#when last year was in itself a HUGE increase over 2020

[rowenabean]

I posted 2,275 times in 2022

That's 1,822 more posts than 2021!

360 posts created (16%)

1,915 posts reblogged (84%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@praise-the-lord-im-dead

@elodieunderglass

@magpie-trove

@thebirdandhersong

@lovesodeepandwideandwell

I tagged 1,463 of my posts in 2022

Only 36% of my posts had no tags

#rowena adventures - 164 posts

#art - 92 posts

#dracula daily - 47 posts

#ro writes - 41 posts

#medicine - 37 posts

#animalia - 36 posts

#!!! - 32 posts

#lotr - 26 posts

#underground places - 24 posts

#faith musings - 24 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#and i don't know it helped me to understand finally what her vision is actually like but also realise that this idea of really blind people

I sent 6 gifts in 2022

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

It's that time of the year again! And no I don't mean Halloween I mean Bird of the Year time! That time of the year when New Zealanders come together to duke it out for the role of Best Bird (te manu rongonui o te tau) and also experience voter fraud and controversy

(last year there was no voter fraud but there WAS controversy that a species of bat was a) allowed to compete and b) won. I eagerly await this year's controversy, it's sure to be good.)

This year I am supporting the tawaki/fiordland crested penguin, because Those Eyebrows. I'm pretty sure you don't have to be in NZ to vote, please join me in supporting him! (ideally in a non-fraudulent manner, but you do you)

47 notes - Posted October 17, 2022

#4

I absolutely loved Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad trilogy as a kid and it turns out it has infected me with brain worms, still can't see a roadworks sign without thinking "Road Works Ahead? Sure hope it does!" or see a shop sign without thinking about the dreaded Prices Slashed stalking the corridors

66 notes - Posted August 23, 2022

#3

There’s a GP in NZ who does these amazing embroideries representing medical conditions (also lots of uterus-related embroideries which are amazing) and please look at my favourites!

(images: the first image is an embroidery of a hand skeleton with thistles growing out of it. The second image is also embroidered showing part of a pelvis and upper femur with the interior of the femur replaced by honeycomb.)

These are rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis - rheumatoid arthritis is a very painful autoimmune arthritis which usually affects hand joints (as well as other joints in some people); osteoporosis is bone thinning/weakening.

I bought two of her uterus prints (menorrhagia/shark week and menstruation) for my clinic room and please check them out here!

120 notes - Posted April 10, 2022

#2

One of the things I really like about Terry Pratchett is the way he talks about death? Like when I was a kid it was just a joke how Death is in every book (or close to? I’m not sure) but then I became a doctor in my mid-twenties, and was utterly caught by how close to death I walked in my day to day, and how much it was not something I could share with anyone I knew (underneath about age 70). But Terry got it. And that was when I found I pulled out the witches books - and especially Tiffany Aching, and A Hat Full of Sky - and read and reread those passages because somehow he understood what it was like to be the person standing next to the door and holding it open for someone else to pass through

171 notes - Posted March 28, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Mānawatia a Matariki!

Today we get a brand new public holiday in NZ which is firstly fun because mostly all our holidays are in summer, but also because it's the first holiday that celebrates specifically Māori knowledge - different regions have different stories but in many regions this is the start of the new year

This is a fantastic article about matauranga Māori/indigenous knowledge from the astronomer who has done the most for bringing it back

"From a Māori point of view, there’s no use understanding something in science unless you go on to understand how it’s connected to everything else. A piece of knowledge can be taken out and explored on its own, but, for us, it only has real purpose and meaning when it’s all stitched together in one fabric."

267 notes - Posted June 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #ok so I never showed you the photo of my uterus embroideries in my clinic room #but i've been meaning to ask if you have any suggestions for medical-themed art that's lowkey enough not to scare people away? #need more things on my clinic walls #bonus points for reo maori #kinda funny how many times more i posted this year than last #when last year was in itself a HUGE increase over 2020 #(in which i posted. like 12 times. all year.) #i've been here for 9 years but i have NOT been equally active that whole time #also i love that !!! is one of my top tags because it's not like an actual tag i use it's just a reaction i have to some things #apparently fairly often

[drdemonprince]

I wanted to thank you for Unmasking Autism. Beyond the content, which is both extremely relatable and extremely insightful, I am overjoyed with how much listening to it has pulled me in and kept me engaged. I have struggled with reading or even listening to audio books since my diagnosis because my ability to read and process information was the biggest casualty of the intense burnout that began when my mom died in 2020 that ultimately led to my diagnosis. Reading just broke for me, and it's been gut wrenching.

This is the first book I have attempted to read or listen to that I am devouring the way I used to devour books, and it is because so much of it is relatable and articulated in a way that resonates. The way you write about your experiences is so similar to how I describe my own, even when describing traits where I present very differently. You understand and recognize the incredible nuance and intersection of autism and other parts of identity and life experience, but you present it in a way that is understandable and relatable. The infinite complexity is acknowledged and embraced without the explanation itself being needlessly complicated.

Unlike every other audio book I have tried, I rarely find myself having to rewind to try to parse something that didn't make sense on first listen, which is filling me with such joy because I have struggled so much to recover my reading ability and while audio books have been somewhat more accessible because my visual challenges aren't an obstacle, it's still been such a source of pain to struggle to understand and process books. It felt like losing something that was a huge part of my life and a major form of emotional self care.

I plan to read the text version once I finish the audio book. The way this has woken up parts of my brain that felt locked away is giving me confidence to try to break into the rest of those walled off areas again. It might sound hyperbolic, but it feels like you fixed part of my brain that I thought might be gone for good. This is the book I needed right now to feel more like myself. It needed to be this topic, something which has been central to every aspect of my life for so long and which I am still trying to understand. It needed to be written this way, with a voice that is clear and direct. It needed to be written by someone who's understanding is personal but also communal, someone who understands the intersections of identity that lead to inequity and hostility for marginalized communities.

I really needed this right now.

Thank you so much.

This is such an immensely lovely comment to receive, I've been sitting with it the last few days not knowing what to say. I'm really glad you've found a way to enjoy and reconnect with reading and that you're feeling empowered to do more.

Over the years I've had long lulls between being able to enjoy any books, video games, or even music at times, and losing an ability to access a type of joy I once considered a big part of me is very tough and deadening. But rediscovering those passions and the ability to take them in and appreciate them is like coming back alive.

(I just had that kind of deadened lull recently with gaming-- because of the medium being associated with my ex, I havent been able to enjoy it the last couple years for myself.

but then i rediscovered the passion of being swept up with a wonderful, thought provoking game on my most recent play thru of disco elysium and fuck, the dora conversation had me really tearing up. and all the conversations about ideology in the game have me feeling passionate about political psychology, a field i studied for years and then abandoned, for the first time in a long, long while.)

Sending you well wishes and hoping that anybody else who is reading this who has been unable to enjoy their passions the past few years finds a way to reignite that spark again soon, too. I think lockdown and the breakdown of regular daily rhythms combined with increased social media usage made it very, very hard for me to gear shift into enjoying challenging art for a *while*, and from what i've seen and heard many people are reporting the same. may it all come back for us.

anyway, yeah, thank you for telling me. im glad my book was able to help get you back on the road to enjoying books. i was very intentional when i was writing it about signposting everything that i was going to say and explaining things both thoroughly and clearly, trusting that the reader could understand and find pleasure in groking all the the scientific work and sociopolitical argumentation so long as it was presented to them in sensible way. i was so fortunate that my editor allowed me to really get into the weeds and parse through the nuances of many topics while also encouraging me to put things plainly and compassionately.

i dont know if my next book is quite up to snuff in this regard yet -- it's really dense, and i seem to have lost some of the ability to slowly break down complex topics sometimes lately, so your message is a necessary reminder to put in that work. if i can't explain something simply, i dont yet understand it, and that means i have some more work to do.

[redhillconfetti]

Blog post 03-02-2023 - Sickness

When you decide to run a small business, the freedom it gives you to run your own schedule is always a huge draw when compared to being an employee of someone else’s business, however whilst things look great all the perks of self employment and flexible schedules can mean for a while you are looking through rose tinted glasses, but with all planning for fun and good things, you also need to plan for the bad and boring.

When I first quit my corporate job to go self employed full time, I had to look at my outgoing expenses each month, with the first being my pension. I had to reduce my monthly payment, but over time I've increased this gradually. This is something I was able to plan for and incorporate into each year’s projections. I also decided to pull off 20% of each week's earnings and just store them in an instant access savings account. It barely makes any interest, but my initial idea for this was to be a pot of instant money should I have any large expenses.

What this actually meant is I had a backup for when I was too sick to work. 

If the last three years has taught us anything, it's that a bad virus or illness can appear out of nowhere and throw everything on its head with regards to running a business. You can’t predict when you will be ill, and it can always come at the most inconvenient time. Unfortunately that’s what happened to me this week.

We’re now at the first few days of February, but since the start of January I had been feeling run down and had a slight tickle of a cough. As January is always a quiet month I have been able to reduce my working hours in order to get some rest and hopefully let my body restore itself. However, after a very busy two days last weekend, this Monday that cough rapidly deteriorated. I had a dry cough that would empty my lungs at any given point, every single bone and joint in my body ached beyond belief, migraine, nausea, elevated temperature, photosensitivity to light and also noise. I had definitely developed something far more severe than just a simple tickly cough. After testing for Covid and that thankfully coming up negative, a call to the NHS 111 service determined it was likely to be the RSV virus, something that has been prevalent in our area for the last few weeks.

I had little choice but to take the week ‘off’. I’m thankful my husband was able to arrange to work from home and thus take our son to and from school, and for the better part of the week I've been able to do little more than sip water whilst wrapped in a blanket and binge watch Criminal Minds on Disney+. What hasn’t helped my recovery is the lack of medicated cold & flu medications that pharmacies locally haven’t been able to source, but that lack of supply is more down to Brexit. But this isn’t a Brexit blog post so we’ll touch on that in the future.

