This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: How Natalie Would ‘Wreck’ The American Tax System!
• Sony Is In Talks To Acquire Kadokawa (They are WAY More Than The Elden Ring Guys…)
• Final Fantasy XIV: Mobile Announced (Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Remobilized)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
How Natalie Would ‘Wreck’ The American Tax System!

Hmmm… I need to talk about a topic this week. My brain is so politics-poisoned that I cannot stop thinking about the dire future of the United States, and I am also low-key dreading how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2.0 will fare. So… screw it, let’s talk about how Natalie Neumann, Enrolled Agent, would revise the tax system of the United States of America, because as a tax professional— NOT A CPA— I have some crazy ideas. And to explain them, I will be making some MAJOR SIMPLIFICATIONS. If you have any questions, I can clarify things in the comments. 

The current US tax system is… complicated. Because rather than just be a straight income tax based on every income item less the applicable expenses, it has multiple forms of taxation. Multiple ways in which taxes can be deducted and ways that taxes can be minimized depending on the forms of one’s income. And these forms often lead to a disproportionate ‘effective tax rate’ for people. Which often results in the wealthy paying a lower percentage than people with fewer means.

The biggest factor that is affecting people in the current predominately service and gig dominated American economy is self-employment tax. A unique animal that comprises Social Security and Medicare tax. For the self-employed, this represents an additional ~14.1% tax that people need to pay. Meanwhile, those who are employees, who are seen as more valuable, as corporate assets, only need to pay roughly half of that, about 7.65%. With another 7.65% being paid by the company who is paying them, who can deduct the full amount against their taxes, in full. Meanwhile, self-employed people cannot do anything to decrease the 14.1% they owe on self-employed income, they will owe that regardless, and there is nothing they can do about it. …Except to make more money. 

Self-employment tax has a cap. After one makes an indexed amount of money— it is $168,600 for 2024 and will be $176,100 in 2025— then they no longer need to pay Social Security tax. Instead, they only need to pay for Medicare tax, which fluctuates between 2.9% or 3.8%. And this right here… is a major problem with the US tax system. Self-employment taxes are higher if you make money, but once you make a LOT of money, enough to support a lavish lifestyle, then your effective tax rate decreases. What?

Now, the logic here is that self-employment tax is not technically income tax. It is paying into America’s Federal pension system. Which over 100 million people are convinced is not a socialist policy, when it objectively is. The idea is that the more social security tax someone pays, the more of a payout they get. However, there is a cap, as the system was designed to cover living costs for retirees. Not to send $50,000 checks every month to rich people.

However, I am of a radical mindset where I think that this social security cap should be abolished. It should not matter if someone is making $150,000, or $15 million, their wages, bonuses, and all forms of compensation should be subject to social security. And this would have a dramatic increase in the taxes people and corporations pay. Like… a lot. Someone with a $1 million salary would need to pay an extra $51,082, and their employer would need to pay the same amount. 

And for every $1 million on top of that, it would be another $62,000 for both employer and employee. For rich people and millionaires… that sucks. For people who work their asses off for years and then get one MASSIVE payout every few years, this also sucks. And for corporations, this also-also sucks. But you know what it is? Fair. It is treating people the same regardless of their income, and not giving people who receive a lot of compensation a sweet spot where their effective tax rate starts going down.

Now, is this taxation without any benefits? Yes. But people who make a lot of money do not need to get more money from the government when they retire. Because you know what these people with a lot of money also have? Retirement accounts. The more money someone makes, the more they can put away for retirement. In their 401Ks, IRAs, or those mythical pensions that only old people have. If people want to have a lot for their retirement, I view that as their problem, not something the government should handle.

Now, I am not saying that social security should come to an end or should not cover living costs. Instead, I am actually building up to a pretty radical approach. To end social security payouts based on one’s lifetime income and replace the program with universal basic income for all adults. And I am similarly proposing an end to basically every peripheral government assisted payment plan along with this. No more food stamps, no more earned income credit, no more unemployment, no more temporary assistance for needy families, no more of that. Get rid of this, get rid of the bureaucracy, get rid of the applications that are hard for poor people, ESL people, and disabled people to understand. Get rid of the potential for fraud that comes with all of these programs, as yes, it does exist. 

