#36 and retired but still my favorite driver of all time

[f1version]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SEB: an edited collection of my favorite photos of him.

#‎ ﹒✶ ˖ ࣪ steph talks ! #36 and retired but still my favorite driver of all time #danke seb #sv5 #sebastian vettel #seb vettel #f1 #formula one #formula 1 #f1edit #f1 edit #jpg #happy birthday #happy birthday seb

[umseb]

vettel to mercedes?! 👀 | sebastian vettel reveals dicussions for f1 return [part 1/2] - 2024 (transcript under the cut)

Interviewer: "Yeah, it's great to join Sebastian Vettel live on Sky Sports News ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix, which is a favorite circuit of yours, obviously, Sebastian. But, I mean, what a career you've had. You've been out of F1 for a year and a bit now, but four times a world champion, 53 times you sprayed champagne or sparkling rose water from the top step of the podium. But it's a different beverage which brings you to London today. What's the big concept?" Seb: "Yeah, so there was the time where I was spraying champagne. Obviously, racing in Formula 1 at the highest level, it's an environment where you're looking for perfection, so you're trying to tune everything you can, and it's also your body. You try to train as good as you can, you try to eat as well as you can, and you try to have the best drink inside the car that gives you the energy for the full two hours. It's trying all sorts of stuff-powders, gels-and they didn't really work, but they came, mostly-and that's the problem-with side effects. I suffered stomach cramps. Speaking to other drivers, they felt similar; other athletes. So it seemed to be a thing, and it was only until the end of my career where I stumbled across a product that is now Perple, a sports drink that didn't do that, that didn't give me any suffering, and giving me the energy towards the end of the race. So I was curious why that is and got to know the person behind- the founder, the story, and got involved, as well, invested, so… I think the biggest surprise to me was that the industry of sports drinks, all your supplements and so on, is not regulated. There's a lot of synthetic stuff that people are taking in every day. These are expensive products, and they're trying to optimize their performance, whether it's your cyclist that goes for one or two rides a week, whether it's the occasional runner, squash player, but then also your professional, and that's where Perple now kicks in. And Perple, not with U but with E, and it stands for P-E-R-P-L-E, performance and pleasure, and it's an all-natural product so you're not putting any of this rubbish stuff into your body. So yeah, give it a go. I'm a big fan of it, obviously, and I think obviously proving it in the testing ground of the car, it did make a difference and I hope people are giving it a go and see what they think." Interviewer: "Sustainable fuel for the body, I guess." Seb: "It is! It's a good comparison, yeah, it is. Yeah." Interviewer: [laughs] "But, I mean…" Seb: "And people become more and more aware that the stuff that we used to consume, eat, drink, maybe isn't doing the trick, so that's where stuff like this offers an alternative." Interviewer: "Okay. Well, I wanna know how sustainable you are, Sebastian, because you're only 36."

Seb: "Yeah." Interviewer: "You've only been out of Formula 1 for a year and a bit. Are you potentially on the driver market for next season?" Seb: "Well, potentially I am because I haven't got a ride, but the question is am I looking for one. I think it depends on the package. I retired from Formula 1 not to come back, but I also did say that you never know, so I think it still stands. Obviously there's things that I miss, which is mostly the competition, and things that I don't miss, so yeah, that hasn't changed. Obviously life is very different if you're not involved, and I do enjoy that still. Still trying lots of different things. Now we're talking about a sports drink. I didn't think [laughs] years ago that this will be something I'll be talking about in the future or be involved in, but you never know where life's taking you, so maybe it takes me back behind the wheel, maybe it doesn't." Interviewer: "I'm just thinking, might it be now or never? As I say, you're still young. It looks like some interesting potential opportunities on the grid for next season. There's a rule change coming in, as well, with some sustainable aspects which you have promoted. I know you've had some conversations with Toto Wolff. If that Mercedes seat was offered to you, how hard would it be to turn down?" Seb: "Well, I had conversations with him, not really about a seat. We did speak about the whole situation, in short, as well, but I did speak to others, as well, because I'm still keeping in touch every now and then. I have some projects and ideas together with F1. We'll see if they will turn out or not, but yeah, so I am staying in touch. I don't know. It has to be a couple more phone calls and conversations, I guess, to really, yeah, find out a little bit more. But for sure it's one of the best cockpits, or best seats, on the grid. I think, performance-wise, Mercedes has a great track record. Struggling a little bit in the last years, but then struggle, you're still second or third in the constructor's, it's not like you're racing in no man's land." Interviewer: "Well, Lewis Hamilton was prepared to leave that car…" Seb: "Yeah." Interviewer: "…even though he had another year on the contract. Going to Ferrari, what sort of fit might he be at that team? He's a big individual and we know it's very much about the team at Ferrari. Is that any…" Seb: "Well, it's true. I think it's about the team everywhere you go. Obviously each to their own, but I think it is a team sport and I think someone like Lewis has said that over and over again, thanking the team around him. I think, without Mercedes, Lewis' career would have been very different. Mine, too. [laughs] But that's how it goes. No regrets. [laughs] No, no. But yeah, I think time will tell. I think if he's excited, that's the main thing. It was ultimately his decision and he took it for himself, so best of luck. I know the team in Ferrari, and yeah, obviously for us or for the outside, the measure is always whether you're successful or not, but the real measure I think is whether Lewis is happy or not."

#sebastian vettel #f1 #formula 1 #fic ref #fic ref 2024 #not a race #2024 not a race #between australia and japan 2024 #sewis #toto wolff #tw food #cw food #tw diet #tw body image

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

The story of Swamp Rat 17: Don Garlits' most misunderstood Top Fueler (part 2)

The Wynn’s Liner sits proudly in Garlits museum, parked just ahead of Petersen’s own failed attempt at aerodynamics, the Can Am-inspired Olympia Top Fuel car that lived its own all-too-short life in 1974.

Any chat with Don Garlits is always a thrill, but for history geeks like me, it’s especially thrilling because of his incredible memory. He turned 89 in January, but his memory is as clear as if he were 29. He, of course, knows his cars inside out, remembering specifically not only the number of each Swamp Rat but wheelbases, engines, and great stories associated with each. I do a lot of interviews with the stars of yesteryear and many, many of them, quite naturally as they age, have less than excellent recall. Then there's "Big Daddy." He's amazing.

So, as promised earlier in this column, I asked him to rank his Swamp Rats in order of favorites. Although I'm sure that, given time, he could have ranked them from 1 to 38, I asked only for his Top 5.

Here’s his Top 5, including portions of the descriptions I wrote for my trio of Swamp Rat Spotters Guides a few years ago (Swamp Rats I-A to X | Swamp Rats XI to 20-B | Swamp Rats 21 to 34):

No. 1, the first (1956-60): Although it wasn't his first dragster — he had made a crude, flathead-powered dragster from a '27-T roadster by moving the engine back and hanging a seat out over the rear end — it's the first car to wear the Swamp Rat name. The car was built on the framerails of a '31 Chevy passenger car that he bought at a junkyard for $35 in 1956; Garlits removed the frame from the body in the junkyard using little more than a large ax, a cold chisel, a ball-peen hammer, and a small assortment of hand tools. He transplanted most of the parts off of the flathead dragster to this car, except the driver seat, which was an old B-17 bomber seat. Initially using Ford power, Garlits switched to Chrysler Hemi power and later to high-gear-only. The carbureted version of this car is the one that beat the nay-saying Californians in Houston but got whipped by the West Coasters in Bakersfield, but as soon as "Big" added a blower, it was all over for everyone.

No. 22, the 5.63 car (1975): The car that succeeded SR 21 would go into the record books in a "big" way and stay there for years: This is the car in which Garlits brought the class to its knees with a 5.63-second clocking at the World Finals, a record that stood for more than six years. Built by Garlits, “T.C.” Lemons, and Don Cook on a 240-inch wheelbase, the car was lightweight and fast from the first go. He had hoarded oversized Goodyear slicks, built a new engine, and even lengthened the chassis by 10 inches, and it all paid off with that monstrous 5.63 that helped him win the event and the championship and was attached to the sport's first official 250-mph run. The historic car was retired at year's end and has never left Garlits' possession other than for occasional displays; it was hauled out of mothballs to run at — and win — the 1977 Gatornationals.

No. 26, the comeback car (1980-84): The follow-up to the porky “Godzilla” car, Swamp Rat 26 was "lean and light" — Garlits forsook paint for black anodized panels with stick-on lettering — and with the power that Garlits and Parks had learned to make to get the porky Godzilla car down the track, they seemed to be ahead of the game. The car was completed in time to run the Florida Winter Series events, but Parks quit that winter after the tough 1980 season, and Garlits won just two AHRA events in 1981. Garlits ran infrequently in the next three seasons, and Swamp Rat 26 might have just gone quietly into retirement as a disappointment had old pal Art Malone not called Garlits in the summer of 1984 and offered to fund a run at the 1984 Indy title. Malone got Garlits new parts, and they coaxed Parks out of retirement, and despite an aging car and a team of "dinosaurs" (Garlits' word), they won the race, completing a storybook comeback straight out of Hollywood. Garlits went on to also win a big eight-car Top Fuel show at Firebird Int'l Raceway and the NHRA World Finals — "Big Daddy" was back!

No. 30, the streamliner (1986): In the pantheon of famous Garlits cars, this cockpit-canopied streamliner may well be at the top of the pyramid. Garlits had Mike Magiera fabricate the nosepiece and constructed front "tires" out of 13-inch aluminum discs wrapped with industrial fan belts to fit beneath it. The belts would exit the wheels after almost every run, but that didn’t stop the “Rat Under Glass” from running 272.56 mph in the car's winning debut in Gainesville in 1986. Garlits later abandoned those wheels to run small-airplane tires that worked well but, ironically, took flight in his famous July 12 blowover wheelstand at the NHRA Summernationals. The car had to be backhalved in the Florida shop to complete the season, which ended with Garlits atop the points standings. Swamp Rat XXX also ran about half of the 1987 campaign and then famously became part of a display at the Smithsonian Institution the following year.

No. 34, the monowing car: Originally built in 1992 for Bruce Larson to drive after Garlits retired after experiencing eye problems caused by too many sudden parachute decelerations. At the end of the 1994 season, Garlits loaned the car to former Funny Car and fuel altered pilot Richard Langson and served as his crew chief in 1995, albeit with little success again. After years off the track, Garlits brought the car up to spec and competed at the 2002 Gatornationals and U.S. Nationals, then upped his speed mark to 323.04 at the 2003 Gatornationals. “It’s still the most modern Top Fueler in the world,” Garlits insisted to me. “It’s got the narrowed rear end and the mono wing rudder to make it go straight down the course, and the canopy.”

And, well, because Garlits was being so generous with his time and candor, I dared to ask him about his bottom five.

“Well, only a half-dozen cars that didn’t cut the mustard, but from what we’ve already talked about today," he said. "I think you know the five already: the streamliner (SR17), ‘Shorty' (SR18), the sidewinder (SR27), the turbine car (Swamp Rat 28-A), and then it would be Swamp Rat 12-A. That car [pictured above, was the first Swamp Rat to be designated with Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals] was too short [just 137 inches], and we only ran that in the winter series in California."