With having a week off, I had to decide whether or not to shut the shops or not. In the end I decided to keep them on, and just allow the natural flow of orders to come in. I completely ignored social media this week, the admin has piled up, no new listing or manufacturing. Instead I packed what orders did come in then left them for 24 hours after sanitising them. If 2020 taught us anything, it's how to protect others and stop the spread of any viruses. After 24 hours and full sanitisation, my husband took the parcels to their drop off points meaning i didn’t have to leave the house.

Through all this I was thankful that I had that small reserve in savings. I could take my time this week to just get better without having the added pressure and worry that I still had to bring in a full week’s wage. My pension payment was able to be covered and this week’s bills have been paid.

Here in the UK if you are employed by a company, most of the time they will offer a certain amount of sick days where you get paid full pay, or a high percentage of full pay (in the past it’s usually been 12 days at companies i’ve worked for). After that the company can draw from the government what’s called SSP - statutory sick pay - which is just under £100 per week, payable for up to 28 weeks. It is only applicable if you are employed by a company. You cannot claim this if you are self employed.

I’m sorry if this week’s blog post is a little disjointed, i’m still in a bit of a fog of flu meds and lack of sleep, but hopefully next weeks post will be something a little more upbeat and fluffy!

Simone

x

[futanariwriter]

CH.9 The Portal to Hell

 https://5kyeeidtal.bandcamp.com/album/eisenlager-idtal-i-2-2020-1123-33-eisen-beton-kopf-remix-by-eisenlager

Ok, so I seem to have stumbled upon a mysterious portal to the nether…am I going to possibly risk being completely vaporized by it and never seen again or escape that sociopathic bat for good and come back when I can get the ship started? The choice really wasn’t that hard. The portal took her to a planet called Terra or earth as some call it. However, in this reality earth had been taken over by zombies in the year 2021 and few survivors remained. This is the story of those survivors…

The Living Dead approached Aranea swiftly but they were no match for her powerful Stone Fist. Come get some bitch she said, taunting them. From the distance, a lone sniper fired. The <Electro-Dragon> did a rolling scream…. “I am gonna fuck up your entire universe and everything in it!” The Sniper missed again. You could hear something fall from the nearby redwood tree in which it was stationed. They were close to the assassin now but zombies blocked her from its deadly projectiles. They were still completely naked with full-body tattoos of her tribe and their sacred star sign of the apprentice. Her large tits and huge constantly erect nipples were exposed only wearing the ship's key, but armor would soon become a priority after this debacle. The sniper looked like a definite reptilian of some species. He was green like Aranea but with Red markings and a much smaller stubbier tail...figures. He pulled out Golden twin Uzis on Aranea, firing them till the 32-round 9mm clips were emptied into them. They dodged flying out of the way with their dragon wings and then used the palms of their hands to shoot the hands off the assailant. They then used their third eye chakra to harness the power of pure energy in the atmosphere to vaporize the remains of the passed-out and hand-less lizard. This is how she got the Twin Uzis which were gold and matched her overly excited purple and gold nipples.

She was all alone now, just drifting through the eerie, wasteland which was clearly haunted and had screeching ghosts flying all around it. It was truly hell on earth. They spent almost a whole year smashing zombie skulls with her stone cestus, trying to heal the soul of this infected planet. Eventually, though they just gave up. During this time they encountered other bipedal animals. There Was Loretta the Red Panda, who introduced Aranea to the others. A group of survivors living in the RedWoods in an old 1981 Vanagon. Around it was all their motorcycle which they held as dear as life itself.

 The day they met they played a fun game called Farkle and vaporized Dragons-Tongue flowers with a special pipe made of "Qoiten Glass". She trained with the group for days doing pull-ups on the redwoods branches. There was also Navi and a young Furry Where-wolf who loved to howl at the moon as do all lycanthropes. The group was called 'The Skull-Crushers' In addition to Navi there was also Kassandra a Bipedal Naga as there called on Rayuba, or in the common tongue cobra. They also regularly had raves in the forest with lights made from glowing rocks found in nearby mines. 

I had to wonder what potential these light-emitting stones emitted."Could they possibly be used to increase the power of my Cestus?" Repair the metal armor back on my ship perhaps? They put of few of them in their pocket for safe keeping. 

After sufficiently meditating on the idea of entering & Breeding each other's bodies the time had come for them to have an erotic Orgy to put it simply. They all sat in a square and began scissoring, moaning, and squirting on each other. After this happened, they all decided it was time to eat each other out in a big square circle, this lasted for about an hour until no one could breathe and they had to take a break. After some gentle cuddling Aranea used their penis to Impregnate Lorreta, Navi, and Cassandra. Simultaniously in one night.

[thetoxicgamer]

The Last of Us Part 1 Sales Skyrocket Just in Time for PC Launch

The HBO series The Last of Us has only had a few episodes, yet it has already established itself as a huge success. With more than ten million views in just two days, we now have The Last of Us PC release date and the remainder of the show to look forward to. The drama has helped drive up PlayStation game sales, which implies a successful launch for the PC port as well. In the last week alone the UK boxed sales have seen The Last of Us series undergo a meteoric rise, as new and old players alike come back to one of Naughty Dog’s most well-received set of games. The Last of Us Part 1 remake has seen an increase of 238% in sales week-on-week, while the original The Last of Us game has seen a 322% sales increase as well (via GamesIndustry.biz). These are UK-only console sales, but they absolutely act as a good indication of how The Last of US series on HBO has acted as a perfect piece of cross-promotion. We saw something very similar last year, as Cyberpunk 2077 sales soared past 20 million thanks to Netflix’s Edgerunners series. What does all of this mean for The Last of Us Part 1 PC port then? Well, it’s set to launch right at the tail end of the nine-episode run of the HBO show, between episodes seven and eight, so I think we’re going to see a strong showing when it comes to launch on both Steam and the Epic Games Store. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW5NwaUXgIA The Last of Us series has already proved it’s going to be big, so I can see the strategy of letting word of mouth spread and new viewers catch up before dropping The Last of Us remake on PC. I wouldn’t be surprised if the last two episodes of the show even include a message saying ‘play The Last of Us on PC now’, as while both games have been huge hits for the PlayStation ecosystem, the pool of PC players is another massive player base to pull from. Naughty Dog has also confirmed that The Last of Us PC port will run on Steam Deck, so that’s yet another group of players the upcoming Steam release can tap into as well. There’s been no official word on a The Last of Us Part 2 PC release date as of now, but with Marvel’s Spider-Man on PC and Uncharted on PC as well, it’s clear that PlayStation is making an effort to port over exclusives after a certain period of time, and I don’t think 2020’s The Last of Us Part 2 will become an exception to this rule. While you wait for The Last of Us Part 1 PC release date, you should check out lists of the best action-adventure games and best stealth games to tide you over. Read the full article

[davieswealthmanagement]

The Two Big Challenges with Investing in Bitcoin

https://youtu.be/mNjD7ftOPTI The Two Big Challenges with Investing in Bitcoin Bitcoins don’t generate cash and you need to have (almost) perfect timing If you've been watching bitcoin prices lately, you already know they've made a spectacular run over the last year. In fact, as of early February 2022, a single bitcoin is valued at over $40,000, having peaked at over $64,000 just a few months ago in November 2021. To put things in perspective, bitcoin values were in the $300 – $400 range for much of 2015 and about $5,000 when the pandemic started in March 2020.   Those who invested in bitcoins years ago are likely rejoicing. But, should you add bitcoin to your retirement portfolio? What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a crypto-currency traded online and used by businesses around the globe. In fact, one of the most attractive advantages of bitcoins is that it can cross borders easily – facilitating international trade. But for the purposes of investing, bitcoins are no different from any other currency or commodity. In other words, bitcoin can be lumped into the same category as the U.S. Dollar, the Euro, the Japanese Yen and the Swiss franc as well as gold, wheat, oil, corn and uranium. As such, at any given time, bitcoins are worth whatever the market says they're worth (meaning whatever someone else will pay). While this isn't necessarily a problem in itself, investing in bitcoins does come with two very big challenges. Challenge #1: Not Generating Cash When you invest in bitcoins – or any other commodities or currencies – you are investing based on price appreciation potential alone – meaning you are only rewarded if the price goes up relative to the U.S. dollar. So an investment in bitcoins is very different from conventional investments found in your retirement portfolio – stocks and bonds – in that those conventional investments offer the chance to generate cash. Think of it this way: when you invest in a stock or a stock fund, that means you own a slice of a business (or businesses). And businesses exist to make money. As an “owner” of that business, you are entitled to a slice of that money. And that money is either used to reinvest in the business, which further increases the value of your slice or it’s paid out as a dividend. No matter what occurs, that stock generates cash – which makes those who own shares more money. Similarly, bonds distribute cash too, usually twice a year. So as a bond holder, you usually get back your original investment plus cash during the holding period. That is not at all the case for bitcoin, gold, or other commodities. Those types of “investments” do not generate cash at all. Instead, investors can only hope that they rise in value with the price of inflation. Further, it costs money to get into bitcoins because you must "buy" them and you won’t be able to buy them at the value you see posted online. You will have to pay a little bit extra, otherwise, the person selling you the bitcoins has no incentive to do so. Challenge #2: Getting the Timing Perfect In many respects, with investments like bitcoin, you really have to get the timing right. And as most of us know, the vast majority of individual investors can’t do that with stocks. Should you maybe consider investing in bitcoins as you would a lottery ticket (it only costs $1 and you might win huge)? That’s probably hyperbole, but you might consider limiting your investment in bitcoins to an amount you can afford to lose – and that’s not a good idea when constructing your retirement portfolio. Your retirement portfolio should contain low-cost, diversified investments that aren’t quite as volatile as bitcoin or other currencies and commodities. And your retirement portfolio should be part of your long-term investment strategy. Copyright © 2022 FMeX. All rights reserved. Distributed by Financial Media Exchange. ✅ BOOK AN APPOINTMENT TODAY: https://calendly.com/tdwealth =========================================================== 🔴 SEE ALL OUR LATEST BLOG POSTS: https://tdwealth.net/articles If you like the content, smash that like button! It tells YouTube you were here, and the Youtube algorithm will show the video to others who may be interested in content like this. So, please hit that LIKE button!💥 🎯🎯🎯Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChmBYECKIzlEBFDDDBu-UIg ✅ Contact me: [email protected] 🔥🔥🔥 ====== ===Get Our FREE GUIDES  ========== 🔥🔥🔥 🎯Retirement Income: The Transition into Retirement: https://davieswealth.tdwealth.net/retirement-income-transition-into-retirement 🎯Beginner's Guide to Investing Basics: https://davieswealth.tdwealth.net/investing-basics ✅ LET’S GET SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaviesWealthManagement Twitter: https://twitter.com/TDWealthNet Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/daviesrthomas Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TdwealthNetWealthManagement Lat and Long 27.17404889406371, -80.24410438798957 Davies Wealth Management 684 SE Monterey Road Stuart, FL 34994 772-210-4031 https://TDWealth.Net DISCLAIMER **Davies Wealth Management makes content available as a service to its clients and other visitors, to be used for informational purposes only. Davies Wealth Management provides accurate and timely information, however you should always consult with a retirement, tax, or legal professional prior to taking any action.   Read the full article