Now, there are plenty of non-monetary government services that are offered to people, and I would not want any cuts to be made to those. UBI is great, but it does not replace the need for government provided housing, food banks, or household goods. The idea behind UBI is to replace services that give people money, not services that give them goods or services.

Though, there is one monetary service that I would keep. I would want to keep the child tax credits, particularly the advanced child tax credits introduced in 2021. Where people could get payments throughout the year, every month, to help cover child care expenses. Managing a UBI system where people have children, figuring out who is who’s dependent, would lead to a lot of errors as people have divorces, pass away, and change custody of children. As such, I think that the childcare component of UBI should be its own different system. 

Additionally, I would see the child tax credits increase significantly. I liked the Harris proposal of $6,000 for newborns, $3,600 for ages 1 to 5, and $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17. But that amount should be indexed. Basically, everything should be indexed, because it future proofs these amounts and ensures that they maintain their value as the value of the dollar decreases.

Okay, but what about the premium tax credit, used to punish people for trying to get discounted health insurance, or game the system to decrease their health insurance bills? Well, I say the way to combat that is with the much heralded and likely never-going-to-happen Medicare for All initiative, and if people want health insurance on top of that, or supplemental plans, then that is their own prerogative. And ideally, Medicare should just be deducted from the UBI I was talking about earlier. Just like how Medicare can be deducted from social security payments.

Similarly, the lifetime learning and American opportunity credits for higher education expenses should be made irrelevant under new systems. I think that the first two years, or equivalent amount of credits, of continued education should be free if taken at a community college. There would, of course, need to be some program to verify that one is indeed taking these classes toward a degree. If one is not, then they should pay for them. And books should be their own expense. Community college is already pretty cheap, but this would remove the financial burden from the lower income crowd and make higher education available for all. Would this screw over people who fast track to a 4 year university? Yes, but that is the price to pay for the free option, and the savings by removing these credits would curb many of the costs of making two years of community college free.

Foreign tax credits are just a tool to avoid double taxation with countries the US has a tax treaty with, and that can stay. And most of the other tax credits are, frankly, so minor that I barely deal with them in my professional life. So I am just going to skip past them

Okay, but what about income tax? Honestly, I am just free balling ideas before going to bed, so I am not going to be able to do the quantitative analysis of various income scenarios. But the problem is that Income tax is not as straightforward as it seems, because of long-term capital gains and qualified dividends. Two nasty little things that are subjected to preferential tax rates that are secret to most. And you know who benefits the most from these? The wealthy, and especially their trust fund babies!

Shit, I need to explain these two things… when you hold a stock or financial asset for over a year, and sell it, it is treated as a long-term capital gain. Qualified dividends are magical dividends that the US government says are better than regular dividends. And dividends are what you get when you own a stock that chooses to give a dividend to distribute corporate profits. Not all stocks do this, only some of them.

In short, the current tax regime treats long-term capital gains and qualified dividends as basically the same thing, and this LTCG QD thing is subject to a beneficial tax rate. 0%, 15%, or 20%. The 0% tax rate is indexed and depends on if you are single, head of household, or married. But it ranges from $47,025 to $94,050 in qualified dividends or long-term gains  in 2024. The 15% range then kicks in and lasts until the qualified dividends or long-term gains reach $291,850 to $583,750.

You know how CEOs keep getting these massive stock options and stock bonuses? Well, let’s say a corporate executive got 1 million shares of stock when they took on the job and raised a company’s stock price from $5 to $10 in two years. They turned the company around, and now they want to sell their stock. They would incur $5 million in long-term capital gains, and they would need to pay less than $1 million on that gain. Assuming they are single, and sold it in 2024, they would need to pay less than a million. $967,000, making a few assumptions. 

…Okay, not quite. I did understate the taxes in the capital gain scenario by ignoring Net Investment Income Tax. Or as douchebags like to call it, the Obamacare tax. You know, despite not having anything to do with healthcare. In short, if one’s investment income— interest, dividends, capital gains— exceeds $200,000 or $250,000 for married folks, they owe an extra 3.8% on all additional investment income. So that’s a crisp $182,400 to make this example $1,149,400. That is… better, but still an effective tax rate of 23%. And that is no good!

