#9/13/05

[mikeywayarchive]

Station Park, Providence, RI // Sep 13th 2005 // holdfasthope on livejournal

[jtl-fics]

my heart is going out to andrew in new kings rn. him looping living in a world having had to watch his world literally crash and die for even a second. (neil didn’t quite drag him down with him, he followed on his own)

WIP Wednesday - Open (9-13-23) | New Kings AU

He sees Kevin blink at him before his good hand came to rest on David's. "Thanks Da-" Kevin looks at the cab driver and swallows. "Thanks David." he says sounding slightly pained.

Wymack couldn't blame him. It had been a long journey for the two of them to become Father and Son. It was only in the last three years before he had passed away that Kevin had regularly called him dad.

He squeezes Kevin's knee again. "Anytime son." he says because no one will bat an eye at him using that phrase. Kevin offers a weak smile but Wymack notices they're about to miss their exit.

[doriantomybasil]

i had an oral exam today and it was scheduled at ten and there were 13 of us so i naively thought that i’d be done around noon the latest right? yeah fuck that the first person who went in was in there for a fucking hour and then because i’m nice i let everyone go ahead of me because i didn’t have anything else to do today until 5 pm so i ended up waiting for three goddamn hours and the whole exam lasted about 5 minutes and i got a four because my prof “could see that i knew the topic and i studied for it but i was a little uncertain” girliepop i was sitting in the hall outside of this room for three hours straight looking at the people coming out defeated and broken at that point i wasn’t even certain about my own fucking name

but i’m on antidepressants so really it was fine

[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!

[dinasilvertongue]

[wanderingsimsfinds]

WanderingSims Fave CC - Female Shoes List

1, 8 - Rollo-Rolls - 4t3 Darte77 Vans Old Skool & Converse All Star HT Sneakers

2 - rasso - Vans Sk8 Hi

3 - Pixicat - Vans

4 - InLightOfDust - Vans Conversion

5 - satellite-sims - 4t3 Leosims Vans

6, 36 - JamiesPlayHouse - 4t3 Logan Shoes & 4t3 Bernard Boots

7 - Suteflower - 4t3 Jius Platform Heeled Boots 01

9-11 - Rollo-Rolls - 4t3 Jius Platform Canvas Sneakers 01, Jius Low Top Sneakers 12, Jius Platform Sneakers 03

12 - Rollo-Rolls -4t3 Elliesimple Nike Tanjun

13 - Semller - Adidas Superstar

14 - Rollo-Rolls - 4t3 Serenity Elphie Pump

15, 18, 25-27, 47-48 - Rollo-Rolls - 4t3 Jius Floral Lace Up Brogues, 4t3 Jius Canvas Wedge Espadrilles, 4t3 Madlen Harlow Boots Low & High, 4t3 Jius Platform Pumps 01, 4t3 Jius Platform Sandals 05

16-17 - Rollo-Rolls - 4t3 Trillyke Jelly Platform Sandals (Both Versions) & 4t3 MMSIMS Primo Sandals

19, 21-22, 40 - Ameriko-Steelie - 4t3 Jius Bowknot Platform Loafers 01, 4t3 Arltos Long Boots, 4t3 Jius Y2K Loafers With Leg Warmers, 4t3 Jius Platform Leather Sandals 02

20 - Ameriko-Steelie - 4t3 Astya96 Lolita Platform Shoes

23 - KotaJose - 4t3 Trillkye Antifragile Boots

24 - bellakenobi - 4t3 Madlen Dusk Diva Boots

28 - LeahLillith - Mulder Platform Boots (TSR)

29 - Semller - UNIF Choke Boots

30-31 - Rollo-Rolls - 4t3 Jius Leather Platform Ankle Boots & 4t3 MMSIMS Daydream Boots

