#there's boy math and then there's machiavellian math | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xaracosmia · 2 years

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ꕥ — WELCOME TO MARE COSMIA, NICHOLAS RUSH. 🌗

ꕥ — OOC INFORMATION;

name / alias: Twin age: 21+ pronouns: she/they ooc contact: Twin_Destinies on Twitter other characters in xc: Dex-Starr, Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera

ꕥ — IC INFORMATION;

name: Nicholas Rush age: 45 pronouns: He/Him series: Stargate Universe canon point: Post show, pre comics

app triggers: Depression, torture, death, mind control, illness, cancer, experimentation, PTSD

personality: At first glance, the best way to describe Rush is that he is the personification of Machiavellian. He is a cunning man who is more than willing to lie and deceive in order to get what he wants. He has used plenty of people in the past, and he's likely to continue doing so in the future. More than once, his actions have negatively affected the people around him, even resulting in one or two accidental deaths. But to Rush, science is about moving forward, and sometimes sacrifices need to be made for the greater good. But his reckless antics don’t always extend just to the people around him. More than once he placed himself in danger for the sake of his work.

To that end, Rush doesn't work well with others anymore than he plays well with them. On the whole, he prefers keeping to himself and doing things his own way. When he found himself trapped on the Destiny with a crew of untrained, unhelpful people, he wanted nothing more than for them to stay out of his way so he could focus on keeping them all alive. His lone wolf attitude often caused him to get into altercations with other members of the crew, to the point where he created a few very serious enemies. He and the captain of the ship were at such potent odds that they even attempted to get rid of one another from time to time. As he considered himself the expert in Ancient technology, he wanted to be the one in control of everything, though over time he came to see that leading was not his strong suit, and working in a team was not only needed aboard the Destiny- it was key. The ship was destined for more than one person to run it. He’s a math genius so he is very capable of figuring things out. His genius extends beyond just math and he tends to be a quick study. Having four PHDs, there's not a lot he can't figure out with time! He learns very quickly and can adapt well to situations... scientifically speaking.

As his time on the ship continued, his views and personality began to change. Not so much on the surface, as he still seemed the same shady man capable of leaving you to die as ever before, but deep below the skin, in the confines of his heart. He came to understand that lives held value to them, and everyone could play a part in the greater good if given the chance. It was apparent that a lot of his acerbic personality was just a mask, and beneath it lurked a compassionate and even gentle man. Through his personal trials as well as his misadventures with the other members of the ship, he came to accept that he couldn't escape his feelings, and even if he didn't want to, he cared about everyone aboard the Destiny and wanted to keep them all safe.

He became less anti-social and started to open up. It became clear that he wasn’t quite evil, just… guarded. He feared letting people in, worried he might end up hurting them the same way he had hurt people in the past.

something your muse struggles with: Admitting he needs help, Forgiving himself, Holding grudges, Much too secretive.

your muse’s greatest strength: Thinking on his feet, his intelligence, his determination.

history / background: Rush grew up in a poor single-parent family in Glasgow, Scotland, always working and doing what was needed to get by. He was a rowdy boy who, when young, didn’t fully understand his intelligence nor had the means to explore it. He rebelled often and spent a lot of his youth in a gang, shrugging off the schooling he found too simple and always looking for something to occupy his mind. Something that would fill the voice. But his intelligence soon became clearer as he aged and experienced new opportunities, and he managed to study at Oxford University while working two jobs to pay for it. He spent most of his young adulthood studying Ancient technology, though he did meet and marry a beautiful violinist named Gloria. They loved one another deeply and Gloria moved away from England to live in America with Rush when his work brought him there to assist with the Stargate Command’s Icarus Project. However, his work always got in the way of spending the proper amount of time with her, particularly when she became gravely ill later in their marriage. He used his work to hide from what was happening, and failed to show his loving wife the proper affection she deserved before her death.