Meanwhile, someone who worked for $5 million, who had earned income, not this investment income, who made all this money, by themself, self-employed, would owe over $1,968,000. An effective tax rate of nearly 40%. Which… is fair considering how much money he made. But it is 71% more than the capital gain scenario.

So, what would I do about the QD & LTCG tax rate? Keep the indexed 0% rate between 47,025 to $94,050, half the 15% rate to 145,925 to $291,875, and tax every QD & LTCG past that at the regular tax rate. The 20% is too overpowered and needs to be nerfed. As a result, however, I would get rid of NIIT, because this is addressing the issue of people with a lot of investment income.

Oh, but I have not even gotten to my approach for regular tax rates. Now, I explained the problem with self-employment taxes and the social security tax cap. But I do not think that the US tax system should have a separate social security tax. Instead, I think that it, along with Medicare tax should be merged with income tax and, effectively becoming one giant tax rate.

Now, I would need to scenario plan this out, factor in the standard or itemized deductions, and do work that I am choosing not to do because, chances are, anybody reading this is already lost. Instead, I will say that it would incorporate a 0% tax bracket for people whose taxable income is less than, say, $12,000, and will not be subject to any taxes. While those who are making over a million in taxable income would be subject to a tax rate of at least 55%, maybe 65%. This is up from the maximum tax rate of 37%, or 40.8% if you think you’re a sly guy. 

This would be balanced to decrease taxes for the overwhelming majority of Americans. For poor people, for middle working-class families, but dramatically increase the tax liability of the wealthy. All to redistribute their wealth to the rest of the nation. Also known as a net positive and good thing, that should only upset the tiny percentage of people who would be affected by this.

That is a very broad, somewhat incoherent, and very much unpolished, untested idea that I came up with via minimal proper research and a lot of gut feeling. And I could end it here… but there are other important factors that I do want to address.

Standard deductions would remain the same, but with two major changes. The State and local tax, or SALT, limitation of $10,000 would be changed. Instead, the limitation would be the same as the indexed standard deduction for a single person— $15,000 in 2025— regardless of a person’s filing status. And there would be an additional special tax deduction, inspired by the 2021 special tax deduction. This allowed people who took the standard deduction to take an extra $300 charitable deduction… if they gave cash to a charity. I would take this and turn it into an indexed $1,000 special deduction for charitable contributions. $500 for cash contributions, and $500 for cash or noncash contributions.

Retirement deductions are something viciously complicated and confusing even to me, due to the sheer variety of different ways in which one can contribute to a retirement account. So, like with everything else, my idea is to simplify things. This is tricky due to things like self-employed pensions, or SEPs, which have a max contribution of $70,000 in 2025. Meanwhile, the 401K contribution limit is $23,500 for young folks, or $34,750 for the 50+ crowd. And the IRA limit is $7,000. I think this is immensely stupid, as it prevents certain people from putting away money. So I say screw this, and just use the 401K rules for everybody, possibly closing the immense gap between the youngsters and oldies. How about an indexed $30,000 with an additional non-indexed $5,000 for the 50+ crowd? Does that screw over people with SEPs? Yes. But this also helps out a lot of self-employed people who could only put away less than $10,000 each year.

I actually really like Qualified Business Income deduction, as I have seen it do a LOT to help people save on tax. Basically, it lets people of certain income levels deduct up to 20% of self-employment income, helping them save on income tax, while not helping them pay self-employment tax. Just like the way people can deduct 50% of their self-employment taxes to lower their income taxes. …Do you see why I want to abolish this dumb interplay? However, it largely exists to combat SE taxes, so along with SE taxes, I’m getting rid of this.

Wealth tax is the biggest thing that would do wonders to help address the growing wealth inequality throughout America, and just the world in general. I know Harris was proposing an unrealized gain tax, but fuck that. If people have a net worth above a certain amount, they have a bean counter bitch like me doing monthly valuation reports. And I think the IRS should tax this amount, every year, if it exceeds a certain amount.

