I'm Raven Mcbain and randomness is a way of life! Iâm over 30. I'm a Canadian geek that loves to cook, perform, watch TV, read and create makeup designs! I will re-blog anything that amuses, enlightens, captivates or educates me.
Hey, Iâm sorry to have to ask this question but does anyone know if a GoFundMe or something like that can be made by someone who lives in a rural area so only has a post office box. My father and I are in real financial trouble because our car needs a new engine and we do not have the money for that. Dad had to stop working a few years back and I work on a part time grocery clerk salary. If anyone has some real advice I would be all ears. I just donât know what to do and I feel awful even making this post when things are so much worse for so many people but Iâm at the end of my rope. Iâm sick and anxious and just donât know what to do
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if hiphop weren't real its existence would sound like an exceptionally heavy-handed metaphor about racism from a really cringe didactic fantasy novel. yeah the racialized underclass in this society, the one that's constantly derided by the ethnic majority as stupid and anti-intellectual, they have a complex artistic tradition based around improvisational poetry which is sometimes enacted on a competitive basis for dispute resolution. you get judged based on the subtlety of your wordplay and the complexity of your internal rhyme schemes. the dominant group periodically gets mad about how this doesn't count as real art like their own objectively more simplistic music and poetry because sometimes it has swears in it
on another note i know iâve ranted about this before but im mad about it again
true crime has done irreparable fucking damage to middle class white women
every time i see some middle class white mom of two saying âgirlies! you need to get a visible tattoo because then a rando wonât try to snatch you in broad daylight in the middle of the walmart checkout to put you into sex trafficking!â i get pissed off because you are NOT the primary target of trafficking! poor children of colour in underdeveloped countries, indigenous women, sex workers, these are the people in danger!
true crime podcasts always talk about the rare instance a middle class white woman is taken and so these true crime girlies only ever hear about it happening to women like them and start thinking theyâre the main target, but if there were a true crime podcast for every poor non-white child who has been trafficked there wouldnât be enough data centres in the entire world to hold them all! the fact that white women are the focus of these things is because society only gives a shit about white women, and turns a blind eye when women of colour are the ones being victimized!
iâm not saying that middle class white women are completely safe in society, far from it. but the fact that these podcasts prioritize stories of white women is because of white supremacy, and comes with the underlying sentiment of âthese stories matter because they happened to the group of people itâs not supposed to happen toâ, and the way white women are eating it up and making themselves the centre of the issue is a huge fucking problem
my stance on the trans athlete debate is always and forever going to be that sports should be completely desegregated because humans have one of the smallest levels of sexual dimorphism in the animal kingdom and the disparity we see between male and female performance is entirely caused by social factors rather than anything biological. âshould trans women compete against cis womenâ i think cis men and cis women could compete fairly but thatâs apparently a little too spicy for people to wrap their minds around bc theyâve been told their whole lives women are biologically inferior & never thought to question that. or wonder if itâs maybe a self fulfilling prophecy of some kind. are women biologically inferior or do they appear so because patriarchy demands that of us?
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They should just bite the bullet and make a female James Bond. Hot, athletic, suave. She wears tuxedos with a somewhat feminine cut, drinks vodka martinis, drives sports cars, and goes by "James", because why not.
Also, because this is incredibly important to Bond for some reason, she needs to be an incredibly predatory, womanizing lesbian. Some perfectly happy married straight woman needs to become gay by the end of the movie.
We live in the future, and we can admit that all of the cool things that a Male James Bond can do are things a Female James Bond can do. But at all costs, we need to avoid making this thing feel "woke" of self-aware. If Female Bond is not exactly as toxic and awesome as any of the male ones, we will have failed, and might as well be making another franchise.
"But what if people will pretend to need this accessibility option so they can be lazy! People who don't need it will use it!!" I don't actually care
I dont care if 9/10 of the people who use the wheelchair ramp arent actually in wheelchairs. As long as the 1 person who needs it has access to it.
I dont care if 9/10 people who use the automatic push button on the library door can actually push the door open themselves. As long as the 1 person who the door is too heavy for gets to use it.