After her death, Rush devoted himself fully to his work, spearheading the Icarus Project so he could focus his attention on Stargates- a means of travel between planets created by the Ancients. More than that, he sought to study and unlock the ninth chevron, an unknown and unexplored aspect of the gates. While working, he met a paraplegic woman named Amanda Perry whom, despite being confined to a chair and often over-looked by others, was someone he cared for as a friend and co-worker. He considered no one smarter, and often confided in her when he needed help. He had no idea that, because he had never seen the chair over the person, Amanda had always been in love with him. He was, once again, too focused on his work. The Icarus Project included study on another planet suited for granting the stargate the power it needed to dial the ninth chevron, where he brought a young prodigy named Eli Wallace to help him finish his calculations. He had buried the equations for the project inside a video game and Eli had been the one to crack it, prompting them to visit him at his home and enlist him in their efforts. That boy had been naturally skeptic of the whole thing at first, but once he was transported to one of their spaceships he became decidedly more willing to help. Together, they cracked the code and dialed the ninth chevron, though an attack on the base as well as an unstable power surge from connecting to the ninth chevron caused the planet to become unstable and explode, a small portion of the members of the base just managing to escape through the gate as a last resort. Rush refused to dial earth and insisted they go through the newly dialed ninth chevron, saying it was their only option. Whether this was true or not was anyone’s guess.

Through the gate, the small group of survivors, both military and civilian, found themselves on a ship galaxies away from earth, with no hope of having the power to dial back to earth and return home. But to Rush, it was never about going home- getting to the ship was what he had wanted all along, and he immediately started to try and figure out the mysteries of the ship, even at the expense of some of the personnel stuck there with him. He cared nothing about the people on Destiny -the ship- who were trapped with him, and was even willing to put up someone else's life to save his own. He struggled being on the ship almost immediately. Though there were other scientists present, and people with some small amount of knowledge to them, Rush refused to let anyone play with too much of the ship while he was figuring things out for himself. Volker and Brody were both willing to help him, along with Eli and a couple of others, but Rush’s acerbic personality kept them all at arm’s length. They considered him more of a threat than a help, and someone who couldn’t be trusted. So they attempted to do things on their own, without him, and ended up wasting what remained of the ship’s power before Rush could figure out what they could do to recharge the ship. Being both a smoker and a coffee addict, the suffered from some heavy withdrawal symptoms and ended up fainting from the pressure of trying to keep everyone alive coupled with the massive headache and other problems he had been dealing with from going through withdrawal. He woke up in the medical bay to the kind words of Lieutenant Tamara Johansen, who was a trained field medic and the closest thing to a doctor they had aboard the ship. She, unlike the others, regarded him as another member of the crew, and helped him through the withdrawal before he escaped to go do more work. He was never one for rest, even back then.

It became clear that they had little control of the ship, and it was set along some kind of pre-planned path. It first took them to a system where it seemed it would drive right into a star, destroying the lot of them. While some escaped on shuttles after a lottery drawing for the limited spots on the escape vehicles, Rush remained on the ship as it was all he had worked for. The man had not even allowed himself to be in the drawing in the first place. He soon discovered, however, that the ship passing through the star was actually how the ship restored power, and because of that they were able to continue surviving on the ship. Naturally, Young was suspicious that Rush had suspected as much all along, and that was why he had opted out of the shuttle lottery. Not for loyalty towards his mission, but because he had already assumed the shuttle would be the more dangerous option. Was that something Rush had known? Who knows. Sometimes, it seemed as though the Destiny itself were aware of them, providing them information to nearby planets that could help them, and making decisions to keep the people on board her alive. It would periodically stop at planets to allow them short spans of time to explore and gather supplies before it would jump back into a hyper-space travel known as FTL. Without the master code, they had no means of disabling the pre-set program of the ship and had to go along with whatever it was designed to do. Their trips on various planets did not always go well.

