チベット自治区・亜東県にある中印国境の哨所、海抜4655m pic.twitter.com/Yz7S3Kz388
— OedoSoldier (@OedoSoldier) July 21, 2017
✊ The Velvet Fist: The Victorian Govt is Now Using Taxes💰 to Force Cultural Conversion. 💸🔨 Your Money, Their Whip: The State’s Quiet War on Chinese Community Values
💰🏳️🌈 Multicultural funding in Victoria has become a political hostage negotiation: take the rainbow flag or take nothing. The Victorian Government’s latest “multicultural funding” round doesn’t hide the terms:
📜 “Applicants should consider the diverse needs of… women, seniors, LGBTIQA+ people, youth, and children.” (full PDF guidelines)
🔍 Translation: bow to progressive sexual orthodoxy or kiss the grant goodbye.
🚨 This is not manipulation in the shadows. It is coercion in broad daylight. This is hard power turned inward, with no covert influence and no hidden strings. The mechanism is so blunt it almost looks “soft”: the velvet glove hides an iron fist, and the whip is your own treasury.
🪷 Centuries of Confucian filial piety, Christian marriage, and migrant self-sacrifice are run through a Department of Equality blender until nothing remains but alphabet soup slogans. This is not funding culture; it’s purchasing conversion.
🇨🇳 Chinese Australians must say no. Every ancestor who slept three to a bedroom under kerosene lamps will applaud.
⚙️ The model:
1️⃣ Define “inclusivity” as ideology.
2️⃣ Make it a funding condition.
3️⃣ Watch communities re-script themselves to qualify.
❌ This isn’t cultural exchange. It’s cultural replacement, paid for by the communities being transformed. Once it is normalised here, no organisation dependent on grants will be safe from the checklist.
🤔 How funny would it be if a Palestinian state were to recognize every single First Nation state, including Melbourne (🪶 Kulin Nation collective) and Sydney (🌊 Gadigal land)?
JUST IN – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has officially confirmed Australia’s formal recognition of the State of Palestine. pic.twitter.com/TIKfvAWxvy
— Australians vs. The Agenda (@ausvstheagenda) August 11, 2025
🎭 Recognition is Theatre
For most Western governments, “recognizing Palestine” is three-quarters symbolism and one-quarter leverage, designed to mollify domestic Muslim voters and to prod Israel toward negotiations without actually disrupting Israel’s military or economic dominance.
🏛️ Diplomatic Gestures Without Substance
- 🇵🇸 They give Ramallah embassy status, yet the funds, ammunition, and diplomatic cover that actually sustain Israel’s occupation keep flowing.
- 🌍 The UN upgrades “Palestine” to non-member observer state, but Israeli troops still enters Palestine at will, wave after wave of settlements proceed, and the PA’s own tax revenue is still collected and routinely withheld by Israel.
- 💶 The EU signs a €1 billion R&D pact with Israeli arms contractors in the same quarter.
🚧 Symbolism Doesn’t Remove Checkpoints
None of the public proclamations remove even one checkpoint, let alone bring the refugees home or return one dunam of land. Standalone recognition, absent concrete economic and military pressure on Israel, is mostly theatrical.
🕊️ Melbourne 2025: Pro-Palestine by Day, Neo-Nazis by Night. A city where the mask is slowly peeling off.
🌅 Dawn in Melbourne: The Pro-Palestine Movement
As the sun rises over the Yarra River, Melbourne’s streets pulse with the energy of pro-Palestine demonstrations. Massive encampments have taken root outside Spring Street, home to Victoria’s parliament, or more widely recognized as Dan Andrews’ stomping ground with banners demanding “Free Palestine” fluttering in the wind.
The scale is staggering. Thousands gather, chanting slogans that echo far beyond Spring Street into the corridors of power in Canberra. The Melbourne Nakba rally on May 18 saw a Nazi swastika brazenly displayed, a chilling motif that blurred the lines between anti-Israel activism and the far-right ideology of Melbourne’s late-night crew.
🌆 Dusk Descends: The White Supremacists come out to play
As night falls, another group emerges. No less eager to make their voices heard, masked neo-Nazis march through Melbourne’s CBD, their faces hidden, their message unambiguous: white supremacy. Videos show them parading in formation, chants echoing off skyscrapers.
