#14/09/2018

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google’s enshittification memos

[Note, 9 October 2023: Google disputes the veracity of this claim, but has declined to provide the exhibits and testimony to support its claims. Read more about this here.]

When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.

Think about Unity President Marc Whitten's nonpology for his company's disastrous rug-pull, in which they declared that everyone who had paid good money to use their tool to make a game would have to keep paying, every time someone downloaded that game:

The most fundamental thing that we’re trying to do is we’re building a sustainable business for Unity. And for us, that means that we do need to have a model that includes some sort of balancing change, including shared success.

https://www.wired.com/story/unity-walks-back-policies-lost-trust/

"Shared success" is code for, "If you use our tool to make money, we should make money too." This is bullshit. It's like saying, "We just want to find a way to share the success of the painters who use our brushes, so every time you sell a painting, we want to tax that sale." Or "Every time you sell a house, the company that made the hammer gets to wet its beak."

And note that they're not talking about shared risk here – no one at Unity is saying, "If you try to make a game with our tools and you lose a million bucks, we're on the hook for ten percent of your losses." This isn't partnership, it's extortion.

How did a company like Unity – which became a market leader by making a tool that understood the needs of game developers and filled them – turn into a protection racket? One bad decision at a time. One rationalization and then another. Slowly, and then all at once.

When I think about this enshittification curve, I often think of Google, a company that had its users' backs for years, which created a genuinely innovative search engine that worked so well it seemed like *magic, a company whose employees often had their pick of jobs, but chose the "don't be evil" gig because that mattered to them.

People make fun of that "don't be evil" motto, but if your key employees took the gig because they didn't want to be evil, and then you ask them to be evil, they might just quit. Hell, they might make a stink on the way out the door, too:

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/

Google is a company whose founders started out by publishing a scientific paper describing their search methodology, in which they said, "Oh, and by the way, ads will inevitably turn your search engine into a pile of shit, so we're gonna stay the fuck away from them":

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Those same founders retained a controlling interest in the company after it went IPO, explaining to investors that they were going to run the business without having their elbows jostled by shortsighted Wall Street assholes, so they could keep it from turning into a pile of shit:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

And yet, it's turned into a pile of shit. Google search is so bad you might as well ask Jeeves. The company's big plan to fix it? Replace links to webpages with florid paragraphs of chatbot nonsense filled with a supremely confident lies:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/

How did the company get this bad? In part, this is the "curse of bigness." The company can't grow by attracting new users. When you have 90%+ of the market, there are no new customers to sign up. Hypothetically, they could grow by going into new lines of business, but Google is incapable of making a successful product in-house and also kills most of the products it buys from other, more innovative companies:

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Theoretically, the company could pursue new lines of business in-house, and indeed, the current leaders of companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are all execs who figured out how to get the whole company to do something new, and were elevated to the CEO's office, making each one a billionaire and sealing their place in history.

It is for this very reason that any exec at a large firm who tries to make a business-wide improvement gets immediately and repeatedly knifed by all their colleagues, who correctly reason that if someone else becomes CEO, then they won't become CEO. Machiavelli was an optimist:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, "growth" has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users.

Now, in theory, we might never know exactly what led to the enshittification of Google. In theory, all of compromises, debates and plots could be lost to history. But tech is not an oral culture, it's a written one, and techies write everything down and nothing is ever truly deleted.

Time and again, Big Tech tells on itself. Think of FTX's main conspirators all hanging out in a group chat called "Wirefraud." Amazon naming its program targeting weak, small publishers the "Gazelle Project" ("approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”). Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much. Think of Zuck emailing his CFO in the middle of the night to defend his outsized offer to buy Instagram on the basis that users like Insta better and Facebook couldn't compete with them on quality.

It's like every Big Tech schemer has a folder on their desktop called "Mens Rea" filled with files like "Copy_of_Premeditated_Murder.docx":

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself-f7f0eb6d215a?sk=351f8a54ab8e02d7340620e5eec5024d

Right now, Google's on trial for its sins against antitrust law. It's a hard case to make. To secure a win, the prosecutors at the DoJ Antitrust Division are going to have to prove what was going on in Google execs' minds when the took the actions that led to the company's dominance. They're going to have to show that the company deliberately undertook to harm its users and customers.

Of course, it helps that Google put it all in writing.

Last week, there was a huge kerfuffile over the DoJ's practice of posting its exhibits from the trial to a website each night. This is a totally normal thing to do – a practice that dates back to the Microsoft antitrust trial. But Google pitched a tantrum over this and said that the docs the DoJ were posting would be turned into "clickbait." Which is another way of saying, "the public would find these documents very interesting, and they would be damning to us and our case":

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/secrecy-is-systemic

After initially deferring to Google, Judge Amit Mehta finally gave the Justice Department the greenlight to post the document. It's up. It's wild:

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416692.pdf

The document is described as "notes for a course on communication" that Google VP for Finance Michael Roszak prepared. Roszak says he can't remember whether he ever gave the presentation, but insists that the remit for the course required him to tell students "things I didn't believe," and that's why the document is "full of hyperbole and exaggeration."

OK.

But here's what the document says: "search advertising is one of the world's greatest business models ever created…illicit businesses (cigarettes or drugs) could rival these economics…[W]e can mostly ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats and sales."

It goes on to say that this might be changing, and proposes a way to balance the interests of the search and ads teams, which are at odds, with search worrying that ads are pushing them to produce "unnatural search experiences to chase revenue."

"Unnatural search experiences to chase revenue" is a thinly veiled euphemism for the prophetic warnings in that 1998 Pagerank paper: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." Or, more plainly, "ads will turn our search engine into a pile of shit."

And, as Roszak writes, Google is "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand." That is, the company has become so dominant and cemented its position so thoroughly as the default search engine across every platforms and system that even if it makes its search terrible to goose revenues, users won't leave. As Lily Tomlin put it on SNL: "We don't have to care, we're the phone company."

In the enshittification cycle, companies first lure in users with surpluses – like providing the best search results rather than the most profitable ones – with an eye to locking them in. In Google's case, that lock-in has multiple facets, but the big one is spending billions of dollars – enough to buy a whole Twitter, every single year – to be the default search everywhere.

Google doesn't buy its way to dominance because it has the very best search results and it wants to shield you from inferior competitors. The economically rational case for buying default position is that preventing competition is more profitable than succeeding by outperforming competitors. The best reason to buy the default everywhere is that it lets you lower quality without losing business. You can "ignore the demand side, and only focus on advertisers."

For a lot of people, the analysis stops here. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Google locks in users and sells them to advertisers, who are their co-conspirators in a scheme to screw the rest of us.

But that's not right. For one thing, paying for a product doesn't mean you won't be the product. Apple charges a thousand bucks for an iPhone and then nonconsensually spies on every iOS user in order to target ads to them (and lies about it):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

John Deere charges six figures for its tractors, then runs a grift that blocks farmers from fixing their own machines, and then uses their control over repair to silence farmers who complain about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

Fair treatment from a corporation isn't a loyalty program that you earn by through sufficient spending. Companies that can sell you out, will sell you out, and then cry victim, insisting that they were only doing their fiduciary duty for their sacred shareholders. Companies are disciplined by fear of competition, regulation or – in the case of tech platforms – customers seizing the means of computation and installing ad-blockers, alternative clients, multiprotocol readers, etc:

https://doctorow.medium.com/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse-3cc01e7e4604?sk=85b3f5f7d051804521c3411711f0b554

Which is where the next stage of enshittification comes in: when the platform withdraws the surplus it had allocated to lure in – and then lock in – business customers (like advertisers) and reallocate it to the platform's shareholders.

For Google, there are several rackets that let it screw over advertisers as well as searchers (the advertisers are paying for the product, and they're also the product). Some of those rackets are well-known, like Jedi Blue, the market-rigging conspiracy that Google and Facebook colluded on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

But thanks to the antitrust trial, we're learning about more of these. Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – was in the courtroom last week when evidence was presented on Google execs' panic over a decline in "ad generating searches" and the sleazy gimmick they came up with to address it: manipulating the "semantic matching" on user queries:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

When you send a query to Google, it expands that query with terms that are similar – for example, if you search on "Weds" it might also search for "Wednesday." In the slides shown in the Google trial, we learned about another kind of semantic matching that Google performed, this one intended to turn your search results into "a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape."

Here's how that worked: when you ran a query like "children's clothing," Google secretly appended the brand name of a kids' clothing manufacturer to the query. This, in turn, triggered a ton of ads – because rival brands will have bought ads against their competitors' name (like Pepsi buying ads that are shown over queries for Coke).

