#queue is full back to regular programming.

Did i have a friend text me "we really shouldnt be friends anymore"? yeah, sure did, check it off the bucket list.

did i move a friend out of her bfs (into my own home mind you) just for her to move back in with him the next day? certainly! still get those brownie points i bet.

have I looked at my finances with gritted teeth and rejoice after cancelling my HSA? oh fuck yeah buddy.

Hi ghesties! Slowly getting back into our regularly scheduled program. 😎 I was already preparing to reopen my Ko-Fi, buuut... After an injury that requires urgent dental care, I will be offering UNLIMITED SL0TS until my calendar is full for the months of July and August!

The thought crossed my mind yesterday, because antis like to call them work shy. I know they don't have Charles or Anne's numbers, but both are working steady now, even more William.

I don't track the work numbers with any kind of regularity, but I pulled some data from the Court Circular on royal.uk and:

William: 63 days for 125 engagements/appearances

Kate: 29 days for 53 engagements/appearances

But there are a few things not right with the Court Circular:

It hasn't been updated since June 30 and we know they've both had public appearances in early July, like William's attendance at the Order of Thistle service and Kate's day out at Wimbledon.

There are events missing for both of them; for instance, their Royal Ascot attendance isn't recorded and Kate attended a reception at Buckingham Palace for cancer survivors that isn't recorded for her.

The Court Circular doesn't count personal appearances like Peter's wedding. (And I do wonder if perhaps Royal Ascot is considered a personal event vs an official event.)

So if we add the appearances not logged in the Court Circular, then:

William: 69 days for 131 appearances. His missing events are Ascot, the podcast, the Order of Thistle service, Peter's wedding, meeting Kate at the conclusion of her 3 Peaks challenge, and today's London Welsh School visit. I'm sure there's one or two Aston Villa matches he attended that didn't get logged, but for simplicity's sake, let's ignore those for now.

Kate: 34 days for 61 appearances. Her missing events are Ascot, yesterday's hospital visit, Wimbledon, the June 2 cancer reception, Peter's wedding, and the RAF visit with George. (Two programming notes here: a) Kate had her own event on June 2nd so the cancer reception does not count as a separate day but it does count as a second event. b) considering how the Court Circular does their reports, I'm fairly certain that her Wimbledon visit will be recorded as three separate engagements since she had 3 separate "stops" - the queue, the ticket desk, and the match, so her Wimbledon outing adds 1 day and 3 appearances.)

The fourth "not right" thing about the Court Circular is that the CC doesn't count messages or statements of support posted exclusively to KP social media, like when William congratulated England for their match against Mexico or when Kate posts a letter supporting Children's Hospice Week. I've excluded them from my count here (mainly because I'm too lazy to go through KP social media right now but also because I feel like a lot of those statements are posted as stories and there's no way to track them once they expire).

So comparing 131 and 61 to recent annual data, they're both actually a little ahead at the halfway point of where they were last year:

If in the second half of the year they keep to their same pace, we could very well see William with ~250 appearances/engagements and Kate with ~115 appearances/engagements, giving them their best year since before COVID.*

*2019, 2023, 2024, and 2025 are from Gert's Royals. 2020 - 2022 I had to source from the internet; one of those years is from the DM but I forgot to note which one...maybe 2020, and 2022 is from a UK data site. I'm not sure how accurate the 2020 - 2022 years are or what their tracking procedures are. For instance, William doing 223 in 2021 seems really high and Kate doing 90 in 2022 seems really low.

But would William and Kate actually deliver those numbers this year? I don't know. I'm a little skeptical. I think a more conservative estimate is to increase their count by 30%, which puts them right on the money with last year, with William at ~170 and Kate at ~80.

Now this is just my calculations based on what I pulled down from the Court Circular's website. Other people track differently and use different tools, and they do it much more regularly. For instance, kingwilliamiv tracks William's appearances and they have him at 140 engagements as of June 30th. (I know there's someone here who tracks Kate's appearances but I am totally blanking on who it is right now. I want to say it's world-of-wales or wales-reign but I am seriously blanking.) FWIW, I definitely trust kingwilliamiv's tracking, so if they say William is at 140 as of June 30, then William is at 140 as of June 30 so if he keeps apace, he could be within spitting distance of 300 come December 31.

Another site that tracks the engagements is Gert's Royals - many royal-watchers consider them an authority so they wouldn't lead you wrong either but do know they specifically state that how they track engagements is different than others and often comes in lower.

Going back to your question, "can we say Kate is back full-time?", I'm actually torn . If you look at it truly from a numbers perspective, then yes, it does appear that Kate is back full-time only if you consider what full-time means for her based on past years, which is ~110 (vs comparing Anne's version of full-time or Camilla's version of full-time).

However, if you look at it from the perspective of "well, what are the events and engagements she's doing," I'd say no, Kate is not back full-time. The majority of her engagements are actually private audiences and meetings at Windsor Castle for the Royal Foundation and the Center for Early Childhood, versus going out to charities and making site visits. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, I just think from the royal-watching perspective, that's not the kind of work we think of when we think of a royal "working."