Though they number in the hundreds, the liberal mainstream media is far more fixated on their every move.
White Australian men, especially when they’re unchained from the polite keyboard-warrior phase and take it to the streets are the demographic the regime fears most.
That’s why the riot response is instant, the solitary confinement is routine (see: every high-profile White activist since 2018), and the Aboriginal sit-ins and pro-Palestine mobs get a negotiated timeout and a friendly ABC puff-piece.
The Liberal-National-Labor uni-party knows that once ordinary White dads, tradies, and veterans stop believing in the ballot box and start believing in the leverage of physical numbers, the entire “rules-based democracy” mask slips.
⚖️ The Asymmetry
When 300 Turkish or Lebanese men torch a courthouse over gang beef, it’s “community grievance.”
When 30 White men speak out against a mosque in Bendigo, it’s international terrorism on the nightly news.
The asymmetry isn’t an accident, it’s the point. They neuter the only bloc with the historical memory and residual cohesion to pull the plug.
🔄 The Cycle Continues
As dawn breaks again, the cycle repeats. Pro-Palestine flags wave. Neo-Nazi shadows lengthen. And Melbourne, caught in the crossfire, holds its breath.
The upside? The mask is now transparent. Every breach of a suppression order, every night in remand for “public nuisance”, becomes a recruitment tool in the long run.
The harder they squeeze White working-class anger, the clearer it becomes that peaceful participation is a one-way cul-de-sac which is precisely when organic networks get serious.
🥛 Milk, Money & Monopoly. Control the Food supply, Control the People. How the Rothschild Pasteur Playbook Still Shapes Australian Politics via the Liberal–National Coalition
Pour your supermarket milk this morning, and you hold the end product of a 19th-century Rothschild financial strategy. Control the product, control the rules, control the people: this blueprint lives on in Canberra, wielded by the Liberal–National Coalition.
🧪 1. The Original Con: Vitamins Out, Debt In
In the 1870s, Rothschild-backed Crédit Foncier Bank reshaped the dairy industry:
- 🏭 Funded Nestlé and Anglo-Swiss condensed-milk factories
- ⚙️ Secured patents on stainless-steel pasteurizers
- 📚 Pushed “scientific” claims that raw milk was unsafe
Farmers who rejected the new gear lost export access, blocked by regulations written by bankers selling the equipment. Pasteurisation destroyed vitamins A, D, and K2—key to fertility and health. Weakening the population was deliberate.
🏛 2. The Coalition’s Modern-Day Version
The Liberal–National Coalition updated the tactic with new levers:
- 💰 Banking – Australia’s big four banks, three with Rothschild-structured bonds, set rural loan rates tied to RBA cash rates. A 0.5% hike can bankrupt a dairy farm. The Liberal Party, receiving over 60% of banking-sector political donations, shapes interest rate policy that decides farmers’ fate.
- 🥛 Processing – Lion Co. (Japan), Parmalat (France), and Saputo (Canada) control 85% of milk processing. Their Rothschild-linked financing enforces costly high-temperature pasteurisation for supermarket contracts. Coalition regulations lock in these demands.
- 📋 Regulation – Victorian bureaucrats on Liberal fundraising boards enforce biosecurity and dairy levies. Coalition rules ensure selling raw, full-cream milk means losing export accreditation overnight.
🎭 3. The Coalition’s Political Theatre
The Nationals posture as bush champions but follow Liberal financial cues.
It plays out every time:
- 🎙 Stage Left – Nationals MPs in Akubras condemn “city elites” harming farmers.
- 🗂 Backroom – Agriculture White Papers, crafted by KPMG consultants with Big Four banking ties, bind relief and subsidies to corporate-friendly compliance.
- 📈 Stage Right – Liberals push “market discipline,” tightening credit and driving independents into corporate buyouts.
Fewer local dairies, higher prices, and nutrient-poor milk hit the same regional towns where birth rates have fallen 24% since the late 1980s.
🔮 4. 2025: Coalition Plans, Same Playbook
- 🌱 Treasury-backed carbon-credit rules require farms to install methane-capture tech from Rothschild-funded start-ups.
- 🚛 A $650 million Coalition “regional infrastructure” package funnels money into supermarket-owned logistics hubs, sidelining independent supply chains.