32 - Suteflower - 4t3 Jius Leather Ankle Boots 04

33 - JamiesPlayHouse - 4t3 Suede Ankle Boots

34 - Rollo-Rolls - 4t3 Jius Ankle Boots

35 - yesod-sims - 4t3 MMSIMS Dr Martens Molly

37-38 - Anzuchansims - Usamarusims Carnival Scene Shoes V1 & V2

39 - Pixicat - JC Scully

41 - Ameriko-Steelie - 4t3 Madlen Sweet Harmony Melody Shoes

42-45 - Rollo-Rolls - 4t3 Astya96 Cross Strap Platform Heeled Sandals, 4t3 Arltos Shoes N7 & 4t3 Arltos Shoes N109, 4t3 Elliesimple Block Heels

46 - lillka - Pretty Summer Shoes (TSR)

[5sospenguinqueen]

Bedtime Stories | Daniel Ricciardo x Author! Reader

Summary: For the past six years, you've been dreaming of a future with Daniel. Until one silly little interview shatters every illusion.

Warnings: Swearing. Angst. Baby fever. End of a relationship. Daniel bashing.

Female reader with various faceclaims. Takes place in the 2022 season.

Main Masterlist

next.

━━━━━━ ༻𖥸༺ ━━━━━━

User 2 no, it's not an announcement. her best friend is currently pregnant and she was gushing about looking forward to aunty duties

User 3 omg her and daniel would make the cutest babies though

→ User 4 i bet she can't wait until they have their own mini-me

User 5 imagine our rom-com queen going from writing the cutest but filthiest fiction imaginable to writing about why you should eat your carrots

━━━━━━ ༻𖥸༺ ━━━━━━

22•05•22

User 6 i can't believe this man was talking about being in the height of his career when he's been nothing but a flop since leaving red bull

User 7 the way he's been stringing this poor woman along for 6 years, knowing how badly she wants children, to then decide in a random interview that he's never going to have kids because they would be a 'distraction'

User 8 fans spotted y/n running from the pits once she saw that daniel was safely done with racing

User 9 i fear we may be witnessing the downfall of something we once held sacred

━━━━━━ ༻𖥸༺ ━━━━━━

16•06•22

fallontonight just posted

liked by YourUserName, kellypiquet and others

fallontonight did you know @ YourUser Name was once chased by a kangaroo? find out how in tonight's episode of The Tonight Show 📚🦘

4,477 comments

YourUserName thanks for having me! ✨

User 11 excuse me, ma’am, reassess what

User 12 daniel has been absent from her last 3 posts

→ User 1 not even in the likes or comments

→ User 2 and he didn't even congratulate her on the recent book launch

→ User 3 ya’ll are reaching. he's busy racing. she's busy doing book promo. they still follow each other

User 4 anyone notice she didn't look as happy as she usually does

→ User 5 yes! and i swear she got teary when talking about her life plans 🥺

━━━━━━ ༻𖥸༺ ━━━━━━

YourUserName just posted

liked by maxverstappen1, mclaren and others

YourUserName my happy place 🌊🐚🦀 Aug '22

4,990 comments

User 6 does this mean a new book is coming soon

→ User 7 girl, we’ve just had one. let the woman rest

→ YourUserName sorry, my lovelies but i don’t think i'm in the right headspace to being right a romance novel at this time

→ User 6 confirmation??!?!

→ User 7 we’re children of divorce

→ User 8 honestly fuck those two because i couldn’t have cared less about vroom vroom boys until mother started dating one and now i'm crying in class ‘cause they’re over

landonorris get that bread, queen 🍞

→ YourUserName who let you out of daycare

→ User 9 not y/n and lando interacting like she didn’t break his teammates heart

→ User 10 more like his teammate broke y/n’s heart. let's not make daniel out to be the victim here

kellypiquet p said get writing those children’s books so she can brag about aunty y/n to her friends

→ YourUserName my sweet girl. i saw the cutest dress the other day for her so I’ll pop round soon x

→ User 11 i love their friendship

→ User 12 get this woman a child. She’s too sweet to be stuck in cool aunt mode forever

User 13 anyone notice she didn't do her annual birthday post for daniel?

━━━━━━ ༻𖥸༺ ━━━━━━

04•09•22

User 14 no because the interviewer was so real for that. checo has a few children and he’s currently 2nd best. max is nowhere to be seen on the grid he's that far ahead and he makes sure p is his priority when she’s there so???

