Chris M Hill

I onboarded and scheduled shifts for 54 volunteers last week (not counting Cast, Tavern, or Care Crew people who are handles internally by their own guilds) and I'm still scared we dont have enough!!!! We're projecting 20k+ attendance this year and I am not ready!!!!!!!!

Yo. Not dead.
Just too busy to write right now - Ren Faire opens in (checks watch) 11 days 😬😬😬😂😵‍💫☠️

Frustrated little dude gripping a pencil saying “how do I pack this down into something I can actually share?” While swirling rainbows labeled “INFINITE POTENTIAL” float around them. Little dude frowns at a tiny grey box, exclaiming “all that work for THIS?!” Little dude shoves the grey box into another little guy’s hands; Frowning, stomping off, and saying “Here you go, I made this, it sucks.” Second little dude cracks open the box, swirling rainbows project out onto their face. Second little dude stares in awe at all the swirling rainbows now floating around them.

Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with a thing we made because when it only existed in our head, we saw all the things it could have been and when it’s done we know all the things that it isn’t, but we can’t see the way it expands into a million new things when someone else unpacks it in their head. 🖊️🦑

Surprising no one who follows me, the RELIC series by @mazmaddox.bsky.social

Just absolutely no contest, dinosaurs shifters and mafia, and a wild romp of the BEST kind of fun.

A bedraggled black Muppet enjoys his third favorite pass time (after walks and tug-o-war): watching the street for pedestrians suspicious enough to bark at.

I love a fluffy dog, but at a certain point it is literal HOURS of upkeep per day, and that's just way too much 😂

⬇️ same dog

A picture of a black golden doodle with a poodle-like curly coat of fur, except all that fur has been cut away for a summer short hairdo. He's sitting against a photo backdrop with a field of sunflowers, and looking slightly morosely at the camera because haircut day is his least favorite day, and the groomer (out of frame) is probably holding a dog treat to get him to stand still when she really should just give it to him already for the hardship he's endured.

My Muppet just got his haircut yesterday ✨️

Just need to say this book cover is TO DIE FOR 🙌👏🙌👏

Not trying to doomsay, just recognizing it's all built on the same precedent.

Y'all worried about Obergefell and I'm just wondering how long it takes us to back track and overturn Lawrence v Texas.

Consensual, private, same sex relationships have only been legal since 2003. 🙈🙉🙊

Yuuuuup. Obergefell has been on the chopping block since the Dobbs Decision 🤷‍♂️

Any time the opinion has to specifically carve out an exception like Noooo, this totally wont affect this other civil liberty built on the exact same precedent!!!! ....its a bad look. And a predictive one.

Cloudward, Ho! the most recent season of Dimension 20 on Dropout TV ✨️💖

A photo of a red, black, and holographic sticker that says "PROUD MEMBER OF THE INDY PUBLISHING CULT." The illustration features a book above a heart shaped summoning circle, with spooky candles in the background. The sticker is a spoof off of the "self publishing cult" comments made in the romancelandia and self publishing booksky community as part of some discourse-of-the-week stuff, but tbh it just sounded metal as fuck and I love it.

Indy Publishing Cult stickers came in today!!
And they have ~・°˖✧ SPOT HOLO ✧˖°・~

(You can grab one through my ko-fi.com/s/e3dec6f156 )
((reposte because I fucked up the link ☠️))

Went to go see the new Naked Gun in theaters tonight with the fam and, honestly, more of a DVD-or-Streaming movie, but it was funny enough to be an effective comfort watch tonight. Many good puns.

Hey.

Hey, you.

Yeah, you. The person reading this. You, specifically.

Be messier and weirder. Fuck up more. And cut people a break when they're messy and weird and fuck up, if you can.

Queerness is about being messy.

When I contacted Stripe, the only financial institution customer service could verify that Stripe has a close relationship with is Wells Fargo, but they didn't have any information about if WF was the bank causing the problem.

A screenshot from Stripe's customer service docs, with the phrase "banking partner" highlighted in orange. The screenshot reads: Financial accounts You can use the Treasury endpoints of the Stripe API to create financial accounts, and attach them to connected accounts in a one-to-one relationship (unless you’re enrolled in the Multi FA beta). You can fund the financial accounts of your platform’s connected accounts and move money between them. Your connected accounts can also fund their Treasury financial accounts using a bank external to Stripe. If your platform uses Stripe Issuing, you can provide payment cards linked to the financial account balance of your connected accounts. Treasury financial accounts have routing numbers because they’re backed by US banking partners, and balances are eligible for FDIC pass-through insurance.

