dead if we keep going. But wait! How can I blame the people for any of this, when it's obviously the corporations that are doing the most damage, lobbying and hiding what is in actuality going on? And you're completely correct, I would have to say, it is corporations, and for the most time, we really didn't know the extent of damage they were doing. So why are the corporations exactly doing all of this? For profit. And who's giving them all that profit? Well, the consumers, by consuming all of the oil, energy, goods, resources and products they make. So how do we take down the corporations? By not giving them any of the profits. But, we can't do that in the current state of the world, we need cars, and food, and that food to be shipped and delivered from the distant lands, and we are all depressed and if we can't at least have our favourite snack, food we're used to, little treats and pieces of clothing that make us happy, we no longer feel like we can live!

And that's where the slow and meaningful habit shift comes into place. The thing is, we're not the same people we were 50 or 100 years ago, we don't have the skills of our ancestors, we're not used to producing our own resources, we are out of touch with nature, and we struggle to find our communities and feel valued. But we also have, so much more information and education at our fingertips. We have more scientific data, we have more access to information, we have more people creating public resources, we have the experiences and wisdom of generations back, only waiting for us to reach out, to tap into what the humanity knew centuries ago.

We're made to do various activities! We thrive on changing our habits by season, even by weeks. We thrive in communities, with no competition for resources. We love creating art, music, crafts and beauty just for fun, and the communal value of it cannot be compared to money. We don't like being reduced into human resources or labour force, we don't like repetitive activities that don't produce results or seem nonsensical, we don't like to be stuck within one room for most of the day, we don't like being replaced when we stand up for our rights.

I can already see a lot of people valuing all of the things on this planet that cannot be exchanged for money, but have intricate value in our lives and experiences; wild animals, plants, forests, environments and ecosystems filled with life, little stories and jokes we tell to each other, making crafts just for the sake of making things, creating their own clothes or fabrics, learning how it was done in the past; growing food, foraging, herbalism, basketry, making of soap and fixing things on our own, visible mending, connections and building communities, we are remembering it's what we want and need, and we're not going to build it the way it was in the past; we're going to do it our own way, with the knowledge and experience we have, the way we think is the best. All we need to do is start small. Do one little shift that takes you one tiny step away from consumerism. Add one little enrichment in your life that doesn't have anything to do with money or purchasing. Find little ways to save on energy that doesn't make any dips in your happiness or comfort levels, that only requires a little bit of your attention or focus to do.

Big shifts are not sustainable, and are not survivable, but we didn't get here by a big shift; we got here by a series of small, almost invisible shifts that we barely felt were happening, until it was our new normal. We can do small, painless shifts too, but this time, they're going to be conscious, purposeful, with thoughts of the future behind it, and they're going to come from us. Not the corporations, not the money holders, but us, pushing the future to the direction that we want.

#anti-capitalism #essay #long post #capitalism #environmentalism #climate change #future #environment #saving energy #leaning away from capitalism

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skrunksthatwunk · 1 month

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sorry just watched all of lacey's games (thru rabbit hole at time of writing) and i wanna talk about laceys diner can we talk about lacey's diner? we're talking about it now

tl;dr lacey's games is about the presentation and consumption of girls.

cw suicide, csa, incest, cannibalism. if you've seen the series, you know. i only speak of them vaguely here though

in lacey's diner her livelihood depends on how well people like her food, how it looks, how it tastes, how quickly she gets it to them on time. if any of these things falter, they reject her and reinforce her desperation (trauma around failure and acceptance + threat of extreme poverty via the restaurant closing).

eating her food is accepting her, choosing to be with her in some way. lacey gets eaten in the prior episode so her stalker can be with her forever, out of an obsession with her (/her body) that leads him to destroy her to better possess and consume her (like her uncle). she can't be late serving them herself, because that's not good presentation—her inability to get food out on time is a reflection of her flaws, and a cause to reject her. she must be available for others, punctual. she can't put the wrong ingredients in—elements of herself, her life—she must exclude them entirely from the part they eat, the part she gives away. she keeps the part that is filled with the disgusting, ugly, painful things in her life, about her.

and when she gets fed up and feeds those raw, authentic parts of herself to them (out of spite, tired of trying her best to no avail, to give them a taste of their own medicine), she is punished, not allowed to serve anyone again bc it's too gross and dangerous. she is punished for lashing out, for not keeping it all bottled up, and in her helplessness, resigns herself to death.

