Everything is magic

The reason the government refuses to even entertain student loan forgiveness is because of something called SLABS. What are SLABS, you ask? Good question. Because the world of finance really does not want you to know this! SLABS are Student Loan Asset Backed Securities. Sounds like a bunch of confusing terms that regular people can’t understand, right? It’s supposed to.

A lot of you were too young to remember what happened in 2008, and what exactly the crisis was that brought the entire economy to its knees. 1 million people lost their homes. It’s because the mortgage industry was taking the mortgages (loans) that individuals opened, split them into tiny little pieces, bundled them together with other tiny little pieces of other people’s loans, and sold them off. A huge industry was created that not only bought little pieces of people’s mortgages, but also made bets on whether or not those underlying securities (pieces of mortgage loans) would fail or succeed. It didn’t take long before the bets on the loans outsized the actual loans themselves - sometimes by a magnitude of thousands.

I know this is complicated, but hang in there. Here’s Selena Gomez in “The Big Short” to explain that betting a little better: 

Okay, so you’ve got lots of people betting on mortgages. See what happens next, is that the banks run out of qualified people for mortgages. There’s only so many people who had jobs that paid them enough and credit scores high enough to be deemed worthy. But they want to keep their cash cow going! What to do?

Of course, the way this problem was solved, was to hand out mortgages to everyone like free T-shirts. No job? No credit? No way to pay that mortgage we just gave you? No problem. They were making more money on the bets than on the underlying loans. They didn’t give a shit if you defaulted. They were making money on you whether you paid or not. And they didn’t care if you destroyed your life and your credit and your family because the financial industry was raking in massive piles of cash by selling and betting on people’s home loans. Eventually the house of cards came tumbling down, there was a massive foreclosure crisis, the industry was found to be operating completely fraudulently, and a million people lost their houses. Large financial institutions received a bail-out that we the taxpayers paid for. The individual families who got exploited and fucked? Got nothing.

So what does this have to do with student loans? Excellent question. The same thing that happened with mortgage loans being split into tiny pieces, bundled, and sold off has also happened with student loans. These bundles are called SLABS. Student loan asset-backed security. But wait! “Asset-backed”?? What asset? The asset is ostensibly...your degree.

This is now a potentially bigger problem than even the housing crisis in 2008: because back in ‘08, if you defaulted (stopped paying) on your mortgage loan, there was a physical asset to seize: your house. You can’t seize somebody’s English degree if they stop paying. This is why it’s nearly impossible to discharge any student loan debt, ever: because the industry making money off of student loans is making outsized bets that are larger than the underlying assets. Just like in 2008. If student loans were forgiven across the board, the ripple effect would capsize the domestic economy. Your $20,000 in student loans? Could represent $2 million in bets made on that loan.

This has already become an enormous hot potato between financial institutions as student loan repayment was paused during the pandemic. Suddenly there’s no payoff for these bets institutions are making on your student loans. There’s also no collateral they can repossess. What they thought was a profitable bet to exploit students and keep people in wage slavery forever, is shakier and shakier. When it finally bursts and goes tits-up, you can bet that the people who bought tiny pieces of your loans and then gambled it away will be the ones receiving a (tax-payer funded) bail-out. Not the students. And it’s already starting to go tits-up.

We are in the New Browser Wars. This time there’s a helluva lot of money up for grabs, because a lot of it is about running those ads. Monopolies are bad for consumers.

AdNauseam is an adblocker that generates false clicks on the ads it blocks, which costs the corporations that pay for them money.

Privacy Possum messes with the tracking data collected about you, rendering it essentially useless

TrackMeNot generates random search terms across sites, meaning that any data collected about things you actually search is buried in a sea of random bullshit. Makes it very hard for people to figure out what you’re actually doing. You can block terms in the options, which means it won’t search for anything incriminating on your behalf (I think the word bomb is blocked by default)

WhatCampaign replaces tracking analytics used in website code with data that can’t be used to track you. I’m pretty sure it replaces it with “fuck off” by default.

If you actually want to know… both of us have the ADHD “out of sight out of mind” thing, a lot of things we want to keep track of, and use the Power Tabs extension to organize and search through them. It’s literally the only way either of us can keep track of a lot of stuff. For my wife, it’s fic, especially the trails she used to get to the fic, since bookmarks don’t preserve the history and tabs do. For me, it’s a lot of different things, but videos are an especially common one. I take a class on trance dancing/drumming/chanting, and a ton of my tabs are things I’m practicing, or should be, or watching for research (or should be). But that’s just one example of mine. I’m trying to switch to Pocket for longer nonfiction articles, which clears out a good chunk of tabs, but then I don’t actually remember to go read my Pocket stuff. It’s a work in progress.