A screenshot from Stripe's customer service docs, with the phrase "banking partner" highlighted in orange. The screenshot reads: Use Stripe Capital to either: Build a Capital program and provide financing offers to your connected accounts. This option is only available to Connect platforms. You can send financing offer notifications to eligible connected accounts through Stripe Capital and our financial partners. Onboard to Capital regardless of whether your existing Connect integration processes payments using both Stripe and non-Stripe payment processors. Stripe manages the underwriting and servicing, and offers additional features to help grow your Capital program. Learn how Capital for platforms works. Access financing offers for your business. Depending on eligibility, you can view and accept financing offers presented to you by Stripe and our banking partners. Learn how Capital works. Capital offers financing types that include loans (issued by Celtic Bank) and merchant cash advances (MCA) provided by our banking partner (YouLend) or Stripe. All financing requests are subject to a final review before approval.

Stripe didn't say that it was end user banks causing the problem - they said their "banking partners," which means the financial institutions they have closer relationships with to provide services through directly. Those banks would have more policy sway over Stripe than an end user bank.

Notably, though, this doesn't mean YOUR bank, it means STRIPE'S banks.

So now we have to find out which financial institutions Stripe is trying to shift the blame to.

And any potential readers following you will burn out, too. No one likes a corporate account that's nothing but ads. 🤷‍♂️ At least those ain't the vibes on Bsky.

Since we don't have polls here on Bluesky yet...

In the replies here you will find two posts. Like the post you agree with most.

We are pitting hardcover books against paperbacks.

I wanna know who reads what!

Flat graphic horror style poster in red and white on a black background that reads "PROUD MEMBER OF THE SELF PUBLISHING CULT" in sick ass spooky fonts. Below the text an open book floats above a heart shaped pentagram with candles in the background.

I am a reclamation kind of bitch. 😌🔥

(I will probably retool this a bit and print some stickers)

Flat graphic horror style poster in red and white on a black background that reads "PROUD MEMBER OF THE SELF PUBLISHING CULT" in sick ass spooky fonts. Below the text an open book floats above a heart shaped pentagram with candles in the background.

I am a reclamation kind of bitch. 😌🔥

(I will probably retool this a bit and print some stickers)

I saw "self publishing cult poster" and thought "yes I would totally put that poster on my wall"

Disappointed to find out it's discourse, not merchandise. 😔

Side note, this is how Patreon won concessions with payment processors the first time around.

They used empirical data to show that Patreon subscriptions were lower risk and lower charge back than other subscription model adult content.

That's what this is about: Money.

It was never about moral panic or Collective Shout.

Visa & Mastercard will only listen to us about censoring adult content when our calls cost them more than adult content costs them in disputes.

Calling *will* work, but the bar is very high.

(End 🧵)

So on the payment processor side, they have a flood of fraud claims and dispute claims that are messy and a pain to handle, and cost payment processors a lot of money to arbitrate. All for purchases under this one product code: adult material.

🧵

Shame leads to denial - mostly people who won't admit they made that first purchase to their wife or mother.

Add to this the fact that a lot of actual fraud will start with a little $2 porn purchase, just to check and see if the card works, and suddenly the investigations get a lot more messy.

🧵

Arbitration means employees hired to look over cases. Employees cost MONEY $$$.

Other groups use the same scam structure, notably THC pills, weird MLM herbal supplements, and political donations to Trump (yes, Trump specifically).

But porn is worse than those for another reason: shame.

🧵

The difference: Fraud says "I never made a purchase" and Dispute says "I made a purchase but they fucked me over."

We can often win that Dispute on technicalities, because porn scams are sloppy with their paperwork

But know who arbitrates those disputes?

Payment processors.

Visa & Mastercard.

🧵

Sadly, theres usually nothing we can do to get that money back as a fraud claim, since they *did* make the first purchase and check a checkbox somewhere agreeing to TOS (aka subscription), it doesnt match the technical definition of fraud.

We CAN, however, file a *Dispute* claim -

🧵

The common set up for this scam is a $2 purchase to access a porn site for 24 hours, where its not clear that the site will then charge $25/month on a subscription after that.

People call in when they see the $25 charge and say they didnt make that purchase.

🧵