My Spotters Guides from a few years ago ended at 34, but the numbers carried on after

35: 2009 DragPak stocker

36: 2011 Drag Pak stocker

37: First electric car

38: Second electric car

Swamp Rat 38 had been Garlits' hope for being the first battery-powered car to exceed 200 mph, but he was beaten to that mark last year by Steve Huff and parked the car.So, naturally, I had to ask Garlits if there would ever be a Swamp Rat 39.“Never say never,” he said, and I could detect a gleam in his eye even over a cellular connection. “Maybe I try to build a 250-mph electric car. There’s such fantastic battery technology coming, I don’t want to spend money on old technology. I still want to drive if I can by then. I still feel good, so I don't think that will be any problems.”Same ol' "Big Daddy." I can’t wait.Phil Burgess can reached at [email protected] of more articles like this can be found in the DRAGSTER INSIDER COLUMN ARCHIVE

#swamp rat #Garlits #Gatornationals #Goodyear #big daddy #Big Daddy Don Garlits

[purplesurveys]

1127

1. What is one thing you will never do again? Watch The Hours. Film itself is great, but is way too triggering.

2. Would you rather be twice as smart or twice as happy? I’d take happiness easily. It’s not bad for the most part to make mistakes and I’d rather be too clumsy than be altogether miserable.

3. What happened the last time you cried? It was the day of what would’ve been our anniversary and at that moment I was alone in my car at a parking lot (waiting for the office to open) on a gloomy day. I just had to cry and let my feelings out for like 5 minutes to accept everything but I was immediately fine afterwards, haha. Grief can be funny.

4. What happened the time in your life when you were the most nervous to do something? My first job interview. It was my first adult thing ever. They never got back to me - very professional of them - but I was still grateful for the experience nonetheless.

5. What would your parents be surprised to learn about you? That I was in a whole ass relationship for technically 6 1/2 years. They probably have an inkling by now, but only about me being in a relationship. I’m sure they would be very surprised if they ever found out how long it had actually gone for.

6. What’s your worst habit? I pick at my toenails when I’m nervous or stressed. I tend to do this when I’m doing a work task that I particularly dread, and sometimes I’ll end up being fixated on the habit for like 10 minutes straight and not get anything done.

7. What superpower would you have for one day? Time travel, just to take quick trips to multiple decades and see how life was like during those times.

8. What fictional character do you have the biggest crush on? Matty from 13 Going on 30 would be one of them. Albert Finney’s character in Two for the Road is also charming as fuck.

9. Where would you live if you could live anywhere in the world? If money wasn’t an issue, probably somewhere cozy in like Switzerland or Canada.

10. What is your most bizarre pet peeve? Not necessarily a pet peeve but I get extremely uncomfortable when someone hands me a gift then they insult the gift while in front of me, saying it’s not a great gift or that I probably don’t need it, etc. Filipinos also have this habit of saying something along the lines of, “You earn way more than me so you’d probably think this gift sucks” like how do you want me to react :(((((( I love receiving gifts and the idea of being thought about already means a lot to me, so it just makes me wince a little bit when I hear statements like the above.

11. Who knows you the best? Gabie, probably. I’ve changed a lot since then, though.

12. What after school activities did you do in high school? Clubs were mandatory extracurricular activities in my high school; in my time, I joined the table tennis and yearbook clubs.

13. What “most likely to” superlative would you be most honored to receive? Idk, we didn’t have those in school. I probably would have been honored to get a journalism-themed one though; something like Most Likely To Write for NYT or Most Likely to Win a Pulitzer or something like that. Obviously that’s changed now and I’ve long let go of journalism as a passion.

14. What’s the last book you really loved? I haven’t read in a long, long while.

15. What was the greatest television show of all time? I don’t watch a lot of TV so I’m not the most credible decision-making body for this lol, but out of all the shows I’ve watched the best one would easily be Breaking Bad.

16. What’s been your favorite age so far? 16. Life was insanely easygoing back then and everything fell into place for me at the time.

17. If you could go back in time, what is one piece of advice you would give your younger self? Know when it’s enough. Be kind to yourself.

18. What one thing would you be most disappointed if you never got to experience it? Have kids.

19. Apologize or ask permission? I don’t understand the relationship between the two.

20. Unlimited love or money? I would love to never have to worry about finances ever again.

21. If you knew you would die in one week, what would you do? Take a week-long leave for work, spend all my money, bond with my dogs, throw a party for my closest friends, and honestly, make my peace with her.

22. What’s your most listened to song? Spotify doesn’t show that feature, but I bet it’s from Paramore or Hayley anyway. It would be impossible to know my most-listened to song of all time, like if we took into account my Spotify, iTunes, etc.

23. Beach vacation or European vacation? I need a beach vacation badly, but a European vacation would be a new and different experience. I’d take the latter.

24. If you could have been a child prodigy what would you have wanted to be skilled at? Playing the piano.

25. What’s the first thing you would do if you won the lottery? Depends on how much I won lmao. I’d probably retire this early if the money was big enough since I’m pretty stingy anyway. But generally, I would like to pay off whatever bills my parents are currently paying for, get back the car that we had to sell because of the pandemic, and maybe go for a solo vacation or five heheh.

26. What celebrity would you trade lives with? Kylie Jenner, for a day. Just so I can briefly have a taste of how being that rich is like.

27. If you were a performing artist, what would you title your first album? Nope.

28. What story do your friends still give you crap about? Staying with Gab despite the red flags that glared for four whole years is one of them. Angela will also never let go of that one time I tried some kind of fruit juice in high school and I described it as ‘packs a punch.’ It’s understood as a super Westernized idiom where I live and literally no one uses it in a casual sentence, so it was a hit with her and now we use ‘packs a punch’ whenever we want to describe something awesome or surprising.

29. If earth could only have one condiment for the rest of time, what would you pick to keep around? Mayonnaise and I will die on this mayonnaise-coated hill.

30. What is the ideal number of people to have over on a Friday night? Ideally? At this point? Like 20. I would love for that to be the case on the first Friday we can consider the Philippines COVID-free.

31. What was the worst age you’ve been so far? Sorry for yet another incoming Paramore reference but they literally have a lyric that goes, “22 is like, the worst idea that I have ever had.” Before turning 22 I used to think it was a weird line, like how could 22 possibly be unenjoyable? Now I’m 22 in a pandemic going through a rough breakup and I can’t even see my friends nor work in my first workplace ever.

32. What is your weirdest dealbreaker? If they wanted only cats as pets. I can deal with a dog and a cat, I guess; but cats were never fond of me so I feel like I’d struggle with this situation lol.

33. What fictional character reminds you most of yourself? Mr. Peanutbutterrrrrrr. Has a lot of love to give, doesn’t always use it on the right people. Also lives on pleasing others.

34. Do you believe in karma? Just to a tiny extent, in how I would want people’s awful actions to come bite them in the ass one day. It’s not a philosophy that controls my life and the things I do whatsoever.

35. What was your favorite TV show as a kid? My absolute favorite was Hi-5, with the original cast. As I got older my interests shifted to Spongebob and The Fairly OddParents.

36. What is the weirdest thing you find attractive in a person? I don’t think it’s weird, but I don’t hear thighs too often when people list down their favorite physical traits. It’s certainly one of mine.

37. What Jeopardy! category would you clear, no problem? A Friends-themed one, obviously. This reminds me of the Jeopardy night I had with some friends a few nights ago! That was so much fun, and Andi makes really great and fun questions hahaha.

38. What is something you’re superstitious about? I don’t think I am about anything.

39. What is the scariest experience you have ever had? Maybe that night my grandpa went into a drunk rampage. I was 9, right in his line of sight, frozen and scared shitless, and I didn’t know who he was going to strike next.

40. Who is a non-politician you wish would run for office? I never really think about this. If someone’s a non-politician then there must be a reason they aren’t, lol.

41. What cheesey song do you have memorized? Little Things by One Direction is very cheesy and it’s one of my least favorite songs of theirs, but I still have it memorized out of habit.

42. What one dead person would you most like to have dinner with, if it were possible? My great-grandpa died all the way back in the 70s, even before some of my aunts and uncles could meet him. It would be cool to spend time with him.

43. Do you think it’s important to stay up to date with the news? Yeah, absolutely. I have the stomach for it lol, so I always monitor what’s happening locally and globally. Skipping the news from time to time is fine because I get how anxiety-inducing and depressing some events can be, but there’s a huge difference between ignoring the news for your mental health and being indifferent altogether. I’d immediately judge anyone who’s the latter, and would assume you are incredibly privileged.

44. What is the best present you could ever receive? My money refunded -____________- I had food delivered to my director, Bea’s house as a surprise earlier today, but apparently I ran into a scammer driver and the fucker drove away with the meal I had bought for Bea. I reported the driver and the situation, and thankfully the customer service rep of the food delivery app quickly responded and said they’d return the full amount I paid for; but I still haven’t received it.

45. Would you give up one of your fingers if it meant you’d have free wifi wherever you go, for the rest of your life? No. Mobile data exists for a reason.

46. What’s the first thing you’d do if you were the opposite sex for one day? Check out my voice.

47. If someone told you you could give one person a present and your budget was unlimited–what present would you get and for whom? I’d love to surprise Angela with an overseas trip that would last for like a month. Traveling is one thing we have yet to do as best friends.

48. What is the nicest thing someone could say about you? Nothing particular, but it makes me happy when people call me strong and when they validate the shit I’ve gone through over the years.

49. Giant house in a subdivision or tiny house somewhere with a view? I would take the giant house. When it comes to my own place, I would want to have a lot of space to roam around.

50. What is the weirdest quirk your family has? Nothing is coming to mind.

#surveys #survey

[supercasey]

Sanders Sides Battlebots AU Part 1: The Bots, Drivers, and Lore (for the time being)

Okay, people actually seem interested in this, so @elvis-has-been-dug and @evelyn-paine, this one is for you two (and also to all the people who liked the first post, lol). ((Putting this under a readmore because... it’s about to get LONG. ALSO: for people who don’t know, Janus is my headcanon name for Deceit, Romulus is my take on Original Creativity (AKA before The Split), and William is my OC for Thomas’ Procrastination!))

Okay, I fixed it and added everything, but I swear to god, if Tumblr makes the formatting shit, I’m gonna eat a brick.

