DO YOU WANT COOL ART? WANNA HELP A TRANS PERSON OUT THIS PRIDE MONTH? I HAVE THE DEAL FOR YOU!!!
my best friend @flyagarictroop is opening 🌟 EMERGENCY COMMISSIONS 🌟 !!!!! theyre super cheap and its a really great artist!!
if youre interested, its kofi is here, or you can reach out to it on discord @/flyagarictroop! 1/5 slots currently taken. if youre not interested, a reblog really helps find people who are! i know we're all having a rough time right now.
if it helps, its situation is under the cut:
alright so. long story short: fly is a trans young adult living in a super transphobic and religious household. it recently reached a breaking point that i wont go further into. after this point was reached, it was able to find a youth home to move into, but in order to move out of its shitty house it needs income and savings. all of the money you give it for art will be going toward this.
again: i KNOW we're all having a rough time. but please. i want to see my best friend thrive. it has so much to bring to the world and i really do fear every day he has to stay in that house.
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So many anti-science (and particularly, anti-vax) people apply their diet and orthorexia culture to medicine. That is one of the things you will hear over and over again. “I actually read the ingredients of this vaccine and it has [SUBSTANCE] in it so I will not let my child get vaccinated.” which is exactly how these people grocery shop, I’m sure. No understanding of chemistry, no research into why that ingredient is in there, what it is doing to help make the vaccine safe and effective and what amount would make it toxic to the human body. They will be like “Oh my god, there is hydrochloric acid in there! I’m not going to research into why it is in there (in small amounts as a PH stabilizer), it’s hydrochloric acid (the human body creates it naturally) and they’re trying to inject this into our children!”
i would almost love to meet one of these people and say ah yes i love drinking Dihydrogen Monoxide with heavy amounts of Citric Acid, Glucose and Limonene (this is a very terrible lemonaid) these ingredients are water, the sour of a lemon, sugar, and lemon flavoring
or just asking if they know the chemicals in a lemon.
Unironically, I saw someone say to avoid citric acid in food products (it’s a common preservative and acidifier, very safe in moderation, occurs naturally in fruits and vegetables) because it is made of black mold. Which is partially correct, Aspergillus niger produces high amounts of citric acid when fed properly BUT the mold is completely filtered out of the final refined product. SO MANY FOOD PRODUCTS ARE MADE WITH MOLD, this one doesn’t have actual mold in it, you are fearmongering about the evils of mold while it lives all around us all the time!
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i think a lot of people would be massively benefited psychologically if they got into non-kink age regression. just try out being a little kid for a while! no you don't have to make it hot, seriously, just try out being a little kid. grab a stuffed animal and hold it a little too tight and too earnestly. let your guard down a little bit. allow that small, deep-inside part of yourself to come out and speak a little. try to feel the emotions that come out. it genuinely might be a lifechanging experience for you. let yourself feel small and vulnerable and yet still safe. you don't have to hide her inside of her fortress prison. she can come out and play if she wants to.
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!!!
This is great - but I have a big question. HOW do you figure out WHO TO EMAIL for Step 4?
I tried negotiating a lease once before, not even on the price but on some minor clause that was unreasonable and probably illegal to enforce anyway. But the property was owned by one of these landlord corporations, you know the type.
So I was sitting there with the representative (Property manager? Sales associate? who knows) and said, "This clause [abc] here seems unreasonable, can we change it to [xyz]?" and she looked at me with the most blank, baffled expression and said, "Change... it? You can't change it..."
It became evident quickly that she wasn't stonewalling me; rather she didn't seem to be familiar with the concept of negotiating a lease. To her, if it's printed on letterhead it's written in stone, and SHE certainly didn't seem to have the authority to sign off any changes to the contract—nor did she have any idea who would.
So back to the original question: How do we figure out the right person to contact for Step 4, especially when dealing with a big corporate landlord?
Modifying the actual language or clauses of the standard lease is kinda beyond the scope of this tutorial (it would involve them contacting their lawyers.) But as for negotiating lower rent, if the person you’re talking to about leasing the place (whether in person or by email—again, ideally you always wanna be doing this by email) just straight up doesn’t understand what you’re talking about, you ask for their manager. If they are the manager, you take your leverage and walk away from the table—either they will very quickly demonstrate that they actually do understand how negotiating works by chasing you down the proverbial block to give you a lower price, or you’ll dodge the bullet of having to live somewhere run by dunces who will no doubt be just as (un)helpful about fixing your plumbing when it breaks.
Secondary question! This advice is really good, but what about when you have already been living in the apartment and your renewal comes up? I've sadly JUST signed mine so I wont be able to try and negotiate until next year, but its always good to get an idea of what and how I would be negotiating ahead of time.
Calculate your leverage as written in step 1, their initial offer is whatever they quote you for renewal rent, follow steps 3-6 with the slight language modification of “I would really like to stay, but I have also been touring other options in the area,” “I would sign a renewal lease today if,” etc. I intentionally wrote the instructions above to be just as applicable for renewals as they are for move-in leases
Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.
Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.
Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.
I'll say it again:
Rumination is a compulsion.
Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.
I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.
And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.
Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.
Like this was genuinely life changing for me.
Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:
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My mother used to make computer cores as a "work from home" side business. As a child I got spending money via un-winding the ones that failed testing so that the magnetic center could be re-used. I got between $0.05 and $0.25 per core depending. Mom got more for the finished ones, of course, though I don't know how much. Her sister was an expert, and did the more complicated kind, some of which ended up in satellites and/or were used by NASA!
They were all done by hand using a kind of treadle-operated frame with a little (crochet!) hook to pull the wires around the cores. The people making them were mostly housewives who did this as a side-job in the 80s and 90s. I don't know if it's still done that way anywhere in the USA today, but the history of computing and space exploration is littered with "women's work" like this.
Felinejoyical / Felinewhimsous is a gender in the genderjoyical/genderwhimsous system related to felines and being full of joy and whimsy! It could be related to felines being full of joy and whimsy, being a feline full of joy and whimsy, experiencing joy and whimsy due to felines, and anything else the user deems fit!
I want people to understand how jarring this was. Most car horns are either a single tone or two tones somewhere in the neighborhood of a minor third apart:
Pixel post dividers for everyone! It's not much, but feel free to use them if you'd like.
I don't know the ideal size for these, so let me know if they're too tall. I can make them a bit shorter next time.
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It's actually a bit surprising to me that we haven't seen contemporary meta brainfuck indie games do more than they have with 1990s point and click adventure games' penchant for developer-intended softlocks. That feels like something you could very easily spin as Saying Something.
Honestly, having grown up with this bullshit is probably a big part of the reason I'm fascinated with player-hostile game design. Giving a puzzle three different solutions with fully voiced and animated reactions to each, except two of those solutions render the game unwinnable in ways that won't become apparent until hours later is a level of "fuck you" that most modern games with pretensions of player-hostility can only dream of!
I'm usually loathe to suggest TV Tropes as a resource, but given that only a person who's entirely unacquainted with the genre would be asking that question, a primer is probably warranted. Check out the Unwinnable By Design article and read the preamble for context on the types of softlocks we're discussing, then hit either the "Sierra" or "Infocom" links (yes, those two publishers each have their own dedicated sections!), pop open the "Cruel" tab, and get ready to read some stuff that makes you mad.