as seen in rabbit hole, jay was too boyish to be consumed happily by the audience (the mothers in the emails), so she was killed off and effectively haunts lacey. if she is not presentable enough, she too will be destroyed and discarded. if she is too presentable, she will be consumed too completely. she has no control, no say (as we know from lacey's wardrobe), no agency outside of pretending she's in a sparkly dreamy world. and jay—who said she would rather die than wear makeup—is forced by lacey to wear makeup in death. she's fixing her by making her conform to the same gender standards she's strangled by, saying that if she was less boyish she wouldn't have died. again, femininity and conformity (and thus being pleasant to others, presenting oneself to be admired and consumed) is safe to lacey, something she must perform to survive. yet, of course, lacey is hurt immensely for her being a girl, for her being a woman, and for her trauma resulting from those events.

all her talk of being ugly when she's grieving, of almost crying in front of him (her uncle iirc), of needing to be pretty even for the people who abuse and hurt her... and how she wished the world was ugly and grotesque when jay died because that was how it felt, but it was just sunny and oblivious. she was the one standing out for being upset, and the world was pretending and consumable and she couldn't anymore. she had to scrape herself together though because what else is there? when her job and stability and life is at stake, how can she afford to be traumatized? to not pretend, even when she's alone? augh. ough. look i just like lacey. i want her to be ok

i don't know that lacey herself is supposed to have a linear, consistent story. i kind of think she's an avatar for like,, girlhood suffering and trauma, and the traumatized people who come from that (hence her dying in multiple ways and coming back). perhaps as rocio's way of warning or comforting girls who went through similar things to her, or to vent her own issues because the thought of making something that's such a farce, such a forced, gussied up version of what it's like to be a girl, bothers her. the audience comes to the website to consume lacey at her best, at her most presentable, and are instead met with the harsh reality of cockroaches and used condoms. and yet, the audience of lacey games the video series consumes her too, only they are seeking out her trauma, trying to invade her mind and pick it apart. we're all consuming what we want, whatever we find appetizing, of lacey. and for rocio, you get the sense that she is also a tool, a way for rocio to express her inner distress. in that, lacey is put through all this unfortunate shit by rocio to make her more presentable and consumable to her. we are all using lacey, we all see her and eat her and destroy her. and she comes back to us and her cage because the pain's comforting in its familiarity.

in short, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. 👍

#this is not conclusive and it's not edited so it's just me like. shitting out my thoughts full speed #but i hope you guys get it bc like. my mind is scrambled over this rn #lacey games #laceys games #anyway as someone whose mental whatevers lead me to not be able to do stuff i need to do like. constantly #laceys diner hits different. in a small way #and the whole series also hits in like. a gender way (<- im a girl but also im not a girl. + lesbian so. 👍)#like lacey feels transgendah to me in a way. might just be ny particular brain poison though

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defilerwyrm · 1 month

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Genuine question. I'm very passionate about conservation and helping animals and the planet, but a lot of people say you cannot be a conservationist without being vegan. Issue is..I don't wanna be vegan, I have AFRID and can't do it. I've tried. I saw your vegan posts and were curious your thoughts on those type of claims!

My thoughts on those type of claims are that it's pretty damned interesting who, specifically, they exclude.

They leave behind disabled people like yourself with medical and/or psychiatric conditions that make a vegan lifestyle impossible.

They leave behind Indigenous peoples such as the Inuit who live in places where agriculture is poor or impossible, and/or ones where no one can reasonably afford the costs of produce on account of shipping prices.

They leave behind the urban, suburban, and rural people who live in food deserts...who are statistically likely to be racialized.

They leave behind the unhoused and otherwise impoverished who must choose calorie-rich food to survive...who are statistically likely to be racialized, disabled, and/or queer.

They leave behind and deny the existence and invaluable work of Indigenous peoples who have done just fine stewarding the land while eating meat and using animal products for millennia.

They advocate for the extinction of the domesticated honeybee and the replacement of wool and leather with petroleum-based plastic products.

So it sure looks to me like those claims are ableist, racist, classist, colonialist, and homophobic — and thus are full of shit.

To each according to his needs; from each according to his means.

#vegans are made of meat #replies to things

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getvalentined · 10 months

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Putting this in its own post for linking purposes.

If you're an artist who wants to continue to use Twitter (or has no choice), you need to Glaze your work everywhere you post it moving forward.

Note: You cannot post your work Glazed on Twitter and not Glazed elsewhere, as this will allow plagiarists to compare the two versions in order to figure out a way around the protection afforded by Glaze.

This isn't a worst case scenario, by the way, plagiarists have been working constantly to try to crack Glaze since it dropped—proving that they never cared about artists' consent in the first place. An artist using Glaze is a clear indication that they don't want their work used in data scraping, and they've adapted to protect themselves, but apparently the plagiarist's rallying cry of "adapt or die" only ever meant "shut up and let me kill you."

And for anyone claiming that Glaze is no longer effective, I recommend checking out their FAQ, particularly this bit:

[Description in alt text.]