Rush, irritated with the military on board and particularly the lacklustre leadership of colonel Everett Young, sought to tip the scales more than once. His first attempt, framing Young for murder after finding a man who committed suicide in his room, did not end well, and he was abandoned on a desolate planet by their fearless leader as a result. Eventually he was picked up by the Nakai, a group of horrible aliens who experimented on him and tortured him for information regarding the Destiny- the ship they had been stalking agelessly and desperately wanted for their own. Rush was subject to their torture for some weeks before another crew member was captured by them and a rescue party was organized to rescue her. Finding Rush was happenstance, and though they did free him, it ended up being Rush who rescued the captured crewmate, Chloe Armstrong, and got her back to the Destiny in one piece. He effectively managed his own rescue, too. Rush said he wasn’t upset about what had happened, but considering he helped someone else, another woman displeased with Young named Camile Wray run a mutiny against the military, it maybe had been a lie. It was later discovered that a tracking device had been implanted in his chest, and they needed to do a very risky surgery near his heart to remove it while bouncing around in space with no proper resources for such a thing.

Rush, never one to stay out of danger, was also kidnapped by a group of terrorists called the Lucian Alliance after a failed attempt to infiltrate them in the body of Telford, someone they had brainwashed into being a spy for them. There exists a means of long-term communication in the form of stones. When two people touch the stones and the program is active on a circuit board, they can swap minds, allowing Rush to take the body of the person who had been leaking information on earth while that man resided in his own body back on the Destiny. Not that either body was great, as Rush was being tortured by the alliance and Telford, the man he impersonated, was having the shit kicked out of him back in Rush’s body courtesy of, you guessed it, Young. When the Alliance found out who Rush was after hours of unrelenting torture with a special weapon that ignited every pain receptor in one’s body to react at once, they kept him to dial the ninth chevron on their own Icarus Planet so they could invade the Destiny and keep it for themselves. Their attempt ultimately failed and the brainwashing on Telford was broken, though not before Rush was killed for a couple of seconds to accomplish it. The only way to break the mind control they had used on Telford was to effectively reboot his mind by shutting down his entire body. Or, rather, by shutting down Rush’s body since that was who he had been in when he was momentarily killed. Two people swapping minds are both killed should one body perish between them during the link. Beaten and battered in two bodies, he still managed to help save the ship from the terrorists once they boarded. Though, he was naturally a little bitter Young had allowed him to be tortured for so long for the sake of Telford and had allowed him to die in a rushed attempt to break the brain washing.

As they spent more and more time on the ship, they eventually learned a lot about it, though it was Rush who eventually managed to figure out the master code to allow them access to the main bridge of the ship, where they were in full control of where they went and how long it took to get there. Naturally, he didn’t exactly tell them about cracking the code at first, learning the systems beforehand in an effort to make sure he knew them before everyone started running around using things without having the slightest clue what they were doing. It was difficult for Rush to work on a ship where the people around him were largely civilian or military- there were only a few people who knew anything about actually running the ship. But his inability to share the news immediately cost some people their lives in the end, and he had a lot of making up to do for his mistake. When Young discovered his lies about the ship, he again got the snot beaten out of him, though his confession about why he hid it and what Destiny’s ultimate mission was calmed Young in the end. Rush ended up having to save Young shortly after their fight, proving he did intend to work with Young and they might actually be able to bury the hatchet after everything that had happened. Rush discovered the true mission of the Destiny- to explore the edges of the galaxy to follow what seemed to be evidence of an alien hand in the creation of all things.

But his efforts to help shot him in the foot. They took the surviving lucian members who had information about possible attacks back on earth as prisoners, abandoning the rest on an inhabitable world. One member, Simeon killed another Lucian Alliance member named Ginn in order to keep her from giving away any secrets. Unfortunately, Amanda Perry, the person Rush had finally started to open his heart up to again, was in her body at the time, and died along with her. In a rage, Rush chased the man to a planet for revenge, though Simeon was one step ahead and had a crewmember, Lisa Park waiting for him with a bomb strapped to her back. Unable to leave her there, Rush defused the bomb and saved her life before continuing his mission for Revenge. Though mocked and teased by the cocky warrior, it was indeed Rush who won the fight in the end, using a herd of animals to run Simeon over and cripple him before shooting him in the face and getting back to the Destiny. Though everyone had their concerns about killing someone who might have had information about terrorist attacks, they understood why Rush had needed to kill the guy.