[bananadeveloper]

Best mac strategy games 2021

But Immortals is more self-consciously gamey than Breath of the Wild, and with great results. It’s true that Immortals Fenyx Rising’s huge, explorable open world can’t reach the creative heights of 2018’s Zelda sequel - that game’s true successor on this list is Halo Infinite. Somehow, this description both over- and undersells what really makes Immortals special - other than its stupidly spelled name. When Immortals Fenyx Rising was released in December 2020 - mere weeks after our voting deadline for last year’s top 50 - the most uncharitable descriptions of the game essentially called it a Breath of the Wild clone with a coat of Greek mythology paint. And that’s exciting.Īnyway, enough from me. And while many might fit cleanly into a single genre, many more defy a basic label. Some had something to say about our cultural landscape, and some were just really damn fun. Whether you’ve been following along with each new release throughout the year, or you’re popping in now to see what you missed, the following is a collection of games that we think encapsulated 2021. Genres are helpful in the brochure, but they can only get you so far - at a certain point, you need a bit of patience, a lot of curiosity, and maybe a tour guide or two. Video games are a towering monument to our collective imagination - they’re part haunted castle, part Freudian psychoscape, part interactive museum whose exhibits each bleed into the next. Unsighted posed that age-old question: If we’re all going to die, then why care about anything at all? In one way or another, a slew of our favorite games were about the ways we deal with catastrophe, and move forward in its wake. Unpacking explored humans’ talent for making a home, even as we grieve. But you all need to play it.”Īs I see them all laid out on this page, I also recognize that many of the year’s best titles were about hope. It became what felt like a weekly occurrence here at Polygon for someone to unmute their microphone during a Zoom meeting and say something along the lines of: “So, I played this game called Inscryption this weekend. I’m hard-pressed to describe so many of 2021’s best games because, well, so many of them are hard to describe. My personal favorite was about storytelling itself, and our ability to weave our own interior narratives out of emergent fantasy adventures. Another was about crushing rich people in Argentine wineries. Some games were about combating self-doubt. With fewer AAA attention magnets, and a renewed collective appreciation for the escapist and social benefits of the medium, it felt like we were all more willing to try something that fell outside of our comfort zone. In fact, it was a weird, wonderful, disorienting labyrinth of dazzling titles. The release schedule felt altogether calm, as an increasing number of blockbuster video games moved out of this year and into the next.īut in trying to find a unifying thread for the games that defined the last 12 months, I’m struck by the fact that this year wasn’t really calm at all. Isolation may not be the norm, but for many, it is still the default. The COVID-19 pandemic continues and supply chains remain choked. In some ways, this year felt like more of the same.

#Best mac strategy games 2021

[cryptocrit]

Litecoin price prediction: What will be the expected price on 2025?

Litecoin (LTC) is a cryptocurrency created from a fork on the Bitcoin blockchain in 2011. It was originally designed to address developers' concerns that Bitcoin was becoming more centralized and to make it more difficult for large mining companies to gain a upper hand in mining. Although in the end it stopped mining companies taking the lion's share of Litecoin mining, the cryptocurrency has reinvented itself into a mineable coin and a peer-to-peer payment system. Like bitcoin, litecoin is a form of digital currency. Using blockchain technology, Litecoin can be used to transfer funds directly between individuals or businesses. This ensures that the public accounts of all transactions are recorded and allows the fund to operate a seamless payment system without government oversight or scrutiny.

 Litecoin (LTC) is an off spring of Bitcoin cryptocurrency created by Charlie Lee in 2011. Litecoin is designed to enable low-cost peer-to-peer payments. It is one of the top 5 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

Litecoin market captitalization?

Litecoin market capitalization at the beginning of 2020 was the highest on record, more than 10 billion US dollars and the value increased by 100% since August 2020. The market cap is calculated by multiplying the number of Litecoins distributed by the price of Litecoin. However, when compared to Bitcoin's market cap and Ethereum's market cap, Litecoin's number is relatively small. The live price of Litecoin (LTC) today is $54.8532, and while Litecoin is currently distributed at 71,236,643.78 LTC, its market capitalization stands at $3,907,560,273. In the last 24 hours, the price of LTC moved $1.4915 or 0.03% while $223,837,200 of LTC was traded on various exchanges. The evaluation of LTC currently places it in 23rd place in the cryptocurrency market based on market capitalization.

Litecoin (LTC) live price today is $54.8411, and given that Litecoin is currently distributed at 71,236,643.78 LTC, its market capitalization is $3,906,697,912. In the last 24 hours, the price of LTC moved $1.4915 or 0.03% while $223,837,200 of LTC was traded on various exchanges. The evaluation of LTC currently places it in 23rd place in the cryptocurrency market based on market capitalization.

Trading history of Litecoin?

There have been some interesting moments in the long history of Litecoin price, and if you want to know more about its movements, you have come to the right place. We've compiled everything you need to know about Litecoin's past price action - and various factors affecting it.

After its launch, Litecoin's growth was aided by its availability and increased liquidity in early exchanges such as BTC-e. During the month of November 2013, the absolute value of Litecoin experienced a huge growth that included a 100% increase in 24 hours.

When Litecoin was first introduced in 2011, two years after Bitcoin, it gained momentum and reached a price per coin of $0.30. By mid-November 2013, Litecoin's price had risen above $4, then in less than a week, it had risen over 1000% to a high of around $50. This was followed, however, by a sudden crash below $10 and the previous high would not move for a few years.

Read full article

#litecoin #cryptocurrencies #crypto investment tips #crypto investors #crypto investing

[stageyrebecca]

Are concert revivals the answer to post-Covid theatre?

It's no surprise to anyone that theatres are struggling to get numbers in post-Covid; not least because there was an initial nervousness to head back into a room full of 1,000 others, but the cost of living is leaving many with less disposable cash.

And it seems theatre's answer to this is revive well-known modern shows... in a different format.

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical's 2020 tour was lost to Covid, but returned as an all-new actor-musician production in collaboration with three regional theatres, including Leicester Curve. This theatre has been on a roll as they also revived Billy Elliot and A Chorus Line. Kinky Boots' new production kicked off in Ipswich. We've had three revivals of Gypsy since Sondheim passed last year. And 42nd Street was announced to be returning to London under different creatives.

Over the summer, among others, we saw concert revivals of Chess and Kinky Boots, and as of today, Once the musical has been announced to be returning in concert form.

That's just to name a few off the top of my head!

Gypsy, Kinky Boots, 42nd Street and Billy Elliot revivals don't appear to be adding anything strikingly different to the material, unlike actor-muso Beautiful. We just (over the last 8 years) have had full-scale West End versions of all of these shows so they're firmly in the memory of a lot of theatre fans' memories. In fact, we've even got all except Beautiful professionally recorded.

However, if it's a chance for people to relive some incredible theatre from the last few years in some form or another because it gets them back into the theatres, it makes financial and artistic sense.

But there's the rub: I do not understand concert versions. I just don't.

For a start, they actively strip back what we love so much about so many of these shows such as choreography, huge sets and costume.

The concerts have consistently been in West End theatres in evenings, so chances are that folks outside of London will actively need to make arrangements to stay over. And I don't overly want to get home late when I've got to go to work the next morning in order to experience these 'one-off' events.

Chess already has a filmed concert version readily available, and the full-scale production was at the Coliseum only a handful of years ago.

And the price increase? Extortionate. I paid £15 to see Chess at the front of the Balcony at the Coliseum, but the equivalent seat for the half-staged concert version was £51.20!

I love Kinky Boots as a show, but it's the full-scale choreography, the costumes, the lighting, the characterisation that makes Kinky Boots what it is. The score just by itself is just alright pop songs.

I didn't attend the concert - not least because it cost £84.20 for the equivalent seats I previously sat in for a full-scale production of Kinky Boots (which totals more than the three tickets I paid for to see it before). But because the amateur licence has recently been released, I can see it in a number of venues across the country and support local theatre - which I already have.

And now we've had Once the musical in concert announced, it follows another production which fell to Covid. It's even more expensive than the previous two concerts, boasting £116 for front Stalls, and the cheapest Stalls seat being £74. Even the back of the Grand Circle is £39.

For what it's worth, I paid £27.75 for a ticket to the full-scale production of Once.

But what also gets me is that these productions manage to piggyback off the awards the originals won.

For example, Once the musical in concert has been advertising it as a 'Winner of 8 Tony Awards'. Well, that'd be true if it was the same leading man, director, orchestrator, scenic, sound and lighting designers - but we know that's not the case.

So the concert version just naturally won't have all the award-winning elements of the original production.