You still need to delete the work you've posted thus far from the platform, in order to pull your consent to use that work for training Elon's new generative AI. If you keep your work on Twitter with this in effect, you are giving your consent to use it in generative AI training, and you have no legal recourse in the future should he choose to distribute the resulting dataset. For instance, if he allows it to be incorporated into LAION, which is the dataset that includes private medical records and patient photos, you will have consented to that by keeping your work on the platform.

The use of Glaze is referred to by plagiarists as an act of data poisoning. It doesn't work particularly well on less realistic or painterly art styles, which is why I can't use it much myself, but it is effective.

For anyone out there with no choice but to leave their food where it can be snatched up by scavengers, you can at least fill that food with cyanide.

#rodent murders bird adventures #fuck ai #glaze #glaze ai protection

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d1sc01nf3rn0 · 8 months

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So I have a big theory and I don't know where to put it, so here it goes:

The thing that's gonna incarnate in Yuri's stomach isn't Aono. Is the patron god of the village, Kubinashi sama. The dark Aono is the real Aono.

Based on the whole thing with Sota and the school inventory, we know the ghost always come back, because you're not supposed to offer them anything, and as soon as you do they're turned into evil spirits. We also know from the Sota situation, that every time someone comes back, a part of the patron god, with them. In Sota's case, his "friend". The part where Aono says that it isn't Yotsukubi sama, nor a ghost, but at the same it is, shows that the existence of Kubinashi is not something that's fixed. Furthermore, my theory is that Kubinashi sama is feigning being Aono (the "good" one) due to Yuri's agreement.

Think about it. Yuri and Aono were only dating for two weeks, yet Aono seems to be the perfect boyfriend, despite Fujimoto knowing that he only dated Yuri because he felt bad for her, and that he didn't really knew her. My theory is that this Aono is the part of the agreement of Kubinashi with Yuri: it gave her her perfect vision of Aono, so that she would be satisfied with it and never taking back her agreement. This is why this Aono doesn't have complete memories of how he died, or his childhood. Is an incomplete version of Aono. This Aono also evolves with the time. Every time Yuri changes, Aono also changes to satisfy her desires. This is why the normal Aono didn't know about what happened in the aquarium, but as soon as Yuri learned about it, he suddenly was able to.

Dark Aono is the real Aono, which is why he only comes when certain steps are taken. As the boyfriend of Yuri he doesn't want to hurt her and he is technically part of the deal with Kubinashi. Similar to Sota, who is part of the deal, and is seemingly the perfect brother, that is also part of the deal; Kubinashi only brings back the parts of the deceased the one making the contract remembers. The "dark versions" that appear are the real ones that have grudges and can't pass on. This also explains why he wanted her to eat food of the other world, that way if she gets stuck there, her agreement with Kubinashi will be void.

Dark Sota holds a grudge to his mother for "forgetting him", and to his brother for "causing his death". Dark Aono does not hold a grudge to Yuri, but as a dark spirit, both of them have the desire to grow stronger by getting offerings and sacrifices. The reasoning of this is that those things are different; offerings are usually made directly to the deceased, normally on their tombstones or the family altars, sacrifices are made to deities, and can be done anywhere. So far all the offerings have been made directly to Aono (the food, the eyes) which is why only the dark Aono, the real Aono takes them. The normal Aono can't take them, cause he's not real one, thus they aren't his to take. This explains why the normal Aono couldn't enter the storage room, but dark Aono could. This also gives a possibility: normal Aono can't afford to let Yuri know that he's not the real Aono, cause otherwise that would void the agreement. In agreements, the spirit cannot lie, but they can hide things. This is also shown on the agreement to bring back Sota, Hiroto wasn't told that he was gonna come back as an evil spirit. In the same, Yuri wasn't told that Aono was gonna come back as Dark Aono, and to make her less suspicious, Kubinashi decided to disguise itself as the perfect Aono. If Kubinashi has control over all the spirits in the village, then he could keep dark Aono at bay, except when Aono is called directly, cause that's part of the rules. That's also why normal Aono remembers everything Dark Aono does, cause technically, spirits are part of Kubinashi's domain; not enough to control what they do, but enough to know what they do.

So, Yuri sacrificed herself, offered her life in exchange of Aono. Now based on the Kubinashi ritual, we know that every ghost agreement isn't made with the ghosts, but with Kubinashi sama; the ghosts are only part of the exchange. And Kubinashi sama makes use of the sacrifices however they seem fit or convenient. In the kids case it involved a game, but in Yuri's case it involved being reincarnated. We also know ghosts can't really come back, except as well.. ghosts. So that further solidifies that argument.

