Tip: you can refrigerate stale croissant for 3-6 hours and it will become mushy and cold and unpleasant. It won't cut well, so just put a big clump of cold, hard butter on it. Strife and hatred.
Tip: you can do nothing to a stale croissant for any arbitrary length of time and it will remain as is. Do not cut it, or add butter. Stasis and stagnation.
Realism in video games! Sometimes random bystanders should jump in to slam a chair against the monster you're fighting, because dang it they live here too and they've had a bad day and really want to wreck a monster.
this post just cant be on its own. it needs the accompanying pic “when you’re level 80” that is exactly the same image, but the stick has glowing runes on it and the crabs are purple
After nearly 20 years of trying to increase the red-headed vulture population, this endangered baby vulture was born in March at the Nakhon Ratchasima Zoo in northeast Thailand. The endangered bird is the first red-headed - also known as Asian king vulture - to be bred in the continent and only the second in the world. X
how I sleep at night knowing my daughter is in a prison of my own design because I turned her into a murderer, my son is abandoned on a notorious garbage realm, and my other son is having an identity crisis because they are from a race I taught them from a young age to hate:
So I decided to look further into this story. I've been lamenting my rent recently-- in 2019, it was a hefty 1,900. Now, in 2024, it's 2,850.
This complex prided itself on safety. My car was broken into, and my neighbor's car was stolen. In the garage-- which has no security cameras-- several other, more severe crimes have occurred.
My apartment had roaches for eight months because another tenant left their home in disarray. Nests upon nests of roaches.
Our air-conditioner, which is not optional where I live, has broken down 15 times in the past two years. The emergency maintenance number has never worked, and I recently learned-- after going to visit the managers myself-- that it simply hasn't been working for a year.
Oh, and they told us they can't replace the fridge filters anymore. It's just... oh, perish the thought, too expensive.
And last time we went to re-sign our lease, when I spotted a listing from our building managers-- our exact unit plan, our exact floor-- for 2,315, I took screenshot. Why, I thought, would us long-time tenants be asked to pay 2,850 when new renters were looking at 2,315?
Eleven days later when I went to ask them about it, the listing had mysteriously disappeared. "Oh, when was it that price? It wasn't listed at that price. Oh, that screenshot's from... a few days ago. The market's volatile." They told me. Really? $600 in 11 days volatile?
If we adjust what I was originally paying for cumulative inflation, I should be paying 2,415 a month. It just didn't make sense! But moving was expensive, and the other options in our area were expensive too.
So you can imagine that when I looked into this story and learned the fucking company that the FBI is investigating is the same company that manages my building, I SCREAMED.
So, check this shit out. This is absolutely fucked beyond imagining, and almost certainly worse than you even thought, and they wrote this shit down:
Over the last four years, rents have skyrocketed by an average of over 30% nationwide and are a major factor in the overall inflation rate.
Last month, the FBI reportedly conducted an unannounced raid of Cortland Management, a major corporate landlord based in Atlanta. The surprise search appears to be part of a Department of Justice criminal investigation, first reported by Politico in March, into an alleged scheme among many corporate landlords to artificially increase rents through collusion.
...
According to the lawsuit filed by the State of Arizona in February, landlords that are supposed to be in competition with each other "outsource daily pricing and ongoing revenue oversight" to RealPage. The company allegedly facilitates and encourages landlords to work cooperatively to increase rents. [In other words, to illegally collude.] An e-book produced by RealPage says that the company allows corporate landlords who are “technically competitors” to "work together . . . to make us all more successful in our pricing." RealPage bragged that landlords that use its software “continually outpace the market in good times and bad.” In other words, RealPage helps landlords charge higher rates than they would in a truly competitive market.
...
RealPage's former CEO revealed that participating landlords share "occupancy rates, rents charged for each unit and each floorplan, lease terms, amenities, move-in dates, and move-out dates." After feeding in this highly-detailed information that would normally be kept proprietary, "landlords agree to outsource their pricing authority to RealPage—rather than competing with one another on price." RealPage even has a feature called "auto-pilot" that lets the software set rent prices without any human approval or intervention.
...
...RealPage employs "pricing advisors" who "meet with landlords to ensure that properties are implementing RealPage’s set rates." This is described by Arizona as "policing the conspiracy to make sure no one cheats by lowering prices and trying to gain market share." RealPage training materials, cited in the DC lawsuit, advise that landlords "should be compliant" with the software's pricing recommendations. The Arizona lawsuit claims that landlords "agree that if they fail to consistently implement RealPage’s set rates, their contract with RealPage will be terminated." Jeffrey Roper, who created the RealPage algorithm, explained that if "you have idiots undervaluing, it costs the whole system."
...
According to the plaintiffs, landlords using RealPage "account for over 53% of the multifamily rental market in the Atlanta Submarket."
Did you catch all of that? These landlords, who control over fifty percent of the multifamily rental market in the Atlanta Metro area, turned over a bunch of privileged information to a company which promises them greater profits. How does it do that? Well, RealPage literally requires them to collude with each other to fix prices. @artsekey saw the effects of that in real time: rents jumping $600 in a couple of days, and why? Well, in the words of Amber Ruffin, which I will take totally out of context:
So yeah, it's a fucking cartel. Literally, this is "an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition." That is the literal definition of a fucking cartel, and this absolutely meets that definition.
They wrote it down! They fucking WROTE IT DOWN! They're so confident that they put it in their fucking training materials.
(LegalEagle used that clip in a video about Trump so that line has been stuck in my head all fucking day, but SERIOUSLY Y'ALL.)
i think about that dota screenshot that's like 'i still think it's your fault because otherwise it's my fault and i don't like that' every day of my life
a correction on the last screenshot: the quote was in reference to him being shown a CGI, zombie-like monster that moved in a way that reminded him of his disabled friend:
a more relevant quote in direct reference to AI taking over animators' and artists' work would be him saying "I feel like we are nearing to the end of the times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves."
stormborns
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
izzy806
germansingergirl