Here we see surpluses being taken away from both end-users and business customers – that is, searchers and advertisers. For searchers, it doesn't matter how much you refine your query, you're still going to get crummy search results because there's an unkillable, hidden search term stuck to your query, like a piece of shit that Google keeps sticking to the sole of your shoe.

But for advertisers, this is also a scam. They're paying to be matched to users who search on a brand name, and you didn't search on that brand name. It's especially bad for the company whose name has been appended to your search, because Google has a protection racket where the company that matches your search has to pay extra in order to show up overtop of rivals who are worse matches. Both the matching company and those rivals have given Google a credit-card that Google gets to bill every time a user searches on the company's name, and Google is just running fraudulent charges through those cards.

And, of course, Google put this in writing. I mean, of course they did. As we learned from the documentary The Incredibles, supervillains can't stop themselves from monologuing, and in big, sprawling monopolists, these monologues have to transmitted electronically – and often indelibly – to far-flung co-cabalists.

As Gray points out, this is an incredibly blunt enshittification technique: "it hadn’t even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better." We don't know how long Google did this for or how frequently this bait-and-switch was deployed.

But if this is a blunt way of Google smashing its fist down on the scales that balance search quality against ad revenues, there's plenty of subtler ways the company could sneak a thumb on there. A Google exec at the trial rhapsodized about his company's "contract with the user" to deliver an "honest results policy," but given how bad Google search is these days, we're left to either believe he's lying or that Google sucks at search.

The paper trail offers a tantalizing look at how a company went from doing something that was so good it felt like a magic trick to being "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand," able to "ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers."

What's more, this is a system where everyone loses (except for Google): this isn't a grift run by Google and advertisers on users – it's a grift Google runs on everyone.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[gunsandspaceships]

Proof that Tony Stark is bisexual in the MCU

It is known that 616 Tony is bisexual. If you didn’t know ��� here’s the page from “Tony Stark: Iron Man (2018) #4”.

But is MCU Tony also bisexual? Let’s find out.

The Avengers:

0:43:10 - seems that Tony watched Rogers' movements at the end of his fight with Loki and liked what he saw.

1:10:08 - “Back off”.

2:08:30 – Sleeping Beauty.

Age of Ultron:

1:52:35 – Rhodey and Tony being a “couple”.

2:10:30 – Nat’s remark.

Civil War:

0:59:50 – huh?

Infinity War:

0:14:35 - Tony didn't know that was Levi.

0:17:08 – Tony noticed Strange’s hair moving.

0:19:15 - Strange's flirting and Tony's reaction.

1:18:50 – Tony and Strange are gazing into each other’s eyes and holding hands.

1:23:45 – again.

Endgame:

0:09:25 – Rogers’ face btw. Is he jealous here?

1:16:30 - Tony is staring at the America’s ass.

1:17:30 – Tony flicks Scott's butt.

1:20:00 – Tony is 100% okay with having a man inside him. Literally.

So what do we have?

He is comfortable touching men and being touched, even if he barely knows them. Even if it’s very gay.

He openly jokes about “gay” things.

He gazes into the eyes of both Steves, and Steves gaze back. Like, pretty often. Even Nat noticed this little habit.

He looks at men. Body, hair, ass. And he doesn’t hide it. That’s not so straight, I’d say.

Conclusion: Tony is bi. He is not latent, not really hidden one, just already in an established relationship with a woman and is faithful to her. He seems to be attracted to some guys though (we can see this towards Rogers and Strange).

Marvel shows it to us, and that’s actually the best we could get here. Because, unfortunately, the real international movie business is not yet ready for Iron Man to have a boyfriend. At least we can say he is canonically bisexual.

[magnussonwilliam]

12 NOVEMBER, 2015 ✦ TORSDAG, 13:20

13 MARS, 2018 ✧ MARDI, 09:00

10 MAGGIO, 2018 ✦ GIOVEDÌ, 14:40

16 MAI, 2018 ✧ MITTWOCH, 11:29

01 JUNE, 2018 ✦ THURSDAY, 3:34PM

25 OKTOBER, 2018 ✧ DONDERDAG, 12:34

27 OCTUBRE, 2018 ✦ SÁBADO, 21:17

16 NOVEMBER, 2018 ✧ VRIJDAG, 10:11

04 PROSINAC, 2024 ✦ SRIJEDA, 15:56

[wub-fur-radio]

Psychedelic Psounds of Pseptember 2024

Blowing in to town like a desert wind in a late summer California heat wave, Wub-Fur presents another rocking and eclectic streaming mix of new psychedelic indie rock music for your listening pleasure. Featuring hot hits and cool tracks by Ty Segall, the Shivas, Oh Sees, King Gizzard, Mountain Movers, Black Market Karma, Causa Sui, Meatbodies, and a half dozen more bands who know why the P’s are silent.

▶︎🎶 Listen on Mixcloud –or– Apple Music

Running Time: 1 hour, 4 seconds

Tracklist

Intro: Intro by Connections (0:13)

Can't Do That (5:21) — ORB | Geelong, Australia

Nightmare Song (3:09) — The Shivas | Portland, OR

Drug City (2:52) — Oh Sees | Los Angeles, CA

Field of Vision (3:33) — King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard | Melbourne, Australia

I Hear (4:29) — Ty Segall | Los Angeles, CA

Oozer (3:33) — Black Market Karma | Dover, UK

Dusk Dwellers (5:14) — Causa Sui | Denmark

My Holy Shrine (4:06) — Mountain Movers | New Haven, CT

Daisy (3:38) — The Silk RailRoad | Portland, OR

Noche Luna (5:05) — Pez Globo | Argentina

Anthropia (6:59) — Karkara | Toulouse, France

Rescue (5:41) — The Asteroid No.4 | San Francisco, CA

Psychic Garden (4:45) — Meatbodies | Los Angeles, CA

Aurora (1:26) — Valley of the Sun | Cincinnati, OH

All tracks released in 2024 (except, if you want to get technical about it, the 13-second intro, which is from 2018).

[thealieninhiding]

The Katie McGrath Archives (WIP)

A repository of my ongoing digital archeology & archival work please contact me if you have anything to contribute and buy me a coffee if you value my content

Updates

(last updated 2024-07-03)

2024-07-03

Scans:

2014-02-07 London Times - Dracula sets

Audio:

(Un)likeminded 2x02 How to Survive The Apocalypse

2024-05-24

Video:

2017 Katie McGrath interview [CW|KMcGsource]

2017 Supergirl Season 3 Sweet dreams (are made of this) Music Video

2017 CW SDCC Promo Supergirl and Arrow

2019-01-01 The CW Promo Open To All

2021-04-25 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Lena Luthor

2021-09-15 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Reflecting on Supergirl

2024-05-22

Audio:

Interview - 2009-07-17 Katie McGrath Mr Media interview

Interview - 2009-10-15 Geek Syndicate Merlin BTS special

Video:

BTS - 2008-10-08 Blue Peter Merlin BTS

Events - 2009 TV Choice Awards Digital Spy interview

Events - Getty Videos of 2009 TV Choice Awards, 2010 Merlin Series 3 launch, 2011 W.E. premiere, 2017 King Arthur Premiere

2024-05-17

Archived interviews

2008-12-07 Tribune Magazine - What Katie Did

2011-10-14 What's on TV - Merlin's Katie McGrath- 'Bad girls have more fun!'

2012-12-03 Fanhattan Blog - Colin Morgan, Katie McGrath and Bradley James on Season 5 and The Series Finale

2018-08-01 The TV Junkies - Supergirl SDCC 2018 Interviews- Lena’s Impractical Lab Outfits, the Return of Reporter Kara and a More Grounded Season 4

Audio

HHush samples

Interview - 2009-2011 Sci-fi Talk rewind merlin the series specials episode 1

Interview - 2011? Merlin S4 Sci-fi talk byte katie mcgrath on morgana

Interview - 2013 BBC Radio 1xtra part 1 & part 2

(Un)likeminded 1x02 While You Were Dreaming

Trees a crowd- Irish folklore segment

Magazine scans

2008-09-20 Radio Times

2009-06-08 TV Week (Aus)

2010-09-05 Sunday Express

2010-09-30 Totally Merlin Magazine

2011-12 Total Film

2012-03-14 Sci-Fi Now

2012-10-06 Radio Times

2013-04-06 Irish independent

2013-09-02 Marie-Claire (UK)

2013-12 Instyle

2013-12 Total Film

Video:

Fans - 2012-04-16 Merlin4 [carlospyrrhus]

Fans - 2017-08-30 Supergirl cast together on set [Joyce Law]

Interview - 2009-09-?? Merlin S2 audio interview with Katie McGrath [BJsRealm] part 1

