#Centre for Culture and Technology

[mostlysignssomeportents]

With Great Power Came No Responsibility

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in NYC TONIGHT (26 Feb) with JOHN HODGMAN and at PENN STATE TOMORROW (Feb 27). More tour dates here. Mail-order signed copies from LA's Diesel Books.

Last night, I traveled to Toronto to deliver the annual Ursula Franklin Lecture at the University of Toronto's Innis College:

The lecture was called "With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It." It's the latest major speech in my series of talks on the subject, which started with last year's McLuhan Lecture in Berlin:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

And continued with a summer Defcon keynote:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

This speech specifically addresses the unique opportunities for disenshittification created by Trump's rapid unscheduled midair disassembly of the international free trade system. The US used trade deals to force nearly every country in the world to adopt the IP laws that make enshittification possible, and maybe even inevitable. As Trump burns these trade deals to the ground, the rest of the world has an unprecedented opportunity to retaliate against American bullying by getting rid of these laws and producing the tools, devices and services that can protect every tech user (including Americans) from being ripped off by US Big Tech companies.

I'm so grateful for the chance to give this talk. I was hosted for the day by the Centre for Culture and Technology, which was founded by Marshall McLuhan, and is housed in the coach house he used for his office. The talk itself took place in Innis College, named for Harold Innis, who is definitely the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan. What's more, I was mentored by Innis's daughter, Anne Innis Dagg, a radical, brilliant feminist biologist who pretty much invented the field of giraffology:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

But with all respect due to Anne and her dad, Ursula Franklin is the thinking person's Harold Innis. A brilliant scientist, activist and communicator who dedicated her life to the idea that the most important fact about a technology wasn't what it did, but who it did it for and who it did it to. Getting to work out of McLuhan's office to present a talk in Innis's theater that was named after Franklin? Swoon!

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

Here's the text of the talk, lightly edited:

I know tonight’s talk is supposed to be about decaying tech platforms, but I want to start by talking about nurses.

A January 2025 report from Groundwork Collective documents how increasingly nurses in the USA are hired through gig apps – "Uber for nurses” – so nurses never know from one day to the next whether they're going to work, or how much they'll get paid.

There's something high-tech going on here with those nurses' wages. These nursing apps – a cartel of three companies, Shiftkey, Shiftmed and Carerev – can play all kinds of games with labor pricing.

Before Shiftkey offers a nurse a shift, it purchases that worker's credit history from a data-broker. Specifically, it pays to find out how much credit-card debt the nurse is carrying, and whether it is overdue.

The more desperate the nurse's financial straits are, the lower the wage on offer. Because the more desperate you are, the less you'll accept to come and do the gruntwork of caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying.

Now, there are lots of things going on here, and they're all terrible. What's more, they are emblematic of “enshittification,” the word I coined to describe the decay of online platforms.

When I first started writing about this, I focused on the external symptology of enshittification, a three stage process:

First, the platform is good to its end users, while finding a way to lock them in.

Like Google, which minimized ads and maximized spending on engineering for search results, even as they bought their way to dominance, bribing every service or product with a search box to make it a Google search box.

So no matter what browser you used, what mobile OS you used, what carrier you had, you would always be searching on Google by default. This got so batshit that by the early 2020s, Google was spending enough money to buy a whole-ass Twitter, every year or two, just to make sure that no one ever tried a search engine that wasn't Google.

That's stage one: be good to end users, lock in end users.

Stage two is when the platform starts to abuse end users to tempt in and enrich business customers. For Google, that’s advertisers and web publishers. An ever-larger fraction of a Google results page is given over to ads, which are marked with ever-subtler, ever smaller, ever grayer labels. Google uses its commercial surveillance data to target ads to us.

So that's stage two: things get worse for end users and get better for business customers.

But those business customers also get locked into the platform, dependent on those customers. Once businesses are getting as little as 10% of their revenue from Google, leaving Google becomes an existential risk. We talk a lot about Google's "monopoly" power, which is derived from its dominance as a seller. But Google is also a monopsony, a powerful buyer.

So now you have Google acting as a monopolist to its users (stage one), and a monoposonist for its business customers (stage two) and here comes stage three: where Google claws back all the value in the platform, save a homeopathic residue calculated to keep end users locked in, and business customers locked to those end users.

Google becomes enshittified.

In 2019, Google had a turning point. Search had grown as much as it possibly could. More than 90% of us used Google for search, and we searched for everything. Any thought or idle question that crossed our minds, we typed into Google.

How could Google grow? There were no more users left to switch to Google. We weren't going to search for more things. What could Google do?

Well, thanks to internal memos published during last year's monopoly trial against Google, we know what they did. They made search worse. They reduced the system's accuracy it so you had to search twice or more to get to the answer, thus doubling the number of queries, and doubling the number of ads.

Meanwhile, Google entered into a secret, illegal collusive arrangement with Facebook, codenamed Jedi Blue, to rig the ad market, fixing prices so advertisers paid more and publishers got less.

And that's how we get to the enshittified Google of today, where every query serves back a blob of AI slop, over five paid results tagged with the word AD in 8-point, 10% grey on white type, which is, in turn, over ten spammy links from SEO shovelware sites filled with more AI slop.

And yet, we still keep using Google, because we're locked into it. That's enshittification, from the outside. A company that's good to end users, while locking them in. Then it makes things worse for end users, to make things better for business customers, while locking them in. Then it takes all the value for itself and turns into a giant pile of shit.

Enshittification, a tragedy in three acts.

I started off focused on the outward signs of enshittification, but I think it's time we start thinking about what's going in inside the companies to make enshittification possible.

What is the technical mechanism for enshittification? I call it twiddling. Digital businesses have infinite flexibility, bequeathed to them by the marvellously flexible digital computers they run on. That means that firms can twiddle the knobs that control the fundamental aspects of their business. Every time you interact with a firm, everything is different: prices, costs, search rankings, recommendations.

Which takes me back to our nurses. This scam, where you look up the nurse's debt load and titer down the wage you offer based on it in realtime? That's twiddling. It's something you can only do with a computer. The bosses who are doing this aren't more evil than bosses of yore, they just have better tools.

Note that these aren't even tech bosses. These are health-care bosses, who happen to have tech.

Digitalization – weaving networked computers through a firm or a sector – enables this kind of twiddling that allows firms to shift value around, from end users to business customers, from business customers back to end users, and eventually, inevitably, to themselves.

And digitalization is coming to every sector – like nursing. Which means enshittification is coming to every sector – like nursing.

The legal scholar Veena Dubal coined a term to describe the twiddling that suppresses the wages of debt-burdened nurses. It's called "Algorithmic Wage Discrimination," and it follows the gig economy.

The gig economy is a major locus of enshittification, and it’s the largest tear in the membrane separating the virtual world from the real world. Gig work, where your shitty boss is a shitty app, and you aren't even allowed to call yourself an employee.

Uber invented this trick. Drivers who are picky about the jobs the app puts in front of them start to get higher wage offers. But if they yield to temptation and take some of those higher-waged option, then the wage starts to go down again, in random intervals, by small increments, designed to be below the threshold for human perception. Not so much boiling the frog as poaching it, until the Uber driver has gone into debt to buy a new car, and given up the side hustles that let them be picky about the rides they accepted. Then their wage goes down, and down, and down.

Twiddling is a crude trick done quickly. Any task that's simple but time consuming is a prime candidate for automation, and this kind of wage-theft would be unbearably tedious, labor-intensive and expensive to perform manually. No 19th century warehouse full of guys with green eyeshades slaving over ledgers could do this. You need digitalization.

Twiddling nurses' hourly wages is a perfect example of the role digitization pays in enshittification. Because this kind of thing isn't just bad for nurses – it's bad for patients, too. Do we really think that paying nurses based on how desperate they are, at a rate calculated to increase that desperation, and thus decrease the wage they are likely to work for, is going to result in nurses delivering the best care?

Do you want to your catheter inserted by a nurse on food stamps, who drove an Uber until midnight the night before, and skipped breakfast this morning in order to make rent?

This is why it’s so foolish to say "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." “If you’re not paying for the product” ascribes a mystical power to advertising-driven services: the power to bypass our critical faculties by surveilling us, and data-mining the resulting dossiers to locate our mental bind-spots, and weaponize them to get us to buy anything an advertiser is selling.

In this formulation, we are complicit in our own exploitation. By choosing to use "free" services, we invite our own exploitation by surveillance capitalists who have perfected a mind-control ray powered by the surveillance data we're voluntarily handing over by choosing ad-driven services.

The moral is that if we only went back to paying for things, instead of unrealistically demanding that everything be free, we would restore capitalism to its functional, non-surveillant state, and companies would start treating us better, because we'd be the customers, not the products.

That's why the surveillance capitalism hypothesis elevates companies like Apple as virtuous alternatives. Because Apple charges us money, rather than attention, it can focus on giving us better service, rather than exploiting us.

There's a superficially plausible logic to this. After all, in 2022, Apple updated its iOS operating system, which runs on iPhones and other mobile devices, introducing a tick box that allowed you to opt out of third-party surveillance, most notably Facebook’s.

96% of Apple customers ticked that box. The other 4% were, presumably drunk, or Facebook employees, or Facebook employees who were drunk. Which makes sense, because if I worked for Facebook, I'd be drunk all the time.

So on the face of it, it seems like Apple isn't treating its customers like "the product." But simultaneously with this privacy measure, Apple was secretly turning on its own surveillance system for iPhone owners, which would spy on them in exactly the way Facebook had, for exactly the same purpose: to target ads to you based on the places you'd been, the things you'd searched for, the communications you'd had, the links you'd clicked.

Apple didn't ask its customers for permission to spy on them. It didn't let opt out of this spying. It didn’t even tell them about it, and when it was caught, Apple lied about it.

It goes without saying that the $1000 Apple distraction rectangle in your pocket is something you paid for. The fact that you've paid for it doesn't stop Apple from treating you as the product. Apple treats its business customers – app vendors – like the product, screwing them out of 30 cents on every dollar they bring in, with mandatory payment processing fees that are 1,000% higher than the already extortionate industry norm.

Apple treats its end users – people who shell out a grand for a phone – like the product, spying on them to help target ads to them.

Apple treats everyone like the product.

This is what's going on with our gig-app nurses: the nurses are the product. The patients are the product. The hospitals are the product. In enshittification, "the product" is anyone who can be productized.

Fair and dignified treatment is not something you get as a customer loyalty perk, in exchange for parting with your money, rather than your attention. How do you get fair and dignified treatment? Well, I'm gonna get to that, but let's stay with our nurses for a while first.

The nurses are the product, and they're being twiddled, because they've been conscripted into the tech industry, via the digitalization of their own industry.

It's tempting to blame digitalization for this. But tech companies were not born enshittified. They spent years – decades – making pleasing products. If you're old enough to remember the launch of Google, you'll recall that, at the outset, Google was magic.

