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#because house prices are so inflated
odinsblog · 10 months
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🗣️THIS IS WHAT INCLUSIVE, COMPASSIONATE DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE
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Minnesota Dems enacted a raft of laws to make the state a trans refuge, and ensure people receiving trans care here can't be reached by far-right governments in places like Florida and Texas. (link)
Minnesota Dems ensured that everyone, including undocumented immigrants, can get drivers' licenses. (link)
They made public college free for the majority of Minnesota families. (link)
Minnesota Dems dropped a billion dollars into a bevy of affordable housing programs, including by creating a new state housing voucher program. (link)
Minnesota Dems massively increased funding for the state's perpetually-underfunded public defenders, which lets more public defenders be hired and existing public defenders get a salary increase. (link)
Dems raised Minnesota education spending by 10%, or about 2.3 billion. (link)
Minnesota Dems created an energy standard for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. (link)
Minnesota already has some of the strongest election infrastructure (and highest voter participation) in the country, but the legislature just made it stronger, with automatic registration, preregistration for minors, and easier access to absentee ballots. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded the publicly subsidized health insurance program to undocumented immigrants. This one's interesting because it's the sort of things Dems often balk at. The governor opposed it! The legislature rolled over him and passed it anyway. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years. (link)
Minnesota Dems gave the state AG the power to block the huge healthcare mergers that have slowly gobbled up the state's medical system. (link)
Minnesota Dems restored voting rights to convicted felons as soon as they leave prison. (link)
Minnesota Dems made prison phone calls free. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed new wage protection rules for the construction industry, against industry resistance. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a new sales tax to fund bus and train lines, an enormous victory for the sustainability and quality of public transit. Transit be more pleasant to ride, more frequent, and have better shelters, along more lines. (link)
They passed strict new regulations on PFAS ("forever chemicals"). (link)
Minnesota Dems passed the largest bonding bill in state history! Funding improvements to parks, colleges, water infrastructure, bridges, etc. etc. etc. (link)
They're going to build a passenger train from the Twin Cities to Duluth. (link)
I can't even find a news story about it but there's tens of millions in funding for new BRT lines, too. (link)
A wonky-but-important change: Minnesota Dems indexed the state gas tax to inflation, effectively increasing the gas tax. (link)
They actually indexed a bunch of stuff to inflation, including the state's education funding formula, which helps ensure that school spending doesn't decline over time. (link)
Minnesota Dems made hourly school workers (e.g., bus drivers and paraprofessionals) eligible for unemployment during summer break, when they're not working or getting paid. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed a bunch of labor protections for teachers, including requiring school districts to negotiate class sizes as part of union contracts. (Yet another @SydneyJordanMN special here. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a state board to govern labor standards at nursing homes. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, which would set price caps for high-cost pharmaceuticals. (link)
Minnesota Dems created new worker protections for Amazon warehouse workers and refinery workers. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed a digital fair repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to make tools and parts available so that consumers can repair their electronics rather than purchase new items. (link)
Minnesota Dems made Juneteenth a state holiday. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned conversion therapy. (link)
They spent nearly a billion dollars on a variety of environmental programs, from heat pumps to reforestation. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded protections for pregnant and nursing workers - already in place for larger employers - to almost everyone in the state. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a new child tax credit that will cut child poverty by about a quarter. (link)
Minnesota Democrats dropped a quick $50 million into homelessness prevention programs. (link)
And because the small stuff didn't get lost in the big stuff, they passed a law to prevent catalytic converter thefts. (link)
Minnesota Dems increased child care assistance. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned "captive audience meetings," where employers force employees to watch anti-union presentations. (link)
No news story yet, but Minnesota Dems forced signal priority changes to Twin Cities transit. Right now the trains have to wait at intersections for cars, which, I can say from experience, is terrible. Soon that will change.
Minnesota Dems provided the largest increase to nursing home funding in state history. (link)
They also bumped up salaries for home health workers, to help address the shortage of in-home nurses. (link)
Minnesota Dems legalized drug paraphernalia, which allows social service providers to conduct needle exchanges and address substance abuse with reduced fear of incurring legal action. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned white supremacists and extremists from police forces, capped probation at 5 years for most crimes, improved clemency, and mostly banned no-knock warrants. (link)
Minnesota Dems also laid the groundwork for a public health insurance option. (link)
I’m happy for the people of Minnesota, but as a Floridian living under Ron DeSantis & hateful Republicans, I’m also very envious tbh. We know that democracy can work, and this is a shining example of what government could be like in the hands of legislators who actually care about helping people in need, and not pursuing the GOP’s “culture wars” and suppressing the votes of BIPOC, and inflicting maximum harm on those who aren’t cis/het, white, wealthy, Christian males. BRAVO MINNESOTA. This is how you do it! And the Minnesota Dems did it with a one seat majority, so no excuses. Forget about the next election and focus on doing as much good as you can, while you still can. 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿
👉🏿 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1660846689450688514.html
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peachmuffinsquish · 9 months
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Here's the thing: imagine if we fixed the housing market, so that the price of housing only increased to match inflation. That would be great, right? Except, homeowners typically spend $2000-$10000 per year on maintenance. So homeownership would go from an investment to an endless money pit, just like renting. The idea of a house as an investment, a house as a way to build wealth, requires that housing prices increase faster than inflation forever, which means that the burden of housing costs on working people must keep increasing forever, and the number of homeless people must keep increasing forever.
The housing crisis isn't just a result of greedy landlords and investors. It's an inevitable result of social policies that encourage people to treat their houses as in investment. Because once a homeowner internalizes the idea that their financial future depends on housing prices going up, they start favoring policies (such as NIMBYism) that make housing prices go up.
Conversely, if we want to end homelessness for good, we need to accept that housing is someone we'll all have to continuously pour resources into, because buildings are complex physical objects that break a lot.
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thenewgothictwice · 9 hours
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March 28. Taleed El-Sabawi, JD, PhD writes: "Jordan should be trending right now. Protests have been blocking traffic; men have flooded the streets in such large numbers that even the repressive military force in Jordan can’t beat them into submission (something they frequently do); Protesters are chanting for Jordan to open its borders so they can march to Al-Aqsa. The political unrest in Jordan has been at a boiling point for years now.
High rates of unemployment particularly among young men; significant inflation; high housing costs; low wages; skyrocketing gas prices, electricity, groceries…hardly any industry. Repressive import taxes.
And a monarchy that pockets millions of US government aid in exchange for US military access. The monarchy is now holding on by a thread.
Expect the Jordanian forces to increase their violence against protestors. Expect the U.S. to send in reinforcements in some shape or form—If the monarchy falls, it will not be a U.S. co-opted government that will organically take its place. It will not be an Israel friendly government. Expect the U.S. to meddle as they always have & to do everything they can to keep the monarchy in place.
Even a UN Ceasefire isn’t enough to make Israel ceasefire or the U.S. to call for Israel to ceasefire. The calculus has changed. The people are reminded yet again how the governments of the world have failed them. Expect more of this around the world.
Every time there are protests in Jordan, I call my family in Amman to get a sense of how serious it is, because my grandparents are in Amman. Since October, every time I call they have brushed it off as young men being young men. Skirmishes with the armed guard as usual. But today was different. They spoke about not being able to drive in the streets, of the chaos, of the sheer number of human bodies, of the determination to do something to help Gaza—something has changed. This time, it feels different.
Additional important context: Jordan was created in 1946. When Britain divided up the Arab World into nation states. Before that there was free movement & a greater degree of one-ness. So when Jordanians say they there is no difference between us and the Palestinian people or that we are the same people , it is because the British creation of nation states was a Western government forcing the Arab people into its Western constructs.
[about further protests in Jordan] There are already plans to start again —at Maghreb tomorrow (sunset)—at the Israeli embassy and doing a sit-in again until dawn, interspersed with prayers. Tomorrow will mark day 5 of protests in Amman."
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femgineerasolution · 22 days
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How about this. Buy your own property. Live on the streets. Or rent one. You can't build anything on any property that isn't yours. That would be illegal. Be thankful that people rent out their property to share so you don't have to deal with the property tax.
Or people could not buy houses they don't need? Owning a house you rent out is a way of generating profit from people who have less money than you, like a reverse robin hood
Plus it reduces supply of houses, which means house prices are inflated and even more people are forced to rent because they can't afford to buy. Deposits for a mortgage are generally more than a year's wages. So if you want to buy, you gotta scrimp and save for years whilst paying someone else's mortgage
Hell, even better them not buying houses you don't need, we could actually recognise housing as a human right and make sure people have what they need to survive
And finally, lol, I rent in the uk, I pay the property taxes
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The AI hype bubble is the new crypto hype bubble
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Back in 2017 Long Island Ice Tea — known for its undistinguished, barely drinkable sugar-water — changed its name to “Long Blockchain Corp.” Its shares surged to a peak of 400% over their pre-announcement price. The company announced no specific integrations with any kind of blockchain, nor has it made any such integrations since.