I understand that producers are under immense pressure to deliver as we approach a recession. But to me it looks like a lot of work goes into these concerts (some have had more advanced choreography and costumes) for just... a one-off.

Why is there only demand for one-off performances? Is it because they want more well-known names attached to the shows and they're already tied up in other longer running productions? Do these one-offs rake in a lot of money to give an initial boost?

So many questions!

To me, I'm not sure the material of each concert holds up on its own. And perhaps that's why they've nearly all had West End star casts to cover for the mildly lacklustre choices of show. And they must be giving the theatres, production companies and performers enough of a boost financially and professionally to make all the work that goes into these worth it.

But as an audience member, I just can't imagine wanting to see the majority of these concert productions, particularly at a cost which is higher than any full scale production I've been lucky enough to see before. I could just listen to the albums on Spotify, unless I'm particularly keen to see one of the billed performers.

I think that producers should consider audience members and their situations a little more. A big ask? Probably. But it makes me wonder who this is for, as this is pricing out under-30s, especially outside of London, who are the next generation of theatre-goers. And if they're not the target audience, then they should be. Producers should be concerned about the long-term effects of excluding this audience group.

There's now this tendency to get folks excited over a concert announcement on Twitter due to a build up, it then receiving lots of attention particularly from younger folks, then the price points are either driving them away, or make them feel like they need to be part of the exclusive one night only event because their fav is in it.

If you've made it this far, I'd love to know - what do you think? Are these concerts the answer to post-Covid financial recovery in the theatre world?

[dailytomlinson]

2020 is finally coming to an end, and we can’t say we’re disappointed about it. It sure has been a long way for everyone, yet some artists had a lot on their plate. Take a look at Louis Tomlinson’s year. As complicated as 2020 has been for him, he still unlocked achievements and outdid himself in the best way. So let’s take a look at how Louis Tomlinson made 2020 his year, let’s go!

Louis Tomlinson Released His Debut Solo Album Walls

After four years of anticipation, and a good two years of teasing, Louis released his debut album, Walls, on January 31st. The record received positive critics and fantastic feedback from his loyal Louies. From the party anthem ‘Kill My Mind’ to the emotional ‘Two Of Us’, with a few sweet escapes such as ‘Too Young’, not to mention the punchy ‘Always You’, the album brought the fans everything they had hoped for. In addition to that, Louis stole our hearts with heartfelt and sincere lyrics that only he has the secret of. Magic.

Louis Started His Worldwide Tour And Gave His First Solo Show

Louis started his worldwide tour in March before it got interrupted. Touring was what he had always been looking forward to, ever since he’d decided to start a solo career. Louis had expressed the exciting feeling and positive stress that he feels right before going on stage. Luckily enough, he had the time to perform twice in Spain at the beginning of March. His first whole solo show took place at Razzmatazz, in Barcelona, and reunited around 2000 fans (sold out). An hour and a half of musical bliss, a performer who shares a lot with his fans, and an incredibly talented band. What else?

Walls Went Number #1 In 53 Countries And Worldwide Upon Release

Louis Tomlinson made 2020 his year in the charts too. He always had a dedicated fandom, and that’s no surprise. However, he seemingly wasn’t expecting the global success of his debut album Walls. Indeed, it went number #1 on iTunes in 53 countries upon its release on January 31st, including the United Kingdom and the major part of South America. Not only that, but the album also climbed the iTunes Worldwide Chart to reach #1 in a matter of hours. Legends only.

Louis Released The Music Video for ‘Walls’, And It’s A Masterpiece

January 16th revealed the final single off Walls, the album, which was none other than the title track itself. Louis described it then as his proudest song on the album, with strong influences of Oasis. A few days later, on the 21st, Louis blessed us with the music video, shot in Morocco by Charlie Ligthening. The camera follows Louis through the Sahara desert and traces his path through a ballroom and dancing crowds. Some other scenes show him surrounded by masked people, or behind four silhouettes that he identified as his four former bandmates. The Easter eggs, the quality of the video, and the suit (yes, the suit, don’t you lie) made it a fans’ favorite, for it now counts more than 12 Million views.

Louis Reached 1.4 Billion Streams on Spotify

It looks like the fans’ streaming parties paid off this year. With only one album, four other songs, and remixes or edits, Louis reached the milestone of 1.4 Billion streams on Spotify this year. Additionally, he also made it to 4 Million followers on the platform. The numbers speak for themselves, and the achievement is huge for an artist who only received little promotion for a debut album, stopped on its way due to the pandemic. Here’s to his first billion, and some more soon! Overall, Louis knows he can count on his devoted Louies to increase the number of streams significantly with new challenges, the way they did it in December with #12DaysOfWalls. (Original idea by @miss_always_you).

He Launched Only The Poets Internationally

If you’re a Louie, there are big chances that this name rings a bell. Only The Poets, a band coming from Reading in the UK, literally skyrocketed this year. After their first performance as Louis’ first act on stage at Scala in February 2020, their popularity started increasing. And Louis confirming them as his first European act only made it better for them. They continued their year with live-streams, private Zoom calls, and pre-listening sessions of their singles with fans. They ended it with a social distanced show in Banbury and a Zoom Tour in a few European countries and South America. And the mutual support Louis and these lads give each other is heartwarming.

Louis Decided To Part Ways With Syco

This one is for the fans. After ten years of collaboration with Sony’s label, Syco, Louis decided to part ways with them for a new adventure. He officially announced his decision with a tweet on July 11th that took no time to break the Internet. Soon enough, hashtags related to the news trended around Twitter, other artists, and radios congratulated him on his decision. Louies celebrated with funny memes and GIFs but made sure to surround Louis with love and support through it all. Now we wait (for the new label announcement).

Louis Didn’t Only Postpone His Tour, He Made It Bigger

Another proof that Louis Tomlinson made 2020 better. Not only did Louis pursue his dream and goal to tour, but he also grew it out. After postponing the tour three times, the newly announced European dates include a few more stops, including Reykjavik (Iceland), Warsaw (Poland), Prag (Czech Republic), Vienna (Austria), Zurich (Switzerland), and an additional date in Paris (France)! The shows sold out in less than 40 minutes, making it more than 15,000 tickets purchased. Due to the high demand in Zurich, the venue changed and 500 more tickets went on sale! In Argentina, a wild mobilization of fans on Twitter led him to open the whole Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires. Some additional tickets went on sale for the Chilean show as well. And guess what? They all sold out.

Louis Was Crowned Artist Of The Summer With 13 Million Votes

Still, doubting that Louis Tomlinson made 2020 his year? A radio station from Philadelphia, @965TDY, launched a Twitter award ceremony last summer to crown an artist ‘Artist Of The Summer’. Many polls, 13 Million votes, and 26 Billion points later, Louis was elected and was all over Twitter thanking his fans for their dedication. Louies had acquired the absolute record of 26 Billion points thanks to their votes on the radio station’s website, and thanks to their mass voting parties. Another proof that Louis and his fans are unstoppable altogether. The support is always undeniably strong, and so is the bond between the artist and the fans. Happy days.

Walls Magically Rises On The Itunes Charts In October

Indeed, nine months after its release, a new wave of fans bought the album on iTunes and made it rise in the charts. The magic truly happened after @UpdateHLD (a Twitter update account), reminded new fans to purchase the album if they had not already. Considering Louis gained a certain amount of fans during the global lockdown, the initiative went successful, and soon enough, Walls was climbing the charts just like it did on January 31st. As incredible as it seems, it even received its first #1 on the USA iTunes chart. Louis didn’t miss on thanking his fans for their continuous support, expressing how amazed he was by the chart climb.

Louis Offered An Online Live-Stream Show, #LTLivestream

Early December, Louis announced his first live-stream show from London for December 12th, entitled #LTLivestream. He promised a very special show, hosted by the platform Veeps, and didn’t lie. The general sale for the tickets (of course) crashed the website, making everyone panic. Louis then confirmed that the tickets were unlimited. The show was as incredible as originally announced, with an orchestra, fans participating through a digital wall, and a new haircut that conquered the fans. The numbers later revealed that Louis had sold over 160,000 tickets. #LTLivestream is the most sold live-stream for a male solo artist in 2020. Being the generous philanthropist that Louis is, he has given the $2.8 Million raised to many charities and his touring crew. The charities benefitting from the funds are FareShare UK, StageHand, Crew Nation, and Bluebell Wood. And they wonder why we love him.

Louis Surprised His Fans With A New Song Called ‘Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy’

Last but not least, after spending a year on a rollercoaster, Louis revealed a brand new song during #LTLivestream. He had been hinting at it through a teaser for the live-stream and via a cryptic tweet that made everyone think he was referring to ‘Copy Of A’ by Nine Inch Nails. However, he proved everyone wrong during the show with a brand new song. ‘Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy’ reminds us of the general sound of ‘Walls’ (the single), and stole everyone’s heart and soul once again. Immediately after the show, the fans asked Louis when the single would be out, to which he replied that he wasn’t sure about it being one. The disappointment faded away when he said it remained an option and would put it on the second album. We’ll take that.

And that, folks, is how Louis Tomlinson made 2020 his year for us! We have so many memories of Louis this year and can’t pick a favorite! What would be yours? And what do you think is yet to come from Louis next year? 

#the honey pop #long post #press #2020 #louis tomlinson #291220

[whywishesarehorses]

A Mustang Crisis Looms in the West

With too many animals on public lands and too many on the public’s hands, the federal wild horse management program is short of money and palatable solutions.

By Dave Philipps       Published March 22, 2020

CHALLIS, Idaho — Dawn broke over the peaks of the Lost River Range, revealing a chase in the wide open valley below. Seven wild horses crashed through the sage, dark manes billowing in the golden light, pursued by a government contractor in a glossy helicopter that dodged left and right like a mechanical Border collie, driving the band forward into a hidden corral.

Within hours, the captured mustangs had been sorted, loaded onto trucks to be stamped with an identification number and sent to the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse storage system. And the helicopter was back out hounding the hills for more.