You could Ask Jeeves questions for a million years, you could load up Altavista with ten trillion boolean search operators meant to screen out low-grade results, and never come up with answers as crisp, as useful, as helpful, as the ones you'd get from a few vaguely descriptive words in a Google search-bar.

There's a reason we all switched to Google. Why so many of us bought iPhones. Why we joined our friends on Facebook. All of these services were born digital. They could have enshittified at any time. But they didn't – until they did. And they did it all at once.

If you were a nurse, and every patient that staggered into the ER had the same dreadful symptoms, you'd call the public health department and report a suspected outbreak of a new and dangerous epidemic.

Ursula Franklin held that technology's outcomes were not preordained. They are the result of deliberate choices. I like that very much, it's a very science fictional way of thinking about technology. Good science fiction isn't merely about what the technology does, but who it does it for, and who it does it to.

Those social factors are far more important than the mere technical specifications of a gadget. They're the difference between a system that warns you when you're about to drift out of your lane, and a system that tells your insurer that you nearly drifted out of your lane, so they can add $10 to your monthly premium.

They’re the difference between a spell checker that lets you know you've made a typo, and bossware that lets your manager use the number of typos you made this quarter so he can deny your bonus.

They’re the difference between an app that remembers where you parked your car, and an app that uses the location of your car as a criteria for including you in a reverse warrant for the identities of everyone in the vicinity of an anti-government protest.

I believe that enshittification is caused by changes not to technology, but to the policy environment. These are changes to the rules of the game, undertaken in living memory, by named parties, who were warned at the time about the likely outcomes of their actions, who are today very rich and respected, and face no consequences or accountability for their role in ushering in the enshittocene. They venture out into polite society without ever once wondering if someone is sizing them up for a pitchfork.

In other words: I think we created a crimogenic environment, a perfect breeding pool for the most pathogenic practices in our society, that have therefore multiplied, dominating decision-making in our firms and states, leading to a vast enshittening of everything.

And I think there's good news there, because if enshittification isn't the result a new kind of evil person, or the great forces of history bearing down on the moment to turn everything to shit, but rather the result of specific policy choices, then we can reverse those policies, make better ones and emerge from the enshittocene, consigning the enshitternet to the scrapheap of history, a mere transitional state between the old, good internet, and a new, good internet.

I'm not going to talk about AI today, because oh my god is AI a boring, overhyped subject. But I will use a metaphor about AI, about the limited liability company, which is a kind of immortal, artificial colony organism in which human beings serve as a kind of gut flora. My colleague Charlie Stross calls corporations "slow AI.”

So you've got these slow AIs whose guts are teeming with people, and the AI's imperative, the paperclip it wants to maximize, is profit. To maximize profits, you charge as much as you can, you pay your workers and suppliers as little as you can, you spend as little as possible on safety and quality.

Every dollar you don't spend on suppliers, workers, quality or safety is a dollar that can go to executives and shareholders. So there's a simple model of the corporation that could maximize its profits by charging infinity dollars, while paying nothing to its workers or suppliers, and ignoring quality and safety.

But that corporation wouldn't make any money, for the obvious reasons that none of us would buy what it was selling, and no one would work for it or supply it with goods. These constraints act as disciplining forces that tamp down the AI's impulse to charge infinity and pay nothing.

In tech, we have four of these constraints, anti-enshittificatory sources of discipline that make products and services better, pay workers more, and keep executives’ and shareholders' wealth from growing at the expense of customers, suppliers and labor.

The first of these constraints is markets. All other things being equal, a business that charges more and delivers less will lose customers to firms that are more generous about sharing value with workers, customers and suppliers.

This is the bedrock of capitalist theory, and it's the ideological basis for competition law, what our American cousins call "antitrust law."

The first antitrust law was 1890's Sherman Act, whose sponsor, Senator John Sherman, stumped for it from the senate floor, saying:

If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity. 

Senator Sherman was reflecting the outrage of the anitmonopolist movement of the day, when proprietors of monopolistic firms assumed the role of dictators, with the power to decide who would work, who would starve, what could be sold, and what it cost.

Lacking competitors, they were too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care. As Lily Tomlin used to put it in her spoof AT&T ads on SNL: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.”

So what happened to the disciplining force of competition? We killed it. Starting 40-some years ago, the Reagaonomic views of the Chicago School economists transformed antitrust. They threw out John Sherman's idea that we need to keep companies competitive to prevent the emergence of "autocrats of trade,"and installed the idea that monopolies are efficient.

In other words, if Google has a 90% search market share, which it does, then we must infer that Google is the best search engine ever, and the best search engine possible. The only reason a better search engine hasn't stepped in is that Google is so skilled, so efficient, that there is no conceivable way to improve upon it.

We can tell that Google is the best because it has a monopoly, and we can tell that the monopoly is good because Google is the best.

So 40 years ago, the US – and its major trading partners – adopted an explicitly pro-monopoly competition policy.

Now, you'll be glad to hear that this isn't what happened to Canada. The US Trade Rep didn't come here and force us to neuter our competition laws. But don't get smug! The reason that didn't happen is that it didn't have to. Because Canada had no competition law to speak of, and never has.

In its entire history, the Competition Bureau has challenged three mergers, and it has halted precisely zero mergers, which is how we've ended up with a country that is beholden to the most mediocre plutocrats imaginable like the Irvings, the Westons, the Stronachs, the McCains and the Rogerses.

The only reason these chinless wonders were able to conquer this country Is that the Americans had been crushing their monopolists before they could conquer the US and move on to us. But 40 years ago, the rest of the world adopted the Chicago School's pro-monopoly "consumer welfare standard,” and we got…monopolies.

Monopolies in pharma, beer, glass bottles, vitamin C, athletic shoes, microchips, cars, mattresses, eyeglasses, and, of course, professional wrestling.

Remember: these are specific policies adopted in living memory, by named individuals, who were warned, and got rich, and never faced consequences. The economists who conceived of these policies are still around today, polishing their fake Nobel prizes, teaching at elite schools, making millions consulting for blue-chip firms.

When we confront them with the wreckage their policies created, they protest their innocence, maintaining – with a straight face – that there's no way to affirmatively connect pro-monopoly policies with the rise of monopolies.

It's like we used to put down rat poison and we didn't have a rat problem. Then these guys made us stop, and now rats are chewing our faces off, and they're making wide innocent eyes, saying, "How can you be sure that our anti-rat-poison policies are connected to global rat conquest? Maybe this is simply the Time of the Rat! Maybe sunspots caused rats to become more fecund than at any time in history! And if they bought the rat poison factories and shut them all down, well, so what of it? Shutting down rat poison factories after you've decided to stop putting down rat poison is an economically rational, Pareto-optimal decision."

Markets don't discipline tech companies because they don't compete with rivals, they buy them. That's a quote, from Mark Zuckerberg: “It is better to buy than to compete.”

Which is why Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for a billion dollars, even though it only had 12 employees and 25m users. As he wrote in a spectacularly ill-advised middle-of-the-night email to his CFO, he had to buy Instagram, because Facebook users were leaving Facebook for Instagram. By buying Instagram, Zuck ensured that anyone who left Facebook – the platform – would still be a prisoner of Facebook – the company.

Despite the fact that Zuckerberg put this confession in writing, the Obama administration let him go ahead with the merger, because every government, of every political stripe, for 40 years, adopted the posture that monopolies were efficient.

Now, think about our twiddled, immiserated nurses. Hospitals are among the most consolidated sectors in the US. First, we deregulated pharma mergers, and the pharma companies gobbled each other up at the rate of naughts, and they jacked up the price of drugs. So hospitals also merged to monopoly, a defensive maneuver that let a single hospital chain corner the majority of a region or city and say to the pharma companies, "either you make your products cheaper, or you can't sell them to any of our hospitals."

Of course, once this mission was accomplished, the hospitals started screwing the insurers, who staged their own incestuous orgy, buying and merging until most Americans have just three or two insurance options. This let the insurers fight back against the hospitals, but left patients and health care workers defenseless against the consolidated power of hospitals, pharma companies, pharmacy benefit managers, group purchasing organizations, and other health industry cartels, duopolies and monopolies.

Which is why nurses end up signing on to work for hospitals that use these ghastly apps. Remember, there's just three of these apps, replacing dozens of staffing agencies that once competed for nurses' labor.

Meanwhile, on the patient side, competition has never exercised discipline. No one ever shopped around for a cheaper ambulance or a better ER while they were having a heart attack. The price that people are willing to pay to not die is “everything they have.”

So you have this sector that has no business being a commercial enterprise in the first place, losing what little discipline they faced from competition, paving the way for enshittification.

But I said there are four forces that discipline companies. The second one of these forces is regulation, discipline imposed by states.

It’s a mistake to see market discipline and state discipline as two isolated realms. They are intimately connected. Because competition is a necessary condition for effective regulation.

Let me put this in terms that even the most ideological libertarians can understand. Say you think there should be precisely one regulation that governments should enforce: honoring contracts. For the government to serve as referee in that game, it must have the power to compel the players to honor their contracts. Which means that the smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to permit.

So even if you're the kind of Musk-addled libertarian who can no longer open your copy of Atlas Shrugged because the pages are all stuck together, who pines for markets for human kidneys, and demands the right to sell yourself into slavery, you should still want a robust antitrust regime, so that these contracts can be enforced.

When a sector cartelizes, when it collapses into oligarchy, when the internet turns into "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four," then it captures its regulators.

After all, a sector with 100 competing companies is a rabble, at each others' throats. They can't agree on anything, especially how they're going to lobby.

While a sector of five companies – or four – or three – or two – or one – is a cartel, a racket, a conspiracy in waiting. A sector that has been boiled down to a mere handful of firms can agree on a common lobbying position.

What's more, they are so insulated from "wasteful competition" that they are aslosh in cash that they can mobilize to make their regulatory preferences into regulations. In other words, they can capture their regulators.

“Regulatory capture" may sound abstract and complicated, so let me put it in concrete terms. In the UK, the antitrust regulator is called the Competition and Markets Authority, run – until recently – by Marcus Bokkerink. The CMA has been one of the world's most effective investigators and regulators of Big Tech fuckery.

Last month, UK PM Keir Starmer fired Bokkerink and replaced him with Doug Gurr, the former head of Amazon UK. Hey, Starmer, the henhouse is on the line, they want their fox back.

But back to our nurses: there are plenty of examples of regulatory capture lurking in that example, but I'm going to pick the most egregious one, the fact that there are data brokers who will sell you information about the credit card debts of random Americans.

This is because the US Congress hasn't passed a new consumer privacy law since 1988, when Ronald Reagan signed a law called the Video Privacy Protection Act that bans video store clerks from telling newspapers which VHS cassettes you took home. The fact that Congress hasn't updated Americans' privacy protections since Die Hard was in theaters isn't a coincidence or an oversight. It is the expensively purchased inaction of a heavily concentrated – and thus wildly profitable – privacy-invasion industry that has monetized the abuse of human rights at unimaginable scale.

The coalition in favor of keeping privacy law frozen since the season finale of St Elsewhere keeps growing, because there is an unbounded set of way to transform the systematic invasion of our human rights into cash. There's a direct line from this phenomenon to nurses whose paychecks go down when they can't pay their credit-card bills.