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way
LBCC was subsequently delisted from NASDAQ after settling with the SEC over fraudulent investor statements. Today, the company trades over the counter and its market cap is $36m, down from $138m.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/textbook-case-of-crypto-hype-how-iced-tea-company-went-blockchain-and-failed-despite-a-289-percent-stock-rise
The most remarkable thing about this incredibly stupid story is that LBCC wasn’t the peak of the blockchain bubble — rather, it was the start of blockchain’s final pump-and-dump. By the standards of 2022’s blockchain grifters, LBCC was small potatoes, a mere $138m sugar-water grift.
They didn’t have any NFTs, no wash trades, no ICO. They didn’t have a Superbowl ad. They didn’t steal billions from mom-and-pop investors while proclaiming themselves to be “Effective Altruists.” They didn’t channel hundreds of millions to election campaigns through straw donations and other forms of campaing finance frauds. They didn’t even open a crypto-themed hamburger restaurant where you couldn’t buy hamburgers with crypto:
https://robbreport.com/food-drink/dining/bored-hungry-restaurant-no-cryptocurrency-1234694556/
They were amateurs. Their attempt to “make fetch happen” only succeeded for a brief instant. By contrast, the superpredators of the crypto bubble were able to make fetch happen over an improbably long timescale, deploying the most powerful reality distortion fields since Pets.com.
Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. We’re told that trillions of dollars’ worth of crypto has been wiped out over the past year, but these losses are nowhere to be seen in the real economy — because the “wealth” that was wiped out by the crypto bubble’s bursting never existed in the first place.
Like any Ponzi scheme, crypto was a way to separate normies from their savings through the pretense that they were “investing” in a vast enterprise — but the only real money (“fiat” in cryptospeak) in the system was the hardscrabble retirement savings of working people, which the bubble’s energetic inflaters swapped for illiquid, worthless shitcoins.
We’ve stopped believing in the illusory billions. Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest. But the people who gave him money — and the nimbler Ponzi artists who evaded arrest — are looking for new scams to separate the marks from their money.
Take Morganstanley, who spent 2021 and 2022 hyping cryptocurrency as a massive growth opportunity:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/morgan-stanley-launches-cryptocurrency-research-team
Today, Morganstanley wants you to know that AI is a $6 trillion opportunity.
They’re not alone. The CEOs of Endeavor, Buzzfeed, Microsoft, Spotify, Youtube, Snap, Sports Illustrated, and CAA are all out there, pumping up the AI bubble with every hour that god sends, declaring that the future is AI.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/wall-street-ai-stock-price-1235343279/
Google and Bing are locked in an arms-race to see whose search engine can attain the speediest, most profound enshittification via chatbot, replacing links to web-pages with florid paragraphs composed by fully automated, supremely confident liars:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked
Blockchain was a solution in search of a problem. So is AI. Yes, Buzzfeed will be able to reduce its wage-bill by automating its personality quiz vertical, and Spotify’s “AI DJ” will produce slightly less terrible playlists (at least, to the extent that Spotify doesn’t put its thumb on the scales by inserting tracks into the playlists whose only fitness factor is that someone paid to boost them).
But even if you add all of this up, double it, square it, and add a billion dollar confidence interval, it still doesn’t add up to what Bank Of America analysts called “a defining moment — like the internet in the ’90s.” For one thing, the most exciting part of the “internet in the ‘90s” was that it had incredibly low barriers to entry and wasn’t dominated by large companies — indeed, it had them running scared.
The AI bubble, by contrast, is being inflated by massive incumbents, whose excitement boils down to “This will let the biggest companies get much, much bigger and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves.” Some revolution.
AI has all the hallmarks of a classic pump-and-dump, starting with terminology. AI isn’t “artificial” and it’s not “intelligent.” “Machine learning” doesn’t learn. On this week’s Trashfuture podcast, they made an excellent (and profane and hilarious) case that ChatGPT is best understood as a sophisticated form of autocomplete — not our new robot overlord.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4NHKMZZNKi0w9mOhPYIL4T
We all know that autocomplete is a decidedly mixed blessing. Like all statistical inference tools, autocomplete is profoundly conservative — it wants you to do the same thing tomorrow as you did yesterday (that’s why “sophisticated” ad retargeting ads show you ads for shoes in response to your search for shoes). If the word you type after “hey” is usually “hon” then the next time you type “hey,” autocomplete will be ready to fill in your typical following word — even if this time you want to type “hey stop texting me you freak”:
https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/provocations/neophobic-conservative-ai-overlords-want-everything-stay/
And when autocomplete encounters a new input — when you try to type something you’ve never typed before — it tries to get you to finish your sentence with the statistically median thing that everyone would type next, on average. Usually that produces something utterly bland, but sometimes the results can be hilarious. Back in 2018, I started to text our babysitter with “hey are you free to sit” only to have Android finish the sentence with “on my face” (not something I’d ever typed!):
https://mashable.com/article/android-predictive-text-sit-on-my-face
Modern autocomplete can produce long passages of text in response to prompts, but it is every bit as unreliable as 2018 Android SMS autocomplete, as Alexander Hanff discovered when ChatGPT informed him that he was dead, even generating a plausible URL for a link to a nonexistent obit in The Guardian:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/02/chatgpt_considered_harmful/
Of course, the carnival barkers of the AI pump-and-dump insist that this is all a feature, not a bug. If autocomplete says stupid, wrong things with total confidence, that’s because “AI” is becoming more human, because humans also say stupid, wrong things with total confidence.
Exhibit A is the billionaire AI grifter Sam Altman, CEO if OpenAI — a company whose products are not open, nor are they artificial, nor are they intelligent. Altman celebrated the release of ChatGPT by tweeting “i am a stochastic parrot, and so r u.”
https://twitter.com/sama/status/1599471830255177728
This was a dig at the “stochastic parrots” paper, a comprehensive, measured roundup of criticisms of AI that led Google to fire Timnit Gebru, a respected AI researcher, for having the audacity to point out the Emperor’s New Clothes:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/
Gebru’s co-author on the Parrots paper was Emily M Bender, a computational linguistics specialist at UW, who is one of the best-informed and most damning critics of AI hype. You can get a good sense of her position from Elizabeth Weil’s New York Magazine profile:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html
Bender has made many important scholarly contributions to her field, but she is also famous for her rules of thumb, which caution her fellow scientists not to get high on their own supply:
Please do not conflate word form and meaning
Mind your own credulity
As Bender says, we’ve made “machines that can mindlessly generate text, but we haven’t learned how to stop imagining the mind behind it.” One potential tonic against this fallacy is to follow an Italian MP’s suggestion and replace “AI” with “SALAMI” (“Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences”). It’s a lot easier to keep a clear head when someone asks you, “Is this SALAMI intelligent? Can this SALAMI write a novel? Does this SALAMI deserve human rights?”
Bender’s most famous contribution is the “stochastic parrot,” a construct that “just probabilistically spits out words.” AI bros like Altman love the stochastic parrot, and are hellbent on reducing human beings to stochastic parrots, which will allow them to declare that their chatbots have feature-parity with human beings.
At the same time, Altman and Co are strangely afraid of their creations. It’s possible that this is just a shuck: “I have made something so powerful that it could destroy humanity! Luckily, I am a wise steward of this thing, so it’s fine. But boy, it sure is powerful!”
They’ve been playing this game for a long time. People like Elon Musk (an investor in OpenAI, who is hoping to convince the EU Commission and FTC that he can fire all of Twitter’s human moderators and replace them with chatbots without violating EU law or the FTC’s consent decree) keep warning us that AI will destroy us unless we tame it.
