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mysquardblogs · 2 years

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Why Maryland Residents Need On-Demand Mobile Plumbing Services

Quality plumbing adds to the value of any building, whether it is a restaurant, department store, work facility, or residential home in Maryland. If you are troubled by issues such as leaky faucets, overflowing toilets, clogged drains, or water heating problems, you need an experienced plumber. Instead of doing it on your own, trust experienced plumbers because they specialize in maintenance and repair work on plumbing systems so you do not have to worry again.

Mobile Plumbing Services in Maryland

Maryland! It is Time to Book a Plumbing Service through MySquard

Are you thinking of calling a plumbing service? Looking for references from your acquaintances? Have you decided to do the job on your own? It makes sense to book plumbing repair and installation services through a new mobile services app because of these many convenient benefits you will enjoy:

Avoid Plumbing Emergencies

Neglecting plumbing repairs leads to more issues and more expenses in the future. Additionally, regular inspection is necessary to avoid an emergency. A plumbing emergency is often costly and time-consuming, and in severe cases, it can damage other household items and appliances. If you own a commercial establishment in Maryland, a plumbing emergency can shut down the entire facility and cause a loss of revenue. Hiring an on-demand, mobile plumbing service will solve your plumbing needs and prevent unnecessary damage to your property. Instead of waiting for a minor leak to turn into a major plumbing problem, book a mobile plumber to fix the problem immediately and at your convenience.

Enjoy Cost-Effective Plumbing Services

It is a common misconception that hiring plumbing services are unnecessary when there are no signs of needed repairs. With the convenience of an online home cleaning services app, you will find many budget-friendly plumbing repair and maintenance service providers in Maryland.

By ensuring regular maintenance of your plumbing system, you will save money on unnecessary emergencies and future plumbing issues. Often, people who try to do their own plumbing end up spending more money. They have to invest in equipment, tools, materials, and time. Moreover, if the problem reoccurs, it could be an added expense. It is best to hire a professional plumber to fix the problem.

Ensure Your Peace of Mind

Remember, experienced Mobile Plumbing Services in Maryland are crucial for your safety and the security of your property. Plumbing repairs, if done by an inexperienced plumber, can be risky. Instead of hiring a novice, choose online service professionals who are already vetted and chosen as the most experienced plumbers in Maryland.

On-demand home service platforms require updated certifications and licenses from the service providers that they host. This enables you to get the best plumbing services in town. Many companies also provide work guarantees, and in case of issues within the stipulated period, the professional will fix them without any service charge.

Good Plumbing is Essential for Better Health

Old plumbing often leads to corrosion of pipes, leaky faucets, and sump pump failure. But with regular maintenance, you can avoid common plumbing problems for years.

An efficient plumbing system is necessary for sanitary purposes. If your property has plumbing issues, you may have to address unsanitary bathrooms, foul odors, contaminated water, and health problems. Good plumbing keeps your property sanitary and adheres to the building codes of Maryland.

Hire the Best!

Every property has a plumbing system that can become faulty. But with access to professional plumbers at your fingertips through a new services platform, you can fix the problems immediately and avoid expensive repairs in the future. Why wait? Hire the best online plumbing services in Maryland and enjoy several benefits with just one appointment.

MySquard is the best on-demand home services app in Maryland! Book professional plumbers online and ensure efficient maintenance of your property. Hire the best on-demand home services app in Maryland!

For more details, visit us: https://www.mysquard.com/

#home services app in Maryland #Mobile Plumbing Services

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reasonsforhope · 4 months

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Paywall-free version

On the outskirts of Austin, Texas, what began as a fringe experiment has quickly become central to the city’s efforts to reduce homelessness. To Justin Tyler Jr., it is home.

Mr. Tyler, 41, lives in Community First! Village, which aims to be a model of permanent affordable housing for people who are chronically homeless. In the fall of 2022, he joined nearly 400 residents of the village, moving into one of its typical digs: a 200-square-foot, one-room tiny house furnished with a kitchenette, a bed and a recliner.

The village is a self-contained, 51-acre community in a sparsely populated area just outside Austin. Stepping onto its grounds feels like entering another realm.

Eclectic tiny homes are clustered around shared outdoor kitchens, and neat rows of recreational vehicles and manufactured homes line looping cul-de-sacs.

There are chicken coops, two vegetable gardens, a convenience store, art and jewelry studios, a medical clinic and a chapel.

Roads run throughout, but residents mainly get around on foot or on an eight-passenger golf cart that makes regular stops around the property.

Mr. Tyler chose a home with a cobalt-blue door and a small patio in the oldest part of the village, where residents’ cactus and rock gardens created a “funky, hippie vibe” that appealed to him. He arrived in rough shape, struggling with alcoholism, his feet inflamed by gout, with severe back pain from nearly 10 years of sleeping in public parks, in vehicles and on street benches.

At first, he kept to himself. He locked his door and slept. He visited the clinic and started taking medication. After a month or so, he ventured out to meet his neighbors.

“For a while there, I just didn’t want to be seen and known,” he said. “Now I prefer it.”

Between communal meals and movie screenings, Mr. Tyler also works at the village, preparing homes for the dozen or more people who move there each month.

In the next few years, Community First is poised to grow to nearly 2,000 homes across three locations, which would make it by far the nation’s largest project of this kind, big enough to permanently house about half of Austin’s chronically homeless population.

Tiny-home villages for people who have been homeless have existed on a small scale for several decades, but have recently become a popular approach to addressing surging homelessness. Since 2019, the number of these villages across the country has nearly quadrupled, to 124 from 34, with dozens more coming, according to a census by Yetimoni Kpeebi, a researcher at Missouri State University.