Now, what should that amount be? Well, this is a coy idea that probably has little basis, but I think back to the lifetime gift exemption. Actually, no, just make it an indexed $50 million to $100 million or something, because I do think that people with $50 to $100 million can provide some benefit to the world. But $300 million is just too dang much, let alone a billion. Anyway, back to the show.

To offer a brief tangent within this tangent of a tangent, everybody is allowed to give a set amount to other people throughout a year. In 2025, it will be $19,000 per person. However, if one goes over this limit, they eat into their lifetime gift exemption, and this figure is probably the most contentious thing in US taxation, because it lets people retain generational wealth. Let me give you a brief history to illustrate why. 

In 2003, the lifetime exemption was $1 million. In 2008, it was $2 million. In 2009? $3.5 million 2011? $5 million. 2017? $5.6 million. 2018? $11.18 million. 2025? $13.99 million! 

Now, this gift exemption figure is a key figure in determining one’s estate taxes. When one dies, their assets are to be distributed from their estate, an entity that holds all their assets. If this entity holds a small amount of assets, they are distributed with a step-up in basis, no taxes incurred. (When you own stock, or a house, then the basis becomes the higher of the initial cost or market.) However, for millionaires, this is trickier, as if their estate exceeds their remaining, unused, lifetime gift exemption, then they need to pay estate taxes on it. And estate taxes… do not fuck around! They start at 18%, reach 30% by $100,000, then cap out at 40% if they are over $1 million. I love how aggressive it is! PUNISH ME, MASTER!

Now, the contentious part is that some people think that the lifetime exemption is too high, and while I agree with that, I believe it can remain in effect, remain indexed, if a wealth tax is also implemented.

In short, a wealth tax would function akin to an estate tax, and every dollar above the total lifetime exemption amount would be subjected to taxes. The rate would NOT be as high as the estate taxes— that would be crazy— but I think that 10% would be reasonable. That might sound low, but you know what 10% of a million dollars is? $100,000. If this went into effect now, Jeff Bezos would need to pay 10% of 219.4 billion USD. That is $21.94 billion… for one year. That is an obscene amount of money that could solve nearly any problem.

(Actually, it should not be a flat 10%. Maybe start at 1% for $100 million, then increase to 10% upon reaching 1 billion. Yeah, that sounds sustainable.)

…And that is about 2,800 words on how I would make the American Empire more money while likely lowering taxes for 70% or more of the population. I would do the math to prove that this would work, running some scenarios, but I wrote this in one night. I didn’t even come up with a way to replace the employer’s share of social security and Medicare, or talk about corporate taxation! (I would have three tiers of corporate taxation, 10%, 20%, and 30%, and just work around the ER FICA taxes  FICA is Social Security and Medicare. Terminology Is a bastard fish.)

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Sony Is In Talks To Acquire Kadokawa
(They are WAY More Than The Elden Ring Guys…)

Back in September 2022, Sony and Tencent made an aggressive bid for power by acquiring a shared total of 30% of FromSoftware for approximately $260 million dollars. That was a significant yet unsurprising move that will make waves across the future of From, as they now had the capital needed to self-publish, and exist as their own entity. …But it also gives Tencent and Sony the right to push From in their own direction, arrange marketing and publishing deals, and all the like.

Admittedly, the whole arrangement was a bit odd, as From is already a subsidiary of the larger Kadokawa Corporation and Kadokawa Group, a truly massive conglomerate whose entities are so sprawling they warrant a list:

• BookWalker, a popular digital manga and light novel reading platform with dogshite UX
• Yen Press, one of the leading manga localization companies in the United States
• J-Novel Club, a light novel and manga distribution platform geared toward a western audience that puts out a bunch of series
• ASCII Media Works, owners of all Dengeki publications, including magazines, comics, and novels
• Famitsu, the Japanese gaming publication
• Enterbrain, the RPG Marker developers
• Spike Chunsoft, developers of all manner of interesting and personality-rich adventure games including Danganronpa and AI: The Somnium Files. …And they also develop the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series for Nintendo
• Acquire, who I did a piece on a few weeks ago after people learned they were behind Mario & Luigi 6: The Brother Ship.
• NicoNico, owners of the popular Japanese video streaming platform, NicoNico
• Doga Kobo, an anime studio behind the highly successful Oshi no Ko
• They have a significant interest in studios like ENGI, Sanzigen, Ordet, Trigger, Liden Films without outright owning them (how Japanese) giving them major sway in the anime market
• Kadokawa Daiei Studio, one of the big four film distributors in Japan
• Kadokawa Shoten, a massive publishing company that holds a damn treasure trove of IP and historic works, spread over a dozen or so publications
• Anime News Network, the foundational anime news resource across the western world
• Myriad anime/manga series including Konosuba, Sword Art Online, and RE:Zero

