#Cash app CeO

[seventhdiscipleworldwide]

it's deeper than you think

[void-thegod]

Any nice rich people helping poor folks?

Askin for me

[newsupdate2]

S Korean crypto-boss Do Kwon to be extradited to US

Read more

[dollbrbie]

♡ ⸝⸝ HOW YOU MET SUGAR DADDY GOJO

featuring. barbie!reader & sugardaddy!gojo | smut mdni

sugardaddy!gojo who you meet in a stereotypical fashion, on a sugar baby website. you found yourself scrolling through wanting men - ready to fund your lifestyle after your father had temporarily cut you off financially, a sigh leaving your lips with an eye roll as you skip, skip and skip.

sugardaddy!gojo who actually found you first, thinking you were one of the prettiest girls on this website and immediately sent you a message. you were definitely someone he could be more than happy to splurge on.

sugardaddy!gojo who smirks to himself, unsurprised when he notices your reply back to him.

barbiedoll: thank you handsome, so when are you thinking of taking me out <3

barbiedoll: with a $500 fee of course :)

thestrongest: you think i’m broke, baby? send me your cash app

sugardaddy!gojo who then sends you $2000 as your eyes bulge out of your sockets and securing his position to take you out the next day.

sugardaddy!gojo who takes you out to a high end, luxury restaurant. this is a restaurant even you, a rich and spoilt girl hasn’t even been to.

sugardaddy!gojo who you didn’t expect to be as young or as attractive as he was, only in his early thirties. typically, you found a lot of sugar daddies were older and not the most… aesthetically pleasing - the reason they were paying girls for their company in the first place.

sugardaddy!gojo who shrugs off your concerns with a laugh, explaining that because of his work as a ceo, he didn’t have the time to make genuine, romantic connections and would rather pay a girl for her company - no strings attached.

sugardaddy!gojo who you discover has way too much money for his own good, which is why he doesn’t mind spoiling a pretty girl in return.

sugardaddy!gojo who actually likes the spoilt princess persona you have going for you, even comparing you to a barbie doll as he compliments your pink, silky dress.

sugardaddy!gojo who you surprisingly hit it off with as you eat a high end, three course meal. then, rubbing your leg up his calf with a giggle, with him giving you a cheeky smirk in response.

sugardaddy!gojo who takes you to his penthouse that night, attaching his soft lips to yours as soon as he hears the door close, his hand reaching for the side of your neck as he depends the kiss and his other sliding down to the curve of your ass.

sugardaddy!gojo who soon takes you to the bedroom, sliding off your silken dress and placing short kisses along your collarbone before playing with the strap of your bra and unclasping it with ease.

sugardaddy!gojo who makes sure to remain a gentleman, eating you out like a starved man before even thinking about taking his pants off.

sugardaddy!gojo who rubs his thumb across your clit as he makes out with your needy pussy, your whines causing an obvious tent in his pants.

sugardaddy!gojo who makes you cum on his tongue twice, leaning back up to kiss your parted lips and making you taste yourself on his tongue.

sugardaddy!gojo who then lines his mushroom tip against your entrance, teasing you as he slides himself against your glossy folds, eliciting needy moans from your lips.

sugardaddy!gojo who is massive, constantly bottoming out inside of you and kissing your cervix as your gummy walls flutter against him.

sugardaddy!gojo who knows exactly what he’s doing, hitting your sweet spot over and over as his thumb rubs frantic circles against your clit and rolling his tongue between your sensitive buds, causing you to experience a pleasure you haven’t felt before.

sugardaddy!gojo who soon sends your intense orgasm shooting through your body, your legs shaking and giving out beneath him as your back arches with pretty moans and whimpers leaving your lips.

sugardaddy!gojo who continues to fuck you through your orgasm until he finds himself on the brink of cumming, pulling out and with a few strokes to his shaft, finishes over your chest with heavy pants.

sugardaddy!gojo who can’t help but admire the sight in front of him as he decides that this was the best sex he’s ever had.

sugardaddy!gojo who cleans you up, placing a chast kiss on your forehead as he admires your sleepy form, pulling the covers over you whilst watching your lids grow heavy.

sugardaddy!gojo who slides himself next to you in his bed, feeling reluctant before he finds himself gently pulling you into his bare chest, letting himself relax for the first time in months.

sugardaddy!gojo who you don’t find next to you in the morning, but instead a note that read -

sorry i couldn’t be here for when you wake up, i got called into work early. i left you my number, i’m hoping you’ll let me see you again. also, check your bank balance. thank you for an amazing night beautiful. ♡

sugardaddy!gojo who definitely wasn’t what you expected, but you found yourself smiling at the note and checking your bank balance, finding- $10,000?!?!

➝ part two | ➝ series masterlist

© dollbrbie | don’t plagiarise or translate any of my work

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The antitrust case against Apple

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and beyond!

The foundational tenet of "the Cult of Mac" is that buying products from a $3t company makes you a member of an oppressed ethnic minority and therefore every criticism of that corporation is an ethnic slur:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Call it "Apple exceptionalism" – the idea that Apple, alone among the Big Tech firms, is virtuous, and therefore its conduct should be interpreted through that lens of virtue. The wellspring of this virtue is conveniently nebulous, which allows for endless goal-post shifting by members of the Cult of Mac when Apple's sins are made manifest.

Take the claim that Apple is "privacy respecting," which is attributed to Apple's business model of financing its services though cash transactions, rather than by selling it customers to advertisers. This is the (widely misunderstood) crux of the "surveillance capitalism" hypothesis: that capitalism is just fine, but once surveillance is in the mix, capitalism fails.

Apple, then, is said to be a virtuous company because its behavior is disciplined by market forces, unlike its spying rivals, whose ability to "hack our dopamine loops" immobilizes the market's invisible hand with "behavior-shaping" shackles:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Apple makes a big deal out of its privacy-respecting ethos, and not without some justification. After all, Apple went to the mattresses to fight the FBI when they tried to force Apple to introduced defects into its encryption systems:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/fbi-could-have-gotten-san-bernardino-shooters-iphone-leadership-didnt-say

And Apple gave Ios users the power to opt out of Facebook spying with a single click; 96% of its customers took them up on this offer, costing Facebook $10b (one fifth of the pricetag of the metaverse boondoggle!) in a single year (you love to see it):

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/facebook-makes-the-case-for-activity-tracking-to-ios-14-users-in-new-pop-ups/

Bruce Schneier has a name for this practice: "feudal security." That's when you cede control over your device to a Big Tech warlord whose "walled garden" becomes a fortress that defends you against external threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#manorialism

The keyword here is external threats. When Apple itself threatens your privacy, the fortress becomes a prison. The fact that you can't install unapproved apps on your Ios device means that when Apple decides to harm you, you have nowhere to turn. The first Apple customers to discover this were in China. When the Chinese government ordered Apple to remove all working privacy tools from its App Store, the company obliged, rather than risk losing access to its ultra-cheap manufacturing base (Tim Cook's signal accomplishment, the one that vaulted him into the CEO's seat, was figuring out how to offshore Apple manufacturing to China) and hundreds of millions of middle-class consumers:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-vpn/apple-says-it-is-removing-vpn-services-from-china-app-store-idUSKBN1AE0BQ

Killing VPNs and other privacy tools was just for openers. After Apple caved to Beijing, the demands kept coming. Next, Apple willingly backdoored all its Chinese cloud services, so that the Chinese state could plunder its customers' data at will:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

This was the completely foreseeable consequence of Apple's "curated computing" model: once the company arrogated to itself the power to decide which software you could run on your own computer, it was inevitable that powerful actors – like the Chinese Communist Party – would lean on Apple to exercise that power in service to its goals.