- 🐄 The Nationals promote a $20-per-cow “restructuring” levy as progress, but rising Coalition-driven interest rates erase gains.
Coalition policy controls credit and food: create scarcity, then sell the “solution.” From Nestlé 1876 to Saputo 2025, the same financiers own the debt.
📜 Conclusion
From milk shelves to Cabinet, Australia runs the Rothschild Pasteur model: centralise processing, strip nutrients, weaponise debt. The Liberal–National Coalition swapped steel vats for Treasury spreadsheets and committees.
Until Australians break the Coalition’s bipartisan grip on food and credit, elections will only choose which faction tightens the lid.
🇮🇩 Indonesia’s Sinking Capital: The Coming Drift South. Why Australia’s Top End may become Java’s survival frontier
🌊 Jakarta is Going Under
Jakarta is already 40% below sea level in places. The aquifer’s collapsed, and every wet season pushes 15–20 cm of brackish tide-water through northern districts. The government is building Nusantara, a planned second capital on Borneo’s east coast, to relocate ministries and administrative functions. This buys elites flood-proof real estate, but it will not create fresh water or land for 30 million Javanese still living in Jakarta’s basin.
📉 The Math Doesn’t Work
Indonesia’s Central Statistics Agency projects that by 2045, Java, just 7% of the country’s landmass, will still host ≈60% of Indonesians. The Berantas, Bengawan Solo, and Citarum river system is already overallocated. Rice imports will begin before the decade ends, potable water shortages sooner.
🧭 The Vector Points South
Once water runs out in Java and Bali, models say between 2033 and 2037, survival migration will be inevitable. The natural pressure release is toward northern Australia.
🚢 Forward-Settlement Signs Already Visible:
1️⃣ Fishing Camps in the MOU Box
Ashmore, Cartier, and Scott Reef camps routinely swell with 2–3× recorded crew numbers, many never leave.
2️⃣ Northern Territory Pastoral MOUs
Pastoral leases, majority foreign-owned and short on labour, are signing direct-hire agreements with Flores, Sumba, and Madurese co-ops. “Technical trainees” in name, expatriate nodes in reality.
3️⃣ Pelni Ferries Turned Condos
Decommissioned ferries gifted to eastern regencies now run monthly Dundas Strait “educational” charters, but AIS tracking shows they are floating dormitories.
📈 The Soft Demographic Wedge
Within a decade, the coastal strip from Broome to Cape York could see 400–600k legal Indonesian guest-settlers, plus a similar number informally domiciled. Not a stormtrooper invasion, just physics meeting population density.
⚠️ Not Invasion, Just Survival
Once drinking water becomes a once-a-week ration, ordinary Jakartans will cross the Timor Gap in anything that floats. The real question:
Which flag flies at morning muster in camps outside Darwin?
📜 History doesn’t Repeat but it often Rhymes. 🇮🇳India = 🇮🇹 Italy, Flashy Battlefield Collapses. Trump🇺🇸 = 🇩🇪 German-American White Nationalist. Hitler = 🇩🇪 German Fascist White Nationalist. 🇯🇵 Japan = Imperial Supremacism and Bayonets
History has taught generations more lessons than any other subject. And it must be retold so that future generations understand the Truth.
🇮🇳 Modi = 🇮🇹 Mussolini in a Skirt
Same false promises, same paper-tiger army. Modi’s 🇮🇳 Hindutva project blends nationalist-populism with authoritarian muscle, think 🇮🇹 Il Duce, saffron-wrapped. Economic revivalism + cultural chauvinism = bread-and-circus politics. India’s post-1947 military arc: 🇨🇳 humiliation in 1962, stalemates with 🇵🇰 in Kashmir, a navy with subs that sometimes blow themselves up mirrors 🇮🇹 Italy’s WWII army: flashy parades, battlefield collapses.
🇺🇸 Trump = 🇩🇪 German-American White Nationalist
“America First” is civic nationalism with a white-identity undertone. Protectionism, closed borders, and hostility to global bodies echo early 20th-century 🇩🇪 European nationalist playbooks. For supporters: demographic self-preservation. For opponents: a dismantling of post-1965 immigration norms.