There’s a lot of credulous repetition of these claims, and not just by AI’s boosters. AI critics are also prone to engaging in what Lee Vinsel calls criti-hype: criticizing something by repeating its boosters’ claims without interrogating them to see if they’re true:
https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5
There are better ways to respond to Elon Musk warning us that AIs will emulsify the planet and use human beings for food than to shout, “Look at how irresponsible this wizard is being! He made a Frankenstein’s Monster that will kill us all!” Like, we could point out that of all the things Elon Musk is profoundly wrong about, he is most wrong about the philosophical meaning of Wachowksi movies:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/18/lilly-wachowski-ivana-trump-elon-musk-twitter-red-pill-the-matrix-tweets
But even if we take the bros at their word when they proclaim themselves to be terrified of “existential risk” from AI, we can find better explanations by seeking out other phenomena that might be triggering their dread. As Charlie Stross points out, corporations are Slow AIs, autonomous artificial lifeforms that consistently do the wrong thing even when the people who nominally run them try to steer them in better directions:
https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future
Imagine the existential horror of a ultra-rich manbaby who nominally leads a company, but can’t get it to follow: “everyone thinks I’m in charge, but I’m actually being driven by the Slow AI, serving as its sock puppet on some days, its golem on others.”
Ted Chiang nailed this back in 2017 (the same year of the Long Island Blockchain Company):
There’s a saying, popularized by Fredric Jameson, that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. It’s no surprise that Silicon Valley capitalists don’t want to think about capitalism ending. What’s unexpected is that the way they envision the world ending is through a form of unchecked capitalism, disguised as a superintelligent AI. They have unconsciously created a devil in their own image, a boogeyman whose excesses are precisely their own.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway
Chiang is still writing some of the best critical work on “AI.” His February article in the New Yorker, “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web,” was an instant classic:
[AI] hallucinations are compression artifacts, but — like the incorrect labels generated by the Xerox photocopier — they are plausible enough that identifying them requires comparing them against the originals, which in this case means either the Web or our own knowledge of the world.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web
“AI” is practically purpose-built for inflating another hype-bubble, excelling as it does at producing party-tricks — plausible essays, weird images, voice impersonations. But as Princeton’s Matthew Salganik writes, there’s a world of difference between “cool” and “tool”:
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2023/03/08/can-chatgpt-and-its-successors-go-from-cool-to-tool/
Nature can claim “conversational AI is a game-changer for science” but “there is a huge gap between writing funny instructions for removing food from home electronics and doing scientific research.” Salganik tried to get ChatGPT to help him with the most banal of scholarly tasks — aiding him in peer reviewing a colleague’s paper. The result? “ChatGPT didn’t help me do peer review at all; not one little bit.”
The criti-hype isn’t limited to ChatGPT, of course — there’s plenty of (justifiable) concern about image and voice generators and their impact on creative labor markets, but that concern is often expressed in ways that amplify the self-serving claims of the companies hoping to inflate the hype machine.
One of the best critical responses to the question of image- and voice-generators comes from Kirby Ferguson, whose final Everything Is a Remix video is a superb, visually stunning, brilliantly argued critique of these systems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rswxcDyotXA
One area where Ferguson shines is in thinking through the copyright question — is there any right to decide who can study the art you make? Except in some edge cases, these systems don’t store copies of the images they analyze, nor do they reproduce them:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids
For creators, the important material question raised by these systems is economic, not creative: will our bosses use them to erode our wages? That is a very important question, and as far as our bosses are concerned, the answer is a resounding yes.
Markets value automation primarily because automation allows capitalists to pay workers less. The textile factory owners who purchased automatic looms weren’t interested in giving their workers raises and shorting working days. ‘ They wanted to fire their skilled workers and replace them with small children kidnapped out of orphanages and indentured for a decade, starved and beaten and forced to work, even after they were mangled by the machines. Fun fact: Oliver Twist was based on the bestselling memoir of Robert Blincoe, a child who survived his decade of forced labor:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59127/59127-h/59127-h.htm
Today, voice actors sitting down to record for games companies are forced to begin each session with “My name is ______ and I hereby grant irrevocable permission to train an AI with my voice and use it any way you see fit.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37za/voice-actors-sign-away-rights-to-artificial-intelligence
Let’s be clear here: there is — at present — no firmly established copyright over voiceprints. The “right” that voice actors are signing away as a non-negotiable condition of doing their jobs for giant, powerful monopolists doesn’t even exist. When a corporation makes a worker surrender this right, they are betting that this right will be created later in the name of “artists’ rights” — and that they will then be able to harvest this right and use it to fire the artists who fought so hard for it.
There are other approaches to this. We could support the US Copyright Office’s position that machine-generated works are not works of human creative authorship and are thus not eligible for copyright — so if corporations wanted to control their products, they’d have to hire humans to make them:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/21/22944335/us-copyright-office-reject-ai-generated-art-recent-entrance-to-paradise
Or we could create collective rights that belong to all artists and can’t be signed away to a corporation. That’s how the right to record other musicians’ songs work — and it’s why Taylor Swift was able to re-record the masters that were sold out from under her by evil private-equity bros::
https://doctorow.medium.com/united-we-stand-61e16ec707e2
Whatever we do as creative workers and as humans entitled to a decent life, we can’t afford drink the Blockchain Iced Tea. That means that we have to be technically competent, to understand how the stochastic parrot works, and to make sure our criticism doesn’t just repeat the marketing copy of the latest pump-and-dump.
Today (Mar 9), you can catch me in person in Austin at the UT School of Design and Creative Technologies, and remotely at U Manitoba’s Ethics of Emerging Tech Lecture.
Tomorrow (Mar 10), Rebecca Giblin and I kick off the SXSW reading series.
Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
[Image ID: A graph depicting the Gartner hype cycle. A pair of HAL 9000's glowing red eyes are chasing each other down the slope from the Peak of Inflated Expectations to join another one that is at rest in the Trough of Disillusionment. It, in turn, sits atop a vast cairn of HAL 9000 eyes that are piled in a rough pyramid that extends below the graph to a distance of several times its height.]
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lovelykil · 4 months
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headcanons—
: ➛gon & killua
hc; christmas hcs!!!!!!!!111
note; YAY DECEMBER
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˗ˏˋ gon
“let's go play outside in the snow!"
gon loves to decorate the house
wants to buy so many inflatables for outside, also
LIGHTS
kurapika and leorio almost have an aneurysm because of the price of all those inflatables !! so glad they're hunters though 😭
I vividly see killua standing near the door, sipping on some hot chocolate, his one hand in his pocket very much unbothered, uninvolved, and very much making fun of you and gon as you two attempt to wrap the lights around the tree outside
gon falls off the latter and you go down with him 🤦🏾‍♀️
loves baking with you :3
he really just wants to eat chocolate chips cookies and have a glass of milk as you two watch a christmas movie together
I'm sure he's a messy baker so you actually tell him you can take it from there 😭
he pouts a little but quickly watches you in fascination.
his eyes grow soo wide when you buy him any gift, they twinkle with generosity and love
Or even better, a homemade gift.
Either way he's so happy you thought of him
you both have matching christmas pjs !!
along with reindeer slippers or wtv you want gon will just say yes to anything if it's you
he's such a cuddler as you two watch christmas movies, he probably hold you and snuggle up
doggy coded ‼️
takes you on a walk to look at the lights in york new, he holds your hand and points at the various spectacular light decor.
or if you guys go to his hometown, whale Island, he'll take you somewhere remote possibly on a hill where he surprises you with the most natural lights there are.
it's so breathtaking how the stars sparkle in the sky, and how there are so many that your eyes just can't possibly take all of it in.
you eventually lean on his shoulder, your hand finding his. He holds your hand back smiling quietly as his head rests on yours.
for the night you two watched as the stars danced in the sky during this cold winter, cuddled up on a hill.
˗ˏˋ killua
“look there's mistletoe, you know what that means.”
kil helps sometimes.
he brings in the tree for inside the house and sets it up for you
if his sister is there she forces him to help decorate the tree with you n her
he so obviously does NOT wanna do it but anything she wants plus I mean he gets to hang out with you too
okay alluka nor you can reach the top of the tree to put the star ..🤕 but you know who can?
"looks like I'm the tallest here huhh?"
"killua just put the damn star on top of the tree"😒
non stop teasing on how you are so short as he does a >:3 face
dw he's just flirting, I think
alluka and gon put ornaments on one side of the tree while you and kil take the other
let's just say he puts them in the most weirdest places ever. It's a christmas tree how do you fuck up so badly
killua has a reindeer onesie (the mobage cards 😋)
so you buy one too and he's never blushed so hard
like as soon as you came out from the bathroom, you did a little pose and smiled nervously waiting for him to react.
since gon and alluka were matching and waiting for you too they complimented the look, the onesie really was for youu.
KILLUA on the other hand was staring, not a single word came out but his face spoke millions.
he's so cute, he really wanted to match with you lowkey so he was really surprised you went to buy yourself a reindeer onesie just like his.
"do.. you like it kil?"
