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#financial account
marzipanandminutiae · 10 days
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thoughts on "tradwives" as a 19th-century social historian
It's great until it's not.
It's great until he develops an addiction and starts spending all the money on it.
It's great until you realize he's abusive and hid it long enough to get you totally in his power (happened to my great-great-aunt Irene).
It's great until he gets injured and can't work anymore.
It's great until he dies and your options are "learn a marketable skill fast" or "marry the first eligible man you can find."
It's great until he wants child #7 and your body just can't take another pregnancy, but you can't leave or risk desertion because he's your meal ticket.
It's great until he tries to make you run a brothel as a get-rich-quick scheme and deserts you when you refuse, leaving your sisters to desperately fundraise so your house doesn't get foreclosed on (happened to my great-great-aunt Mamie).
It's great until you want to leave but you can't. It's great until you want to do something else with your life but you can't. It's great. Until. It's. Not.
I won't lie to you and say nobody was ever happy that way. Plenty of women have been, and part of feminism is acknowledging that women have the right to choose that sort of life if they want to.
But flinging yourself into it wholeheartedly with no sort of safety net whatsoever, especially in a period where it's EXTREMELY easy for him to leave you- as it should be; no-fault divorce saves lives -is naive at best and dangerous at worst.
Have your own means of support. Keep your own bank account; we fought hard enough to be allowed them. Gods willing, you never need that safety net, but too many women have suffered because they needed it and it wasn't there.
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aropride · 6 months
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also don't let ur friends/society/tumblr posts/whatever convince u to start smoking or drinking or whatever if u don't want to. there are health risks there are social and financial aspects to consider and it's totally fine and normal to not want to. there's no moral aspect to it you can drink and do drugs or whatever if u want and that's chill but u should know what ur doing and do research and if u decide u dont want to that's chill and anyone who tries to shame u for it can go fuck themselves
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dosemakesthepoison · 10 months
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Just saw a post about zevrans torturers in the fade being dalish elves that made me think about this.
I was listening to zevrans dialogue with the warden and other companions and zevran truly doesn't identify with or as basically any of the groups he could conceivably be a part of. He's left the crows so he's no longer a crow, he was rejected by the dalish and is not really a "true elf", he can't go back to being a kid in the brothel (last place he felt unconditional love). He's never had a lover which wasn't a contract or he didn't kill. He's just very dissociated from himself and everyone around him.
The only thing he consistently identifies as is being worth 7 gold coins. He says it to the warden more than once. He says it to some of the companions. My guys got 1 thing defining his self worth and it's that the crows bought him for 7 gold coins. And what does the warden give him to increase affinity? Gold bars. The warden is saying "You are worth so much more than what the crows paid for" in a quite literal sense. I'm emotional about the pixel man again.
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No, Uber's (still) not profitable
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Going to Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!
https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826
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Bezzle (n): 1. "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it" (JK Gabraith) 2. Uber.
Uber was, is, and always will be a bezzle. There are just intrinsic limitations to the profits available to operating a taxi fleet, even if you can misclassify your employees as contractors and steal their wages, even as you force them to bear the cost of buying and maintaining your taxis.
The magic of early Uber – when taxi rides were incredibly cheap, and there were always cars available, and drivers made generous livings behind the wheel – wasn't magic at all. It was just predatory pricing.
Uber lost $0.41 on every dollar they brought in, lighting $33b of its investors' cash on fire. Most of that money came from the Saudi royals, funneled through Softbank, who brought you such bezzles as WeWork – a boring real-estate company masquerading as a high-growth tech company, just as Uber was a boring taxi company masquerading as a tech company.
Predatory pricing used to be illegal, but Chicago School economists convinced judges to stop enforcing the law on the grounds that predatory pricing was impossible because no rational actor would choose to lose money. They (willfully) ignored the obvious possibility that a VC fund could invest in a money-losing business and use predatory pricing to convince retail investors that a pile of shit of sufficient size must have a pony under it somewhere.