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese state's appetite for deputizing Apple to help with its spying and oppression was not sated by backdooring iCloud and kicking VPNs out of the App Store. As recently as 2022, Apple continued to neuter its tools at the behest of the Chinese state, breaking Airdrop to make it useless for organizing protests in China:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

But the threat of Apple turning on its customers isn't limited to China. While the company has been unwilling to spy on its users on behalf of the US government, it's proven more than willing to compromise its worldwide users' privacy to pad its own profits. Remember when Apple let its users opt out of Facebook surveillance with one click? At the very same time, Apple was spinning up its own commercial surveillance program, spying on Ios customers, gathering the very same data as Facebook, and for the very same purpose: to target ads. When it came to its own surveillance, Apple completely ignored its customers' explicit refusal to consent to spying, spied on them anyway, and lied about it:

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

Here's the thing: even if you believe that Apple has a "corporate personality" that makes it want to do the right thing, that desire to be virtuous is dependent on the constraints Apple faces. The fact that Apple has complete legal and technical control over the hardware it sells – the power to decide who can make software that runs on that hardware, the power to decide who can fix that hardware, the power to decide who can sell parts for that hardware – represents an irresistible temptation to enshittify Apple products.

"Constraints" are the crux of the enshittification hypothesis. The contagion that spread enshittification to every corner of our technological world isn't a newfound sadism or indifference among tech bosses. Those bosses are the same people they've always been – the difference is that today, they are unconstrained.

Having bought, merged or formed a cartel with all their rivals, they don't fear competition (Apple buys 90+ companies per year, and Google pays it an annual $26.3b bribe for default search on its operating systems and programs).

Having captured their regulators, they don't fear fines or other penalties for cheating their customers, workers or suppliers (Apple led the coalition that defeated dozens of Right to Repair bills, year after year, in the late 2010s).

Having wrapped themselves in IP law, they don't fear rivals who make alternative clients, mods, privacy tools or other "adversarial interoperability" tools that disenshittify their products (Apple uses the DMCA, trademark, and other exotic rules to block third-party software, repair, and clients).

True virtue rests not merely in resisting temptation to be wicked, but in recognizing your own weakness and avoiding temptation. As I wrote when Apple embarked on its "curated computing" path, the company would eventually – inevitably – use its power to veto its customers' choices to harm those customers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Which is where we're at today. Apple – uniquely among electronics companies – shreds every device that is traded in by its customers, to block third parties from harvesting working components and using them for independent repair:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

Apple engraves microscopic Apple logos on those parts and uses these as the basis for trademark complaints to US customs, to block the re-importation of parts that escape its shredders:

https://repair.eu/news/apple-uses-trademark-law-to-strengthen-its-monopoly-on-repair/

Apple entered into an illegal price-fixing conspiracy with Amazon to prevent used and refurbished devices from being sold in the "world's biggest marketplace":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/10/you-had-one-job/#thats-just-the-as

Why is Apple so opposed to independent repair? Well, they say it's to keep users safe from unscrupulous or incompetent repair technicians (feudal security). But when Tim Cook speaks to his investors, he tells a different story, warning them that the company's profits are threatened by customers who choose to repair (rather than replace) their slippery, fragile glass $1,000 pocket computers (the fortress becomes a prison):

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

All this adds up to a growing mountain of immortal e-waste, festooned with miniature Apple logos, that our descendants will be dealing with for the next 1,000 years. In the face of this unspeakable crime, Apple engaged in a string of dishonest maneuvers, claiming that it would support independent repair. In 2022, Apple announced a home repair program that turned out to be a laughably absurd con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

Then in 2023, Apple announced a fresh "pro-repair" initiative that, once again, actually blocked repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Let's pause here a moment and remember that Apple once stood for independent repair, and celebrated the independent repair technicians that kept its customers' beloved Macs running:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/29/norwegian-potato-flour-enchiladas/#r2r

Whatever virtue lurks in Apple's corporate personhood, it is no match for the temptation that comes from running a locked-down platform designed to capture IP rights so that it can prevent normal competitive activities, like fixing phones, processing payments, or offering apps.

When Apple rolled out the App Store, Steve Jobs promised that it would save journalism and other forms of "content creation" by finally giving users a way to pay rightsholders. A decade later, that promise has been shattered by the app tax – a 30% rake on every in-app transaction that can't be avoided because Apple will kick your app out of the App Store if you even mention that your customers can pay you via the web in order to avoid giving a third of their content dollars to a hardware manufacturer that contributed nothing to the production of that material:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Among the apps that Apple also refuses to allow on Ios is third-party browsers. Every Iphone browser is just a reskinned version of Apple's Safari, running on the same antiquated, insecure Webkit browser engine. The fact that Webkit is incomplete and outdated is a feature, not a bug, because it lets Apple block web apps – apps delivered via browsers, rather than app stores:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

Last month, the EU took aim at Apple's veto over its users' and software vendors' ability to transact with one another. The newly in-effect Digital Markets Act requires Apple to open up both third-party payment processing and third-party app stores. Apple's response to this is the very definition of malicious compliance, a snake's nest of junk-fees, onerous terms of service, and petty punitive measures that all add up to a great, big "Go fuck yourself":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

But Apple's bullying, privacy invasion, price-gouging and environmental crimes are global, and the EU isn't the only government seeking to end them. They're in the firing line in Japan:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And in the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-wins-appeal-in-apple-case

And now, famously, the US Department of Justice is coming for Apple, with a bold antitrust complaint that strikes at the heart of Apple exceptionalism, the idea that monopoly is safer for users than technological self-determination:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

There's passages in the complaint that read like I wrote them:

Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving premise that only Apple can safeguard consumers’ privacy and security interests. Apple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple’s own financial interest—such as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars each year for choosing Google as its default search engine when more private options are available. In the end, Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests.