"its.. alright.." (\\ーー;)
you assumed he wouldn't get you a gift cause in his own words..
"I'm your Christmas present, I'm like no other."
but surprised you with 2 gifts beneath the tree, with your name on them.
he brushes off your gratitude with a blush, but smiles nonetheless as he watches you open his gifts.
loves hot chocolate
chocolate especially
make him some and he's a clingy cat
during the night when everyone eventually clocks out for the night and parts ways for slumber, killua can't help but break out in a sweat.
he's nervous about something.. he anxiously looks at a small box in the palms of his sweaty hands.
you drink the last of your milk and finish your cookie, about to go brush your teeth when he stopped you.
"y/n could you.. meet me outside in 5 minutes?" He mumbled.
"uh, sure?" your brow rose but didn't ask further as he walked away.
when you were done brushing your teeth you went outside just like he asked, your curiosity growing as you saw him mess with the fabric of the onesie he still was wearing.
he seemed to fix his posture and suck up his nervous demeanor quickly as he sensed you.
"hey."
"hi."
you stood in front of him wondering what was next. Under the moonlight, its glow captured the beautiful shade of blue in his eyes, creating a perfect complement to the serene around you two,, you felt your cheeks warm up.
the hunter picked up his eyes and fixed them on you.
"You mean alot to me, you know? Even though you can be stupid. I.. wanted to give you this. My last gift." He took the miniature box out from his pocket and extended his hand out towards you, his head looking the other way as his face darkened.
you took the box into your hands and studied it before opening it. Your eyes widen so as your mouth, completely in awe to what he had gotten you.
"if you didn't know, they're promise rings.. when I think of my future I.. think of you." The words that came from his mouth poured out so effortlessly, so softly, and importantly truthfully. He spent so much time deciding on this gift, and planning when he should give you it. With it being Christmas, your favorite holiday he knew he couldn't have chosen a better day.
his love for you was an undying fire, no matter how many times you got on his nerves, the fights, the little annoying habits you had, he never let those small things get in the way cause at the end of the day he has vowed to always be by your side. He's the blanket to when you're cold and the knight in shining armor when you're hurt.
after a single tear fell down your cheek you hugged him tightly, sniffling ever so softly. You couldn't have asked for a better boyfriend, he was all you ever needed.
"I want you in my future too."
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robertreich · 1 year
Video
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The Biggest Economic Lies We’re Told
In America, it’s expensive just to be alive.
And with inflation being driven by price gouging corporations, it’s only getting more expensive for regular Americans who don’t have any more money to spend.
Just look at how Big Oil is raking it in while you pay through the nose at the pump.
That’s on top of the average price of a new non-luxury car — which is now over $44,000. Even accounting for inflation, this is way higher than the average cost when I bought my first car — it’s probably in a museum by now.
Even worse, the median price for a house is now over $440,000. Compare that to 1972, when it was under $200,000.
Work a full-time minimum wage job? You won’t be able to afford rent on a one-bedroom apartment just about anywhere in the U.S.
And when you get back after a long day of work, you’ll likely be met with bills up the wazoo for doctor visits, student loans, and utilities.
So what’s left of a paycheck after basic living expenses? Not much.
You can only reduce spending on food, housing, and other basic necessities so much. Want to try covering the rest of your monthly costs with a credit card? Well now that’s more expensive too, with the Fed continuing to hike interest rates.
All of this comes back to how we measure a successful economy.
What good are more jobs if those jobs barely pay enough to live on?
Over one-third of full time jobs don’t pay enough to cover a basic family budget.
And what good are lots of jobs if they cause so much stress and take up so much time that our lives are miserable?
And don’t tell me a good economy is measured by a roaring stock market if the richest 10 percent of Americans own more than 80 percent of it.
And what good is a large Gross Domestic Product if more and more of the total economy is going to the richest one-tenth of one percent?  
What good is economic growth if the way we grow depends on fossil fuels that cause a climate crisis?
These standard measures – jobs, the stock market, the GDP – don’t show how our economy is really doing, who is doing well, or the quality of our lives.
People who sit at their kitchen tables at night wondering how they’re going to pay the bills don’t say to themselves
“Well, at least corporate profits are at record levels.”
In fact, corporations have record profits and CEOs are paid so much because they’re squeezing more output from workers but paying lower wages. Over the past 40 years, productivity has grown 3.5x as fast as hourly pay.
At the same time, corporations are driving up the costs of everyday items people need.
Because corporations are monopolizing their markets, they don’t have to worry about competitors. A few giant corporations can easily coordinate price hikes and enjoy bigger profits.
Just four firms control 85% of all beef, 66% of all pork, and 54% of all poultry production.
Firms like Tyson have seen their profit margins skyrocket as they jack up prices higher than their costs — forcing consumers who are already stretched thin to pay even more.
It’s not just meat. Weak antitrust enforcement has allowed companies to become powerful enough to raise their prices across the entire food industry.
It’s the same story with household goods. Giant companies like Procter & Gamble blame their price hikes on increased costs – but their profit margins have soared to 25%. Hello? They care more about their bottom line than your bottom, that’s for sure.
Meanwhile, parents – and even grandparents like me – are STILL struggling to feed their babies because of a national formula shortage. Why? Largely because the three companies who control the entire formula industry would rather pump money into stock buybacks than quality control at their factories.
Traditionally, our economy’s health is measured by the unemployment rate. Job growth. The stock market. Overall economic growth. But these don’t reflect the everyday, “kitchen table economics” that affect our lives the most.
These measures don’t show the real economy.
Instead of looking just at the number of jobs, we need to look at the income earned from those jobs. And not the average income.
People at the top always bring up the average.
If Jeff Bezos walked into a bar with 140 other people, the average wealth of each person would be over a billion dollars.
No, look at the median income – half above, half below.
And make sure it accounts for inflation – real purchasing power.
Over the last few decades, the real median income has barely budged. This isn’t economic success.
It's economic failure, with a capital F.
And instead of looking at the stock market or the GDP we need to look at who owns what – where the wealth really is.
Over the last forty years, wealth has concentrated more and more at the very top. Look at this;
This is a problem, folks. Because with wealth comes political power.
Forget trickle-down economics. It’s trickle on.
And instead of looking just at economic growth, we also need to look at what that growth is costing us – subtract the costs of the climate crisis, the costs of bad health, the costs of no paid leave, and all the stresses on our lives that economic growth is demanding.
We need to look at the quality of our lives – all our lives. How many of us are adequately housed and clothed and fed. How many of our kids are getting a good education. How many of us live in safety – or in fear.
You want to measure economic success? Go to the kitchen tables of America.
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zvaigzdelasas · 1 month
Text
Inflation has pulled back significantly from its pandemic-era peak. In fact, some categories have fallen into outright deflation, meaning consumers are seeing the prices decline instead of rise.[...]
Demand for goods soared early in the Covid-19 pandemic, as consumers were confined to their homes and couldn't spend on things such as travel or concerts. The health crisis also snarled global supply chains, meaning volume couldn't keep pace with demand for those goods. Such supply-and-demand dynamics drove up prices.
Now, they're falling back to earth.[...]
"Supply chains are going back to normal," said Jay Bryson, chief economist for Wells Fargo Economics. "And on the demand side, there's been somewhat of a rotation from goods spending back toward services spending."
"We're kind of reverting back to the pre-Covid era," he added.[...]
14 Feb 24
Deflation may soon start biting into Chinese growth, as Beijing looks at another three to six months of a "very painful economy," according to one analyst who covers the country.
"This is something investors need to be cautious of. The economy here is bad, it's pretty ... it's really bad. I've been in China for 27 years, and this is probably the lowest confidence I've ever seen," Shaun Rein, founder of the China Market Research Group, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Monday.
“So deflation is starting to wield its ugly head[sic]. Consumers are waiting for discounts. They’re very nervous.”
Linked to a decline in the prices of goods and services, deflation is generally associated with an economic slowdown — raising questions over the growth outlook for China, whose post-Covid-19 recovery has already fallen short of some expectations in 2023. In December, depressed prices for pork — which makes up around a fifth of China’s CPI basket — heralded the possible advent of deflation.
“Deflation is a serious issue, I know the Chinese government doesn’t want me saying it, but it’s an issue that we need to be worried about,” Rein stressed. [...]
Economic slowdown is widely seen as a potential threat to Xi Jinping, whose Chinese Community Party has cultivated national political legitimacy through rapid growth.[...]
″[Buyers] think housing prices might continue to drop, so even if there’s pent-up demand for housing, a lot of home buyers are telling us, we’re not going to buy this month, we’re not going to buy this quarter, because we’re scared prices are going to drop another couple [of] percent in the coming months,” Rein said Monday.
