Turniper
1d ago
Amazon. I currently post on Royal Road/Patreon/other forum sites, but Amazon and Audible are pretty much the only games in town for self publishing unless you go full indie and sell ebooks off your own website. There are other options, but they generally don't have a fraction of the reach.
Turniper
1d ago
Every 20% rise is more pressure than the last. I'm predicting a peak no later than another 40-50% climb. I've no idea when that will happen, or if it'll end in a level off or a crash, but at that price speculative pressure will begin to crowd out actual applications that use silver like solar panels. The price level might hold for a while, but fundamentals win out on a time scale of years.
Turniper
1d ago
My understanding is silver is spiking because of: 1) Solar demand is pretty price insensitive, it had a ton of room to run before they seriously considered swapping out silver for copper. 2) Mining quantity is pretty fixed, it's very often a byproduct of other mining operations. Mines take ages to start up, and even massive spikes just cannot materialize new supply in the short term. 3) Retail demand is narrative driven and price insensitive, has been waiting for a spike for years, and is inclined to continually double down.
My guess is that we'll see another 20-40% rise before the run stops, and then a 50-60% pullback, possibly even deeper when some panel operations shift to copper, across 3-4 years. I don't think it's a concrete sign of de-dollarization. Just a product of massive amounts of money chasing any gains it can find and there being little except AI demanding major investment at this moment.
At these prices, I think silver is a terrible store of value. It's going down eventually.
Turniper
1d ago
Yesterday I dragged my fiancee to the gym. She dragged me to half priced books and Venezuelan food after we showered. This is generally considered to be what humans call a 'date'.
If one of us wished to drag the other person to an event they were not interested in, like a boardgame night, or an Emily Autumn concert, we would simply not do that and live would go on. The whole process is a negotiation. We each engage with the other's interests because we are interested in the other person. Like in any negotiation, not being willing to allow the other parties to walk all over you does a great deal to prevent the other parties from walking all over you.
As a male who likes the occasional boardgame, I would agree that regularly getting dragged to board game nights is big beta male energy if you don't. My fiancee likes plenty of nerdy stuff, but she doesn't like those, so she generally hangs out with someone else and watches anime instead whenever I attend one.
Turniper
1d ago
After getting an offer, I elected to go the self pub route with my first story (A different story than I got the offer on actually, because I didn't feel confident finishing that series). I got what was apparently pretty decent numbers on my offer (I can look up the breakdown by medium if you want em), but even then the percentiles are kinda brutal. I think the highest was ebooks at 30 or 35 percent after platform fees. I know the sales and marketing efforts of publishing houses are supposed to be better than what most authors manage on their own, but I really did not feel comfortable signing away very fixed and definite rights and shares of profit in exchange for marketing efforts that were highly subjective and discretionary. Obviously the publisher is suppose to be aligned with your interests, because every sale benefits them even more than it does you, but I just don't love the model in this day and age where up-front printing costs have gone from 5-6 figures to basically zero. Even with audiobook production being included and a small advance (5k per book), it didn't feel worth it to me. So, I'll be self publishing my first novel in June. I wish you the best with your submissions though, it's a harsh game if you're not one of the big genres that they're currently pushing.
Turniper
2d ago
Darn Tough Socks. I have returned my used socks for replacements 4 times now. They just keep sending me more. As long as you don't lose it or have your house burn down, it's 10 bucks for a pair of socks for life.
Turniper
3d ago
Compared to silver, yes. Compared to the yen or euro, no. Compared to stocks, complicated. In the short term? Definitely no. In the long term? Maybe a tiny bit. In general? Mostly no.
If you have savings and need liquidity, there's still not really any other game in town. If you have savings and don't, stocks, real estate, precious metals, and crypto will all probably outperform it long term.
Turniper
3d ago
Thundamoo is probably the biggest RR author for what you're looking for, but there's definitely a fair bit of '"disabled autistic BIPOC social outcast" awards bait' to wade through. Stray Cat Strut might also be up your alley, but it's apparently interminably long and I dropped it pretty early for that repetitive nature. I'm generally a fan of Ravensdagger's other stuff though.
Turniper
3d ago
I think about games the same way I think about books. If someone can be reasonably sure what the moral you're trying to teach is, you're failing at it. Runescape is one of the best games for teaching people scam awareness, password safety, typing speed, and previously basic economics. It is so much more effective than a typing trainer precisely because nobody would ever think the devs were attempting to teach kids to type.
In that vein, I'm going to say Final Fantasy 14. There's definitely someone at that company fed up with internet culture trying to instill a little bit of Japanese courtesy in their audience, and with a thousand small nudges, they're doing it.
Turniper
3d ago
God, that's so wasteful. Perfectly good toilet paper getting thrown out before its time.
In all seriousness, as an inveterate dog-earer, I have no room to criticize anyone for their treatment of books.
Turniper
20d ago
Nioh 2! The third is coming out in just a few weeks, and I'm replaying the second in preparation. Having already beaten the game 1.5 times or so, playing "I constantly swap between the 10 different kinds of weapons based on what recently dropped well" is a ton of fun. So many of the move-sets and combos are basically muscle memory for me, especially the katana, since it barely changed since the first game. Sekiro is an honorary contender, but I really do think Nioh is the best 'combat focused' game I've ever played. At least for melee combat, the ranged is rather bolted on in comparison. But the stances, ki management, the way it encourages aggression without becoming a rhythm game like Sekiro, it's just all so peak. I really hope the third one lives up to the legacy. As much as I love onmyo being its own playstyle, I think doubling down on their melee focus was probably the right call.
Turniper
22d ago
Every still image I've seen pretty clearly shows a bullet hole in the front windshield. Close to the edge of the front, roughly where state registration tags usually go, but still the front. I'm sure some shots went through the side considering like 4 rounds were fired, but characterizing them all as being shot from the side does not seem fair.
I have no idea what the official schedule for the democrat orgs in my city looks like. But I do know the potlucks I attend in which like 90% of the candidates for certain state house seats and a bunch of dem precinct chairs and heads of random third party YIMBY orgs hobnob are probably not listed on them. I just happen to be friends with a dude who is in that scene, and he runs events.
They might not be on the party calendar, but I'm pretty sure that you could make a lot more connections at one of them, than at anything official.
Everyone I know who actually got involved pretty much did so by going to some sort of event, a protest, reading, rally, etc; and then just asking who they should talk to and being directed to someone who could use labor for calls/event planning/etc. To address the question you asked downthread, nobody wants randos off the street, because anyone who doesn't at least have the gumption to attend an event on their own is definitely not gonna follow through with dozens of hours of uncompensated labor. And that pretty much is required, if you really want to get involved. Almost everyone cuts their teeth as a gofer or door knocker, unless you plan to enter as a candidate and bring serious money/recognition.
No, that's why we got it. It isn't my favorite, not a huge smother everything with cheese guy, and that place is a little expensive for the serving size, but it's good grub.
More options
Context Copy link