Petrichor

nah genuinely it's my own experience. every competitive multiplayer i've ever given a chance to i've had a miserable time with. i just don't like playing pvp.

Godzilla -0.0 viral marketing going too far

I might be sweating in this...just a little bit

Suit from @feturax.bsky.social

Oh that's fascinating! Thank you!

The Conservatives are, after all, well placed to know a lot about this morass, since they introduced it. In 2012, the coalition government launched the Plan 2 system of student loans and raised university fees across Britain to £9,000 per annum. To put Plan 2 in simple terms, loan repayments were laid out via a seemingly innocuous series of calculations. The first to consider is the threshold at which repayments begin. If you left education with, say, £27,000 worth of debt, you would only start paying it back once you met a predetermined salary. On its face, this might not seem like a particularly onerous demand. “Low-earning” graduates would avoid being saddled with repayments before they were financially able to begin making them, while their “high earning” peers could start chipping away at their debt, and provide an income stream for the state.

As any of my fellow literature or history graduates will tell you, however, the devil is in the details. For one thing, the threshold at which someone becomes a high earner was never particularly high and, following years of inflation, is now preposterously low. Rachel Reeves’ announcement that the government are freezing the threshold at April 2026 levels (£29,385) for a further three years only makes this worse. The real living wage for London is currently calculated at £28,860, which means that any London-based graduate making just £40 more per month than the minimum needed to live there will automatically begin paying their debt. In real terms, this means practically any graduate in any form of full-time work will be paying as much as 9 per cent of their income to the state, and for a very, very long time. Worse still, the amount owed by those graduates below the threshold does not remain static – it accrues interest, year on year, whether you’re working for low wages, volunteering, taking a career break or on maternity leave, ensuring that if you do pass the threshold some time later, you will be returning to find your original £27,000 much enlarged.

If the state’s attitude to what constitutes “high earnings” makes you think it’s oblivious to the concept of inflation, let me put your mind at ease. When it comes to the calculation of student loan interest, they are very conscious of inflation indeed. Each year, the interest charged on student loans is calculated by two components. The first is the Retail Price Index (RPI), which generally records a higher number than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Governments prefer the latter, lower figure for many of their other calculations, just not when it comes to adding extra debt to every graduate in the country. To this is added a second component, a percentage tied to each graduate’s earnings, meaning that as your salary increases so too does the interest you’re paying on the loan you took out. If you think this seems like a predatory and punitive way to bilk students for as much money, and over as long a period of time, as possible, then you’re just about up to speed on this scandal, which amounts to a regressive stealth tax on every graduate in the UK. One which, it’s calculated, you would need to be earning £66,000 per year to pay off in anything like a timely fashion.

The debt burden of UK students is one of those things where, the more you look into the details, the more insane and predatory it is. So I tried my best to explain the numbers involved without making my, or your, head explode.

Starling using an AT field to block incoming attacks

How are you able to tell it's a hybrid and not just a hooded crow? Are there signs to look out for? 😯

Between Brewdog, Labour and Dubai eating it, a very specific type of guy is having the worst time and they absolutely deserve it.

a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people

A crow says "I just want to"

"Focus" Crow is now very detailed and crouching down

A picture of a shoebill next to a picture of pop musician Sabrina Carpenter. Both are measured at 152cm. Very suspicious.

They’re birdvestigating Sabrina Carpenter on instagram.

Worksheet titled: "Evolving from Eel-less Language" and it includes a column titled "Instead of" with a red X, and a column titled "Say this" with a green checkmark. The "Instead of" column includes sayings like "You're doing it wrong" and "Look at those used condoms in the water!" The "Say this" column includes sayings like, "You're grabbing an eel by the tail" and "Hey! Manhattan eels!" I don't have the space here to list all of them. But each expression in the "Say this" column is a bonafide (read that in a Wharvey Gal's accent) historical eel metaphor. We'd all be better off if we talked more about eels.

We're all trying to be careful with our language, so as not to offend, or not to lose federal funding for talking about paragraph transitions.

To help you out, here's a worksheet to guide you in swapping out troublesome phrases for real, historical eel expressions.
🗃️🧪

a picture of a chick with the new grass starter's beak and eyebrows badly edited on. the tumblr post underneath it says "i'll kick anyone's ass. ill kick your ass. i'll kick your dog's ass. i'll kick my own ass"

I like the new bird

some say they are still fighting to this day
#ポケモン30周年 #Pokemon30

Artist! Quote with some of your most detailed art!

A better world. 🍃

I had to. Thank yo u

Human artists, use only once piece to convince people to follow you!
🦖

I need a rubber pet so bad 😤

being trans online is like [posts a silly joke] [sees news abt government trying to exterminate us] [like funny post by trans friend] [more news about gov wanting us dead] [repost funny joke] [trans friend shares horrible news about insurance issues/sexual violence/abusive family] [sees funny post]

*hovering over ed3n's door with a big bucket of latex*

I feel pretty again today, I swear my mental health gets better the closer we get to spring

Full reference for Punk-MireGoji, as promised. <3

Aldori swordlord commission:

1 raven dad
19 raven kids

¿ɥɐʍפ

we rescued a turtle yesterday 😍

My god you're so beautiful my love 😭

And they still could be! A hammer is a multi purpose tool!