After all, Apple punishes its customers for communicating with Android users by forcing them to do so without any encryption. When Beeper Mini rolled out an Imessage-compatible Android app that fixed this, giving Iphone owners the privacy Apple says they deserve but denies to them, Apple destroyed Beeper Mini:

https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-moving-forward

Tim Cook is on record about this: if you want to securely communicate with an Android user, you must "buy them an Iphone":

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rcs-imessage-android-iphone-compatibility

If your friend, family member or customer declines to change mobile operating systems, Tim Cook insists that you must communicate without any privacy or security.

Even where Apple tries for security, it sometimes fails ("security is a process, not a product" -B. Schneier). To be secure in a benevolent dictatorship, it must also be an infallible dictatorship. Apple's far from infallible: Eight generations of Iphones have unpatchable hardware defects:

https://checkm8.info/

And Apple's latest custom chips have secret-leaking, unpatchable vulnerabilities:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/hackers-can-extract-secret-encryption-keys-from-apples-mac-chips/

Apple's far from infallible – but they're also far from benevolent. Despite Apple's claims, its hardware, operating system and apps are riddled with deliberate privacy defects, introduce to protect Apple's shareholders at the expense of its customers:

https://proton.me/blog/iphone-privacy

Now, antitrust suits are notoriously hard to make, especially after 40 years of bad-precedent-setting, monopoly-friendly antitrust malpractice. Much of the time, these suits fail because they can't prove that tech bosses intentionally built their monopolies. However, tech is a written culture, one that leaves abundant, indelible records of corporate deliberations. What's more, tech bosses are notoriously prone to bragging about their nefarious intentions, committing them to writing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Apple is no exception – there's an abundance of written records that establish that Apple deliberately, illegally set out to create and maintain a monopoly:

https://www.wired.com/story/4-internal-apple-emails-helped-doj-build-antitrust-case/

Apple claims that its monopoly is beneficent, used to protect its users, making its products more "elegant" and safe. But when Apple's interests conflict with its customers' safety and privacy – and pocketbooks – Apple always puts itself first, just like every other corporation. In other words: Apple is unexceptional.

The Cult of Mac denies this. They say that no one wants to use a third-party app store, no one wants third-party payments, no one wants third-party repair. This is obviously wrong and trivially disproved: if no Apple customer wanted these things, Apple wouldn't have to go to enormous lengths to prevent them. The only phones that an independent Iphone repair shop fixes are Iphones: which means Iphone owners want independent repair.

The rejoinder from the Cult of Mac is that those Iphone owners shouldn't own Iphones: if they wanted to exercise property rights over their phones, they shouldn't have bought a phone from Apple. This is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy for distraction-rectangles, and moreover, it's impossible to square with Tim Cook's insistence that if you want private communications, you must buy an Iphone.

Apple is unexceptional. It's just another Big Tech monopolist. Rounded corners don't preserve virtue any better than square ones. Any company that is freed from constraints – of competition, regulation and interoperability – will always enshittify. Apple – being unexceptional – is no exception.

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/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

[philsmeatylegss]

Just saw a Tiktok of a teacher dancing as an attempt to raise money to pay off her students $5,000 lunch debt. Her account is mostly dedicated to raising money to pay off children’s lunch debt.

Every teacher deserves to be paid more than any CEO or politician on this Earth and no one will ever convince me otherwise.

Btw here’s her amazon wishlist, her Venmo is @/MrsKati, and her cash app is @/mrskatijo

[verycleverboy]

Sure, you wanted TikTok back...

...but nooooooooooo not like this.

While TikTok has been known to censor some terms, particularly regarding topics like sex and murder, many see a noticeable and concerning shift taking place when it comes to how users are permitted to speak about politics. Since the app was restored in the States, countless TikTokers in the U.S. have spoken out about creator fund cutbacks, reported that videos and comments are being flagged and taken down, and warned Americans on the app can no longer use certain hashtags or see search results for terms like “fascism,” “Hitler,” or “Nazi Germany.” In searching widely censored terms myself, I got a full page of results for “fascism,” while searches for “Hitler” or “Nazi Germany” got me the same automated messages other have received, encouraging users to verify facts and use credible sources when seeking information about the Holocaust’s “legacy.” (Although “legacy” is a neutral term that can be used to refer to both the positive and negative impacts of an event, it does carry a largely positive connotation which seems notably off in this context.) Some users have reported that their own results have not been censored in this way. Meanwhile, others aren’t even getting search suggestions containing these terms. While it remains unclear why that is, TikTokers outside the U.S. say increased censorship seems to remain an issue specific to the app’s American user base. Perhaps the most jarring detail of all amid talks of censorship concerns is that some apparent changes started rolling out prior to the app’s “ban” on Saturday night. On the day of, posts containing critique of Donald Trump or Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, were flagged and removed. Posts that have been similarly censored also began to trigger a pop-up when TikTokers attempted to send videos to multiple users at once, warning of the spread of misinformation and stating the video could not be sent to more than one user. Some say censored topics include those as benign as gay rights and abortion, and American users have continued to receive these warnings since the app’s return on Jan. 19.

There's more, of course. And even more beyond that.

All of it is yet another reminder that corporations can never be your real allies, because every relationship has a cash-out price. Use what you can while you can, but always have a plan B in your digital bug-out bag.

[beardedmrbean]

March 6 (UPI) -- Sending and receiving letters in Denmark will take a big hit by 2026 as its national postal service will stop letter deliveries when 2025 comes to a close.

The Nordic nation has had a national postal service since 1624, but the current state-run postal service PostNord says that due to a 90% drop-off in letter volume since 2000, it's ending its letter-carrying services.

"We will continue to deliver letters throughout the year, before delivering the last letters at the turn of the year in 2026." CEO of PostNord Denmark Kim Pedersen said in a press release.

PostNord will begin to remove Denmark's current 1500 red mailboxes starting in June.

Letters can continue to be received and sent however, according to Transport Minister Thomas Danielsen who says "a free market for both letters and parcels" will remain in place.

More than a thousand workers will lose their jobs as a result of the change.

"It's a super sad day. Not just for our department with 20-30 people, [which is] closing down at the end of the year. It's for 1,500 people who face an uncertain future," PostNord employee Anders Raun Mikkelsen said.

The move is also a result of Danes moving to digital communication, as they typically keep all personal identifications and information on their cell phones, and the use of cash has also become uncommon. Public services utilize a Digital Post app, and local authorities send all alerts electronically.

However, it is estimated that 271,000 Danes still rely on physical mail, especially for medical correspondence. TV2 reports that the distribution company Dao will take over the remainder of the letter services in 2026, and those looking to send a letter will need to drop it off at one of the company's Daoshop outlets to do so.

