Last year I started designing a series of Coat of Arms, themed in the spirit of Pride Month and using different mythological creatures as heraldic animals. I now aim to turn these designs into wearable pins and will be running a Kickstarter in Julyto fund this endeavor!
In addition to these 5 designs I wish to be able to crowdfund enough to be able to also manufacture the following pins and identities:
I have found a very trustworthy local manufacturer, who has already shown the quality of their craftsmanship with the first batch of test pins I received, just look at the detail they were able to produce!
Since I try to support local manufacturers, which produce pins with fair wages and are more ethical than outside of Europe, the pins are more expensive to create than through the usual pipeline via Asia.
I therefore seek to crowdfund the expenses since they would be more than I can afford. If you are interested and look forward to support this little endeavor, please follow the link below to sign up for a mailing list. People who signed up on the email list and pledged during the campaign will receive an exclusive sticker set by the end of a successful launch consisting of the following designs:
SIGN UP ON OUR PRELAUNCH WAITING LIST TO GET THESE LITTLE GUYS FOR FREE
Our Kickstarter Prelaunch Page:
A collection of Pride themed Coat of Arms Enamel Pins. Rally your friends, choose your crest and celebrate with PRIDE.
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
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!
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!!!
if you dont know the context, JK Rowling appears in the Epstein files being invited to the pedophile island and in return, invited Epstien to her Harry Potter play, The Cursed Child. while her full name is redacted, she signs her emails with "Jx" like she often signs her tweets, and Epstien calls her "wordsmith", so we know he was talking to 1. an author 2. someone connected to Harry Potter enough to be able to offer an invite to the play 3. someone incredibly wealthy because those are the only people he communicated with 4. SOMEONE WHO SIGNS OFF AS "Jx"
she brushed it off, calling it "silly", then she illegally deleted YEARS of tracking on her yacht. never any threats to sue despite what would be very clear and obvious defamation and libel case if it weren't true, but none of these scumbags will do it because they know it would all be proven TRUE in discovery
this is a woman who has dumped millions of dollars to make the lives of trans people in the UK miserable. she calls us perverts, abusers, and pedophiles. and here she is, visiting pervert pedophile abuse island to do what they do there. truly every accusation is a confession with these devils
at this point i expect hp fans to delude themselves more into thinking somehow its not what it looks like when theres literally no other way to look at it
While watching a DVD from the library my TV popped up a message saying to press a button if I wanted to watch this from additional providers.
It's never done that before so I looked it up and turns out Roku TVs have added all sorts of creepy things in the privacy section since I last checked.
One of which being they take screenshots from what you're watching and send them to third parties to identify it.
Fucking hell! Remember when every fucking device in your life wasn't a spy implanted in your home and working against your interests to try and sell your data? Remember how nice that was??
Remember when the TV was just a tool that would play the things you plugged into it?
people on here are always saying “we NEED a story where the art of storytelling is abandoned” like ugh literary devices are soo annoying like that wouldn’t happen in real life that only happened to further the story (why is there story in my story) why would orpheus turn around when he was explicitly told not to why would icarus fly so close to the sun romeo&juliet catcher in the rye why are they so earnest why pour your heart and soul into anything why bother why cant all art be quippy logical monotony like my marvel movies there’s a void in my heart bc i refused to fill it and the curtains were blue
“i hate poetry its so pretentious” but then you reblog a quote or a throwaway line and say “why does this go so hard” you are desperate for poetry you are starved for it and u dont even realise you’re hungry
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again but it is absolutely an example of civilizational inadequacy that only deaf people know ASL
“oh we shouldn’t teach children this language, it will only come in handy if they [checks notes] ever have to talk in a situation where it’s noisy or they need to be quiet”
My family went holiday SCUBA diving once, and a couple of Deaf guys were in the group. I was really little and I spent most of the briefing overcome with the realization that while the rest of us were going to have regulators in our mouths and be underwater fairly soon, they were going to be able to do all the same stuff and keep talking.