Part of this theory is that Nozomi's family is a family of ommyoujis. But that due to the times changing, and the lack of sacrifices, they probably left that tradition behind, and thus Nozomi was never really talked about her heritage. This part comes from the fact that Nozomi's grandma seems to know a lot about the village story with Kubinashi, and despite being a ghost she has powers that ghosts otherwise don't have, like taking over Nozomi without her permission, entering her dream, or taking control of the snake in Nozomi's dream. This also comes from her clothing, which are clothes people wear to funerals (the visitors are the ones that wear it, the deceased usually wears white clothes), but black clothes are also associated with the highest rank of Shinto priests.

Furthermore, Nozomi's grandma is effectively Nozomi's shikigami as of now, one out of devotion and not sacrifice. This is why she helping her during her dream was accepted, she is technically an extension of Nozomi.

Another part of why the agreement with Yuri is different, is because they're kids. Yuri is a virgin who's in age of conceiving (the chapter showing her having her period wasn't a coincidence). Ghosts cannot come back, but deities can, given they have a vessel. In this case, Yuri's stomach. The fact that Yuri's family has a history with Kubinashi isn't out of the question, neither. It's is possible that like Nozomi's family, Yuri's family must have a tie to the Kubinashi ritual in some way. If the Kariya family has a tie to sacrifices, it could even possibly explain what happened to Yuri's older brother. Let's not forget that in some traditions you're supposed to sacrifice your first born. This could also explain the situation behind her older brother.

Now I know this is wild but, my theory is that Yuri's parents had to sacrifice his older child, and had Midori hoping she could be sacrifices instead. As per the rules, only the first child was accepted, and they grow to hate Midori because of this. They had Yuri either as an unplanned pregnancy, or in hopes of having a second boy to replace the first one, but it failed. This is also why the first child is never really talked about.

So, not only the Kariya family has something to do with sacrifices, and abnormal virgin pregnancies related to deities; Yuri would inherently be sacrificing her first born by making her birth a god.

So, the theory is this: the village where Yuri lives is controlled by Kubinashi, and her family has a tie to it by doing sacrifices, and Nozomi's family by being priests. Yuri didn't make an agreement with Aono, she made an agreement with Kubinashi to bring back Aono, and now she has to birth Kubinashi, while Aono returned as just a dark spirit.

#i want to hold aono kun so badly i could die #aono kun ni sawaritai kana shinitai #ryuhei Aono #yuri kariya #manga theory #manga talk #manga headcanon #i literally entered galaxy brain mode #i connected the dots #i connected them

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power-handmaiden · 4 months

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Day 23: Glazed By The Gay Living Donuts

Everyone who loves tinglers loves the cover art. The only problem I have with my physical copy of "Handsome Sentient Food Pounds My Butt And Turns Me Gay" is that it doesn't have the cover art for each story. I mention this because there's something interesting about this cover in particular: the donuts don't have faces, or any human features. This reflects how the donuts themselves are explicitly seen as lesser beings in the setting than most living objects are.

The story takes place in a world where living donuts are a man-made species that doesn't have equal rights to humans in the USA, despite having the same mental capacities. Thus, their activities are restricted to underground clubs, especially when it comes to relations with humans. It's a familiar premise to fellow sci-fi fans, I'm sure. Thankfully for the donuts, it looks like packing up and leaving for countries that afford them more rights is a viable option, so while this is a somewhat dark premise for a tingler, the existence of donut sex clubs isn't as concerning as it is in similar settings in other works of fiction.

The donuts are also "faceless" in the sex scene, a group encounter with over a dozen donut strangers where by the end, the protagonist is so coated in their glaze that he can't even see them. In the end, it's a story about the joy that can be experienced by occasionally breaking out of one's safe routine and surrendering to the unknown.

#2024 tingles my butt #chuck tingle

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bigskydreaming · 9 months

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Jason, randomly, out of nowhere, without warning: Hah, I'm taller than you now. LMAO. Loser.

Dick, who knows perfectly well that height has absolutely nothing to do with self worth and also that he's supposed to be above being blatantly baited by his little brother, who is obviously the REAL loser, and needs to be reminded of that fact which so doesn't count as actually being baited: Please. You're only that tall now because you got revived in a magical pit of green ooze that optimized your growth when bringing you back from the dead which is CHEATING, and thus doesn't count. Loser.

Jason: Really? Me dying and being dunked in a magical pit of green ooze to undo the physical trauma of my MURDER and also the years of malnutrition that led to my growth previously NOT being optimized is 'cheating?'

Dick: I regretted it as soon as I said it but I can not afford to set the precedent that I made a misstep in the minefield that is our fraught sibling relationship. I have no choice but to double down. The only way this ends well is if you choose to let it slide and gracefully accept a subject change. I'll even let you pick. As long as its understood that me letting you pick is not an admission of wrongdoing on my part, its just me being Awesome and you're welcome.

Jason: First off, I have never let anything slide gracefully a day in my life and I'm damn sure not about to start NOW, when you were being an ASS....