Pairing: Kozume Kenma x Reader (gn)

Genre: fluff!

⚠️WARNING⚠️ possible manga spoilers (future careers)!

WC: 1.2k  

“—has more DPS but really weak defense so I think we’ll be okay.” 

It takes every ounce of your self-control not to giggle out loud and blow your cover when you enter the apartment and hear your boyfriend’s soft tone from the back room as he speaks to the fans diligently watching his live stream. 

You tiptoe across the carpet, keeping a steady grip on the white box balanced in your hands as you navigate through the dark apartment, following the light source coming through the crack in the door. You hear the incessant keyboard clicks getting louder the closer you get to his office. The crack of the door is just large enough to see your boyfriend’s pale hands dancing swiftly across the keys and a portion of one of his monitors. You vaguely recognize the game as Overwatch, one of the games he has been playing more often lately. He had mentioned something about a Halloween loot box and new D.Va skin but you were hardly paying attention, to be honest. You just like hearing his calming voice sometimes, oblivious to that actual video game terminology he’s speaking about. 

“Alright, one more match and I’ll switch to something else. It's getting late and the queue times are getting ridiculous.”

You stifle a chuckle just imagining the responses his fans must be giving him in the chatroom. From your experience occasionally watching Kodzuken’s streams yourself, you know there is likely a string of people begging him for ‘just one more game’ or ‘please play this one next!’

Kenma is well loved by his large fanbase and his own dedication to them is clear.

I am going to visit my family and friends back where I’m from for Christmas. I am leaving this morning, arriving sometime in the afternoon, and then staying for only four full days after that. I will keep you all posted if anything happens.

As such, I have the queue going and I’ll pop in whenever I can, but “regular programming”, as it were, is on hold until the 28th, when I return home.

The anti-capitalist Tumblr morans have no idea how badly the lives of Egyptians and eventually themselves would be affected if the Suez Canal, one of the busiest waterways in the world, was shut down.  The canal is a major source for Egypt’s economy, earning it at least $5.5 billion in revenues.  And even the few nations that have very little to do with the Suez route will be affected.  Many manufacturers in Europe relying on component products in containers on either the Evergiven or ships stuck waiting in the queues. The same can be assumed to be true in Asia and elsewhere.

It has been suggested that about 1/10th of global trade passes through the canal every year.  My wild assumption is the Suez is closed for a full year the cost will be around 3% of Global GDP.  And if Global GDP is now at about 80 trillion, then then the cost is about 2.5 rillion globally.  Paradoxically the most effective and economical way to conduct global trade is to rely on giant containers ships, or Triple Es such as the Evergiven.  The oil industry was probably the only industry that benefited from the Suez Canal crisis.

Socialists are human garbage.  Hilariously, many socialists here praise the capitalist countries of western Europe that have lots of social programs.   Then they advocate socialism, wrongly using these predominantly capitalist countries as their model.   These numbskulls brag that they are “full on communist,” and they have no idea what they are talking about because they don't know history.   Real socialism is worker ownership of the means of production. If you can find any countries today that have something this stupid, you get one free internet cookie. There is ZERO communist country that has done well, which is why the USSR and China abandoned it and created all kinds of capitalist reforms, to save themselves from starvation.   The fundamental tenet of socialism is proletariat control of the means of production, which pretty much no country in the world has because this is an ass-backward ideology that’s not grounded in economic reality and it only ever leads to starvation and poverty.

Failing infrastructure is the first indicator of a failing socialist country because who wants to take care of stuff that doesn’t belong to anybody? Who wants to be careful and efficient if they aren’t going to get more pay for doing more and they won’t get paid less for screwing up? That’s why socialization of the means of production and distribution is a disaster in most cases.   Socialistic policies didn’t allow for the upkeep of the infrastructure in Venezuela, the ability to even move their oil has been rendered useless. Pumps, piping, and storage are completely furbared. The overall price drop and lower demand on top of having to build the system from scratch.  

Capitalist world allows you to leave whenever you like it, but  in the Socailist world, they want to control you, so they refuse you to leave.  When the USSR went back to capitalism, emigration out of Russia drastically went down.

Whenever a young socialist claim that they will get socialism right “this time”: (translation) it may be hell on earth, but l will be in power!

Have you seen this meme?

Numbskulls think that under socialism they will still have the same selections and privileges that they have under capitalism.   In the early 1990’s, during Gorbachev’s rule, there were Soviet Ministers who were in the US and they were brought to a regular supermarket and they were astounded by the variety of food.  And, supposedly, some even wept because they realized that everything that they had been told about the United States was a lie.