[maxiemclaren]

can u do angst abt liam finding out he was rejected from vcarb and reader comforting him

Reservations

Warnings - Angst, Self doubt, slight panic attack, fluff

Pairings - Liam Lawson x fem!reader

Summary - Getting rejected by VCARB and needing to be comforted. 

a/n - I just wanna give this Kiwi a hug! Enjoy.

2023

One would think getting a call to fill in for an injured team member would help get a foot in the door for full time racing in an F1 seat. Well…That’s where you’re wrong, only competing in 5 races that season. Your boyfriend was over the moon when he finally got a chance to race in an F1 car during a part of the 2023 season. Having high hopes of the team making the switch for him to be a full time driver, he had treated you to fine dining and luxurious presents for a period of time, until the honeymoon phase was over. Because all it was filling in.

Winter Break 2023/2024

Even though on average he placed higher, the team just wanted to keep Daniel for the upcoming season. It wasn’t that Liam was a bad driver, it’s just that the team wasn’t sure if they wanted to switch to a full time seat just yet. After all, the team just had a revamp, changing the name to Visa Cash App Racing Bulls, having a new CEO and team principal. Liam was called into a meeting back at the factory, getting excited knowing that they will have their own discussion about the driver lineup.

He left the factory in the worst mood possible, not calling you on the way home like he normally did, not texting you to let you know he was out of the meeting, so there was no hope and knowledge to brace yourself for a very angry Liam. 

Sitting at the island in your kitchen doing some work, you nearly jump out of your skin when you hear the front door open and slam shut with a loud “Fuck! It’s fucking bullshit!” from a voice you know all too well. Closing your laptop you go and meet the very frustrated sounding boy. 

Approaching him with calm energy you ask “Hey baby, are you okay? Is there anything you wanna talk about?” not wanting to further upset or frustrate him but wanting to let him know that you’re here for him. He looks at you, eyes locking onto yours, and then that’s when you see it. All the pain and frustration he is feeling, he goes to speak but his voice fails him and tears start to stream down his face. Immediately you close him in a hug holding him tight, you hear a change in his breathing as it sounds more rapid and suddenly he has pushed you off him as the contact is too much for him. You notice that he’s starting to shake and hyperventilate “Liam, baby it’s okay, you are home, you are with me right now. Let’s do some deep breathing, yeah?” you say to him in the hopes it calms him down from the panic attack.

“Four, three, two, one” you both say in unison as Liam has calmed down from the panic attack, you carefully sit there awaiting to see if he wants to share what had happened. “I guess I kind of need to explain what just happened” Liam says, rubbing the back of his neck. As he explained how the meeting went at the factory you couldn’t help but notice the digs he threw at himself like saying he was “incompetent, has a lack of talent, naive, and an overall shit driver”. Hearing enough of him tear himself apart you grab him and allow him to lean against you, “Now you listen to me sir. You are not incompetent, naive, a shit driver, and you have loads of talent. Just because they made a shit call does not mean you are anything less. For fucks sake you amaze me, there is no way I would be able to drive one of those cars and let alone score points” you say poking his cheek. He huffs out a laugh feeling a bit better than he did mere minutes ago.

For the next week you spoiled him, allowing him to stay in bed and cuddle with you as long as both your schedules would allow, making him his favorite meals, watching his favorite shows, etc. You decided that the both of you needed a little pick me up, so you booked a flight to LA so you could visit Lightning McQueen, his favorite character and what movie got him into racing (quoting the youtube video). “Oh baby, I have a surprise for you” you say in a sing-song way. “Hi love, what is it?” He asks you giving his full attention. “Well I know you’ve been wanting to go out but haven’t really known where to go, so I booked us flights to LA next week so we can meet Lightning McQueen!” you said excitedly. He leaped off the couch and spun you around as he peppered your face with kisses and kept repeating thank you’s.

Next week came faster than anyone could imagine and today was the day Liam would get to meet his idol. “I’m so nervous, why am I so nervous?” He asked you, “I’m not too sure, maybe because this is something you grew up with and your inner child is feeling healed and very joyful?” you answered honestly. After taking about two dozen pictures of him and Lightning McQueen. You both decide to head back to the hotel to relax while you are on vacation. Laying in your bed Liam rolls into your side and whispers in your ear “You know that you are the most amazing girlfriend anyone could ask for? Thank you for taking care of me through my rough patch” He said genuinely. You turn to face him and just smash your lips onto his, after a minute you look at him “Thank you, baby I know you would do the same for me so it’s only fair to be there for the highs and lows”. The both of you cuddle up and fall into deep sleeps both feeling so loved and cared for.

[feminist-space]

"Just weeks before the implosion of AllHere, an education technology company that had been showered with cash from venture capitalists and featured in glowing profiles by the business press, America’s second-largest school district was warned about problems with AllHere’s product.

As the eight-year-old startup rolled out Los Angeles Unified School District’s flashy new AI-driven chatbot — an animated sun named “Ed” that AllHere was hired to build for $6 million — a former company executive was sending emails to the district and others that Ed’s workings violated bedrock student data privacy principles.

Those emails were sent shortly before The 74 first reported last week that AllHere, with $12 million in investor capital, was in serious straits. A June 14 statement on the company’s website revealed a majority of its employees had been furloughed due to its “current financial position.” Company founder and CEO Joanna Smith-Griffin, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles district said, was no longer on the job.

Smith-Griffin and L.A. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho went on the road together this spring to unveil Ed at a series of high-profile ed tech conferences, with the schools chief dubbing it the nation’s first “personal assistant” for students and leaning hard into LAUSD’s place in the K-12 AI vanguard. He called Ed’s ability to know students “unprecedented in American public education” at the ASU+GSV conference in April.

Through an algorithm that analyzes troves of student information from multiple sources, the chatbot was designed to offer tailored responses to questions like “what grade does my child have in math?” The tool relies on vast amounts of students’ data, including their academic performance and special education accommodations, to function.

Meanwhile, Chris Whiteley, a former senior director of software engineering at AllHere who was laid off in April, had become a whistleblower. He told district officials, its independent inspector general’s office and state education officials that the tool processed student records in ways that likely ran afoul of L.A. Unified’s own data privacy rules and put sensitive information at risk of getting hacked. None of the agencies ever responded, Whiteley told The 74.

...

In order to provide individualized prompts on details like student attendance and demographics, the tool connects to several data sources, according to the contract, including Welligent, an online tool used to track students’ special education services. The document notes that Ed also interfaces with the Whole Child Integrated Data stored on Snowflake, a cloud storage company. Launched in 2019, the Whole Child platform serves as a central repository for LAUSD student data designed to streamline data analysis to help educators monitor students’ progress and personalize instruction.