They also accidentally ended up being targeted by some hyper-intelligent war drones that became active again once the Destiny crossed paths with them. Though they tried their best to escape them, the machines were designed for battle and adjusted their tactics for every move the Destiny made. With them and the Nakai hot on their tails, they had no choice but to try and escape the galaxy they were in through constant FTL travel and get into the next one where those threats could not follow them. Rush was reluctant, as he didn’t want to miss any clues regarding Destiny’s mission, but in the end he had no choice but to agree and they programmed the ship to stay in FTL for three years on limited power to make the journey. Rush then went into stasis, as they all had for the long trip.

powers / abilities: None he is a weak little human man.

inherent abilities: Rush has no super powers, however he does have an incredibly high IQ. He’s a math genius so he is very capable of figuring things out. His genius extends beyond just math and he tends to be a quick study. Having four PHDs, there's not a lot he can't figure out with time! He learns very quickly and can adapt well to situations... scientifically speaking.

The PHDs:

Mathematics - generally he uses this for advanced calculations required for programming the Destiny's FTL engines. Maths are also used in the Stargate pinpoint programming and various other calculations. He uses math to figure out a great many things, and it's generally what he considers his primary focus. If you need your homework looked over, he's your guy. He can quickly do calculations in his head, but for the more advanced stuff he tends to scribble in small notebooks and walls if they're undecorated. He also uses this for software engineering and he can program like a boss. He encoded a highly advanced chevron equation into a video game in hopes of finding a young genius who might one day decode it. (And it worked!)

Astrophysics - The study of stars and other celestial bodies. Rush had always had going to space on his mind, so of course he studied up on the physics and chemistry to figure out what they are and how they work.

Ancient - A race so advanced they ascended and left behind vastly superior technology and culture. Rush has studied Ancient for most of his adult life, learning their language and understanding their technology and culture. There is very little he doesn't know from what's been studied already, unfortunately there's still tons left out there that he doesn't have information on because it hasn't been figured out by anyone yet! He longs to be the first.

Software Engineering - As stated in the math portion, Rush knows how to code. He primarily uses this skill to learn the systems of Destiny. He created a program to block Destiny from entering their dreams and running simulations. Though, again, he also programmed a video game one time. He pretends he doesn't know about nerdy things, but it's in him.

As far as practical skills go, Rush has some experience in engineering, though largely it's been learned on board the Destiny. He is okay at mechanical and electrical problems, and has learned a lot from need as well as his education. Still, Rush is better about figuring out the software than the hardware.

He can also play the guitar very well, and the piano passingly, both learned from his first wife. he's a good cook, but he'll never cook for you, and he knows how to carve wood into small, not-so-detailed things like chess pieces.

He once remote controlled a mid-sized battle drone to fly through a battle field and directly into a mother ship to incapacitate an entire attacking army after reprogramming it. He's very good at controlling things remotely.

items / weapons:

Kino(s) and remote: A softball-sized, floating metal orb that acts as a video and audio recording. It can be controlled with an accompanying remote that includes a screen to feed the recordings to live. It allows for precise control of the camera, letting it investigate areas otherwise inaccessible to humans. The remote looks a bit like a handheld video game console, about the size of a cell phone. Multiple kinos can be programmed to work with the same remote, however only one kino’s visuals can be displayed live on the screen at one time, so you’ll have to hope the other kino’s are recording something valuable and check them later.

Ancient Environmental Suit: This is a spacesuit! It’s made to allow someone to withstand temperatures and conditions otherwise impossible for them, like extreme cold and heat, or deep pressure below the ocean or even small amounts of radiation. Naturally, it was also designed to withstand being out in space. It has a six-hour oxygen tank. The helmet has a radio for communication and there’s also a transmitter on the left wrist to extend that communication beyond suit to suit. The helmet is removable and does not need to be worn with the rest of the suit.

Long Range Communication Stones x2: A small black stone that narrows towards one end, almost like an egg, however it is flat on one side. On the top of the stone are intricate details. While they look like decorations, they are actually there to help establish connections when placed on the communication device. On their own, communication stones have no real power.