All over the West, similar scenes have played out as the federal government fights to control the number of wild horses roaming public lands. Managers say they need to keep the herds down so they don’t destroy delicate native species habitat and threaten the livelihoods of ranchers.

But in recent years, the Bureau of Land Management has been losing that fight on two fronts: It hasn’t been able to round up nearly enough horses to limit the wild population. And it doesn’t know what to do with the ones it has managed to capture.

The roundup operation itself is strikingly efficient — a helicopter and a few workers in jean jackets can catch scores of mustangs in a day. The bureau rounded up 7,300 in 2019.

But once they are caught, they have to be fed and cared for. And the costs and frictions of having so many animals on the government’s hands — 49,000 at last count — have pushed the whole wild horse program toward collapse.

The rented pastures and feed lots where they are kept now devour more than two-thirds of the program’s budget, leaving little money for anything else, including looking for ways to get the bureau out of its current fix.

Low on cash, the bureau cut roundups drastically in recent years. But officials acknowledge that the move just made matters worse, by allowing the population on the range to grow rapidly. There are now about 100,000 wild horses and burros on public lands — more than at any time since the days of the Old West. The government reckons the land can sustain only about 27,000.

Bureau officials warn that the mustang herds are a looming catastrophe for the land, and there is no cheap or obvious solution. Capturing all the excess horses and caring for them in storage for the rest of their lives could cost up to $3 billion. Doing nothing may prove costly, too.

“If we don’t get this controlled, it’s just going to get worse,” said Alan Shepherd, the on-range branch chief for the wild horse program. Mustangs have already destroyed fragile desert springs in some places, and the birds, snakes and butterflies that depend on them, he said: “We are going to get to the point where the public lands are going to be almost unusable by anything.”

Mr. Shepherd started his career 30 years ago working on an emergency roundup on the Nellis Air Force Base missile test range in southern Nevada, where drought and overpopulation killed thousands of mustangs.

Now, near the end of his career, he worries that more herds are headed for a similar collapse.

Wild horse welfare groups argue that the crisis is largely invented. They say the government sets its population targets artificially low to justify mass removals that serve the interests of cattle ranchers and distract from other public land policies that are far more damaging.

“It’s a bait and switch,” said Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Campaign, a group that has lobbied against roundups. “They say wild horses are an existential threat; meanwhile, they are loosening regulation on energy extraction. We do agree that roundups are creating a crisis in management, but the claims of overpopulation and horses starving are just not borne out by on-the-ground observations. Generally, the horses are doing pretty good.”

Crisis or no crisis, the number of horses on the range has risen into uncharted territory. Mr. Shepherd estimated that while 7,300 horses were captured in 2019, 17,000 foals were born. “We’re not even keeping at status quo,” he said.

In the early frontier days, wild horses in the West were too numerous to count. Explorers saw herds running on the Great Plains, likening the sight to the roll of waves in the ocean. On early maps, vast areas were labeled simply as “wild horse desert.” Later, as the region was settled, the herds were hunted down. Many were shipped east to pull city streetcars in places like Manhattan. Others were slaughtered for dog food and fertilizer. By the 1960s, only a few thousand mustangs were left.

Congress granted federal protection in 1971 to the remaining herds, which were nearly all on Bureau of Land Management land. With few predators and no hunters to cull them, the herds began to rebound, and land managers realized in the 1980s that they were quickly outgrowing the patchwork of public land allotted to them. That is when the helicopter roundups began.

At first, the program appeared sustainable. The bureau publicized an adoption program that found homes for captured horses, and the wild population stayed relatively constant. But news reports in the 1990s revealed that most of the “adopted” horses were actually going to slaughter, often while bureau employees profited. Regulations were tightened, and a backlog of unwanted horses began to build up on rented pastures in the Midwest.

Some conservative lawmakers from rural districts have pushed the bureau to euthanize excess horses or sell them for slaughter, but those steps remain widely unpopular and have not gained traction in Congress.

The bureau has told lawmakers repeatedly that it could create a sustainable program if Congress budgeted enough money to reduce the wild population to 27,000. Three times in the past 30 years, Congress has done so. Each time, though, the efforts were tripped up by dizzying costs and lawsuits from animal welfare groups.

Now the bureau is asking again. William Perry Pendley, its acting director, is a longtime conservative activist and lawyer who sued the bureau a number of times on behalf of ranchers before entering the administration. In an interview, he said he favors a proposal to remove more than 70,000 horses from the range over five years.

“Right now, it’s the ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice,’” he said. “We’re carrying water and not getting anywhere.”

The bureau is in talks to open two huge feedlots to hold thousands of horses. But it is unclear if Congress is willing to spend billions to store unwanted horses, especially if an economic downturn drains public funds. Bureau staff say privately that they expect the population on the range to continue to grow toward disaster.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. More than a decade ago, government auditors warned that the cost of storing captured horses would “overwhelm the program.” A 2013 report by the National Academy of Sciences urged the bureau to shift away from roundups and start using readily available and inexpensive fertility control drugs, which are typically administered by dart gun annually in the field.

Bureau leaders acknowledged the warnings and promised to embrace fertility control drugs, but their use actually declined in the years after the report. Less than 1 percent of the program’s current budget is spent on them.

Nearly all of the fertility control now happening on wild horse ranges is done by local volunteers, often retirees, who have learned to wield dart guns in the field.

That includes Andrea Macki, a visual artist who has been darting horses in the Challis herd for more than five years. She says the fertility control treatments have slowed reproduction rates by half, and could do more.

“It’s the obvious solution,” she said as she squinted through the dawn light to watch the helicopter rounding up horses she knew. “I wish the B.L.M. would invest in it, instead of all this.”

Bureau officials say that darting tens of thousands of horses in the field each year is not practical, and would take years to shrink the herds as much as a roundup can in a few days. Congress approved a $21 million increase in the wild horse program’s budget for this year, with the stipulation that the money would be released only when the bureau submitted a five-year plan that includes increases in both roundups and fertility control.

The bureau has also taken steps to dispose of captured horses, including deals that may be sending horses quietly to slaughter. It has ramped up sales of horses it deems unadoptable, charging $25 a head. In 2019 it sold 1,967 that way, often by the truckload in bulk sales; officials have refused to say who the buyers were.

Mr. Shepherd say the bureau tries to screen out slaughter buyers, but acknowledged that it does nothing to monitor the fate of horses after sale.

The bureau also created a program that offers $1,000 to anyone willing to adopt a horse.

Together, the sales and adoptions put about 7,000 horses into private hands last year, not enough even to keep pace with roundups, let alone draw down the number now warehoused.

On the edge of the wild horse range in Challis in central Idaho, Jackie Ingram, a rancher, has shared 168,700 acres of public land with the mustang herds for 46 years. Each spring her family drives hundreds of Black Angus cattle up a steep road through Spar Canyon to graze the high, windswept hills on Bureau of Land Management land.

In some years, she said, the wild horses left so little grass to eat that other wildlife disappeared, and her family had to cut back their cattle herd.

“We like the horses, but we also want to protect the land,” she said. “Every time they do a roundup, we’re happy. If the horses get to be too numerous, it affects the sage grouse, the elk, the antelope and us. All of us depend on the grass.”

#long post #blm mustang #mustang horse #horse news #equestrian #equine

[robertreich]

The Biggest Deficit You’ve Never Heard Of

America has a deficit problem. But the country’s biggest deficit isn’t the federal budget deficit. It’s the deficit in public investment. The public investment deficit is the gap between what we should be investing in our future — on infrastructure, education, and basic research — and the relatively little we are investing. Increasing public investment needs to be a major goal of the Biden administration.

Public investment is similar to private investment in that we invest today because of the payoff in the future. The difference is public investment pays off for all of us, for America. 

In the 1960s, we used to make a lot of public investments. But they’ve been steadily declining ever since.

That decline has been largely driven by so-called “deficit hawks” who argue against more federal spending. But as I've been saying for years, reducing the federal deficit just for the sake of reducing it makes no sense. 

Any business person knows that you borrow money for the sake of investing in the future of your business. Those are wise borrowings. Because then you can pay those debts off when they get bigger. 

A national economy works exactly the same way. It doesn’t matter that we’re borrowing money, if we’re investing those monies that we borrowed from abroad — in education, training, infrastructure, factories — but we’re not.

The public return on infrastructure investment, based on 2020 report taking into account the pandemic, averages $2.70 for every single public dollar invested — yet we haven’t made those investments. Our infrastructure today is crumbling.

The return on early childhood education is between 10 and 16 percent — but only a handful of our children have access to early childhood education. 

Public investment on clean energy has an annual return of over 27 percent. But federal tax breaks favor fossil fuels over renewables by about 7 to 1.

The public return on investments in basic research and development are huge. America’s competitiveness depends on them, because no individual company has an incentive to make them. The lithium-ion battery that powers iPhones and electric cars was developed by federally sponsored materials science research, while the Internet itself was borne out of the Advanced Research Projects Administration. 

And yet in recent years, public investment in basic research has declined as well. 

Are you seeing a pattern yet? Federal investments in all these areas have shrunk — even though the payoffs from these investments are gigantic, and the costs of not making them are astronomical. American productivity is already suffering.

Now, some say we don’t need to worry about this public investment deficit because private investments fill the gap. Baloney.

Corporations are focused on getting the best return for themselves, not for America. For most of the last four decades, they’ve made money by lowering their costs, at the expense of working people: capping wages, reducing taxes, and deregulating.

A common assumption is that when American corporations are profitable, Americans are better off. But that's false. Trickle-down economics is a sham. Tax cuts and subsidies to big corporations and the wealthy don’t build the economy. Economies don’t grow from the top down — they grow from the bottom up, through public investment.

So if private investment won’t fill the gap, how do we fill it? Two ways: tax the wealthy and large corporations, and borrow.

