I have a question regarding federal vs. state court jurisdiction but I can't for the life of me find a straight answer online.

As every American should know, Fuckface von Clownstick has, with the help of the deflated scrotum monster Mitch McConnell, successfully managed to stack the Supreme Court. That means certain landmark decisions such as Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges could soon be coming under fire and potentially be overturned.

My question is this: I live in a state where same-sex marriage was legalized by a court ruling, but it was the state Supreme Judicial Court, not any sort of Federal district court. If Obergefell v. Hodges is overturned, what will the effect be on the state court's decision?

I know that there are certain boundaries between the state and federal judiciaries, but I have no idea how this sort of thing would play out. I need to know if I should start getting on my state legislators to pass a law protecting same-sex marriage before I have my rights ripped away from me by religious fucktards.

I keep getting these notifications that Chrome is discontinuing any Flash functionality in December of this year. I've noticed that a large number of animations uploaded by the artists on this and other sites tend to be in flash format. Are people going to start using a different program for their animations or is there some work-around we'll be able to use in order to continue enjoying content made with Flash? I'm not particularly adept with computers or programming, so forgive me if I sound idiotic here.

Despite the fact that my age keeps rising regardless of my desires, my one wish for this past birthday was granted. I did not get sick with the coronavirus, so that's good. Birthday is over now though, so bring on the plague.

P.S. For those who are wondering, I just turned 32.

I'm sure I have messages backlogged in telegram and I've only touched Twitter like 3 times since September, but I am indeed alive. Things have been extremely stressful these past couple of months between work trouble, medical crap, and the need to buy a new car on my travesty of a salary.

I know I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating for anyone who may not know: My default response to stress is to withdraw and disappear. I don't like burdening others with my problems and stress tends to bring out the less endearing aspects of my personality. I will return to the outside world eventually...maybe even stay a while if life can leave me the fuck alone for a few weeks. Regardless, standard apology for being an asocial hermit goes here.

 adleisio is taking some commissions. He's very trustworthy, so go check it out.

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9214989/

Just letting everyone know that I've returned to telegram. I won't be responding to most of the 500 backlogged messages I got. If you wish to speak with me, feel free, but please remember that I can't handle 20 people all talking to me at once. If I'm online, but not responding, don't get worried or angry. I will get to you when I have time.

Yes, I know I've been avoiding it like the plague. I haven't logged into it once since mid-January I think. I am planning on going back to it Soon™ For the probably dozens of people who have messaged me on Telegram since the last time I was there... it's not you, it's me. I just can't handle the constant, endless barrage of interaction that Telegram inflicts on me. Just non-stop people poking at me tends to cause me to disappear until it stops. I've said it a thousand times and I'll say it again: I am not a highly social individual. If the interaction becomes too much, I retreat from it. Since telegram, unlike Discord, doesn't have an "appear offline" option, my only recourse is to actually be offline.

I'm going to try to get back on again...just for the love of all that is good and holy, go easy on me. Don't try to talk to me on a daily basis. If I don't respond to you, don't keep poking at me, even if I'm online. I'm only going to have a couple conversations going at any given time. If yours isn't one of them...oh well. Wait. I'll get to you soon enough. Just don't all dogpile me all the time or I'll only last a few weeks before closing the app and not opening it again until November.

I'm not taking them, I'm MAKING them. Come get you some!

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/31612057/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/30083799/

There are a lot of stereotypes going around about furries, and about the younger generations in general: We aren't willing to work. We're lazy. We can't manage our money. We won't grow up and move out of our parents' house. We complain too much about work stressing us out.

What if I told you that it's not our fault; that all the old people bitching about us are the ones who buried us in this hole to begin with? Well, that's exactly what I'm saying. There are websites out there that will calculate inflation, and how it's changed the value of currency between now and some time in the past. I used it, and boy was I surprised. I didn't think inflation had gone that crazy, but it has.

I used 1980 as a reference year. This is around the time many of our parents and grandparents entered the workforce. $10/hr at a full 40 hours per week earns $20,800 gross pay. In 1980, $20,800 would have been the equivalent of $64,000 today. Makes a big difference, right? $21k won't allow for much of a living in today's world. $64k, on the other hand, would allow for a decently comfortable living.

That's how we've been screwed over. Wages have stagnated while the cost of living has skyrocketed. We can't manage our money because we don't earn enough. We can't move out of our parents' house because we can't afford it. We complain about stress at work more because working as hard as we do while STILL not earning enough money to forge a life for ourselves is stressful as hell.