So competition is dead, regulation is dead, and companies aren't disciplined by markets or by states.

But there are four forces that discipline firms, contributing to an inhospitable environment for the reproduction of sociopathic. enshittifying monsters.

So let's talk about those other two forces. The first is interoperability, the principle of two or more things working together. Like, you can put anyone's shoelaces in your shoes, anyone's gas in your gas tank, and anyone's lightbulbs in your light-socket. In the non-digital world, interop takes a lot of work, you have to agree on the direction, pitch, diameter, voltage, amperage and wattage for that light socket, or someone's gonna get their hand blown off.

But in the digital world, interop is built in, because there's only one kind of computer we know how to make, the Turing-complete, universal, von Neumann machine, a computing machine capable of executing every valid program.

Which means that for any enshittifying program, there's a counterenshittificatory program waiting to be run. When HP writes a program to ensure that its printers reject third-party ink, someone else can write a program to disable that checking.

For gig workers, antienshittificatory apps can do yeoman duty. For example, Indonesian gig drivers formed co-ops, that commission hackers to write modifications for their dispatch apps. For example, the taxi app won't book a driver to pick someone up at a train station, unless they're right outside, but when the big trains pull in that's a nightmare scene of total, lethal chaos.

So drivers have an app that lets them spoof their GPS, which lets them park up around the corner, but have the app tell their bosses that they're right out front of the station. When a fare arrives, they can zip around and pick them up, without contributing to the stationside mishegas.

In the USA, a company called Para shipped an app to help Doordash drivers get paid more. You see, Doordash drivers make most of their money on tips, and the Doordash driver app hides the tip amount until you accept a job, meaning you don't know whether you're accepting a job that pays $1.50 or $11.50 with tip, until you agree to take it. So Para made an app that extracted the tip amount and showed it to drivers before they clocked on.

But Doordash shut it down, because in America, apps like Para are illegal. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and section 1201 of the DMCA makes is a felony to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work," with penalties of $500k and a 5-year prison sentence for a first offense. So just the act of reverse-engineering an app like the Doordash app is a potential felony, which is why companies are so desperately horny to get you to use their apps rather than their websites.

The web is open, apps are closed. The majority of web users have installed an ad blocker (which is also a privacy blocker). But no one installs an ad blocker for an app, because it's a felony to distribute that tool, because you have to reverse-engineer the app to make it. An app is just a website wrapped in enough IP so that the company that made it can send you to prison if you dare to modify it so that it serves your interests rather than theirs.

Around the world, we have enacted a thicket of laws, we call “IP laws,” that make it illegal to modify services, products, and devices, so that they serve your interests, rather than the interests of the shareholders.

Like I said, these laws were enacted in living memory, by people who are among us, who were warned about the obvious, eminently foreseeable consequences of their reckless plans, who did it anyway.

Back in 2010, two ministers from Stephen Harper's government decided to copy-paste America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act into Canadian law. They consulted on the proposal to make it illegal to reverse engineer and modify services, products and devices, and they got an earful! 6,138 Canadians sent in negative comments on the consultation. They warned that making it illegal to bypass digital locks would interfere with repair of devices as diverse as tractors, cars, and medical equipment, from ventilators to insulin pumps.

These Canadians warned that laws banning tampering with digital locks would let American tech giants corner digital markets, forcing us to buy our apps and games from American app stores, that could cream off any commission they chose to levy. They warned that these laws were a gift to monopolists who wanted to jack up the price of ink; that these copyright laws, far from serving Canadian artists would lock us to American platforms. Because every time someone in our audience bought a book, a song, a game, a video, that was locked to an American app, it could never be unlocked.

So if we, the creative workers of Canada, tried to migrate to a Canadian store, our audience couldn't come with us. They couldn't move their purchases from the US app to a Canadian one.

6,138 Canadians told them this, while just 54 respondents sided with Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement. Then, James Moore gave a speech, at the International Chamber of Commerce meeting here in Toronto, where he said he would only be listening to the 54 cranks who supported his terrible ideas, on the grounds that the 6,138 people who disagreed with him were "babyish…radical extremists."

So in 2012, we copied America's terrible digital locks law into the Canadian statute book, and now we live in James Moore and Tony Clement's world, where it is illegal to tamper with a digital lock. So if a company puts a digital lock on its product they can do anything behind that lock, and it's a crime to undo it.

For example, if HP puts a digital lock on its printers that verifies that you're not using third party ink cartridges, or refilling an HP cartridge, it's a crime to bypass that lock and use third party ink. Which is how HP has gotten away with ratcheting the price of ink up, and up, and up.

Printer ink is now the most expensive fluid that a civilian can purchase without a special permit. It's colored water that costs $10k/gallon, which means that you print out your grocery lists with liquid that costs more than the semen of a Kentucky Derby-winning stallion.

That's the world we got from Clement and Moore, in living memory, after they were warned, and did it anyway. The world where farmers can't fix their tractors, where independent mechanics can't fix your car, where hospitals during the pandemic lockdowns couldn't service their failing ventilators, where every time a Canadian iPhone user buys an app from a Canadian software author, every dollar they spend takes a round trip through Apple HQ in Cupertino, California and comes back 30 cents lighter.

Let me remind you this is the world where a nurse can't get a counter-app, a plug-in, for the “Uber for nurses” app they have to use to get work, that lets them coordinate with other nurses to refuse shifts until the wages on offer rise to a common level or to block surveillance of their movements and activity.

Interoperability was a major disciplining force on tech firms. After all, if you make the ads on your website sufficiently obnoxious, some fraction of your users will install an ad-blocker, and you will never earn another penny from them. Because no one in the history of ad-blockers has ever uninstalled an ad-blocker. But once it's illegal to make an ad-blocker, there's no reason not to make the ads as disgusting, invasive, obnoxious as you can, to shift all the value from the end user to shareholders and executives.

So we get monopolies and monopolies capture their regulators, and they can ignore the laws they don't like, and prevent laws that might interfere with their predatory conduct – like privacy laws – from being passed. They get new laws passed, laws that let them wield governmental power to prevent other companies from entering the market.

So three of the four forces are neutralized: competition, regulation, and interoperability. That left just one disciplining force holding enshittification at bay: labor.

Tech workers are a strange sort of workforce, because they have historically been very powerful, able to command high wages and respect, but they did it without joining unions. Union density in tech is abysmal, almost undetectable. Tech workers' power didn't come from solidarity, it came from scarcity. There weren't enough workers to fill the jobs going begging, and tech workers are unfathomnably productive. Even with the sky-high salaries tech workers commanded, every hour of labor they put in generated far more value for their employers.

Faced with a tight labor market, and the ability to turn every hour of tech worker overtime into gold, tech bosses pulled out all the stops to motivate that workforce. They appealed to workers' sense of mission, convinced them they were holy warriors, ushering in a new digital age. Google promised them they would "organize the world's information and make it useful.” Facebook promised them they would “make the world more open and connected."

There's a name for this tactic: the librarian Fobazi Ettarh calls it "vocational awe." That’s where an appeal to a sense of mission and pride is used to motivate workers to work for longer hours and worse pay.

There are all kinds of professions that run on vocational awe: teaching, daycares and eldercare, and, of course, nursing.

Techies are different from those other workers though, because they've historically been incredibly scarce, which meant that while bosses could motivate them to work on projects they believed in, for endless hours, the minute bosses ordered them to enshittify the projects they'd missed their mothers' funerals to ship on deadline these workers would tell their bosses to fuck off.

If their bosses persisted in these demands, the techies would walk off the job, cross the street, and get a better job the same day.

So for many years, tech workers were the fourth and final constraint, holding the line after the constraints of competition, regulation and interop slipped away. But then came the mass tech layoffs. 260,000 in 2023; 150,000 in 2024; tens of thousands this year, with Facebook planning a 5% headcount massacre while doubling its executive bonuses.

Tech workers can't tell their bosses to go fuck themselves anymore, because there's ten other workers waiting to take their jobs.

Now, I promised I wouldn't talk about AI, but I have to break that promise a little, just to point out that the reason tech bosses are so horny for AI Is because they think it'll let them fire tech workers and replace them with pliant chatbots who'll never tell them to fuck off.

So that's where enshittification comes from: multiple changes to the environment. The fourfold collapse of competition, regulation, interoperability and worker power creates an enshittogenic environment, where the greediest, most sociopathic elements in the body corporate thrive at the expense of those elements that act as moderators of their enshittificatory impulses.

We can try to cure these corporations. We can use antitrust law to break them up, fine them, force strictures upon them. But until we fix the environment, other the contagion will spread to other firms.

So let's talk about how we create a hostile environment for enshittifiers, so the population and importance of enshittifying agents in companies dwindles to 1990s levels. We won't get rid of these elements. So long as the profit motive is intact, there will be people whose pursuit of profit is pathological, unmoderated by shame or decency. But we can change the environment so that these don't dominate our lives.

Let's talk about antitrust. After 40 years of antitrust decline, this decade has seen a massive, global resurgence of antitrust vigor, one that comes in both left- and right-wing flavors.

Over the past four years, the Biden administration’s trustbusters at the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau did more antitrust enforcement than all their predecessors for the past 40 years combined.

There's certainly factions of the Trump administration that are hostile to this agenda but Trump's antitrust enforcers at the DoJ and FTC now say that they'll preserve and enforce Biden's new merger guidelines, which stop companies from buying each other up, and they've already filed suit to block a giant tech merger.

Of course, last summer a judge found Google guilty of monopolization, and now they're facing a breakup, which explains why they've been so generous and friendly to the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, in Canada, our toothless Competition Bureau's got fitted for a set of titanium dentures last June, when Bill C59 passed Parliament, granting sweeping new powers to our antitrust regulator.

It's true that UK PM Keir Starmer just fired the head of the UK Competition and Markets Authority and replaced him with the ex-boss of Amazon UK boss.But the thing that makes that so tragic is that the UK CMA had been doing astonishingly great work under various conservative governments.

In the EU, they've passed the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, and they're going after Big Tech with both barrels. Other countries around the world – Australia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and China (yes, China!) – have passed new antitrust laws, and launched major antitrust enforcement actions, often collaborating with each other.

So you have the UK Competition and Markets Authority using its investigatory powers to research and publish a deep market study on Apple's abusive 30% app tax, and then the EU uses that report as a roadmap for fining Apple, and then banning Apple's payments monopoly under new regulations.Then South Korea and Japan trustbusters translate the EU's case and win nearly identical cases in their courts

What about regulatory capture? Well, we're starting to see regulators get smarter about reining in Big Tech. For example, the EU's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act were designed to bypass the national courts of EU member states, especially Ireland, the tax-haven where US tech companies pretend to have their EU headquarters.

The thing about tax havens is that they always turn into crime havens, because if Apple can pretend to be Irish this week, it can pretend to be Maltese or Cypriot or Luxembourgeois next week. So Ireland has to let US Big Tech companies ignore EU privacy laws and other regulations, or it'll lose them to sleazier, more biddable competitor nations.