Whiteley told officials the app included students’ personally identifiable information in all chatbot prompts, even in those where the data weren’t relevant. Prompts containing students’ personal information were also shared with other third-party companies unnecessarily, Whiteley alleges, and were processed on offshore servers. Seven out of eight Ed chatbot requests, he said, are sent to places like Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Australia and Canada.

Taken together, he argued the company’s practices ran afoul of data minimization principles, a standard cybersecurity practice that maintains that apps should collect and process the least amount of personal information necessary to accomplish a specific task. Playing fast and loose with the data, he said, unnecessarily exposed students’ information to potential cyberattacks and data breaches and, in cases where the data were processed overseas, could subject it to foreign governments’ data access and surveillance rules.

Chatbot source code that Whiteley shared with The 74 outlines how prompts are processed on foreign servers by a Microsoft AI service that integrates with ChatGPT. The LAUSD chatbot is directed to serve as a “friendly, concise customer support agent” that replies “using simple language a third grader could understand.” When querying the simple prompt “Hello,” the chatbot provided the student’s grades, progress toward graduation and other personal information.

AllHere’s critical flaw, Whiteley said, is that senior executives “didn’t understand how to protect data.”

...

Earlier in the month, a second threat actor known as Satanic Cloud claimed it had access to tens of thousands of L.A. students’ sensitive information and had posted it for sale on Breach Forums for $1,000. In 2022, the district was victim to a massive ransomware attack that exposed reams of sensitive data, including thousands of students’ psychological evaluations, to the dark web.

With AllHere’s fate uncertain, Whiteley blasted the company’s leadership and protocols.

“Personally identifiable information should be considered acid in a company and you should only touch it if you have to because acid is dangerous,” he told The 74. “The errors that were made were so egregious around PII, you should not be in education if you don’t think PII is acid.”

Read the full article here:

https://www.the74million.org/article/whistleblower-l-a-schools-chatbot-misused-student-data-as-tech-co-crumbled/

[trauma-tits]

"What actually happened is that—as you can see from the images below—TikTok first shuttered itself in accordance with the new federal law, then (presumably because of a backchannel communication from or with Team Trump) almost immediately thereafter changed its main-page message to locked-out users to a note that lauded Trump for promising to save TikTok. Then, 14 hours later, the platform went live again under a new message that offered fawning credit to Trump at a time when Trump has invited the TikTok CEO to his inauguration and received positively gobs of money from a donor closely linked to it. All this created an unavoidable impression of a hoax or scam in which (a) Trump is really just pumping his megadonors for cash behind the scenes as he also (b) could have insured TikTok stayed live all weekend but wanted it down for a period of time so that the 150 million Americans who use TikTok would suffer from a sense of loss and grief just long enough to feel lasting gratitude to Trump for “saving” an app in fact he himself had taken offline (and perhaps so megadonors would open their pockets a little wider to ensure their investment remained healthy)."

[chussyracing]

what's been happening in motorsport lately?

(long overdue update from me so it's very long and therefore hidden under the cut)

F1 teams and drivers:

Williams (union jack) and Red Bull (red pattern) brought special liveries to Silverstone

Andy Cowell (previously Merc PU chief) joins Aston Martin as new CEO

Mick Schumacher will do a Pirelli tyre test for McLaren because no other reserve driver of thier has the criteria to drive the car and their F1 drivers are coming off a triple header (so their activated the option to use Merc juniors/reserves)

Matt Whyman is Publishing „Inside Mercedes F1: Life in te Fast Lane“ book

Mercedes will bring more upgrades to both Spa and Hungary

Checo will get the new Red Bull floor Max has been running in the next race as well although Helmut Marko said that upgrade was only worth 6 points of downforce

i am so sure that i wrote this down about a month ago but since everyone has been talking about it: Enrico Cardile left Ferrari and will serve gardening leave for the rest of the season before joining Aston Martin, so Fred will oversee the area himself before Loic Serra comes (and potentially Newey as according to rumour that’s main reason behind Enrico leaving)

Ferrari is also set to have a board meeting to discuss the current form

Ollie and Pietro Fittipaldi completed Pirelli tyre testing for Haas

Michael Broadhurst became Alpine’s chief aerodynamicist (previously in Red Bull and McLaren) and Vin Dhanani became their head of vehicle performance (previously in Red Bull) and finally Jacopo Fantoni is their new deputy chief engineer (in Ferrari last year)

Visa Cash App RB partnered with Warner Bros to promote Twisters in Silverstone

oh and after complaining about the tickets the N*rstappen ruffle in Austria helped them sell out the Silverstone weekend

Charles is Peroni’s world brand ambassador and an ad and the first part of short video series to promote the drink was posted

Adidas will be Merc’s official clothing partner

Lewis was reading CBeebies Bedtime Story on BBC on 3rd July called „Small’s Big Dream“ by Manjeet Mann

Charles expanded the export of his LEC ice cream so now you can get it in Italy (can confirm that one, had Chocolate Crunch from Unes and it was delicious), France and Monaco

Pierre extended with Alpine and Lance extended with Aston Martin for next year (and beyond)

oh lol i almost forgot Ollie Bearman is officially Haas 2025 F1 driver!!!

Williams announced 26 new employees joining this year with some big names from RBR, Merc, Ferrari and others (like Matt Harman joining after summer break)

Logan started his own app (i didn’t research more on it so far but apparently there are a few articles about him so far)

Ferrari asked for an explanation from FIA after RBR’s mid season RB18 test that led to performance upgrades which shouldn’t be allowed with tests

McLaren sent out thank you packages to other teams as they helped them out after their hospitality caught fire

Alex made (and almost sold out already) Albon Pets merch

Toto Wolff confirmed they included police to research the email that was sent to journalists and F1 figures concerning the sabotage of Lewis in the team

Mercedes will have a charity football match against Aston Martin today

and Levi’s partnered with McLaren to make special edition of merch

after Almave Ambar, Almave Blanco will be distributed in the UK as well

Andretti Cadillac hired Chris Green as IT director and Laura Sturland as finance director (both previously in Merc)

Future of F1:

6 sprint weekends in 2025 will be: China, Miami, Spa, Cota, Brazil and Qatar (there is one or maybe two locations that make sense otherwise it kills the weekend imo but ok)

Rolex ends their sponsorship of F1 after 10 years (11 if you count this one), instead LVMH will step up into their position starting in 2025 (it is also very much possible Tag Heuer will be their title sponsor since it falls under LVMH umbrella and occupies similar position in business as Rolex, side note: Rag Heuer is the current sponsor of Red Bull) – rumouredly this is about money like everything in F1, the new contract is supposed to be $ 150m, so about three times as much as Rolex gave them

besides this, F1 is also finalising deal with American Express as a global partner

