I think more people need to learn the phrase “I don’t know enough about that to have a strong opinion” its literally a cheat code for awkward conversations
its ok if you actually do know a lot about the thing and/or have strong opinions about it btw. you can just lie
I just had a discussion with my friend about fanfiction and how we tend to assume that women are the writers without any actual proof. Then I said, hey, I know fanfiction written by gay and trans dudes. But then I remembered, wait, I think I know one writer who just must be cis het based on his work. Anyway, all writers, be honest, who are you?
Please reblog if you’re interested in the results.
If you have ever written any fanfiction, tell me your identity, pls
Finding out that Elon Musk was forced out as CEO of PayPal in favor of noted vampire Peter Thiel bc Elon Musk was adamant they keep it named “X dot com” instead of Paypal unlocks so much. His space company, his literal child, and now Twitter: it’s the world’s most inane Rosebud. He actually bought back the URL, like a cherished childhood sled (owning the right to name a website the letter “X”)
Some people told him it made more sense to have their banking company have a indicative name instead of generically being called “X” with vague allusions to being The Site For Everything, and he’ll prove those fools WRONG by getting the same things yelled at him over a different website’s name twenty years later
For twenty two years he’s been stewing about people telling him PayPal was a better name for a payment site than X. He was so invested in X dot com at the time they waited to hold the vote until he was on vacation. He has been furious over people saying “it’s better for our site to have a name that tells you what it is instead of a letter” since before 9/11. This is his entire life
ALT
Pictured above: the only moment Elon Musk has ever been happy, before it turned to all-consuming rage and envy over a single letter
Is… is THAT why he called his space company SpaceX???
fr tho, I’m convinced at this point that he got divorced just so he could have another X.
Instead of “live laugh love” or “home is where the heart is” my (wonderful, progressive, very accepting) dad put up the racism sign in the foyer
whats the racism sign?
The racism sign, as I like to call it, is from an art piece I made halfway through my first semester of art school:
It reads “any attempted theft will be reported to the police” in the 15 most commonly spoken languages by immigrants here other than English or other western european languages (in descending order).
This sign was only half of the art piece, the other half was the most stereotypically Icelandic painting I could think of:
When the piece was shown the painting and the sign were hung on opposite sides of the room, making the sign more of an afterthought for those who don’t speak any of the languages written on the sign. Standing out just enough for them to notice it and maybe wonder what it said, but ultimately not giving it a second thought for the most part.
I wanted to highlight one of the most common ways racism and xenophobia present themselves here as well as the comfort of ignorance. The sign doesn’t cater to you, you ignore it it, and you don’t care what it might say. You don’t have to think about it because it doesn’t affect you.
For those who can read the sign though, or bother to translate it, this is just yet another reminder of people’s ignorance and double standards. My inspiration for this piece came from my old workplace, where they had this sign hanging on one of the doors:
The main things that stood out about this to me were that
It was the only sign on the premises written in anything other than Icelandic and/or English
All of the additional languages (Vietnamese, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian) specifically targeted minority groups that already face discrimination here
The location of the sign. We only had 1 of these, and they chose to put it up somewhere where only staff would see it rather than the customers. In fact, it was right next to the break room so you had to walk past it every time you went on break. And it was a sign reminding people not to steal. Big win for inclusivity here
People love saying that we’re not racist/xenophobic here even though we very much are. The problem is just that so many people don’t take the time to look when it doesn’t directly affect them. I was very happy with my piece because people actually came up to me and asked what the sign said because they wanted to know, it started a conversation and made those previously unaware of this issue more aware. I wonder if these sorts of signs would be anywhere near as commonplace as they are if more people looked at them critically and asked “why is this the thing we bother translating?”
Anyway, all that aside I love my dad and I like the way this art piece turned out but also I am slightly worried about giving people the wrong idea when this is the first thing they see when they enter our home 💀
Well if you want my permission to show it then you have it :))
with great regret i must inform you that there is a typo in the Latvian translation, so it actually says “any attempted theft will be reported to poland”
I found out while working on this that it is extremely difficult to get 15 fully accurate translations into languages you don’t speak in the span of a week but this is killing me 💀
Under the new rules, homes that are not occupied for at least six months of the year are subject to a tax of one per cent of the property’s assessed value. The deadline to rent out empty dwellings was July 1.
Fazli said many of the people he has talked to are thinking of renting or selling their properties. He recently met with a woman who owns three empty properties in Vancouver — and says one of them is now listed for rent, another will be listed shortly and she is thinking of selling the third.
“This is a scenario of someone who is kind of in a panic now and needs to rent them out,” he said. […]
amazing
Why were they empty?
they’re meant to be investment properties, bought, left empty, and then sold a year or few later for huge profit as housing values continue to rise. it’s a massive part of the bc housing bubble, and why despite so much new construction it’s still so difficult to find rental housing
the fact that these landlords are panicking because they might have to actually use their housing properties as housing rather than finance capital is deeply funny
It should be more than a 1% tax rate though. I want it to be 100%. Torture them.
According to the most recent census data, Vancouver’s percentage of homes that aren’t occupied by usual residents dropped from 8.2 per cent in 2016 (25,502) to seven per cent last year (23,011). That marks the first decline in two decades, and Vancouver’s Empty Homes Tax (EHT) is being credited as a primary influence. Introduced in 2017, Vancouver’s one per cent tax on empty dwellings — properties unoccupied for six months of the year — was implemented to encourage real estate investors to transition their properties to long-term rentals rather than having them sit unused. Although industry experts are divided on how much vacancy taxes contribute to increased housing supply, a report by the City of Vancouver found the number of vacant homes dropped from approximately 2,200 to 1,600 between 2017 and 2020 after the tax was introduced. Meanwhile, Vancouver’s EHT generated $33.6 million in revenue in 2018, $23.3 million in 2019, $27.9 million in 2020, and $20.8 million as of December 2021, helping to fund affordable housing initiatives in the city. After staring out at one per cent, the tax was increased to 1.25 per cent in 2019 and more than doubled to three per cent last year.
So, fuck yeah it helps! Reduced empty homes, they’re raising the tax, AND using it to help fund affordable housing.
ALT
ALT