→ User 15 and the way he stormed out. i bet PR are sooo happy with him

User 16 nah because mclaren recently announced that they’re not extending his contract so he currently doesn't have his seat and doesn't have his y/n, all because he thought he was better than that

YourUserName posted a new story

danielricciardo posted a new story

━━━━━━ ༻𖥸༺ ━━━━━━

danielricciardo just posted

liked by landonorris, estebanocon and others

danielricciardo yesterday was something. p17 wasn't the result we were expecting, and the media were a challenge but it's always a delight to be in Suzuka. Moving on to the Americas

5,509 comments

User 1 maybe if y/n was there, you wouldn't have done so badly

User 2 maybe if he had a baby waiting in the paddock he would’ve had more incentive to do better

mclaren we’ll get them next time 💪

User 3 letting mclaren and lando down

→ User 4 the real reason he and y/n broke up is because he has no wins. she should move onto lando or something

→ User 5 he’s way too young for her

→ User 4 they'd make a good looking couple tho

(comments have been disabled for this post)

━━━━━━ ༻𖥸༺ ━━━━━━

19•10•22

YourUserName just posted

liked by charles_leclerc, bloomsburypublishing and others

YourUserName thirty, flirty and thriving. please enjoy a small snippet of my 30th birthday, organised by my favourite girl. these are the nice moments before she plies me full of cocktails and i become the sloppiest person in monaco tagged: kellypiquet

kellypiquet any chance to celebrate you 🤍🤍

→ kellypiquet and an even better chance to drink the entire bar and force max to carry us home

→ maxverstappen1 i'm just glad i was able to pull you both out of the sea before you drowned

landonorris can't believe you tried (and failed) to stop us from gatecrashing

→ YourUserName it was an exclusive event, we don't let randos in

→ landonorris i know you're joking but it still hurts my feelings

maxverstappen1 happy birthday, sloppy. you don't look a day over 40

→ YourUserName i'm gonna let that slide but only because i love the bag that kelly told you to buy

User 7 happy birthday to the best author

User 8 happy birthday queen

carlossainz55 happy birthday, y/n 💐

liked by YourUserName

danielricciardo happy birthday x

User 5 kelly and y/n look like the funnest people to hang out with

→ User 6 literally need to know how to become part of their duo

lewishamilton happy birthday, y/n. have a lovely night 💕

liked by YourUserName

mclaren happy birthday to papaya's favourite author (we're still waiting for a racing rom-com that is quite clearly about your favourite f1 team and their super sexy admin) 🥳🥳

liked by YourUserName

Request are open!

Baby Fever Angst Series

[scoonsalicious]

Unwanted Masterlist

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Fem!Reader

Summary: When your FWB relationship with your best friend Bucky Barnes turns into something more, you couldn't be happier. That is, however, until a new Avenger sets her sights on your super soldier and he inadvertently breaks your heart. You take on a mission you might not be prepared for to put some distance between the two of you and open yourself up to past traumas. Too bad the only one who can help you heal is the one person you can no longer trust. Completed.

If you ever feel so inclined to support my work, hop on over to buy me a coffee; it's much appreciated! <3

Warnings: 18+ Minors: GTFO; I don’t serve your kind here.

"*" indicates explicit sexual content (each chapter will feature its own warnings as needed), language, alcohol/drug use, drunk!Bucky, drunk!/high!Reader, pick-me!oc, angst, mentions of CSA, angst, emotional affair, angst, physical infidelity (dependent on your pov), canon-level violence, emotional trauma, did I mention angst?, some fluffy moments, destructive behavior, injury, medical conditions, poorly translated Russian, unprotected anonymous sex, murder, minor oc character death, mentions of SA and torture, underage drug use, mentions of sex trafficking, mention of child injury.

More will be added as the story progresses, and some chapters will have specific warnings that I will keep under wraps to avoid spoilers. When we get to those sections, I will let you know, so if there is a specific trigger that you absolutely cannot handle, let me know and I will tell you if the section is safe. As always, please let me know if I miss any warnings.