Mandy Chapman Semple, a consultant who has helped cities like Houston transform their homelessness systems, said the growth of these villages reflects a need to replace inexpensive housing that was once widely available in the form of mobile home parks and single room occupancy units, and is rapidly being lost. But she said they are a highly imperfect solution.

“I think where we’re challenged is that ‘tiny home’ has taken on a spectrum of definitions,” said Chapman Semple. Many of those definitions fall short of housing standards, often lacking basic amenities like heat and indoor plumbing, which she said limits their ability to meet the needs of the population they intend to serve.

But Community First is pushing the tiny home model to a much larger scale. While most of its homes lack bathrooms and kitchens, its leaders see that as a necessary trade-off to be able to creatively and affordably house the growing number of people living on Austin’s streets. And unlike most other villages, many of which provide temporary emergency shelter in structures that can resemble tool sheds, Community First has been thoughtfully designed with homey spaces where people with some of the highest needs can stay for good. No other tiny home village has attempted to permanently house as many people.

Austin’s homelessness rate has been rapidly worsening, and the city’s response has whipped back and forth... In October [2023], the official estimate put the number of people living without shelter at 5,530, a 125 percent increase from two years earlier. Some of that rise is the result of better outreach, but officials acknowledged that more people have become homeless. City leaders vowed to build more housing, but that effort has been slowed by construction delays and resistance from residents.

Meanwhile, outside the city limits, Community First has been building fast. [Note from below the read more: It's outside city limits because the lack of zoning laws keeps more well-off Austin residents from blocking the project, as they did earlier attempts to build inside the city.] In a mere eight years, this once-modest project has grown into a sprawling community that the city is turning to as a desperately needed source of affordable housing. The village has now drawn hundreds of millions of dollars from public and private sources and given rise to similar initiatives across the country.

This rapid growth has come despite significant challenges. And some question whether a community on the outskirts of town with relaxed housing standards is a suitable way to meet the needs of people coming out of chronic homelessness. The next few years will be a test of whether these issues will be addressed or amplified as the village expands to five times its current size.

-via New York Times, January 8, 2024. Article continues below (at length!)

The community versus Community First

For Alan Graham, the expansion of Community First is just the latest stage in a long-evolving project. In the late 1990s, Mr. Graham, then a real estate developer, attended a Catholic men’s retreat that deepened his faith and inspired him to get more involved with his church. Soon after, he began delivering meals as a church volunteer to people living on Austin’s streets.

In 1998, Mr. Graham, now 67, became a founder of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a nonprofit that has since amassed a fleet of vehicles that make daily rounds to deliver food and clothing to Austin’s homeless...

Talking to people like Mr. Johnston [a homeless Austin resident who Graham had befriended], Mr. Graham came to feel that housing alone was not enough for people who had been chronically homeless, the official term for those who have been homeless for years or repeatedly and have physical or mental disabilities, including substance-use disorders. About a third of the homeless population fits this description, and they are often estranged from family and other networks.

In 2006, Mr. Graham pitched an idea to Austin’s mayor: Create an R.V. park for people coming out of chronic homelessness. It would have about 150 homes, supportive services and easy access to public transportation. Most importantly, it would help to replace the “profound, catastrophic loss of family” he believed was at the root of the problem with a close-knit and supportive community.

The City Council voted unanimously in 2008 to lease Mr. Graham a 17-acre plot of city-owned land to make his vision a reality. Getting the council members on board, he said, turned out to be the easy part.

When residents near the intended site learned of the plan, they were outraged. They feared the development would reduce their property values and invite crime. One meeting to discuss the plan with the neighborhood grew so heated that Mr. Graham was escorted to his car by the police. Not a single one of the 52 community members in attendance voted in favor of the project.

After plans for the city-owned lot fell apart and other proposed locations faced similar resistance, Mr. Graham gave up on trying to build the development within city limits.

In 2012, he instead acquired a plot of land in a part of Travis County just northeast of Austin. It was far from public transportation and other services, but it had one big advantage: The county’s lack of zoning laws limited the power of neighbors to stop it.

Mr. Graham raised $20 million and began to build. In late 2015, Mr. Johnston left the R.V. park he had been living in and became the second person to move into the new village. It grew rapidly. In just two years, Mr. Graham bought an adjacent property, nearly doubling the village’s size to 51 acres and making room for hundreds more residents.

And then in the fall of 2022, he broke ground on the largest expansion yet: Adding two more sites to the village, expanding it by 127 acres to include nearly 2,000 homes.

“No one ever really did what they first did, and no one’s ever done what they’re about to do,” said Mark Hilbelink, the director of Sunrise Navigation Center, Austin’s largest homeless-services provider. “So there’s a little bit of excitement but also probably a little bit of trepidation about, ‘How do we do this right?’”

What it takes to make a village

Since he moved into Community First eight years ago, Mr. Johnston has found the stability that eluded him for so long. Most mornings, he wakes up early in his R.V., feeds his scruffy adopted terrier, Amos, and walks a few minutes down a quiet road to the village garden, where neat rows of carrots, leeks, beets and arugula await his attention.

Mr. Johnston worked in fast-food restaurants for most of his life, but he learned how to garden at the village. He now works full time cultivating produce for a weekly market that is free to residents.

“Once I got here, I said, This is where I’m going to spend pretty much my entire life now,” Mr. Johnston said.

Everyone at the village pays rent, which averages about $385 a month. The tiny homes that make up two-thirds of the dwellings go for slightly lower, but have no indoor plumbing; their residents use communal bathhouses and kitchens. The rest of the units are R.V.s and manufactured homes with their own bathrooms and kitchens.