This venture predation let investors – like Prince Bone Saw – cash out to suckers, leaving behind a money-losing business that had to invent ever-sweatier accounting tricks and implausible narratives to keep the suckers on the line while they blew town. A bezzle, in other words:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy
Uber is a true bezzle innovator, coming up with all kinds of fairy tales and sci-fi gimmicks to explain how they would convert their money-loser into a profitable business. They spent $2.5b on self-driving cars, producing a vehicle whose mean distance between fatal crashes was half a mile. Then they paid another company $400 million to take this self-licking ice-cream cone off their hands:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money
Amazingly, self-driving cars were among the more plausible of Uber's plans. They pissed away hundreds of millions on California's Proposition 22 to institutionalize worker misclassification, only to have the rule struck down because they couldn't be bothered to draft it properly. Then they did it again in Massachusetts:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/15/simple-as-abc/#a-big-ask
Remember when Uber was going to plug the holes in its balance sheet with flying cars? Flying cars! Maybe they were just trying to soften us up for their IPO, where they advised investors that the only way they'd ever be profitable is if they could replace every train, bus and tram ride in the world:
https://48hills.org/2019/05/ubers-plans-include-attacking-public-transit/
Honestly, the only way that seems remotely plausible is when it's put next to flying cars for comparison. I guess we can be grateful that they never promised us jetpacks, or, you know, teleportation. Just imagine the market opportunity they could have ascribed to astral projection!
Narrative capitalism has its limits. Once Uber went public, it had to produce financial disclosures that showed the line going up, lest the bezzle come to an end. These balance-sheet tricks were as varied as they were transparent, but the financial press kept falling for them, serving as dutiful stenographers for a string of triumphant press-releases announcing Uber's long-delayed entry into the league of companies that don't lose more money every single day.
One person Uber has never fooled is Hubert Horan, a transportation analyst with decades of experience who's had Uber's number since the very start, and who has done yeoman service puncturing every one of these financial "disclosures," methodically sifting through the pile of shit to prove that there is no pony hiding in it.
In 2021, Horan showed how Uber had burned through nearly all of its cash reserves, signaling an end to its subsidy for drivers and rides, which would also inevitably end the bezzle:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/10/unter/#bezzle-no-more
In mid, 2022, Horan showed how the "profit" Uber trumpeted came from selling off failed companies it had acquired to other dying rideshare companies, which paid in their own grossly inflated stock:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/05/a-lousy-taxi/#a-giant-asterisk
At the end of 2022, Horan showed how Uber invented a made-up, nonstandard metric, called "EBITDA profitability," which allowed them to lose billions and still declare themselves to be profitable, a lie that would have been obvious if they'd reported their earnings using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP):
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/#gryft
Like clockwork, Uber has just announced – once again – that it is profitable, and once again, the press has credulously repeated the claim. So once again, Horan has published one of his magisterial debunkings on Naked Capitalism:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-thirty-three-uber-isnt-really-profitable-yet-but-is-getting-closer-the-antitrust-case-against-uber.html
Uber's $394m gains this quarter come from paper gains to untradable shares in its loss-making rivals – Didi, Grab, Aurora – who swapped stock with Uber in exchange for Uber's own loss-making overseas divisions. Yes, it's that stupid: Uber holds shares in dying companies that no one wants to buy. It declared those shares to have gained value, and on that basis, reported a profit.
Truly, any big number multiplied by an imaginary number can be turned into an even bigger number.
Now, Uber also reported "margin improvements" – that is, it says that it loses less on every journey. But it didn't explain how it made those improvements. But we know how the company did it: they made rides more expensive and cut the pay to their drivers. A 2.9m ride in Manhattan is now $50 – if you get a bargain! The base price is more like $70:
https://www.wired.com/story/uber-ceo-will-always-say-his-company-sucks/
The number of Uber drivers on the road has a direct relationship to the pay Uber offers those drivers. But that pay has been steeply declining, and with it, the availability of Ubers. A couple weeks ago, I found myself at the Burbank train station unable to get an Uber at all, with the app timing out repeatedly and announcing "no drivers available."
Normally, you can get a yellow taxi at the station, but years of Uber's predatory pricing has caused a drawdown of the local taxi-fleet, so there were no taxis available at the cab-rank or by dispatch. It took me an hour to get a cab home. Uber's bezzle destroyed local taxis and local transit – and replaced them with worse taxis that cost more.