Word Count: 155.2k

A/N: And here I present unto you, my beloved, the fruit of my labors these many past moons. Seven months in the making. My magnum opus.

Tumblr says this post has too many links, so for Chapters 27, 28, 29, and 30 (the epilogue), please use the navigation links in the first part of each chapter.

Banner By: The absolutely amazing @mrsbuckybarnes1917

Part 1 (Posted 3/6/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/6/24) Part 3 (Posted 3/6/24) Part 4 (Posted 3/6/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/8/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/8/24) Part 3 (Posted 3/9/24) Part 4 (Posted 3/9/24) Part 5 (Posted 3/9/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/10/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/10/24) Part 3* (Posted 3/10/24)

Part 1* (Posted 3/11/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/12/24) Part 3* (Posted 3/13/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/15/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/15/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/16/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/17/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/17/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/18/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/19/24) Part 3* (Posted 3/19/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/21/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/22/24) Part 3 (Posted 3/23/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/24/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/26/24) Part 3 (Posted 3/26/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/27/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/28/24)

Part 1 (Posted 3/29/24) Part 2 (Posted 3/30/24) Part 3 (Posted 3/31/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/01/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/02/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/03/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/04/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/04/24) Part 5 (Posted 4/05/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/6/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/7/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/7/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/8/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/8/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/9/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/9/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/10/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/10/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/11/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/11/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/11/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/12/24) Part 5 (Posted 4/12/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/12/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/13/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/13/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/13/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/13/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/14/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/14/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/14/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/15/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/15/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/15/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/15/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/16/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/17/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/17/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/18/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/19/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/19/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/19/24) Part 5* (Posted 4/20/24) Part 6 (Posted 4/20/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/20/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/21/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/21/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/21/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/22/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/22/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/22/24)

Part 1 (Posted 2/23/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/23/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/23/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/23/24) Part 5 (Posted 4/23/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/24/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/24/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/24/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/24/24) Part 5 (Posted 4/24/24) Part 6 (Posted 4/24/24) Part 7 (Posted 4/24/24) Part 8 (Posted 4/24/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/25/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/25/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/25/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/26/24) Part 2 (Posted 4/26/24) Part 3 (Posted 4/26/24) Part 4 (Posted 4/26/24)

Part 1 (Posted 4/27/24) Part 2* (Posted 4/27/24)

[dedmerath]

Im adding a timeline to my Adamsapple stuff, so its easier to follow, and because I keep jumping from present to past to future.

I will edit this as I add more comics.

- Adam and his Paradise

- Adam goes to heaven

- Adam and Cain

- Cain side Story 1

- Cain side Story 2

- Cain side Story 3

- Cain side Story 4

- Cain side Story 5

- Cain side Story 6

- Cain side Story 7

- Cain side Story 8

- Cain side Story 9

- Cain side Story 10

- Cain side Story 11 - End

- Satan and Lucifer 01

- Satan and Lucifer 02

- Satan and Lucifer 03 - End

- Adam wakes up after being killed by Nifty

- Visit to the Heaven Embassy.

- Adam fails to keep himself out of trouble

- Adam’s first punishment PART 1.

- Adam’s first punishment PART 2.

- Adam’s first punishment PART 3.

- Adam’s first punishment PART 4.

- Adam’s first punishment PART 5.

- Adam’s first punishment PART 6.

- Adam’s first punishment PART 7

- Adam’s first punishment PART 8.

