Untitled

[janmisali]

pick whatever option the person you're following who reblogged this post didn't pick. if they didn't say in the tags what they picked or if you're seeing the original post and not a reblog, pick at random instead.

first option

second option

Remaining time: 1 day 23 hours

[lambda-larry]

"Fashion Student" Worm - Sentinel 9.2

Bonus panel:

[azraelart]

worm break- pact now

[comradegoblin]

If there was ever a moment where somebody brings up the previous Lord of Toronto in pale and they were just like "yeah it was an incarnation of conquest for like 100 years then some dude killed him. Nobody knows who" I would clap when I saw it

[janmisali]

imagine rolling two standard six-sided dice. what is the sum of their results?

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

[show results]

Voting ended onJun 3

[janmisali]

okay if you haven't yet, participate in the poll before clicking the readmore because I'm gonna respond to someone's tags and I don't want to influence your answer

so first of all this is a poll where I've prompted people to play pretend with imaginary dice and I cannot comprehend what assumptions you'd have to make to think this is a question with a correct answer.

but if it did have a "correct answer", surely the correct answer would be whatever the most likely result of the sum of two six-sided dice rolls is, right? and that's seven. because there are more ways for the results of two six-sided dice to add to seven than anything else. like, it makes perfect sense that the results of this poll are what they are. what are you talking about.

[vozam]

To keep up the integrity of the poll I will also put my response under a readmore!

I am so sorry for the mixup! I must have come off SUPER confrontational. I wanna be clear that I was ABSOLUTELY joking in those tags. I'm entirely aware that this is a poll based on an imaginary prompt with no correct answer, so by insisting that my completely arbitrary answer was the correct one I was trying to be tongue-in-cheek.

I put it in the tags so as to not immediately influence anybody's opinion or blow up anybody's notifications, but if you'd like I can absolutely delete my reblog lol.

Again, so sorry! Hope this doesn't derail your enjoyment of your own poll- I also had a lot of fun with it and was really impressed to see a somewhat organic normal distribution!

[benssecondatyempt]

This poll ideas been running around in my brain for a while so Who would have the worst time on earth bet (assuming they get the average powered person experience)

Ruby Rose (RWBY)

Percy Jackson (Percy Jackson)

Dave Strider (Homestuck)

Fall Baros (the sword interval)

Steven Universe (Steven Universe)

Voting ended onMay 20

[artbyblastweave]

Initially voted Steven like a good little reflexive contrarian but then reconsidered. Steven has a grab bag of a dozen plus powers, one or two forms of redundant durability, healing and resurrection powers to hedge against any big fuckups, a bone-deep internalized understanding of the shared principle of the two settings that harm stems from trauma and circumstance rather than strict binary morality, powerful psychic abilities deliberately withheld from the setting at large and (imo most interestingly) a better frame of reference for what’s actually going on with the underlying setting cosmology than most people on earth bet AND an actual proof of concept for how to de-escalate it. Admittedly several powers that be are going to make a beeline for him at once the second they become aware he’s alive, so one limiting factor here is “can his corrupted form go head to head with an Endbringer.” But if he shimmies out of that and works his way past the rest of the gauntlet I’d give him pretty good odds of eventually flipping scion with a musical number

[comradegoblin]

I voted Steven because he indeed would have an awful time, but given his talk no jutsu feats I think there's a decent chance he actually could get through to scion.

[comradegoblin]

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

[gourde]

All three of my new creatures btw. There’s Sesame, Connor, and Marlow. They are brothers and were rescued from a dumping situation as babies. Currently 4 whole months old and already Sesame is HUGE. Connor is tiny. Marlow is hopelessly stupid <3 I love them all very much.

They’ve settled in so quickly since we first got them April 1st and immediately accepted Minnow, whom was annoyed by their baby antics but he loves now lol. My sillies :)

[machine-saint]

we justifiably give Biden a lot of shit but I think "at least 3" is the funniest possible response to some right wing dipshit asking you how many genders there are

[madnessofmen]

wait it gets better

[comradegoblin]

he's right you know, can confirm there's at least 3

[notalittleatall]

And another thing about Accord. He never planned for his own mortality. Which sounds like a platitude, but it really was a serious flaw in his decision making. His major plans for world hunger and that relied on him being around to carry them out consistently for the next 20 years when the average lifespan for a supervillain is maybe 6 months. He was careful, but the main thing that kills these guys is unpredictable violent bullshit which is in fact what got him in the end. Technically speaking it was an assassin sent by the Simurgh to gank him just as he was beginning to gain traction on helping the world, but honestly he should have accounted for that too

[comradegoblin]

Should have just anticipated the simurgh smh

[json-derulo]

I love lying to my landlord. “We’re currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease here” and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind

[json-derulo]

Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, I’m gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that I’m not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlord—I’m just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease I’ve ever signed. (Also, I’ve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)

Step 0: Know Thy Enemy

The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether they’re corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their asset—the property—is a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time it’s sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not. 

Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goal—and because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent money—they’re almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, it’s actually in their best interest to give you a better price. 

Step 1: Identify Your Leverage

If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily.  High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an “AVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAY” sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says “First month free”? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says “call for availability”? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher. 

You have the least leverage if you’re a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that aren’t even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if you’ve already signed a lease and you’re in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so you’re stuck with that until the lease is up.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if you’re a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and you’re being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, they’re also probably going to have to put in some work to “turn” the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.

All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, it’s still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. They’re probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know it’ll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if you’re a prospective new tenant—if they can’t get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, that’s $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and they’ll never get it back. It’s a perishable item about to spoil. 

Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer

This is the first number they’ll quote you for the rent—the sticker price that you’ve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, they’ve built some buffer into that number. There’s almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people don’t!

Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter

Don’t reply to their initial offer right away—unless there’s a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you aren’t desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.

As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when we’re talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!

When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when it’s time to send out renewal offers didn’t get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they could’ve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000! 

Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing) 

Here’s the tricky part. You need to write an email—always negotiate over email if you can, it’s too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isn’t in writing means nothing—which simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, you’d delete those other hoes’ numbers forever! Here’s the rough script I use every time:

“ Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.

If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "

Step 6: You Win Either Way

Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I should’ve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number that’s higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; you’ve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and they’re likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firm—in which case, guess what? You still didn’t lose anything by asking!

[json-derulo]

THIS!!! Exactly this. I didn’t mention it above because I just couldn’t fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically “price firm :(”, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, “actually, nvm, how’s $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?”

To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like

I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!

[writing-prompt-s]

Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.

[lyricwritesprose]

The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

I followed the being in the suit.

[phoenixyfriend]

Took me well over a minute to realize "low frequency right angle shape" was Red Cross.

[pyromania2014]

This whole thing is brilliant with translation stuff.

[dustbunnyaac]

I think any time anyone has a migraine $2,000 should be directly deposited in their bank account as compensation

[comradegoblin]

guess who's job is now not drinking coffee!

[frankencain]

finally, a way too long and yet not exhaustive list of my favourite video essays:

tell her I'm sorry

the ouroboros of grief: a video essay

ocean waves - studio ghibli's (accidental) queer film

the last unicorn: a love letter to humanity

sesame street created the perfect secular grieving ritual

penda's fen: the greatest movie you've (probably) never seen

this wikipedia article hides a sorrowful secret

understanding snapewives: religion, fandom, sociology & erotica

tiktok gave me autism: the politics of self diagnosis

studio ghibli's apocalypse and the atomic bomb

the blind eternities | a void between planes

bo burnham vs. jeff bezos

we need to talk about call me by your name

why the hell do I own a copy of the fountainhead?

dead doesn't mean gone - a haunting of bly manor video essay

you can't save the galaxy in a day

in search of a flat earth

my neighbour totoro: what's real?

a modern greek tragedy: kentucky route zero

legacy, chronicle & every other reimagining of the craft

the art of religious interpretation (midnight mass vs god's not dead)

the tragedy of the monster

the molting house | a guided tour of duskmourn

control, anatomy and the legacy of the haunted house

control, lovecraft in the modern day

outsiders: how to adapt lovecraft in the 21st century

how a forest digests you

video games, the forest, and the things that live inside them

my transformers midlife crisis

an unhinged deep dive into wicked's biggest pothole

the wasteland of jordan peterson

majora's mask retrospective

breaking down true womanhood & black girlhood in media

chances to change - a happy death day video essay

the villain of edith finch

saurian cinema: capitalism killed the dinosaurs (and we're next)

dark souls 3 is thinking of ending things

midnight mass: christianity and trauma

why knights of the old republic 2 is beautiful; an analysed playthrough

stranger things & the meaning of life

every zelda is the darkest zelda

madness, memory, mill & discard

the autistic horror of don't hug me I'm scared

I wish I could (and don't) hate buffy season 6

transition regret & the fascism of endings

the strangest pair in nature

what is no-face?