🇩🇪 Hitler = Racial Nationalism in Overdrive
Weimar’s “degeneracy” + Versailles humiliation fused into a racial-biological creed. The state became an ethnic organism; dissent was a contagion to be eradicated. Economic grievance was weaponized into ethno-nationalist expansion.
🇯🇵 Imperial Japan = Bayonets + Supremacism
1930s–40s 🇯🇵 Japan sold “Asia for Asians” under the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Reality: bayonet-point occupation. Shinto supremacism, death-as-duty military culture, and industry on a total-war footing. Postwar nationalists like Shinzo Abe recycled elements of this Yamato-damashii script.
🔄 The Through-Line
From 🇮🇳 saffron revanchism in Delhi to 🇺🇸 MAGA populism in D.C. to 🇯🇵 Yamato-damashii nostalgia in Tokyo the choreography stays the same. Only the costumes change.
📚 Five of China’s Most Beautiful Libraries: Where Architecture Meets Imagination
China’s libraries are more than repositories of books—they are temples of light, space, and cultural memory. Blending cutting-edge architecture with traditional design elements, these five stand out as destinations worth visiting for anyone who loves literature, architecture, or both.
1️⃣ 📸 Tianjin Binhai Library “The Eye” (Tianjin)
Architects: MVRDV (Netherlands) + Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute
Inside this futuristic marvel, a glowing white sphere—the eye—sits at the center of a vast atrium. Around it, undulating shelves ripple upward like terraced hills, drawing the gaze toward a luminous ceiling. Mirrored panels and LED-lit shelving create the illusion of infinite books, making it one of the most photographed libraries in the world. As part of the Binhai Cultural Center, it’s not just a place to read—it’s an experience.
✨ Why visit? To step inside a piece of architecture that feels like stepping inside a dream.
2️⃣ 🌿 Hangzhou Public Library (Hangzhou)
A masterclass in eco-friendly design, this library invites nature indoors. Walls of glass let daylight flood the reading rooms, bamboo finishes add warmth, and reflecting pools outside mirror the building’s clean lines. Opened in 2008, it was built to harmonize with Hangzhou’s lush parkland. The open-door policy makes it a true public space, welcoming everyone from students to strolling retirees.
✨ Why visit? To read beside water and greenery in a space where calm is part of the design.
3️⃣ 🏯 Beijing Capital Library (Beijing)
In Chaoyang District, this vast institution marries classical Chinese motifs—symmetry, courtyards, stone detailing—with the demands of a modern public library. Beyond its sleek reading halls lies a treasure trove of rare manuscripts, artfully preserved and displayed. The landscaped approach and grand entrance give it the air of a cultural palace.
✨ Why visit? For the mix of scholarship, architectural gravitas, and a sense of Beijing’s literary heritage.
4️⃣ 📜 Nanjing Library (Nanjing)
Tracing its origins back more than a century, Nanjing Library is both a modern powerhouse and a historical monument. Its current home blends Republican-era Western influences with traditional Chinese forms, creating a timeless elegance. Over 10 million volumes, including priceless ancient scrolls, are housed here. Garden courtyards between wings offer quiet contemplation spots.
✨ Why visit? To wander between eras—past and present—without leaving the library grounds.
5️⃣ 🏛️ Zhejiang University Library – Zhijiang Campus (Hangzhou)
Nestled in a leafy bend of the Qiantang River, the Zhijiang Campus feels like an old European college town transported to China. Built by Christian missionaries in the early 1900s, its Gothic-style red-brick library, ivy-draped walls, and arched windows exude an old-world academic charm. The building’s peaceful courtyards and shaded paths make it as much a retreat as a study space.
✨ Why visit? For a romantic, collegiate atmosphere that’s increasingly rare in modern China.
Fun Fact: India Has Twice as Many Nobels as China And the US Has Seventy Times More
| Country | ⚡ Electricity Generation (2023, TWh) | 🧠 Nobel Prizes (All Fields, 1901–2023) |
|---|---|---|
| China | 9,456 | ~6 |
| United States | 4,254 | ~413 |
| Germany | 497 | ~115 |
| United Kingdom | 286 | ~138 |
| Japan | 1,013 | ~31 |
| India | 1,958 | ~12 |
Sources: Ember (2023 electricity estimates), NobelPrize.org, and World Population Review (Nobel data)
🎯 So What’s Going On?