Tax rates on the wealthy and on corporations have continued to drop over the past 40 years, just as the deficit in public investment has grown. In the 1950s, the highest tax rate on individuals was over 90 percent. Even after tax deductions and credits, it was still over 40 percent. But since then, tax rates have dropped dramatically. For the first time on record, the 400 richest Americans now pay a lower effective tax rate than people in the bottom half. Revenue from corporate taxes has also plummeted.

If wealthy individuals and corporations want all the advantages that come with being American, they have to pay taxes so America can afford the public investments necessary for a high-wage, high-productivity society.

The other way to pay for public investment is through public borrowing. This kind of borrowing doesn’t burden future generations, because it’s used to build a better future for those future generations. 

Remember: There’s a difference between borrowing for the future and borrowing for today. You might not want to borrow to pay for a vacation, but it’s perfectly rational to borrow to purchase a house, because a vacation doesn’t have any future return, while a home does. Right now, the federal budget irrationally treats all government borrowing the same.

The government needs a public investment budget separate from the current spending budget to clarify what we’re investing in and allow us to keep borrowing for investments as long as the returns justify it.

Public investment is the biggest and most important deficit you’ve never heard of. 

Don’t listen to people who claim we can’t afford to invest in the American people. We can afford it. We can’t afford not to. Joe Biden needs to recognize this, and make public investment a central part of his economic strategy. 

#Bidenomics #public investment #infrastructure #basic research #early childhood education #earlylearning #video #videos

[copperbadge]

Remote, Relief, and the Pandemic Deli

For years, a lot of companies clung to pre-2012 studies about work-from-home productivity and the example Marissa Mayer set when she joined Yahoo and six months later banned working from home based on VPN data. A lot of sketchy studies about remote work productivity have been cited in the past decade, and even allowing the occasional remote day was often either policy banned or shadow banned when employees would get hassled for requesting them.   

But, well, 2020. It’s not that the pandemic proved to us that remote work would not destroy the economy, but it provided an opportunity to study remote work in a new light, with a huge dataset. Now studies are emerging that not only do companies whose workers can go remote save money, but on average remote working increases productivity. Even in a pandemic.

Now, on the one hand productivity should not be the metric by which we measure human worth or happiness. And this is also an extremely abnormal situation. We were all asked to stay at home as much as possible anyway, and with unemployment spiking, a lot of people were terrified of losing their jobs and may have put in extra (perhaps too much) effort to prove they were working hard. So this data may be a little wonky. But even before the pandemic there were studies coming out of Stanford that remote work was not the disaster Yahoo thought it was (at least in China, where the study data came from). 

On the other hand, insights are also starting to emerge that will make you say “Shocking!” very sarcastically: It’s the managers. 

Early in the pandemic, pieces began to appear about how companies were really starting to see who wasn’t pulling their weight, or who wasn’t necessary, and it was predominantly managers and supervisors. Studies emerging now are pointing out that whether company staff are productive or reductive isn’t down to where they’re located, but rather how they’re managed. Shocking!

I don’t think remote work is right for everyone, and if remote work numbers stay high after the pandemic it will be in our cultural best interest to be mindful of how we manage not only the work itself but how it impacts our relationship to society. Remote work can be intensely isolating and lead to poor work-life boundaries. And some people just plain don’t like it! And that’s okay. 

But I do think that a high percentage of workers staying remote could break a lot of bad management policy, and maybe make room for a better way of looking at management, hierarchy, and what makes a good boss -- and what makes a strong worker. It could lead to a cultural movement towards intentionality in our social interactions, and a re-evaluation of how we behave and where we go when we’re outside the home. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about how so many restaurants now either offer groceries or have little grocery sections in their physical locations. I call them Pandemic Delis and I kind of hope they last after the pandemic ends. I think there is a similar space opening up for both remote work stations (like wework only not, you know, ludicrously dysfunctional) and remote relief stations. 

Imagine going to a Pandemic Deli post-covid, getting yourself a freshly-made hot breakfast, buying a few necessities for dinner that night, and then being given a choice: screen or no screen? On one side are remote workers being out in the world, sipping coffee while they plug their laptops into pre-set monitor stations, maybe even meeting with their supervisors to go over the week’s planning or using a booth to video-call their colleagues. It could even be people who just want to read an ebook or text with their family. On the other side, you leave your phone in a locker, sit down, and have a meal with a friend, or play a board game with someone, or simply consciously unplug for a little while because you spent all of yesterday at home with your work screen. 

I wish I knew how, or had the power, to guide culture in a direction where more people have more options that make them happier. I think the fact that our society is increasingly data-driven might actually help, in that it proves to people disinterested in human happiness that human happiness is still vitally important. 

I suppose the point is I hope that if we had to live through 2020, we, as a collective, at least use it to make some positive change in 2021. 

#crafting in a time of cholera #pandemic #work #covid #your daily news digest

[paint-lady]

hey, if you don't mind, i want your advice: i'm going to be running a chronicle set in chicago (i am using the chicago by night 5e book) for players who are new to vampire for the most part in a few days and i can't For The Life of Me to come up with an interesting chronicle hook (yeah i have read the hooks in the book). any ideas/suggestions/general advice?

Hiya! I could talk your ears off on how I write my chronicles- so hopefully I have taken all my processes and reduced it down to a lovely World of Darkness jam. 

Here are two good hooks I just came up with- feel free to use them! The third is what I got for my first chronicle, and I just think its a narrative that works very well for new players.

>Option 1: Guilty Until Proven Innocent ”Chicago is a series of paradoxes and transitions, of ever changing paradigms and whimsy,” (CbN 47). Have your coterie be newbies to the city. Ask why they have come to Chicago. Power? A new start? Perhaps this is a political arrangement between the clan of one city with another. Whatever their reason, they have arrived right when a Primogen vanishes- and guess who is first on the suspect list? The fresh faces on the streets >:) The coterie, having barely settled, has to suddenly prove their innocence. And finding evidence lets them uncover something much more sinister....

This one is ideal for new players as it sets everyone on an equal footing. Even if they create a character that has been a vampire for 50+ years and has amassed several dots of influence, herd, status- whatever, they are still new to the city. And being new means you have to start all over again. (This may be frustrating to a player that invested all those points at character creation- but it is on you as the ST to make sure they have opportunities to use those dots and on them as a player to think cleverly.)

Starting the tale off with defending their innocence is actually a very engaging questline. It effectively sets the stage for the political powerhouses. It lets new players know there are rules- and those in power are watching. It also sets the consequences for failure. Understand that the Camarilla probably isnt going to outright kill the coterie if they fail- always make the punishment just harsh and grueling enough to make final death feel like a mercy. Failure isn’t the end of the story.

For new players- I would be lenient with the time it takes for them to find evidence. But within reason. Think like your Prince and Seneschal. Do you really want this coterie running around for a full week, unsupervised, making more messes? No. You don’t. (You might wanna send an npc with them to watch and keep em out of trouble. Your npc is also able to vouch for them.)

This story lends itself to be a Camarilla Chronicle very easily. You can go Anarch, but an Anarch leader suddenly vanishing and blaming the newbies is much more quickly going to end with blood spilled. Thank your local sweeper.

> Option 2: Containment Breach Blacksite 24 (Loresheet on page 264) was temporarily occupied by Operation Firstlight. It has now been transformed into a medical research facility. While most kindred of Chicago know of Blacksite 24, they have zero clue what happens inside other than bad news for them- the less they know the safer they are. The chronicle opens with a car crash. The captured soon-to-be coterie was in transit to this feared medical facility. The crash did kill the driver and the agent in charge of transporting them. The crash did not fully break their restraints, but it did enough damage that first responders are freaking out. They are all at hunger 3. The chronicle is a hunt. The coterie should have some knowledge of what had happened to them and how lucky they are to have escaped. Operatives are already on their way to recapture them. They must hide in this city- and do their best to survive and stay out of sight.

The point of this story is to invoke dread. I highly recommend one player either being a thin-blood (or an npc) with the Daydrinker merit, or a player to have a ghoul. If they decide to not have a daywatch, they increase their chance of being found.

This story also sets up a feeling of desperation. They would be willing to take shelter from anyone- anyone. Eventually the other kindred will catch on that these guys are on the run from something. Any sane kindred would toss them out to protect themselves. A compassionate kindred who takes them in will suffer the final death as a compassionate fool- or join them in captivity. 

This story lends itself to be an Anarch Chronicle much more easily. This is the time the Camarilla will likely be a bit more paranoid and bloody. While they might not outright kill the coterie- they will send them somewhere that is a death trap. They wont dirty their hands with this. After all, you do not want any evidence to fall into the hands of the SI if you hired the hit.

This story is ideal for newbies without background merits. No allies, no influence, no herd. Let them take more mythic merits such as bloodhound and unbondable (Consider finding some from V20 too! There are some really awesome supernatural merits!). These powers would certainly be more fascinating for a medical team to study- not how many instagram followers they have. This kind of story also lets your players feel more powerful- but out of the loop. It lends itself to them forging alliances and getting caught in one-sided favors a lot more quickly. 

The challenging aspect of this story is that is starts with a masquerade breach. New players may not know how to handle such a blatant breach and thats okay. I would let the crash slide- and the Camarilla in the background handles it. Breaches after the crash need to be handled with proper consequences. 

> Option 3: New Blood This is what my storyteller did to me and my first time players (and its also very close to the plot of CoNY). We were shovelheads. Embraced to make a huge mess for the Camarilla and die quick deaths. We were all thin-bloods. The last thing the pcs remember is the sweet rush of ecstasy washing over them, before clawing out of the earth and driven mad by an insatiable hunger. The thrill of the hunt, and the sweet, warm blood on their tongue, nothing was going to be better. All three will awake next to each other, surrounded by the corpses they drank dry in their frenzy. What a way to play the name game! The players have three nights were they figure out their new condition or coverup their tracks (if they think to do it). They contend with their hunger and hatred of sunlight, wrestle with accidentally drinking their family member dry. After three nights, the Scourge comes knocking. Rather than outright killed, they are dragged to Elysium. For some reason, they are adopted by an upstanding member of the Camarilla- or the Prince orders a political rival care for them (hoping they fail). The players are the errand childer of this kindred, and slowly they figure out what they have been gathering through all these errands....