And that is just scratching the surface! Now, how did they get all this stuff? By taking advantage of the post-war economic movement— literally founded in 1945— and merging with other entities. Most notably, the Dwango Corporation in 2014. I cannot overstate how BIG Kadokawa really is. They have a damn goldmine of valuable IP, and should have around 8,000 employees based on their latest integrated report. They are freaking huge!

As such, I nearly fell out of my chair when Reuters reported that Sony was in talks to acquire Kadokawa. (Except every damn publication reported this as them buying ‘The Elden Ring blokes’ because some people lack imagination. Yes, I know that From is their most profitable subsidiary by far, but still, not all profit is monetary.) If this were approved and were to go through, that would be insane. 

Now, I talk about Kadokawa being big… but Sony is literally the size of 14 Kadokawas in terms of employees and while Sony’s market cap is 118 billion, Kadokawa’s is just 3.4 billion. They are in wildly different classes of scale, mostly due to their choice in fields and how global they are. Kadokawa has smaller satellites for publishing international works, mostly gets by on software, animation, and publication, but they are mostly a Japanese company, while Sony is worldwide.

However, Kadokawa has something that Sony desperately craves. IP and anime! Sony has seen the rise of the global anime market, watched as it went from a niche international curiosity to something enjoyed by young people the world over, and they have tried to dominate their way through the field. The acquisition of Funimation and Crunchyroll were big moves, but they have been eyeing ways to broaden their share of the market as much as possible. All until they become the face of anime!

Now, they will never own all of anime— AMC’s Sentai Filmworks and Shogakukan (they own Shonen Jump, Viz, and just way, way too many things) are still around, still growing. But I still think that Sony is simply too big and too powerful in the world of anime already. Crunchyroll, while once a promising service, has seen oodles of problems over the years, and is not seen favorably in the broader anime community. The more anime that gets put in the Crunchyroll bucket, that gets put in the hands of a single company, the more these problems will compound.

Also, I am going to say that FromSoftware is something of a minor factor here. Yes, From is a very valuable developer. I estimated their value at $860 million two years ago.  And yes, I understand they are the most profitable facet of Kadokawa, an IP company. However, if Sony just wanted to buy From, they would just buy From. This is a bid to buy IP and a back catalog that Sony can consolidate and merge into robust streaming platforms and digital storefronts. Getting the rights to release, and possibly publish, Elden Ring 2 in 2027-ish is just the icing on the cake. Some might say it’s the best part, but if you love icing more than cake, just eat icing!

The bigger companies like this become, the fewer options customers have, and the harder it is for new entities to rise up or succeed in a system controlled by a few oligarchs. They gain more control, develop catalogs they can rehash ad nauseam for perpetual profits, and can deliver shit services for too much money. A merger like this would not be a good thing, and would only make things worse for a wide variety of people. Hell, even if you pirate your anime, this will just give Sony more cause to pull a Nintendo and abuse the broken digital copyright system designed by old men who barely knew how to use computers.

Sony acquiring Kadokawa would only mean bad things for everyone except for the True Humans who are Corporations. However I do not know if the Japanese courts would prohibit a merger like this. Kadokawa buying Dwango was a big deal, but Dwango was a fairly young company. Kadokawa is nearly 80 years old, and seen as a major institution in the country, so I’d imagine that there would be a desire to keep them as their own company. But is that desire enough to stop something that, ultimately, would help the export of Japanese IP and soft power across the broader world? Hmm… tough question. 