Update: you guys this is an amazing resource for learning asl. Bill Vicars is an incredible teacher. His videos are of him teaching a student in a classroom, using the learned vocabulary to have conversations.
Not only is the conversation format immersive and helpful for learning the grammar, but the students make common mistakes which he corrects, mistakes I wouldn’t have otherwise know I was making.
He also emphasizes learning ASL in the way it’s actually used by the Deaf community and not the rigid structure that some ASL teachers impose in their classrooms
His lesson plans include learning about the Deaf community, which is an important aspect of learning ASL. Knowing how to communicate in ASL without the knowledge of the culture behind it leaves out a lot of nuances and explanations for the way ASL is.
Lastly, his lessons are just a lot of fun to watch. He is patient, entertaining, and funny. This good natured enthusiasm is contagious and learning feels like a privilege and not a chore
And it’s all FREE. Seriously. If you’ve ever wanted to learn ASL
Here's the zine layout version of the whistle guide from Pilsen Arts and Community House, in English and Spanish; you can print and fold it into a booklet with these instructions: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Zine
“The Militarization of the Police Department – Deadly Farce,” an original painting by Richard Williams from “The 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2014″ in Mad magazine #531, published by DC Comics, February 2015.
“For most people, he was the painter of ‘America,’” he added. “But even he said his vision was what he wanted ‘America’ to be. It was a mythical ‘America,’ a place where all people were decent, honest and full of good will. His work was full of gentle humor that made you feel a little better; even if you knew it wasn’t really true… you just wished it was. My parody of Rockwell’s painting simply says, ‘That myth is dead.’”
I think it’s relevant to add that even Norman Rockwell chose to leave his cushy job at the Saturday Evening Post because he wanted to make artwork that was more radical. The Post had rules that wouldn’t allow him to do artwork depicting black people as anything other than servants. The job paid really well and that was a huge reason he continued on. But he wanted change that and so he moved to Look magazine.
A lot of people know about the very first piece he did when he left the post which was the The Problem We All Live With which depicts Ruby Bridges walking to school under federal protection.
But I don’t think enough people know about Murder in Mississippi which depicts three real civil rights activists who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and sherriffs. The magazine ran the sketch instead of the finished piece because they felt it had a more striking statement to accompany the article. Norman Rockwell would finish that version after publication which is here
Rockwell’s legacy is sanitized because he decided to maintain his job at the Post for so long despite his frustrations with not being able to express himself. The civil rights movement was just his final straw to change what he could with the little time he had left. Look magazine received a lot of hate for Rockwell painting these as well.
Another favorite piece of mine is The Right to Know which depicts an integrated populace questioning their government. In 1968, the year of Vietnam and the year the Fair Housing Act only just got signed in months prior:
But I think it’s important to include the caption Rockwell originally wrote for the piece as well. I think it represents how a 74 year old Rockwell felt about the America he believed in and the people in it:
We are the governed, but we govern too. Assume our love of country, for it is only the simplest of self-love. Worry little about our strength, for we have our history to show for it. And because we are strong, there are others who have hope.
But watch us more closely from now on, for those of us who stand here mean to watch those we put in the seats of power. And listen to us, you who lead, for we are listening harder for the truth that you have not always offered us.
Your voice must be ours, and ours speaks of cities that are not safe, and of wars we do not want, of poor in a land of plenty, and of a world that will not take the shape our arms would give it.
We are not fierce, and the truth will not frighten us. Trust us, for we have given you our trust. We are the governed, remember, but we govern too.
R.I.P. The 2976 American people that lost their lives on 9/11 and R.I.P. the 48,644 Afghan and 1,690,903 Iraqi and 35000 Pakistani people that paid the ultimate price for a crime they did not commit
R.I.P. to the more than 4,500,000 people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria, who have lost their lives as a result of American occupation.
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