Like Mr. Johnston, many residents have jobs in the village, created to offer residents flexible opportunities to earn some income. Last year, they earned a combined $1.5 million working as gardeners, landscapers, custodians, artists, jewelry makers and more, paid out by Mobile Loaves and Fishes.

Ute Dittemer, 66, faced a daily struggle for survival during a decade on the streets before moving into Community First five years ago with her husband. Now she supports herself by painting and molding figures out of clay at the village art house, augmented by her husband’s $800 monthly retirement income. A few years ago, a clay chess set she made sold for $10,000 at an auction. She used the money to buy her first car.

“I’m glad that we are not in a low-income-housing apartment complex,” she said. “We’ve got all this green out here, air to breathe.”

A small number of residents have jobs off-site, and a city bus makes hourly stops at the village 13 times a day to help people commute into town.

But about four out of five residents live on government benefits like disability or Social Security. Their incomes average $900 a month, making even tiny homes impossible to afford without help, Mr. Graham said.

“Essentially 100 percent of the people that move into this village will have to be subsidized for the rest of their lives,” he said.

For about $25,000 a year, Mr. Graham’s organization subsidizes one person’s housing at the village. (Services like primary health care and addiction counseling are provided by other organizations.) So far, that has been paid for entirely by private donations and in small part from collecting rent.

This would not be possible, Mr. Graham said, without a highly successful fund-raising operation that taps big Austin philanthropists. To build the next two expansions, Mr. Graham set a $225 million fund-raising goal, about $150 million of which has already been obtained from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the founder of the Patrón Spirits Company, Hill Country Bible Church and others.

Support goes beyond monetary donations. A large land grant came from the philanthropic arm of Tito’s Handmade Vodka, and Alamo Drafthouse, an Austin-based cinema chain, donated an outdoor amphitheater for movie screenings. Top architectural firms competed for the chance to design energy-efficient tiny homes free of charge. And every week, hundreds of volunteers come to help with landscaping and gardening or to serve free meals.

Around 55 residents, including 15 children, live in the village as “missionals” — unpaid neighbors generally motivated by their Christian faith to be part of the community.

All missionals undergo a monthslong “discernment process” before they can move in. They pay to live in R.V.s and manufactured homes distinguished by an “M” in the front window. Their presence in the community is meant to guard against the pitfalls of concentrated poverty and trauma.

“Missionals are our guardian angels,” said Blair Racine, a 69-year-old resident with a white beard that hangs to his chest. “They’re people we can always call. They’re always there for us.”

After moving into the village in 2018, Mr. Racine spent two years isolated in his R.V. because of a painful eye condition. But after an effective treatment, he became so social that he was nicknamed the Mayor. Missional residents drive him to get his medication once a week, he said. To their children he is Uncle Blair.

Though the village is open to people of any religious background, it is run by Christians, and public spaces are adorned with paintings of Jesus on the cross and other biblical scenes. The application to live in the community outlines a set of “core values” that refer to God and the Bible. But Mr. Graham said there is no proselytizing and people do not have to be sober or seek treatment to live there.

Mr. Graham lives in a 399-square-foot manufactured home in the middle of the village with his wife, Tricia Graham, who works as the community’s “head of neighbor care.” He said they do not have any illusions about solving the underlying mental-health and substance-use problems many residents live with, and that is not their goal.

“This is absolutely not nirvana,” Mr. Graham said. “And we want people to understand the beauty and the complexity of what we do. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on the face of the planet than right here in the middle of this, but you’re not fixing these things.” ...

From an experiment to a model

Community First has already inspired spinoffs, with some tweaks. In 2018, Nate Schlueter, who previously worked with the village’s jobs program, opened Eden Village in his hometown, Springfield, Mo. Unlike in Community First, every home in Eden Village is identical and has its own bathroom and kitchen. Mr. Schlueter’s model has spread to 12 different cities with every village limited to 50 homes or fewer.

“Not every city is Austin, Texas,” Mr. Schlueter said. “We don’t want to build a large-scale village. And if the root cause of homelessness is a loss of family, and community is something that can duplicate that safety net to some extent, to have smaller villages to me seemed like a stronger community safety net. Everybody would know each other.”

The rapid growth of Community First has challenged that ideal. In recent years, some of the original missional residents and staff members have left, finding it harder to support the number of people moving into the village. Steven Hebbard, who lived and worked at the village since its inception, left in 2019 when he said it shifted from a “tiny-town dynamic” where he knew everyone’s name to something that felt more like a city, straining the supportive culture that helped people succeed.

Mobile Loaves and Fishes said more staff members had recently been hired to help new residents adjust, but Mr. Graham noted that there was a limit to what any housing provider could do without violating people’s privacy and autonomy.

Despite these concerns, the organization, which had been run entirely on private money, has recently drawn public support. In January 2023, Travis County gave Mobile Loaves and Fishes $35 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to build 640 units as part of its expansion.

Then four months later came a significant surprise: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved the use of federal housing vouchers, which subsidize part or all of a low-income resident’s rent, for the village’s tiny homes. This will make running the village much more financially sustainable, Mr. Graham said, and may make it a more replicable blueprint for other places.

“That’s a big deal for us, and it’s a big deal on a national basis,” Mr. Graham said. “It’s a recognition that this model, managed the way that this model is, has a role in the system.”

Usually, the government considers homes without indoor plumbing to be substandard, but, in this case, it made an exception by applying the housing standards it uses for single-room-occupancy units. The village still did not meet the required ratio of bathrooms per person, but at the request of Travis County and the City of Austin’s housing officials, who cited Austin’s “severe lack of affordable housing” that made it impossible for some homeless people with vouchers to find anywhere else to live, HUD waived its usual requirements.