…Actually, apparently Kadokawa is under threat of being consumed by Korean internet company Kakao. While Japan and Sane Korea are trying to maintain a good relationship, the Japanese government would not like this, while Sony is a golden child of Japan. A Japanese company that gained the power to stop being Japanese! So, between the two options, I know who the Japanese FTC equivalent would choose. 

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Final Fantasy XIV: Mobile Announced
(Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Remobilized)

MMOs are something I never fully got, as they rely on a level of commitment and dedication that is just beyond me. Especially now that I have so many projects that I want to work on. However, I do respect the art of a good MMO. Of a game that lasts weeks of constant playtime, that is a community in and of itself, and offers a scale and dearth of meaningful content that eclipses nearly every game.

However, I also believe that MMOs are responsible for nearly every evil that currently exists in modern gaming. EA saw that future after Origin provided them with Ultima Online (1997)— which is still going on today, somehow. EverQuest (1999) was a huge hit for Sony… who later went and sold the IP and developer. Like a bunch of dummies. (An EverQuest action RPG Genshin-like live service would have been such a better investment than Concord.) And Vivendi was swimming in hot gold after World of Warcraft (2004) came out and offered an equal amount of evolution, revolution, and devastation upon the games industry. Seriously, WoW is the most influential game of the 21st century, or at least most influential non-mobile game. And if there was one game I could erase from history, it would be WoW. Mind you, that would be a ‘kill the Fuhrer’ situation, as WoW was just the right game in the right place at the right time, and a game comparable to WoW would have just appeared a few years later. 

Akumako: “God, now she’s comparing WoW to the Nazi Emperor… Talk about Final Fantasy XIV, ya dumb bitch!”

I am so old brained that when someone says Final Fantasy XIV, I think back to the 1.0 2010 release. When the game was a shit MMO that had learned nothing from the past decade of innovation after XI, and was behind launch WoW in many respects. Through the power of crunch, the game was able to relaunch into something far better, and as expansion and changes were implemented, it became a huge success. It even gained a massive-er following during the pandemic, and while I won’t ever touch the thing, I respect it. Seriously, do not play MMOs if you want to get things done. It drains you or your spirit and there are better people who had their promising careers come to an end because of them.

However, FFXIV has something of a platform problem. In that it is only on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. No Switch release, and more importantly, no mobile release. I might not understand how or why anybody would play an MMO on a phone, but most of Genshin Impact’s players are on mobile, and MMOs have been targeting mobile for about a decade at this point. It’s simply where a lot of the market is. …So it’s no surprise that Square Enix formally announced Final Fantasy XIV: Mobile. 

Developed by Tencent’s Lightspeed Studios of PUBG Mobile fame— second week in a row they get a mention— the game promises to be… FFXIV for mobile. Neither the trailer nor official PR explains how exactly this project will adapt the game for mobile. Just details on recreational activities one can do, like fishing, playing cards, attending event parties, and switching between a lot of gathering jobs. Riveting.

I do not quite get this, but if this is the direction Square Enix wants Final Fantasy to take… sure, go ahead. It’s in no way more egregious than any of the other mobile slop the series has pushed out over the years only for it to be delisted within two years. I hope for the best for this project, that it does expand the game to more people, that it is a good and faithful adaptation, and that it is ultimately fun, rather than a big bushel of grinding.

I’d end this by saying something disparaging about Tencent getting their tendrils in this game, but… Square Enix clearly does not give a shit.

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Progress Report 2024-11-24

And that’s it for this week! With Geoff Keighley’s The Spike Game Awards, Announcements, and Advertisements looming overhead and Thanksgiving gestating in the background, there was not a bunch of big news going around this week. People in the games press are still reeling from the election. The news climate is all out of wack as people are shifting over from 𝕏-Twitter: The Genocide Hole to Yosky-Wosky-Psky-Bsky. Personally, I just read my following feed, rarely clicked the tweets themselves, never had to deal with spam, and the only Nazis I saw were in quote tweets and screengrabs. Sure, the site had some annoying shit that I didn’t want to see, but that’s what a script blocker is for. 

Meanwhile, Bluesky is just a Twitter reskin with a better handle system, a more sensible 300 word skeet/skoot count, communal block lists, and effective moderation, including moderation tools. Genuinely, I started going from one to the other, and I constantly forget which one I am looking at, as their UI is goldarn identical.