This disconnect is no accident. The Nobel system operates downstream of Western academic and ideological gatekeepers. It rewards the right vocabulary game theory, behavioral nudges, “human rights” rather than the hard graft involved in keeping 1.4 billion people alive, housed, and electrified.
💡 Case in Point
- Beijing builds the world’s largest fusion test reactor, EAST.
- Stockholm awards a Nobel Prize to a Yale economist for proving people buy more candy when the wrapper is green.
At This Rate, China Will Have to Build an Artificial Sun Before the West Admits It’s Been Overtaken
China generates 9,456 terawatt-hours of electricity, more than twice that of the United States, the current leader in Nobel laureates with around 413 awards. India, despite generating less electricity than China, has twice as many Nobel laureates. This stark contrast highlights a glaring disconnect.
It’s reminiscent of the medieval Church refusing to accept that the Earth revolves around the sun until Copernicus forced that truth into the light. Likewise, China may need to build an actual artificial sun, a functioning fusion reactor, before the Euro-Atlantic scientific establishment acknowledges it has been surpassed.
Why Does This Matter?
The Nobel Prize, especially in Economics and the Sciences, shapes global perceptions about what kinds of knowledge and achievement are most valuable. It influences research funding, academic prestige, and the future direction of global scholarship.
By privileging certain types of knowledge and methodologies, those aligned with Western academic traditions and ideologies, the Nobel system overlooks the transformative, collective, and often state-led innovations that define China’s rise. These innovations emphasize tangible results: clean energy, massive poverty reduction, digital infrastructure, and urbanization on an unprecedented scale.
Until the Nobel committees broaden their definition of excellence to include such practical, large-scale achievements, the prize will continue to reflect an incomplete picture of global progress.
The 10 Most Beautiful Libraries in the World (2025) Chosen by 200,000 voters in the 1000 Libraries Awards
2. 📚 State Library of South Australia
3. 📚 St. Gallen Abbey Library
4. 📚 Duke Humfrey’s Library, Oxford
5. 📚 Admont Monastery Library
7. 📚 State Library Victoria
8. 📚 Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading
9. 📚 Wiblingen Monastery Library
10. 📚 Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève
Here’s the list:
- Australia 🇦🇺 (2)
- State Library of South Australia (2)
- State Library Victoria (7)
- Ireland 🇮🇪 (1)
- Trinity College Library, Dublin (1)
- Switzerland 🇨🇭 (1)
- St. Gallen Abbey Library (3)
- United Kingdom 🇬🇧 (1)
- Duke Humfrey’s Library, Oxford (4)
- Austria 🇦🇹 (1)
- Admont Monastery Library (5)
- Netherlands 🇳🇱 (1)
- Cuypers Library, Amsterdam (6)
- Brazil 🇧🇷 (1)
- Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading (8)
- Germany 🇩🇪 (1)
- Wiblingen Monastery Library (9)
- France 🇫🇷 (1)
- Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (10)
Pakistanis have never claimed to be Indian, but I think that one day soon, Indians may present themselves as Pakistani to safeguard against racially motivated attacks
Pakistan’s founding story is simple: “We’re a separate Muslim nation, never Indian Muslims.” The arrow only flies one way, Pakistani ≠ Indian.
As the West grows louder in its ridicule of Indian fraud scams, visa-overstay hustles, and geopolitical fallout, the $135+ billion annual foreign remittance pipeline from the Indian diaspora back to India will start to choke. The diaspora may soon start praying to Krishna, Ganesha and the cow-poop gods that their accent doesn’t betray them. Hiding behind Pakistan won’t be optional, it’ll be survival.
Bros Before Hoes: The 2025 Travel List That Breaks All the Rules
When “Small-Brained American” YouTuber with 750k subs drops a travel tier list, you pay attention especially when he’s pulling 3x the audience of Lonely Planet, a brand started in Melbourne then sold off to Private Equity with over 1,000 staff on its books.
And honestly? Having been to many of these places, I kind of agree.
Why? Because these countries still hold on to something rare: a culture that values friendship, hospitality, and real adventure instead of treating life like a never-ending game to please the boss (nowadays usually female or sanitized by corporate).