- Adam’s first punishment PART 9-1

- Adam’s first punishment PART 9-2

- Adam after the punishment NSFW (4 pages)

- New clothes PART 1

- New clothes PART 2 (second punishment part 1)

- Second punishment PART 2

- Second punishment PART 3

- Second punishment PART 4

- Second punishment PART 5

- Second punishment PART 6

- Second punishment PART 7

- Little Visit

- Second punishment PART 8

- Little Visit Part 2

- Second punishment PART 9

- Second punishment PART 10

- Second punishment PART 11

- Secon punishment PART 12

- Second punishment PART 13

- Second punishment PART 14

- “Cain” PART 01

- “Cain” PART 02

- “Cain” PART 03

- “Cain” PART 04

- “Cain” PART 05

- “Cain” PART 06

- “Cain” PART 07

- “Caín” PART 08

- “Caín” PART 09

- “Cain” PART 10

- “Cain” PART 11

- “Cain” PART 12

- “Cain” PART 13

“Cain” Part 14 on Patreon

“Cain” Part 15 on Patreon

“Cain” Part 16 on Patreon

“Cain” Part 17 A on Patreon

“Cain” Part 17 B on Patreon

“Cain” Epilogue on Patreon

- “Boy’s Night” PART 1 soon on patreon.

New arc soon on Patreon!

[jayflrt]

a stoner’s guide to starbucks

PAIRING ▸ lee heeseung x fem!reader (ft. enha, winter from aespa, beomgyu from txt, and dino from svt)

GENRES ▸ social media au (smau), crack, fluff, stoner au, strangers to lovers

WARNINGS ▸ profanity, sexual jokes, zero braincells, limited knowledge of the starbucks corporation, weed consumption, dumb shenanigans, ignore timestamps!

SUMMARY ▸ in which you work at the starbucks where heeseung is a regular at (and considered a public enemy). also he only goes when he’s stoned off his ass.

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ hello !! i am alive (real) also i was so committed to the bit that i got high to make this <3 shoutout @hoonbear for the Extensive Starbucks Knowledge 🫡 i would also like to note that i am NOT doing a tag list for this smau. also please note that this is a fictional setting and to boycott starbucks in real life for firing their workers over their pro palestine speech. remember to do your daily click!

INCOMING MESSAGES !

TEASER

PROFILES ONE | TWO

01. weed guy beomgyu

02. red bitch with the freckles rizz

03. starbucks public enemy #1

04. 50% cut ???

05. lee heeseung: upstanding citizen, NOT murderer

06. clearing up misunderstandings with an aqi under 50

07. chat is this real

08. daddy’s home 2

09. biodegrade ur chance at romance

10. triple filtered reverse osmosis water filtration system

11. losing the idgaf war

12. crazy gets u bitches

13. banned in the name of love

14. riki s worded irl??

15. 8ball brings nations together

16. killing myself postponed tonight repostponed

17. scheming sponsored by crazy bitch 62 and unimportant goon

18. the do-over date to end all first dates

19. seek BetterHelp.com

20. quarterly store meeting (remote)

21. WHAT ARE WE

22. heejake support group for heejake victims

23. bro fumbled the unfumbleable

24. sunghoon is the new Papa John

25. according to penal code 837 🤓☝️

26. jungwon pulls bitches (the duolingo owl) too

27. someone PLEASE take jungwon to see the teenage mutant ninja turtles movie

28. 14th date’s the charm

29. doc mcuggo

30. nothing to write home about

31. LONDON I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL I LOST MY QUEEN TOO

32. starbucks double chocolate brownies

33. having a kid together before dating is next level

34. tweaking out on 5 hour energy

35. 7.83 inches

36. The Milk Makes The Man, And The Man Makes The Milk

37. sunghoon from papa john's from starbucks

38. then who's flying the plane???

39. league of legends quarantine ex girlfriend

40. WELCOME HOME CHEATER 😐

41. unknown evil forces (chaewon)

42. friends to rivaling coffee shop employees au

43. do NOT get the weed frap

44. now on channel 9 news

45. choose your fighter heeseung tit variation

46. kitten i'll be honest, daddy's about to kill himself

47. a fire can be put out but missing a bereal is forever

48. baby's first customer connection score

49. #STARBUCKS_FIRST_WIN

50. epilogue

UNCUTS !

weekly weed check 🗣️

SUNGHOONXJLAW

happy weedsgiving

minjake texts

the Sunghoon Special

goons vs baby shark movie

COMPLETED 12/1/23

[mikeywayarchive]

Providence, RI // Sep 13th 2005 // holdfasthope on livejournal

[jtl-fics]

Hi! I love your writing! Could you please do something from the Smalls AU? I’m obsessed with Janie

WIP Wednesday - Closed (9/6/23) | Smalls AU

"Watch your step." the hostess warns as they climbed away from the bar and Janie caught sight of a game on the Final Destination plot point waiting to happen.