Honestly, my only problems with Bluesky are that, one, the URL is Bsky, but it’s not called Bsky, and I think Bsky is a dope name. And two, WordPress’s integration with it is a bit shit and does not grab the metadata when my posts are automatically published. I work hard on these headers and I want them to appear when I skoot ’em out of my skoot hole, ya stinky skootling. 

…Now imagine that sentence if I used the word skeet instead, which means to take a diarrhea dump on a bird’s stupid face. Also, the word skeet just makes me think of yeet-skeet-gangsta-beats. Which is how my mind chose to transform that clip-trip-gangsta-blip bits from the ending skit of Chonkyfire. I like Outkast, they’re good. Never did listen to their last album though. I should, but I have a pretty bad rap backlog of stuff I should get smart on…

Also, one of the worst things about switching to Firefox is the fact that many great extensions are Chrome only. And there is still not a good Bsky media downloader. So I need to switch to Chrome just to download skoot media, so I can goot when I poot!

Akumako: “Natalie is 30-years-old, but deep down, she’s still a 5-year-old.”

Yeah, I may be a 5-year-old, but I’m a 5-year-old with a lotta money! Just look at this!

This is my personal IRA over the past three years, and I haven’t made a contribution since January 2023. Yet despite that, my IRA has grown from $47,000 to $63,000 in two years. That’s about 17% per year! Stonks be crazy yo! I just hope large capital equity doesn’t decline, because if it does, I will lose a LOT of my net worth! It almost makes me forget how I had ample opportunity to buy BTC back when it was $3,000, but I didn’t because I did not trust crypto.

…Actually, that’s a lie. I DO trust crypto, but only in the sense that I know it’ll keep making me money! ‘Cos I’m a crypto accountant!

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2024-11-17: Worked on TSF Showcase 2024-47 by reading the source material. Also, December will be home to Mayonaka no X Giten, The Wotch, Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, and I have two more weeks to fill. I am tempted to tackle Shishunki Bitter Change across two parts, as it is nearly 1,700 pages long, but I also have the research paper by Richard Pilbeam on TSF. …Which is over 400 pages, and I REALLY don’t want to do that. I also want to end the year with Nyotai-ka, as that is one of the first ongoing TSF manga I remember reading. But the official translation is still not available digitally. And Magical Trans still isn’t done yet! (Actually, The Wotch might require 2 parts, because of how DENSE it is.)

2024-11-18: Birthday day! So I took it a bit easy. Wrote a 2,800 word tax-filled ramble for this Rundown and got started on the next TSF Showcase before getting bored after 2,000 words.

2024-11-19: Wrote 1,000 words for the Kadokawa bit. Wrote 650 word FFXIV bit. Wrote 2,100 words for TSF Showcase 2024-47. I had a birthday dinner with $60 of Indian food (I had a gift card), and walked like four miles, so I was a bit wiped out. But I was productive! I submitted my passport information— just in case— and also had a dentist appointment.

2024-11-20: 4,400 more words for TSF Showcase 2024-47… and I’m not even 2/3rds done. I still had some time left to work on it, but… tired.

2024-11-21: Got the Rundown all edited and ret-2-go. And did another 4,200 words for TSF Showcase 2024-47. How the frick is this 4 volume manga series the longest showcase I’ve done so far? I didn’t even write the conclusion! The Wotch is definitely going to be a two parter at this rate. Fuck it! The Wotch, The Wotch Part 2, Sparkling Yuuki, then TS Revolution. Because TSF Revolution is the GOAT!

2024-11-22: Heeeey! Guess who had to manually match hundreds of crypto transactions for a client and was working for most of the evening? This bitch! Finished up TSF Showcase 2024-47 with a 360 word conclusion and grabbed 68 images. Yeah, it’s a long bitch! Also, this TSF Showcase took me a full fucking week to make. DAMN YOU!

2024-11-23: Edited TSF Showcase 2024-47 and did some prep work and research for TSF Showcase 2024-48: The Wotch Part 1. But I was only ready to start reading it at midnight and… nah. Sleep time!

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