22 Jan 24
Curious 🤔
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odinsblog · 1 month
Text
I think the thing that's important for us to remember is that cost volatility is actually all about fossil fuel dependency.
The more that we are dependent on fossil fuels, it means the more we are dependent on global events. As we saw with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as we see with the choices that come out of the UAE, as well as many other regions of the world, oil and gas development and drilling in Latin America, as well as in the United States. The more dependent we are on oil and gas, the more crazy our prices are going to be, and the more up and down our prices are going to be. And the fact that, for example, we have not developed electric or alternative energy vehicles earlier is one of the reasons why we pay such close attention to gas prices to begin with.
And we would not be as sensitive to the changes in energy costs if we weren't so fossil fuel dependent.
And Donald Trump knows that.
The oil and gas industry knows that.
And that is why they finance huge parts of lobbying our government in order to keep the country entirely dependent on fossil fuels.
Now, if you prefer gas cars and gas stoves, you're free to make that choice.
But what we haven't had is accessible and broad choices for something else. EVs have been in development, but for a very long time, they've been financially inaccessible to a lot of people in this country. The Inflation Reduction Act helped change that. We got huge tax breaks for both new and used EVs. If you're trying to buy one off your neighbor or whatever that may be, as well as many other things that are accessible, whether it's induction stoves, heat pumps for one's home, et cetera. But the oil and gas industry is deploying all of their political and special interest money towards one central goal, which is to keep virtually every American completely dependent on their product.
And Donald Trump is very closely aligned with them.
And not only that, but the larger point is that it's not a coincidence that his authoritarian tactics are tied to fossil fuels.
This is a global phenomenon.
And what we are seeing is authoritarianism is very, very closely linked with oil and gas interests around the world.
That's Putin, that's Trump. That's folks like Bolsonaro. That's a lot of the political instability we see out of Saudi Arabia, the UAE.
And I believe that it is not a coincidence, because you have one central industry that has a clear vested, both political and financial interest, and an authoritarian…that is also increasingly becoming politically unpopular, by the way, because the vast majority of Americans believe that the U.S. should start winding down our subsidization of the fossil fuel industry. They want to see clean energy alternatives available to them and financially accessible to them. And they understand that it's just more volatile to be so chained to fossil fuels.
And so the only way that you can really empower both financially a political sect, is through the fossil fuel industry, the oil and gas industry.
The Koch brothers are an oil and gas dynasty who had such large influence on our political system. They come from an oil and gas dynasty, or rather, came. One of them has passed, there's that, but then you see that link crossing across the world, and the ascent of authoritarianism, paired with the fact that every single one of them is very closely aligned to the fossil fuel industry.
And the ascent of the fossil fuel industry is not a coincidence. It's not a mistake.
And in fact, the democratization of our energy system, which is a means of production that has been privatized and concentrated into the hands of the very few, the democratization of our energy system means that people have the potential. We're doing this in Puerto Rico. When you have a battery pack on your house, when the power goes out, you're not as dependent on a central system. You have a backup reserve in case of an emergency, you can give energy to your neighbor.
This is what the democratization of our energy system looks like.
This is also what a fairer economic system that is less volatile for everyday people looks like as well.
And that is a direct threat to authoritarianism.
It's a direct threat to the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few.
But it also represents a shift for the betterment of mankind and our democracy.
—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, noting the link between the fossil fuel industry and authoritarian regimes
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phantomrose96 · 1 year
Text
Oh while I'm on U.S. economics, I have another thing that bugs the hell out of me: the hiking of mortgage interest rates.
For those who don't know, mortgage interest rates dropped low during the pandemic. Which is not all sunshine since it resulted in many bidding wars and a ton of way-over-asking offers in competitive areas, but it put home-ownership way more within reach for a lot of people.
Then the fed started to pee their pants over inflation, and hiked their rates up, prompting mortgage companies to follow.
Here's a chart of mortgage interest rates over the last 4 years
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It hit a trough at 2.65% on average in early January 2021, and then you see it hiked itself way back up, now chilling at 6.27%
For context on how different these are: let's use an example of a $400,000 home - someone pays 20% down ($80,000) in cash, and finances the remaining 80% ($320,000).
Monthly payments at 2.65%:
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This results in paying back, in total, $464,040. You'll notice that's well over the initial $320,000, and that's because of the interest paid over those 30 years.
Now, monthly payments at 6.27%:
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This results in paying back, in total, $710,640. That's more than twice the initial loan of $320,000.
And, of course, it means the same exact property which could be paid for with a monthly budget of ~$1,300 in early 2021 now requires a monthly budget of ~$2,000 in 2023.
Also, those pandemic lows were an anomaly... Historically, mortgage interest rates were on average HIGHER than 6.27% - but also, historically, wages were much better relative to the prices of homes and people could afford the high interest rates (with the exception of the people who got screwed over in the 2008 housing market meltdown... There's a really good Cold Fusion video on that.)
And because these low interest rates were an anomaly, they may never come back...
So with mortgage interest rates going up, home-buying becomes harder. When home-buying becomes harder, rents increase (because renters have no alternative).
So who DOESN'T get affected?
ENTITIES THAT CAN PAY IN ALL CASH.
They need no mortgage. They pay the sticker price on-spot with no interest applying to them. And I say ENTITIES because, sure, some people can buy their home in all-cash. But a huge number of the entities that can buy in all cash are BIG investment companies--the Blackrocks and the Mega-landlords who scoop up properties to sit on, rent out, and turn for a profit later like it's a piece of stock, and not a habitable property...
Anyway I don't have a conclusion for this. Fix wages, or bring interest rates back down, or kill Blackrock. Preferably all 3.
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Why increasing public sector wages won’t cause inflation.
One of the current Tory arguments about wages is that if they increase public sector wages, inflation will go up. Even by their own logic, this is clear nonsense, and there’s a reasonably strong argument that increasing public sector wages could actually stimulate the economy too.
So, where does this idea come from? Well, it comes from business, where the idea is that if you increase wages, some or all of that price rise gets passed on to the consumer, and prices go up. Of course, even this is false, because in many cases the consumer will say “fuck that” and not buy the product, or choose a cheaper alternative. Thus, the company must instead reduce profits to retain consumers (and let’s not be fooled, a lot of companies are still making huge, untaxed profits right now). Or they cut hours and provide a less good service.
But this doesn’t apply in the public sector. Increasing wages of people in education, or in healthcare or in the civil service etc has no direct impact on the price of anything, because the public don’t directly buy our services.
However, it may actually stimulate the economy more widely.
In general, when you give rich people more money, they save it, or possibly “invest it”- meaning it basically goes out of circulation and doesn’t further benefit anyone.
If you give people right at the bottom more money, then they almost inevitably spend it right away, usually on essentials- which benefits the economy because more money is being spent, so companies have more money to pay wages, etc etc. But this doesn’t work soooo well, because people always need essentials, and will find some way of getting them, generally, if they possibly can. Of course, we want a world where everyone has access to these essentials easily, but we’re trying to think like an economist right now.
Most public sector workers are somewhere between these two extremes although some are definitely in the second category.
Right now, however a lot of people like teachers, nurses, junior doctors, junior civil servants etc etc are “feeling the squeeze”- caught between high housing prices, rising bills and stagnating wages, there’s less and less money to spend on “luxuries”. People might cut back on eating out, on take aways, on buying new clothes, on buying presents, on “treats”, on non-essential travel, on buying things like books and nice stationery, on make up and toiletries, on haircuts and getting their nails done- the list goes on.
These things aren’t essential to survival, you can do without them. So if you can’t afford to buy them, you don’t. But of course, if a lot of people stop buying these things at once, it hurts the economy. Companies that make or sell these things see profits go down, perhaps reduce hours or lay off staff, which in turn gives them less money to spend, and it all becomes a vicious cycle which shrinks your economy- i.e. the worst possible thing if you’re a Tory, supposedly.
(Investing in education and health also has long term pay off, but anyway).
If the people at the bottom and the people a bit above the bottom had a bit more spare cash, there would be more spending, and more businesses would see a proportion of that spending. And so they can offer staff more hours, pay higher wages, employ more staff. There’s more money going around and it’s a virtuous circle. The economy grows.
Would some companies then put their prices up? Maybe. Companies will often raise prices whenever they can. But the pressure to increase prices tends to come from increased costs, not increased custom. And it would matter less because everyone or nearly everyone would be earning more.
Cutting and cutting just leaves everyone poorer. We know this.