The Builders/Bots (In order of experience)

Bot Name: Undercover Driver: Janus Salem Driver’s Age: 45 Weapon Type: Wildcard Mini Bot: None Mini Type: None Years Competing: 27 Number of Giant Nuts Won: 5 Number of Giant Bolts Won: 0 About the Bot: A very adaptable bot, Janus will make Undercover anything he needs it to be. Whether it’s a vertical spinner, a full-body spinner, a horizontal spinner, an axe, a wedge, a flipper; you name it, Undercover’s probably been made into it at some point for a match. In any case, Undercover is a very well built bot, and is difficult to strategize against, but what it has in strategy it lacks in driving, as Janus doesn’t have the razor sharp reflexes he once possessed as a young man. About the Driver: Janus has been involved with Battlebots since the very beginning, founding the first public competitions alongside Romulus. He actually had romantic feelings for Romulus, but due to the competitive (and somewhat homophobic) atmosphere they were surrounded by, the two of them had to keep their relationship a secret, which was just fine by Janus. Unfortunately for everyone who knew him, Romulus died at thirty-six from a sudden heart attack, and out of sympathy and genuine love for the kids, Janus adopted Romulus’ twin sons; a controversial move at the time, to say the least. Nowadays, Janus is still involved with Battlebots, despite the pressure to retire, and is intent on winning at least one more Giant Nut before he throws in the towel; besides, he has to teach these new kids who’s boss!

Bot Name: The King Driver: Romulus Magnus Driver’s Age: 46 (Deceased - Died at 36) Weapon Type: Horizontal Spinner Mini Bot: Princess Mini Type: Propeller Years Competing: 17 Number of Giant Nuts Won: 4 Number of Giant Bolts Won: 0 About the Bot: Horrifyingly powerful horizontal spinner, The King is up there in deadliness with the likes of Tombstone and Minotaur. He’s fairly durable, due to his driver having over a decade of experience under his belt, and every wound seems at most a temporary inconvenience. Princess is more for show than anything else, but she still packs a fiery punch when used correctly. Unfortunately, The King and Princess have both been retired for many years now, but their designs still inspire many bots into existence, allowing their legacy to continue. About the Driver: One of the veterans of Battlebots, Romulus is one of the first names people in this competition associate with the idea of being gone too soon. Alas, Romulus died at thirty-six from an undiagnosed heart condition, which triggered a heart attack, killing him within twenty-four hours of his heart attack happening. While alive, Romulus was a bit unpredictable in the ring, switching between being everyone’s kindly father figure and the Battlebox miscreant. Nowadays, his twin sons Roman and Remus continue his legacy, most assuredly making their father proud from wherever his spirit now resides.

Bot Name: Tuff Pupp Driver: Patton Picani Driver’s Age: 27 Weapon Type: Wedge Mini Bot: Pretty Kitty Mini Type: Spinner Years Competing: 7 Number of Giant Nuts Won: 0 Number of Giant Bolts Won: 1 About the Bot(s): Very cutesy looking bot; sturdy, low to the ground, and very fucking durable (on par with the likes of Duck! tbh). Can survive several hits from Tombstone on a good day, but don’t expect those giant googly eyes to stay on after a fight. Pretty Kitty is a fan favorite, and although it usually gets busted pretty quickly, it’s become famous for once crippling Undercover and winning the match for Tuff Pupp (it’s also a favorite because Patton let’s kids in the crowd drive Pretty Kitty for him, and then gives them a cat-themed baseball cap afterwards). About the Driver: Patton Picani has been raised in the midst of Battlebots since he was a young teen, on account of his father being the arena announcer for the show. After he came of age and went through college, Patton built Tuff Pupp and entered the ring. From the very beginning, Patton has been a big fan favorite, his iconic puppy onesie and cat baseball caps for the kids making him rather endearing. He may seem like a total softie, but his bot is anything but, and while the fans adore him, fellow bot builders know to fear him and his building skills.

Bot Name: Falsehood Driver: Logan Wu Driver’s Age: 26 Weapon Type: Flipper Mini Bot: None Mini Type: None Years Competing: 6 Number of Giant Nuts Won: 1 Number of Giant Bolts Won: 1 About the Bot(s): Hydraulics flipper on par with the likes of Bronco (they tested which bot could launch a dryer the highest, but Bronco won by a few feet). Not a lot of real flashiness to the design, but is painted black with dark blue accents. Durable, but not quite as durable as Tuff Pupp. Very reliable, but it’s hydraulics have failed on it before in the ring. Keep an eye on this one in a Free for All match; it’ll launch you the minute you look away. About the Driver: Logan Wu is a college graduate who made his first appearance a few years back with his college robotics club and their bot, but after a very embarrassing loss it seemed like his club would never return to Battlebots again. The next year, Logan returned, but this time with his OWN bot, and with him as the driver. He managed to get to the semi-finals with Falsehood, and has since been considered one of Battlebots’ best builders. He’s not as flashy as the likes of Tuff Pupp and Princey, but he still has a very loyal fanbase (and he definitely earned some new fans that time he wore his unicorn onesie for a match against Patton).

Bot Name: Princey Driver: Roman Magnus Driver’s Age: 23 Weapon Type: Full-Body Spinner Mini Bot: None Mini Type: None Years Competing: 5 Number of Giant Nuts Won: 1 Number of Giant Bolts Won: 0 About the Bot(s): A fairly large full-body spinner that clearly took a great deal of inspiration from The King, save for plenty of modern day upgrades and improvements alongside Roman’s own creative touch (plus it’s a full-body spinner, unlike The King, which only had a small horizontal spinner). Princey is very much feared in the ring, capable of taking down bots as durable as Tuff Pupp and Duck! on a good day, though he isn’t invincible. More often than not, Princey ends up breaking himself on anything he hits too hard; it’s a good thing that Roman’s so great at repairs. About the Driver: Raised alongside his twin brother since the beginning of Battlebots, Roman has always dreamed of being one of the big stars, wanting to compete with the likes of Tombstone and Bronco. He originally thought he’d grow up to inherit his father’s bot, The King, but after Romulus passed away from a heart attack, Roman committed himself to building his own bot, and has indeed become one of the stars he always dreamed of becoming someday. He’s not as rambunctious as his twin brother, but Roman is definitely famous in the Battlebox, and he’ll be damned if anyone takes his spotlight.

Bot Name: Forbidden Fruit Driver: Remus Magnus Driver’s Age: 23 Weapon Type: Full-Body Spinner Mini Bot: Jeffery Mini Type: Spinner Years Competing: 5 Number of Giant Nuts Won: 0 Number of Giant Bolts Won: 2 About the Bot(s): Very similar to Princey, but it’s a little smaller and is painted neon green instead of red (though it has a few red “blood splatters” in order to tease Roman). Somehow even less capable of taking it’s own hits than Princey, but it does much more damage, as Remus more or less put all of it’s weight in kinetic damage. Jeffery is a bit of an odd mini bot, oftentimes doing more harm than good, but he’s a fan favorite, and usually gets a lot of laughs from the audience when he (inevitably) breaks himself on something midway through the match. About the Driver: Raised alongside his twin brother since the beginning of Battlebots, Remus has been dying to get a genuine taste of the action. Unlike Roman, he never wanted to pilot The King, and his father’s passing, while absolutely devastating for him, at least removed the pressure to pilot his dad’s bot someday. Now having his own bots in Forbidden Fruit and Jeffery, Remus is infamous in the Battlebox for his cheap tactics and maniacal laughter, resulting in him being either hated or adored by builders and viewers alike.

Bot Name: Procrastination Station Driver: William Jackson Driver’s Age: 25 Weapon Type: Horizontal Spinner Mini Bot: Chippy Mini Type: Propeller Years Competing: 4 Number of Giant Nuts Won: 0 Number of Giant Bolts Won: 1 About the Bot(s): Secretly based off of The King, Procrastination Station is quickly becoming infamous in the ring for it’s incredible build and it’s excellent driving. Not quite as durable as Tuff Pupp, or as strong as Forbidden Fruit, or even as adaptable as Undercover, PS makes up for it’s shortcomings in all out speed and maneuverability, making matches with it intense and usually very long. Not exactly a big time winner, PS is still very much feared in the Battlebox, and is more than capable of winning the Giant Nut someday… there’s also Chippy, but he’s more of an accessory than anything else. About the Driver: Unlike most of the drivers/builders currently competing, Billy didn’t have any sort of family members or connections to Battlebots, instead growing up watching the matches from the couch at home. Once old enough, and after graduating with high honors in college, Billy started making a name for himself in Battlebots with his beloved Procrastination Station. Though he doesn’t have the benefits of following a legacy, he also doesn’t have the setbacks, something he considers a great advantage. Billy comes off as a bit slow, at least at first glance and in interviews, but anyone who’s faced him can testify that he’s incredibly brilliant, just quiet about it.

Bot Name: Charlotte Driver: Virgil Salem Driver’s Age: 19 Weapon Type: Vertical Spinner Mini Bot: Lil' Reaper Mini Type: Wedge Years Competing: 2 Number of Giant Nuts Won: 1 Number of Giant Bolts Won: 0 About the Bot(s): A small but deadly bot, Charlotte has already racked up an impressive amount of knock-outs since her debut last year, and is known for showing little mercy on the battlefield (unless your insides are exposed, of course). Charlotte is a tiny, black painted vertical spinner, complete with purple “patches” all over her. Lil’ Reaper isn’t much for damage output, but it’s been very useful for pinning bots for Charlotte during matches. About the Driver: Virgil is currently the youngest driver/builder in Battlebots, but has been driving since he was even younger, as his adoptive father- Janus Salem- has been bringing him along for every season since he was adopted, even letting him pilot Undercover a few times as a young teen. There are rumors going around that Virgil and Janus had a falling out, based off of their explosive interactions in front of the cameras and in the ring, but it’s all for show (well… not ALL of it, but Virgil doesn’t want to talk about that too much). The unspoken outcast/prodigy of the competition, Virgil is here with something to prove, and he’ll do anything to escape Janus’ shadow over his Battlebots career.

Little Headcanons/Things in the AU (So Far!!!)

Thomas and Jaun are the commentators for Battlebots, going very much with a best friends/occasional frenemies routine.

Talon, Terrance, and Valorie are all the judges.

Remy is the Battlebox commentator (basically that means he runs around interviewing all of the builders/getting into shenanigans with them (AKA pulling pranks with the twins)). He definitely has a very sassy attitude, and let’s be honest, he’s getting bleeped (alongside Jaun, of course) every third word he speaks.

Picani is the battle arena announcer, and unlike the amazing Faruq of real life Battlebots, his starting lines/jokes are always very family friendly/adorable. However, whenever Patton is battling someone, Remy will sometimes be made to take over for announcing the fight (which leads to him cussing like a sailor, much to Picani and Patton’s horror (like father like son, lol)).

Janus and Romulus are the veterans of Battlebots, but with Romulus gone, this just leaves Janus as the “Battlebox Grandpa” according to everyone else (Virgil got him a “World’s Okayest Grandpa” mug and he unironically loves it… secretly, of course).

Janus and Virgil have a fake “Father vs Son” rivalry thing going on; it started in Virgil’s first season of Battlebots, when he was eighteen, and has continued into the current season. Janus is fairly convinced it’s all for fun, oftentimes having to hide his laughs/chuckles whenever he playfully makes fun of Virgil. Virgil, on the other hand, is actually a little angry with Janus, so it’s not all fake for him. The worst it’s gotten is a staged “fight” they had between matches, which was quickly broken up by security; neither of them were disqualified or anything, since no one got all that hurt, but Janus had a blackeye and Virgil’s knuckles were sore afterwards.

