Posts made by Ganymede

@surreality

I could admire cute pussies all day.

I mean kitties, of course.

Do not actually post pictures of —

— fuck.

@RightMeow

I think the theater industry will survive. Hotels survived the AirBnB craze.

Theaters are still an experience. Drive-ins are still around. People will pay for that experience. Around my city, many theaters have been renovated to have these big ass comfy seats, yet the ticket prices are about the same. In some places you can order beer and wine too.

Good industries adapt. Few actually go extinct.

@Lisse24 said in Good TV:

In this week of quarantine viewing, I, too, went down the Letterkenny rabbit hole. It was everything you all promised me it would be.

@mietze said in Post-Covid 19 world:

But I actually do not think this is bad enough to force something like what had to be done post-Depression. People are not desperate enough.

They will be.

Few people are talking about the economic outlook after the pandemic is over, and for cause: no one really knows for sure because international economics look a lot different now than it did back when the Spanish flu, Asian flu, and Hong Kong flu hit.

I haven't crunched numbers yet, but I have the time to do it now, I suppose.

Upon request and reflection, I have elected to move the discussion related to the underpinnings of land ownership to the Politics Section.

I would welcome continued discussions there.

Fuck.

So what do I need to play Animal Crossing? A Switch?

@bear_necessities said in Landlord Bitching:

That guy rents an apartment building and he probably has loans that are owed to the bank. When he defaults on those loans, the Bank will take the property and all of those people who unified to not pay rent will be out of a home.

Going back to my comment, this landlord likely fucked up somewhere because I cannot imagine, out of 32 tenants, that not one of them thought about the possibility of eviction and debt in the future, which means that collectively they are trying to send a message to this guy.

Speaking of pieces of shit:

This guy is a landlord in my area. I'm part of an investors' group and every single one of them think that this guy is an asshole.

He claims he was hacked.

@WildBaboons

I was thinking about putting it there, but this really isn't political.

This be bitching about landlords, something which I understand.

@GreenFlashlight

I can appreciate a spot of idealism, but I draw the line with unsupported suppositions. I am willing to go out on a limb and say that you, like the vast majority of people here, have no idea of what it is like to live in a non-capitalist country. We should talk a little about places like China.

I oppose the idea that anyone's income must go to someone who provides me something you will die without, something literally forming the foundation of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Below security needs are physiological needs. Among physiological needs is the need to eat. I presume you do not oppose the idea that someone's income must go to farmers; however, if you do, I would be interested in learning what you think this outbreak of COVID-19 is going to do for the Nebraska corn harvest.

Every person who dies homeless was murdered by the people who put profit over the sanctity of human life.

Joe Murphy is probably going to die homeless, but it isn't because people have not tried to give him free housing. That said, I know several people without homes at the moment, and while I might want to open my house to them my partner would likely object because she doesn't know them and may be concerned for our kids' safety.

I do not believe landlords actually provide a good or service in return for the rent they are paid, because the costs of business are funded one hundred percent by the rent tenants pay, which means the only thing a landlord does to earn a check is come unclog your sink as part of you paying I'm guessing a thousand bucks a month, or maybe picks up a phone to call someone else to fix your problem and act as a middleman who for some reason deserves half your income in perpetuity.

I have a client who was physically and emotionally abused by an affluent ex-husband. She ended up getting a million dollars in her divorce decree, and used half of that to build up her real estate "empire," which consists of a couple of dozen single-family houses. She rents these to veterans, folks with disabilities, minorities, and others. After paying expenses related to maintaining the properties, she makes around $50,000 a year, which she lives on along with her pension as a former school bus driver.

She knows each and every one of her tenants on a first name basis. She does most of the repairs herself. For some of the disabled tenants, she helps them get groceries now and again. Over the years I have handled her evictions, and some of the shit she puts up with is this side of saintly.

But she's a landlord, right? So she has to be a piece of shit, if you are to be believed.

There is literally nothing in the world stopping us from giving every living human the relative comfort and dignity of a home except for the murderous greed that tells us our landlords should have the power of life and death over us unless we tithe to their coffers.

Actually, there is something that stops the people from doing this in the United States: the U.S. Constitution. Incorporated into that document is the Bill of Rights, which guarantees certain fundamental rights against encroachment by the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment extends those rights to the states, if those states did not already incorporate similar rights into their state constitution. Ultimately, the people through their government cannot simply take someone else's property and give it to another; not without just compensation, at least.