Zandvoort is contemplating making gravel traps to avoid track limits like they did in Austria

Rumours of the paddock:

Zak Brown has been asking for a possibility of engine supply from RBPT instead of Mercedes due to fear of reliability if they start supplying Alpine as well (considering they will drop Aston who gets Honda’s engine and knowing how much he publicly criticizes Red Bull and the culture in the team i kinda doubt it)

Alpine is also exploring RBPT and Ferari as potential engine suppliers instead of Renault

Jos Verstappen still very much wants to get his son out of the Red Bull team and Mercedes could be the next destination, Jos said in Austria that Christian Horner is the one responsible for not allowing him to drive during legends parade during the weekend and they had a lil argument speaking to media, there is still the rumour about Merc engines in 2026 being strong and that being a good argument for Max

this is technically not a rumour but also not confirmed either but Fred Vasseur strongly indicated in an interview that Lewis‘ contract will be for three years (he said they want to be champions in 2025, 2026, 2027 or something along those lines basically)

Haas is about to announce the extending of engine supply from Ferrari (with stronger links as Ollie becomes their official driver while being a part of FDA), they might get some kind of parts from Toyota as well (along with their knowhow) with potential title sponsorship deal

also Gene Haas apparently wants to expand their facilities in the UK

racingnews365 believe that Esteban is going to announce his deal with Haas before summer break

i want to prelude this by saying that driver contracts are highly confidential and nobody knows what exactly is in them, because they simply do not talk about the legal stuff so it wouldn’t get out BUT there has been a lot of speculation about Checo and his contract including clauses of performance compared to Max, some of which he is currently not complying so there is a rumour if he doesn’t improve over the next two races, they can terminate his contract and replace him mid-season (with candidates being Daniel Ricciardo – Horner’s favourite + good for their marketing where Checo is strong, Liam Lawson – Marko’s favourite + has a close to look among other teams if he doesn’t get a RBR backed seat for 2025, and apparently also Yuki)

also Liam is doing a filming day (200 kms test) with RB20 in Silverstone today which is a similar move they did with Daniel Ricciardo last year before he replaced Nyck

and Joe Saward thinks he will replace Daniel in July

also some people freaked out about Mick doing a Pirelli test for McLaren and honestly he has bigger change in Alpine where he did kind of a shootout with Jack Doohan (we have no info about how it went besides Toto saying he was strong)

after Williams were ready to announce a contract with Carlos in Spain with Netflix ready to shoot the footage of it and after he pulled out of it with new offer from Alpine (or rather Flavio Briatore), they now focused on getting Valtteri Bottas as a stable driver to partner Alex

that leaves Carlos waiting if Max really leaves RBR (but Marko made it clear they don’t want him anyway), potentially Merc (Toto said they are not interested in him but after Kimi’s  results in F2 so far, he said maybe the door is not fully closed for him yet), Audi (where Liam Lawson was seen in Austria, but even after Carlos missed a deadline from them, they might be interested) or Alpine (and if he says no, they still have Jack and Mick lined up and ready)

meanwhile Guanyu has been exploring the option to get a seat in FE if he cannot find one in F1 (with Alpine, Haas and Sauber as possible options) or even being a reserve for an F1 team for 2025

Ted Kravitz mentioned paddock gossip of Estaban leaving earlier than planned to replace Logan mid season in Williams and make space for Jack Doohan in Alpine (the only thing supporting this right now is interview with James Vowles talking about this and mentioning potential changes event his season)

Will Buxton on the other hand mentioned Daniel Ricciardo is talking to Williams

and finally Blick reported that Drugovich might be on Williams‘ list after Carlos

as for Logan he is reportedly in talks with Prema to get their Indycar seat

Lewis Hamilton is rumoured to buy Gresini Racing motogp team

apparently Lewis also called Seb to ask about what Adami is like as a race engineer and Seb gave him positive feedback

Jeremy Clarkson said he can calm people down and say that Newey is not looking for houses in Italy but rather UK

the superlicence request in Miami was potentially meant for Arvid Linblad (if you don’t know who he is, he is rbr junior currently crushing it in F3)

Briatore wants to bring Binotto into Alpine (lol)

Other series and juniors:

Franco Colapinto, Ollie Bearman, Jack Doohan and Isack Hadjar got their FP1 junior drive in Silverstone

Roman Staněk will end in Trident after Monza, he terminated the contract due to the team not performing like expected and is currently looking for a possibility of another seat in F2 (when it’s on dry, the car lacks too much to others and only on wet like in Silverstone’s sprint, the differences are diminished and the driver can show what’s in them like he did going from p22 to p8)

British F4 race in Zandvoort will have SO many F1 Academy drivers: Abbi Pulling, Bianca Bustamante, Carrie Schreiner, Jessica Edgar (and of course Chloe Chong which is driving full season in British F4)

so Arrow McLaren cannot behave for a week, to sum it up: David Malukas (who got a full time seat after Alex Palou was sued for not driving for them) got injured, they got Callum Illot drove instead of him for some time, since David wasn’t healing, they fired him and hired Theo Pourchaire for the rest of the season, INSTEAD they fired him as well after he posted about how he can’t wait for another race, and now hired Nolan Siegel (and on top Rossi will leave the team and will get replaces by Lundgaard  in 2025)

freaking Nikita Mazepin was testing GT3 in Hungary after the EU sanctions were lifted (side note idk if i stated before but Haas has to pay off Ural Kali)

Other news:

Goodwood festival of speed is coming up with interesting names (like Frederik Vesti, whole of Williams team, RB team including Horner etc)

the F1 movie everyone has been in frenzy about will be called… F1 (i think there is some teaser too if you are interested, also Fernando did an interview after Silverstone which will be used for the movie as well as some other real life stuff, like Pierre’s onboards modified) OHHH also Hans Zimmer should compose music for it like he did for Hunt vs Lauda (however it is called in English)

there was a rumour that Danica Patrick is leaving Sky Sports but that fake (or rather AI generated)

the Silverstone trophy was made by ex-F1 mechanic Alastair Gibson from car parts (there are two trophies always but the Iconic golden one is returned)

i am putting this in other category because it’s simply too unhinged but there was an open letter from some fans that Leo Leclerc is not loved and cared for enough (be so serious he has better life than i do)

[darkmaga-returns]

Donald Trump's inauguration fund is set to top the $107 million it raised in 2017 - which was nearly double the $61 million raised by Joe Biden in 2021. Corporate America is lavishing the president-elect with cash, hoping he'll support their interests, and let bygones be bygones regarding statements and actions against him over the past four years.