Interview - 2010-09-06 Merlin Series 3 - BBC Radio 1xtra Interview with Angel Coulby & Katie McGrath [BJsrealm]

Interview - 2011-10-14 Merlin S4 Colin Morgan, Eoin Macken Katie McGrath on The Late Late Show

Interview - 2012-07-15 Colin Morgan and Katie McGrath at SDCC 2012 - innerSPACE [merlinnetwork2]

Interview - 2012-07-18 Katie McGrath Talks Merlin At Comic Con 2012 [ThinkHeroTV]

Interview - 2012-10-25 BBC Radio 1 Breakfast - Colin & Katie part 1 & part 2 [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Merlin S5 Katie McGrath interview international press day [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Colin, Bradley, Katie phone interview [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2013-11-09 Katie McGrath on BBC One Saturday Kitchen [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2019-07-22 ENTREVISTA SUPERGIRL Elenco fala sobre a nova temporada [Warner Channel Brasil]

Interview - 2019-07-23 Melissa Benoist Teases Directing An Episode Of 'Supergirl' [ET Canada]

Interview - 2020-02-21 ‘Supergirl’ Celebrates 100th Episode [ET Canada]

Panels - 2011-07-28 Merlin Comic Con 2011 Panel [ThinkHeroTV]

[astraofdelos]

My Personal Headcanons for the Batfamily

(All ages are calculated for the last day of 2024. If people want me to add onto this for other Batfamily members or associates, lmk)

Bruce Thomas Wayne: 43, 02/19/1981

— 19 when he went off to the LoA (2000)

— 24 when he became Batman (2005)

— 27 when he took in Dick (2008)

Barbara Joan Gordon: 24, 09/23/2000

— 12 when she became Batgirl (2012)

— 17; paralyzed (2017)

— 18 when she became Oracle (2018)

Richard John “Dick” Grayson-Wayne: 24, 11/11/2000

— 10 when he became Robin I (2010)

— 15 when he became Nightwing (2015)

Cassandra Carolyn “Cass” Cain-Wayne: 22, 01/26/2002

— 18 when she became Batgirl II (2020)

— 19 when she became Black Bat (2021)

— 21 when she became Orphan (2023)

Jason Peter Todd-Wayne: 22, 8/16/2002

— 13 when he became Robin II (2015)

— 15; died (2017)

— 18 when he became Red Hood (2020)

Timothy Jackson “Tim” Drake-Wayne: 19, 07/19/2005

— 13 when he became Robin III (2018)

— 16 when he became Red Robin (2021)

Stephanie Brown: 19, 08/11/2005

— 14 when she became Spoiler (2019)

— 16 when she became Robin IV (2021)

— 16 when she became Batgirl III (2021)

— 18 when she became Spoiler again (2023)

Duke Thomas: 17, 08/13/2007

— 14 when he became Robin (2021)

— 15 when he became Signal (2022)

Damian Thomas al Ghul- Wayne: 12, 08/09/2012

— 10 when he became Robin VI (2022)

[calderacitylovers]

Zutara SlowBurn FanFiction: Personal Favs, part I

·        I AM STILL HERE by owedbetter Published: 2017-10-09 | 77K words | 7 Chapters

After the Last Agni Kai K heals Z with the help of bloodbending. Very sweet.

 ·        THE SUMMIT by AJLenoire

Chronicles post-war years, as Gaang and other characters gather for annual summits to keep peace and build relationships between the Four Nations. Katara yearns for a bigger purpose than the Avatar’s companion and slowly grows into a shrewd diplomat. Very sweet slow burn ZK story. Has mature scenes.

 ·        CLOTHE ME IN SEASONS, DRESS ME IN SNOW by sadladybug Published: 2015-01-05 | 62K words | 7 Chapters

Follows old Zuko as he reflects on his life and what would have been if he kept Katara closer. Absolutely beautiful, but also a devastatingly heart-breaking story about loss and pain.

 ·        SILENT DECLARATIONS by Megara Pike (Megara_Pike) Published: 2021-01-20 | 2,6K words

A short story based on animation by Hayley Wong. Z finds K asleep in her study and carries her to bed. Very sweet, gentle story.

 ·        COVERED IN YOU by evergreenonthehorizon Published: 2021-04-02 | 55K words | 14 Chapters

Eight years after the war Z convinces K to take on a role of a Southern Water Tribe ambassador in the Caldera city. Both are completely clueless about each other’s feelings. Features political talks, big gestures, and a ball. Very cute, sweet slow-burn story. Has mature scenes.

 ·        TEN STRIDES IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION by evergreenonthehorizon Published: 2021-04-03 | 29K Words | 12 Chapters

A collection of short stories filling in the gaps between some of the events of ATLAS3 and up to the Last Agni Kai. Features accidental cuddling, embracing in the rain, sharing a bed for warmth, post-Ember Island Theater discussions, being discovered, waiting to be kissed, Suki & Katara being good friends, battle plans, Zuko & Sokka getting drunk, slow burn & angst. Very sweet.

 ·        THE SWAY OF THE SUN by TheBlackBriarSparrow Published: Published: 2019-10-14 | 102K Words | 27 Chapters

Two years post-war Gaang reunites in Caldera city for a secret party in honor of the overworked Fire Lord’s birthday. Rebels attack the palace setting a thrilling consequence of events in motion. Adventures, investigations, and fights ensue. Z & K work together and enlist old friends to help find missing people. Beautiful slow-burn story with an exciting plot.

·        A WARM EMBRACE by ewinkie Published: 2020-10-06 | 19K Words | 7 Chapters

An ATLAS3 rewrite from Southern Riders to the Last Agni Kai. Katara and Zuko have to hide in a cave following their encounter with Yon Rha. Comforting turns to cuddling, which turns to waking up on Appa's tail in each other's arms. Katara is shocked at how comfortable she is. Zuko is shocked that Katara doesn't hate him for it. Features sharing a bed, being discovered, slowburn, and lots of teenage silliness.

 ·        FOLLOWING BLUE by Boogum Published: 2018-11-07 | 39K Words | 10 Chapters

ATLA S2 rewrite. After Katara falls from Appa’s saddle during a pursuit, the Blue Spirit becomes her reluctant companion and helps her reunite with her friends. Ba Sing Se scenes are completely rewritten, and Z ends up joining the Gaang much earlier. Thrilling beginning, sweet middle, average ending.

 ·        ANOTHER WORD FOR ALCHEMY by FanPanda13 Published: 2014-08-19 | 108K words | 24 Chapters

Five years post-war Aang summons old friends for a summit and invites them on a trip to investigate mysterious locations where he experiences loss of bending. Features Gaang setting Z & K up, travelling on Appa like in the olden days, lots of sparring, royal courting, magnificent navy ships & war ballons. Thrilling story with fun banter between old friends. Slowburn, mature content.

 ·        CONSUME ME WITH FIRE, FLOOD ME WITH DESIRE by Dacamia Published: 2020-08-14 | 86K words | 24 Chapters

Steamy ATLAS2 and ATLA S3 rewrite. Z & K accidentally meetup on their way to Ba Sing Se and decide to travel together. Features aged-up characters, lots of intimate scenes, staying in a beautiful cave, helping villagers, betrayal in Ba Sing Se, reunion, forgiveness, etc. Explicit mature content.

 ·        ROOTS AND WINGS by zukoscomet Published: 2020-08-14 | 250K words | 25 Chapters

A series of short stories of Z & K as they grow closer, confess their love for one another and start a family.

 ·        THOSE WHO FAVOR FIRE by hiwasseelane Published: 2021-05-02 |29K Words | 13 Chapters

An ATLAS3 rewrite. Sweet, teen-appopriate.

Here’s a link to Part II of my personal favs.

Here’s a link to Wholesome Zutara Short Stories.

[starstruckbyacomet]

Buddiebaiting – Real or Imagination?

A. THE TOXIC FANS

Among Buddie shippers, there are growing toxic fans who have become more prominent over time. These are not normal fans. They're obsessed to make Buddie canon, by all means necessary. They have been bullying actors and showrunners at least since 2020.

There are indications that people inside the show have known about those toxic fans at least since 2021:

Oliver Stark deactivated his Twitter account because of the bullying on May 23, 2021.

In a Gay Times interview uploaded on YouTube on Apr 22, 2024 (time stamp 09:07) Oliver admitted that the actresses who portrayed the love interests had felt unfairly treated by Buddie stans.

In a TPN interview uploaded on YouTube on Jul 21, 2024 (time stamp 19:29), Tim Minear said that some fans on X were wishing him to die.

After knowing about the toxic fans, what did the show do?