In the waiver, a HUD staffer wrote that Mr. Graham told HUD officials over the phone that the proportion of in-unit bathrooms “has not been an issue.” But in conversations with The Times, other homeless-service providers in Austin and some village residents said the lack of in-unit bathrooms is one of the biggest problems people have with living there. It also makes the villages less accessible to people with certain disabilities and health issues that are relatively common among the chronically homeless....

Mr. Graham said that with a doctor’s note, people could secure an R.V. or manufactured home at the village, although those are in short supply and have a long waiting list. He said the village’s use of tiny homes allowed them to build at a fraction of the usual cost when few other options existed, and helps ensure residents aren’t isolated in their units, reinforcing the village’s communal ethos.

“If somebody wants to live in a tiny home they ought to have the choice,” Mr. Graham said, “and if they are poor we ought to respect their civil right to live in that place and be subsidized to live there.” But he conceded that for some people, “this might not be the model.”

“Nobody can be everything for everyone,” he said.

By the spring of 2025, Mr. Graham hopes to begin moving people into the next phase of the village, across the street from the current property. The darker visions some once predicted of an impoverished community on the outskirts of town overtaken by drugs and violence have not come to pass. Instead, the village has permanently housed hundreds of people and earned the approval and financial backing of the city, the county and the federal government. But for the model to truly meet the scale of the challenge in Austin and beyond, Chapman Semple said, the compromises that led to Community First in its current incarnation will have to be reckoned with.

“We can build smaller villages that can be fully integrated into the community, that can have access to amenities within the community that we all need to live, including jobs and groceries,” Chapman Semple said. “If it’s a wonderful model then we should be embracing and fighting for its inclusion within our community.”

-via New York Times, January 8, 2024

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boreal-sea · 8 months

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Society needs to do a few things to help unhoused people. Firstly, and obviously, those who want to be housed in houses and apartments should be able to get them. Cities should create and enforce rent reduction policies on landlords who let apartments and homes sit vacant - and if they sit vacant too long, the city takes control of the property. Most Airbnbs have to go. Apartments and homes that are foreclosed or owned by banks need to be given to the city to be used for low income or free housing. House selling agencies like Zillow etc who have unsold properties just sitting around should be forced to lower the prices of those homes until someone buys them, and if they are still vacant after a certain amount of time, they too go to the city to manage. You wanna get angry? Google the number of foreclosed homes in your town or city, then Google the estimated homeless population in your area.

But.

I also think society needs to get easier for people who don't have and don't want a permanent house or apartment?? Cities and towns need to ease restrictions on "tiny homes", trailers, campers, mobile homes, live-in-vans, and things like that. They need to provide safe, dry areas for people who want to camp. They need to provide clean places to bathe and shower and clean your clothes. They need to provide water and electricity and plumbing to these places. Because of how job applications work right now, those camps need to have a real address that the people living there can use.

Oh yeah - and of course, hostile architecture needs to be banned WHILE mandating that public spaces must have a minimum mandatory amount of seating.

#homelesness #human rights #unhoused

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copperbadge · 10 months

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Radio Free Monday

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Ways to Give:

personalmoshiakh's physician has been obstructing their access to gender affirming surgery, and his wait time for top surgery within the NHS is only getting longer; he's also unable to get a loan for privately funded top surgery. He's raising money to try and fund the surgery himself. You can read more and give at GoFundMe here.

the_rainbow_jen's colleague Madison is struggling with immense medical debt due to gender affirmation surgery; you can read more and give at GoFundMe here.

joseph-lavode's sister has recently gotten a good job after a long stretch of unemployment or underemployment and just as things were stabilizing, a number of expenses came up unexpectedly in the same week, including car problems, plumbing, and water heater issues, to the point she is in danger of losing her home. You can read more and give at GoFundMe here.

Anon linked to a couple of posts about the recent fire which is devastating Maui; unavernales has a links list here and metalheadsforblacklivesmatter has a links list here, both rebloggable, of places you can give to provide aid.

thegeeksqueaks is a teacher fundraising to provide support for her queer and neurodivergent students, both in class and in the student-organized GSA and D&D clubs she sponsors; as with many teachers she is already supplying a lot for her classrooms out of her own budget but needs help to go the extra mile. You can read more and reblog here, give directly at paypal here, or purchase items from the classroom Amazon wishlist here.

News to Know:

MB linked to a study by Northwestern University regarding LifeSkills Mobile, an HIV prevention app for "trans women and nonbinary femmes". If you are eligible and join the study, they provide you either with the app or with information about HIV prevention, and ask you to complete an online survey and a mouth swab HIV test at home every 6 months for up to 4 years. You can opt out at any time, and can receive up to $250 for your help.

Recurring Needs:

Anon linked to a fundraiser for dee-the-red-witch, a trans woman who needs to raise $10K to keep her home. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here, give via paypal here, or purchase her leatherwork here.

Anon linked to a fundraiser for littlefluffbutt, who is facing homelessness with two daughters due to a predatory loan and support falling through; the house has received a stay of auction, but the family still needs to raise funds to keep it. You can read more and reblog here or support the fundraiser here.

Anon linked to a fundraiser for maximumsunshine, who has just received life-saving surgery but is behind on rent, bills, and food until their first paycheck comes in at the end of the month. You can read more and reblog here, or support them via patreon or via paypal.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

#radio free monday #charity #philanthropy #fannish community

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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This day in history

Tomorrow (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."