In order to pay that compensation, a government needs money. Presumably, it gets that money through taxes; however, the federal government could feasibly just print more and more until it has enough to buy up every parcel of vacant land and every empty residence in the country. One would simply have to convince the Federal Reserve and the other members of Congress of the wisdom of the solution.

You ask what the alternative is to letting millions of people die of exposure every year, and my mouth drops open a little bit because I can't for my life imagine why you think that is an unavoidable outcome rather than one cultivated by greedy fuckwits who think that owning land is more important than human life.

My mouth drops a little because of your presumption that millions of people die of exposure every year because of landlords in the United States. It isn't because of systemic racism, sexism, or genderism; it isn't because of familial or collective hatred for the mentally ill or non-dangerous deviance; and it isn't because of political cowardice, misguided priorities in governance, or simply societal indifference to the plight of others.

No, people are dying because of landlords, folks.

That said, everything in me says that this landlord done fucked up somewhere. Getting 32 tenants to agree to default on their leases knowing well what it may do to their credit and/or living arrangements suggests that the landlord is a piece of shit that needs to be strung up.

Bitch about landlords here, please.

@Aria said in COVID-19 Assistance Thread:

@insomniac7809 and I may or may not need some guidance in dealing with his employer. Anyone familiar with labor law in Pennsylvania or able to point us in the direction of resources?

Why don't you PM with some details? I may be able to help if it relates to federal law.

@Seamus

This all sounds like a cheap rip-off of Mage: The Ascension.

@Runescryer

Where is this game? I'm not seeing an advert for it.

@RDC

Oh, I can handle those. Sure. I'm in on that.

@RDC said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:

ON A FURTHER NOTE: We are looking to hire 1 or 2 staffers. Being a trans communist isn't necessarily a REQUIREMENT, but just saying.

What are you looking for from staff volunteers? Administrative support? Scene running?

@Macha

When employees are injured as a result of negligence in the workplace, they can make a claim for workers' compensation in jurisdictions with the same. As a result, employers are immune to a negligence claim arising from work conditions.

But if the employer intentionally subjects an employee to a dangerous work environment, an employee may file an intentional tort claim against the employer if they suffer injuries as a result of the known danger.

@Macha

Remind them that intentional torts are still available even where workers compensation exists.

I don't know where else to put my thoughts right now. Normally I share personal matters on my Facebook page, but my network includes a lot of family and I don't want to freak them out.

Ohio's Governor just said that the state expects the pandemic to peak around May 1.

So far, Ohio is 16th in the nation with 704 confirmed cases. This is good, given that Ohio is the 7th in the nation for population. We have been in lock-down mode for almost two weeks. It does not sound like a long time. So far, though, our firm has suffered a 50% decrease in billable hours. This is partly due to the court system pushing civil cases back. It is also likely due to our corporate clients pulling back the reins on moving forward with certain legal matters.

May 1.

Checked with our office manager today. At the moment, we can maybe swing the next payroll. That's after the 25% reduction to wages implemented across the board. We have obligations in the form of vendor contracts and company cars on leases that cannot be broken willy-nilly. And there appears to be no solution: we simply must get the courthouses open again so that business can continue if the firm hopes to survive.

May 1 will be the peak.

Nothing in the proposed bill in the Senate will help. I have examined our commercial general liability policy thoroughly, and I cannot find coverage for this particular business interruption. The state isn't offering anything at the moment. We are currently on a lease for our space and have no assets to leverage as collateral, and it is doubtful that the SBA loan we may qualify for will cover for another month of expenses.

May 1 will not be the end.

I try not to let the bleakness take over, but it is difficult. We may have to furlough everyone, presuming that the Senate bill is passed and signed, so that they can get unemployment. But that means our paralegals, who are billing what work they can, will no longer be generating income for the firm. It's the only solution we have at the moment.

Dayton is strong enough to weather this.

But there will be violence. Maybe not around where I live or in the streets of the city in which I work, but there will be violence. New York City or Chicago or Los Angeles will burn as the cuts dig deeper and deeper. The new bill will cover maybe one or two weeks of expenses -- that's it. Do the people in Washington D.C. understand what it costs to live in a major U.S. city these days? $1,200 is nothing, but it is enough to buy a gun and some ammunition.

There will be dark times ahead.

@mietze said in Bad TV:

Including the faction leader who clearly maxed out his social stats for his sheet, but can only RP coming across as a creepy mess.