Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.
Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.
He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.
Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.
But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.
Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.
Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.
So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?
Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.
Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.
Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.
Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.
Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.
Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.
But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?
Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.
Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.
So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.
Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.
At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.
The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.
Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.
All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.
Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.
But by GOD is he trying.
I was at our local bakery recently and came across a loaf of bread quaintly branded as a “Peasant Loaf”. It was selling for over $6—the irony of this was not lost on me.
In retaliation I have decided to post what I actually think of as a peasant loaf, but with the luxury of finely ground modern flour which is less likely to break your teeth because actual peasant loaf bread is like chewing rocks unless you’re soaking it in soup or stew.
This is a very simple loaf, it requires no special tools and is a fairly forgiving dough for beginners to work with. Also it has the added bonus of looking like an expensive artisan loaf, but costs literal pennies to make once you invest in the basic ingredients.
So what do you need?
Ingredients:
Plain flour (or wholewheat if you prefer)
One sachet of active dry yeast.
Salt.
Water.
Tools:
Bowl
Mug
Prep and bake time total: 2 hours 45 minutes.
Yep, that’s it. You’ll notice that there’s no quantities listed up there, and that’s because you’ll be using the mug to measure everything. This helps to make sure your quantities are consistent, and means that so long as you have a mug and your ingredients, you can make bread. Heck you don’t even need a bowl, it just makes clean up easier.
Again I had Elusive Tumblr Dad help me take the photos so be warned this is going to be fairly image heavy under the cut :D
Step One: Gather your stuff.
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"Which branch of the US military did you say you were again?" Ukyo asked, timidly.
The man sitting across from him with his spine deadly straight stared him down, "Special Forces." He repeated what he had briskly said when they first met.
"Yeah, but is that like the Marines, or...?" Ukyo fumbled for an answer Stanley Snyder was not benevolent enough to give him. Okay then.
Everything about this was strange. A random Japanese sonar operator wasn't reassigned to a top-secret project that multiple nations were cooperating on. Not without much drilling and warning.
Yet he had received none of that. Just a rushed verbal handover. And now he was in the care of this crack team of soldiers, flying to Houston, Texas.
A landlocked city was a strange place to require a sonar operator's presence. So it definitely had to do with something that Ukyo might be able to do for them.
"Any briefing you need to get done?" He asked, hopefully.
Snyder looked away, "I don't think I'm cleared to talk about it."
It was when they made landfall that he finally got more context than what his anxiety-filled nerves cooked up.
"Ah, the second General, brilliant!" A man with a white pompadour greeted him the second Ukyo walked out of the jet.
"I'm just enlisted..." Ukyo tried to correct, only to be cut off.
"Not what I meant. I'm sure Stan didn't think of explaining the situation to you?" The man asked, pulling out a briefcase, "We would've taken more time, but once he made landfall and located you, things got more dire."
He opened the case to reveal a stone statue of a swallow. Ukyo remembered a picture of a whole flock left decorating a tree on his feed in the one second he got to check his phone.
"This is a warning shot." The scientist explained, cryptically.
And then, much less cryptically: "We want you to go to space."
"What." His ears had apparently chosen this exact moment to fail him.
"You'll be accompanied by a student of mine, and a young man I'm assured has remarkable instincts that we are currently trying to contact. We'll explain more at the JSC, but time is running drastically short-" The man continued to talk.
"Xeno, you can't just spill state secrets in the open like this." Snyder frowned, guiding Ukyo along into an SUV anyway.
"Please, Stan, anyone with working braincells can piece together that these are real birds." Xeno scoffed, "And the radio transmission from the future? It doesn't belong to the state."
Snyder had the gall to laugh for the first time since Ukyo had met him, "Alright, you fucking commie. Kid, any pressing questions you wanna ask?"
"You know there's a difference between a submarine and a spaceship, right?" Was his first, panic-stricken question. Before he cringed and backtracked, "Also. Everything. I need to know everything. Been underwater for a really long time."
The others clearly suck at their jobs, and she's already hated by the government. Plus, there's a bunch of dead goons that would gladly help set up training exercises for Robin if she asked!
Vlad and Dan are always telling her to make friends in her own age group anyways.
So she goes and starts trouble when Robin is on patrol, and adamantly refuses to play with any other hero.
Red Hood arrives? She just stops, stares at him in disgust, and disappears.
Nightwing? She waves at him half heartedly and asks when Robin can come out.
Red Robin? Loves planning with him, isn't entirely convinced he's not actually a villain.
Spoiler? Best costume. But also the best at hunting Dani? 0/10. Dani flees on sight.
BlackBat? Girlboss. 10/10. Likes to learn some cool ninja moves from her to practice on Robin.
Batman? Adult. Smells like money. Gross. She makes it a point to stare at him with all the disgust and hatred she can before going invisible and stealing the candy from his belt.
Signal? Creeps her out. Always knows where she is. She does make sure to give him a wave sometimes. He seems pretty cheered up when she does that.
Robin? Time to play time to play time to play. Intense weird plots that serve no real purpose, mazes that always shift, puzzles she put together with Red Robin, holding Robin's other friend Superboy hostage for a really cool battle across the rooftops (Superboy is also like, kinda cool? He prefers to hang out normally, though; although he does agree that Robin needs this level of entertainment for enrichment purposes).
She thinks Robin is having as much fun as her, honestly.
(Damian is, and the rest of the Bats and Supers think it's adorable)
anyway this is my pitch for why thad should join young justice thank u for ur time
*dusting and sweeping out the dust from this account* Hi guys, long time no see!
The real reason why Law’s feeling anxious when he knew Jinbei’s joining The Strawhats lol (though really, it’s most likely because he’s wary of new powerful addition to his rival’s crew, that’s all).
This could explain why he tried so hard to make himself not feeling overly friendly to Strawhat Crew (it’s a lost cause, Law, just let it go).
beautiful fish boys!💕
but i forgot about someone….. oh yeah
Wild Link has many things for exchange tho, just choose wisely