#15yrsago Berlin hacker con will use RFID badges to simulate life in a totalitarian panopticon https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/OpenBeacon_with_OpenAMD/

#15yrsago RIP, Forrest J Ackerman https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-ackerman6-2008dec06-story.html

#15yrsago Googling Security: book that opens your eyes to how much you disclose to Google https://memex.craphound.com/2008/12/05/googling-security-book-that-opens-your-eyes-to-how-much-you-disclose-to-google/

#10yrsago 75% of American silent feature films lost https://variety.com/2013/film/news/library-of-congress-only-14-of-u-s-silent-films-survive-1200915020/

#10yrsago NSA collecting unimaginable quantities of mobile phone location data for guilt-by-association data-mining https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-cellphone-locations-worldwide-snowden-documents-show/2013/12/04/5492873a-5cf2-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html

#10yrsago Democratic lawmakers share a squalorous house in DC https://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/index.html

#10yrsago Rob Ford police document: allegations of heroin use and more https://torontolife.com/category/city/toronto-politics/2013/12/04/new-bombshells-from-police-documents-suggest-rob-ford-may-have-tried-heroin-been-blackmailed/

#10yrsago NYPD shoot at unarmed man, hit bystanders, charge man for making them shoot https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/nyregion/unarmed-man-is-charged-with-wounding-bystanders-shot-by-police-near-times-square.html?smid=pl-share

#10yrsago Orange UK plumbs the depths of insulting, stupid marketing, finds a new low https://memex.craphound.com/2013/12/05/orange-uk-plumbs-the-depths-of-insulting-stupid-marketing-finds-a-new-low/

#5yrsago What it’s like to be a woman reporter on a cryptocurrency cruise where nearly all the other women are sex-workers https://web.archive.org/web/20181205144647/https://breakermag.com/trapped-at-sea-with-cryptos-nouveau-riche/

#5yrsago See you in court: amid protests, shameless Wisconsin GOP neuters the incoming governor in an all-night, lame-duck session https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1205/Wisconsin-GOP-pass-slew-of-measures-during-lameduck-session

#5yrsago British Member of Parliament publishes 250 pages of damning internal Facebook documents that had been sealed by a US court https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf

#5yrsago The longest-serving Congressman in US history proposes a four fixes for American democracy https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/john-dingell-how-restore-faith-government/577222/

#5yrsago RIP, George HW Bush: a mass-murderer and war-criminal https://theintercept.com/2018/12/05/george-h-w-bush-1924-2018-american-war-criminal/

#5yrsago Trump cybersecurity advisor Rudy Giuliani has no idea how the internet works https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/rudy-giuliani-doesnt-seem-to-know-how-the-internet-works.html

#5yrsago Not just breaches: Never, ever use Quora https://waxy.org/2018/12/why-you-should-never-ever-use-quora/

#5yrsago Obamacare study: 25% decline in home delinquencies among newly insured poor people https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-04/how-access-to-obamacare-cuts-late-housing-payments

#5yrsago Poland rejects the EU’s copyright censorship plans, calls it #ACTA2 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/poland-saved-europe-acta-can-they-save-us-acta2

#1yrago Monopoly's event-horizon: The true capitalist singularity https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/05/eldritch-physics/#wouldnt-start-from-here Banning surveillance ads and banning drm as good politics

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

#pluralistic

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thessalian · 7 months

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Thess vs MCM Comic Con, Day 2

So today was the day. It was, I will admit, a very hard day, but it was A Day nonetheless.

Obviously, Comic Con was fun, despite ... well, public transport, home plumbing woes, whole bunches of nonsense and it just being Saturday at one of the UK's biggest conventions when you are less than mobile because of having a fucking cane. Still. Fun.

So, yeah, the usual public transport malarkey happened and when we arrived at the Excel Centre ... well, it turned out that their provisions for those requiring accessibility assistance were ... lacking. Or, to be less kind, an utter shit-show. We were crammed behind the main queues with a stall maybe four feet from our backs, with people trying to a) walk to some other part of the convention hall, or b) join a regular queue. But they finally figured out that this was actively stupid, and they moved us towards the rear, where we could kind of slip into the back one at a time after every two of the people in the regular queue had got their autographs. And there were some chairs. And good conversation. And Marion bonded with somebody over Fruits Basket. And that helped the fact that I was in a fair amount of pain and feeling very squished. Then again, it kept me from feeling any "I am meeting people I very much admire" anxiety too much.

Finally, my turn came. Matt Mercer came first, and he was an utter sweetheart who was actually really impressed by the couple of bits of my campaign that came up in conversation. (I think he was also probably slightly chuffed that I got inspired by some of his things and did something unique and interesting with them.) And @fauxfire76 got a specific shout-out because the Bunny-Bard story came out and he did seem to like how we handled it all, players and DM both. Plus he was really touched by the fact that them having people Skype in was what made me realise I could play with my dearest friends online. (And also being responsible for me meeting one of my players, and thus dearest friends.) Also, nearly forgot - he was well chuffed at what I brought for them to sign - the original Green Ronin version of the Tal'dorei Campaign Setting. I saw other people bringing sourcebooks but I think I'm the only one who brought that one. I thought it might be nice for them to see a) how far they've come and b) that we've been there since the beginning, frankly. It seems to have worked.

Little less conversation with Marisha, but I very much praised her acting / RP in Sagas of Sundry: Madness. I really do need to watch that again.

Laura, I praised her singing voice and we talked about Stray Gods (which will have to move back to the top of the Steam wish list). She was really sweet (and, later on in the photos, gave me a side-hug. It was really kind of her, given she could probably see I was struggling by then.)