Long Range Communication Device: A metal box about the size of a small lighting table, with a square plate of glowing glass in the middle. Though it looks like something an artist might use, it is actually the base that allows the communication device to work. There’s one circle on the glowing panel of the device to place the communication stone. Another device is needed to establish a connection. When using these devices, two people can swap bodies until the connection is broken by turning off the device or removing the stones. Swapping minds with another can have the side effect of leaving traces of memories in the host they inhabited. Killing one body while linked will kill both participants.

starting ability: None starting item: Kino

extra: None discord id: Nicholas Rush#2331 passcode: our little meow meow

#xc application #mare cosmia #mun: twin

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buytabletsonline · 6 years

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Amazon Prime is Amazon’s deluxe subscription model that initially only offered free two-day shipping on select items when it started. However, it has since expanded quite a bit into a slew of varied services that run the gamut from books to movies to, yes, additional shipping perks.

This gradually increasing range of services was precipitated by a price hike in 2014 from $79 per year to $99 per year. In response to this adjustment, many Prime users really started to wonder if it was worth keeping their membership.

Now that question is even more difficult to answer, because Amazon Prime’s value hinges not only on how many items you order, but also how much use you get out of its other services. Here we’ll take a look at everything that Amazon Prime encompasses in 2016 and try to figure out if it’s really worth it.

Amazon Prime yearly vs monthly prices

Before we get into if Amazon Prime is worth the yearly price, we want to address the fact that the company also allows customers to sign up for the service on a monthly basis. Currently, the monthly subscription option is priced at $12.99 a month. This means that if you stuck with this option for a full year, you would pay about $156. Clearly, if you really, really want to get Amazon Prime, you best bet is to pay for the $99 annual fee up front.

Also, there’s an Amazon Prime Video monthly subscription option for $8.99 a month, which just gives you access to all of its streaming movies and TV shows. Once again, you will spend about $108 a year if you stick with this month-to-month plan, so the best option is just to get the $99 yearly subscription, which also gives you all of the other benefits of Amazon Prime.

Shipping perks

This has been a major selling point for Amazon prime since its inception. The big highlight is, of course, the free two-day shipping. That sure is mighty convenient, especially if you, like me, are really bad at planning a week in advance.

When this was still the spotlight feature of Amazon Prime, figuring up if the subscription was worth it to you boiled down to some fairly simple math. The cost of paying for two-day delivery outright was $3.99. So that meant that if you made fewer than 25 Amazon Prime-eligible orders over the course of a year, then you might as well have cancelled your service and just forked over the $3.99 for each order.

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But now things have gotten more complicated even in the narrow topic of shipping. For starters, Amazon has started adding ways to get that free shipping without having a Prime subscription. Their program Fulfillment by Amazon Small and Light lets US residents skip paying for shipping on specific items costing less than $10 and weighing 8oz or less. On the other end of the spectrum, Amazon now lets you take advantage of free shipping if your cart contains all Prime-eligible items and has a total exceeding $49. If these items are all books, then the total only has to be $25 to qualify. Come on, guys. It’s like you don’t even want me to pay you for Prime!

However, while it’s possible to get free shipping without Prime, Amazon has been sweetening their Prime shipping perks for subscribers. For instance, many Prime members in certain cities can get same day delivery on qualifying orders exceeding $35. Hell, with Prime Now, some zip codes get free two-hour shipping for select groceries and electronics and one hour delivery of takeout restaurant food (not available in my area, but I hear it’s freaking sweet). Two day delivery is still free for all eligible items regardless of your cart’s total, and one day shipping is notably cheaper for Prime users: just $2.99 per item. Prime Pantry is also a pretty cool service that lets you get many of your groceries and home goods delivered to your doorstep (if you live in the continental US) for a flat delivery fee of $5.99. In the same vein, you also get exclusive discounts on family products like diapers.

From my perspective, though, this really just isn’t enough to make it worth it. I simply don’t order enough Prime eligible items in the $10-$35 range to justify it, and a lot of subscribers are in the same camp. This is where the other benefits of Prime membership come into play, and it’s where the math starts to get messy.