This is a problem. A BIG problem. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think it's fair that I work for my living, yet I'm still forced to live in a tiny, 2 bedroom apartment with 3 other people. It's like I said in a previous journal; the American Dream is dead, and the Boomers and "Greatest Generation" killed it. They reaped its rewards, then denied them to those of us who came after. We NEED to change this. The minimum wage must go up, and not by a couple dollars, but to at least $18-20/hr.

Right now, our minimum wage is the equivalent of earning $2.40/hr in 1980. The price of living has increased by far more than inflation has allowed as well. Things need to change, or we'll be stuck living like paupers regardless of how hard we work.

The next time you see some old fuck bemoaning how lazy Millennials are, or how we're not growing up and getting a life, then just ask them how much they made in the workforce, go here: https://westegg.com/inflation/ and calculate how much more they made than you. If nothing else, it'll shut their dumb, wrinkly face.

That's a question the Supreme Court of the United States is about to answer for us. The Trump administration is of the opinion that LGBT+ people are not protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If the court (currently with a 5-4 conservative majority) agrees with that assessment, businesses will be able to fire LGBT+ workers simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

This CAN NOT be allowed to stand. I call on everyone to contact their politicians and insist that they push for Civil Rights protections for all. Even if that means they need to make a new law specifically naming LGBT+ as protected workers entitled to the same rights as everybody else.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/.....employees.html

It was pretty long, but I think it pertains to almost everyone who would read it. I'd suggest doing so. It's a pretty important topic that's near and dear to everyone's hearts. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9117158/

The title means "I Bemoan the Wounds of Fortune." It's pretty apt for the topic I'm about to go into. Money. That thing that torments most of us. The secret source of many of the woes, insecurities, and misfortunes that plague our lives.

Let's start with the insecurities part. Nearly 80% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. That's just a fact. Some people mismanage their money, some are living beyond their means, but most are just people who simply don't earn enough to live comfortably. Being "poor" is a major source of insecurity, especially as you get older. Being 31 and a member of the working poor, I feel like my life to this point has been a combination of failure and time wasted.

"But," you say, "we live in the age of the internet. Surely it's got advise from people who've been where I've been and have escaped." Yes, but no. The internet is rife with misinformation, Trojan horses from corporate shills trying to force you into selling your soul even further, and generally well-meaning people whose advice simply won't work for you.

Some examples of what a quick search found me:
-Get a second job/work more.
Ahh yes, the obvious approach. Work more, get paid more. It seems simple enough, until you burn out from working 60 hours a week. That path leads to depression, anxiety, and/or drugs (either to cope, to force performance after your body begins to decline, or to treat the work-inflicted ailments that you've sustained.) No no, there's no reason why a person should be required to work in a Dickensian nightmare world in order to make ends meet.
-Get an education to make more money.
Yeah, because it's just that fucking simple. An education is not experience, and what you get the education in is unimaginably important. I became certified as a medical assistant and phlebotomist. I can't get a job as a phlebotomist due to lack of experience. The field is saturated with no way in. My medical assisting skill has me working in a hospital making barely above minimum wage with no benefits and no guaranteed hours. That earned me about $30k in debt for no appreciable reward. Then I went to "real" college, not these trade school traps like before. I got an AS in Biology and started on a BS. Then my health started failing. I was in the hospital monthly, getting multiple surgeries, on all kinds of meds. My grades tanked, and I'm on leave still, trying to recover. This isn't just my problem. Video game design, culinary, most liberal arts and business administration fields... they're all so saturated that it's very hard for fresh graduates to break into the fields. That leaves you floundering with a mountain of debt and still a deplorable income situation.
-Get a "side-gig."
Sometimes this means a second job, but is just meant to sound less repugnant. In those cases, see above. In other circumstances, it might mean to take some other skill you may have and try to market it. Art seems to work for a lot of people. Fixing things, blogging, streaming, YouTube...whatever. If you can do it, you can make money doing it, right? Wrong...at least the majority of the time. I've tried this one before too. I have a biology degree. I like reptiles. Why not breed ball pythons into interesting morphs, then sell the babies? I tried it. Spent thousands on the snakes, the setup, the food. It took as much time and work as a second job, but then the ungrateful noodles didn't fuck. Failure, and another hit to my self-worth. So I tried again. I spent thousands more of agonizingly saved money on a faceting machine and gemstones. Surely this would work. It's entirely in my own hands, no hoping for animals to have sex and the genes to align and blah blah blah. Nope, failure again. No interest. At all. I cut gemstones, people say "Ooohhh, pretty," then run back to buying their porn and video games.