Travis ... I don't think anyone's called him an "avatar of positive masculinity" to his face before, but he was really ... somewhere between flattered and touched, I think. That feels like that "someone lit up his face from the inside" expression's best description, anyway. Also we may have mentioned how good a job he and Laura seem to be doing with raising Ronin, because so many parents have doubts as to how they're doing and it's nice to hear that kind of validation.

Ashley ... equally touched by being responsible, through her Skype presence in Campaign 1, for the group I value so much today ... and also for having been company for a much younger me who had TV sitcoms for company, and thus having seen a lot of Littie!Ashley.

Sam ... Sam I saw on Broadway, so that came up. My accent came up (he was one of the few who flagged up that I in no way sound like I'm from the UK), and I mentioned having lived in New Jersey, and that @hyperewok1 lives in New Jersey, and how it was interesting that @hyperewok1 and Liam both lived in New Jersey and both played Oath of Vengeance Paladins to some degree. And together we came up with, "New Jersey breeds vengeance".

Which I then told Liam, which also got a laugh. As did my remembering about him in Dragon Age: Origins and his being various voices in Guild Wars 2, particularly this one crafting vendor who would say something every time you walked past him and my general response to any time I hear Liam's voice being a casual, out loud, "Hi, Liam!" Which I said a lot when I was playing Guild Wars 2, I can tell you.

And I was just about to get to Taliesin ... and then one of the stewards, who'd been helping me along the whole time, said that they were breaking for lunch and the photo ops, and she was really sorry, but I'd have to wait for the Talisein autograph. But I should go straight to the back area when the afternoon set came and I'd be let straight in. Okay, fine, that gave us time to find some food and a sit-down before photos.

Photos ... thankfully it was a little easier with the accessibility stuff that time, but the first photo (which was probably the better one) got nixed because of flash glare on our glasses. We didn't even get the option to see that photo - just got sent back for a second one, with head tilted down, which ... I did not need that much displayed double chin, thank you very fucking much. I'd rather have the lens flare. I can live with being in a JJ Abrams film. Anyway, the picture exists but I dislike it a lot. Marion looks great, though.

Anyway, after some cooldown time, and a bit of shopping wherein I found some dice that fit an Alisaie sort of theme (to go with the Scanlan-themed ones I got mostly because Purple and Bard), back to the autograph session. The very American woman helping out was in conversation with I think friends of hers and kind of didn't notice me there, so I spoke to a security guard and mentioned what happened at the morning session and he went back to get her. She came back looking hugely apologetic going, "Were you just there the whole time and I just ignored you? I am so sorry!" I told her it was fine and explained and she said, "Well, you've obviously been through it today so I'm going to just bring you straight in there because ... it's not protocol, but fuck it." Unfortunately, Taliesin was a bit behind schedule joining the others for the autographs (maybe an individual photo session ran long, maybe he was waiting for meds to kick in, all of the above, who knows? We just hoped he was okay), so she put me right at the front of the accessibility queue and even pulled over a chair so I could sit down. So we sat and watched the cosplay go by, had a nice conversation with some other people in the queue, and watched Felicia Day smack a cosplay Pike with a LARP mace. As you do.

Eventually, Taliesin turned up, looked really flustered, so we were just calling out, "It's okay! Take a minute!" So he did, and eventually he got started and I demonstrated my ability to be very fucking organised. I had my QR code out and ready, I still had my original Post-it with the name I wanted used (Thess, I used, because, as I told most of them, "Everyone I like calls me Thess"), and so when the steward looked at me, I just handed him my phone, opened my Tal'dorei guide to the right place and said, "That's the Post-it; I'm all set". I did that a couple of times over the course of the autographs and in both cases I got stares and, "...thank yooooooou..." It was a hard day for the poor sods. Most of them aren't even getting paid for this.

So then I got Taliesin's autograph. He's the only one who pronounced "Thess" properly (a lot of them didn't pronounce the H), and that got mentioned, and he asked where it was from (so Marion got in on the conversation because he asked if it was a Welsh name, and Marion's Welsh, so...) and I told him the Thancred / Therapy story and when I shook his hand, he did the "take hand in both his" thing (Matt did that too) and it was great.

And then Marion asked if I wanted to go home and I said "YES" with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Because as fun as it all was, I was stressed and in SO MUCH PAIN and very tired. And so we are now home after the usual absolute horror of public transport when tired, sore, and fed up.

But one more thing that put an added bit of sparkle to the evening. We were walking towards the door of the block of flats, and some people I don't honestly remember having seen had just come up from the block of flats and one of them stopped me and went, "Hey! We're wearing the same shirt!" And we were - the "Don't Forget To Love Each Other" one, though I'm not sure if his is the original or the second iteration. Doesn't really matter. So I asked if they were going to the MCM After-party. They said no, they couldn't get tickets to the live show so they more or less skipped it and I mentioned we'd just come from the Excel Centre and I had their autographs. From the reaction of one of the women of their little group, if I'd told them we also had a picture, her head might have exploded through sheer "impressed" and "envious". So they wished us a lovely evening and we wished them the same and so I apparently have Critters for neighbours. And I would bet money they're the ones who make the corridor smell of weed, but never mind.

So all in all, for all the OW OW OW OW OW, a good day. And now we're going to wait for takeaway curry to arrive because apparently asking me to cook was a bridge too far and I'm honestly too tired to argue with that.

#mcm expo

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philbridges · 10 months

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Toilet Bubbles When Other Is Flushed #Shorts

Ok Drew. I don’t think he heard us. Go ahead and flush it, Drew. That is us flushing the other toilet in the house. And the air’s coming up here. So that means we have a vent that is not working. Now we’re on the hunt for a vent that is blocked. All right. Just let you know when you start seeing that bubbling anywhere else, you got a vent that’s not working. So keep that in mind. ????…

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redd956 · 11 months

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Nonhuman Things 4

Theme: Dogfolk

Dogfolk always going on walks in groups to the point that people refer to a mobile group of dogfolk as a walking, meanwhile the term pack is reserved for found families of dogfolk.