the dolphin house

searching for god in film

a desperate deconstruction of stephen king's it

everyone's cheating at chess (allegedly)

I saw the tv glow, the matrix, and trans gnostic stories (a video essay)

playing stardew valley made me question everything I've ever loved

myhouse.wad - inside doom's most terrifying mod

[homunculus-argument]

in Finland, it is illegal to kill a bear when it’s hibernating. If you ask a hunter why that is, a number of them will tell you it’s wrong simply because it is the law, and they don’t make a distinction between what is right, and what is legal. Most people like that are perfectly normal, decent and respectable people, just like the rest of us.

 But if you ask people who think about things, the answer is vague. Killing a hibernating bear would just feel… impolite? You can’t fucking shoot a man when he’s sleeping, that’s just fucking rude. It’s just not the right thing to do.

 Long before hunting laws were established in Finland, you couldn’t kill a sleeping bear, and what commands you is something older than law: tradition. Even at a time when hunting was a matter of life and death, and a bear fighting for its life is mainly a matter of death, you just didn’t kill a hibernating bear, you have to wake it up first. Hunters risked their lives, the lives of their brothers and everyone in the hunting party, who were friends, family and men that they loved, to give the bear a fighting chance.

 In the modern time, the hunting season of bears is in the summer, for the warmest summer months. There are many reasons for why they are allowed to tread safely in autumn and to sleep in peace through the cold months, almost all of which are rational and scientific, and do not touch the old traditions.

 Old faith says a living thing has many souls - henki, luonto, itse. Plants only have one - the one that wills them to grow. Animals have two, both the spark of life and nature that enables them to act. A human being also has the third, one that makes them a person, personality, itse, literally “self”. But the soul that travels in your dreams is not the soul that defines a human - animals have that one as well. When your dog runs in her sleep, her soul is elsewhere, where a dog is needed.

 One’s waking soul is elsewhere when they sleep and dream. A bear’s soul is somewhere else when they are hibernating - there are two words for “hibernation” in finnish, one of which is talviuni, “winter sleep”, and that is the one that bears have - and if you kill a sleeping bear, their soul is not in the body, it is still out there, and it can find you, and as a revenge for killing its body, Ghost Bear will kill your entire fucking family.

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Metahuman with super healing powers whose entire job is that once a week they go to a nearby hospital and are put into a medically induced coma for 24 hours while all their organs and blood are harvested, and kept there until they've healed up again.

They get paid a small stipend by the Heroes Council for this, and they live off that.

No crime fighting, no obvious heroics, and they only took a Super Identity because it's technically hero's council policy. Nobody's ever seen them in a cape.

Every so often the Heroes council will release an official report to the public, and there'll be another bunch of news articles wondering how some unknown super calling themselves 'Meat Factory' somehow consistently holds the record for most lives saved across the city.

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

It is essential to my vision that they are not at all sanctimonious about this.

Like, they regularly act like they're getting away with something. They joke about how they get to earn money in their sleep. They show up to their hospital visits in deliberately ridiculous disguises, on the excuse that they need to 'protect their identity'.

Part of their employment contract is that they get served the same post-operation vanilla ice cream that they normally hand out on the childrens' ward. Also a sticker. Their overnight bag is covered in stickers.

[megamuscle885-blog]

the parahuman version of this is someone who woke up in the middle of an operation after a motorcycle accident because they had organ donar on their ID and were assumed dead and suddenly they're very unreasonable about donating organs, even if those organs are now growing on the outside of themselves. also now they explode into acid when they throw them-- I just recreated Sidepiece.

[comradegoblin]

I shudder to think of the trigger event that produced sidepiece

[else-creates]

I think a common misconception about Sophia is that she's a popular girl.

Sophia is a mean girl, but she's not popular. Emma is a popular girl and Sophia hangs out with Emma..... Without Emma, Sophia would have no friends at Winslow.

I mean, not even getting into the amount of E88 kids there Sophia is just hard to like, deliberately so (Absolutely deep in her 'Not like other girls' phase).....She's antisocial and probably considered to be one of the weird kids by most of the school.

Which means that a lot of other Winslow kids look at Emma's friendship with Sophia as "Oh Emma got rid of the Hebert girl and found another charity case to work on"

Which I'm sure Sophia would be completely normal about if anyone bothered to tell her.