So from now on, EU tech regulation is getting enforced in the EU's federal courts, not in national courts, treating the captured Irish courts as damage and routing around them.

Canada needs to strengthen its own tech regulation enforcement, unwinding monopolistic mergers from the likes of Bell and Rogers, but most of all, Canada needs to pursue an interoperability agenda.

Last year, Canada passed two very exciting bills: Bill C244, a national Right to Repair law; and Bill C294, an interoperability law. Nominally, both of these laws allow Canadians to fix everything from tractors to insulin pumps, and to modify the software in their devices from games consoles to printers, so they will work with third party app stores, consumables and add-ons.

However, these bills are essentially useless, because these bills don’t permit Canadians to acquire tools to break digital locks. So you can modify your printer to accept third party ink, or interpret a car's diagnostic codes so any mechanic can fix it, but only if there isn't a digital lock stopping you from doing so, because giving someone a tool to break a digital lock remains illegal thanks to the law that James Moore and Tony Clement shoved down the nation's throat in 2012.

And every single printer, smart speaker, car, tractor, appliance, medical implant and hospital medical device has a digital lock that stops you from fixing it, modifying it, or using third party parts, software, or consumables in it.

Which means that these two landmark laws on repair and interop are useless. So why not get rid of the 2012 law that bans breaking digital locks? Because these laws are part of our trade agreement with the USA. This is a law needed to maintain tariff-free access to US markets.

I don’t know if you've heard, but Donald Trump is going to impose a 25%, across-the-board tariff against Canadian exports. Trudeau's response is to impose retaliatory tariffs, which will make every American product that Canadians buy 25% more expensive. This is a very weird way to punish America!

You know what would be better? Abolish the Canadian laws that protect US Big Tech companies from Canadian competition. Make it legal to reverse-engineer, jailbreak and modify American technology products and services. Don't ask Facebook to pay a link tax to Canadian newspapers, make it legal to jailbreak all of Meta's apps and block all the ads in them, so Mark Zuckerberg doesn't make a dime off of us.

Make it legal for Canadian mechanics to jailbreak your Tesla and unlock every subscription feature, like autopilot and full access to your battery, for one price, forever. So you get more out of your car, and when you sell it, then next owner continues to enjoy those features, meaning they'll pay more for your used car.

That's how you hurt Elon Musk: not by being performatively appalled at his Nazi salutes. That doesn't cost him a dime. He loves the attention. No! Strike at the rent-extracting, insanely high-margin aftermarket subscriptions he relies on for his Swastikar business. Kick that guy right in the dongle!

Let Canadians stand up a Canadian app store for Apple devices, one that charges 3% to process transactions, not 30%. Then, every Canadian news outlet that sells subscriptions through an app, and every Canadian software author, musician and writer who sells through a mobile platform gets a 25% increase in revenues overnight, without signing up a single new customer.

But we can sign up new customers, by selling jailbreaking software and access to Canadian app stores, for every mobile device and games console to everyone in the world, and by pitching every games publisher and app maker on selling in the Canadian app store to customers anywhere without paying a 30% vig to American big tech companies.

We could sell every mechanic in the world a $100/month subscription to a universal diagnostic tool. Every farmer in the world could buy a kit that would let them fix their own John Deere tractors without paying a $200 callout charge for a Deere technician who inspects the repair the farmer is expected to perform.

They'd beat a path to our door. Canada could become a tech export powerhouse, while making everything cheaper for Canadian tech users, while making everything more profitable for anyone who sells media or software in an online store. And – this is the best part – it’s a frontal assault on the largest, most profitable US companies, the companies that are single-handedly keeping the S&P 500 in the black, striking directly at their most profitable lines of business, taking the revenues from those ripoff scams from hundreds of billions to zero, overnight, globally.

We don't have to stop at exporting reasonably priced pharmaceuticals to Americans! We could export the extremely lucrative tools of technological liberation to our American friends, too.

That's how you win a trade-war.

What about workers? Here we have good news and bad news.

The good news is that public approval for unions is at a high mark last seen in the early 1970s, and more workers want to join a union than at any time in generations, and unions themselves are sitting on record-breaking cash reserves they could be using to organize those workers.

But here's the bad news. The unions spent the Biden years, when they had the most favorable regulatory environment since the Carter administration, when public support for unions was at an all-time high, when more workers than ever wanted to join a union, when they had more money than ever to spend on unionizing those workers, doing fuck all. They allocatid mere pittances to union organizing efforts with the result that we finished the Biden years with fewer unionized workers than we started them with.

Then we got Trump, who illegally fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB without a quorum and thus unable to act on unfair labor practices or to certify union elections.

This is terrible. But it’s not game over. Trump fired the referees, and he thinks that this means the game has ended. But here's the thing: firing the referee doesn't end the game, it just means we're throwing out the rules. Trump thinks that labor law creates unions, but he's wrong. Unions are why we have labor law. Long before unions were legal, we had unions, who fought goons and ginks and company finks in` pitched battles in the streets.

That illegal solidarity resulted in the passage of labor law, which legalized unions. Labor law is passed because workers build power through solidarity. Law doesn't create that solidarity, it merely gives it a formal basis in law. Strip away that formal basis, and the worker power remains.

Worker power is the answer to vocational awe. After all, it's good for you and your fellow workers to feel a sense of mission about your jobs. If you feel that sense of mission, if you feel the duty to protect your users, your patients, your patrons, your students, a union lets you fulfill that duty.

We saw that in 2023 when Doug Ford promised to destroy the power of Ontario's public workers. Workers across the province rose up, promising a general strike, and Doug Ford folded like one of his cheap suits. Workers kicked the shit out of him, and we'll do it again. Promises made, promises kept.

The unscheduled midair disassembly of American labor law means that workers can have each others' backs again. Tech workers need other workers' help, because tech workers aren't scarce anymore, not after a half-million layoffs. Which means tech bosses aren't afraid of them anymore.

We know how tech bosses treat workers they aren't afraid of. Look at Jeff Bezos: the workers in his warehouses are injured on the job at 3 times the national rate, his delivery drivers have to pee in bottles, and they are monitored by AI cameras that snitch on them if their eyeballs aren't in the proscribed orientation or if their mouth is open too often while they drive, because policy forbids singing along to the radio.

By contrast, Amazon coders get to show up for work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand. They get to pee whenever they want. Jeff Bezos isn't sentimental about tech workers, nor does he harbor a particularized hatred of warehouse workers and delivery drivers. He treats his workers as terribly as he can get away with. That means that the pee bottles are coming for the coders, too.

It's not just Amazon, of course. Take Apple. Tim Cook was elevated to CEO in 2011. Apple's board chose him to succeed founder Steve Jobs because he is the guy who figured out how to shift Apple's production to contract manufacturers in China, without skimping on quality assurance, or suffering leaks of product specifications ahead of the company's legendary showy launches.

Today, Apple's products are made in a gigantic Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou nicknamed "iPhone City.” Indeed, these devices arrive in shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles in a state of pristine perfection, manufactured to the finest tolerances, and free of any PR leaks.

To achieve this miraculous supply chain, all Tim Cook had to do was to make iPhone City a living hell, a place that is so horrific to work that they had to install suicide nets around the worker dorms to catch the plummeting bodies of workers who were so brutalized by Tim Cook's sweatshop that they attempted to take their own lives.

Tim Cook is also not sentimentally attached to tech workers, nor is he hostile to Chinese assembly line workers. He just treats his workers as badly as he can get away with, and with mass layoffs in the tech sector he can treat his coders much, much worse

How do tech workers get unions? Well, there are tech-specific organizations like Tech Solidarity and the Tech Workers Coalition. But tech workers will only get unions by having solidarity with other workers and receiving solidarity back from them. We all need to support every union. All workers need to have each other's backs.

We are entering a period of omnishambolic polycrisis.The ominous rumble of climate change, authoritarianism, genocide, xenophobia and transphobia has turned into an avalanche. The perpetrators of these crimes against humanity have weaponized the internet, colonizing the 21st century's digital nervous system, using it to attack its host, threatening civilization itself.

The enshitternet was purpose-built for this kind of apocalyptic co-option, organized around giant corporations who will trade a habitable planet and human rights for a three percent tax cut, who default us all into twiddle-friendly algorithmic feed, and block the interoperability that would let us escape their clutches with the backing of powerful governments whom they can call upon to "protect their IP rights."

It didn't have to be this way. The enshitternet was not inevitable. It was the product of specific policy choices, made in living memory, by named individuals.

No one came down off a mountain with two stone tablets, intoning Tony Clement, James Moore: Thou shalt make it a crime for Canadians to jailbreak their phones. Those guys chose enshittification, throwing away thousands of comments from Canadians who warned them what would come of it.

We don't have to be eternal prisoners of the catastrophic policy blunders of mediocre Tory ministers. As the omnicrisis polyshambles unfolds around us, we have the means, motive and opportunity to craft Canadian policies that bolster our sovereignty, protect our rights, and help us to set every technology user, in every country (including the USA) free.

The Trump presidency is an existential crisis but it also presents opportunities. When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. We once had an old, good internet, whose major defect was that it required too much technical expertise to use, so all our normie friends were excluded from that wondrous playground.

Web 2.0's online services had greased slides that made it easy for anyone to get online, but escaping from those Web 2.0 walled gardens meant was like climbing out of a greased pit. A new, good internet is possible, and necessary. We can build it, with all the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the ease of use of Web 2.0.

A place where we can find each other, coordinate and mobilize to resist and survive climate collapse, fascism, genocide and authoritarianism. We can build that new, good internet, and we must.