This one lets the characters all have the moments where they discover their disciplines and powers- and bestial tendencies. It naturally flows to allow players to slowly discover the rules and mechanics as well. All players must play fledglings for this tale. 

This story is much more a personal tale than a political one. Eventually politics makes its way in...but it does not have to be a focus. 

This story has less of a hook and more of a “Figure it Out” survival mode until the errands begin. The story is how the character’s react to their condition. It very quickly lends itself to a narrative of finding your own path in the night, rather than mindlessly obeying.

So here are a few questions that I ask myself when crafting a chronicle story:

1. What kind of story do you want to tell? Not asking for a plot hook, I’m asking for a general concept. Is it a tale of good triumphing over evil? (Not necessarily a wrong answer, but if you wanna play good guys...vampire is not the best game for that). Is this a chase? Is this a race against time? 

2. How do you want your story to make your players feel? Do you want to tell a story that invokes as much dread as possible in your players? Do you want them to feel ultra powerful? Vampire is both a power fantasy and a dread inducing game- it can do both. 

3. If you don’t know what kind of story you want to tell, switch gears to worldbuilding. CbN has so many NPCs with the rumors already written for you. Its your setting, perhaps switch two rumors around with prominent NPCs. Decide which ones are true in your setting- Maybe Primogen Annabell did kill her predecessor. Perhaps the Lasombra are attempting to infiltrate the Camarilla as everyone fears- but no one is able to prove it or stop it. Deciding what is true, false, and undetermined usually blossoms into hooks and stories worth investigating.

4. What is a historical event of the city that the Vampires would have endured/ scars would have remained? For example, in my chronicle set in Richmond, the tale of the Richmond Vampire is true. Depending on who you ask, it is the Camarilla’s best or sloppiest cover up. Have the chronicle coincide with the events and the coterie live through them. No one said this must take place in 2021- you can do 2015, 2008, -hell go back the 1990s. Its actually super fun if you set your chronicle in the 90s and your Malkavian is using phrases from 2020.

5. One of my things I do when writing scenes and moments is play Dread by myself. Dread is a role playing game played with jenga. There are no dice rolls, if you want to attempt something, you have to pull pieces from the tower. If the tower falls, you die. If there is a moment where I really really really dont want to pull from the tower, though the reward for succeeding is so so sweet- I keep the moment. If its really easy to shrug and go eh, I can live without performing that action- go back and rewrite it. If you have no incentive to pull from the tower, why would they?

6. Examine your player’s desires and ambitions- and do not neglect them in your chronicle. The plot wont magically allow all of them to achieve their ambitions. However, provide opportunities for them through the plot. Its on them to strive for what their character wants- its on you to make them struggle but have the path to get there. For example, if a player wants to become a Baron, provide a political opening. Perhaps then by announcing their power, they have made a bigger name for themselves and it has become harder to hide. Perhaps by doing this, the kindred they owe a favor is suddenly much more vocal about it. 

Here are some suggestions for handling new players:

> You are going to have to handhold them through some things. New players to vtm won’t be able to see the cascading political web and how the consequences of their actions will ripple into waves. I like to use Wits+Insight and call it Common Sense. Common Sense was a merit in V20- and damn is it WONDERFUL. All they need is just 1 success (they can take half) to have you explain how whatever plan they just thought of is actually a TERRIBLE idea. 

> Do your RPG consent list. Know what is safe to discuss and what is off the table. I highly recommend utilizing something my Storyteller used for my first chronicle, and subsequently I use for all my ttrpgs now: Invoking the Veil. The metaphor is that you are slowly lessening the intensity of a scene- as if raising the opacity or looking through layers of fabric. Eventually, there is too much fabric and you can no longer see the scene. If something is too intense, the ST or the player may announce they are invoking the veil. Reduce the scene by lowering music, speaking in third person, or avoiding heavy descriptors. You can reduce it further to just dice rolls. Role play stops, and the consequences of the scene are solely dictated by the dice. Or fade to black. If a player is repeatedly fading to black on something- ask to talk to them about it. Clearly something is too intense and they are not having as much fun as they can. Debriefing after a session is also a good idea. Do something silly! Share and check all the memes in the discord chat. Its important to make sure you and your players know that at the end of the night- its all just a game.

> I find the sabbat and new players don’t tend to mix well. You may absolutely still use the sabbat in your chronicle! But the dogma and philosophical ideals of the sabbat can be offputting and downright upsetting to a first time player. You may absolutely build to it- that’s what I did to my players. And in the moment of the truth, they chose to cling to humanity. 

> The taking half mechanic is your friend! V5 says players may announce how many dice they are rolling- and if the dividend is greater than the DC- they auto succeed. This streamlines play. Of course, you as the Storyteller may say this is a roll they are not allowed to take half on. Usually these are contested rolls (combat).

> The three turns and out rule keeps combat intense but not too lengthy. It actually streamlines encounters super super well. 

> My ST used a phrase, “The quickest way to kill Cthulhu is to give it a healthbar.” If Methuselahs and Elders are involved in your game- avoid giving them stat blocks. This cultivates a conflict that new players must find a way to overcome without brute force combat. It makes them think critically and defy these super old antagonists through narrative means. This also gets the notion out of your and their heads, “if they die, its over.” Its never that easy. Never. 

#steph answers questions #thanks for asking! #vtm #vampire the masquerade #vamp tag #storyteller vibes #ghostravens

[romanceboys]

(interview) cosmopolitan korea november issue 2020 — shining visual, shinee key

1. agreeing to have a magazine photoshoot scheduled a week after discharge must not have been an easy decision. i tried my best to not look like the military had changed me during my service. people don’t notice when you’re in a good condition, but when you come out in a poor state, they notice right away. this will probably be my last schedule for the month of october. i want to rest for a bit. 2. that's understandable. how was your military life? what i gained from the army were health and people. while i was in the military band, i came across many non-celeb friends, especially young friends who did music. it was an opportunity to learn about what people like these days. though adjusting was hard, it was fun.  3. some say that the mandatory service is like a vacation for workaholic idols. would you sympathise? vacation doesn’t seem like the right word, rather i was able to live a planned life. there was time dedicated to resting, training, sleeping, etc., a daily routine. i liked having to live doing things regularly.  4. for key, dancing and singing are a given, but you do more than the usual with acting, variety tv, musicals, etc. i’m curious about whether you tend to showcase only what you’ve gotten good at on your own, since you’re smart, or is it the result of your ceaseless efforts? besides music, i think the rest is just packaged well. though i can’t make it look like i’m doing really well when i do things poorly, it’s got to do with good marketing too. i also think i have a good grasp of how to look like i’m doing well. 5. it’s said that people who are lively and can express themselves definitively end up incurring the public’s wrath at least once, but over the course of 13 years, there was no such happening. others might not know, but i was aware of many of my failures. there were several shows that i didn’t stand out in, or many times when neither talking nor singing worked. through such experiences i think i was able to cultivate my judgement. 6. all celebrities showcase themselves, but they don’t do so without hesitation. comparatively, key tends to express himself naturally. and so, ‘naturally-talented celebrity,’ one with many talents, comes to mind.  had i stayed still and not shown myself, i don’t know what would have happened. i probably wouldn’t have been able to shoot for a photoshoot like today’s either. i’m the type of person who has to do multiple things simultaneously. for instance, i was able to do <amazing saturday - do re mi market> after 10 years of debut. through this program, there were many who most likely saw me and my personality for the first time. but had i not done it, would there be many people curious about me when i’m not in the public’s eye? of course not. though there are people who can arouse the public’s curiosity just by staying still, i don’t think i’m one of them. 7. your objective assessment of yourself is quite cold. i learned that the more you keep denying yourself, the more uncomfortable it gets. there are those who set an absolute standard for themselves and even improve by working towards it, but i don’t think i fall into that category. i came to a realisation by trying out things this way and that way, and then by staying still. in the end, i learned that being passive wasn’t the answer. even if i like my career as a celebrity, it’s meaningless if the people don’t like me. 8. what’s your judgement criteria for making choices? back in the day, i would do things people would like even if i disliked it. but now if i’m unsure about it, i don’t do it. i realised that forcing myself to do something in such an ambiguous state would not make a huge difference to my life. but you never know. i’m saying this now but then i might end up taking on many things randomly. however, what’s certain is the need for something new.  9. in the ‘solitary chatroom’ fans asked about your plans following discharge, to which you replied “i’ll probably be doing something?” have you not found something new to do yet? i’m troubled over whether to start youtube or not. i doubt people will be curious about my unbroadcasted, ‘off’ (-camera) appearance. the problem isn’t whether to start youtube or not, it’s the how that is important too. i haven’t found the answer to whether i can do it unabashedly. while competing with professional youtubers, i don’t even know if my content will be competitive enough. i’ve been deliberating for a long time. 10. after seeing you and your fans converse like friends in the ‘solitary chatroom,’ i felt that you adore each other. it took a long time for me to reach the point where i could show myself to the fans to my heart’s content. the fans must have waited for a long time too. in the past, i was focused on presenting myself to the public. i did take care of my fans back then too, but i thought it was more meaningful for me to show new people new things. whereas, now i know that if i continue to tread in the right manner, people who like me will continue to like me. it seems more proper to deliver high-quality content to those who are waiting for me. 11. it’s your 13th year of debut. i think you might feel beyond colleague camaraderie for the shinee members. whether we like it or not, i think it’s affection. it's all inevitable and natural. it’s difficult to answer questions that ask about how much i love the members or how close we are. it’s like asking one how much they love their mother. neither colleagues, nor friends, nor family; it’s a relationship that is hard to describe. 12. one idol vented, “it’s upsetting that idols are given secondhand treatment despite being young for the years of experience they have.” have you ever had these thoughts? of course. but i do get why people think that way. it’s because they must have seen them working as idols for a long time. if that’s the case, then they (idols) should switch it up; towards something different, something that’s enjoyable to the public. on that note, rain and lee hyori seniors are quite cool and amazing. while continuing to dance and sing, they’ve chosen to keep up with the times as well. 13. it seems like key possesses the perspective of a content creator rather than an artist.  i think the duties of an artist seem to be gradually increasing. youtube has become as popular as the television these days. that’s why i believe one should be able to adapt. 14. is there an unexpected side to you that people don’t know of? i have a simple side to myself, but people don’t seem to know about it. haha. i mentioned this to my military juniors as well that i prefer receiving a letter over presents. i feel like people are burdened by the idea that it’s a must to buy me something nice. of course, since they only see me on sns or tv, they might feel that way, but i’m truly a simple person. 15. what is key’s definition of a break? it’s thinking no thoughts. when i’m having fun or sleeping, i don’t think about work. that moment itself becomes my break. in our line of work, i believe we can change the quality depending on how much we involve ourselves in the process. and so, obviously, you end up with a lot to think about. when i watch a movie, i end up projecting myself onto the character; when i listen to music, i wonder about the song. back in the day, i couldn’t watch audition survival programs at all. because my hands and feet would tremble. this happened so naturally. that’s why i don’t have a tv at home. i only watch what i want to watch separately. 16. when do you feel that you’re a pretty decent person? (there has been) many a time when i like myself but the word decent is making me quite worried. haha. honestly, i’ve had a group of friends for 10 years now. they come running whenever i call them, even if people curse me out i feel nothing when these friends are around. going by the friends i have then, i’m not that terrible of a person, am i? i actually feel the sorriest towards the people who work with me. i can’t help but say things they’d dislike since it’s necessary for work. but seeing how i’m concerned over this itself makes me a pretty decent person, doesn’t it? haha. 17. as i listen to you talk, you seem very simple-minded but also a deeply complex person. being simple-minded is the easiest thing yet the hardest. you have to give up on a lot but can’t because it’s hard and scary. i came to this realisation naturally without any wake up call.  18. do you feel burdened by the fact that your future as shinee key depends on the choices you make now? no. it’s been a long time since i set goals for myself. i believe i will continue to find more work if i do the things i’m assigned without disappointing others. when i was young, i never once thought i’d become the key i am today. it’s just that now there are more people who favourably view my choices than before, so i expect it’ll be the same in the future. 19. only a confident person would be able to say that. i’m easily frightened but i don’t dread. i worry thinking ‘is this right?’ but when it comes down to making a decision i do it conclusively. people who dread a lot don’t take risks, but those with fears don’t run away.