I dont care if 9/10 people who buy the can tab opener, or the little guitar clamp that holds the chords for you, or the hand grip that helps you hold chop sticks, don't need any of it and just get it to "be lazy". As long as the one disabled person who needs it gets access to it.
I do not care. Oh my GOD I do not care. As long as there's a disabled person on this planet who the accessibility device will benefit, the accessibility device is necessary.
Also, if you're so worried about people being "lazy" by using accessibility devices, MORE worried than you are about disabled (visibly or not) people not having access to them, you have unchecked ableism you need to work through.
Brother Mort liked the peace and solitude of tending his herb garden but even so a visit from Sister dot with her latest tranche of dirty jokes was rarely unappreciated
sorry gotta get my âfriend thatâs too wokeâ on but I donât think the solution to misogyny is more misogyny. like by all means rip into republican/right wing women but your critiques should be about how theyâre evil soulless people not âhaha theyâre ugly/visibly aged. they donât know how to put on make up!â like i donât fucking know man I donât think any woman at all should be required to wear makeup or be made fun of for not wearing it âproperlyâ also letâs stop doing the ânot conventionally attractive = morally badâ thing. that last part especially be kicking yâall asses.
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Assigned Sex didnât just pop up one day as a podcast concept. It started as a film I made fresh out of film school, got some awards, scared the hell out of me, and then sat in a metaphorical vault because my perfectionism was too loud. This episode is me unburying that project, talking about what I got right, what I got wrong, and why documentindfg Black trans and genderqueer life canât just be trauma porn for other peopleâs curiosity đđž
https://assignedsex.substack.com/p/assigned-sex-was-never-just-a-film
We all like to joke about July being "Gay Wrath Month" but it's actually Disability Pride Month, so have the Disability Pride Flag from VGAPride and my AST Premmia LX MS-DOS machine
MRI machines and cooling units and AC and IT systems in hospitals are breaking due to the heat. Lab equipment is failing. Some cancer treatments cannot be done due to machine failures. A&E overcrowding is worse due to heat related health issues and sheer amount of people is making the heat in hospitals worse (and the AC! Is breaking!) Patients with appointments are being advised to bring in "a lot" of water with them to be able to safely attend. Fans cannot be used in hospitals. Norwich has no functuoning MRI scanners right now. And the staff have to keep working through all of this, they are getting ill and sleep deprived which is compounding issues further. This is not normal đ
Hereâs a community reminder that the New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, and is generally considered to be an arm of the far rightâs propaganda machine.
They just do a slightly better job of pretending theyâre centrist or liberal than Fox News, because their goal is not to sway conservatives, but to sway everyone to the left of the far right.
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I love lying to my landlord. âWeâre 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 hereâ 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, Iâm gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that Iâm not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlordâIâm 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 Iâve ever signed. (Also, Iâve 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 theyâre corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their assetâthe propertyâis a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time itâs 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.Â
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 goalâand 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 moneyâtheyâre 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, itâs actually in their best interest to give you a better price.Â
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 âAVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAYâ sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says âFirst month freeâ? 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 âcall for availabilityâ? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.Â
You have the least leverage if youâre 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 arenât even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if youâve already signed a lease and youâre in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so youâre stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if youâre a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and youâre 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, theyâre also probably going to have to put in some work to âturnâ 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, itâs still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. Theyâre probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know itâll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if youâre a prospective new tenantâif they canât get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, thatâs $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and theyâll never get it back. Itâs a perishable item about to spoil.Â
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number theyâll quote you for the rentâthe sticker price that youâve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, theyâve built some buffer into that number. Thereâs 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 donât!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Donât reply to their initial offer right awayâunless thereâs 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 arenât 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 weâre 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 itâs time to send out renewal offers didnât 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 couldâve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!Â
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)Â
Hereâs the tricky part. You need to write an emailâalways negotiate over email if you can, itâs too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isnât in writing means nothingâwhich 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, youâd delete those other hoesâ numbers forever! Hereâs the rough script I use every time:
â 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 shouldâve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number thatâs higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; youâve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and theyâre 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 firmâin which case, guess what? You still didnât lose anything by asking!