The key in all these cases isn't just that they don't work most of the time... it's that the mere suggestions give the subtle implication that YOU are the reason you're broke. "There are ways to make a good living out there," they say. "If it's not working, it's a failure in you, not the system." Others are more blunt. They call unwillingness to work like a slave, believing that the system is rigged against you, and the inability to do "simple" things like save or invest "excuses" or "whining." Seeing that grinds you down. Makes you feel like a useless burden. A flawed person who's going nowhere. A failure.

Is there a solution? Yes, actually. It's blinding in its simplicity, but sooo very difficult for us to do. Give up on the American Dream. The system is upheld by the hope that it still works, and those who are being violently fucked over by it will defend it simply because "It might be my turn next." Hope is a powerful tool in the right circumstances, but right now it's being used against us.

Yes, Markiplier got rich on YouTube, Swifty got rich playing WoW, people got rich off BitCoin or winning the lottery, or whatever the fuck else, but they are the exceptions, not the rule. They are the carrot being held up to tempt us to keep running in the hamster wheel, while the state of some other countries like Venezuela is the stick being used to scare us out of asking for change.

For every success story, there are a million failures. Markiplier was the success, so thousands upon thousands of people tried to do what he did...and failed. FNAF exploded and made the developer rich, so thousands tried to become Indy game developers and couldn't even break even. The problem is that so many people still believe they can become rich. You. Can. Not.

We need to give up on this whole idea of getting rich and focus instead on living a comfortable, happy life. If we do that, we won't be afraid to change the system so that it's harder for us to get rich, but easier for us to get happy. To have hope, we must give up hope. To achieve the American Dream, we have to rewrite the dream so that it's attainable for the majority, not the one in a million cases. In order to get what we want most, we have to admit that as things are, we'll never see it.

We are the most powerful force in this country. Us. The people. The politicians will do what we tell them and keep their cushy, comfortable jobs, or they won't and they'll be gone. That's our carrot and stick. It's time we used them.

I've been dealing with what I thought was an ear infection for about a month now. I didn't feel any pain, but considering my long, tragic history with my ears, that's not surprising. It takes an infection of pretty epic proportions to cause me to feel anything. I went in to the ENT today to, I thought, get some antibiotics. Come to find out that there's no infection. No swelling, no fluid, no inflammation, no wax... nothing. So they run a hearing test to compare to my last one a few years ago. The full suite of tests indicated that I have fairly pronounced nerve damage in my left ear. There is also a pattern of hearing loss in both ears over the past decade that has a fairly poor prognosis. I'm starting a heavy course of Prednisone, as it's been known to help stop and reverse nerve damage, but the odds are against me. What the odds are in favor of is me eventually going completely deaf in the next decade or two. Longer if the gradual pattern holds, but shorter if there are more precipitous drops like what I just experienced. This is progressive nerve damage, so cochlear implants won't help. They rely on the nerves remaining functional and simply take the place of damaged physical structures. I can't even begin to relate how terrified I am of going deaf, especially after having grown up being able to hear. If I was born deaf, I wouldn't know what I was missing. I do know what I'll be losing though, and that really scares me. I'm not sure what I can do aside from hope that medical technology advances to the point where it can either regenerate my nerves or mechanically replace/bypass them. In the meantime, this news has ensured that my fugue will continue. I was planning on getting back on telegram and trying to restart my social life, but this just kicked me back into the pit I've spent months trying to claw my way out of. I'm sure I'll be back... eventually. Might be in a month, might be in a year. Who can say? Until then though, I have misfortunes on which to ruminate.

After the 2016 election, people were asking how Trump won. Many said they voted for him because he was a businessman who promised to make America rich again. To bring back jobs. People on the left were skeptical. Trump won on the backs of white, middle class voters. Why are they worrying about jobs? Are we sure it wasn't Trump's ability to appeal to.the lowest common denominator? His profoundly racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, elitist, nationalist rhetoric surely just motivated all the evil scumlords to come out of their holes and vote, right?