The twins 100% have a legitimate rivalry going on, which has resulted in several fistfights that have nearly gotten them thrown out of the competition altogether (their father being a fan favorite is pretty much all that’s kept them from being banned, plus the competition runners know it’s (mostly) in good fun and not actual attempts at fratricide). They also play pranks on each other constantly, but will occasionally team up to prank a fellow competitor (last year they rigged one of Logan’s pens to spray him with ink, which resulted in a famous clip of Logan running after the twins while soaked in blue ink, screaming bloodymurder).

I don’t really have a lot of ships for this AU other than Romuceit (Romulus/Deceit), seeing as there’s a lot of family stuff going on, but I’ll probably have hints at Logicality and repressed Prinxiety (Prinxiety I’m a bit scared to fiddle with, seeing as they grew up together, but I dunno still).

Back to the lore: the shit surrounding Romulus and Janus’ families (oh fucking boy).

Only a few years into his Battlebots career, Romulus got news that an ex-flame of his from college had given birth to twin boys; not only were they his, but she didn’t want anything to do with them anymore (they were about three years old at the time). So long as Romulus agreed not to publicly shame his ex/say who she was, she told him that she’d give him full custody of the twins, and he immediately agreed, taking both boys a month after he found out about their existence.

Fans and fellow builders alike believed that Romulus would take a season off to take care of his kids, and a few even feared he’d retire, but to everyone’s shock, Romulus appeared the very next season (this all happened during the off season) with both Roman and Remus riding on his shoulders, Romulus appearing happier than he had in many years.

Romulus took to fatherhood quickly, and with the occasional (secret) helping hand from Janus with babysitting/raising the boys, he continued with his Battlebots career, even winning his first Giant Nut the year he brought in the twins (there’s a famous picture out there of them posing with their dad in front of the Giant Nut).

After that, Romulus considered his boys good luck, and brought them for every single season he competed in. This delighted both fans and builders, as the twins were now considered to be just as much a part of Romulus’ bot as the bot itself (though, the twins occasionally got into trouble when they got older, mostly from pranking other builders, but they never sabotaged anyone or anything extreme like that).

When the twins were around eight years old, Janus adopted a four year old out of the blue (well, out of the blue for viewers and strangers, but he’d been wanting a kid for years before even Romulus got his kids). The kid was named Virgil, and he too quickly became famous in the Battlebots community, oftentimes found being carried around by Janus or napping underneath his father’s workbench.

As expected, the twins became fast friends with Virgil, but unlike the twins, Virgil was very quiet, and was selectively mute until he was about seven years old. Even so, Virgil was still a fan favorite, Janus having him push the button for battles and even letting Virgil occasionally pilot Undercover once he reached twelve years old.

Unfortunately, when the twins were thirteen and Virgil was nine, Romulus very suddenly passed away from an unexpected heart attack. This caused a great deal of drama within the community, viewers and builders alike unsure of what would happen next. After all, didn’t Romulus have sole custody of the twins? Who would take them in? And what about The King?

In an unexpected turn of events, Janus offered to take custody of the twins. This sparked an uproar within the builders community, many speculating that Janus, who was already infamous for his cheap tactics and antisocial behavior, was only taking in the twins so he could steal The King and misuse his blueprints.

In the end, it took Janus agreeing to not touch The King in order to have custody of the twins (something that shouldn’t have been necessary, as he didn’t even want The King, but rumors spiral), and even then there was great unrest, as some truly disgusting rumors started flying around, especially when Janus and Romulus’ romantic relationship was outed to the public.

Nonetheless, Janus adopted both Roman and Remus, and continued to bring them and Virgil along for Battlebots competitions. There was an obvious shift in moods among the boys, all three of them mourning their dead father, but within a few years they returned to being Battlebots’ unofficial child stars.

((There’s more I’ll probably talk about later, like how the twins are getting along (they’re not) and how Janus and Virgil’s falling out happened, but I’ll do that later on; I wanna see if people even give a fuck about this AU first.))

General Rules/Things concerning Battlebots for anyone who knows fuck all about Battlebots

1. More or less, this is a fighting robot competition, but not like the stuff that was on-screen for a few minutes in Big Hero 6: if you want, I can link people with some really good fight examples if you’re curious of how these fights go down.

2. Battlebots is a robot fighting competition, and is one of the most famous ones in the world, located in the USA.There are two Big Trophies (that my dumbass knows of) that you can win in Battlebots: the most coveted prize is the grand prize, that being the “Giant Nut”, which is awarded to the last Bot standing at the end of the competition. The other trophy/prize is the “Giant Bolt”, which is awarded to the season’s Desperado Tournament. (The Desperado Tournament is basically everyone’s last chance to get into the final 16/the true championships, so if your Bot has had a shitty season so far, it’s not a terrible idea to enter the Desperado, but beware, it tends to leave your Bot pretty fucked up by the end, so you’d better be able to repair it afterwards.)3. While it’s all about wrecking/destroying the other team’s Bot, there IS a sense of common courtesy in the competition. It’s good sportsmanship not to kick a Bot while it’s down (unless the Bot’s builder consents/requests you to, which oftentimes happens late in the game/just to please the crowd), and it’s considered very disrespectful to purposefully destroy someone’s internal wiring (say a Bot busts open, and all it’s wires are hanging out of it: it’s considered very inappropriate to then wreck those wires, and you’ll probably get a lot of shit for it in the Battlebox afterwards).4. Battlebots is already somewhat of a “family” thing for a lot of teams, so I’m not just pulling that one out of my ass. One of the most famous family teams is “Son of Whyachi” and pretty much everyone in their family is now involved with Battlebots.5. The gimmick thing that some Bots have isn’t just a dumb joke for Patton: look up the likes of Witch Doctor, Rainbow, and Kraken to get a taste of what I’m talking about.6. I think that’s most of the general stuff… if you have anymore questions, shoot me an Ask/PM and I’ll try to help as much as I can (Just please don’t spoil any of 2019’s Battlebots for me, as I’m not caught up with the show yet)! I’ll post more in-depth rules later on, so if you don’t want to read through all the technical garble on Battlebots’ rules document, I’ll have you covered soon enough!

That’s all I’ve got so far (I’ll probably provide more rules if people want them, and as stated, I’m more than happy to provide good battle examples... I’ll also try to draw/design the bots, but no promises because I’ll certainly suck at it)! Feel free to fuck around with this AU, but please tag me in anything you create, as I’d love to see it!

#sanders sides #sanders sides battlebots au #deceit sanders #virgil sanders #roman sanders #remus sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #romulus sanders #romulus sanders (oc) #william sanders (oc) #thomas sanders #ts thomas #ts deceit #ts virgil #ts roman #ts remus #ts logan #ts patton #logicality #creativitwins #for lisa #for girnyo #god tumblr please don't delete the readmore i don't want to snipe my followers

[illthdar]

YOU REBLOGGED THE AU ASK THING SO I AM SENDING IN THE AU ASKS. 1, 4, 6, 8, 17, 23, 30, 36 You don't have to answer all of them. (This is my favorite ask of all time, ever)

Good heavens, well I’ll give it my best shot. Thanks for the ask. I won’t do the full cast, or we really will be here all year but here’s Inari’s team and how they would fit:

1. college AU but instead of being students, all your ocs are professors

Toshiiro: dance

Seth: the cool science teacher

Tundra: computer lab

Inari: the principal, of course

Lerki: the less cool science teacher

4. *wormhole AU where your ocs find themselves at a Comic Con on Earth (in the near future after your book/comic/film has come out to wild success) and they must pretend to be extremely dedicated cosplayers*

Tundra: absolutely trying his hardest not to fanboy over all of the stuff. Not really succeeding because he’s a super nerd.

Seth: completely enjoying the fact that everyone wants a picture with him.

Toshiiro: cannot figure out wtf is going on. Face may as well be tattooed red from every person getting too up close and personal. Nothing he does seems to make them go away - he’s bewildered that, the more he complains, the more people scream with excitement.

Inari: their very best self, fan hiding their laughing face.

Lerki: complete mess. Too noisy, too bright, too much is wrong with this place - the elements said so - WHY can’t we go back yet?

6. AU where your ocs are all various types of animals at a pet store/petting zoo

Toshiiro: he’s the parrot that got taught all the swear words.

Seth: the Labrador puppy that is toocuteforlife. OMG, U HUMAN?! TAKEMEWITHUUUUU!

Tundra: that cat that comes in and doesn’t even live here. No one knows who he belongs to, he just eats the food and sleeps in the beds and fucks off again when it suits him.

Inari: the so majestic bird in that one cage that is never bought, despite how pretty, because they snap at everyone that tries to touch their feathers. Don’t mess with the aesthetics.

Lerki: Hamster. HAVE I MOVED ANYWHERE YET? NO?! Better run in this wheel some more! Oo! Water! CARROT SLICES NOMNOM! What was I doing? 

8. AU where your ocs all work at a fast food restaurant

Toshiiro: Manager. Hates his life because he got the rest of these dipshits.

Inari: Regional manager. All eyes on them when they walk in. Super bitchy.

Tundra: Looks like a slacker, does most of the work anyway, but still manages to flirt with the customers.

Seth: Wants to flirt with the customers, unfortunately stuck on drive thru because he can’t seem to do it without getting caught by Toshiiro.

Lerki: Does he work here? Fuck knows. If he shows up, we never see him.

17. boy band AU

Toshiiro: drummer. Can’t sing for shit, won’t try, but has best rhythm.

Tundra: electric guitar. Screamer.

Seth: base guitar. Backup vocals.

Inari: Lead singer, second best vocals but best face.

Lerki: Backup vocals, best but looks like he forgot to change clothes. Or shower. All week.

23. AU where your ocs are aged-up and are now all residents in a retirement home

Tundra: going to laugh as he tries to run people over with the electric scooter. Can you catch him? Nope.

Seth: the nice old black guy that every white person looks to for great advice but gives no thanks to.

Inari: Still a diva and dresses better than everyone there. Including the visitors. 

Lerki: lost touch with reality but forever trying to convince everyone otherwise. No one is fooled. Cheats at cards.

Toshiiro: Legit has his shit still in order. Head of the scrabble and bingo clubs and chess club. Will completely own any ass in trivia. 

30. 1950s ‘Outsiders’ AU where your ocs are split between Greasers and Socs

Inari: Complete Soc. Head of them, their ruler. All bow.

Toshiiro: the Soc who would very much like not to be surrounded by insufferable egotistical dicks but can’t stand morons, so here he’s stuck.

Seth: Greaser. Best at detailing. Will pimp the fuck out of your wheels.

Tundra: Greaser. Best driver. Has lots of practice crashing. People think he’s got nine lives or some shit.

Lerki: Voted most likely to get doors opened into his face every time he tries to enter a room. Loser.

36. shipwrecked on a desert island AU

Toshiiro: made the Help sign out of sticks.

Seth: made shelter and fire.

Inari: that bastard who sits around and supervises.

Lerki: wandered off hours ago to explore.

Tundra: the only one who thought to grab a mirror to signal for help that way.