Uber won't say why its margins are improving, but it can't be coming from scale. Before the pandemic, Uber had far more rides, and worse margins. Uber has diseconomies of scale: when you lose money on every ride, adding more rides increases your losses, not your profits.
Meanwhile, Lyft – Uber's also-ran competitor – saw its margins worsen over the same period. Lyft has always been worse at lying about it finances than Uber, but it is in essentially the exact same business (right down to the drivers and cars – many drivers have both apps on their phones). So Lyft's financials offer a good peek at Uber's true earnings picture.
Lyft is actually slightly better off than Uber overall. It spent less money on expensive props for its long con – flying cars, robotaxis, scooters, overseas clones – and abandoned them before Uber did. Lyft also fired 24% of its staff at the end of 2022, which should have improved its margins by cutting its costs.
Uber pays its drivers less. Like Lyft, Uber practices algorithmic wage discrimination, Veena Dubal's term describing the illegal practice of offering workers different payouts for the same work. Uber's algorithm seeks out "pickers" who are choosy about which rides they take, and converts them to "ants" (who take every ride offered) by paying them more for the same job, until they drop all their other gigs, whereupon the algorithm cuts their pay back to the rates paid to ants:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
All told, wage theft and wage cuts by Uber transferred $1b/quarter from labor to Uber's shareholders. Historically, Uber linked fares to driver pay – think of surge pricing, where Uber charged riders more for peak times and passed some of that premium onto drivers. But now Uber trumpets a custom pricing algorithm that is the inverse of its driver payment system, calculating riders' willingness to pay and repricing every ride based on how desperate they think you are.
This pricing is a per se antitrust violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, America's original antitrust law. That's important because Sherman 2 is one of the few antitrust laws that we never stopped enforcing, unlike the laws banning predator pricing:
https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/sites/ilr.law.uiowa.edu/files/2023-02/Woodcock.pdf
Uber claims an 11% margin improvement. 6-7% of that comes from algorithmic price discrimination and service cutbacks, letting it take 29% of every dollar the driver earns (up from 22%). Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi himself says that this is as high as the take can get – over 30%, and drivers will delete the app.
Uber's food delivery service – a baling wire-and-spit Frankenstein's monster of several food apps it bought and glued together – is a loser even by the standards of the sector, which is unprofitable as a whole and experiencing an unbroken slide of declining demand.
Put it all together and you get a picture of the kind of taxi company Uber really is: one that charges more than traditional cabs, pays drivers less, and has fewer cars on the road at times of peak demand, especially in the neighborhoods that traditional taxis had always underserved. In other words, Uber has broken every one of its promises.
We replaced the "evil taxi cartel" with an "evil taxi monopolist." And it's still losing money.
Even if Lyft goes under – as seems inevitable – Uber can't attain real profitability by scooping up its passengers and drivers. When you're losing money on every ride, you just can't make it up in volume.
Image: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA_BREA_TAR_PITS,_LOS_ANGELES.jpg
CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
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I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:
http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org
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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/2023/08/09/accounting-gimmicks/#unter
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Image: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA_BREA_TAR_PITS,_LOS_ANGELES.jpg
CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
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HAPPY 16TH BIRTHDAY!!! To this elderly bapy boye!!! he...!!!
#cats#ghhbbb this is the first time I've genuinely considered tumblr blazing a post lol but no.. i shant.. I feel too weird putting financial#information into tumblr or whatever unless I made like a seperate bank account or something not associated with anyhting else lol#but I gave it serious contemplation which is really sayng something (the evil magical spell that all cats cast over u by their perfection)#ANYWAY.................... old man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#it's technically like march 8th but I did his party a little early. I have other pictures to post later maybe too..hrmm#The '1' candle is actually a '4' candle with the side part cut off because they didn't have any 1s#I went all out (like under $15 still lol) and got new birthday decorations for him instead of using the same old#ones from the past like 5 birthdays that I've done for the cats lol..#His theme was rainbows mostly in as light of colors as I could find#The legal age to drive a car in the US is 16 so.... honk honk beep beep.. I shall go out and buy him the most expensive car on the market#as soon as March 8th comes. then he can run little errands (probably mostly getting kibbles or chicken somewhere)#stealing the rotisserie chickens from walmart or something lol#AND they would let him have them. He would drive up and walk inside and they'd call the manager to come over#and they would be so moved by his presence and his big goofy stare that they would just be like..... okey.. have all the chicken in the#entire store. Actually. have the store. it's yours now. And This would continue all the way up the chain until he was handed#the entire walmart company. And every other company. a boy who owns everything. probably wouldnt use it for evil. he'd just abolish#everything and then focus on eating chickens.. ........ chibken son...