Allow me to answer...78% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. Millennials are the first generation who are worse off than the one before us. Most people can't afford to buy homes, buy cars, go on vacations, retire, pay for college... The American Dream is all but dead, and that scares and angers people. This is the source of much of the discontent that Trump tapped into. He wasn't making up demons to scare voters, he was using ones that already existed. He did manage to scapegoat several groups that aren't responsible, but that only succeeded because there was already a problem. The thing that Trump and the Republicans refuse to acknowledge is that it's not the fault of immigrants, or the "Welfare State," or bad trade deals. It's the fault of Trump and the Republicans. Trickle-down economics was a Reagan policy. Deregulation is a Republican hallmark. The people responsible will NEVER accept blame for ruining things for everyone else. They'll blame lazy Millennials never taking responsibility for their lives, cheaters who scam the system and steal money through Welfare and Disability, immigrants for coming in and stealing our jobs, foreign countries for tempting our corporations to use their pseudo-slave labor.

Trump won because he said he'd make America great again. In the minds of most of his voters, America was great when the American Dream was still attainable. If the Democrats have a candidate who ignores this issue, Trump will win again. Climate Change is the greatest existential threat facing humanity...but it won't decide the next election. Neither will immigration, or Russian collusion, or how much of a landfill of a human being one of the candidates is. It won't even be the economy. The economy is doing great...the majority of people just can't feel it. Promise to ease the financial pain of the average American, to make things so their children can succeed in life, and you win.

Edit: Some of this stuff is easy to find through polling and statistical data. Some, though, requires some critical thinking. Look at the approval/disapproval numbers over time for Donald Trump. It's remarkably steady. Look at the few places it dips and surges, then correlate those to the events at that time. His numbers didn't show substantial movement when his negotiations with North Korea failed, when he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, when he cancelled the Iran nuclear deal, or when he openly sided with Russia over the US intelligence agencies. They haven't much changed since the Mueller Report ended with a fart rather than a bang. Where you do see a precipitous drop, though, is during the government shutdown. That shutdown was caused by Trump trying to force Congress to fund his border wall, the largest and loudest promise from his campaign. That is significant. It means that his base started turning on him when he threatened jobs. Jobs are more important than the wall. That's why his approval rating went back to its resting state shortly after the shutdown ended, despite Trump failing to get funding for his precious wall. I know a lot of people are bound and determined to hate Trump voters over all the shit they ushered into the White House with Trump...but for many, those are simply compromises they were willing to make over their main concern, not the main selling point. Don't allow your vendetta to blind you to the issues or Trump WILL win again.

If you live in the United States, this is an essential topic that needs to be addressed. If you're not American, feel free to read on and see how our country is going to shit.

The Donald Trump administration has allowed federal adoption agencies in South Carolina to use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the ruling of the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case to actively and openly discriminate against others based on their own religious bigotry. They now have the ability to deny the right to adopt children to LGBT+, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Atheist parents. They can now refuse adoption services to anyone who isn't a straight, cisgendered, Protestant Christian. This sets a terrifying precedent that opens the door for a level of discrimination not seen before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Don't forget, these are FEDERAL AGENCIES paid for by our tax dollars. This makes it possible for people who offend "religious sensibilities" of the clerks/administrators of any government agency to be denied simply on that ground. If federal adoption agencies can refuse service to anyone that doesn't parrot their religious beliefs, then what's to stop Social Security, Food Stamps, Housing, or any other agency from doing the same?

{Sources: https://slate.com/news-and-politics.....mpression=true
https://www.them.us/story/lgbtq-ado.....egislation/amp }

So what can we do? We need to contact our legislators and DEMAND that they address this blatant attack on civil liberties.
Go here to find your district's Representative
https://www.house.gov/representativ.....representative
Go here to find your Senators https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC
It would also be helpful to contact the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union.
https://www.splcenter.org/contact-us
https://www.aclu.org/contact-us

If you live in the third world shithole known as South Carolina, then definitely call your state Representatives, Senators, and Governor and tell them unequivocally that you will not tolerate this kind of discrimination and bigotry. Make it clear that you will vote them out as soon as possible if they don't immediately rectify their evil decision.

As I previously mentioned in a journal about 10 days ago, I'm making a daily series of tweets on animals that humans have driven to extinction. Again, if you care about this issue, I strongly encourage you to spread the word. Too many people either don't know how grievous the consequences of their actions are or don't care. The only way to mitigate that is to show them what's been lost already. If I were an artist, I'd draw pictures of these animals and upload them. Unfortunately, my creative abilities lie elsewhere.