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/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/#enshittification-eh

[housepartyprotocol]

Teammates

Oscar Piastri x teammate!reader

summary: Oscar and his teammate have a close hilarious relationship

Masterlist / TipJar

ynusername

liked by oscarpiastri, landonorris, lewishamilton and 2,109,851 others

ynusername Photo of oscar accurately describes how I feel going into my home gp

view all 10,293 comments

oscarpiastri how do you always find the worst photos of me

ynusername i take them bb oscarpiastri oh my god user best teamates on the grid

user if only the mclaren car was better for them

user i think mclaren should be more worried about yn's insane internet presence ynusername omg no..... dont tell them mclaren you are mistaken we live for this

lewishamilton home race !

georgerussell silverstone ! ynusername Brit squad assemble ! landonorris here we come !

user YN is my favourite driver by a landslide

ynusername

liked by oscarpiastri, lewishamilton, georgerussell and 1,992,938 others

ynusername he may've been schooled in this country but he is in desperate need of an education on pure culture

view all 41,291 comments

user I love the fact the minute she is not racing she has the craziest nails

user are they acrylics ynusername they are press ons, easy on easy off ynusername easy way to be hot

oscarpiastri I love that these are the photos you post, you're education was not coffee shops and bookshops

ynusername what nope it was very mundane oscarpiastri nothing with you is mundane user shots fired user petition for yn to release the other photos landonorris petition signed alexalbon petition signed

lewishamilton the most cultured driver crown might be passed down soon

ynpiastri omg can you knight me too lewishamilton i wish! user the crown needs to be passed on now

oscarpiastri

liked by ynusername, landonorris, lewishamilton, and 802,439 others

oscarpiastri Just shy of a podium but got to witness the united kingdoms honorary princess on a podium. (also its not her birthday, her birthday is in 8 months)

view all 99,204 comments

user its always her birthday!

user always !! ynusername it is! oscarpiastri I am not getting you gifts everyday user he gets her birthday gifts..

ynusername mclaren domination in the foreseeable future

oscarpiastri so soon user i love them user they should date

f1fanupdates

liked by 3,420 users

f1fanupdates For the uneducated and borderline uncultured, meet the McLaren cuties. Teammates YN LN and Oscar Piastri channel the Gen Z unmedia-trained craziness. Having known each other from F3 days, their social media makes McLaren admins have heart attacks. Both having wins under their belt, it makes them a very strong team, a force. Would I be lying if I said they would be cute together...

view all 198 comments

user I love them, they are my parents, together or not

user they are iconic I hope they never get trained

user they are the hottest drivers, McLaren slayed with this pairing

user preach

user I already thought they were dating

user no they are just friendly user I bet there are underlying feelings

ynusername

liked by oscarpiastri, lewishamilton, landonorris, and 2,202,420 others

ynusername checking out the opposition. checking OUT the opposition

view all 70,436 others

user she is unhinged

user she is iconic

user is she dating lewis

user nah lewis is married user since when?!?

oscarpiastri don't you dare jump ship

ynusername can't promise anything pooks oscarpiastri you better mclaren you better ynusername till death does us part x

lewishamilton you are not smart with this caption

ynusername innocent until proven guilty lewishamilton you are baiting him user WHO, LEWIS TELL US user OMgggg drama

oscarpiastri

liked by ynusername, lewishamilton, landonorris and 892,104 others

oscarpiastri pov we were meant to be at the technology centre at 9. One of us was

view 67,241 comments

ynusername nooo youve made me look bad, it was traffic

oscarpiastri So, thats not an ice cold coffee in the selfie you sent me ynusername no one was meant to see that oscapiastri nothing you send me is safe sweetheart ynusername I ... okay user omg is she lost for words

user thats possible??

user omg they sent each other photos

user thats not a crazy thing user just let me believe they have feelings

mclaren ohhhh thats why you were late

ynusername no not at all mother mclaren mother is disappointed oscarpiastri what is happening? mclaren its okay son oscarpiastri oh hell naw we are not siblings user hes not helping the rumours

ynusername

liked by oscarpiastri, lewishamilton, mclaren, and 2,579,546 others

ynusername A visual representation of me trying to soft launch a relationship

view all 278,543 comments

oscarpiastri is this why you have been screaming/wheezing in your drivers room for the last 30 mins

user omg she is just like the rest of us oscarpiastri shes been in tears screaming 'why do i have none without his face!!' ynusername you are out of line Piastri oscarpiastri wow, not the surname

lewishamilton very very accurate

ynusername huh lewishamilton we are going to talk soon ynusername @ anyone HELP ME oscarpiastri nothing can help you now

user okay so who do we think it is

user oscar user oscar user oscar user ah so a universal thought

f1fanupdates

liked by 8,250 users

f1fanupdates It has been five months since this soft launching started! We are almost in Abu Dhabi, and YN is still just teasing her partner. We all think it is Oscar, but it is still unknown. No matter who it is though, they look good together

view all 942 comments

user OSCARRRRR

user Imagine it is not oscar and it is some poor guy and now he's upset

user oh user thats a good point

user OscarYN for life

oscarpiastri

liked by ynusername, lewishamilton, landonorris, and 1,240,567 others

oscarpiastri Hoping on the soft launching YN's relationship train

view all 82,459 comments

ynusername wow, thats my next post ruined

lewishamilton for the love of all that is good, just post him ynusername booo oscarpiastri no booo its getting boring ynusername you think that, really.. ? oscarpiastri i do yn girl

user this is hilarious

user i thought this was an YN post at first user same! user oscar is getting sick of it lol

mclaren There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded

user not mclaren quoting princess Diana user wouldn't it be four, mclaren, oscar, yn, yns partner user i think you are delusional user i think they are right user mclaren outing there relationship...

ynusername

liked by oscarpiastri, landonorris, lewishamilton, and 2,520,636 others

ynusername my man my man my maaaan

view all 97,577 comments

user its officalllll guys

user im so happy i was right user they look amazing together user hot couple

oscarpiastri finally a hard launch pookie

oscarpiastri was wondering when you would do it ynusername i was teeing it up lewishamilton its been a good 8 months of you two sneaking around the paddock landonorris we all knew maxverstappen i walked in on them making out fully behind the mclaren hospitatility alexalbon we all did that day, it was basically public information

mclaren our evil plan finally worked

ynusername your what... oscarpiastri your what... mclaren nothing, doors sometimes just lock on accident user not mclaren admin confessing to playing cupid mclaren not just me, everyone, Zak once hid YN's car keys so Oscar had to drive her home ynusername WHAT OMG I FEEL BETRAYED

oscarpiastri

liked by mclaren, ynusername, landonorris, and 1,924,250 others

oscarpiastri HR approved of photos 1 and 2 of my girlfriend

view all 45,266 others

user goddamm

ynusername OSCAR

oscarpiastri hey georgus ynusername georgus? oscarpiastri thats you landonorris you guys make me sickkk ynusername love you toooo oscarpiastri hey... ynusername x

mclaren we do not approve of the 3rd

oscarpiastri I do not want another HR meeting ynusername THIS ONE WASN'T MY FAULT! DON'T MAKE ME SIT THROUGH ANOTHER user what happened last time.. mclaren setting work place phyiscal intimacy boundaries ynusername Oscar is not a good influence on me oscarpiastri you aren't a good influence on anyone love

user I love these two so much

user best teammates on the grid

user the next brocedes ynusername we arent having a dramatic public break up lewishamilton oh

[bernhard-schipper]

Hermann Noordung Sneaker / 2022

As an absolute space fan, I finally designed skater sneakers in honor of the Slovenian space pioneer Herman Potočnik (1892 - 1929) and had them made by Vans. Due to the fact that Vans cannot embroider special Slavic characters, I chose Potočnik's pseudonym Hermann Noordung.

To learn more about Herman Potočnik please visit Wikipedia:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Potočnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Potočnik

[astrocafecoffee]

•Venus in Groom persona chart •

• FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY, ENJOY •

✨ MASTERLIST

(I totally forgot about this series 🙂, so here I am with Venus in Groom persona chart)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~✨✨~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Venus in 1st house:

Prince charming, tall , handsome and attractive spouse. Has beautiful eyes that Captivate your attention. Appreciates luxury, comfort and sensual pleasures. Could be a romantic at heart with a deep appreciation for love stories. May have talents in music , art or any creative pursuits. People wants to be with them , could be some sort of influencer. Also, maybe a natural people pleaser. May have a secret talent for improvisational comedy or witty banter.

Venus in 2nd house:

Sturdy build or have athletic physique. A hard worker, who values financial security. Very loyal spouse. Acts or service and gift giving could be their love language. Could have a strong connection to family traditions or cultural heritage. They could have a thing for collecting unique items. May have a secret talent for cooking and baking. Loves nature and gardening. Excels in banking or in family business.

Venus in 3rd house:

Possibly has youthful appearance (even if they are older than you). Enjoys mental stimulation. Has talents for writing or public speaking. Also can be a good singer too. May have secret love for leaning new languages. Likes brain teasers or puzzles. Some sort of content creator? May have strong connection with their siblings and friends. Possibly has a fascination with technology or gadgets.

Venus in 4th house:

Possibly has soft, rounded features. They values hone life and very protective and Caring towards their loved one.may have strong connection to their family traditions. Enjoys cooking, decorating or other domestic pursuits. Very intuitive spouse. Possibly has a fascination with antiques or vintage items. Has ability to transform emotional pain into something beautiful and meaningful . Spending time with their loved ones is their love language.

Venus in 5th house:

Has youthful and radiant appearance. Possibly has a playful and mischievous glint in their eye , has a talent for fashion and design. Enjoys risks and trying new things. Loves music , drama, art and any other creative pursuits. May have a strong connection to their inner child. Loves to shine and be the centre of the attention. Some kind of content creator maybe. Hopeless romantic at heart. May have a talent for writing or reading fantasy stories to create elaborate imaginary worlds.

Venus in 6th house:

May have slender or athletic build. Passion or interest in health and wellness / service oriented activities. Values long term commitment, very loyal spouse. May have a talent for energetic healing or reiki. Possess talents for finding creative solutions to everyday problems. They will listen to your every word very closely. Maintains a good body and health. Suprise gifts and heartfelt letters are the love languages. possibly has talent in writing or in journalism.

Venus in 7th house:

Possibly has a strong sense of style and enjoys dressing up. They will love you the most. May have strong magnetic attraction to your beauty. A excellent listener and have a strong ability to understand their partner's needs. Collaboration is the main theme in this relationship ( collaboration in artistic pursuits or any business). They believe in idea of soulmates or twinflmaes . Others admires their beauty so much.

Venus in 8th house:

May have a powerful, intense and dark gaze. They will be attracted to the beauty of your body and sensual expression.also may possess magnetic presence that attracts others to them(Obsessive energy is present too). You can openly share your secrets with them , they will never tell a soul. Could be very spiritual and has knowledge about esoteric things ( tarot, astrology). May have a dark romantic streak or a fascination with unknown.

Venus in 9th house:

Probably big and tall build. May Have interests in foreign cultures/ may have attraction to foreign peoples or people very different to them. May have radiant or philosophical gaze. They are drawn to higher education where they can expand their knowledge. Very spiritual. Their knowledge and words inspire others. Maybe interested in mystical arts and practices such as meditation, yoga or energy healing.

Venus in 10th house:

May have a strong build. May posses a leadership position in the society. Possibly drawn to careers in arts, design or media, also humanitarian field and possess charismatic and charming public persona. Very responsible spouse. Also may have interest in fashion, beauty or any creative industries. May posses some kind of media presence. Possibly may recieve awards or recognition for their work. May have knack for forming successful collaborations or partnerships.

Venus in 11th house:

Possibly has tall or lanky build. Quirky or unconventional appearance. May have a strong desire to help others. They thinks outside the box. Maybe passionate about technology, innovation or progressive ideas. Passionate about science and engineering and mathematics. Involved in social justice and human rights. Possibly has a talent for finding innovative solution to complex problems. Their work inspire others.

Venus in 12th house:

May have dreamy or ethereal quality to their appearance. Has slender or delicate build. Possibly has a talent for art, music or any other creative expression. Passionate about spirituality , and other metaphysical subjects. May have interest in esoteric studies(tarot, astrology). May have intuitive relationships or sense their partners emotions. Possibly some sort of content creator. possibly engages in selfless service or volunteer work.