[nanalikessurveys]

1. What time did you get up this morning? 12:30pm, don’t judge me, i went to sleep at 4am lol

2. How do you like your steak? i don’t really like steak

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Spider-Man: Far From Home

4. What is your favorite TV show? csi miami, haha i’ve watched that show since i was about 7?? it’s still one of my favorites, i also like law and order

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? actually i’m moving out of my parents house to live on my own in couple weeks. my new apartment is soo nice, so as boring as it sounds, i would want to live there

6. What did you have for breakfast? just cereal

7. What is your favorite cuisine? japanese!

8. What foods do you dislike? pickles, or just everything pickled

9. Favorite Place to Eat? the American Diner we have in my town is the best

10. Favorite dressing? something with garlic in it

11.What kind of vehicle do you drive?  i don’t drive

12. What are your favorite clothes? i like black jeans, with a loose shirt

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? italy, spain, iceland, croatia, thailand, usa, canada...etc

14. Where would you want to retire?  what does this mean? lol my english is not very good so..

15. Favorite time of day? i like midday 

16. Where were you born? here in finland

17. What is your favorite sport to watch? i am an ex-gymnast so i’d have to say artistic gymnastics, i don’t really watch sports that much anymore tho

19. How many siblings? one

20. Favorite pastime/hobby?  just doing different types of exercises, watching movies and tv shows, spending time with my friend and family

21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? i really don’t know

22. Bird watcher? no not really

23. Are you a morning person or a night person? i think i’m usually both lol, maybe more of a morning person

24. Do you have any pets? yes we have two cats 

25. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share? not really

26. What did you want to be when you were little? i wanted to be a mailman haha, and also crime scene investigator (surprise much), prison psychologist and a hotel receptionist

27. What is your best childhood memory? i really don’t know, maybe just something that i did with my friends, i used to have a lot of friends, then the teenager years came and i lost all of them haha

28. Are you a cat or dog person? cat person

29. Are you single? yes

30. Always wear your seat belt? always 

31. Been in a car accident? nope, thank god

32. Any pet peeves? i just don’t like rude people

33. Favorite Pizza Toppings? mushrooms, tuna and LOTS OF garlic, i sound disgusting haha

34. Favorite Flower? roses, they smell nice

35. Favorite ice cream? just basic vanilla ice cream

36. Favorite fast food restaurant? i don’t really go to fast food restaurants, but i’d say mcdonalds

37. How many times did you fail your driver’s test? i haven’t done my drivers test

38. From whom did you get your last email? just an ad

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? i actually have no idea

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? nope 

41. Like your job? i don’t have a job, i’m a student

42. Broccoli? yes 

43. What was your favorite vacation? when i went to Cyprus with my mom last summer, it was so fun and the place was so pretty

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? my mom

45. What are you listening to right now? nothing really, my cat snoring lol

46. What is your favorite color? turquoise

47. How many tattoos do you have? zero

49. What time did you finish this quiz? 5:38pm

50. Coffee Drinker? yes

#survey #surveys

[dinedreamdiscover]

60 things to be thankful for in 60 years

I will be turning 60 in October and I'm not really depressed about it because In 60 years I am thankful for so many things and here is my list!

60 things I’m thankful for in 60 years

Let me start off by saying that this post isn't meant to be a depressing post. At first it might come across that way to you but it's about all the things I am thankful for in the (almost) 60 years that I've been on this earth. October will be here soon enough but trust me....I'm not rushing it. lol

1. Thankful to be Alive. First and foremost I thank God that I am here to celebrate by 60th birthday. There are so many don't have the opportunity to do that. My sister was one of those people. She died at the age of 51. Her husband also passed at the age of 55. My husband's brother was killed at the age of 28 by a drunk driver. 

2. My Parents. I am thankful that I had mom on this earth until the age of 98. My dad passed at 75 and he was there to help everyone as much as he could while he was with us. I miss them both dearly but and thankful for years they were here. 

3. Children. I have two wonderful sons and I couldn't be more thankful for both of them. They both turned into awesome young men and husbands.

4. Grandchildren. I have been blessed with five beautiful grandchildren. Three boys and two girls with the oldest at 13 and youngest at 5. 

5. A Roof Over my Head. Something like this may seem trivial to some, however, there are so many people people that are homeless and don't have that, to me it's a blessing. Whether it's a regular home or for the past two years, our RV, I'm covered...literally.

 The little Things 6. A Job When I Needed It. I was blessed to have had a job for most of my life. I started working at the age of 14 and was employed until I retired.  7. A Vehicle. Thankfully I had a (working) vehicle for the majority of my life. It might seem like a small thing but it was there when I needed it.

8. Food on my Table. I am lucky in the fact that there is food on my table. There may have been times when it was low but I made it through the tough times.

9. Clothes on my Back. Believe it or not, there are people that are less fortunate and cannot afford the clothing they need. Which is one reason I try to give clothing I no longer need to the people that need it the most.  10. Good Health. Even though my health hasn't been so great lately, I am still able to get out of move and move around. 11 - 20 things to be thankful for:  11. Pets. I don't know what I would do without my fur babies. Right now we only have the one German Shepherd Dog, but it gets lonely when there isn't one around. She really is family.

12. Money. I don't have a lot of money, but I have enough to survive.  13. Good Friends. I don't have a lot of friends, however, the friends that I do have are true friends. Friends that I have known most of my life and can be trusted. Ones that are there if I need them to lean on. 14. Having a Partner. Sometimes things don't work out between two people and they must part ways. I live by the old saying that everything happens for a reason. I am lucky enough to have found someone to spend the rest of my life with.

15. Sunshine. The sun is an entegral part of living. Without it we, at least I know I wouldn't/couldn't survive. It makes me feel good and gives me energy. 

Stuff not to take for granted: 16. My Eyesight. I am thankful for my eyesight because without it I wouldn't be able to see the beautiful places that we get visit.  17. My Hearing. I'm thankful for being able to hear people talking to me, to be able to listen to music and hear the TV. 18. Freedom. I am thankful for all those that served in the Military and allowing me to have freedom. 

19. Electricity. Without electricity we wouldn't have the ability to do most of things that we do today. 20. The Internet. I wouldn't be writing this post without the Internet. lol 21-30: 21. Relationships. Since I've started blogging in 2012, I have met so many people. Girls, Guys, kids and even pets.

22. Traveling. Even before we had our RV, we did a lot of traveling. I am thankful that we can do that.

23. Sunrises and Sunsets. I love sunrises and sunsets. Although, I'm usually not up to catch the sunrise. I am always taking pictures of sunsets too. lol

24. The Hallmark Channel. Call me crazy, but I love all those Christmas movies that pretty much have the same story line. If it's a romantic movie, count me in.  25. Pet Movies. While we are on the subject of movies, if there's a story with pets, specifically dogs in it, you better believe I'm watching it. And most probably crying while watching it. Eight Below gets me every time no matter how many times I've seen it.  Things Everyone should be thankful for: 26. Old Photos and Home Movies. I love looking at old photos and home movies. My uncle gave me some old 8mm movies and I had them transferred onto CD's. I can watch them over and over and I get a huge smile on my face every time. 27. Courteous People. It seems like there aren't very many courteous people around anymore. People that will hold a door open for you, say thank you, stop if you need help, etc. 28. Holidays. It's getting to be that time of the year when my favorite holidays are coming. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are totally my favorite and it shows when I decorate.  29. Memories. I am thankful that I can still remember all the wonderful memories I have. Memories of my family, when I was little, my wild teenage years and all my family members.  30. Love. This kind of goes hand in hand with the partner. Although it's possible to have a partner and not have love, I am thankful for both. The love of my parents and children is more to be thankful for. 31 - 40 things to be thankful for: 31. Coffee. Without coffee I would be dragging all day. lol 32. Things I Have. I am thankful for what I have. Some people wish for more and think the grass is greener on the other side. But that isn't always true. 33. My iPhone. Do you ever wonder what we did before smartphones? I have 40,000 pictures on my phone. We're able to talk to anyone and see anyone via video.  34. Scenery. The mountains, ocean, forests and more.

35. Wineries. Who ever thought of wine tastings at wineries and wine tours was an amazing person. I love visiting them and tasting all the different wines available across the US. Which is we signed up for Harvest Hosts. We are able to stay over at wineries for one night in our RV and it's simply amazing.

Things we all experience: 36. Great Recipes. Everyone has recipes that have been passed down from their parents and grandparents. Those are the recipes that you cherish and that bring back memories of happy times with family. 37. Mistakes. Trust me when I say that I am thankful for all the mistakes that I've made in my life. They have made me a better person and I have learned so much from them. I might have made the same mistake two or three times, but I learned. lol 38. Hugs. Hugs make you feel good and as it turns out is good for you. It's proven to make you happier and healthier. 39. Smiles. Did you know that if force yourself to smile even when you are in a bad mood, it can help you to feel better? Plus it makes other's smile too.  40. Family. This probably should have been listed as one of the top things under mom, dad, children and grandchildren. Where would we be without family. I love my sisters even though it's rarely said. Our family always got together weekly when I was little. Families don't do that anymore and it's kind of sad. We try to as much as possible but you know how life gets in the way most of the time. :(

41 - 50: 41. Music. I love music. I love singing along and music makes me feel good and forget all my worries.  42. Disney. Ever since I visited Disneyland when I was 9 with my mom and sister, I have loved it. Which is probably the reason we moved 15 minutes from Disney World back in 2003.

43. My Mind. I am thankful that I can still remember things. My mom had dementia that last couple years of her life and it's a very sad disease. She didn't know me but I knew it was the disease and not her.  44. Being Able to Take Care of My Mom. I am thankful that my husband was willing to move in with my mom to take care of her when she started to go downhill. I vowed I would NEVER put my mother in a nursing home and we were both retired and able to take care of her. 

45. Opportunities. Not everyone is able get the opportunity to do some of the things that I did. I flew to Germany when I was 17 and even though I was young and really didn't get to see too much of the country, I still had the opportunity.  Where would we be without these things? 46. Teachers. Even though I didn't realize it at the time, my teachers taught me most of things I needed to know. There was also a few things I didn't need, like shorthand. lol 47. Water. Believe it or not, there are many countries where water is not as plentiful as we have here. We have plenty to drink, bathe, enjoy and use. 48. Rockets. I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to see a rocket or two launch from Cape Canaveral. No matter how many times I have seen them go up, it is still amazing every time I see them.