Neither Fox nor ABC has ever acknowledged that the bullying & online harassments ever happened. They've never condemned the bullying towards their actors and/or showrunners. They didn't delete bullying comments on their OFFICIAL social media accounts. They also didn't block the senders.

Tim Minear also said that he didn't want the toxic fans affect his work (time stamp 15:14).

When talking about the actresses who felt that they had been 'unfairly treated' by the toxic fans, Oliver stated that "whether or not it was unfair or not, I don't speak to that" (time stamp 09:23). A statement that some people interprete as 'COWARDLY THROWING THE ACTRESSES UNDER THE BUS' by implying that they might deserve such treatement, just to avoid upsetting toxic Buddie fans.

B. ARE YOUR INTENTIONS HONORABLE?

Do Tim Minear & co. do the right thing? Imagine if similar scenario happen to you, for example:

A female co-worker with whom you've been doing a project, confesses her romantic interest to you. You're married, and have no romantic feeling towards her. You plainly reject her. However, your co-worker insists that your spouse is not the right partner for you, she is. What would you do?

Borrowing Hen Wilson's word, if your intentions are 'honorable', you would be mindful in your interactions with the co-worker. You would reduce your friendliness, and avoid any gestures which could raise her empty expectation.

If you're acting as usual, ignoring her feelings, or even encouraging it, you are being selfish and deceitful. It seems that you want to continue enjoying her attention without giving what she wants.

Your co-worker is harassing your spouse to make your spouse leaves you. If you still don't limit your interactions with her by now, you are proven to be a cruel & selfish bastard. At this point, the victim is not only you. Your innocent spouse has been dragged into this mess and suffered.

Tim & co. want to portray a close friendship between Buck & Eddie to the audience, including Buddie shippers. In this case, Buck & Eddie's close friendship is the project, Buddie shippers are the infatuated co-worker, and actors who played the love interests are the spouse.

C. EXAMINING THE BAITS

If Tim & co. have 'honorable intentions', they should be mindful in portraying Buck & Eddie's interactions. If we playback Season 2 and onwards, we'd find several Buddie positive scenes which are NOT NECESARRY portraying Buck & Eddie working relationship or close friendship. Are those scenes Buddiebaits?

1)) Ep. 2x01 "Under Pressure" (Sep 23, 2018): Buck admired/envied Eddie's physique.

2)) Ep. 2x04 "Stuck" (Oct 8, 2018): Maddie teased Buck about his boycrush on Eddie.

Tim said that Buck has been coded as bisexual at least since Season 2. Those two scenes might be the codes to indicate Buck has interest in men, but not limited in Eddie.

VERDICT: Not a bait.

3)) Ep. 2x10 "Merry Ex-mas" (Nov 26, 2018): A stranger in Elf costume assumed that Christopher was Buck & Eddie's son.

A Buddie fan wrote this: "The writers could have easily had Buck say that him and Eddie were not a couple and Chris was not his son. Especially since the writers had no problem doing just that in ep. 5x01 "Panic" when Eddie's then-girlfriend Dr. Ana Flores was alluded to being Christopher's mother and she said that she wasn't his mother just a friend."

I agree with the commentary. It is the writers' deliberate decision that Buck didn't deny the allegation when he had the chance. This scene seems to be a nod to Buddie shippers. However, the scene was aired on Nov 2018. I don't think anyone had been harassed by the toxic shippers by then. The writers might think it was a harmless inside joke between them and the fans.

VERDICT: More like a joke, not a bait.

4)) LS ep. 2x03 "Hold the Line" (Feb 1, 2021): Eddie showed up right in front of Buck, after TK mistakenly alluded that Buck was hitting on him.

This scene DIDN'T CONTRIBUTE ANYTHING to Buck & Eddie's working relationship or friendship. Even worse, by the time this episode was on air, both Ana Flores (first seen on ep. 3x12 "Fools", aired on Mar 23, 2020) and Taylor Kelly (first seen on ep. 2x06 "Dosed", aired on Oct 22, 2018) have been portrayed as the love interests of Eddie and Buck (they had been flirting/hooked up on screen). This Lone Star scene is sending a false message to Buddie shippers, and should not be made at all. I don't see any purpose of this scene other than to be A BAIT to KEEP the INTEREST of BUDDIE SHIPPERS, because each BUCK and EDDIE HAD DIFFERENT CANON RELATIONSHIPS which WERE PROGRESSING ON SCREEN.

VERDICT: A bait.

5)) Ep. 4x14 "Survivors" (May 24, 2021): Eddie made Buck the legal guardian of Christopher. Kristen Reidel, the showrunner at the time, insisted that the gesture was platonic. She drew the inspiration from her personal experience. Her mother was a single parent who listed a best friend as Kristen's legal guardian instead of Kristen's own grandparents. The scene was meant to show the depth of friendship between Buck & Eddie, and how much Eddie trusted Buck. This is a tricky one, but because the scene had a clear purpose which it successfully achieved, I believe it is not a bait.

VERDICT: Not a bait.

Scene #6 onwards were aired in 2024. By that time, the bullying and harassment towards the actors and showrunners had been happening for years. And we know that at least Tim and Oliver had known about it.

If Tim & co. didn't want to bait Buddie fans, they should review Buck & Eddie's scenes from Buddie fans' perspective, or as other fans often said, by wearing Buddie goggles. They should avoid any possible misinterpretations which could give false hopes to Buddie fans.

6)) Ep. 7x06 "There Goes the Groom" (May 2, 2024): Buck & Eddie's karaoke scene.

They should include Henren and Ravi, or at least Ravi, to avoid misinterpretation by Buddie fans. Unless, THE MISINTERPRETATION IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY AIMED FOR.

VERDICT: A bait.

7)) Ep. 8x06 "Confessions" (Nov 7, 2024): Eddie talked about beards, right after he mentioned that he was straight.

For anyone who doesn't know, 'a beard' is a common slang for a fake romantic partner whose purpose is to conceal someone's sexual orientation. Eddie mentioned beards right after he said that he was straight has made Buddie shippers interpreted the scene as a sign that EDDIE WAS HIDING HIS SEXUALITY.

Can the scene be written without mentioning beards? Well, here's the actual conversation on screen:

Father Brian: "And you you have that... very handsome mustache."

Eddie (chuckling): "Do you wanna know why I grew this?"

Father Brian: "Tell me."

Eddie: "Because the LAFD doesn't allow beards. Too flamable. Otherwise, I'd have gone full mountain man."

Father Brian: "So, it's a disguise?"

Eddie (averting his gaze): "Something like that."

Father Brian: "What're you afraid of seeing when you're looking in the mirror?"

**************

Here's an alternative conversation WITHOUT talking about beards:

Father Brian: "And you you have that... very handsome mustache."

Eddie (chuckling): "I'm glad someone likes it."

Father Brian: "Nobody else likes it?"

Eddie: "Well, sometimes my friends tease me about it. But I think they're just not used to see me with a mustache."

Father Brian: "So, it's new? Is it a trend that I didn't know about?"

Eddie (chuckling): "No, not a trend. I just want to see something different when I look in the mirror."

Father Brian: "So, it's a disguise?"

Eddie (averting his gaze): "Something like that."

Father Brian: "What're you afraid of seeing when you're looking in the mirror?"

**************

If a non-writer like me could come up with an alternative conversation with the same ending WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT BEARDS, so could the writers. What if the conversation became longer? Then, cut some time off from the fu**king dancing scene!!! THE WRITERS CAN AVOID TALKING ABOUT BEARDS, BUT THEY DIDN'T.

VERDICT: A bait.

8)) Ep. 8x06 "Confessions" (Nov 7, 2024): Pantless Eddie opened his door to Buck and let Buck sat next to him.

There are others iconic dances which Eddie could do without losing his pants: Michael Jackson's Moonwalk, the Footloose Dance, John Travolta's Staying Alive Dance, etc. But no, Eddie had to do the Risky Business Dance so HE COULD OPEN HIS DOOR WITHOUT WEARING PANTS TO BUCK, RIGHT AFTER BUCK WAS DUMPED BY TOMMY, and BUCK COULD SIT NEXT TO A PANTLESS EDDIE 😒. This sexual inuendo only gives a false message to Buddie fans.

VERDICT: A bait.

Aren't those baits actually signs that Buddie will be canon? HECK, NO! Based on the reasons explained on another post.

D. CONCLUSION

BUDDIEBAITING IS REAL. Buddie shippers are NOT ONLY IMAGINING SIGNS, at least not some of them. The show has been giving mixed signals to Buddie stans all these years, to keep them watching & supporting the show, without ever making Buddie canon.

Katey Stoetzel has criticised some journalists paid writers for encouraging the toxic fans' behavior. Lisa Babick has criticized toxic fans for pushing their own romantic narrative over friendship narrative offered by TV shows. However, a lot still need to be said about shows which are ACTING OBLIVIOUS although their scenes could raise false expectation among fandom.