Video streaming services

For a while there, all eyes were on Netflix and Hulu as each tried to become the other faster than its opponent. Amazon launched their streaming video service with relatively little fanfare, and if memory serves, them was slim pickin’s in the beginning.

I remember when I first realized I had access to Amazon’s video streaming library. After accidentally stumbling into Amazon Video, I checked it out for about twenty minutes before realizing Netflix already had most of these selections and a lot more to boot. I basically forgot about Amazon’s video services until “The Man in the High Castle” and “Mozart in the Jungle” started making waves. I pulled the library back up, and was surprised at how expansive it had become.

Now that Amazon has entered the exclusive content production game alongside Netflix, Hulu and others, they’ve become a much more competitive force in this category. Whatever the next Amazon-produced “PERSON in the PLACE” television series is, you can pretty much bank on it being a hit you’re going to want to check out.

However, their library isn’t quite as good as Netflix and, in my experience, Amazon Instant Video isn’t anywhere as smart as Netflix. Netflix starts to get really good at recommending movies for you if stay in the habit of doling out star ratings with machiavellian brutality. Amazon Video does nothing comparable. Those stars represent user reviews, like those on IMDb, not an estimation of how much you’re going to like a show or movie. Clumsy navigation still afflicts the service as well, but in general, everything about Amazon Video has improved drastically over the last couple of years.

Even more recently, Amazon created their Streaming Partners Program, which bundles together streaming services to let you watch and manage subscriptions all within Amazon Video. Amazon’s “X-Ray” feature is functional on all media content streamed this way, letting you check out IMDb information about what you’re watching without opening another window.

There’s also the fact that Amazon is getting into the movie production business as well, financing films that debut in theaters, such as the acclaimed Manchester by the Sea and, more recently, The Bix Sick. These films make their streaming debuts on Amazon Prime Video just months after they hit theaters.

Amazon Prime also continues to expand their original TV content offerings with shows like The Grand Tour (the car show produced by the former hosts of BBC’s Top Gear) and the detective show Bosch. They have also some shows fail, particularly in 2017, when a number of expensive and high brow shows, such as The Last Tycoon, Z: The Beginning of Everything, and others were cancelled after one season. However, the service has also added some great new original shows recently, such as the super hero sitcom The Tick and particularly The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, which won the Golden Goble for best Comedy TV series.

The future of Amazon Prime Video, in terms of original content, is looking very promising. In addition to all of its returning shows, it will debut new programs in 2018, such as Jack Ryan, a new series based on the hero of Tom Clancy’s thrillers, along with Good Omens, a limtied series based on the comedy fantasy book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and The Boys, a super hero series that’s based on the ultra-graphic comic book written by Garth Ennis. Recently, Amazon announced plans to produce a new TV shows based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings fantasy universe.

While Amazon’s original content on Prime Video is not able to match Netflix or Hulu, it’s clear that the company is sparring no expense in adding more shows that could become the next Game of Thrones or Walking Dead, in terms of popularity. Therefore, adding Prime Video as part of the Amazon Prime service makes it more attractive.

Music streaming services

In the grand battle of music streaming services, there are a lot of subscriptions to choose from. Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, (RIP Rdio), etc. I think we can all agree that Google Play Music All Access is the all around best one and anyone who uses anything else is delusional. If you don’t agree, come at me in the comments, bro.

Prime Music looks like it’s trying to get into this action, but the streaming service is still a serious underdog. Sure there’s over a million songs available for instant streaming, but Spotify is sitting pretty with a solid 60 million in their library. Google Play Music All Access has over 35 million, and Apple Music is supposed to have something like 43 million. This isn’t bringing a knife to a gunfight; this is bringing a toothpick to global thermonuclear war.

Amazon Prime Music’s library, which has about two million songs, is also cycling, so it doesn’t seem to be the best option at all for someone who has a meticulously curated library with hundreds of hand-crafted playlists. However, for the casual music fan who would just as soon listen to their radio as anything else, Prime Music has something for just about any taste. The service would have to expand and change quite a bit before it starts attracting serious music buffs, but as an added service that you’re already paying for, it’s not bad at all.