Oh wow.

On the TV was an Exy game.

She knew, logically, that in this universe it was a very popular sport and that it was real and existed (or at least it better exist because how the fuck else was she gonna pay for stupid American University?)

Still, it was her first time seeing it.

< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >

[beemo-clippin]

Presentiiinngg *drumrolls* Favorite Etho + Bdubs moments of HC10! (Video length: 3:36 min)

There will most definitely be a part two at some point, so I would love to hear any of your favorite moments which I may include there ^-^

Video credit in order of appearance: Bdubs Ep.8 (23:20); Etho Ep. 2 (17:33); Bdubs Ep.6 (7:23); Bdubs Ep.2 (16:00); Etho Ep.3 (6:50); Bdubs Ep.7 (0:56); (1:53); Bdubs Ep.14 (27:19); Bdubs Ep.2 (15:23); Etho Ep.1 (7:17); Bdubs Ep.9 (2:41); Bdubs Ep.2 (16:13); Etho Ep.1 (8:41); Bdubs Ep.2 (16:58).

Bc of the length, the video description for this one is available by request, so please lmk if you would like one!!

Transcription is below cut:

*intro music*

--- 0:05 ---

[Etho] I don't know if you know RBG values but like more like a hundred green

[Bdubs] I don't know if you know HSL

[Etho] *laughs* [Bdubs] but- *laughs*

[Etho] Hue, saturation, luminescence?

[Bdubs] That would be- yeah! Yeah. So that would be a 50L

[Bdubs] "I don't know if you know RGB"

[Etho] *laughs* [Bdubs] *giggles*

[Etho] Well apparently you go HSL not- not RGB, uh huh

[Bdubs] Yeah, HSL's the, uh… that's the, uh, primary

[Etho] The artist standard, you know, yeah

[Bdubs] Yes. This is beautiful

[Etho] Someone that truly understands art

[Bdubs] That's right [Etho] Mhm

--- 0:34 ---

*mischevious music*

[Bdubs] Hullo?

[Etho] Bdubs?

[Bdubs] Woah! *laughs* You're in- you're inside?!

[Etho] Ah I was waiting for you, I decided I would just walk in, you know

[Bdubs] That's so rude, you brought the horse in?

[Etho] Does- does he not belong in here?

[Bdubs] The horse has never been in this house

[Etho] I saw the haybales in here, I thought it was like a-

[Bdubs] No, that's a carpet

[Etho] *chuckles*

[Bdubs] Out! Out. Out

[Etho] Not horse food?

[Bdubs] No. [Etho] Okay, okay

[Bdubs] No, stop it see! Look what happened

--- 1:07 ---

*gentle piano*

[Bdubs] I love this area

[Etho] You got the pink tree

[Bdubs] Yeah

--- 1:11 ---

[Bdubs] This might be pushing it for you, a little bit. I don't want to push you too hard

[Etho] Mhm. You thinking about texturing the floor?

[Bdubs] *laughs*

[Etho] But I can texture too like, I know how to texture

[Bdubs] Yeah yeah yeah! Oh I know you can. I- I know. I know that too much is uncomfortable

[Etho] Mhm

[Bdubs] Right?

[Etho] I- I don't know what it is

[Etho] Like I like it when you do it

[Bdubs] Sure, yeah. But it can be too much.

[Bdubs] Yeah. It's more for advanced H- *laughs* HSL type people

[Etho] *laughs*

--- 1:44 ---

*chill music*

[Bdubs] That roof, It's less than a forty-five degree angle. It's like a-

[Etho] It's flatter right?