A couple's tails beginning to wag when they spy each other out in public

Neighbors complaining about the dogfolk from the upper floors of the apartment complex who howls right on the clock at 2 every night.

Theirs ears and tail giving away most of their emotions. Flattened against their head after being fired from work. Perked up as they watch the finale to their favorite show. Turning to listen to their crush talk, so that they make sure they hear every last word.

The local dogfolk daycare pays the most out of all the daycares in the city, but pulling up with the thoughts of applying, you watch on the workers leaver her shift covered in bandages and mud.

Coming home to find everything covered ceiling to floor in shed fur. The plumbing is clogged again. Dogfolk for a roommate is starting to sound like a bad idea.

Checking on the dogfolk neighbor next door during fireworks shows, bringing noise canceling headphones for upper ears and nose plugs to help them get through the night.

"How come you always know exactly when your partner is on their period?" "Dogfolk secret."

A survivor dogfolk starting to growl when someone enters their personal space.

Beware of dog sign being put outside the new neighbor's lawns because HOA demands it. No wonder the new neighbor is so cranky.

#nonhuman things #dogfolk #dogboy #dog girl #dogfolk characters #nonhuman characters

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red-man-of-mustache · 20 days

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Mario's Bio

Long post, going under a cut-- This is for mobile users, desktop users can also view this here

The stork. Trusted companion to expecting parents. Mario & Luigi were both on their way to the Metro Kingdom via Stork until, unfortunately, the animal was set upon by a particular Magikoopa: Kamek! He'd managed to successfully kidnap Luigi and the stork but not the older of the twins Mario. Kamek foresaw the trouble the bros would cause for Bowser and the Koopa clan in the future and sought to nip it in the bud. Luckily Mario landed amongst a tribe of Yoshi’s who selflessly helped reunite the bro’s and free the poor stork. There was much toil in between but the brave reptiles perservered. After their little adventure the Stork took the bros and continued on it’s course to deliver the duo to their parents.

The Koopa Clan searched tirelessly for the twins, seeking to keep a future enemy from growing too powerful or in this case growing at all! There was a second kidnapping because the stork had actually delivered the babies to the wrong parents, given it was frazzled from being taken prisoner. Fortunately, when the twins were kidnapped again(with a whole host of other babies dubbed the Star Children) the stork on it's way to pick them up attacked the Toadies after they gathered the children, managing to free both Mario & Peach. The Yoshi's, with the guidance of the children, set off again to save their island and the Star Children. They succeeded once more and it seems as though the Koopa Clan went quiet after another failure.

The bros, when returned to their actual parents, were raised with as much love as the pair could receive. Mario was an energetic child who often injured himself being too daring or getting into fights with the other kids meanwhile Luigi was more introverted and preferred to indulge softer things on his own. He scared easily and was an obvious target for bullies. Most of Mario's fighting was spent defending his younger brother whereas other times he may metaphorically step on someone's toes and then refuse to offer an apology. Mario is obviously the more brash of the twins so he wasn't as well-mannered. Luigi would often have to apologize on his behalf and divert whatever was coming his way. They stood up for one another in their own ways but they stuck together and that was all that mattered throughout their younger years.

Once they hit adulthood, Mario picked up plumbing after he flew through a slew of other careers. He was a Doctor, Carpenter, Demolition worker, Factory worker, and much more, Mario’s adventurous attitude didn’t let him wade in one profession for too long,plumbing being the only exception. Plumbing happened to be precious to him because it was something he could share with Luigi along with it running in the family. In fact, Mario’s love for plumbing would plunge him into a world full of adventure. Him and Luigi were involved with a typical call to fix a leak. When they arrived and got to work the foundation of the home had begun crumbling, dropping them near a large green warp pipe. Mario, being the curious fellow he was, wanted to see where it would go. It wasn't attached to anything else within the home and he wished to see why. Luigi followed after concerned for his brothers safety.

The second the bros came out on the other side they were met with their first adventure: save the Princess from the clutches of Bowser. In a foreign land and far from home, the bros didn't let the situation shake them. They valiantly traveled throughout the eight worlds of the Kingdom to reach Bowser in Darkland and smite him.

Their first adventure done, the bros decided to stick around. The pipe that brought them was gone. Not that Mario saw it as a bad thing. It looked like the people of this humble land needed him and Luigi. Though it should go without saying that from time to time he does think about Mama Mario and Papa Mario.

#ℳ ➙ Player One | OOC |#Mario's bio #ℳ ➙ “Hey! Come back here! You big-a monkey!” | Headcanons |#it's been 3000 years

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hungee-boy · 23 days

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so since were like halfway to getting it ill just share it now

next year well be getting a new mobile home and im so excited for multiple reasons

it has five bedrooms, so thats enough bedrooms for all of us plus a dedicated office

TWO living rooms!!! i legit thought that was only a rich brick and mortar house thing but im so excited to be able to just have more places to retreat to if someone else is in a space

actual closed off pantry with a door. the amount of times our cats have gotten into bags of chips and shit.... im excited for that

i get my own bathroom.... god bless.