So why do the Tories keep going on TV and spouting bollocks? It might be because they don’t actually understand the economics of the situation (scarily likely) but it’s also likely to be ideological. They’d rather “win” the fight with the unions than do something that could actually help everyone.
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piratefalls · 5 months
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i'm sure everyone's tired of my rambling at the beginning of these, so let's just get to it. new list every wednesday!
list one. list two.
Even If It's Just Pretend by nontoxic
“The queen wants to show that the Prince and the First Son are still deeply in love and committed to their countries.” Ellen swallows. “They want you to go on a tour of the Commonwealth together, to get the public to see those emails not as a sex scandal, but an invasion of privacy of a wholesome, loving relationship.” “It was an invasion of privacy,” Alex says. He swallows. “Did they say what would happen if we say no?” Ellen’s lips pinch tightly at the corners. “Then they will issue a full denial and Henry will tour the commonwealth himself.” Alex doesn't hesitate. “Tell them we’ll do it. I’m not gonna let him do this alone." It would kill him. Henry hates this shit. The public parading, the judgment. Having to do all of that, and deny who he is? Alex at least wants to be there, to hold his hand through it. Even if it's just as a friend. It might kill Alex to pretend, but that’s a small price to pay to ensure Henry—his beautiful, vibrant, funny-as-hell, brilliant ex-not-quite-boyfriend—isn’t killed instead. --- or, the alex-never-goes-to-kensington-after-the-lake-house, exes-to-fake-dating-to-lovers fic.
I've carried this song in my mind by kiwiana
Henry lays eyes on Alex Claremont-Diaz for the first time in Rio, and it sends such a shockwave of longing and terror into the universe that Arthur feels it. Or, five times Arthur tries to get Alex and Henry together from beyond the grave, and one time two times his intervention isn’t needed.
Bear with me by phlebotinxm
The first time it happened, Henry was not having it. “For the last time, I’m not helping you shave your arse.” — In which Alex is very hairy, and Henry sort of has a thing for it. Not that he'd admit it, though.
Taking Control of the Histories by Qwert33
Singer ACD and Prince Henry announce their engagement to each other. The internet reacts. (+ the months after, a new album, resurfacing of old interviews, and public online flirting.)
Lost and Found by milowren
Pez turns to hand him his ticket, raising an eyebrow over one of his unsettling blue eyes. “It’s either too terrifying for you or too juvenile. It can’t be both.” “I’m not terrified,” Henry says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. But as soon as the crowd in front of them clears and he’s able to see the entrance to the maze, he’s forced to recant that statement. Because standing just off to the side in the shadow of a giant inflatable jack-o-lantern, along with two girls that Henry vaguely recognizes through their costumes, is the most terrifying thing Henry has seen so far tonight. Alex Claremont-Diaz. ****** Alex and Henry are coworkers, Henry has a crush, and they end up at a haunted corn maze together a few nights before Halloween. Shenanigans ensue! Plus many horror movie references.
you handle it beautifully by HypnosTheory
“And I may have an idea for the libido problem too.” Henry sighs. “I don’t think this has risen to the level of therapy just because I can’t get hard.” “First off, nothing has to rise to the level of therapy, there’s no threshold for misery,” Alex says, parroting the words his therapist has told him about half a million times. “But no, I wasn’t thinking about therapy.” Henry raises a brow. “I was thinking we try party drugs.” - Alex, discovering Henry is having a hard time getting out of his head enough to enjoy sex, has a clear solution: recreational drug use! While on the road to self-discovery and self-actualization, Henry surprises Alex more than once. (3 times Henry surprised Alex + 1 time Alex shocked him right back)
Thirst Tweets & Mean Tweets [FOR APPROVAL] by loveonpurpose
MEMO: Official Transcript of Alex Claremont-Diaz and HRH Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor for BuzzFeed, Inc. Original video title: "Prince Henry Reads Thirst Tweets / FSOTUS Reads Mean Tweets" (2021). Filmed February 20, 2021. Approval status: PENDING This transcript is strictly confidential and may contain privileged and proprietary information, which is protected under applicable laws and intended solely for the use of The White House and Buckingham Palace.
in the shadow of two gunmen by matherine
There are over four hundred and thirty-three million guns in civilian possession in the United States. Alex isn’t sure where on the campaign trail that fact embedded itself into his brain — he thinks he picked it up from some memo between Minnesota and Missouri — but he’s never been able to forget it. It's one of those things he turns over and over in his head, running the numbers as if he could calculate the possibility of a bullet embedding itself in his brain. In the end, Alex thinks that it evens out. More people want to kill him than the average person (and that number has grown exponentially over the years) but now he also has Secret Service protection and can’t go anywhere without a motorcade. So, really, statistically, he figures that he has just as much of a chance of being shot by one of those 433 million firearms as anyone else, give or take a few decimal points here and there. But doing the math doesn’t make it any less terrifying when it actually happens.
Want you stealing my time by clottedcreamfudge
Henry has no idea what the rules are meant to be when you fall in love with your best friend thirty seconds after befriending them, but he supposes it doesn't matter anyway; he knows that Alex could never feel the same way - has always known that - and he considers himself lucky to have someone this fierce and full of life in his corner. He doesn't need more, no matter how much he may want it. Then Alex goes and ruins everything by daring to press him against the wall at a party and kiss him like his life fucking depends on it.
simply, don't by rizcriz
The first voicemail notification sits in Henry’s inbox when he lands in London. He stares at it for a long while before quietly dismissing it and shoving his phone unceremoniously into his pocket. His phone feels like lead in his pocket the entire ride back to the palace, fingers itching to pull it out and just listen. But he’s stronger than that, isn’t he? He left, he got on the plane, he made it home without once looking back. He had, though, contemplated the many steps it would take to turn around. Wondered if he could make it back with enough time to climb back into Alex’s bed and pretend none of this nightmare—the confession of love—had ever happened. But for every step he envisions himself taking back, three more lead him straight to Kensington Palace, because for whatever it is that he wants, there is only what he can have, and it is not a life with one Alexander Gabriel Claremont-Diaz. -- Or, Henry actually answers one of Alex's calls.
heart & home by railmedaddy
An exploration of life, love, friendship and family – one snippet for each week of Alex & Henry’s first year in their brownstone.
the love of my life, forever by coffeecatsme
“So,” the host of the talk show starts, eyes glimmering with excitement as he gazes at Alex over the desk, “your new single. I think anyone here would agree that it felt like a death by a thousand cuts, listening to those lyrics. If you don’t mind me asking… There’s been a lot of speculation online about who the song is about.” Alex flips his curls to the other side, trying not to smile. “Uh huh.” Or, 5 times the media speculates Alex is dating someone else and 1 time they realize he's been with Henry all this time.
You Can't Deny Me Anything by Dawg1515
“What happened?” Henry frowns deeply and presses his hand to Alex’s forehead. “You’re burning up, love.” Or: That night at the Lake House, Henry is getting ready to leave when Alex wakes up feeling sick. Faced with memories of losing his father, Henry decides to stay and take care of Alex. They have some things to talk out.
sparks fly (whenever you smile) by cxpbuck
When Alex wakes up after a particularly alcohol-filled night, he’s surprised by a blonde stranger in his bed. What’s more surprising, however, are all the messages on his phone congratulating his engagement to said blonde stranger.
how to have (normal) friends without fucking it up by ohgaywarden
Alex y’all are forgetting i started in georgetown when my mom was elected at least it’s not like the white house where they’ll bring the dogs out to sniff for weed cash and the ppos will probably check you for stuff but yeah… just don’t bring anything that would alert the royal protectors of the 4th in line for the throne Abbylol Anthony okay :) what time? -- Alex tries to make friends in law school.
a thousand, a million, billion thoughts, (all under the form of a letter to you) by CrayolaRainbow
Henry has been working on something in his office for the past week. Every time Alex asks him what it is, Henry just brushes him off with a simple “It’s a project, dear, nothing to worry about,” before throwing himself back into his work. He comes back, a week later, with a proposal he wants to show Alex. Or: Henry proposes to Alex with the help of a list, a powerpoint presentation, and some Very Gay Quotes.
buzzing by demigodbeautiies
“I mean, I respect the guts of anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to send a vibrator to the Prince of Wales,” Alex said, staring down at the little egg shaped thing in a box on their counter. “I can’t ever endorse this,” he replied, finally. -- Henry and Alex are sent a remote control vibrator. They find many, many uses for it.
A Tapestry of Intimacy Unfolded by Hqwhna
It's a case of textbook serendipity when Senator Alex Claremont-Diaz and Dr. Henry Fox first meet at a fundraiser in D.C. Now, Alex just has to think of an excuse to see him again...