49. Beach. Nothing is more relaxing than being on the beach listening to the waves crashing. As long as there are waves. lol

50. Healthcare. This has been a rough year health wise for me. If it weren't for the wonderful nurses and Dr.'s at South Lake Hospital, I don't know where I'd be.  51 - 60 things to be thankful for: 51. Air Conditioning. I don't know how we ever survived without air conditioning growing up. Maybe it wasn't as hot, maybe we didn't know what it was, ha, but I do know that I could NEVER survive without it now....in our home or our vehicle. 52. Social Media. Without it I wouldn't get to keep up with things going in my family. I get to see pictures of everyone and birthdays and weddings that we can't be at in person. 53. Life Experiences. All life experiences good and bad. Thankful for change and the journey it brings! 54. Laughter. Laughing daily is good for your health. And it makes you feel good. 55. Bathtubs. This is probably the thing I miss most in our RV. We had a jacuzzi tub in both our last two homes and I would just love to sit and soak my troubles away. I know of one RV that has a beautiful tub, but it didn't have any of the other features that we were looking for. :(

Last but not Least: 56. My Snack Bar. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to own my own little Snack Bar for four years. I loved doing it and people loved my food which is always a good thing.  57. Today. Be thankful for all you have, because you never know what will happen next. Life is too short. Live life to the fullest everyday. 58. Exactly What I Have. I am thankful for exactly what I have. Everyone always wants more, but I'm content. I didn't realize how much stuff we had until we started liquidating all the clutter for full time RV Travel. You don't realize how much stuff you have until you have to move it. UGH! 59. The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. I am so excited to be able to attend the Balloon Fiesta this year for my 60th birthday celebration. It's been on my bucket list forever and this year I vowed to make it happen. Follow along on our Instagram page with the hashtag #60thBirthdayCelebration. 

60. YOU! Without you, my readers, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this post because there would be no reason to. Thank you. 

What are some of the things that you're  thankful for?

Read the full article

#60thbirthdaycelebration #family #food #housing #life #thankful

[beached-thing]

50 things about me

I was tagged by @thevelveteendork 1. What time did you get up this morning? Like around 10am or something. Got up early today 2. How do you like your steak? Rare, maybe even blue. The bloodier the better 3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? John Wick 2. It was fucking rad 4. What is your favourite TV show? ummm idk i dont really have a fave. But Archer is currently my rewatch show so thats something 5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? In a big city, in another country, far far away from the US 6. What did you have for breakfast? Fruity Pebbles! 7. What is your favourite cuisine? North Indian tastes the best, Italian gives you the most choices which are all great 8. What foods do you dislike? Almonds set my gag reflex off like no other. Also basically all vegetables cuz im terrible 9. Favourite Place to Eat? at home cuz social anxiety. I know some good restaurants tho 10. Favourite dressing? Dressing is gross but if we're talking condiments I gotta give it to sweet chili sauce 11.What kind of vehicle do you drive? Silver 2001 Toyota Corolla. Great car. 12. What are your favourite clothes? I look gross in everything 13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? my gfs and all my tumblr crushes and friends 14. Where would you want to retire? haha 'retire' 15. Favourite time of day? When everything is dark and quiet 16. Where were you born? Bellevue, WA, USA 17. What is your favourite sport to watch? American football 18. Missing 19. How many siblings do you have? 1 older brother 20. Favourite pastime/hobby? idk games I guess 21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? they're not super deep questions so idk 22. Bird watcher? Nah fuck birds 23. Are you a morning person or a night person? Night 24. Do you have any pets? Yeah 25. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share? No :/ 26. What did you want to be when you were little? Dead. Or a surgeon 27. What is your best childhood memory? gaming with the lads 28. Are you a cat or dog person? Cats 29. Are you married? I wish 30. Always wear your seat belt? Always 31. Been in a car accident? Multiple times. Only once when I was the driver but it was objectively not my fault 32. Any pet peeves? Tons but none worth mentioning off the top of my head 33. Favourite Pizza Toppings? Pepperoni. Pineapple, olives, hot sauce, and jalapeños are all good too 34. Favorite Flower? idk tbh. Not a flower person 35. Favorite ice cream? Ben & Jerry's Milk and Cookies 36. Favorite fast food restaurant? McDonald's and Taco Bell 37. How many times did you fail your driver’s test? I never failed and I even went up on the curb in my test. Still passed. And I'm still and awful and dangerous driver to this very day 38. From whom did you get your last email? cba to check, my bank I think 39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Fry's Electronics. That store is heaven on earth. Imagine a fancy Walmart but entirely for computers and video games and shit. 40. Do anything spontaneous lately? I took a shower today lmao 41. Like your job? I'm unemployed and doomed 42. Broccoli? Like the only acceptable vegetable 43. What was your favourite vacation? Disneyland was ok 44. Last person you went out to dinner with? my parents lol 45. What are you listening to right now? Archer 46. What is your favourite colours? Pink & blue 47. How many tattoos do you have? None :/ 49. What time did you finish this quiz? 4:22am 50. Coffee Drinker? Nah shit is gross I tag no one cuz the people I tagged in the last one of these all didn't even acknowledge the post :/

[biofunmy]

Meet the Man Quietly Building the Tesla of Trucks, With Jeff Bezos Aboard

NORMAL, Ill. — By definition, the time of the world’s richest man is pretty valuable. But early last fall, Jeff Bezos sought out a 36-year old entrepreneur named R.J. Scaringe and spent the better part of a day in Plymouth, Mich., at the company he founded, Rivian.

Mr. Bezos got a preview of Rivian’s electric pickup truck and sport-utility vehicle and liked what he saw. Not long after his visit, Amazon led a $700 million investment in Rivian. Two months later, in April, Ford Motor invested $500 million. All told, Rivian has raised $1.7 billion without selling a single truck or S.U.V.

If you have not heard of Rivian before, well, that was intentional. Until recently, it was in stealth mode, operating out of unmarked buildings and making few public announcements. But no longer. By the end of 2020, Rivian intends to begin producing premium electric vehicles, with a greater range than anything on the road today.

Rivian is promising to do for trucks what Tesla did for luxury cars.

That’s where the similarities between the two electric automobile makers end. Even as Tesla and its brash chief executive, Elon Musk, made headlines by setting and falling short of some audacious goals, Mr. Scaringe and Rivian has spent a decade fine-tuning their designs.

Walking around a former Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Ill., Mr. Scaringe points to where stamping presses will churn out car parts like fenders and doors. But he is hoping to do more than sell cars. Mr. Scaringe wants to dispel myths he thinks still surround electric vehicles.

“We have a number of untruths — a truck can’t be electric, an electric car can’t go off road, it can’t get dirty, it can’t tow and truck buyers don’t want something that’s environmentally friendly,” he said. “These things are fundamentally wrong. Electrification and technology can create a truck that’s incredibly capable and fun to drive.”

In addition to developing advanced battery systems, Rivian has also designed a skateboard-like chassis that it plans to sell to other carmakers. For Ford, investing in Rivian is a way to leapfrog the competition and get new ideas from a start-up as it and other automakers race to prepare for an electrified future.

Amazon has been mum about its interest in the company, but Rivian’s vehicles could help the retail giant reduce its carbon footprint as it builds its own distribution network.

The automobile business has fearsome barriers to entry, and aspiring players have to ante up billions of dollars just to be dealt into a game where profit margins tend to be slim.

Mr. Scaringe is likely to need billions more to get as far as Tesla, which itself struggled to expand production in 2017 and 2018. But the demand for electric vehicles is there — Tesla built more than 250,000 cars in 2018.

Mr. Scaringe founded Mainstream Motors, the business that would later become Rivian, in 2009 after completing a doctorate in mechanical engineering at M.I.T.

His timing was odd to say the least — the financial crisis had made investors skittish, and the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler did not bode well for an automotive start-up.

Family and friends provided the initial funding, and Mr. Scaringe and his father both took out second mortgages to raise money. Rivian takes its name from Florida’s Indian River, close to where Mr. Scaringe grew up in Melbourne, Fla.

Mr. Scaringe and a small team worked for two-and-a-half years to create a fuel-efficient sports car, but he ultimately pulled the plug in 2011. “In my heart and soul, I knew I wasn’t answering the fundamental question of why the world needs this company to be successful,” he said.

It was a painful moment. At one point, the team had worked through four nights in a row, said Roman Mistiuk, now a senior interior designer at Rivian. “When the vehicle was done, R.J. said we’re switching.”

The small band of employees stuck with him, and when Mr. Scaringe moved the company to Michigan, they followed him north. At one point, Mr. Scaringe, his girlfriend (now wife) and several Rivian staff members lived together in a house in the Detroit suburbs.

Except for sleeping, they talked cars day and night. “It was breakfast, lunch and dinner, 24/7,” Mr. Scaringe said.

Early backing from Saudi and Japanese investors provided the runway for Rivian to develop its electric vehicle designs.

“Fortunately, my personality is one that I never lost confidence I could do it,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I always knew how I was going to do it.”

Much like what he is building, Mr. Scaringe is in constant motion, splitting his time between the company’s engineering headquarters in Plymouth, the factory in Normal and two other offices in Irvine and San Jose in California.

That leaves little time for him to spend with his wife and three sons, the oldest of whom is 3. “Rivian is 100 percent minus family,” Mr. Scaringe said, estimating that his wife and children get about 5 percent of his time.

Rivian is the culmination of a lifelong dream. Mr. Scaringe grew up rebuilding vintage Porsches under the tutelage of a neighbor and he knew he wanted to start a car company when he was 18.

“It became the plan when I started college,” he said. “Then I started putting the pieces together.”

At M.I.T., Mr. Scaringe made his ambitions clear, recalls Dan Roos, a retired engineering professor who served as the director of the university’s Center for Transportation Studies.

“He said, ‘I’m going to start an auto company’,” Mr. Roos said. “When you hear a student say that, it’s like saying I’m going to change the world. It’s nice but highly unlikely. But he was very determined about what he was going to do.”

As much as he loved cars, Mr. Scaringe said he was deeply troubled by their role as a cause of climate change, air pollution and other ills. “I wanted to have an impact and the highest impact approach was to build the company myself,” he said.

Mr. Scaringe, an outdoorsy type who enjoys mountain biking, wants his cars to be able to go off road. Rivian trucks and S.U.V.s can operate in three feet of standing water. A ballistic liner protects the battery pack so drivers can take the vehicle into rugged terrain without worrying that rocks and other objects could penetrate the undercarriage.

Rivian’s R1S S.U.V. bears a resemblance to a Range Rover, while the flatbed in its R1T pickup is shorter than the best-selling Ford F-150. “Rivian’s products are not really meant to be work trucks,” said Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst with IHS. “They aim to be lifestyle products, capable but meant for recreational use.”

The R1S will directly challenge Tesla’s S.U.V., the Model X, and although Mr. Musk has said he will introduce a pickup, Tesla has yet to unveil one

The R1S and the R1T will start at around $70,000 and cost more than $90,000 for fully loaded models that can travel up to 400 miles on a full charge. Rivian has received tens of thousands of reservations from buyers who have made deposits of $1,000 each.

“Targeting the premium pickup and S.U.V. market in the U.S. was smart,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal auto analyst at Navigant Research. “Those are the kind of vehicles Americans want to buy, as opposed to a compact car or midsized sedan.” Profit margins are higher too, especially for luxury models.

As different as Mr. Scaringe is from Mr. Musk, the two share some qualities. Mr. Scaringe is a control freak who weighs in on everything from the color of bathroom tiles to the lighting in the assembly plant.

Rivian employees describe Mr. Scaringe in worshipful, almost mystical tones, echoing the kind of adoration that Mr. Musk inspires. Designers laud his sophisticated design sensibilities. Brand experts cite his marketing know-how.

“I’ve spent years trying to decode R.J. and predict what he wants,” said Larry Parker, creative director at Rivian. “He’s moving so fast. Sometimes we don’t know where he is going. To keep up with R.J. is not easy.”