Day 1: Great Auk https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....889212928?s=19
Day 2: Caribbean Monk Seal https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....066957824?s=19
Day 3: Axolotl
https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....464261634?s=19
Day 4: Pinta Island Tortoise https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....124168192?s=19
Day 5: Thylacine https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....627726336?s=19
Day 6: Passenger Pigeon https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....392950785?s=19
Day 7: Golden Toad https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....183445505?s=19
Day 8: Round Island Burrowing Boa https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....325917696?s=19
Day 9: Eastern Cougar https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....629811200?s=19
Day 10: Dodo
https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....649407490?s=19
Day 11: Toolache Wallaby https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....583481857?s=19
Day 11-B: Aurochs https://twitter.com/Albeon_Draken/s.....564401664?s=19

Each one seems shorter than the last. 31 down, ?? to go. I'm not quite at the halfway point numerically, but I think I might be there from a perception point of view.

I've decided that I can no longer in good conscience just sit back and idly bitch about the state of the environment and how the officials we elect handle it. I am starting a project where I will post a species driven to extinction by humans on Twitter every day. I will then move on to species that are very likely to go extinct imminently. The goal is to put a face on the statistics, and to impress upon people just how real the problems are.

If the potential loss of all of Earth's animals (including us) is an issue that is near and dear to your heart, or even if you find it somewhat important, please go to https://twitter.com/albeon_draken and retweet my daily extinction tweets. If you don't have a Twitter, then you can help by posting a journal pointing people in my direction. I'm not doing this for follows or likes or retweets. This is, in my opinion, the defining issue of our generation and the most dire threat that's ever faced us as a species. We need to fix this.

P.S. the extinct animal of the day was the Great Auk.

An argument with some creature of amoeboid intelligence on Twitter got me thinking about this topic, and I'd like to know other people's opinions, especially those of people from other countries that may not be as... relentlessly capitalistic as the USA. Skip down to the bottom for a tl;dr list of my questions without having to read the novel. Context might be missing for a few, but they should all be fairly easy to answer.

The subject is, of course, money and how much is too much. Beyond all reason, a vast majority of the people living in this country are against taxes while simultaneously being viciously defensive of those things that tax money provides for them. Oddly enough, my fellow countrymen *gags* are not only against taxes on their income bracket, which usually falls into the category of lower or middle class, but they're also against taxes on the super rich. Now why would so many people, even those who are, for all intents and purposes, the working poor, be against a higher tax burden being levied against the richest people in the country? The answer is as simple as it is stupid. Many of these people hold the belief, either overtly or lurking somewhere within their psyche, that they will one day be rich, and therefore any obstacles placed before the rich today will be obstacles for them tomorrow. Needless to say, this is no less ludicrous than those who gleefully talk about "when" they win the lottery, but still it is as persistent as it is pervasive.

Next, I want to talk about the rich. Their minds are as inscrutable to me as those of an alien. They hate taxes at least as much as their poorer aspirants, if not more. But why? In my final year working at Comcast, the CEO of the company took home about $18.5 million. Even at a 75% tax rate (well above what it currently is) he would still net $4.6 million. More than most people would hope to earn in a lifetime. Is this gentleman being substantially disadvantaged by a higher tax rate? He still makes more than enough money to not only live, but live more lavishly than most of us could ever hope to comprehend. Yet he, and most others who make money on such a grand scale, not only fight taxation with the same vigor as those who can barely afford to put food on the table, but they also tend to hoard their money. Millionaires become billionaires, accumulating money they could never hope to spend, and still they want more.

Now, the philosophical questions. How much is too much? A lot of people will say that most millionaires and billionaires have earned their money. But have they? Have they really? Is it really possible for one person to "earn" thousands of dollars every day, year after year? Are they actually doing anything with that kind of value? I find that hard to swallow.

The best I can do is try to equate it to something I do with something a billionaire does and see if I can make sense of the work/reward ratio. I'm a writer. So is JK Rowling. Let's use that. JK Rowling, by writing the Harry Potter series, earned roughly $1 billion. Now, let's do some math. I know that each of her books can vary pretty drastically in length. I'm going to average out the total amount of time spent on the whole series as 7 work years, or 7 years of 40 hour work weeks. About 14,000 hours in total. That means that Rowling earned about $71,400 per hour of work. Is there any job or career that could or should be worth that much pay? Bear in mind that the BEST doctors generally make $500 per hour or less, excepting some special cases, and they are literally saving lives. So what justifies this massive disparity? Food for thought.