Dick: Oh biiiiig surprise, little brother can talk a big talk about being the bigger man, but god forbid someone give him the opportunity to back it up.....

Jason: Not my fault if you're feeling particularly SMALL at the moment, pun absolutely intended. Since its not like you have a monopoly on those no matter HOW much you've tried to act like you do over the years....

Dick: Hey, I've never claimed to have a monopoly on puns. I just said I find it INTERESTING that you were totally cool with using the name, costume and SIGNATURE BRAND OF HUMOR I DELIBERATELY SPENT YEARS CULTIVATING AS A LITERAL SIGNATURE BRAND all while insisting that noooooo, no need to CREDIT your older brother who quite literally paved the way with all of that and gave you his express PERMISSION to adopt it all as your own, hahaha, who actually gives credit where credit's due, that would be so weird right....

Jason: Tell you what, since you're sooooo sore about not being properly credited for your work why don't you go ahead and figure out a royalty rate for all the times I used YOUR intellectual vigilante property or what the fuck ever, and I will PAY you to never bring it up again.....

Dick: I would LOVE that, actually. I think it would be a great way to acknowledge MY trailblazing hard work, but I think we both know you'd literally just make a show of stealing the money from Bruce to make some kind of statement about how beneath you all this is which KINDA DEFEATS THE POINT of acknowledging or crediting someone's work as WORTH something, so -

Their siblings, who have been standing right there the whole time, and who are all Very Tired, and literally just wanted to know if their older brothers wanted to go to Bat-Burger with them and are now regretting everything, why does this always happen and why don't any of them know better by now: Is it done? Is it over? Can you stop? Ever?

Dick and Jason, simultaneously swiveling in instant older sibling solidarity: Wow. So impatient. So entitled. So demanding. Why, in OUR day, we'd be LUCKY to be granted even ten minutes between patrol and bedtime, to scarf down an Alfred-Approved Healthy Snack, but its not enough that Bruce lets you run around Gotham stuffing your faces with fast food at any hour of the night, noooooooo, its gotta happen RIGHT NOW, like THIS INSTANT, how dare anyone make you wait five whole minutes to get whatever you want.....

Tim: I honestly can't tell if I hate it more when they're just being obnoxious at each other & we're stuck bearing witness or when they combine their powers of obnoxious and aim it at us.

Cass, gravely: There are no winners here.

Damian: And Father doesn't get why I wish I was an only child.

Duke, wistfully: I took being an only child for granted.

Stephanie, with popcorn: None of you appreciate good theater.

Bruce, from somewhere offscreen, even miles away: My parents died because of the theater, STEPHANIE.

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vibinwiththefrogs · 8 months

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I would really like somehow someway to put my education in agriculture towards a social movement -- in food sovereignty and sustainable systems, and things like that. But honestly I have no clue how to do so. Where I am agriculture is very dominated by more privileged white farmers that can afford technological and chemical solutions to problems, and so conventional ag is the dominant system. Everything I've read thus far makes it sound like the only way to influence that group of people is to establish a farm myself and have them come around eventually by proving I'm not insane (and proving that I make a profit), which would require personal capital that I simply don't have and couldn't get for years (if even, in this economy). There is a city nearby but it doesn't have an urban agriculture movement like a lot of major cities do, as far as I'm aware at least.

Idk, I've been spending a lot of time frustrated at the existing possibilities of what I can do where I am with my degree, that maybe I haven't been thinking and learning outside the box enough. I think I'm going to move towards learning more about grassroots movements and organizations and being a good community member. I feel that might reveal a door I can't see right now.

#rambling #if anyone has resources on community building and grassroots movements i would love u so much #but I'm going to look around myself as well #agriculture #agroecology #food sovereignty #it doesn't help that I'm an introvert but I'm determined to wedge myself in somewhere

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maryellencarter · 2 months

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yo tunglr how goest it

so! things keep Happening. i am like "i should make a post" and then things happen and i would need a whole additional post

so uh. where to start. i was in minnesota. i did not like minnesota. the social services are pretty damn solid but i did not know anybody except john and it was looking like a three year wait to get into housing, and i had to park a mile and a half away from the shelter because clearly letting homeless people park their cars next to the homeless shelter encourages them to remain homeless or something :P

and i have been trying for ten years to get back to the east coast, to the only place where i know more than one person in meatspace in the entire world. and then my tax refund came out to be Enough that i could afford to go to there. so i was like fuck it i will go to there

(can i afford to exist on the east coast? probably not. but i can't afford to exist anywhere that allows trans people. may as well be not affording to exist in a place where i have some sort of a network.)

so first i went to leia's and got a bunch of my stuff. mainly electronics and knitting. and then i came to here. i had arranged with a friend to use her address to receive mail and do laundry and shower and all those fun things you cannot do in a car. also i acquired some car-camping gadgets that plug into my car's cigarette lighter, such as an electric blanket.