--- 1:51 ---

[Bdubs] I'm soo… puffed up as a builder. Okay

[Etho] Mhm

[Bdubs] that you can say anything and it won't hurt me. I can take it

[Etho] I feel like you need, like, some… semi-rooves lower down like, like at the four-five block height… kinda thing. You know what I mean? Like those little overhangs to something underneath

[Bdubs] I thought I could take it and I can't

[Etho] *laughs* Oh no, I crushed him

[Bdubs] *laughs*

--- 2:21 ---

*inspired piano music*

[Etho] Look at that build

[Bdubs] Come on now

--- 2:25 ---

*gentle piano and distant chatter*

--- 2:31 ---

[Bdubs] Jevin, Ethan, I'm coming. er, Etho. Ethan? Ethan

[Etho] Ethan? [Jevin] Ethan!

[Etho] Ethan hunt! [Jevin] Ethan I'm coming!

--- 2:36 ---

*silly music*

[Etho] Okay connected. *laughs* What??

[Bdubs] Oh noo!!

[Etho] *laughs* I have never seen anything like that before

[Bdubs] It's worse!

[Etho] *laughing* How is that possible?

--- 2:49 ---

*wither shriek*

[Bdubs] Wait! You hear that?

[Etho] Is that cub? Oh I think Cub's after you

[Bdubs] It could be Hypno *wither shriek*

[Etho] Oh my goodness *wither shriek*

[Etho] Oh my goodness, they're coming Bdubs *wither shriek*

[Etho] They're coming!

[Bdubs] It could be Hypno!

*wither shriek*

[Bdubs] Oh it's you!!

[Etho] *laughs*

[Bdubs] Ohhh!

[Etho] *laughs* [Bdubs] *laughs*

--- 3:09 ---

[Etho] Alright, we're gonna go by seniority here. Bdubs

[Bdubs] Yea- hahaha. *whispers* youu. You!! [Jevin] Wow

[Etho] *laughs*Lead the way [Jevin] Woww

[Bdubs] *laughs* [Jevin] *laughs*

[Bdubs] Ohh

[Etho] Was that not respectful? I thought that was a respectful thing to do

[Bdubs] No it's very respectful to your elders. It was very good

[Etho] I don't understand some things about social dynamics, I tell you

[Bdubs] *laughs*

--- 3:31 ---

[Etho] If you're ever bored or- or lonely on the server Bdubs, come hit me up

[Bdubs] Oh yes. Okay. Thank you

<end transcription>

[brightgoat]

JJBA GREEN CHILD AU - All Parts Masterpost

[.0] gravity works in mysterious ways

[ .05 ] she really did show up to church [ .1 ] stand training [.1 .5] [.2] stand education and standard education [.3] just sillies [.4] confessions? [.4 .5] soul collecting [.5] jolyne runs off with stone free and pucci bullies whitesnake part 1 [.6] jolyne runs off with stone free and pucci bullies whitesnake part 2 [.7] comic in which enrico pucci is predictable [.8] jolyne steals a disc again, gets a new stand [.9] jolyne asks about the friend, pucci asks about the birthday, [.10] introspection [.11] The Plan [.12] O-MOON [.12 .5] details lore dump (ask) [.13] Gravity [.14] Metamorphosis [.15] And she's buying a... [.15 .5] details lore dump 2 (ask) [.16] What A Wonderful World (END)

[.??] alternative end

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The real problem with anonymity

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

According to "the greater internet fuckwad theory," the ills of the internet can be traced to anonymity:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory

This isn't merely wrong, it's dangerously wrong. The idea that forcing people to identify themselves online will improve discourse is demonstrably untrue. Facebook famously adopted its "real names" policy because Mark Zuckerberg claimed to believe that "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity":

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html

In service to this claimed belief, Zuckerberg kicked off the "nym wars," turning himself into the sole arbiter of what each person's true name was, with predictably tragicomic consequences:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

Facebook is, famously, one of the internet's most polluted reservoirs of toxic interpersonal conduct. That's not despite the fact that people have to use their "real" names to participate there, but because of it. After all, the people who are most vulnerable to bullying and harassment are the ones who choose pseudonyms or anonymity so that they can speak freely. Forcing people to use their "real names" means that the most powerful bullies speak with impunity, and their victims are faced with the choice of retreat or being targeted offline.