Next up is why this happens? Why is so much of the money so heavily concentrated in such a small portion of the population? How do some people manage to earn such an obscene amount of money when the overwhelming majority will never even make a tiny fraction of that amount? Is there anything that can be done to help to equalize things a bit? Unfortunately, no. Outside of taxation, there's no other solution. Let's look again at writers. I'm in the process of writing a novel. Does that mean I'm going to be making a billion once I release it? No. Perhaps it's because I'm not quite as good at it as Rowling. I'd like to think I'm at least 1/20 as good as her though. Does that guarantee me $50 million? Nope. Wait, wait, she wrote 7 books. I'm writing 1. That means I'll make about $7.15 million, right? Wrong. The fact is, almost universally, with millionaires and billionaires, they make their money in ways that doesn't break down in the sane ways as most of us do. They usually sell a product of some sort, be it movies, video games, oil, cars, computers, software...whatever have you. Thousands of people write books every year, yet even earning $1 million as an author would be an amazing success, far beyond even my wildest hopes for my book.

The fact is that there is no way to even out the money these people make. Every author makes a different amount per hour. If you fix the prices of books, then the authors who write things that are less popular will suffer far more than those who have popular books. The same goes for cars. If you make it so that all coupes cost $5000, all sedans cost $7500, all SUVs cost $10000, then what would happen? Everybody would own Jaguars and Ferraris while Hyundai and Nissan went out of business.

Okay, so price fixing doesn't work, how do we solve income inequality? We can't change human nature and make people only keep a reasonable amount and not hoard money. We can't fix prices to try to ensure a more even distribution of profits. What else is there? Forcible redistribution of wealth? Nope. We've tried that...well, "we" haven't, but other countries have. Communism. It didn't work out very well. That goes back to human nature. In order to control how much money everybody in a country gets, you have to grant almost absolute power to the government. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even if we manage to form an incorruptible government, humans aren't immortal. The incorruptible ones would grow old and die, and eventually it's a guarantee that someone would come into power with the intention to abuse it. Then that would be the end of that. So what do we do? At this point, we need to have strong taxation, especially on the rich. The rich will still be rich and the poor will still be poor, but maybe the gap won't be quite so pronounced. I don't know...I think capitalism is starting to show that it has a lifespan, and it's heading into the geriatric phase for the United States.

Finally, I'll sum up my questions that are scattered around in here. I certainly built a wall of text here.
1. What is your opinion of taxes?
2. Should the burden of taxation be placed more heavily on the rich? If no, why not? If yes and your reasons differ from mine, why?
3. Is there such a thing as earning too much money?
3a. Where is the line drawn between an appropriate amount of earning and an inappropriate amount?
4. Do you think income inequality is a problem?
5. What are your ideas on addressing income inequality?
6. Do you think, as I do, that capitalist systems have limited "lifespans" due to the steady concentration of wealth slowly strangling the masses?
6a. If no, why not? What do you think is currently happening and what do you think the conclusion will be?

I'm officially opening commissions and trades for cut gems.

The price/value of the stones will be determined by the following factors:

1. Material in question
2. Complexity of the cut (affects time spent working)
3. Size of the end product

I do have some limitations at the moment.
-I can only cut designs on a 96-gear index.
-I can't cut anything under about 1ct due to dop size limitations.
-I will be limiting myself to materials I currently have.

Current materials
1. Lemon citrine - a bright yellow form of quartz. $10-20 per carat.
2. Synthetic Spinel - Deep, dark blue stone. $15-25 per carat.
3. Amethyst - bright purple/violet variety of quartz. $20-40 per carat.
4. Synthetic Alexandrite - deep purple in incandescent light, changes to bright blue-green in sunlight. $35-50 per carat.
(More options coming soon)

If commissioning an actual stone is too complex, annoying, or otherwise inconvenient, I will also be selling/trading off stones that I cut on my own. Just keep an eye out for the uploads. As a free service to anyone who buys a gem, I will provide information and links on where to get jewelry in which to mount it.

Currently for sale:

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/30083799/ - Blue Spinel in an octagonal pinwheel cut. The price is $90. More info is on the submission page.

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/30118814/ - Amethyst in a simple baguette cut. Price is $42.