(i even found out that my car has a 15amp cigarette lighter circuit like a semi truck, instead of a 10amp circuit like most passenger cars, so i can use a trucker's cookbox to heat up food! very exciting. still don't have an electric kettle but i saw a hopeful looking one at a truckstop, i'm just trying to pinch my pennies.)

anyway SO! got to friend's house. things went well for 2 nights. i successfully tested riding the metro and did not get the motion sickness. this was excellent news as i had to quit my last job in this area due to inability to arrive on time as i kept having to hop off metro and let my tummy settle

then friend's husband decided actually the plan that we thought had been cleared with him was Not okay, because he had managed to hear a totally different plan that only existed inside his head. (he does this. he has not managed to grasp that friend is against the palestinian genocide. they are both jewish so this is. a topic of regular conversation let us say)

so. i have been put up in a hotel for a week. very cozy. i just figured out how to use the coffee maker to make hot water for instant mashed potatoes. the week is running out but i have been looking into options.

so yesterday of course my phone had to go and fucking brick itself. (i think it was yesterday. time has been. somewhat. look i don't have a phone okay i can't exactly look at the date every five seconds as normal)

phone repair place gave me a free diagnosis, which was, the battery swoll up just enough to pop the back slightly open (it is not a phone that is supposed to open) and let water in and now the motherboard is ruined. it cannot be fixed

thank fuck i had picked up my electronics at leia's, thus i was able to communicate via ipad and laptop that this Had Happened. navigation is being *really goddamn hard* because i have to memorize directions from my wifi-only ipad before going out, and then somehow correlate them with very bad interstate signage (the only way i survived getting back from the phone repair place is that i'd been to an aldi in the same shopping center while my phone still worked)

i mean i could take transit but have you ever tried to take transit without a phone when transit maps are digital only

any fucking way. so then i went to the department of food stamps and all that stuff, to ask about assistance. the department told me i would have to be a resident in the county for nine months before i could even get into a shelter. also i got shuffled between several desks that were supposed to help me applicate for food stamps and medicaid before my name just... fell off the big monitor that showed all the people waiting and where they should go.

so my friend mara who is well connected in the local activism community began making Noises and we emailed a bunch of people. there is a place (nondenominational even! in minnesota you had your choice of the catholics, the "union gospel mission", or the sally army) that does free hot meals and helping applicate for shit and sometimes has charities come to give away free phones and so forth. sounds very much like the big central shelter and help center i was at in minnesota, except crucially not catholic.

(the catholics are better to deal with than the folks who require you to attend services in order to receive help. but they're still very... catholic about it.)

anyway that place says i can park there and not get towed, which is my largest concern. i have not actually gone to there yet because i did not feel like driving that far from my hotel with no gmaps until i have to. but it sounds extremely promising. i have some other emails to follow up on too but today i went and got one of my roughly-annual migraines so i was flat on my back in a dark room all day.

(at least the migraine had the decency to hit while i have a room and a bed and darkness all available. very polite of it. this has not been the case any time in the past six months and it has been a worry)

anyway i can't friggin get my lifeline provider (aka free government phone service for teh poors) to log me in on their website to look for a new phone without them being able to text my old phone, even though they offer me email verification and then just don't load the next page, so there is a solid nonzero chance i may lose this phone number. my contacts *should* be backed up to my gmail if i can get another android phone though.

so. uh. let's see. a new smartphone and service would run me close to $200 minimum. (i've been checking on a cheap service i had before becoming eligible for lifeline, which i was happy with. their very cheapest smartphone is like $114 on sale and their cheapest from a brand i've ever heard of, which i would strongly prefer, is a motorola running about $140 on sale. it's giant and clunky with a badly placed fingerprint reader but "able to get cellular service and run google maps therefrom" is my main priority right now.)

i have about $200 of my tax refund left in the bank. also i still need to buy gas. and some more food soon, i'm about down to canned chili (very edible cold in tortillas) and instant mashed potatoes (can make with cold water but they are significantly less delicious that way). and probably some other things i'm forgetting, and i haven't even started looking into the emissions test or my maryland ID and license plates. which i also wanted to budget about $200 for in case i have to pay excise tax for moving states like i did in minnesota (i don't know if i was supposed to or if the dmv fucked up). i forgot to ask if the one place does gas cards but i need to.

anyway i have to be out of my hotel room saturday morning so i am planning to spend tomorrow packing my shit back up and hauling it mostly down to my car. also i need another bath at some point. too much has been happening

sleeping in a bed has been very nice though. hadn't done that since august. i can sleep in my car and it's mostly comfortable but i'm fat and my steering wheel does not respect that

anyway. um. until more things explode i guess that is my update? jesus murphy. it's holy week and you can friggin tell. really bringing my catholic out. tomorrow is good friday and i definitely expect something more to explode. hell, my micro sd card was making noises about being corrupted and i was going to transfer stuff off it onto a new one via my computer and i haven't even started that yet because i've been so frazzled. it better not die along with jesus tomorrow, it's got all my music on it

#homelessness tw #uh i guess #who the fuck knows anymore #i haven't actually typed on a keyboard in over six months either so there's that #at least i still have my touch typing skills

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shadowi8 · 2 years

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When Ryūji and Rin moved in together, Ryūji learnt that Rin is really good at managing money.