Matcha reports on Soshuku Shibatani, the transgender head nun of the Shozenji Temple in Moriguchi City, Osaka. It  is Japan’s first temple built as a refuge for the LGBTQ community.

Soshuku Shibatani, a 65-year-old openly transgender Buddhist nun, was assigned male at birth: 

She began to identify as a female in elementary school but never dared to express her gender identity at the time. As a university student, she met people similar to her and briefly lived at ease among like-minded peers. However, upon entering the workforce, she had to hide her true self once more…

According to Ms. Shibatani, “Buddha saw beyond the differences of gender.”

There is no need to hide your true self. Ms. Shibatani gradually became interested in Buddhist teachings and enrolled in community courses at the Graduate School of Koyasan University. She later resigned from her company, joined the priesthood, and went on to study Esoteric Buddhism.

Ms. Shibatani stated, “Shozenji is not exclusively for the LGBTQ community, but rather a temple for everyone.”

For more go and check my Instagram.

What is tasseomancy?

Also known as tasseography or tassology, it’s an intuitive divination technique of reading tea leaves or coffee grounds. Images changes when viewed differently so depends on reader’s perceptions. Good tool to access subconscious.

Techniques

There are different ways to interpret which area of the cup corresponds with what. There are also special cups for divination with symbols painted on its inner surface. Check diagrams: 1. Rim to bottom layout where rim area is for present, sides for near future and bottom for far future. 2. 12 month layout where you divide cup into 12 areas, from left to right each is a further future. 3. Past/future layout where left side represents past and the right side future. 4. Importance layout - rim: most important; sides: relevant; close to bottom: rival, bottom: unlucky, right from handle: lucky. Those are not all possibilities!

Reading

Get mentally prepared. Meditate, focus on the preparation of the tea and the reading. Find calm place to perform.

You’ll need a cup with a light surface, loose tea or coffee ground, stove, kettle/pot and water. Place 1 teaspoon of tea leaves in a cup, bring water to a boil and pour over your tea. Steep for 3 to 5 minutes. Stir and let to settle. If you’re using coffee grounds first heat them in a pot, pour into your cup and let to settle.

How to do a Tea leaf reading (aka Tasseomancy or Tasseography):

1. Choose a loose tea - you may want to choose herbs that lend to your intent/question or to enhance psychic abilities. Alternately, if you dislike tea, coffee also works (it is from a plant after all).

2. Use a wide mouth tea cup with a saucer.

3. Sip, enjoy and allow your energy to infuse with the herbs. You can keep your question in mind, or just drink your tea and let the message you need to know come through.

4. When you are finished, here are two of many methods a) read the leaves as they naturally land when finished b) cover with the saucer and swirl the cup  3x while asking your question - an extended version of this includes flipping the cup upside down after swirling, then back over and wait a few moments for the leaves to settle back into the cup.

5. When reading, first observe the cup and allow your gut response to the pattern. e.g. Evenly spread out = balance in the persons life.. and so on. Closer to the rim indicates things happening in the home/close to the person, then immediate family/close friends, and so on to the bottom. Generally the reading begins at the handle which represents current events, moving clockwise (see diagram).  Some people can see further than others. So the sections can be hours for a 24hr reading, or a year, or a lifetime.

tasseomancy/tasseography/tassology

the idea that thousands of people are calling alexander hamilton a slut

calling any founding father a slut

the idea that people are SHAMING Alexander Hamilton for being Such A Slut he is being SHAMED for being such a naughty little tart, SPREADING HIS LEGS FOR EVERYONE IN CONGRESS

that this was probably prompted by people expression dissaproval for Alexander Hamilton cheating on his wife - that the OP thinks “slut shaming” and “Isnt it gross that he cheated on his wife” are the same thing

Alexander Hamilton has been dead for 210

210 slutty, slutty years

the way that this is presented in such a CHECKMATE SJWS way when they’re talking about a founding father who cheated on his wife and has been DEAD FOR 210 YEARS

the fact that the words “Slutshaming” and “Alexander Hamilton” have been used in the same sentence

i mean just apply what we’d traditionally think of as “slut shaming” to Alexander Hamilton.

His frock coat is too tight, his breaches are so short, have you SEEN how often he powders his wig??? I heard he gave Thomas Jefferson a handy behind the stables AND that he got fingered by John Hancock

A spread for figuring out the positive, negative and harmful aspects of your inner most self, plus some advice on how to overcome. Feel free to use this spread for non- commercial purposes, I would love to know how helpful it was!