**All prices do not include shipping, which must be paid separately based on location**

This is just to let everyone know that I took much higher quality photos of 4 of the 6 gems that I completed in the past month (the other 2 have already been gifted to family). If you'd like to see these gems in much better detail, go ahead and give them another look.

I notice this a lot on social media when I leave comments. They don't even need to be attacking or correcting something. I could just be giving an opinion, sharing some information, or otherwise just saying something vaguely intelligent, and people seem to get very upset about it. It's often not even the person I'm responding to, but other random viewers who just can't stand someone saying something that isn't a meme, adoration, or poorly-worded insults. I just want to know why, in recent years, being intelligent and well-spoken triggers so many people. If I was being some kind of snob and talking condescendingly, that would be one thing, but even when I take great pains to be polite, I still catch shit.

Since I've started posting more of my cut gemstones in various places, I've gotten a few questions about faceting. I'm putting this journal up as a way to answer some of the more basic questions that I've been getting.

1. What is faceting?

Faceting is the process of cutting gemstones into particular shapes. These shapes are composed of a series of flat surfaces (facets) designed to catch light going into the gem and bounce it around before sending it back out the front of the gem. This gives a bright, sparkling effect to the stone that many people find appealing.

2. What kind of stones can you facet?

Technically, any rock can be faceted. The process is wasted on anything that is not transparent though, since in opaque and translucent materials, the light isn't able to bounce around inside and give the stone the "fire" that is typical of faceted gemstones. The material must also be of high quality. Cracks, inclusions, (tiny flaws or foreign object) and abnormalities in the stone will negatively affect the final product. There are two other ways of treating stones that are better suited for lower quality material: tumbling and cabbing (making them into a cabochon). Tumbling involves putting stones into barrel shaped containers and having them rotate over and over along with grit of finer and finer particles similar to a tumble dryer for clothes, except the stones are tumbled for days or even weeks. The end product is a roughly globular shaped stone that is smooth and shiny. These are usually used as beads. The lowest quality stones are usually tumbled, and even common rocks from the ground can be made pretty like this. Cabbing involves grinding the stones into a regular shape with a convex surface, then polishing these to a high lustre. This is normally done to either semi-precious or precious stones that are not transparent (opal, agate, jasper, Jade) or stones that are normally transparent, but are not of high enough quality for faceting. I'm planning on getting a cabbing machine once I can save up the $1500 and get the space necessary.

3. How much value does faceting add?

That depends on the stone. For example, I just bought a 25ct parcel of Rose de France amethyst for about $30. When I finish, I'll probably have about 10ct of cut gems that are worth about $40/ct. That may seem like a substantial increase, but if you consider that this will probably be 3 stones, each taking about 8 hours of labor, then $264 of that approximate $400 in value would simply be the equivalent of my 24 hours of labor at minimum wage in my state. That means the profit would be about $100 beyond what simply working that amount of time would have earned me. That's for a fairly inexpensive gemstone though. On the other extreme is something like Tanzanite. That would cost me about $1000 for a 10ct facet-grade rough stone. The end result would be a 4ct stone that would be worth around $3000-$4000. This would also only be about 8 hours of labor, but the profit would be $2000-$3000. The more valuable the stone, the more expensive the rough is, but the returns are much higher on the finished product.

4. Do you make jewelry?

No. I don't make any jewelry myself. I may look into doing that in the future, but right now, I lack any of the equipment necessary to work the metal. I'd need either metalworking equipment like a lathe and belt sander, casting equipment such as a smelter, forge, and crucible, or a 3D printer along with a decent CAD program and the skills necessary to use it. None of these are feasible in my current situation. In the meantime, I can purchase "blank" jewelry online fairly easily and then mount the gems I cut in it.

5. Is there a difference between "natural" and "synthetic" gems?

Not really. The main difference is in the value. Synthetic gemstones are lab-grown variants of the natural gemstones. They're the same material with the same chemical compounds, just no flaws or inclusions like natural gems have. For that reason, they're far less valuable than natural stones. Yeah, I know, it makes no damn sense to me either. Natural gemstones are rare, especially at facet quality, and that drives their price much higher than stones that you just get from a lab. This is especially true of stones that are extremely rare in nature at facet quality. Emerald, tanzanite, alexandrite, and ruby are all very difficult to find without substantial flaws, cracks, translucency, and inclusions. The synthetic alexandrite I just cut a couple days ago, for example, is worth about $45/ct. At 5.8ct, that makes it worth $260 or so. If that exact same stone was natural alexandrite, it would be worth around $40,0000/ct, or $232,000 for the whole stone. Aside from value, though, synthetic gemstones are a perfectly viable substitute for natural ones. (Please note that I'm talking about synthetic stones, NOT simulated stones. Simulated stones are fake, like blue glass or cubic zirconia in place of sapphire.)