This can be a matter of life and death. Cambodian dictator Hun Sen uses Facebook's real names policy to force dissidents to unmask themselves, which exposes them to arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing. For members of the Cambodian diaspora, the choice is to unmask themselves or expose their family back home to retaliation:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/facebook-cambodia-democracy

Some of the biggest internet fuckwads I've ever met – and I've met some big ones! – were utterly unashamed about using their real names. Some of the nicest people I know online have never told me their offline names. Greater internet fuckwad theory is just plain wrong.

But that doesn't mean that anonymity is totally harmless. There is a category of person who reliably uses a certain, specific kind of anonymity to do vicious things that inflicts serious harm on whole swathes of people: corporate bullies.

Take Tinyletter. Tinyletter is a beloved newsletter app that was created to help people who just wanted to talk to others, without a thought to going viral or getting rich. It was sold to Mailchimp, which was sold to Intuit, who killed it:

https://www.theverge.com/24085737/tinyletter-mailchimp-shut-down-email-newsletters

Tinyletter was a perfect little gem of a service. It cost almost nothing to run, and made an enormous number of peoples' lives better every day. Shutting it down was an act of corporate depravity by some faceless Intuit manager who woke up one day and said "Fuck all those people. Just fuck them."

No one knows who that person was. That person will never have to look those people in the eyes – those people whose lives were made poorer for that Intuit executive's indifference. That person is the greater fuckwad, and that fuckwaddery depends on their anonymity.

Or take @Pixsy, a corporate shakedown outfit that helps copyleft trolls trick people into making tiny errors in Creative Commons attributions and then intimidates them into handing over thousands of dollars:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

Copyleft trolling is an absolutely depraved practice, a petty grift practiced by greedy fuckwads who are completely indifferent to the harm they cause – even if it means bankrupting volunteer-run nonprofits for a buck:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

Pixsy claims that it is proud of its work "defending artists' rights," but when I named the personnel who signed their names to these profoundly unethical legal threats, Pixsy CEO Kain Jones threatened to sue me:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

The expectation of corporate anonymity runs deep and the press is surprisingly complicit. I once spent weeks working on an investigative story about a multinational corporation's practices. I spent hours on the phone with the company's VP of communications, over the course of many calls. When we were done, they said, "Now, of course, you can't name me in the article. All of that has to be attributed to 'a spokesperson.'"

I was baffled. Nothing this person said was a secret. They weren't blowing the whistle. They weren't leaking secrets. They were a corporate official, telling me the official corporate line. But they wouldn't sign their name to it.

I wrote an article about for the Guardian. It was the only Guardian column any of my editors there ever rejected, in more than a decade of writing for them:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/05/14/anodyne-anonymity/

Given the press's deference to this anodyne anonymity, it's no wonder that official spokespeople expect this kind of anonymity. I routinely receive emails from corporate spokespeople disputing my characterization of their employer's conduct, but insisting that I not attribute their dubious – and often blatantly false – statements to them by name.

These are the greater corporate fuckwads, who commit their sins from behind a veil of anonymity. That brand of bloodless viciousness, depravity and fraud absolutely depends on anonymity.

Mark Zuckerberg claimed that "multiple identities" enabled bad behavior – as though it was somehow healthy for people to relate to their bosses, lovers, parents, toddlers and barbers in exactly the same way. Zuckerberg's motivation was utterly transparent: having "multiple identities" doesn't mean you "lack integrity" – it just makes it harder to target you for ads.

But Zuckerberg couldn't enshittify Facebook on his own. For that, he relies on a legion of anonymous Facebook managers. Some of these people undoubtably speak up for Facebook users' interests when their colleagues propose putting them in harm's way for the sake of some arbitrary KPI. But the ones who are making those mean little decisions? They absolutely rely on anonymity to do their dirty work.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

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/2024/03/04/greater-corporate-fuckward-theory/#counterintuit-ive