And Tevan fans need to be careful, because WE COULD BE THE NEXT TARGET.

[goalhofer]

Longest tenured NHL player by team: 2024-25

Boston: Brad Marchand (2009-10) Buffalo: Rasmus Dahlin & Tage Thompson (2018-19) Detroit: Dylan Larkin (2015-16) Florida: Aleksandr Barkov (2013-14) Montreal: Brendan Gallagher (2012-13) Ottawa: Thomas Chabot (2016-17) Tampa Bay: Victor Hedman (2009-10) Toronto: Morgan Reilly (2013-14) Carolina: Jordan Staal (2012-13) Columbus: Boone Jenner (2013-14) New Jersey: Jesper Bratt & Nico Hischier (2017-18) New York Islanders: Casey Cizikas (2011-12) New York Rangers: Chris Kreider (2012-13) Philadelphia: Sean Couturier (2011-12) Pittsburgh: Sidney Crosby (2005-06) Washington: Alex Ovechkin (2005-06) Chicago: Connor Murphy (2017-18) Colorado: Gabriel Landeskog (2011-12) Dallas: Jamie Benn (2009-10) Minnesota: Jared Spurgeon (2010-11) Nashville: Roman Josi (2011-12) St. Louis: Jordan Binnington & Colton Parayko (2015-16) Utah Hockey Club: Lawson Crouse & Clayton Keller (2016-17) Winnipeg: Mark Scheifele (2012-13) Anaheim: Cam Fowler (2010-11) Calgary: Mikael Backlund (2008-09) Edmonton: Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (2011-12) Los Angeles: Anže Kopitar (2006-07) San José: Marc-Édouard Vlasic (2006-07) Seattle: Matty Beniers, Will Borgen, Joel Daccord, Vince Dunn, Jordan Eberle, Yanni Gourde, Philipp Grubauer, Nils Larsson, Jared McCann, Jamie Oleksiak, Jaden Schwartz & Brandon Tanev (2021-22) Vancouver: Brock Boeser (2016-17) Vegas: Lars Karlsson, Brayden McNabb & Shea Theodore (2017-18)

[staydandy]

The Lost Tomb 3: Ultimate Note (2020) - 终极笔记 - Whump List

List by StayDandy Synopsis : Wu Xie and Wang Pan Zi delve into a web of mysteries tied to his uncle’s past, The Mystic Nine's expedition to Parcel Island, and the disappearance of his friend Zhang Qi Ling. As Wu Xie uncovers dangerous secrets and faces devastating challenges, his journey leads him to unexpected alliances, ancient conspiracies, and a perilous tomb raid in search of the truth. With Zhang Qi Ling’s lost memories and a critical mistake plunging the group into uncertainty, Wu Xie is left at a crossroads, holding onto a faint hope sparked by an intriguing suggestion. (MDL) AKA : Ultimate Chronicles

Whumpee : Wu Xie played by Joseph Zeng (center) • Zhang Qi Ling "Xiao Ge" played by Xiao Yu Liang (2nd from left) • Wang Pang Zi played by Cheng Fang Xu (far left) • Hei Yan Jing "Hei Ye" played by Liu Yu Ning (2nd from right)

Country : 🇨🇳 China Genres : Action, Adventure, Thriller, Mystery, Bromance

Notes : This is a Full Whump List • Adapted from books 5, 6, and 7 of "The Grave Robbers' Chronicles" (盗墓笔记) by Kennedy Xu • Favorite episode is pink • Suggested watch order of series (not including movies & spin-offs) : – 1. Mystic Nine (2016) – 2. The Lost Tomb (2015) – 3. The Lost Tomb 2: Wrath of the Sea (2019) – 4. The Lost Tomb 2: Explore with the Note (2021) >> 5. The Lost Tomb 3: Ultimate Note (2020) – 6. Adventure Behind the Bronze Door (2024) – 7. Tomb of the Sea (2018) – 8. Reunion: Sound of the Providence (2020) – 9. Reunion: Sound of the Providence 2 (2020)

Related Lists : The Lost Tomb (2015) - Full List • The Lost Tomb 2: Wrath of the Sea (2019) - Full List • The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2021) - Full List • Adventure Behind the Bronze Door (2024) - Full List

Episodes on List : 23 Total Episodes : 37

*Spoilers below*

01 : (near end) Wu Xie falls down a few stairs

02 : (near end) Stranded in the dessert, briefly stuck in quicksand.. exhausted, overheated, collapses, passes out

03 : … continued from previous ep. ... Carried

04 : (near end) Trips & rolls down a stone hill

05 : Lost in a dessert, exhausted, overheating, hands shaking; heatstroke, punched … freezing … vertigo.. collapses, passes out

06 : Falls down a cliff, caught (unharmed) … shaking head, dizzy, unsteady, kneels down.. exhausted, dizzy, passes out, infected.. struggling being held down, knocked out with tranquilizer.. carried.. body temp too low, struggling being held down, infection cut off, passes out

07 : Zhang Qi Ling "Xiao Ge" unsteady, Wu Xie unsteady, collapses

08 : Bitten by tons of bugs, which are burned off with hot knife … nightmare

09 : Xiao Ge's shoulder sore … Hei Yan Jing "Hei Ye" unsteady, ear ringing … unsteady, affected by a poisonous gas in the air, stuck sinking in a swamp

10 : Bitten by a snake, collapses … cared for … Wu Xie knocked around by a monster snake

11 : Eyes sore … Hei Ye tied up … Wu Xie temporarily blinded

12 : Rolls down a hill … falls & lands on a rock … carrying a friend, rolls his ankle on a stone … passes out.. infection cut out with hot knife (why'd they have to make it so gross 🤢), biting on a stick to mute his screaming, pain, breathing hard

14 : Finger bleeding, cut on rough iron

16 : Xiao Ge collapsed, traumatized, carried … Wu Xie unsteady … Xiao Ge in and out of consciousness, unresponsive, carried … Wu Xie waking after (not shown) being rescued from the dessert, Xiao Ge still asleep, feverish … unsteady, helped to walk … hospitalized, coma

19 : Wu Xie bit by a spider, Wang Pang Zi bit by a spider, passes out

22 : Wu Xie attacked

23 : Realizes he's been stuck in a hallucination, breaks from the hallucination, is actually still underwater, running out of air … passed out, wakes with a shock … Hei Ye tied up

24 : Xiao Ge's arm cut during a fight … Wu Xie kicked … Xiao Ge exhausted, unsteady, has a cut on his cheek from a fight.. unsteady, supported.. stabbed in the gut, collapses, coughing up blood, carried … (@ 19:00 Wang Pang Zi is a badass who doesn't get near enough credit) … Wu Xie's knuckles bleeding from digging, Xiao Ge passed out.. carried … Pang Zi exhausted & hurt from fighting, passes out … Xiao Ge carried … Pang Zi dragged, Wu Xie collapses … hands wrapped in bandages

25 : Pang Zi & Xiao Ge hospitalised … Pang Zi wound cared for … arm cut.. bit by a spider, passes out

32 : Pang Zi & Xiao Ge in a fight, Pang Zi's arm injured, kicked to the ground, passes out

33 : Wu Xie falls on top of old pottery, injures leg … coughing, rendered mute (temporary) … wounds treated

34 : (at end) In a fight, beat up

35 : … continued from previous ep. ... Fight, bit by a snake, collapses, passes out … Pang Zi's arm cut … Xiao Ge encased in an amber, gasps awake when freed

More Whump Lists for this show: love-me-a-lotta-whump

[whumpetywhump]

Are You Human, Too? (2018)

Nam Shin/Nam Shin III

01:

- Hit by a truck, unconscious, bleeding from the head

02:

- Still unconscious and bleeding on the ground from last episode, cradled, transported via ambulance with his head and leg bandaged, comatose in bed

- Has the skin torn off his back in a fire

03:

- Still comatose in bed, transported via ambulance

- Skin still shredded from last episode, shuts down and passes out, rushed to hospital, has his mechanics fixed, unconscious on an operating table after being stitched up, rebooted

04:

- Still comatose, transported via ambulance again

- Dragged behind a moving car, scratches on his face, skin torn off his back

05:

- Still comatose, bathed by his mother

- Face still scraped and back still shredded from last episode, has the skin repaired

06:

- Still comatose, treated with a device designed to wake him up

07:

- Still comatose and receiving the treatment

- Runs out of battery, shuts down

- Has his batteries ripped out, shuts down

08:

- Still comatose and receiving treatment

09:

- Still comatose

10:

- Still comatose, has the treatment withdrawn, twitching

11:

- Showing signs of waking from the coma

- Smashes a glass, cuts his hand, bleeding

12:

- Flashback: Wakes from the coma

- Still bleeding from the hand after last episode, collapses and passes out, recovering in bed with an oxygen mask and his hand bandaged

- Has his batteries removed, shuts down

- Has his batteries removed again, believed dead, given CPR

13:

- Hand still bandaged, still weak, helped into bed

- Easily exhausted, breathless, has to lean on things for support, using a wheelchair

- Hit in the face with a wrench, skin shredded from his cheek

14:

- Flashback: Face cut and bruised after a fight

- Stands up too quickly, dizzy, refusing help, stumbling, needs support to walk

- Face still shredded after last episode, has the damaged skin cut out and replaced

- Shut down after having his battery removed

15:

- Flashback: Smashes a glass, bloody hand, bandages it himself

- Punched in the face

- Has his batteries ripped out, shuts down, put on manual mode so that his every move is controlled by others

- Forced to hurt someone, tries to jump from a building so he can’t do the same again

- Has his memory wiped, forced to hurt someone, overrides the manual mode to save them

16:

- Punched in the face, bloody lip

17:

- Overwhelmed, migraine, stumbling, unable to walk without support, stumbles again, recovering in bed on an IV, feverish, refusing care

- Kill switch activated, falls to his knees, passes out and shuts down, reactivated

18:

- Grieving, sobbing

- Held hostage, tied to a chair, gagged, beaten in a hostage video, bruised face, bleeding from the mouth, held at gunpoint, rescued, unable to walk without support

- Grieving but unable to show emotion, “I want to cry”

- Running out of time before his kill switch is reactivated, starting to lose power, unstable on his feet, stumbling

- Removes his own batteries, shot repeatedly in the chest, falls into a river, shuts down underwater, magically resurrected in Kdrama style

TW: Contains themes of child abuse and suicide

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The reason you can’t buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

In 2017, Equifax suffered the worst data-breach in world history, leaking the deep, nonconsensual dossiers it had compiled on 148m Americans and 15m Britons, (and 19k Canadians) into the world, to form an immortal, undeletable reservoir of kompromat and premade identity-theft kits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

Equifax knew the breach was coming. It wasn't just that their top execs liquidated their stock in Equifax before the announcement of the breach – it was also that they ignored years of increasingly urgent warnings from IT staff about the problems with their server security.

Things didn't improve after the breach. Indeed, the 2017 Equifax breach was the starting gun for a string of more breaches, because Equifax's servers didn't just have one fubared system – it was composed of pure, refined fubar. After one group of hackers breached the main Equifax system, other groups breached other Equifax systems, over and over, and over:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equifax-password-username-admin-lawsuit-201118316.html

Doesn't this remind you of Boeing? It reminds me of Boeing. The spectacular 737 Max failures in 2018 weren't the end of the scandal. They weren't even the scandal's start – they were the tipping point, the moment in which a long history of lethally defective planes "breached" from the world of aviation wonks and into the wider public consciousness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737

Just like with Equifax, the 737 Max disasters tipped Boeing into a string of increasingly grim catastrophes. Each fresh disaster landed with the grim inevitability of your general contractor texting you that he's just opened up your ceiling and discovered that all your joists had rotted out – and that he won't be able to deal with that until he deals with the termites he found last week, and that they'll have to wait until he gets to the cracks in the foundation slab from the week before, and that those will have to wait until he gets to the asbestos he just discovered in the walls.

Drip, drip, drip, as you realize that the most expensive thing you own – which is also the thing you had hoped to shelter for the rest of your life – isn't even a teardown, it's just a pure liability. Even if you razed the structure, you couldn't start over, because the soil is full of PCBs. It's not a toxic asset, because it's not an asset. It's just toxic.

Equifax isn't just a company: it's infrastructure. It started out as an engine for racial, political and sexual discrimination, paying snoops to collect gossip from nosy neighbors, which was assembled into vast warehouses full of binders that told bank officers which loan applicants should be denied for being queer, or leftists, or, you know, Black:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

This witch-hunts-as-a-service morphed into an official part of the economy, the backbone of the credit industry, with a license to secretly destroy your life with haphazardly assembled "facts" about your life that you had the most minimal, grudging right to appeal (or even see). Turns out there are a lot of customers for this kind of service, and the capital markets showered Equifax with the cash needed to buy almost all of its rivals, in mergers that were waved through by a generation of Reaganomics-sedated antitrust regulators.

There's a direct line from that acquisition spree to the Equifax breach(es). First of all, companies like Equifax were early adopters of technology. They're a database company, so they were the crash-test dummies for ever generation of database. These bug-riddled, heavily patched systems were overlaid with subsequent layers of new tech, with new defects to be patched and then overlaid with the next generation.

These systems are intrinsically fragile, because things fall apart at the seams, and these systems are all seams. They are tech-debt personified. Now, every kind of enterprise will eventually reach this state if it keeps going long enough, but the early digitizers are the bow-wave of that coming infopocalypse, both because they got there first and because the bottom tiers of their systems are composed of layers of punchcards and COBOL, crumbling under the geological stresses of seventy years of subsequent technology.

The single best account of this phenomenon is the British Library's postmortem of their ransomware attack, which is also in the running for "best hard-eyed assessment of how fucked things are":

https://www.bl.uk/home/british-library-cyber-incident-review-8-march-2024.pdf

There's a reason libraries, cities, insurance companies, and other giant institutions keep getting breached: they started accumulating tech debt before anyone else, so they've got more asbestos in the walls, more sagging joists, more foundation cracks and more termites.

That was the starting point for Equifax – a company with a massive tech debt that it would struggle to pay down under the most ideal circumstances.

Then, Equifax deliberately made this situation infinitely worse through a series of mergers in which it bought dozens of other companies that all had their own version of this problem, and duct-taped their failing, fucked up IT systems to its own. The more seams an IT system has, the more brittle and insecure it is. Equifax deliberately added so many seams that you need to be able to visualized additional spatial dimensions to grasp them – they had fractal seams.

But wait, there's more! The reason to merge with your competitors is to create a monopoly position, and the value of a monopoly position is that it makes a company too big to fail, which makes it too big to jail, which makes it too big to care. Each Equifax acquisition took a piece off the game board, making it that much harder to replace Equifax if it fucked up. That, in turn, made it harder to punish Equifax if it fucked up. And that meant that Equifax didn't have to care if it fucked up.

Which is why the increasingly desperate pleas for more resources to shore up Equifax's crumbling IT and security infrastructure went unheeded. Top management could see that they were steaming directly into an iceberg, but they also knew that they had a guaranteed spot on the lifeboats, and that someone else would be responsible for fishing the dead passengers out of the sea. Why turn the wheel?

That's what happened to Boeing, too: the company acquired new layers of technical complexity by merging with rivals (principally McDonnell-Douglas), and then starved the departments that would have to deal with that complexity because it was being managed by execs whose driving passion was to run a company that was too big to care. Those execs then added more complexity by chasing lower costs by firing unionized, competent, senior staff and replacing them with untrained scabs in jurisdictions chosen for their lax labor and environmental enforcement regimes.

(The biggest difference was that Boeing once had a useful, high-quality product, whereas Equifax started off as an irredeemably terrible, if efficient, discrimination machine, and grew to become an equally terrible, but also ferociously incompetent, enterprise.)

This is the American story of the past four decades: accumulate tech debt, merge to monopoly, exponentially compound your tech debt by combining barely functional IT systems. Every corporate behemoth is locked in a race between the eventual discovery of its irreparable structural defects and its ability to become so enmeshed in our lives that we have to assume the costs of fixing those defects. It's a contest between "too rotten to stand" and "too big to care."

Remember last February, when we all discovered that there was a company called Change Healthcare, and that they were key to processing virtually every prescription filled in America? Remember how we discovered this? Change was hacked, went down, ransomed, and no one could fill a scrip in America for more than a week, until they paid the hackers $22m in Bitcoin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Change_Healthcare_ransomware_attack

How did we end up with Change Healthcare as the linchpin of the entire American prescription system? Well, first Unitedhealthcare became the largest health insurer in America by buying all its competitors in a series of mergers that comatose antitrust regulators failed to block. Then it combined all those other companies' IT systems into a cosmic-scale dog's breakfast that barely ran. Then it bought Change and used its monopoly power to ensure that every Rx ran through Change's servers, which were part of that asbestos-filled, termite-infested, crack-foundationed, sag-joisted teardown. Then, it got hacked.