Major companies that walked lockstep with the establishment in denouncing Donald Trump after the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 chaos at the Capitol have pulled a major about-face amid his comeback, giving generously to his inauguration fund and hoping he’ll forget their statements about the “threat to democracy” he and his supporters purportedly posed just four years ago.

Who are the biggest corporate flip-floppers, and what do they want from Trump? Here's a breakdown:

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: Big Pharma trade group donating $1 million (which means access to exclusive VIP events, including black tie ball and personal “candlelight dinner” with the Trumps). In 2021, PhRMA CEO Steve Ubl said the events of January 6 “violate the values of our nation” and canceled donations to Republicans rejecting the 2020 vote’s outcome.

Ford and Toyota: Ford briefly froze political donations after January 6, and promised to vet politicians supporting Trump. Now they’re giving him $1 million. Toyota, also pledging $1 million, similarly halted donations to those refusing to certify Biden’s 2020 victory.

Stanley Black & Decker: Giving Trump $1 million this time around, up from a paltry $25,000 in 2017.

Intuit: Maker of popular DIY tax software has pledged a cool million amid reports Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is brainstorming a free tax filing app for Americans to use.

Kraken and Coinbase: Crypto trading platforms donating $1 million in hopes of loosened regulations. Contributed heavily to Trump's 2024 election campaign, seeking to capitalize on his pro-crypto statements.

Charter Communications: Telecom giant pledging $1 million – four times what it gave Trump in 2017, and nearly three times the $350,000 it gave Biden in 2021.

Uber: Another $1 million pledge maker, which gave the Biden inauguration $1 million four years ago. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi donated an additional $1 million, clearly hoping that the ride-hailing, courier and freight transport giant will benefit from his administration's policies.

Meta*: one of the earliest confirmed $1 million pledgers. Hoping for favorable policy, and that he'll forget the post-2020 acrimony - including Facebook and other Big Tech’s censorship of his speech online, and the companies’ backing of the outgoing Democrat president’s agenda.

[twopoppies]

Hope this is the start of the end for Dan who seems untouchable before. https://bylinetimes.com/2023/07/17/gb-news-star-dan-wootton-unmasked-in-cash-for-sexual-images-catfishing-scandal/

I hope it’s the end of him, but you’d have to imagine someone like him would have dirt on some very powerful people that might allow him to just slink away quietly. But we can all pray the police and criminal courts actually do something to punish him to an extent that he deserves.

[…]

Byline Times has extensive evidence to show that, between June 2008 and 2018, Wootton – who is gay – posed as a fictitious showbusiness agent called “Martin Branning” to offer sums of up to £30,000 “tax free” to his targets, many of whom were heterosexual men.

Among them are a very senior executive at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK alongside at least six other staff at The Sun newspaper – one with close links to News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks – friends, Facebook associates and users of the dating apps Grindr and Gaydar.

[…]

As a result, this newspaper is today publishing some details of our findings. We have identified five co-conspirators, along with a representative group of around a dozen victims. However sources suggest the true figure extends to many, many more men.

Full article here

[kodiakjackson]

Full Name: Kodiak Jackson.

Nicknames: Kodi, KJ.

Pronouns and Gender: He/Him, cis man.

Birthday: December 15th, 1992.

Birth place: Macon, Georgia.

How long have they been in town?: On and off at holidays since he was 21, full time since Feb 2025.

Sexuality: Bisexual.

Housing: Crystal Cove Condominiums.

Occupation: Co-founder and current CEO of Torch

Family: Declan Jackson (Older brother), 1 younger sister.

tw cheating, divorce, drugs, alcohol // @aurorabayaesthetic

BIO:

born and raised in macon, georgia.

middle child (and middle child syndrome sufferer) with an older brother and younger sister.

grew up in a stable home with hard-working parents who instilled that in him and also inspired his own life goal of not having to work that hard for the rest of his.

respected the hustle, had no romanticisation of the struggle.

there was always something that he wanted that was just out of reach. a new bike as a boy, new car as a teen, not to have to worry about college loans and how he was going to fund the next semester while he was in the current one as a young adult.

loved to rough house with his brother as youths and was the accidental accomplice in a number of declan's frequent flyer visits to the emergency room.

grew up but didn't exactly grow out of that and can be a little bullish at times without meaning to be.

by fourteen he knew the rest of his life wouldn't be spent in georgia.

his teenage years from then until college were more like an exercise in escapism with most of it spent dreaming about being anywhere but home to the point where his parents were concerned about how disengaged he was.

always did well in school, academics always came easy to him and he he rarely had to put in much studying to do well.

when it came time to apply for college, he didn't apply to a single one in state.

with a number of acceptances to choose from, he narrowed it down to two: bachelor of science in management in MIT or bachelor of science in business administration at USC.

it only took minimal deliberation with himself before he accepted a place at USC.

took to college like a duck to water and left a lot of his previous life behind him in georgia, including some of his interests and hobbies.

very much reinvented himself in his freshman year and by his senior year he knew exactly who he was and exactly what he wanted -- a move to silicon valley after graduation, to head his own startup and aylin carrigan.

kodi was besotted from the moment he met her in a way he hadn't experienced before that point. he'd had a number of girlfriends up until that point but they soon felt like little more than stepping stones in the rearview when compared to what was in front of him.

he proposes fast and would have gotten married faster if not for the wedding planning and wanting to honour unifying both of their families, especially after receiving some skepticism from aylin's for the spontaneity.

splitting time between silicon valley and usc was no easy feat once kodi had graduated but they managed it until aylin's graduation when she relocated with him full time.

it was in that 2 years of splitting time that kodi met peter basara from an ad seeking a roommate.

they clicked instantly (matched each other's creative freak)

started working on an app called torch together from a throwaway idea that's still disputed to this day who's it was initially (it was peter's) and after two years, it had grown legs and boomed into quickly profitable venture with a number of buyout offers on the table.

faced with the prospect of a new chapter in his life about to begin, kodi knew that he had to do what was best for him and the future he wanted with his wife and he cut the fat.

unfortunately, that included cutting peter out in order to secure himself as ceo after a large cash infusion that required equity to be sold.

maintains to this day that he did what was needed for the company and it's success, which has since expanded tenfold (sorry dj whizbang)

as much as kodi tried to absolve himself of any and all guilt surrounding that betrayal, it changed something within him. first with his approach to business, leaving him unafraid to be cutthroat in pursuit of what he wanted which inevitably spilled over into his personal life.

the work days grew longer, burning the midnight oil felt perpetual and kodi was all but consumed with share prices and the uptick of money in his bank account.

it felt good to be able to buy his parents house for them, it felt better to be able to get a second home in his wife's hometown as a five year wedding anniversary gift for her.

the problem was he began to be present less and less in both.

if he wasn't working, he was thinking about work.