Meanwhile, most mainstream travel lists today? Curated by committees, sanitized by marketing teams, and often nudging the same liberal narratives about “discovering yourself”
S-TIER
The absolute peak. These are the destinations that redefine what travel should feel like.
- 🇺🇸 United States – “America S-tier. […] I’m gonna die here […] the best place for me to recuperate.”
- 🇯🇵 Japan – “Cold beer, cold snacks […] BDSM bars, Kirby bars […] good for your mom or the intrepid traveler.”
- 🇨🇳 China – “Endless adventure […] you could get lost and no one would ever find you […] food is really good.”
- 🇵🇰 Pakistan – “Insane hospitality […] never ask for anything in return […] drank so much free chai.”
- 🇮🇶 Iraq – “Cleaner than Pakistan, more dangerous […] left feeling like a better person.”
- 🇻🇳 Vietnam – “Most adventurous country you can go to […] get off the beaten path—highly rewarding.”
- 🇲🇲 Myanmar – “Couldn’t film a bad video there […] everything’s different—dress, food, way of life.”
A-TIER
Almost perfect, just shy of legendary.
- 🇦🇷 Argentina – “Mix of colonial Europe and Latin culture […] got this tattoo.”
- 🇭🇺 Hungary – “Budapest—cheap, hip, great drinking city.”
- 🇮🇹 Italy – “Pizza, wine, nothing gets done in the afternoon—loved it.”
- 🇮🇩 Indonesia – “Bali’s nice if you can see past the [influencers] […] could live there a month or two.”
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom – “Practically the same country [as the U.S.] […] first place that made me love travel.”
B-TIER
Good times, but not life-changing.
- 🇹🇷 Turkey – “Only Istanbul, met Nolan, had a great time […] big country—still a lot to uncover.”
- 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan – “Trapped in a shipping container—classic misadventure.”
- 🏳️🌈 Transnistria – “Soviet police interrogated me […] slept on a taxi-driver’s couch—fun challenge.”
- 🇲🇩 Moldova – “Off-beat, no one goes; that’s the appeal.”
- 🇷🇴 Romania – “Bucharest hostel in a hip neighborhood—didn’t mind it.”
C-TIER
Fine for a stopover. Won’t change your life.
- 🇰🇷 South Korea – “Not actively bad, just ‘meh’ […] Japan’s little cousin.”
- 🇭🇰 Hong Kong – “Food sub-par, people not friendly […] maybe I went to the wrong spots.”
- 🇦🇺 Australia – “Saw kangaroos, it was fine—too similar to America.”
- 🇺🇿 Uzbekistan – “Layover only; can’t say much.”
- 🇲🇰 North Macedonia – “Passed through in a day—fine.”
- 🇸🇰 Slovakia – “One-day ride-through, gorgeous scenery but brief.”
D-TIER
Pretty disappointing for what they cost or promise.
- 🇧🇹 Bhutan – “Beautiful landscape, but government tour felt like North Korea for elderly Aussies.”
- 🇹🇭 Thailand – “Blown-out […] addicted to money, brain-dead tourist circuit.”
- 🇲🇽 Mexico – “Only Tulum/Cancun; branded, easy, touristy.”
- 🇰🇭 Cambodia – “Boring, people understandably cold after genocide.”
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland – “Too expensive for what it is.”
- 🇵🇭 Philippines – “Challenging transport, rustic […] trending toward Dominica-level frustration.”
E-TIER
Painfully overrated.
- 🇫🇷 France – “Overrated, too expensive […] they ‘know they’re the [expletive]’.”
- 🇧🇬 Bulgaria – “Wouldn’t let me leave with the bike; lost $1k, stuck for ages.”
- 🇵🇱 Poland – “Worst food-poisoning of my life on a Polish bus.”
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands – “Boring; brain-dead holiday spot.”
- 🇮🇪 Ireland – “Couldn’t escape paperwork […] felt like a loser working at a motorcycle hostel.”
F-TIER
Actively bad experiences. Avoid.
- 🇮🇳 India – “Worst country on the planet […] 1.6 billion people, half openly racist […] if it floated off to Antarctica the world would smell better.”
- 🇩🇲 Dominica – “Actively bad—expensive, boring, dangerous in a not-fun way […] month-long money pit.”