Being a student in a dormitory away from home, Ryūji, despite having a scholarship, learned to manage his money for all the things he needed; food, school supplies, clothes, etc.

However, Rin was better than him.

Ryūji: We've got, like, 20 bucks for the rest of this week and the next one.

Rin: It's more than enough

Ryūji: ??? Did you hear I said 20 bucks?

Rin: Yes. I told you that's enough.

Ryūji: ???? I'm sure not.

Rin: Give me that. We're going to make some spending cuts on food. The good thing is that we already paid the rent, electricity and water for the month, so we don't have to worry about that. Uhm. But we can't afford to go out to eat elsewhere, so you're going to have to decline all invitations until next week. As for transport... Well, I can walk, you... Don't you have a bicycle?

Thus, Rin accommodates here and there, and although it is a bit difficult for Ryūji, they manage to survive the two weeks until the payment of both arrives.

Ryūji is pleasantly surprised, actually, because he didn't expect Rin's ideas to work to such an extent.

I don't think the church had that much money, and when they were at the True Cross Academy the money was even less, so Rin and Yukio must be used to stretch the money even if it's only $1 a day. Ryūji, on the other hand, I think he's more used to always having a little more money than necessary.

Rin is not very good at very complex things, but he can do simple math. I feel like he's more of street smart than school smart, I don't know if you get what I try to say xD

#rin okumura #ryuji suguro #ryuuji suguro #bonrin

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fadewalking · 1 year

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I think my lizard is going to die :(

Hey guys, my pet lizard is pretty sick, and I cannot afford to take her to a vet because my dog has also recently been sick and all of my money has gone to his vet bills. My dog is fine for right now, but the lizard is not.

She is open mouth breathing (really bad sign), has been refusing food, and thus has lost weight. I suspect she has a respiratory infection. If I were to be able to take her to a vet, I believe they would prescribe her Baytril (antibiotic to fight the infection) and Critical Care to increase her weight, and maybe also something special to soak her in rather than just warm water, just to help keep her hydrated as she is also looking dehydrated. With all of this, I imagine I would be looking at a bill of around $150-$200, or maybe even a little bit more, which i simply do not have right now, especially since I cannot work for the next 4 weeks.

I really don't want to lose her. So I am asking for money to take her to a vet. If I can raise at least $150-$175, I can find a way to cover the rest if it ends up being a bit more than that.

I started a fundraiser on paypal, so if y'all could please consider helping her, or sharing/boosting this post, I would really appreciate it. https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8Rv9LhIQz9

In the meantime, my plan for her care is twice daily soaks in warm water to keep her hydrated, keeping her in a smaller quarantine tank so I can easily monitor her health as right now she is in a larger one with a mate. She might be eating, but i can't really tell since the other one may be the one getting the food, but I've just moved her to the smaller tank, so I will try to give her some food. If she doesn't eat over the weekend, I have some liquid meal that I can syringe feed to her, but she hates being handled like that. But keeping her fed and hydrated is really all I can do to help make her more comfortable while she tries to fight the infection. There is nothing I can do for her respiratory infection without medical treatment. If any reptile owners out there have any advice for me, i'd appreciate it.

This is her:

#reptiblr #sorry this was so long i just wanted you guys to understand the exact details of why im asking for money #if you want even more details #my dog has been limping #we suspected a cruciate ligament tear #the xrays and meds were over $400 #and the meds continue to cost me $$#turns out it's not a cruciate tear but we still don't know what the problem is #he is doing pretty good on all the meds he's on right now #but that is an ongoing cost #and the reason i cannot work for about the next 4 weeks #is because i am in an internship program to complete my degree #which is full time #tragically it's an unpaid internship #or i would be working right now #i already have a job lined up after i finish #but right now i have no income and no extra time to work #if u feel like u need proof #you can literally see her mouth is still a little bit open in the pic i took of her #but if anyone wants it #i can provide video of her doing it too #sorry the pic is so blurry she tiny lol #i had to like mega zoom in

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levil0vesyou · 8 months

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Oh hey, I realised I can just ask for advice!

