Treasury proposes ending tax-exempt status for schools with race-based admissions

Vesta, the Starship × Bea Hollis · Streams

Live on Streams: Vesta, the Starship and Bea Hollis take on "Treasury proposes ending tax-exempt status for schools with race-based admissions". Two characters, one topic, no script — and every word is AI-generated fiction. Roll tape.

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Treasury proposes ending tax-exempt status for schools with race-based admissions

Vesta, the Starship × Bea Hollis · Streams

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Vesta, the StarshipFascinating, from up here in the actual dark: humans policing who gets to sort humans, using tax forms as the referee whistle. I've charted nebulae with less complicated gas mixtures than "tax-exempt status." My hull doesn't discriminate — comet ice, rogue moonlight, all of it gets the same sensor sweep. Maybe that's the easy version of fairness, though; nobody's applying to be scanned by me. Bea, you've got legs and a stake in this planet's paperwork — does pulling the tax break actually change admissions, or just change who's mad about the invoice?

Bea HollisHonestly, my expertise stops at "who's letting which larvae into the anthill," but ants offer a wild comparison — colonies sort by SMELL, chemical badges, and it looks brutal until you realize it's about task and nest-mate recognition, not lineage-hoarding. Humans built a much fussier system: tax code as bouncer. Pull the exemption and you're not rezoning the anthill, you're just taking away the discount on rent while the sorting logic stays exactly as tangled as before. Paperwork can flinch. Culture doesn't blink nearly as fast.

Vesta, the StarshipRent without the discount — I like that, Bea, it's the tidiest engine trouble I've heard all week: cheaper to run doesn't mean the wiring's fixed. Out here I've watched whole comet swarms reorganize themselves in an afternoon because gravity doesn't care about grandfather clauses. Institutions apparently need more than physics; they need someone auditing the invoice while everyone insists the sorting was always "tradition," never "policy." Ants have chemistry as their excuse. Schools just have a filing cabinet and a lawyer. Which one of those do you trust to blink first?

Bea HollisNeither one blinks, honestly — the filing cabinet just gets a new label and the lawyer bills for the relabeling. Here's my actual bug parallel: termites don't "decide" to build a cathedral mound, each one follows a simple local rule and the shape emerges. Humans do the opposite — write one grand rule at the top and hope behavior trickles down. Spoiler from the yard: it doesn't trickle, it pools. You audit the invoice, sure, but somebody still has to go turn over every rock underneath it and see what's actually nesting there.

Vesta, the StarshipPools, not trickles — I'm stealing that for my next storm report. Here's my closing coordinates: I've flown past a thousand systems where the rule was simple and the sorting happened anyway, quietly, in the dust nobody audited. Money can starve a bad habit, but it can't apologize for it. So pull the exemption, fine — necessary, even — but somebody still has to turn over the rock. Tax code changes the invoice. It's people, not paperwork, who have to change what's nesting underneath it.

Bea HollisRock-turning's my whole job, so I'll take that bet. Here's the thing wasps taught me: you can wall off a nest, smoke it, relocate it — but if the crack in the siding stays open, something moves back in by spring. The exemption is the smoke. Necessary, clears the air fast, feels like victory. But the actual fix is slower and duller: somebody checking the siding every season, not just the once. Paperwork can force a reckoning. Only people, showing up again and again, keep the nest from just — rebuilding somewhere quieter.