translated by romanceboys — take out with full credit (source)

#shinee #key #kim kibum #cosmopolitan korea november issue 2020 #interview #translations #e:the story of light epilogue #key:enlistment hiatus

[kyluxbigbang]

Kylux Big Bang 2020 wrap-up and feedback survey results

Hello everyone!

We've concluded yet another Kylux Big Bang, fifth one we've run since TFA first came out - a huge THANK YOU to all our participants who keep this bang going! Amazing job everyone, we hope you've had as much fun with it as with the previous ones, and if this was your first ever KBB - we hope you've enjoyed it, and will join us for the 2021 KBB :D

We've closed the feedback survey, thank you to everyone who responded! Your comments will help shape the coming Kylux Big Bang. Here's the tl;dr summary, (for more info please see below the cut):

Ratio of artwork to wordcount: just right

Time-frame to complete works: just right, we will have a similar timeframe for KBB 2021 with posting in November

Check-ins: were useful, just about the right amount, and will be included again in 2021 KBB

Pairing process: went well, we've addressed more detailed comments below

Type of bang for 2021: REVERSE! The KBB has a tradition of swapping between the type of bang every other year, and over half of responders voted for a reverse bang. For the KBB 2021 artists will provide prompts, and writers will pick from them!

Mods for the 2020 KBB: will be announced once the 2021 bang starts

Our email is still [email protected], please feel free to contact us there if you’d like!

We will keep running the discord server for KBB 2021 to help people reach out to the mods and other participants

We will update the schedule as soon as the 2021 KBB starts. We are hoping to open the sign-ups for KBB 2021 in early May - keep an eye out on our blog and twitter for the sign up announcement around that time!

For more details about the survey results please check below the cut.

Everyone, regardless of previous involvement in the fandom and their skill level, is welcome to participate in the Kylux Big Bang!  We look forward to many of you signing up for the 2021 KBB :)

KBB Mod Team

Nearly everyone thought the ratio of artwork to wordcount was just right (93%; 94% last year; 5% thought there were too many words per piece of art and 2% that there wasn't enough), and the majority of people (79%, 77% last year) thought the time-frame to complete the works was also just about right, with 14% saying it wasn't enough and 7% saying that it was too much time. We will stick to a similar time frame, starting KBB 2021 around May and finishing in November for the Big Bang and September for the Mini Bang.

Almost everyone (95%; 15% more than last year) finished their projects by the end of the event and was satisfied or highly satisfied with the 2020 KBB (88%).

Most people (86%; 96% last year) found the check-ins useful, with majority of participants (74%, 91% last year) having found the amount of check-ins to be just about right. 16% of respondents thought there were too many, 10% thought there were too few. 86% of all respondents would like to have check-ins in the next KBB. We will continue using them, and review their number.

62% of people want to see a reverse bang this year, and we have taken into account the fact that the previous bangs operated on a switch basis: a regular bang followed by a reverse, followed by a regular. We are happy to announce that this year’s event will be a REVERSE bang, following the regular bang from last year :) Artists will submit their story ideas, and writers will pick from them.

We were happy to hear that almost everyone who voiced their opinions about the pairing process thought it worked well!

As usual, we got the one singular comment about the pairing process being somehow 'rigged'. Here is a link to the pairing algorithm we use every year since 2017. To increase the anonymity of prompts and bids, mod @glass-oceans encoded each prompt with its own unique code (the 'prompt code' everyone has been using for their project), and the artist bids were similarly encoded to avoid bias before the pairing up was done by mod @brainyraccoons based on those codes alone. If people still have concerns and doubts about the pairings, mod @brainyraccoons is more than happy to discuss those, you can message him on tumblr/twitter under the same username or on discord at brainyraccoons#5678.

We would also like to note that most other big bangs operate on a ‘first come, first served’ basis for pairing, where whoever is first to bid on a prompt gets it. We think that is highly unfair to people who cannot access the bidding on time or experience technical difficulties, therefore we employ the pairing algorithm even though it adds at least 15 extra work hours (that’s almost half a week for an office worker) for one mod and is quite a complex process. We do it because we want everyone to have an equal chance at getting their favourite prompts. If you think the process is somehow ‘rigged’, you are in no way obliged to participate in the KBB, and we will not address any further comments of this nature.

We've received a comment asking for space to write down people whom the participants do not wish to be paired up with - this information can be included in the last question on the form which asks whether you would like to let us know of anything else regarding your pairing and prompt preferences.

We are not sure what the comment asking about factoring in time zones for pairing relates to - if the person in question could send us a private message and explain, we would be happy to hear them out!

Other feedback we've received has been extremely positive and encouraging, and we are happy to hear that you've enjoyed the project! We sincerely thank everyone who took the time to share their love for the KBB with us, the project wouldn't be possible without you!

To address the concerns and queries that were raised:

This year we will be changing the way the posting windows work, as many people have raised their concerns over them, and we acknowledge that the posting didn't go as smoothly as anticipated. We will be following the format almost all other Big Bangs take, and people will be able to pick ONE DAY, and one day only, for their posting. ALL art and fic will have to be posted within that time-frame. If there are reasonable mitigating circumstances for people missing their assigned posting date, we will do our best to find a good solution - as always, we will help however we can, and there will be options to post after the original deadline has passed, provided that the team keeps a line of communication open with us at all times when difficulties arise, and all parties know what's happening. Changing the way we do posting should also help with having less fics posted in the last few days and help to spread the posting out better.

Check-ins having no repercussions for the half of the team who isn't progressing with their side of the project: as far as we know, that wasn't the case, and teams who have submitted only partial check-ins were chased up and multiple pinch hitters were assigned where people went MIA. If there are issues with people not pulling their weight in your team, PLEASE LET US KNOW. If you are for some reason unhappy with your partner(s), PLEASE LET US KNOW. If you wish to change your partner because you cannot form a working relationship with them for the duration of the bang, PLEASE EXPLICITLY LET US KNOW (this one is particularly helpful at the start of the project when it's easier to move people around as necessary). We assume that everyone who is taking part in the bang is mature enough to be able to communicate with their partner, or notify us in a timely manner if things are not going according to plan, so we can work on a viable solution together.

Ability to talk to a mod of someone's choosing: this has always been the case, the list of mods is available to view on the rules page, as well as clearly visible on discord! You can DM any member of the mod team at any given time, although a reply might come some time later due to time zone differences.

We will continue to allow everyone to join the KBB, regardless of their previous involvement in the fandom, the KBB itself, and whether they have finished all their previous works for all other projects they have participated in or not.

We will aim to open beta sign ups at the start of the bang, so there will be a bigger beta pool from the beginning and hopefully we will be able to pair up anyone who will need a beta with one. However, we urge people to look for their own betas where possible, as it is not guaranteed that we will be able to provide one for the project, considering how many participants there are.

We will try to make more use of the discord server for posting announcements and reminders as well as posting more on both the tumblr and twitter throughout the bang. Unfortunately 2020 hit us all hard and we didn’t get to do things such as Tips & Tricks and Participant Profiles like we usually do.

For KBB 2021 we will require artists and authors to exchange emails. In previous bangs we’ve allowed people to opt-out of this and use alternate contact methods. This year primary point of contact will be through email and once people are paired up partners can choose how they want to keep in touch moving forward.

If anyone would like any clarification on any of the above, please feel free to contact us!

#Kylux #Kylux Big Bang #KBB 2020 #kylo ren #armitage hux