Jeff Hammoud, Rivian’s head of design said Mr. Scaringe was the reason he was willing to leave his job as the top designer at Jeep. “It’s amazing how much he is able to absorb,” Mr. Hammoud said.

But there are idiosyncrasies beneath the surface. Mr. Scaringe usually dresses in blue (“Blue is my favorite color!”), occasionally flannel. On his birthday, many employees wear flannel on what’s known as “Dress Like R.J. Day.”

To provide fresh food for his employees, Mr. Scaringe wants to turn the grassy areas that surround the plant in Normal into a farm. “The goal is let’s make this the best place to eat in town,” he said.

Asked about Rivian’s rivalry with Tesla, Mr. Scaringe would not disparage the competition. He credits Tesla for changing the perception of electric cars as “boring and slow, or glorified golf carts.”

While Tesla has failed to reach its own lofty production targets in recent years, Mr. Scaringe is only promising about 20,000 to 40,000 vehicles in 2021, the first full year of production.

Before that happens, Rivian will have to create assembly lines for its vehicles and batteries, which Tesla’s problems have shown is very difficult. The company will also have to establish a retail operation to get its vehicles to buyers.

“Manufacturing is the biggest challenge,” said Mike Ramsey, an analyst with Gartner. “The capital requirements are enormous and ceaseless.”

Even as Rivian has grown and new investors have come aboard, Mr. Scaringe has made clear he wants to hold the reins tight. General Motors discussed investing in the company this year, according to two people familiar with the negotiations who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But the automaker and Mr. Scaringe could not agree on terms. G.M. was demanding more control and exclusivity than he was comfortable with.

For inspiration, Mr. Scaringe looks to Alex Honnold, a rock climber who scaled Yosemite’s El Capitan without equipment. A poster for a documentary about the climb, “Free Solo,” is on the wall of Mr. Scaringe’s office in Plymouth.

“Hindsight has a lot of advantages, one of which is that everything looks crisper and cleaner, but at the time you don’t know the path forward,” he said. “So you’re going up this infinitely steep climb.”

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[ecotone99]

[MF] The old rocker

I have been wanting to write for probably 10+ years, and finally this month something in me actually made it happen and ive been playing around. Put together this short story tonight and would love advice/critique. Don't be afraid to be harsh, I'm not pretending to know at all what im doing. The story doesn't have much mean or reason but it is what came out..

He was seventy-five years old, and dressed the same as he ever had, like a rocker. White sneakers, tight jeans and small white t-shirts. A leather jacket in the colder months. He lived alone and barely ventured from his house, except to go to the bank and supermarket. He had no car, nor a license, so he made good use of the bus stop directly outside his house when needed. His small house was run down, and the garden was not over grown, but completely baron apart from grass. The house was sat in one of the nicer areas of town – a good end of the city. Upon the death of his mother, with great help he had brought this place with his inheritance, leaving enough to live off until his pension kicked in. He had never had any urge to make money, nor any head for it, but he sufficiently managed his essentials. The only kind of leisure that he spent his money on was that of rock music. Mostly on CD’s, he had inherited a decent stereo, sometimes he also brought guitar strings. He listened to rock music and played his guitar daily – although he was terrible at guitar. He had practiced for over 30 years, and though he could play along with his favorite songs, he never had that connection of really feeling the instrument and using it to express himself. Still, he believed after so many years that his taste in rock was incredibly refined. He knew if ever questioned or entered into a discussion about classic rock music, that he would be completely at home and confident in discussing the obscure and fine aspects of the genre, and the thought of it excited him greatly - although he was yet to have had the chance Despite the rock, throughout this simple life he was a sober man, never drinking or taking drugs. A lucky man whose mind operated on the base line of existence, captivated and distracted enough by the sane things, to never really feel a turmoil in him. Never wanting to see that line from above, or below, only right on top of it. And despite the repetition of his life, he escaped endlessly in his music each day and night, before retiring to his small and plain bed. Every morning he rose without a wakeup call before 6am, to go and sit on the bus stop outside his house, to drink instant coffee and watch the sunrise with a smile. The sun would peek up from behind the adjacent houses, closely trailing the golden haze that melted the morning cold and fog, hitting his feet first and then the rest of him as he sipped on his coffee and thought about his favorite bands.

He always felt truly alive sitting here and often thought that as long as the sun rose each morning, he would be happy. He would watch the traffic pickup over the course of a couple of hours, the odd person here and there heading off to work before there was light, slowly building into the commuter frenzy peaking at eight thirty. They were all part of a world that seemed to move at a different pace than him, not that he ever seemed to care, or consider this. On Saturday and Sunday mornings he saw all manner of sights as he sat. Girls coming down the footpath, holding their high heels, stumbling forward as if still wearing them. Inebriated men, still trying to ride the night, walking past directionless. Occasionally solo dogs walked by with pace, not even turning to look or sniff at him as they passed, clearly having somewhere to be. More rarely so a group of teenagers or a worser man would slow and say something nasty to him, but he always cluelessly defused these instances by smiling and sipping his coffee. Those encounters were few and far between here in this part of town. He never greeted the morning people that came by on foot, and in ten years had never talked to or befriended any of them, but the daily dog walkers now expected to see him sitting there as they rounded the bend and it was somewhat comforting for them, although they never admit it - sometimes whispering to themselves as they passed “isn’t it sad, that lonely old man”. The bus drivers all knew not to slow or stop for him. He felt no need or miss of the possible interactions, regardless he had barely time enough to listen to the infinite stories and genius of his favorite bands. He would sit until a little after 9am, multiple coffees down, and then head back inside to put on a morning song. Contact from any distant family was years gone, and didn’t seem to bother him.

One cold august Saturday morning, around quarter to six just as the night died, a young man possibly 20, walked towards him as if fueled by something. As he began to pass, the old man heard an unmistakable sound blasting out from the teenager's headphones, the Grateful Dead's Scarlet Begonias, muffled lyrics of “well there aint nothing wrong with the way she moves”. The man felt a strange feeling in his chest and looked at the kid as he passed. The kid turned, smiled, took out one earphone and spoke. “Morning” he said. “Hello” said the man. The kid promptly sat next to the man and slightly slurring proclaimed “I’ve been up all night; I think I’ll barely make it home”. “Ahh” proclaimed the man. “I’m just having my coffee”. He looked at the direction of the muffled song, still playing out of the headphones, the high frequencies of the guitars dimly jabbing into the morning air. “Scarlet Begonias” he said. The kids body seemed to perk up now, he sat upright and removed the other earphone from his ear. “You know them??” he said, bloodshot eyes wide. He looked down at the old man and noticed now that he looked straight out of a seventies rock band with his tight black jeans and a worn leather jacket. He had on a gold chain and his hair was curly and unkempt. He looked the part just as much as the combination of age and theme looked inappropriate. “Scarlets one of Hunters best” replied the man. “They rocked it over 300 times live”. “Did you ever see them” said the kid. The old man smiled, “no, that would have been nice though”. “Hell yeah” replied the kid. Then he thought of asking about other bands the man liked, or what he had done in his life. He then thought to maybe ask just what the hell he could do in his own life. But the comedown of the nights drugs and drink, was on the tail end of almost 36 hours without sleep, so most of the thoughts he made were conjured by this and then lost or zapped out by his brain, before they got anywhere near his mouth.

Beside him the old man, finally feeling like he had a friend he could talk to, was unfortunately finding himself too with nothing to say – although this was normal for him. He sipped at his coffee and for a couple of minutes they sat there with only the dim sound of the song coming from the headphones, light now starting to raise up behind the house and tree lines adjacent to them, both smiling and feeling something new. “I... got to sleep” said the kid finally. “Yeh, better” smiled the man. The kid stood carefully, bracing himself on the seat, looked at the old man and smiled back. He set off slowly, putting his headphones back in his ears. He found now he felt a little better, walking off thinking of that old man. “He is onto something” he said to himself. “He’s truly living, what am I scared of. He’s old and hasn’t lost anything”. In that moment, growing old didn’t seem as bad to him as it had before. Meanwhile, the old man stared down into his empty coffee cup, and while thinking of his favorite rock bands, decided to go inside for a refill before heading back out to his bench.

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[newssplashy]

World: As affordable housing crisis grows, HUD sits on the sidelines

WASHINGTON — The country is in the grips of an escalating housing affordability crisis. Millions of low-income Americans are paying 70 percent or more of their incomes for shelter.

The Trump administration’s main policy response, unveiled this spring by Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development:

A plan to triple rents for about 712,000 of the poorest tenants receiving federal housing aid and to loosen the cap on rents on 4.5 million households enrolled in federal voucher and public housing programs nationwide, with the goal of moving longtime tenants out of the system to make way for new ones.

As city and state officials and members of both parties clamor for the federal government to help, Carson has privately told aides that he views the shortage of affordable housing as regrettable, but as essentially a local problem.

A former presidential candidate who said last year that he did not want to give recipients of federal aid “a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say, ‘I’ll just stay here; they will take care of me,'” he has made it a priority to reduce, rather than expand, assistance to the poor, to break what he sees as a cycle of dependency.

And when congressional Democrats and Republicans scrambled to save his department’s budget and rescue an endangered tax credit that accounts for 9 out of 10 affordable housing developments built in the country, Carson sat on the sidelines, according to legislators and congressional staff members.

Local officials seem resigned to the fact that they will receive little or no help from the Trump administration.

“To be brutally honest, I think that we aren’t really getting any help right now out of Washington, and the situation has gotten really bad over the last two years,” said Chad Williams, executive director of the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority, which oversees public housing developments and voucher programs that serve 16,000 people in the Las Vegas area.

Nevada, ground zero in the housing crisis a decade ago, is now the epicenter of the affordability crunch, with low-income residents squeezed out of once-affordable apartments by working-class refugees fleeing California’s own rental crisis.

“I think Carson’s ideas, that public housing shouldn’t be multigenerational, are noble,” Williams said. “But right now these programs are a stable, Band-Aid fix, and we really need them.”

Underlying the conflict between Carson and officials like Williams are fundamental disagreements over the role the federal government should play.

Carson believes federal aid should be regarded only as a temporary crutch for families moving from dependency to work and sees the rent increases as a way to expand his agency’s budget. Low-income renters and many local officials who run housing programs see the federal assistance as a semi-permanent hedge against evictions and homelessness that needs to be expanded in times of crisis.

This year, the White House proposed to slash $8.8 billion from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s most important housing programs. While aides say Carson privately pushed for a restoration in programs for seniors and disabled people, he publicly supported the gutting of his own department, reiterating to lawmakers last month that he felt as much responsibility toward taxpayers as tenants.

“I continue to advocate for fiscal responsibility as well as compassion,” Carson told a House committee in June. He declined to comment for this article.

Under Carson’s most significant policy proposal as secretary, maximum rents paid by the poorest households in public housing would rise to $150 a month from $50.