Thanks for reading ✨

- PIKO 💙

[thusspoketrish]

Hiya, I'm Trish! Below you'll find a list of my completed Drarry fics + a gist of the story + a handful of tags. All of my stories are postwar, EWE, and rated E or M. I will update this list as I complete more stories! Wooo!!!

MOST RECENT FIC:

Netflix and Chills | E | 20K Halloween might be over, but the tricks, treats, and heat between the sheets are just beginning for our favorite dynamic duo! Humor. Post-Second Wizarding War. EWE. Drarry in the Muggle World. Established Relationship. Snarky Draco Malfoy. Muggle Technology. Slice of Life. Humor. Romance. Domestic Fluff. Pop Culture References. Shenanigans. Halloween Night. Netflix and Chill. Banter. Mystery. Idiots in Love. Light Dom/Sub Elements. Dirty Talk. Blue Ball Hell.

Summary: When Draco innocently asks what "Netflix and Chill" means, Harry simply can't pass up the opportunity to impart some knowledge while demonstrating a masterclass in the art of seduction. Now, if only those plans weren't constantly interrupted by trick-or-treaters—some of them far more trick than treat.

The Art of Getting By | E | 149K Recovery fic set in a psychiatric hospital. Mental health Issues. Trauma/Traumatic Experiences. Heavy Angst. Harry and Draco admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Therapy. Fastburn. Co-dependency. Falling in love. Draco's + Harry's POV. Please read warnings. Dead Dove.

This Year's Love| E | 84K. A Drarry slowburn inspired by When Harry Met Sally! Humor. Light Angst. Draco in the Muggle world. Lovable Disaster!Harry. Enemies to Best Friends. Modern Dating. Layabout!Harry. Medical Student!Draco. Draco Dates Zaddies. Harry Is Living His Best Heaux Life. Sex (or no sex!) Positivity. Idiots In Love. So Much Pining. Harry's POV.

Everything That Happens Is From Now On | E | 42K. A sensitive story that explores the aftermath and recovery from a stranger SA. Established relationship. Secrets. Supportive/Loving Partner. RTS. Living Together. Body Positivity. Enthusiastic Consent. Hope. Draco's POV. Please read warnings.

Lemon Colour, Honey Glow | E | 67K. A love story that takes place over a series of unfortunate nights at the Leaky Cauldron. Enemies to Lovers. Falling in Love. Auror!Harry. Potion Master!Draco. Secret Relationship. Emotional Hurt/Comfort. Possessive Harry. Flangst. Beer Gardens. The Leaky Cauldron. The Slytherin Trio. Bullying/Violence. Spoilers Left Untagged.

Super Rich Kids | E | 81K. True crime meets wild government conspiracies when Draco becomes a twisted sort-of Robin Hood, robbing the badly behaving rich to give to...well...you'll have to read the story to find out! Angst. Murders. Coverups. Enemies to Friends to Lovers. Bisexual Draco. Lush descriptions of glamour. Humor. The ULTIMATE Slytherin ensemble. Mental Health Issues. Drug Usage/Addiction. Pureblood Elitism. Social Season. Angst with a Happy Ending. Draco's POV.

On The Last Day | E | 53K. Draco's role as an Unspeakable, Harry's untimely death and ghostly return, and conspiracies bind them in a quest for truth and redemption. Mystery. Angst. Hurt/Comfort. Grief/Mourning. Horror Elements. Science. Neurology/Neuroscience. Slowburn. Memory Loss. Draco's POV.

My Best Friend, the Serial Killer | E | 37K. Ride or Die BFFL Draco finds he's tired of moonlighting as a serial killer's accomplice. No matter how much he loves Pansy, he draws the line at helping her dispose of a sexy, flirty Harry Potter. Dark Humor. Campy/Kitsch Elements. Serial Killer!Pansy. Healer!Draco. Femme Fatale Trope. Falling in Love. Self-Love. Jealousy. Everyone is seriously morally grey. Draco's POV.

A Ferret, a ScarHead, a Weasel, & a Baby | E | 91K. The ultimate bromance takes centre stage (alongside a sweet and tender Drarry romance) in this Three Men & a Baby inspired story! BAMF Auror Draco. Protective Draco. Healer Harry. Capable and Emotionally Intelligent Ron. Illegal Potions Ring. Orphaned Baby. Roommates. Nothing to Something to Everything. Draco's POV.

Seven Days | E | 8K. It takes seven days for the Malfoy-Potter family to unravel. Grief/Mourning. Child Abduction. Death of a Child. Implied Mpreg. Alcohol Relapse. Coming to Terms. Harry's POV. Please Read the Warnings.

Portrait of a Young Girl | M | 8K. Navigating the complexities of love, marriage, and child-rearing, Harry and Draco face a new challenge when they suspect that four-year-old Teddy might be transgender. Married Drarry. Young Couple. Inexperienced Parents. Marital Problems/Disagreements. Stay-at-Home Dad Draco. Fluff. Acceptance. Love. Family. Happy Ending. Harry's POV.

A Day at the Park | M | 6K. Draco discovers that love has its own timing, and sometimes, that means returning to the place where he once lost it all. Estranged couple. Flashbacks. Pining. Postman's Park. Exiled Draco. Draco's POV.

Long for Bliss! | E | 9K. A random night out takes a dark and thrilling turn when Harry, after taking MDMA, encounters Draco Malfoy, looking like something straight out of his wildest dreams – or nightmares. First Time Drug Use. Nightclubs. The Perils of Ennui. Mildly Dubious Consent. Rooftop Sex. Light Dom/Sub Elements. Harry's POV.

Idiot Boys In Love & More | Various Ratings | 18K. Here you'll find a collection of one-shots, drabbles, and poems about Harry and Draco that are all standalone pieces! Each story is centered on a prompt provided by @drarrymicrofic and said prompt will be listed in the summary of each story (Series I completed). Harry + Draco's POV.

[hauntedtwink]

“The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different. In the personages of other times and alien cultures we recognize our all too human selves and yet are aware, as we do so, that the frame of reference within which we do our living has changed, since their day, out of all recognition, that propositions which seemed axiomatic then are now untenable and that what we regard as the most self-evident postulates could not, at an earlier period, find entrance into even the most boldly speculative mind. But however great, however important for thought and technology, for social organization and behaviour, the differences between then and now are always peripheral. At the centre remains a fundamental identity. In so far as they are incarnated minds, subject to physical decay and death, capable of pain and pleasure, driven by craving and abhorrence and oscillating between the desire for self-assertion and the desire for self-transcendence, human beings are faced, at every time and place, with the same problems, are confronted by the same temptations and are permitted by the Order of Things to make the same choice between unregeneracy and enlightenment. The context changes, but the gist and the meaning are invariable.”

—Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun (1952)

[theresattrpgforthat]

Alright, I have a weird one. Are there any TTRPGS that revolve around Coral? That, or have coral as an important element of the game?

Oh my gosh my ask box apparently ate this for MONTHS and finally decided to spit this back. Let's see what we've got!

THEME: Coral

Descent into Midnight, by Rich Howard, Taylor LaBresh, and Richard Kreutz-Landry.

At its heart, Descent into Midnight (DiM) is a game about community, family, and hope. It's a tabletop roleplaying game that takes place in a technologically advanced aquatic civilization whose culture has never been touched by humanity. Bioengineering and psionic, or mental, powers allow the strange and varied species to communicate and interact with their surroundings no matter their physiology.

In the game, players take on the roles of guardians, defending their community from a physical, emotional, and even existential threat. The game focuses on the relationships between the guardians, the inhabitants they protect, and their internal struggles and dreams in the face of a corruption that threatens to change their world.

You can play as whatever you like in Descent in to Midnight, including fish, plants, even abstract concepts - so a shelf of coral isn’t really that much of a stretch. The playbooks (yes, playbooks, this is a PbtA game) are centred more about your personality, and what you look like is secondary. The game is designed to take a turn for the darker before it pushes towards hope, so I think your game experience will be different depending on whether this is a one-shot or a long-form campaign.

Delve Deeper, by Maik.

A complete new game of under-oceanic adventuring and exploration. 

Play as intelligent oceanic folks such as the cephaliin octopoids, the crustaciin crab-folk and the fish-like merfolk and explore the coral reefs, open seas and abyssal trenches in search for adventure, pearls and treasure.

You don’t play as coral in this game, but you’re certainly exploring it! Taking nods from games such as Troika!, Electric Bastionland, and Brave Zenith, this game feels solidly inside the OSR camp, but with a special love for the wacky and weird. If you want to have a particular connection to the coral reefs, you’ll likely want to play as a Merfolk, who build cities from the coral and rule as a matriarchal society. This game is full of lore, but not extensively so - it’s only 33 pages long in total. But I think you’ll probably come away from reading Delve Deeper with a pretty strong sense of what this underwater kingdom is like.

Reefs of Despair, by Zaftikat

You are a sea anemone, stuck firm in an ocean that will soon be inhospitable to you. Grapple with climate change as you explore fatalism and ennui.

Sea anemones aren’t coral but they’re kind of close right?

Now this game is neat. It uses popcorn as a resolution mechanic - how cool is that? You have to pop the popcorn in a stove-top vessel, rather than a microwave, because you have to count how many popcorn kernels pop at first pop - the more there are, the better your outcome. Apart from that, your character has two stats: Ennui and Fatalism. These stats rise and fall similar to the way stats raise and fall in Honey Heist - with a similar outcome if you get too high or too low, by ending the game. There’s also a third end state for what happens once you’ve popped all the kernels, but I’ll leave that one for folks who decide to download this game and read it.

The game also is donating proceeds to the Coral Restoration Foundation, so in a roundabout way, I guess it was about coral all along.

Other Games You Should Check Out

Bones Deep, by Technical Grimoire. (You should really check this one out.)

[sagistrology]

𝖍𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖑𝖚𝖙𝖔 𝖎𝖓 𝖆𝖖𝖚𝖆𝖗𝖎𝖚𝖘 𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖘𝖎𝖙 𝖒𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖎𝖒𝖕𝖆𝖈𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘 (𝖘𝖈𝖔𝖗𝖕𝖎𝖔, 𝖘𝖆𝖌𝖎𝖙𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖎𝖚𝖘, 𝖈𝖆𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖈𝖔𝖗𝖓)

(these observations are general and do not cover all aspects)

♇ the significance of pluto lies in its association with disruption - 'death' in both a symbolic and literal sense, regeneration, and rebirth. in each respective sign, pluto demands collective change through the sign's principles, without compromise. as an outer planet its personal implications can be more subtle, yet they intrinsically affect you.

♇ think of pluto as the wound of perception, subconsciously impacting us through trauma - whether individually or collectively.