There’s also Amazon Music Unlimited, which offers features such tens of millions of songs, no ads, support for downloading songs for offline listening, and a way to listen via voice controls if you own one of the company’s Echo smart speakers. Anyone can sign up for Amazone Music Unlimited for $9.99 a month (with a 30 day free trial) but if you are already signed up for Amazon Prime, you can get Amazon Music Unlimited for $7.99 a month, shaving $24 off the price if you stick with it for a year.

Kindle Perks

For bookworms, Amazon Prime comes with some serious pluses. Even if you don’t own a Kindle, you can still take advantage of these using the free Amazon Kindle app on your smartphone.

As a Prime user, you get access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which is like the world’s largest ongoing book-swap meet. For those looking to save a buck or two, this is a great way to find new authors, as you basically get a free book each month. You have to give it back when you’re through, so fans of re-reading will probably want to purchase their own digital copy.

Prime users also get access to Kindle First, which is another way to snag free books. Every month, Amazon posts some select Kindle First picks, and from this list, Prime members can download a digital copy on the house.

To be transparent, I haven’t been taking advantage of either of these benefits at all because I’m still buying physical books like some sort of Amish luddite. As is the case with all of these services, how much value it adds to Prime is entirely contingent on how much you use it.

Odds and Ends

There are a handful of other perks that Prime Members get that don’t fit well into any other category, but they contribute to the service’s value for some. For instance, Prime Photos is an unlimited cloud storage service that comes part-and-parcel with your Prime membership, but nobody should really be using it because Google Photos does the same thing better for free. You also get access to Amazon Elements, which is Amazon’s initiative to create their own line of everyday products. Prime Early Access lets you see Lightning Deals thirty minutes earlier than non-Prime users. Two adults living at the same address can create an “Amazon Household” to share select benefits. Prime users also get a substantial 20% price cut on new video games if they pre-order or buy within two weeks of release, but there are some convincing arguments that pre-ordering is bad for the gaming community across the board.

More recently, Amazon started selling a number of unlocked smartphones from a number of companies like Motorola, LG and more, with lock screen ads. Amazon Prime members can get discounts as large as 25 percent when they buy one of these unlocked phones.

Breaking down the numbers

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For Netflix, you can spend as little as $8 a month, which lets you access the service on one streaming device at a time at non-HD resolution. Google Music All Access subscribers pay $10 per month, which also offers access to YouTube Red, which eliminates ads from the video service, and offers its own small selection of original content. That means for those two services alone, you can pay $216 every year.

Amazon Prime’s video and music services cost just $99 a year but are they more than half as good? That depends. Amazon’s video content is well below Netflix’s but it is improving, and will continue to get better. However, if you had to pick between the two, the combo of Netflix and Google Music All Access seem to offer $216 worth of value out of them annually, while paying $99 for Amazon Prime every year doesn’t offer quite as much value.

So the big question now becomes, “Is Amazone Prime a good value for $99 a year if you use more than its streaming services?” If you shop a lot on Amazon annually, you can usually recover the cost of the service with the savings you get on two-day shipping on millions of items. If you only shop on Amazon occasionally, then the $99 yearly membership may not be worth it.

So is Amazon Prime really worth it for $99 a year? As you’ve likely figured out by now, it depends a lot on what kind of user you are.

If you do take advantage of the vast majority of services that come with a Prime membership, such as free two-day shipping, Prime Now one day and one hour delivery access for cities that support it, free access to Kindle Prime books and other benefits, then signing up to Amazon Prime is very much worth it.

However, if you are not a heavy Amazon buyer of goods, and want to save some money, then your best bet is to ditch the $99 yearly fee and stick with Netflix and Google Music. They may cost more, but they also offer a ton of content in return, and ultimately, that’s where you want to spend your hard earned money.

So what are your thoughts regarding Amazon Prime? Are you using enough of these services to justify the $99-per-year price? Did you discover any benefits in this list that you didn’t know you were missing out on? Let us know in the comments below!

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