His proposal has received little support from local housing operators. Over the past month, Carson has huddled with Rep. Dennis A. Ross, R-Fla., who is drafting less stringent legislation that would allow, but not mandate, local housing authorities to raise rents and carry out reforms to streamline the process of verifying the poverty of applicants, aides said.

Still, both proposals represent a paradigm shift in federal housing policy, ending the requirement that low-income tenants spend no more than 30 percent of their net income on rent.

Tying rents to incomes has been a central part of the system since 1981, especially for the Section 8 housing voucher program, enabling 2.1 million low-income families to rent private apartments they could not otherwise afford. Carson’s proposal would peg rents to 35 percent of gross income for all tenants. The Ross bill excludes voucher recipients, at the request of local housing authority officials.

“We need sensible reforms to make the system more efficient for agencies and residents,” said Adrianne Todman, chief executive of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. “But now is not the time for arbitrary federal rent hikes.”

“This isn’t about dependence,” said Diane Yentel, president of the nonprofit National Low Income Housing Coalition, a Washington-based advocacy group that has released several recent reports documenting the affordability crunch. “Today’s housing crisis is squarely rooted in the widening gap between incomes and housing costs.”

The crisis didn’t begin under Trump’s presidency.

Median national rents rose 32 percent in constant dollars from 2001 to 2015, while wages remained flat, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. The pace has picked up over the last few years, buoyed by an improving economy.

The rent increases are hitting poor and elderly people, African-Americans and low-income wage earners the hardest. A survey by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that a worker earning the state minimum wage could afford a market-rate one-bedroom apartment in only 22 of the country’s 3,000 counties.

The Obama administration initially proposed steep increases for Section 8 and other programs, but pulled back after the Republicans won control of the House in 2010.

During the 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama promised to fund an affordable housing trust fund for the construction of new units. But the $200-million-a-year program, funded by the profits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was blocked by Republican lawmakers until 2014. In 2017, it was on track to finance the construction of about 1,000 units of affordable housing in 32 states, according to federal data.

Its sister program, the Capital Magnet Fund, which has leveraged private investment to create 17,000 new units, is in the cross hairs of Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, who tried to cut it by $141.7 million this year as part of his unsuccessful budget recession effort this summer.

Under Trump, funding for public housing, vouchers and new construction has risen slightly — against the president’s wishes.

In March, Republican and Democratic negotiators rejected Trump’s budget, adding $1.25 billion to HUD’s rental assistance programs and injecting an additional $425 million to the HOME program, which funds state, local, nonprofit and private partnerships to build affordable housing.

Those moves, while significant, are likely to have a limited impact on the larger problem of the increasing number of families who cannot afford a place to live.

While prices are cooling at the high end of the market in many big cities, the low- and middle-income housing markets in Nevada, Texas, California, Florida and Colorado are so hot, local officials say, that landlords routinely reject subsidized tenants because they can charge more to other renters.

Rental construction has focused on attracting high-income tenants. From 2001 to 2013, the number of rental apartments for high-wage earners increased 36 percent, while units for poor people shrank nearly 10 percent, according to federal housing statistics.

With affordable stock scarce, prices are spiking. An estimated 12 million Americans, most of them poor, now spend more than half of their earnings on housing, according to HUD statistics.

One of them is Judith Toro Fortyz, 75, who receives $848 a month in Social Security and pays $594.88 of it to remain in the small two-bedroom apartment on Staten Island that she once shared with her mother.

Toro Fortyz has been turned down for federal vouchers, reflecting a shortage in assistance that has shut out 3 of every 4 eligible applicants for Section 8. Even with an additional housing stipend from the city, she is spending 70 percent of her income on rent.

That has forced her to make wrenching decisions, like forgoing her favorite fruit, oranges, after a price spike at her local supermarket.

“I stay home a lot. I’d rather not go out because going out means you have to spend money,” said Toro Fortyz, a retired data storage worker. “I have a friend who gets Section 8 and, oh my God, they pay $200 a month. I can’t even imagine having that much money to live on.”

Carson’s proposal alarmed many low-income tenants, especially older ones, who could face significant rent increases under the plan. “We basically wouldn’t be able to get by,” said Patrick Greene, 69, a retired truck driver who lives in a small HUD-subsidized apartment with his wife in Montgomery, Alabama.

A more immediate threat to affordable housing, critics say, is the huge tax bill passed by Congress last year, which imperils one of the most important sources of long-term funding, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit.

Novogradac & Co., a firm that provides analytics for the construction and finance industries, estimated that demand for the $9-billion-a-year credit could dry up as investors realize savings through the tax cuts. The firm estimates that nearly 235,000 fewer apartments could be built over the next decade as a result of the tax code rewrite.

A bipartisan coalition, led by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was able to expand the credit by an additional $400 million. But that is not likely to offset the damage done by the tax measure.

The administration is observing these efforts from the sidelines. Trump, scion of a New York real estate family that made its fortune in the 1950s and 1960s building affordable housing for white working-class neighborhoods, has shown little interest in tackling the problem.

He made only passing mention of the issue during the 2016 campaign and has pressed Carson to move more aggressively to impose work requirements on federal aid recipients.

For his part, Carson publicly acknowledges the crisis in most of his speeches. “Alarmingly high numbers of Americans continue to pay more than half of their incomes toward rent,” he told a House panel in October. “Many millions remain mired in poverty, rather than being guided on a path out of it.”

But he is focused less on federal solutions than on prodding local governments to ease barriers to construction. He has ordered his policy staff to come up with proposals to push local governments to reduce zoning restrictions on new projects, especially low-cost manufactured housing. HUD will also begin working with landlords around the country to come up with ways to make housing vouchers more attractive and more inclusive, aides said.

“Subsidies are a piece of the puzzle,” said Raffi Williams, a spokesman for Carson, “but we must also address the regulatory barriers relative to zoning and land use in higher-cost markets that are preventing the construction of new affordable housing. This is not just a federal problem — it’s everybody’s problem.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Glenn Thrush © 2018 The New York Times

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/07/world-as-affordable-housing-crisis_29.html

#News

[toshn8r]

Ok....So I was tagged in this like...15 days ago...and I’m still learning how to use Tumblr. Shut the hell up, I can hear your laughter.

...tag yourselves :D 

THE LAST: 1. Drink: Pepsi...even though I’m not supposed to 2. Phone call: my best friend, Pink 3. Text message: also Pink explaining why Alois is a bitch 4. Song you listened to: Make it up-Sam Tsui 5. Time you cried: it’s been a long time

HAVE YOU EVER: 6. Dated someone twice: No...shockingly 7. Been Cheated on: Yes 8. Kissed someone and regretted it: Yes 9. Lost someone special: I think most people have.                                             10. Been depressed: Yes. I’m bipolar so it’s there frequently

11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: Yes...luckily I was in the shower. Made for easy cleanup

LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS: 12. Black 13. Royal Blue 14. Emerald Green

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU: 15. Made new friends: Yes! Mostly at Cons 16. Fallen out of love: No 17. Laughed until you cried: A few times

18. Found out someone was talking about you: Eh, whatcha gonna do?  19. Met someone who changed you: Most likely 20. Found out who your true friends are: Yes 21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: No...I haven’t kissed anyone for a long time (like...pushing 3 years)

GENERAL: 22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: Damn near all 23. Do you have any pets: One cat and two big dogs 24. Do you want to change your name: Nope. It’s fine. Most people shorten it 25. What did you do for your last birthday: I....don’t remember?  26. What time did you wake up: 11am 27. What were you doing at midnight last night: listening to music on Youtube, playing on Tumblr, reading smut, chatting with friends 28. Name something you cannot wait for: Retirement? Yeah...retirement 29. When was the last time you saw your mother: She’s in the kitchen right now. Hi, mom. 30. What is one thing you wish you could change about your life: I’d like to be immortal. And male. 31. What are you listening to right now: the Escape channel on the TV 32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yes 33. Something that is getting on your nerves: Idiots, bad drivers, country music 34. Most visited website: Tumblr, AO3, Facebook, Amazon... 35. Elementary: I remember actually enjoying my education 36. High School: Got bullied, but also tutored others in schoolwork. It’s where I got most of my theater experience. 37. College: My degree is an expensive piece of toilet paper and I dated horrible people 38. Hair color: My natural is auburn. It’s currently jet black. 39. Long or short hair: I just donated 2 ft...so short. 40. Do you have a crush on someone: Yes...this medic at work. It’s mutual, but it’s not moving forward very fast. 41. What do you like about yourself: My eyes? I don’t know. 42. Piercings: 14 in my ears. None elsewhere (that I know of) 43. Blood type: O+ 44. Nickname: Tosh, Tosh2.0, Tosh Spice in rl 45. Relationship status: Single for 4 years and it feels like an eternity 46. Zodiac sign: Scorpio 47. Pronouns: I couldn’t care less really...but people go with she/her 48. Favorite TV show: Lucifer, Dr. G: Medical Examiner, ummm... 49. Tattoos: Yin Yang wolves on my back, “Why so serious?” on my ankle, the Assassins’ symbol on my wrist for AC, and I have pawprints and feathers going up my side and across my back 50. Right- or left-handed: Lefty

FIRST: 51. Surgery: Adnoidectomy 52. Piercing: My ears. 54. Sport: Softball and soccer 55. Vacation: Well, France... 56. Pair of trainers: Ask my mom.

MORE GENERAL: 57. Eating: Nothing currently 58. Drinking: Pepsi.... 59. I’m about to: Eat dinner and then go work in the ER 61. Waiting for: This weekend. ANIME OASIS!!! WOOHOO! 62. Want: My Ciel contacts to get here 63. Get married: Oye...not yet 64. Career: Rockstar! Actually I’d love to be a writer 65. Hugs or kisses: Both! 66. Lips or eyes: Both. 67. Shorter or taller: Taller! I’m just over 5 foot so I need someone who can wrap around me and carry me. 68. Older or younger: I prefer older 69. Light or dark eyes: Doesn’t matter. I can find light or dark eyes attractive. 70. Nice arms or nice stomach: Nice body? Doesn’t have to be super fit, just same level as myself.

71. Sensitive or loud: Sensitive...but not cry at the drop of a hat sensitive

72. Hookup or relationship: RELATIONSHIP. 73. Troublemaker or hesitant: Somewhere in the middle

HAVE YOU EVER: 74. Kissed a stranger: Yes 75. Drank hard liquor: Yes...and it led to the kissing of a stranger 76. Lost glasses contact/lenses: I lose my glasses all the time 77. Turned someone down: Yes. 78. Sex on first date: I’ve done it before. It takes a special something though. 79. Broken someone’s heart: More than once 80. Had your heart broken: Of course. 81. Been arrested: Nope.  82. Cried when someone died: Well no shit

83. Fallen for a friend: No

DO YOU BELIEVE IN: 84. Yourself: Fairly often 85. Miracles: Yes

86. Love at first sight: Maybe once in blue moon 87. Santa Claus: The spirit of the season, yes. The person, no. 88. Kiss on the first date: Sure 89. Angels: I don’t actually know

OTHER: 90. Current best friend’s name: Pink (yes, really)

91. Eye color: Green 92. Favourite movie: Currently Moana. Love the music.