Those are the main questions I've gotten. If you have any more, feel free to ask them here.

Now that I've gotten my polishing lap and can actually finish the cutting process on gemstones, I've had some people ask me if I might start doing commissions for them. The answer is "yes and no." These are my reasons.

Gemstones aren't like art, where you have a blank canvas and can easily draw whatever you (or the commissioners) want. When cutting a gemstone, you're starting with a piece of rough. High-quality rough is pretty pricey. Even for less popular stones, like peridot, citrine, or tourmaline, a good quality piece of rough will run over $50 for a decent sized piece, possibly even more. That means a fairly substantial up-front cost before work even begins.

Next, there's the cutting process itself. Natural gemstones tend to have strange shapes, cracks, flaws, inclusions, different color profiles based on orientation...a LOT of factors to take into account. When you're cutting a stone, you need to evaluate each piece of rough and cut it based on what shape will best allow you to get the best quality finished stone and utilize the largest amount of usable material. Someone trying to commission a specific cut would make that difficult. You might wind up wasting carats (and therefore, money) trying to cut a piece of rough in a way that's suboptimal for its individual characteristics.

Then, there's the cuts. Some types of cuts are more complex than others, and I'm talking about degrees of magnitude here. The shape and number of facets varies wildly. The amount of time, therefore, it would take to complete the stone could go from 5 or 6 hours to over 20 hours. A fair price for a simple cut would be massively underpriced for a complex cut.

Then, there's the stone valuation. With gemstones, they tend to be valued per carat. This value is extremely variable based on the type of stone, the cut it's been given, and the color profile. The amethyst I just cut, for example, would run around $40/ct. At 1.8ct, that would give that amethyst a value of $72, give or take. The difficulty here is that rough gems have different valuation criteria than cut gems. Once you cut something, the color is usually affected, the weight is decreased (you generally only have 30-40% of the material that you started with) and any flaws become more apparent. As a result, I can't give an accurate price for the finished product until it's finished.

All these factors together mean that I would be unable to give a commissioner an accurate quote for the price of what they were asking for until I already finished. If the price is too steep, I'm left holding the bag for the hours of work I did and the cost of the rough. I still have a stone I can try to sell, but I have no way of knowing when or if it will sell. Therefore, commissions are probably a no-go in most circumstances. I'll just cut the stones, post them, and let people buy what they want from products that already have a set price.

BUT

There is an exception. Synthetic rough tends to be free of flaws and cracks, have a consistent shape, be of consistent color, and have a fairly regular value. It's also much cheaper than natural rough. I would probably be willing to offer commissions only for synthetic rough. Then, the only real variable would be the complexity of the cut affecting the time spent working on it. That's something I can account for with at least some accuracy.

In conclusion, I would not offer commissions for natural stones, but I would be willing to do so for synthetic stones.


edit: Something I may do is take "requests" or suggestions regarding the next stone/cut I do. That way, people can have me make something they may be interested in buying, and then can decide when it's finished. The only stipulation would be that I would only use rough that I already have available.

First non-practice project is a set of wedding rings for family. Nobody can say I don't set lofty goals for myself. In that regard, I actually think I did fairly well. https://www.furaffinity.net/view/29757881/ I'm very pleased with how this stone came out. Now, work on the stone for the other ring is on hold. My mother's birthday is Friday and then Christmas is coming. I have a lot of work to do. I'm making two pieces for my mother and one for my grandmother. First project is a piece of synthetic color-change alexandrite. After that, more amethyst. Purple is both my mother and grandmother's favorite color, so I'm planning on making them amethyst....somethings for Christmas and my mother gets the alexandrite for her birthday.

Faceting involves lots of hours bent over a machine, straining the eyes to look through a loupe at the miniscule faces of a gemstone to make sure they're sized, shaped, and polished correctly. As hobbies go, most probably wouldn't find it very fun, but I actually enjoy it. Now that I have all my equipment, I may shoot to build up some surplus and get myself into the dealer area of a con. Perhaps Furpoc 2019 or ANE 2020.