United's execs are the kind of execs on a relentless quest to be too big to care, and so they don't care. Which is why their they had to subsequently announce that they had suffered a breach that turned the complete medical histories of one third of Americans into immortal Darknet kompromat that is – even now – being combined with breach data from Equifax and force-fed to the slaves in Cambodia and Laos's pig-butchering factories:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/data-stolen-healthcare-hack/index.html

Those slaves are beaten, tortured, and punitively raped in compounds to force them to drain the life's savings of everyone in Canada, Australia, Singapore, the UK and Europe. Remember that they are downstream of the forseeable, inevitable IT failures of companies that set out to be too big to care that this was going to happen.

Failures like Ticketmaster's, which flushed 500 million users' personal information into the identity-theft mills just last month. Ticketmaster, you'll recall, grew to its current scale through (you guessed it), a series of mergers en route to "too big to care" status, that resulted in its IT systems being combined with those of Ticketron, Live Nation, and dozens of others:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/ticketmaster-hack-data-breach.html

But enough about that. Let's go car-shopping!

Good luck with that. There's a company you've never heard. It's called CDK Global. They provide "dealer management software." They are a monopolist. They got that way after being bought by a private equity fund called Brookfield. You can't complete a car purchase without their systems, and their systems have been hacked. No one can buy a car:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/business/cdk-global-cyber-attack-update/index.html

Writing for his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller tells the all-too-familiar story of how CDK Global filled the walls of the nation's auto-dealers with the IT equivalent of termites and asbestos, and lays the blame where it belongs: with a legal and economics establishment that wanted it this way:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-supreme-court-justice-is-why-you

The CDK story follows the Equifax/Boeing/Change Healthcare/Ticketmaster pattern, but with an important difference. As CDK was amassing its monopoly power, one of its execs, Dan McCray, told a competitor, Authenticom founder Steve Cottrell that if he didn't sell to CDK that he would "fucking destroy" Authenticom by illegally colluding with the number two dealer management company Reynolds.

Rather than selling out, Cottrell blew the whistle, using Cottrell's own words to convince a district court that CDK had violated antitrust law. The court agreed, and ordered CDK and Reynolds – who controlled 90% of the market – to continue to allow Authenticom to participate in the DMS market.

Dealers cheered this on: CDK/Reynolds had been steadily hiking prices, while ingesting dealer data and using it to gouge the dealers on additional services, while denying dealers access to their own data. The services that Authenticom provided for $35/month cost $735/month from CDK/Reynolds (they justified this price hike by saying they needed the additional funds to cover the costs of increased information security!).

CDK/Reynolds appealed the judgment to the 7th Circuit, where a panel of economists weighed in. As Stoller writes, this panel included monopoly's most notorious (and well-compensated) cheerleader, Frank Easterbrook, and the "legendary" Democrat Diane Wood. They argued for CDK/Reynolds, demanding that the court release them from their obligations to share the market with Authenticom:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-7th-circuit/1879150.html

The 7th Circuit bought the argument, overturning the lower court and paving the way for the CDK/Reynolds monopoly, which is how we ended up with one company's objectively shitty IT systems interwoven into the sale of every car, which meant that when Russian hackers looked at that crosseyed, it split wide open, allowing them to halt auto sales nationwide. What happens next is a near-certainty: CDK will pay a multimillion dollar ransom, and the hackers will reward them by breaching the personal details of everyone who's ever bought a car, and the slaves in Cambodian pig-butchering compounds will get a fresh supply of kompromat.

But on the plus side, the need to pay these huge ransoms is key to ensuring liquidity in the cryptocurrency markets, because ransoms are now the only nondiscretionary liability that can only be settled in crypto:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

When the 7th Circuit set up every American car owner to be pig-butchered, they cited one of the most important cases in antitrust history: the 2004 unanimous Supreme Court decision in Verizon v Trinko:

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-682

Trinko was a case about whether antitrust law could force Verizon, a telcoms monopolist, to share its lines with competitors, something it had been ordered to do and then cheated on. The decision was written by Antonin Scalia, and without it, Big Tech would never have been able to form. Scalia and Trinko gave us the modern, too-big-to-care versions of Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and the other tech baronies.

In his Trinko opinion, Scalia said that "possessing monopoly power" and "charging monopoly prices" was "not unlawful" – rather, it was "an important element of the free-market system." Scalia – writing on behalf of a unanimous court! – said that fighting monopolists "may lessen the incentive for the monopolist…to invest in those economically beneficial facilities."

In other words, in order to prevent monopolists from being too big to care, we have to let them have monopolies. No wonder Trinko is the Zelig of shitty antitrust rulings, from the decision to dismiss the antitrust case against Facebook and Apple's defense in its own ongoing case:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/073_2021.06.28_mtd_order_memo.pdf

Trinko is the origin node of too big to care. It's the reason that our whole economy is now composed of "infrastructure" that is made of splitting seams, asbestos, termites and dry rot. It's the reason that the entire automotive sector became dependent on companies like Reynolds, whose billionaire owner intentionally and illegally destroyed evidence of his company's crimes, before going on to commit the largest tax fraud in American history:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaire-robert-brockman-accused-of-biggest-tax-fraud-in-u-s-history-dies-at-81-11660226505

Trinko begs companies to become too big to care. It ensures that they will exponentially increase their IT debt while becoming structurally important to whole swathes of the US economy. It guarantees that they will underinvest in IT security. It is the soil in which pig butchering grew.

It's why you can't buy a car.

Now, I am fond of quoting Stein's Law at moments like this: "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." As Stoller writes, after two decades of unchallenged rule, Trinko is looking awfully shaky. It was substantially narrowed in 2023 by the 10th Circuit, which had been briefed by Biden's antitrust division:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/22-1164/22-1164-2023-08-21.html

And the cases of 2024 have something going for them that Trinko lacked in 2004: evidence of what a fucking disaster Trinko is. The wrongness of Trinko is so increasingly undeniable that there's a chance it will be overturned.

But it won't go down easy. As Stoller writes, Trinko didn't emerge from a vacuum: the economic theories that underpinned it come from some of the heroes of orthodox economics, like Joseph Schumpeter, who is positively worshipped. Schumpeter was antitrust's OG hater, who wrote extensively that antitrust law didn't need to exist because any harmful monopoly would be overturned by an inevitable market process dictated by iron laws of economics.

Schumpeter wrote that monopolies could only be sustained by "alertness and energy" – that there would never be a monopoly so secure that its owner became too big to care. But he went further, insisting that the promise of attaining a monopoly was key to investment in great new things, because monopolists had the economic power that let them plan and execute great feats of innovation.

The idea that monopolies are benevolent dictators has pervaded our economic tale for decades. Even today, critics who deplore Facebook and Google do so on the basis that they do not wield their power wisely (say, to stamp out harassment or disinformation). When confronted with the possibility of breaking up these companies or replacing them with smaller platforms, those critics recoil, insisting that without Big Tech's scale, no one will ever have the power to accomplish their goals:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

But they misunderstand the relationship between corporate power and corporate conduct. The reason corporations accumulate power is so that they can be insulated from the consequences of the harms they wreak upon the rest of us. They don't inflict those harms out of sadism: rather, they do so in order to externalize the costs of running a good system, reaping the profits of scale while we pay its costs.

The only reason to accumulate corporate power is to grow too big to care. Any corporation that amasses enough power that it need not care about us will not care about it. You can't fix Facebook by replacing Zuck with a good unelected social media czar with total power over billions of peoples' lives. We need to abolish Zuck, not fix Zuck.

Zuck is not exceptional: there were a million sociopaths whom investors would have funded to monopolistic dominance if he had balked. A monopoly like Facebook has a Zuck-shaped hole at the top of its org chart, and only someone Zuck-shaped will ever fit through that hole.

Our whole economy is now composed of companies with sociopath-shaped holes at the tops of their org chart. The reason these companies can only be run by sociopaths is the same reason that they have become infrastructure that is crumbling due to sociopathic neglect. The reckless disregard for the risk of combining companies is the source of the market power these companies accumulated, and the market power let them neglect their systems to the point of collapse.