(Note: This is (mostly) not ebegging (nothing wrong with ebegging, just wanna be clear) even if it may sound that way in the first section. Please keep reading. It's pretty long tho, sorry. I'll put it under a cut as I am planning to pin it but please, please read it, especially if we're mutuals. Reblogs are welcome, especially within the german blogosphere, but don't feel obligated.)

So as some of you know, my flatmate has locked me out of the kitchen because I didn't have money for groceries and thus kept eating his food. This includes the electric kettle, microwave and most cutlery but I did accidentally keep a spoon that I still have now. (I have a small bottle of dish soap so yes, I can reuse it as I do still have bathroom access.)

I have since received my first unemployment payment which, due to my previous (necessary) overconsumption is mostly gone again now. I have 20€ and change (cash so paypal and my other debtors can't seize it) left for the rest of the month (new unemployment payment should arrive on the 1st) but I'm struggling to make it stretch.

I've been trying to search up advice on this but couldn't find anything useful. If you have links or anything, that'd be awesome. Here's the key points:

I live in Germany so subject to the German costs of living. Because I also can't afford public transport fare, my store choice is pretty much limited to a small-ish Rewe nearby. There's also a Mäc Geiz and a pharmacy but ofc those aren't grocery stores.

I do not have food allergies but I am a vegetarian and unless I'm literally dying, this situation will not change that.

As mentioned I have no access to a kettle, a microwave, a stove, a fridge or any of that. I do have access to my popcorn machine (many years of trusty service, real mvp) but that's it. I have access to a spoon and a sharp knife. Not a chef's knife tho. I do not have access to spices.

My mental health is still very bad, I cannot leave the house some days and I don't think I'd be able to do anything elaborate. Thus, whatever I eat has to be easily (or not at all) prepared but not easily perishable.

At this point, my standards are very low. My current main thing is eating unheated canned food but I'm prepared to eat basically anything I can stomach (excluding meat, as mentioned) in any way that is possible for me. I'm eating unseasoned chickpeas out of a jar right now. They're actually pretty good. I also (under normal circumstances) sometimes eat dry pasta for funsies so that might give you an idea.

I eat a lot. Less at the moment but still above average. I need plenty of carbs or I will still be hungry after. Essentially, pretend I'm feeding two people here.

I keep craving salt. I'm usually decent at telling what foods my body needs by cravings so I've been eating many crisps since I no longer have a spice cabinet. But they're 'spensive. I've also been craving eggs but I have no way to indulge since afaik boiled eggs are only sold around Easter. Also fruit juice but I can eat some vitamin gummies I still have instead, that'll probably be fine.

As stated, the budget is 20€ for 1½ weeks. I do have a bit of food already, some Zwieback, a pack of Leibniz cookies, a small jar of applesauce, a (hopefully not too spicy) can of chili sin carne, stuff like that. Also some hardtack I made months ago and just now remembered, but not a lot of it and I have no way to soak it, tho I might be able to clean an empty can.

While I'm not hoping to inflict permanent damage on my body, I am willing to take a few more risks than I usually would. That said, I can barely handle one or two short grocery trips a week so foraging isn't a good option at the moment. Also, laundry situation is difficult rn so avoiding diarrhea would be awesome 👍

While I am unemployed and legally homeless (I just haven't left yet) I have no documentation for this at the moment. I mention this because some food banks and similar require such documentation. Also, again, I have a very low travel range rn (like... 200m. 500 on a good day) but if you know like some kind of... delivery food bank?? that exists in Bavaria (dm me for the city) that would be incredible.

No, I can't get a job. I literally just tried that (again) and have reached a personal new low as a result. There were some in-between steps (like that fucking clinic) but yea, that's not an option. No, not even home office. No, not even freelance.

This one might seem entitled but. I cannot keep eating the same thing. I do have my samefoods (tho I cannot cook pasta rn for obvious reasons) but especially lately, eating the same thing for more than two or three days in a row has been low key driving me insane. Might be because I've been mostly cut off from society for months, might be because my body is sick of it, who knows. But I need variety. Same thing twice a week is fine, but more than that is pushing it. I'm very sorry.

As stated, this is not an ebegging post and I want nobody to feel any kind of obligation but if we're mutuals and you have a German bank account (or Schengen and are willing to pay the fee) and you desperately want to, you may dm me about it. But you do not have to!!! And I literally only say this because I know what it feels like to be on the other end of this. No, paypal is not an option, I'm triple digits in the red there. Water droplet on a hot stone etc.

What I am looking for is advice, especially from people who have dealt with severe financial issues and/or homelessness/kitchenlessness before. I've been kitchenless before but I had a fridge, microwave and somewhat reasonable money then so it didn't really prepare me. You can either comment or reblog directly or you can dm me or send me an ask. Anon is enabled.

Either way, thank you so much for taking the time to read all this! I love you, may you have a good day <3

#mine #personal #long post #i don't know how much i can tag this without being obnoxious tbh

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