♇ pluto dismantles and doesn't console, but rather pushes you to the edge in order for you to evolve and reclaim your power.

collective impact - pluto in aquarius

♇ in the ‘humanitarian’ sign, combined with pluto’s implications, we’re likely to see the previously established overturned and reformed. fragile structures, ‘unjust’ power, and inauthenticity can be expected to be dismantled on a large scale. authority and its ability will be questioned, along with blatant lies being exposed. this can be a time of societal values centring on communities, a collective, factual questioning of the status quo, and a critical eye on institutions, as well as the power held by them. think of uncompromising idealism, protests in reaction to crises and human rights violations, and redefining morality - centred on equality. discernment is invaluable.

♇ we're likely to see an influx of information and graphic exposure to humanity's deepest wounds, demonstrating the fragility of our existence.

♇ seeing these vulnerabilities (pluto) in relation to global structures (uranus) this might affect technology at large - highlighting its flaws and shortcomings. in a situational context, this could mean exponential advancements in tech - both positive and negative, e.g. more surveillance, an increase in cyber-attacks, data being deleted, power outages, further implementation of ai, plagiarism, etc.

pluto in scorpio

♇ wound of sorrow and cyclical loss, purging of trauma and ancestral wounds, purification, the occult, pain, rage, and anger.

♇ a gen deeply attuned to crises and disillusioned about the state of the world, sensing the potency of global struggles.

♇ may bring forward hidden information on corporations, political figures or governments through whistleblowers or officials. also paying more attention to their privacy and how their data is being processed.

♇ perhaps seeking positions of mentoring - helping to build a foundation. questioning and reevaluating social circles, looking for connections that align with them and preferring solitude to company that isn't beneficial.

pluto in sagittarius

♇ philosophy, religion, 'meaning', wound of seeking, inquiring, and investigating constrained by structure - often experiencing alienation due to a misalignment with cultural and societal norms.

♇ it will be invaluable to practice groundedness in order to implement idealism, setting an intention but also planning how to achieve this desired state globally, esp. when it comes to activism. can be eccentric, optimism has to be backed by strategies.

♇ themes can include the questioning of authority esp. in academic settings, seeking education outside institutions, and diverse qualifications rather than convention.

♇ may lead to a surge of entrepreneurs, startups, value-based businesses, more autonomy, less traditional employment etc. (working hours or location)

pluto in capricorn

♇ wound of responsibility - pragmatism, endurance, authority, implementation of new baselines, philosophies become policies - tradition and identity, social responsibility, emotional withdrawal, prone to anxiety and depression.

♇ with capricorn being a cardinal sign, there’s an emphasis on death and renewal – signifying new standards, demanding change rather than petitioning for it. these norms may create a sense of detachment from previous generations.

♇ different values and a deep sense of urgency and responsibility, no sugarcoating and radical action, centred on benefitting the masses and pushing boundaries.

[hezenkossapologist]

My criticism of Veilguard and my desire for a sociological Dragon Age story exists entirely and happily alongside me loving the game as-is, as a character focused psychological story.

In fact taking it seriously as a work of art, that exists within our society and says things about our society (bc that’s what art does bc it is made by us) is how I love the game. I am a cultural theorist and sociologist by education, that’s my lens, that’s my baggage.

I just. wish. that BioWare would magically do exactly what I want and would allow me to be their resident sociologist/cultural theorist to go to each writer and ask them a host of questions and point out ways in which the characters they are writing would have been restrained by their positionality in the world (as we all are!) and the social technologies they are surrounded by (E.G are you SURE you want to set part of your game in Docktown in the world centre of enslavement when you don’t want to deal with the technologies of enslavement. Are you sure. Pls read In The Wake: On Blackness and Being and get back to me xoxox)

Anyway I want dark and gritty like Toni Morrison not like GRRM and not only do I not agree that you have to accept the level of frictionlessness that Veilguard offers in order to avoid misogynistic and racist writing, I think we do a huge disservice to women and Black and other writers of colour and oppressed peoples to ignore our histories of writing our own dark and gritty stories about our dark and gritty realities in the world. That’s my onion.

[thorarms]

On asgardian subcultures

Aka ive been thinking about this for months and youre all finally gonna hear about it

Obligatory disclaimer of im not an expert in any of this, ive mixed ideas from the movies comics and myths together so if thats not your thing im sorry, a ton of this is my own headcanons about asgard so ymmv, correct me if i get any facts wrong, this is an oversimplified look at asgard and how countercultures develop (theres no way I could cover everything), consider this post a jumping off point, etc. etc.

Subcultures Primer

Ok so, subcultures dont form in a vacuum. They tend to develop as a response to dominant cultures, and often aim to subvert the political and social norms of their time (see 70s punk, the us anti vietnam war movement that gave rise to hippies). They also tend to form in specific geographical locations, usually a city or county, and then spread further out (see the london 00s grime scene that spread through pirate radio stations before reaching mainstream success in the late 00s, 90s grunge forming in seattle and taking aesthetic cues from the clothes that were cheapest and most durable in seattle at the time). The other place alternative scenes tend to crop up is in music (see pretty much every subculture ive previously mentioned, plus goths, emos, mods, ravers, metalheads, northern soul, etc). This is not something I'll be covering about asgard because music history just isnt my area.

The only other thing i really need to mention here is the dilution of subcultures, aka the set aesthetics of a movement being co-opted by people outside that movement and diluting it's original message. While this is a real thing that eventually happens with all movements that have a set aesthetic, im not gonna touch on it here. Because quite honestly thats way too much worldbuilding for one post. You'd be asking me to invent like, all of asgard. In a tumblr post. Im not doing that.

Dominant Asgardian Culture

For asgard in specific, to figure out what the alternative scenes look like, you first have to figure out whats going on in the mainstream. Dominant asgardian culture (for me at least) brings to mind:

War and warrior culture, aka fight and die for asgard and be rewarded with eternal life in paradise, before fighting and dying again at the end of the world. Asgard doesnt have a huge military for nothing

Gold, and the wealth and political power it signifies. The fact that gold is concentrated in the palace at centre of the city is not an accident (gold actually has some really interesting chemical properties, including its inability to rust or degrade over time, it's many uses in scientific equipment, etc. Idk where else to put this, i just think it's really neat that gold doesnt rust, it's eternal, it makes total sense for asgardians to be obsessed with it)

A monarchy and rigid class system (see rigsthula/the high fantasy genre in general)

Extreme technological advancement, and a rise in scientific rationalism. In particular I feel that asgardians would look down upon the other realms, and consider themselves more sophisticated and rational, and less prone to superstition (of course this is merely a belief; how asgardians see themselves is not always reflected in reality).

A general sense of immortality and eternity. Lives stretching out unchanged for thousands of years. The preservation of youth from enchanted golden apples. It's all very reminiscent of an insect trapped in amber, or a city of immortal vampires

Aesthetically, this manifests as

sleek, shiny, very new looking tech, particularly in richer areas of the city. Think silicon valley or high concept supercars

art deco style architecture (whoever on the design team at marvel came up with that i am kissing you on the mouth it's fucking inspired)

gold armor/jewellery/ornamentation on buildings etc. primarily concentrated among the wealthiest citizens and districts

highly decorated buildings (specifically with very neat, clean lines and patterns, controlled curves, very mathematical and scientific designs, almost reminiscent of the art of the islamic golden age, also fucking inspired btw, seriously theres some great design choices in those early movies, like it was genius for the artists to pick architectural influences from great scientific ages throughout history and mix them with traditional viking age motifs and patterns, really great design work i feel like people dont talk about this enough)

The architecture of asgard itself also plays a role in the formation and maintenance of it's cultural norms. The palace is located in the centre of the city, centralising the wealth and power among those who live there, and leaving behind citizens who live further out from the centre.

The immediate areas around the palace would be home to asgards wealthiest families, as well as politicians/diplomats/ambassadors etc. Very wealthy landowners may have private lands here, which they use as gardens, vineyards, or for fancy rich people hobbies like foxhunting and horse riding. There would also be a high military presence in this area due to proximity to the palace.

The areas fairly near the centre would likely be relatively wealthy, and be home to a greater diversity of professions (engineers/doctors/etc). They're likely to contain big cities with big city amenities, such as music halls, universities, more niche and specialist shops, etc. These areas would be densely populated, with modern apartment complexes and a decent transit system.

Further out, more industrial areas would likely start appearing, with larger industrial cities forming particularly close to mountains and forests. More rural areas will start to crop up too, and will consist mostly of farmland and smaller towns.

The outermost edges of the city would likely be mostly port cities, with docks and large fishing communities (asgard is an island after all). Some of these cities would likely see some trade from fishing and beach tourism, but many may also be struggling financially. There may be some small islands off the coast in some areas, with their own small communities largely cut off from the mainland. Whaling would likely be fairly common here, alongside other forms of fishing.

In addition, the bifrost is the only way in and out of asgard, and is only open to a select few, meaning the vast majority of people living in asgard will never step foot outside it. Even some rich asgardians may never leave the realm once in their entire lives. This means that most of asgardian culture would develop mostly in isolation from the other realms, with very little cultural exchange outside of traders and extremely wealthy citizens.

Countercultures: Formation and Aesthetics

Rejection of technology and scientific thinking in favour of the supernatural/wisdom of old/outright cults (see 19th century gothic literature as a reaction to the industrial revolution). Would be expressed as returning to old technology (anything from drop spindles to whatever the asgardian equivalent of cassette tapes is). Potentially this could also give rise to pseudoscientific thinking as a backlash to scientific reasoning. Things like contacting the norns to have them read your fortune, or having your consciousness travel through the branches of yggdrasil, would be fairly common. I can imagine there would be a fair few grifters claiming they can "realign your spirit with the branches of the world tree. For a small fee of course".

Whilst subcultures can form anywhere there's people, they most often tend to form in places with dissatisfaction with cultural and political norms. In asgard, these would be places with little influence over the crown, aka areas far away from the palace that may also be struggling financially. These countercultures could manifest from a variety of things, including:

Anti war and warrior culture. It's likely that, during its long and storied history of wars with the other realms, asgard would have had at least one anti war movement. I reckon it would spring up during a particularly long war that funnelled resources meant for poorer towns on the outskirts of the city, decimating the economy and potentially even creating food shortages. The main focus of the movement would be class related, but may have some more general hippy style anti violence sub-movements.

Rejection of the promise of eternal life in valhalla and by extension a permanent state of self, with a focus on natural processes of death and the cycles of life (i can see so many weird teenagers being told that they'll be feasting in valhalla forever with their high school bullies, and i doubt that would go down well with them, like "fuck that i would rather literally rot in hel than see any of you ever again"). Aesthetically it would include rotting fruit, the life cycles of animals (particularly insects, which violently change forms throughout almost every stage of life), animal and human skeletons, mushrooms growing from dead and rotted trees, scavenging animals that eat corpses, etc. More hardcore members of the scene may develop a fascination with transformation of the self, and use seiđr to alter their bodies (think extreme body mods but with magic).

The sea!! Asgard is an island!! Theres no way they havent tried exploring the oceans surrounding the entire realm. Fear of and fascination with the unknown, combined with proximity to the ocean, would very likely result in a deep love and appreciation of deep sea life, and much speculation of what creatures and monsters might be lurking just out of sight. Almost certainly a couple of small cults will spring up worshipping some ancient sea monster that definitely exists for sure i saw it with my own eyes it was thiiiis big.