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lingwenboobs · 5 months
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hi im uh, not doing so hot tbh! I had to take a lot of money out to cover food and expenses last week. I wasn't able to work because the college was closed too so that means no paycheck! I'll be working a lot these next two weeks to try and make up for it but in the meantime I really don't have the money to buy...anything really and I'm short around $800. If anyone feels up to sending some my way i have c.app, p.pal, and vnmo.
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ssimplesuccubus · 5 months
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wanna cuddle?
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mosaickiwi · 8 months
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Nails, TV, Moving
Rendacted paints your nails and 'asks' you to move in. 1.3k words, GN reader c:
14 Days With You is an 18+ Yandere Visual Novel. MINORS DNI
~
"Unfortunately for our contestant—" the host’s words get cut off as you press a button on the remote.
"Booooo," you jeered at the TV from your spot on the floor and changed the channel. 
Ren hummed softly at your voice, but didn't look up. Despite the dark bangs that obscure their eyes, you can tell they’re focused. He was happily painting your nails—the same shade of black as his own—at your request. He insisted you sit as close as possible on the blanket he laid down, instead of across the coffee table. He'd only ever painted his own nails after all, so the angle was very important to keep him from messing up. You were certain he just said that because he wanted the closeness.
The screen barely flashes a few frames before you're changing it again. A football game, a cartoon, a drama, and then—you finally stop. There's a couple wandering through a cabin, with a disembodied voice narrating all it had to offer. One of the many house hunting shows that came on every so often.
"Oh, this one's pretty." You put down the remote to watch. The couple head upstairs where the master bedroom is and your excitement quickly dies. "Maybe not. The bathroom is a huge let down."
Ren casts a glance up at the TV as the camera pans over the room once more. He took in the slanted ceiling, with the tub stationed on the lower end, lit up by an angled skylight. He didn't really see whatever problem you had. "What's wrong with it?" he asked.
"The ceiling is already so low. You'd have to fold yourself in half to get in that tub, tall as you are. And you'd probably hit your head every time you got out. We couldn't live there," you grumbled and rested your chin on your free hand, eyes never straying from the screen. "No way I'd put you through that."
You didn't notice how he perked up when your concerns involved him—you even said ‘we.’ A miniscule drop of polish fell on the paper towel under your hand. He wasn't sure if you were being considerate, or if your perfectly normal relationship was at the point of buying a home together. He hoped it was the latter. Either way, including them already planted ideas in their mind. "So then, what's our—your ideal home have?"
"My ideal home…" You’d only really thought about things you didn’t want, thanks to your current apartment. "I can't say I'm very picky. No holes in the walls, enough room to breathe, no rats," you paused for a bit—now they were in a rather awkwardly shaped second bedroom. "When I was little I wanted to live in a bounce house. Or have a freezer dedicated to ice cream."
Ren smiled while he carefully painted the nail of your pinky. "One of those is doable."
"True, but I'd rather not blow up my house every day," you joked and continued pondering. "The location is probably the most important, right?" He silently nodded in agreement as you went on. "Corland Bay's nice and all—having everything so close together makes things easy. Except sometimes I wanna fall asleep without hearing cars pass by or Violet playing games. It's much quieter here. Plus your bed is comfy."
"You're more than welcome to live here, Angel," he innocently offered. “Although maybe you’d enjoy somewhere more secluded.”
“Like just out of town? Not too far from civilization. I'd still wanna be near the beach." You watched the couple fuss about the kitchen in another house before you really processed what he just said. You turned to look at him for the first time since the show caught your interest. "Are you asking me to move in with you?" 