brand new working HVAC with insulated walls, doors, and windows so we can actually have comfortable summers

i know this basic but the bedrooms havent had doors in ten years. not by our choice just kids breaking them and not having the money to replace it so we just got curtains but i am so fucking excited to have doors everywhere. i can completely close myself off. i can have a purely quiet space. god bless

new water heater that stays on all the time and that we dont have to manually flip the breaker for

new full sized fridge and new unbroken, not 30 year old stove

floor with no weak points where you sink like half an inch and fear falling through the damn house

walls and floors that havent degraded over 30 years and are actually easy to clean and paint and put wallpaper/tile on

brand new plumbing that wont freeze and burst over the winter

both plugs of every outlet working

theres a closed off closet in the hallway that we can put our seasonal things in instead of just keeping them out or putting them in the shed thats already too full

working lights and ceiling fans in every room, also easy to clean

so many cabinets and storage spaces, shit wont just be left out anymore

ive literally prayed for a better home since i was ten years old. 14 years of yearning and wishing and planning out ways i could earn enough money to afford it. now its just possible where we are now when it comes to money. we didnt even intend it to be possible. my mom just works for walmart and receives social security for my siblings since my dad died. ill be working soon hopefully so my money will also go towards down payment, furniture, etc., my bf is really smart with money and is helping with all of this too. the house were getting was on sale and i paid the min deposit to keep the price for the year itll take us to save up and get the land prepped. were actually buying a brand new home. a house that hasnt been lived in before us. itll start with us and i never had that ever. its surreal to live so badly for my entire life, especially more so since my dad died, to now be able to naturally obtain a normal life in a normal house that can actually accommodate all of us and give us comfort and not just bare minimum shelter. i only have to suffer one more year. god what a relief

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azpreferredplumber · 2 years

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#Mobile home plumbing

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wide-eyedscottishlass · 1 year

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Fetching Scarlett

(just the beginning of) a one-shot that lies in Scarlett & Hennessy's future

The fuel pump of his rental 2018 Range Rover gave up the ghost just shy of eight kilometers from his destination--the Scottish village of Stormeil Na Mara, a scant five kilometers as the crow flies, from the storm-tossed Atlantic Ocean. Hennessy let loose a salty string of bitter profanities at the outrageous inconvenience of having to trek the final leg of his quest on foot. Of course Scarlett’s home village was so far off the grid (nearly two hours drive from Edinburgh Airport) that mobile reception was almost non-existent. He could only hope the wee fishing and farming burgh had some alternate form of communication with the wider world. He didn’t fancy the idea of being stranded there any longer than absolutely necessary to reclaim his wayward lassie. Surely his willingness to leave his cherished Caribbean clime and the comforts of the world he had built for himself, to travel to this dismal, godforsaken countryside should be proof enough that indeed he loved her. That she had--unwittingly or not--won her way deep into his normally thorny heart, making him break every self-made rule regarding romantic entanglements, which he had abided by for nearly two decades.

Yes, Scarlett’s gentle, loving ways, coupled with the well of heady passion within her--which he alone had ever had the privilege of plumbing--had turned him more than monogamus. Had shown him he could trust in another human soul to see his weaknesses yet never scorn him for them. Had proven that she saw a light in him that he had believed was extinguished long ago, trusting in him without hesitation from their beginning and sincerely loving him unconditionally. Late as he was in coming to this realization, Hennessy finally understood that Scarlett was his pearl of great price--and that no cost was too high to win her back into his life.

Resigned to the road ahead, he quickly gathered a few essentials from his luggage, along with his bottled water, to pack into his leather tote, and donned the heavy wool sweater he had purchased at an airport boutique that catered to tourists desiring to immerse themselves in the trite trappings of Gaelic culture. As Hennessy’s designer wardrobe featured only hot weather garb, in this case it was a necessity. Plus, it might very well make the difference in him catching a ride from a local croftsman heading in his direction. As his usual good luck would have it, he traversed less than two kilometers before a lift materialized.

The farmer wasn’t a talker beyond a few rudimentary questions in a brogue so thick Hennessy barely understood him. They got along well enough for Henns to make clear he was seeking the Campbell cottage, home of Mrs. Aileen Campell (he’d had a stuttering moment when he couldn’t recall Scarlett’s mum’s name, but finally managed it when he set his mind’s eye to the way the sunlight streaming through the transom window lit his bonnie lover like a halo of gold about her sex-tousled raven locks, as she sat wrapped in his silk sheet at the foot of his bed, revealing some quiet detail of the strict life she’d lived as a teen beneath her mother’s roof). The man had grunted with a nod, telling him he could drop him as near to there as the road would take him, but he’d still have a twenty-minute walk at least, to reach the shoreside bothie. Their rough conversation lapsed from there, until the farmer dropped Hennessy off those twenty minutes from his destination, telling him to head northwest and when he saw the shore off to his right, he’d be nearly there.

Doggedly determined as he strode across the long grass towards his goal, he could smell the Sea before he saw it--and as always, nearness to the source of his vitality and power, granted Hennessy the invigoration needed to speed his pace afoot.

Coming over a thistle-covered hill, he paused when he saw the white capped waves beating upon the sand, and drew a deep, deep breath, a full understanding of the source of his Scarlett’s fundamental relationship with the Sea, dawning upon him. Though these waters would always run in her blood, they had taught her a healthy fear of the treacherous, untrustworthy northern seas. Her gentle nature was far better suited to the warm embrace of sunshine seawaters, as was his own...

(I'd love to hear from anyone still following this story ~ although I can't reply directly, as my main blog still dwells in shadowban prison)

#my writing #please keep your fingers crossed I can continue #Fetching Scarlett #Scarlett and the Professor #gimme some love and maybe it will help me to continue #Hennessy #Professor Hennessy #Scarlett Campbell #faceclaims:#Benedict Cumberbatch #Vivien Leigh

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