Thanks for the tag @corkytheguar :D

1. Why did you choose your url?

My main is DruidX, which has been my handle on nearly every single platform ever since.... well, since the World Wide Web became a feasible thing to have in one’s home ^.^; Because this is the blog to which all other random interesting things are thrown, I thought I’d keep in theme with “Dru reblogs stuff”, for I am Dru... and I am reblogging stuff XD

2. Any sideblogs? If you have them name them and why you have them?

Technically @/dru-reblogs-stuff is a sideblog already. It gets more personal stuff, and also everything I like that’s interesting to me. I keep thinking I should narrow it down further though, and make seperate fashion & star wars blogs, because I rb that stuff on the regular...

@/druidx is my main, and is my Writeblr blog, for, well, all my writing, other people’s writing, and writing related advice/ resources.

@/dru-plays-starbound is the blog I used to rb Starbound stuff, and also post my starbound builds to. I haven’t updated it in a while, thought there’s lots of stuff still to post... I just haven’t had the inclination to fight with a graphics program and screenshots.

@/nine-blessed-hero breaks my naming scheme sadly, but this is now my dedicated Elder Scrolls blog, for art and fanfic. It’s also not as well kept as I would like it to be (I’ve got 600 items in draft to read though and comment on, so it’s slow going).

Finally there is the essentially abandoned @/things-my-rm-says-to-her-lego. This started as an out-of-context quote blog for things my roommate muttered while sorting/ building the old Lego her parents dropped off ~October 2020. I have no idea what to do with it now said roommate is no longer saying strange things to her Lego...

3. How long have you’ve been on tumblr?

I’ve just passed my one year anniversary, 18 May -- or at least, the anniversary of my first post which I’m sure was made only a week or so after I joined. Basically I joined up not long after the Lockdown was made official in the UK.

4. Do you have a queue tag?

Yes! It’s just “q”, because I am both lazy and basic.

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

As mentioned above, I joined not long after the Lockdown was made official in the UK. Because I had more time, I was looking back at old works and wanting both to share them and to get advice on how to get better. I’d heard somewhere that Tumblr was to writing as DeviantArt is to art, so I figured I may as well join and see what I could get out of the experience. Again, because I suddenly had more time, I bought TESIV: Oblivion on Steam and started to get into TESblr as well as Writeblr (which incidentally, is how I met the wonderful Corky ^.^). 

6. Why did you choose your icon?

I wanted something that reflected my interests (boy do I love Tea :D), but also wasn’t fussy, so I found a site filled with free SVG icons and picked this one out. I’ve had a lot of complements on it, so clearly it was a good choice ^.^ I’ve tried to keep the theme of teapots over all my blogs.

7. Why did you choose your header?

I don’t think any of my blogs have a header because I just couldn’t find anything I liked?

8. What’s your post with the most notes?

Across them all, it’s a “Last Line Tag” game one, posted Sep 22 2020 with 328 notes.

9. How many mutuals do you have?

28, across the board.

10. How many followers do you have?

I feel that’s somewhat defeating the point of not having them public. Let’s just say I have enough.

11. How many people do you follow?

181; just enough to keep things interesting, but not enough to be overwhelmed.

12. Have you ever made a shitpost?

No; the most I’ve done would have been an incorrect quote.

13. How often do you use tumblr each day?

I’m currently working from home, so it’s a permanent fixture on one of my background virtual desktops, ready to be flipped over to when work is dull or when I’m procrastinating writing.

14. Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?

I think someone tried to insinuate I’d offended them once, but they hid in the tags and I could never work out if it was my tags they were arguing against, or the post in general (it was a rb). But generally no; I’m Internet Old and just done with the Drama so I don’t engage.

15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

They can jog on. If I think it’s important, then I will chose to rb it, but telling me I’m a horrible person if I don’t? That’s a surefire way to ensure I dislike you and your cause, and will ignore you out of spite.

16. Do you like tag games?

<Points to this post> I fuckin’ love tag game, my dude. I’m bad at doing them sometimes, but I honestly adore when people are thinking about enough to say “You know who’d want to do this? Dru!”.

17. Do you like ask games?

Slightly less so, because again, I’m bad at keeping up with these things, and a full askbox hangs over my head like the sword of Damocles. But that you chose to poke me with a question about me or my writing that you’re curious about, well; it does warm my heart.

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

im-a-seraph-winging-it, rewrit, adelinewriting (though she’s no longer on Tumblr) maybe? idk ^.^; I guess not knowing is one of the nicer things about Tumblr; it makes everything a little more personal.

19. Do I have a crush on a mutual?

Yes. I’m not saying who (it’s sort of embarrassing to be the age I am and have a crush), but they have a unique and exquisite writing style, and I care for it very much.

20. Tags?

Masked Omens: Week Six

[Image Description: Image 1 - A simple rendition of the Masked Singer UK logo, a golden mask with colourful fragments flying off of it. The mask has a golden halo and a golden devil tail protruding from either side. Below, gold text reads ‘Masked Omens’.

Image 2 - A page from the Entertainment section of the Capital Herald, dated Saturday, 30th January 2021. Full image description and transcript below cut. End ID.]

Read the fic here!