the things he had said he wanted in his early twenties were no longer a priority as his thirties sped towards him.

ever the businessman, he had successfully argued down the idea of having children to a more agreeable to his schedule adoption of two dogs with the promise that they would revisit that conversation when things on his end simmered down.

they never did.

with his ten year wedding anniversary approaching, kodi couldn't stave off a discontentment that he had been ignoring for a couple of years by then.

he had everything he wanted and set out to get and yet he couldn't pinpoint the source for why he neither woke up happy or went to sleep happy.

that's when the thrill seeking started.

he ordered his drinks a little stronger, he no longer turned down coke when it was offered to him at a party his wife opted to skip and when he met pru piper he let curiosity cross the threshold into infidelity without much thought for anything other than himself.

what started as a new year's eve kiss became a full blown affair.

it lasted for six months before it hit him what he was risking and he ended things with pru and decided to dedicate himself to fixing his marriage by any means necessary.

those efforts were short lived when a throwaway comment on one of pru's podcast episodes stirred up a wave of internet sleuthing that soon pieced things together.

unfortunate timing saw that news break on aylin's 30th birthday which put a fast end to his plan to ask her to renew their vows.

with no way for him to deny what he had done, he came clean about all of it.

in a move he genuinely never thought possible, aylin left.

he remained in their home while she moved back to her hometown and into their holiday home.

after receiving notification that she intended to sell that, kodi took his chance to show up in aurora bay with reason enough that she couldn't instantly slam the door in his face.

PERSONALITY.

+ ambitious, cutthroat, charming.

- hypocritical, inflexible, workaholic.

FUN ADJACENT FACTS.

dog dad to a chocolate lab and an american staffordshire terrier that he now shares custody with with his estranged wife.

rushed tau kappa epsilon (tke) in usc successfully.

big college football fan.

is in a fantasy football league.

was on forbes 30 under 30 list when torch went public.

was on jack sweeney's tracking list for how frequently he opted to fly private (all the time) and now does the occasional business class flight so he looks less hypocritical when he pitches torch's sustainability initiatives.

uncle / godfather to his niece kenzie (lil kj) that he adores who lives in georgia full time. never misses a birthday of hers or a holiday if he knows she'll be there.

CURRENT CONNECTIONS.

@aylinxc-s estranged wife.

@prupipers former mistress.

@peterbasara former business partner / friend.

@gavin-carrigan brother in law.

SPECIFIC WANTED CONNECTIONS.

tba.

GENERIC WANTED CONNECTIONS.

connections wise he’s pretty much an open book right now, but some baseline ideas that can be springboarded off are:

friendly.

a best friend / ride or dies / close friends / childhood friends from georgia / pseudo-siblings / friends / drunk friends / new friends / people he knew from usc / people he met in silicon valley / people he became friendly with during multiple visits to aurora bay over the years.

romantic

flirtationship / friends with benefits / one time hook ups / tinder matches / unrequited crush / exes from high school (georgia specific) / exes from college (must have attended usc).

antagonistic.

enemies / former friends / exes on bad terms / frenemies / rivals / negative influence / people who don’t fuck with him for everything that went down with aylin.

[spicyliumang]

[🦋x🐼] This is the night before the gang confronts Tendo! And it was before Enya and Zhao officially dated, They have a little heart to heart and Zhao witnesses the horrors on the dating app Enya has on her phone😭 Lore/context ⬇️

So, for the backstory here, this is the night before the gang confronts Tendo in the Millennium Tower. Due to the cutscenes happily omitting some of the gang this scenario works! So, at this time of night Ichi, Adachi, Saeko, and Nanba went to confront Aoki on his final tour. Joongi stepped out to have a chat with Seonhee leaving Enya and Zhao alone in New Serena to rest up before leaving the next day! 

While they were alone, they had a few drinks during some downtime, they weren't exactly drunk but a lot.. looser than usual, Enya starts out asking why did he save her from the explosion Ishioda planted when he could have nearly lost his life? She messed up her ankle and slowed them down. it would have been easy to leave her behind rather than carrying her to help her escape. Obviously, Zhao found the question silly and was shocked she asked, but just replied there's no way he would have left her there, and of course she's a part of the gang! And no one gets left behind 

She kinda opens up a bit, explaining that she's grateful, and had no idea how she could repay him. Even cold hard cash could not pay for someone saving your life She also explains a bit how Okino told her long before she could read that things will be hard. She will have to work 10x harder than the average person and be thick skinned to earn respect, let alone be seen. And in her eyes, she couldn't do any of that. A college drop-out who works as a hostess barely scraping by, can't even maintain a relationship and not an ounce of thick skin. Even if she should be used to the pushback by now. She admitted that she felt like she let Okino down. And that she was nervous about meeting her parents and worried they never reached out because they didn't want her period. She perked up and realized the alcohol really got her talking more than she should and apologized for dumping on him randomly. Zhao empathized a bit knowing what it feels like to not meet the expectations put on him and how heavy it could weigh on a person. 

Though the mood lightens when Enya's phone gets a dating app notification and Zhao notices. He knew she used it because the last time the gang all got drunk Eri and Saeko loudly talked about how one of the men she swiped on was handsome. Enya’s close friend Junpei got sick of Enya looking so sad s she recommended it was time to put herself back out there and she should try it! She's the CEO of bad ideas So Zhao grabs the phone to take a look and when Enya realizes she tries to reach for it but he pulls away with it dangling it out of her reach. I made some dialogue,, very bad at doing this but who cares I'm committed to the bit kjfgkjfdjgj 

Zhao: Really? Dating apps? 

 Enya: D-don't look at me like that... Jun-chan says I should give it a try and maybe I'll meet someone new. 

 Zhao: points to the message So this is the guy you're chatting with? 

 Enya: Yeah! He's a mechanic, and pretty fun to talk to! He invited me out a while ago and plan on going once everything is settled. I hope. 

 Zhao: Hmm.. I wouldn't do that if I were you. 

 Enya: Huh? what do you mean? 

 Zhao: This isn't a real picture. 

 Enya: What do you mean?? This is literally him! He sent a selfie yesterday! Let me see. 

 Zhao: points see around his jawline? the image is manipulated on both of them. 

 Enya: squints at it for a second and then looks in horror YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME..  

 Zhao: chuckles Told ya. 

Enya kinda slams her head on his shoulder now at this point she's not completely sobered out of frustration After Zhao kinda lectures her a bit that she shouldn't use dating apps and she never knows what sicko could be waiting for her on the other end. She should find someone organically, and she never knows who could be there waiting for her in person is he planting seeds? perhaps ~~ And after spending the rest of his time listening to her rant about her experience with the greasy salaryman, the cheap Poppo clerk, and the bartender who ghosted her after one night!