This is the system that Schumpeter, and Easterbrook, and Wood, and Scalia – and the entire Supreme Court of 2004 – set out to make. The fact that you can't buy a car is a feature, not a bug. The pig-butcherers, wallowing in an ocean of breach data, are a feature, not a bug. The point of the system was what it did: create unimaginable wealth for a tiny cohort of the worst people on Earth without regard to the collapse this would provoke, or the plight of those of us trapped and suffocating in the rubble.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[pressnat]

MEUS CC’S MASCULINOS FAVORITOS + CC/ MY FAVORITE MALE CC || PART 1

⇢ basics ||

eyes. https://www.patreon.com/posts/d-o-l-c-e-v2-eye-68183687?l=fr

eyelash. https://kijiko-catfood.com/3d-lashes-version2-for-skin-detail-experimental/

skinblend. https://lamatisse.tumblr.com/post/612766683809136640/butterish-my-first-skinblend-i-made-like-two

skinoverlay. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lemonade-skin-62813813

skintone. https://www.patreon.com/posts/bare-skintone-40506361

skin detail. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364

freckles . https://www.patreon.com/posts/40247063

nose shade. https://faaeishccpreviews.tumblr.com/post/648642853067800576/skin-details-nose-shaders-by-faaeish-download

blush. https://squeamishsims.tumblr.com/post/185846308452/booboo-blush-by-squeamishsims-so-ive-tried-so

eyebrows. https://www.patreon.com/posts/whispy-eyebrows-62391460?utm_source=Patreon&utm_campaign=Whispy+Eyebrows

lips. https://www.patreon.com/posts/55703083

mouth corners. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364

~~~~

⇢  presets ||

lip. https://www.patreon.com/posts/memphis-lip-43736936

nose. https://poyopoyosim.tumblr.com/post/686774059407736833/male-nose-presets-n5n6n7n8-teen

jaw. https://www.patreon.com/posts/jiumiqaq-jaw-72054166

~~~~

⇢ hair/cabelos ||

01. https://www.patreon.com/posts/oh-my-god-were-58952703

02. https://jny-sims.tumblr.com/post/685668030601117696/jny-redo-hair

03. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pelo-bueno-male-33392785

04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/male-hair-pack-2-65951700

05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/kent-hair-62397490

06. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161

07. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763

08. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763

09. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161

10. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71551981

11. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71827369

12. https://www.patreon.com/posts/72827056

13. https://www.patreon.com/posts/levi-hair-73080895

14. https://www.patreon.com/posts/79061220

15. https://allabouthatcc.tumblr.com/post/656904403834503168/grimcookies-hair-dump-ive-updated-all-of-my-old

16. https://aharris00britney.tumblr.com/post/187194346870/axa-2019-official-release

17. https://okruee.tumblr.com/post/684075013010243584/sylvester-hair-hi-babes-info-masculine-frame

18. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58261906

19. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lorenzo-by-54215805

20. https://www.patreon.com/posts/marco-by-56792600

21. https://www.patreon.com/posts/federico-by-70185929

22. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564

23. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564

24. https://www.patreon.com/posts/70428613

25. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58551246

26. https://liliili-sims4.tumblr.com/post/691837200658219008/bruno-hair-bgc-hat-compatible-24

27. https://qrqr19.tumblr.com/post/673612023225073664/hair-24-fluorite-hair-25-peridot-hair-26

28. https://qr19sims.blogspot.com/2022/03/hair-27-28-29.html

~~~~

⇢ beard/barba ||

01. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

02. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

03. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

04. https://www.veigasims.com/2018/07/beard-facial-hair-style-12.html

05. https://www.veigasims.com/2020/11/beard-facial-hair-style-15.html

06. https://www.veigasims.com/2022/08/facial-hair-style-33.html

~~~~

⇢ acc/acessórios ||

01. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection

02. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/696230540558385152/equinox-collection-its-the-start-of-my-favorite

03. https://www.patreon.com/adrienpastel

04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/warm-5-item-set-60918114

05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/round-square-38706995

06. https://maxismatchccworld.tumblr.com/post/190436912960/liliili-sims-scarf-collection-scarf-no1-45

07. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection

[yeonboy]

𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐥 ♡ choi yeonjun // mlist.

After facing disappointment with love for years upon years, you have chosen to replace romance with dance in your life, dedicating your entire time to this dance academy you’re employed at. It’s not that you hate men now, you just don’t expect to fall for them anymore because all they do is break your heart. And then Choi Yeonjun enters your life as a new recruit at the academy – sweet, adorable, soft spoken, kind and younger than you. He is everything you have never found attractive in a guy before. But somehow, you're helplessly spiraling for him.

❧ choi yeonjun x f. reader | 16+ | smau ♡ comedy ♡ angst ♡ strangers to friends to lovers!au ♡ dance academy!au ♡ 98-liner!reader ♡ dancer!reader ♡ dancer!yeonjun ♡ slow burn.

❧ warnings! profanity, an ABUNDANCE of suggestive jokes, mentions of people's sex lives (or lack thereof), death & murder threats as jokes, some of the characters being assholes for no reason, reader being a commitment phobe, a lot of pining, a ton of miscommunication (hehe ofc <3), misunderstandings, unnecessary heartbreaks + more will be added as the series progresses!

❧ featuring! all of txt | jimin & jungkook (bts) | sakura & kazuha (le sserafim) | yeji & ryujin (itzy) | keeho (p1harmony) | somi (soloist, ex i.o.i).

❧ playlist! trampoline - zayn & shaed ║ easy - camila cabello ║ lavender haze - taylor swift ♪

❧ status! 23.04.23 ⇢ tba. | on-going | bi-weekly updates

notes! heyyy, guys! yes, rya smau era 2k23 hehe! i had this idea for a very angsty fic where an older reader has feelings for a younger yeonjun but can't accept it bec he's not her "type"... but when i tried to write it, it got soooo sad and heavy soooo fast that i had to give up 😭 SO! i reckoned why not attempt to do an smau w a lighter version of this concept??? let's hope this turns out okay (:

pls be kind! the last time i wrote an smau was in 2018 so my creativity's got rust in every crevice (': but constructive criticism + suggestions are more than welcome! 🫶

❧ main masterlist | inbox ⁘

profiles: [1] [2] [3]

00. intro ║ 01. more nepotism hires ║ 02. grandpa and grandma ║ 03. break a leg (but not yours) [written: 1k] ║ 04. do you like flowers ║ 05. ✨aRtTtT✨ ║ 06. let the boy feel a woman's touch ║ 07. support system ║ 08. liking people we can't have ║ 09. it IS weird ║ 10. ‼ trouble ‼ ║ 11. connecting some big ass dots ║ 12. it's a work in progress ║ 13. dance crush ║ 14. enemies to lovers ║ 15. ohhh my god i'm so stupid ║ 16. at least that’s how it began ║ 17. we're no sidehoe material ❌ ║ 18. jealousy wasn't on my bingo card ║ 19. pesky little feelings ║ 20. why do i know so much ║ 21. it should've been me ║ 22. an overthinker AND a dumbass ║ 23. everything is a mess [written: 500] ║ 24. sum chamgo love dive it is [written: 1k] || 25. feels like a funeral in here ║ 26. let's all act surprised || 27. must start breathing into a bag ║ 28. IDK DUDE IM NERVOUS ║ 29. i wasn't jumping I SLIPPED ║ 30. wdym denial ║ [tba]

taglist: @bailies-me @samisubi @forever-in-the-sky2 @captivq @jiawji @hyuneyeon @wanlore @softcabur @emohazuzworld @yjusei @marifujioka @taekwondoes @suzirumas @ohmahgods @ye0nvibezzn @mrsyawnzzn @rionah

let me know if you'd like to be added!

© yeonboy 2023 // do not steal, copy or repost. respect your local content creators, kaythanks.

[333mp444thy]

1.) Haifa Massacre 1937

2.) Jerusalem Massacre 1937

3.) Haifa Massacre 1938

4.) Balad al-Sheikh Massacre 1939

5.) Haifa Massacre 1939

6.) Haifa Massacre 1947

7.) Abbasiya Massacre 1947

8.) Al-Khisas Massacre 1947

9.) Bab al-Amud Massacre 1947

10.) Jerusalem Massacre 1947

11.) Sheikh Bureik Massacre 1947

12.) Jaffa Massacre 1948

13.) Khan Yunis Massacre 1956

14.) Jerusalem Massacre 1967

15.) Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982

16.) Al-Aqsa Massacre 1990

17.) Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994

18.) Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002

19.) Gaza Massacre 2008-09

20.) Gaza Massacre 2012

21.) Gaza Massacre 2014

22.) Gaza Massacre 2018-19

23.) Gaza Massacre 2021

24.) Current Gaza Genocide 2023-2024

Still believe it started on October 7th, 2023?

[stickybasementobject]

Johnny Depp Horror Icon

01. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

02. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

03. Ed Wood (1994)

04. Sleepy Hollow (1999)

05. The Astronaut's Wife (1999)

06. The Ninth Gate (1999)

07. Corpse Bride (2005)

08. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

09. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

10. From Hell (2001)

11. Secret Window (2004)

12. Dark Shadows (2012)

13. Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

14. Transcendence (2014)

15. Marilyn Manson: Kill4Me (2017)

16. London Fields (2018))

17. Tusk (2014)

18. Yoga Hosers (2016)