"Oh, is that what it sounded like?" His tone was full of shock, but you could see the way his snake bites pulled up in a faint grin. He examined your nails and lifted your hand once he deemed it finished. "I do have all this space, though. The library’s close by. Beach is a short walk away, too. No neighbors, no noise. I've never had a rat problem. I guess it hits all the marks f’you, doesn’t it, Angel?"
"Ren…" You rolled your eyes at his antics. 
"If you really want to move in that badly, I'm not opposed," he said teasingly. "Other hand."
You didn't respond just yet, merely giving them a playful side eye and placing your hand flat on the table. Gently, you blew air on your wet nails while he went to work. The noise of the TV faded into the background as you thought about his offer.
It was a big step to take. You already spent a fair amount of your time at his place. The ever-dwindling amount of laundry you did at home served as proof. Cohabitating with them wouldn't be much different from now. Ren always gave you space when you asked, even with his clingy personality. He was tidy, quiet, and never made a fuss—the perfect roommate on paper. The real issue was money. A place like this would cost way more than a librarian’s salary could pay.
"As much as I want to, I have to consider rent first," you thought aloud, causing him to stop and look up.
"Angel, you don't need to pay anything." His answer was almost immediate and it surprised you how firm he sounded about it.
You shook your head. "I know I probably can't do half, but I’d like to do my fair share. How much is your rent each month?"
"Well, actually," he stalled and idly rolled the nail brush in his fingers before putting it back in the bottle. The rent was one thing he couldn’t be bothered to keep track of. "...I have no idea?"
"How—what?"
"It's an automatic payment so I never think about it," he admitted, explaining further at your incredulous expression. "I mean I definitely saw it when I found the listing—and when I signed the lease. But I can't remember it off the top of my head."
You had a hard time believing what you were hearing. You knew your own rent by heart—it mocked you every time it took a chunk out of your bank account. A question about how he budgeted weighed in your mind, although the rather calm way Ren spoke clearly answered it: he didn't. It seemed obvious now; he'd been a frivolous spender from the beginning.
The blank look on your face made him a little worried. "Honestly, Angel, it’s not an issue. I’ve been paying it on my own just fine," he insisted. "You don’t have t’worry about any cost if you stay here, I promise.” He’d be happy as a clam to pay triple whatever he already was if it meant you'd move in. Hell, he’d even pay for you to live in one of the empty units next door.
"Fine then," you sighed in defeat, glancing towards the TV screen for a moment. The show was already ending. "If I tried to give you money you'd just find a way to give it back anyways.”
Ren let out a faint breath as if he was holding back laughter, but didn’t disagree. "So, how about it? Gonna move in?” he asked with a sincere smile.
You couldn’t help but smile the same in return. “Yeah, why not? I’d be crazy to say no. I can talk to my landlord and be out in a few weeks, probably.”
His excitement only seemed to grow at your words. He was radiating silent joy, fingers tapping rhythmically on the table as he uncapped the bottle of polish once more. You could almost imagine a tail wagging behind him as he tried to make steady brushstrokes over your nail.
“Are you really that happy?” you laughed and he nodded. “Maybe I should just move in tomorrow.” His hand barely slipped, leaving the tiniest streak of polish on the side of your ring finger.
“Oops,” he muttered.
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oaketreee · 4 months
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Cum watch the rest on my OF✨️🐖💙💰
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neuroticboyfriend · 8 months
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it's okay to spend money. it's okay if you have trouble saving. it's okay to buy things that make you happy. it's okay to buy things that improve your life. it's not your fault the world we live in is so incredibly expensive and inaccessible. all you can do is your best. please don't neglect yourself.
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mewvore · 6 months
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Im not gonna complain about breaking the rules but I will complain about the tumblr live bar that gets forced on everyone and all it ever is is thirst trap girlies
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minghaosmilfshirt · 1 year
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Congrats to the 3 funniest men in Korea on their most recent comeback!!!
🍊⚔️🐯 my beloved
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ssimplesuccubus · 6 months
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you wanna touch my tail?✨🤍
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jay-wasreblogging · 2 months
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Mariana carrying the credit card like a mum because Sherlock and John are financially irresponsible - yeah.
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alwaysbewoke · 5 days
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