Going Platinum by cricketnationrise
Email: [email protected] Channel Name: AustinBoy Age Restricted?: 18+ Chat enabled?: Yes Subscriptions: Monthly Tiers: 2 Tier 1:> Name: Standard > Description: Access to chat room, 1 weekly video Tier 2:> Name: Bonus > Description: Access to chat room, 1 weekly video, 1 weekly livestream
Or, a Camboy!Alex AU
A Taste of You by everwitch
On a few, select occasions, Henry has indulged Alex’s flirty banter, meeting Alex halfway with his own brand of dry wit. That is hardly advisable, of course, but Henry is only… well, not human exactly, but once upon a time he was, and sometimes he likes to reminisce about that. To recall what that existence had felt like. To watch a pretty young thing with a certain spark in his eyes smile victoriously when Henry admits he’s handsome. When Henry lets Alex take him home, he thinks he’s the only one who’s about to reveal his true nature. He’s wrong.
Hit (My Love) Out of the Park by bleedingballroomfloor
“It’s just — I’ve had such a hard time feeling like I really belonged. I think that’s what got me in the slump in the first place. But coming back here, seeing all the love I still got even though I’m not on the Rangers anymore… that really helped. And being on the Mets, being in New York — you helped with all of that. More than you’ll ever know.” Or, Alex and Henry are dumb, horny disasters. With an added bonus of baseball.
Engagement by SilverRosesAndDragons
Alex and Henry get engaged. They make a show of telling the world.
hear it in the silence (feel it on the way home) by orionseye
“It drives me nuts sometimes that you don’t get to have more say in your life. When I picture you happy, I see you with your own apartment somewhere outside of the palace and a desk where you can write anthologies of queer history. And I’m there, using up your shampoo and making you come to the grocery store with me and waking up in the same damn time zone with you every morning.” - page 296 Henry and Alex get everything they want after the 2020 elections: a beautiful home, fulfilling careers, a life together. But you need to heal first, to be able to love.
Sweetheart Grips by orestespdf
“Is this a good time to say that I haven’t done this before either, and that you should also tell me if it’s terrible?” Henry asks. Alex lets out a quiet laugh. His cheeks are ruddy with pleasure, the way some people get flushed when they’ve been smiling a while. Henry wants to do everything in his power to make Alex laugh again. The sound is intoxicating. “Sure thing, sweetheart,” Alex says with an easy grin. "I’ll log any complaints accordingly.” --- Rewriting a few RWRB sex-scenes with trans!Alex.
Hold the Moonlight In Your Hands by absolute-worst-idea (cxptained)
“Come on.” Henry tells him, tugging him to his feet and suddenly time is repeating itself. They sneak through the long grass, past the same PPO’s that snooze by the front door, before taking off at a run down that very same pier. “What are you doing?” Alex yells out, laughing as they come to the same halt as before, right under the brilliant night sky. The same stars look down on them. The same moon lights up their path, lights up Henry’s face, lights up his eyes and his smile. “I’m doing this right!” Henry says. There’s a lightness to his voice, a sparkle in perfect blue hues and Alex’s chest lifts just as it had done a year ago. ---------- The group find themselves back at the lake house, and Henry wants to make right that disastrous night with a marriage proposal that will change Henry and Alex's lives forever.
my gift is my song/and this one's for you by HestiaForever
It still amazes Henry, sometimes. That Alex loves him back; that the whole world knows and it’s okay. He turns his head and kisses Alex gently. The frizzing anxiety in his veins settles, and it’s like taking a breath of fresh air. Alex breaks away to smile against his lips. “Just like old times, huh? Do I need to let you go flee the country now?” OR Alex and Henry’s relationship, told through five holidays over five years.
The Red Side Goes Up by cmere
Henry brings home a little something new to try in the bedroom. Or: The One Where Alex Gets Jealous of a Butt Plug.
One Wild and Precious Life by SprigsofViolets
In 2015, Arthur Fox was diagnosed with cancer. He went into surgery to have a tumor removed from his brain, and fell into a coma. Nine years later, he wakes up.
Imagine Being Loved By Me by ladybonehollows
“Please tell me you're not so high in your ivory tower that you don't know what fanfiction is and that people write it about you." He can practically hear the sound of Henry rolling his eyes through the phone. “No, I know what it is, and I wish I could be surprised to learn that people have written it about me. None of that has ever inspired me to go looking for it.” Alex looks gleefully at the page in front of him. “Oh baby, I love how we can still surprise each other," he says. "I'm skipping to the good part, though.”
But Then You Found Me (And Everything Changed) by Lily_Padd_23, supernatural_mondler
Henry accidentally asks a question. Alex is more than ready with the answer.
if you want to be tagged in future lists, let me know!
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bengiyo · 4 months
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Last Twilight Ep 3 Stray Thoughts
Last time, Mhok began working and was pleased with his salary. He may be rough around the edges, but he was doing his "easy" job. He had some initial friction with Day around moving his things and taking care of the fish, but things came to a head when Day tried to run from strangers seeing his condition. Mhok got triggered, thinking Day might hurt himself, and broke into his room. Mhok got fired, but Porjai came to talk to Day about Mhok putting himself through an exercise to understand Day's disability more and the two have reconciled for now.
I like the two of them straightening Day's room together and understanding the system to help him find things. It's a relief to see Day having fun with it.
The inflatable dino costumes are so silly. This is fun.
Now, Mhok, you know better than to swipe through someone else's pictures.
They saw Day making progress around the house and made him instantly clam back up by suggesting he go back to school.
Mhok's relationship with Porjai is used very well here. I love that she has moved on from Mhok and is happy, so I don't feel bad about her giving perspective and wondering about some jealousy plotline.
I like the pace of the relationship between Mhok and Day so far. Day is already asking Mhok for help on his own.
I will always love teachers who refuse to let students give up on themselves.
Mhok is a good listener and supporter. I like that he doesn't involve himself in the conversations between the family or the teacher, and that he aids Day's attempt to avoid notice.
Said the name of the show. Finish your drinks.
Thank you for keeping the lights on, Oishii.
I like how Mhok plays with the preconceptions that he doesn't know much to encourage Day to figure out some things. It's a very gentle approach that uses Day's own ego to move him forward.
WE HAVE FINALLY USED THE BANGKOK METRO SYSTEM IN A BL. 🎉 IPYTM came close, but we never went inside.
I love that Mhok tried to prank Day with the pink shirt. Later, in the dressing room, we know he's watching out for Day because he confirmed that he knew what was on the shirt he picked.
I like the way the physical tension between them around Day's exposed body is building.
And Day made Mhok get the pink shirt! I love this.
Mhok being sure to include Day in the conversation with the bookstore owner is a great touch. I like that he didn't let Day give up and insisted they find the book today.
Even if it's a bit artificial, I like Mhok slipping the book where Day would find it to help him have a sense of accomplishment since Day had been also sifting through books.
The last page is missing? How will we know the ending? Okay, Aof. I see you.
Increasing the price because he's Mhok's friend was so fun. It's the kind of detail that makes the world feel like it has a history. It was clearly a joke and let Day have fun.
Oh, we were having such a good day, and now Mhok feels like he has to defend Porjai and in a fight against Porjai's two-timing boyfriend. Now Day is lost.
Oh my goodness, did Mhok switch to the pink shirt to make himself more visible? I am going to melt.
Mhok is so ready for people to look down on him that he immediately owned his own history rather than let the mom hold it over him.
Oh shit that was great eye shine from Jimmy when Day started saying how much he appreciates Mhok.
Not sure what all is going on with Night and Day yet, but I like that he came to Mhok's defense after they left the room.
That was a really well done wind down for this episode.
More of Film next week!!
So, I'm really loving this show and so glad that a GMMTV show is back to sound episodic structure. Jimmy and Sea both feel much more attuned to their characters and their chemistry feels a lot easier than their last outing. This is a solid watch
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americanbrightside · 6 months
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Some historical inflation facts, for comparing prices and memories. We're coming out of a period of really high inflation, so it's good to recalibrate. Based on Consumer Price Index data, the following all have the same purchasing power:
$10 today (2023)
$8.30 in 2019 (the dollar has lost 17% of its purchasing power since the pandemic)
$7.50 in 2012 (has lost 1/4 its purchasing power since the London Olympics)
$6.77 in 2007 (to do the tricky math, the dollar lost 10% of its purchasing power across the Recession)
$5.00 in 1995 (half-life of the dollar's purchasing power is 28 years)
$1.00 in 1963 (when you read prices and wages from the early 1960s, add a 0 to the end to get a rough translation to today)
$0.49 in 1941 (so the dollar lost about half its value in 20 years, 10 years faster than the most recent half-life)
Idk, I think it's interesting because, for example, the federal minimum and median individual wages in 1963 were $1.25 and $5,362, gas cost $0.30, University of Texas tuition cost $100.00, and a house cost $19k. Adjusting to today, we can see that minimum wage was way higher than today, and median income was about the same (in 2022 it was $48k for individuals). Gas was cheaper, though $3 for gas is only slightly lower than we expect today. Houses and tuition, though, were incredibly cheap to get.
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fanghaunt · 5 months
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Workload, my RSI, and what it means for my ToS in 2024.
Please read if you are planning to commission me in the future.
I cannot keep working at this pace anymore without changing something about how I provide commission work next year.
I am dealing with the triple threat of inflation threatening my long-term food & housing security, a repeated stress injury (my wrist), and not having a way to make money off already made work since most of my portfolio is commissions.
I cannot raise my own wages at my job and I cannot make my wrist work longer hours, so the only thing I have to budge is the image rights of commissioned work.
Meaning, I would really like to start selling prints/zines with my artwork in them in the future. I have really been hesitant about this idea because it personally makes me feel a little weird as a client myself. In my current ToS, i require written permission for reproduction. This was a favor to clients. As the artist, I have the reproduction rights to my own work unless the client buys them. I have never sold them outside of commercial projects. Starting in 2024, if you absolutely do not want your commission reproduced or printed anywhere or on anything by me, you MUST buy the commercial rights, even if you don’t plan to use them. My commercial fee is 100-200% of the base price of the commission, minimum $100.
I know that sounds like a lot, but I am wearing my wrist down to a nub. I do not have time or wrist-spoons to make new pieces from scratch with the sole intention of selling them. The commercial fee is OPTIONAL. You do not have to pay it if you are OK with me selling your commission as a print or in a book or whatever else. I completely understand this will turn some people away, but times are really bad for me right now financially and i would not be going this route if I felt I had another choice.
I do want to reassure current clients and anyone who has commissioned me in the past, I will NOT go back and use your commissions for prints without permission. This is for commissions in 2024 going forward ONLY.
I know this is a lot to process, please feel free to ask me if you have any questions, and my apologies for any inconvenience to future clients.
— Ever
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Are we still clowning on the anons trying to tell you how awful living in Europe is? Because I (a USian) saw them spouting nonsense and was like 'Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones'. Several communities there do not have access to safe drinking water at all. Texas's insistence on building their own electric grid incompatible with the rest of the country's meant that about 246 died in the 2021 winter storm. I'm trying to move to the land of bones because the US? YIKES
The US is not without its problems infrastructure wise, yes. I don't think any country is in all honesty.
Though, I think I should address how anon seemed to be getting wires crossed about the situation in Europe:
Most homes here are maybe 100 years old at most, some 150 ish, but most only 40-70 years (something something rebuilding after two world wars). Of course, you get ones built earlier that people still live in. I've known several people in my life who lived in 16th century built homes with thatched roofs. My own home is about 60 years old.
'The buildings are crumbling' yeah, they're old...so they will. But they're not falling down so there's no issue. We make repairs!
Despite their age they do have all the mod cons! Yes, including the 16th century farm houses! You see with continuous settlement people repair and renovate the existing homes, so over the years things like electricity/central heating/plumbing etc have been added.
That said, depending on when stuff like electricity and plumbing was installed it can fail. Anon said that anecdotally a socket had blown. This could be due down to age. However, it can also be down to an american adapter being the wrong voltage for the european plug socket. That tends to make them short out. I've had two american friends at uni who had plug sockets short out on them when arriving in the UK because they used the wrong voltage adapters. Nothing to do with the wiring. Mostly to do with no checking voltage requirements. I've had to do the same when holidaying on the continent. If I take the wrong one I'm gonna damage something.
While central heating and air con are in abundance in Europe, not everyone needs air con. In Northern Europe, before climate change, we experience cold winters but mild summers so our homes needed good central heating and thick walls to keep the heat in. Which they have! However, now climate change is upon us...imagine living in a house where the walls are thick and trap heat but it's 40c outside and you don't have air con still because it's still too expensive a thing to install for 3 weeks use a year at best. That's why anon has seen Europeans complaining about being too hot. The temperatures are record breaking high, and because it's not normal for it to be like that we don't have air con. Southern Europe, where it's much warmer, is where homes more regularly have air con. Pretty much every commercial building, regardless of location or age, has some sort of air conditioning and central heating system.
The 'europeans don't have central heating' probably comes from the posts about how most of us are going to freeze to death this winter due to fuel prices/shortages. We have central heating, we just can't afford to put it on. Thanks to Pusheen (fameux dictateur Russe) invading Ukraine, gas prices in Europe have gone through the roof. In the winter I used to pay £75 for gas and electric per month. Now, I pay £120 for gas alone. I live alone. My consumption is less (I halved the time I have the heating on to save money so it's -3c and I only have the heating on 2 hours a day). Many more people are in a worse off state than me. They can't afford to heat their homes at all. Add in inflation, which has pushed food prices sky high, recession, and stagnant wages, and people are dying from not being able to put the heating on. They've got it anon, but they can't afford to use it and also eat.
Moving to the 'move somewhere without bones' part of it all. Europeans are fine digging up bones and mosaics. Happens all the time, I've no idea why anon thinks we'd need to move or why we'd be mad about it. It's our history! Part of continuously living in an area for centuries means that inevitably when you dig down for foundations you're gonna find bones. That's where the Archaeologists come in! Laws here dictate that an archaeological survey must be conducted on any build site, so that if there is something there it can be properly recorded! This is so we don't end up with what we currently have where it's like 'nope no idea what's down there' and the surprise is a WWII bomb or a roman cemetery, or even a plague pit.
Actually that last one is one I've experienced. When I was looking into archaeology as a degree I went to a dig site for a new shopping centre where they'd discovered victorian ruins, a medieval abbey destroyed by Henry VIII, and a plague pit all on the same site. An absolutely wild time. These guys had to be moved or secured before the actual building work could commence. You can still go down and see the plague pit if you know the right people because the building was built in a way that preserved it.
Anyway, the digging of graves is where everyone seems to get funny with regards to archaeology. They'll accuse archeologists of grave robbing or disturbing the dead and that's so far from the truth it's unreal.
Firstly, there's so much paperwork involved when remains are found. So much. 90% of the time archaeologists don't even deal with human remains because we're digging up buildings instead. I don't know why people seem to think 99% of our work is with the dead. It's not. After finding remains, then we have to decide what is safe for them. If we can leave them in situ we will. You excavate, analyse, record the find, and then cover them back up. People seem to think we're getting to the grave site and then removing everything to keep in a box. That's only done if the remains are in danger from the construction or agriculture that's being performed there. It's a choice between saving a person's remains, or letting them get destroyed by construction work. Which do you think is more respectful in that scenario?
We don't make that decision lightly either. So many elements are factored into the decision, including the safety of the site (will someone come along and steal for the antiquities black market? See: Egypt and the reasons mummies are moved to storage when found.) and how best to keep this person's dignity. We don't want to smash through remains with bulldozers and concrete. Where we can, like that famous McDonald's in Italy with the body in the floor, we keep them in situ so they do remain in their graves. In the UK, recently, there was a huge mosaic uncovered in a field by a farmer. Archaeologists excavated it, recorded it, took a load of photos, didn't disclose the precise location, covered it back up, and then told everyone 6 months after it has been discovered just to preserve the site.
Most archaeological finds were discovered months before the public even knew about them in order to preserve the site and not get illegal traffickers trying to make money off things (again, the reason mummies in Egypt are moved to museums. it's for their safety not because no one wants them to be in their graves). We want these people and artefacts to rest in peace as much as you do. Believe it or not Archaeologists do care about the people and places they are tasked with uncovering and protecting. Sometimes you've got to move those bones because if you don't someone who doesn't care for anything but making a quick profit will dig that site and sell what they find.
Often it's a race between archaeologists discovering sites and therefore affording them security from getting disturbed, and traffickers digging in locations they know something might be and selling what they find to some rich bastard where it'll never see the light of day.
TL;DR: Europe isn't living in the Middle Ages, we're suffering from climate change and soaring fuel/food prices, and Archaeologists perform a vital job that isn't about grave robbing but about preserving and protecting the past from traffickers and giving those dead we do come across a voice in the present.
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