Rust. Any asgardian subculture worth its salt is going to reject gold and everything it represents. Rusting discoloured metals with thick patinas and flaking paint will likely crop up alongside every other point in this list.

Anyway this is all a very long winded way of saying that, by asgardian standards, loki isnt actually a goth he's a poser. He's a rich kid that buys £150 'goth style' clothes from ye olde asgardian punk rave but hasnt heard of bauhaus. He doesnt even care about rust.

[abby118]

Hey Abby, I wanted to ask you, which style of Asgard representation do you prefer? The one in Thor 1, which is essentially more minimalist, orderly, and sparse, or the one in Thor 2, which is richer in details and intricacies? I think the first style fits better to represent an alien and warrior culture like theirs, as I don't see them being too inclined to fill their place with details, since they might consider them unnecessary. However, at the same time, I prefer the aesthetics of the second film, as it makes me think more of a rich, ancient, and magical city.

Hey, I will say Dark World's depiction of Asgard is more fitting in my eyes but that is because of multiple reasons I will get to later in this post. I agree with what you've said, especially regarding their contrasting culture, but there is nuance in this. I say 'contrasting' because on one hand, you've got the focus on the warrior society and Asgard's position as the leading realm (thus having to present itself in a way that would signal their superiority over the other nations), but this does not extend throughout the entirety of the kingdom. Despite Asgard's view of magic and its classification as a predominantly female field, it plays a significant role in the relam's overall profile that can't be overlooked. It runs deep through Asgard (both as a society and as a celestial body); the kingdom is built around it, it rose from it if you count the Bifrost into what we think of as magic. So it's not all just a defence and battle driven style.

As in most of my posts, my opinion is largely influenced by the writing I've got, which follows after the events of TDW. I have spent years detailing the setting so naturally, TDW is closer to how I see Asgard. I've pretty much written an entire book's worth of worldbuilding content when it comes to Asgard by now. With that in mind, what is important is that what we see in TDW is more up to date than what was shown in Thor 1; it is not one or the other, they are related. (x)

Thor 1's focus was primarily on Valaskjalf (I mean the palace, I just shorten the name for my posts) rather than the realm as a whole. That is because the story's centre, or its starting point, was the royal family. Not its people. We saw the palace through this lens that was there because of all the important events like the coronation and related values.

We should also look at this from an out-of-universe pov and for that I will quote Bo Welch who was the production designer for Thor 1. This was him talking about the thought process behind the design the production team ended up going for:

"-we had decided that Asgard's inhabited by warrior gods but that they live at the top of the Nine Realms. Their privileged perspective on the universe should be so advanced and elegant that it should not be cluttered with the normal details that we associate human beings with; the technology, the building construction, the methodology of their architecture is so advanced, the human brain cannot even comprehend it."

I am bringing this up because it supports my point of how we saw Asgard's highest positions of power. We saw the gold and the grandour of royalty within the kingdom. They were yet to introduce TDW's perspective to which I will get in a moment.

To me, personally, this look of Asgard is incomplete and I don't like to settle for just partial pieces of a picture. You do need to see the commoners in order to fully appreciate the monarchy's place and the contrast there. Thor 1's Asgard looks empty, because it is yet to reveal that side of itself. (This goes without saying but this is not critique, I am simply saying you need TDW too.) What we've been shown in Thor 1 is actually a very brief period of time. You only saw the realm in this perpetual state of what we'd describe as nighttime (though I don't think you can apply those terms entirely because we are talking about a wholly different system). This makes the two hard to compare without bringing up what TDW added (not changed!) and it being what makes it more fitting.

TDW was no longer showing this attempt of perfection; the family was split after all and so was the golden (I won't say facade, because it's still present and definitely real in the kingdom, it's just not the only focus shown) image. We did get to see the other side of Asgard, the bottom of their societal hierarchy; the dungeons. We saw the commoners and the city they inhabit and yes, we did see a more realistic look of royalty and their palace. The story was now letting you pick your stance by showing you a realistic pov of the environment whereas before, you saw a filter put there to give the impression of unattainable glory.

We did see more of their technology, we did see more of the palace and their armies, the city, the nature and even a possible change of season. It was much more complete and for me, the places from Thor 1 were still there. If it weren't for the circumstances you might have seen them. I am not choosing one or the order, I am simply taking the updated version that carries both.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election

I'm in to TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (Monday, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.

But unsubscribing from Prime? That's a fucking nightmare. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave. Now, there's two possibilities here: either Amazon's UX competence is a kind of erratic freak tide that sweeps in at unpredictable intervals and hits these unbelievable high-water marks, or the company just doesn't want to let you leave.

To investigate this question, let's consider a parallel: Black Flag's Roach Motel. This is an icon of American design, a little brown cardboard box that is saturated in irresistibly delicious (to cockroaches, at least) pheromones. These powerful scents make it admirably easy for all the roaches in your home to locate your Roach Motel and enter it.

But the interior of the Roach Motel is also coated in a sticky glue. Once roaches enter the motel, their legs and bodies brush up against this glue and become hopeless mired in it. A roach can't leave – not without tearing off its own legs.

It's possible that Black Flag made a mistake here. Maybe they wanted to make it just as easy for a roach to leave as it is to enter. If that seems improbable to you, well, you're right. We don't even have to speculate, we can just refer to Black Flag's slogan for Roach Motel: "Roaches check in, but they don't check out."

It's intentional, and we know that because they told us so.

Back to Amazon and Prime. Was it some oversight that cause the company make it so marvelously painless to sign up for Prime, but such a titanic pain in the ass to leave? Again, no speculation is required, because Amazon's executives exchanged a mountain of internal memos in which this is identified as a deliberate strategy, by which they deliberately chose to trick people into signing up for Prime and then hid the means of leaving Prime. Prime is a Roach Motel: users check in, but they don't check out:

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

When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – "relentless" (Bezos's original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented "one click checkout" – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon's relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like "fairness" or "grievance":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

Amazon also invents implausible corporate fictions that allow it to terminate entire sections of its workforce for trying to unionize, by maintaining the tormented pretense that these workers, who wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks, deliver Amazon packages, and are tracked by Amazon down to the movements of their eyeballs, are, in fact, not Amazon employees:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-drivers-unionized-then-amazon-tried-to-terminate-his-contract/

These workers have plenty of cause to want to unionize. Amazon warehouses are sources of grueling torment. Take "megacycling," a ten-hour shift that runs from 1:20AM to 11:50AM that workers are plunged into without warning or the right to refuse. This isn't just a night shift – it's a night shift that makes it impossible to care for your children or maintain any kind of normal life.

Then there's Jeff Bezos's war on his workers' kidneys. Amazon warehouse workers and drivers notoriously have to pee in bottles, because they are monitored by algorithms that dock their pay for taking bathroom breaks. The road to Amazon's warehouse in Coventry, England is littered with sealed bottles of driver piss, defenestrated by drivers before they reach the depot inspection site.

There's so much piss on the side of the Coventry road that the prankster Oobah Butler was able to collect it, decant it into bottles, and market it on Amazon as an energy beverage called "Bitter Lemon Release Energy," where it briefly became Amazon's bestselling energy drink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

(Butler promises that he didn't actually ship any bottled piss to people who weren't in on the gag – but let's just pause here and note how weird it is that a guy who hates our kidneys as much as Jeff Bezos built and flies a penis-shaped rocket.)

Butler also secretly joined the surge of 1,000 workers that Amazon hired for the Coventry warehouse in advance of a union vote, with the hope of diluting the yes side of that vote and forestall the union. Amazon displayed more of its famously selective competence here, spotting Butler and firing him in short order, while totally failing to notice that he was marketing bottles of driver piss as a bitter lemon drink on Amazon's retail platform.

After a long fight, Amazon's Coventry workers are finally getting their union vote, thanks to the GMB union's hard fought battle at the Central Arbitration Committee:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/04/26/amazon-warehouse-workers-in-coventry-will-vote-on-trade-union-recognition/

And right on schedule, Amazon has once again discovered its incredible facility for ease-of-use. The company has blanketed its shop floor with radioactively illegal "one click to quit the union" QR codes. When a worker aims their phones at the code and clicks the link, the system auto-generates a letter resigning the worker from their union.

As noted, this is totally illegal. English law bans employers from "making an offer to an employee for the sole or main purpose of inducing workers not to be members of an independent trade union, take part in its activities, or make use of its services."

Now, legal or not, this may strike you as a benign intervention on Amazon's part. Why shouldn't it be easy for workers to choose how they are represented in their workplaces? But the one-click system is only half of Amazon's illegal union-busting: the other half is delivered by its managers, who have cornered workers on the shop floor and ordered them to quit their union, threatening them with workplace retaliation if they don't.

This is in addition to more forced "captive audience" meetings where workers are bombarded with lies about what life in an union shop is like.

Again, the contrast couldn't be more stark. If you want to quit a union, Amazon makes this as easy as joining Prime. But if you want to join a union, Amazon makes that even harder than quitting Prime. Amazon has the same attitude to its workers and its customers: they see us all as a resource to be extracted, and have no qualms about tricking or even intimidating us into doing what's best for Amazon, at the expense of our own interests.

The campaigning law-firm Foxglove is representing five of Amazon's Coventry workers. They're doing the lord's work:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/02/legal-challenge-to-amazon-uks-new-one-click-to-quit-the-union-tool/

All this highlights the increasing divergence between the UK and the US when it comes to labor rights. Under the Biden Administration, @NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has promulgated a rule that grants a union automatic recognition if the boss does anything to interfere with a union election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

In other words, if Amazon tries these tactics in the USA now, their union will be immediately recognized. Abruzzo has installed an ultra-sensitive tilt-sensor in America's union elections, and if Bezos or his class allies so much as sneeze in the direction of their workers' democratic rights, they automatically lose.

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/2024/05/06/one-click-to-quit-the-union/#foxglove

Image: Isabela.Zanella (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballot-box-2.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[warningsine]

Fifty years on, the wounds left in Chilean society by the coup of 11 September 1973 are still very much open. Justice is a long way from being served, secrets remain untold, and the bodies of many of the victims are yet to be found.

Last Wednesday, the government announced a new national initiative to find the remains of 1,162 Chileans who vanished under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and remain unaccounted for. In most cases, the best their families can hope for are fragments or traces of DNA.

After ousting a democratically elected socialist, Salvador Allende, Pinochet rounded up opponents, social activists and students in Santiago’s national stadium and other makeshift detention centres, where nearly 30,000 were tortured and more than 2,200 were executed.

Allende’s body was pulled out of the bombed wreckage of the presidential palace, La Moneda. He is generally thought to have killed himself rather than be captured by soldiers loyal to Pinochet, the armed forces commander he had appointed a few weeks earlier.

Almost 1,500 others simply disappeared, and since the end of the junta in 1990, only 307 have been identified and their remains returned to their families. Anticipating the reckoning to come, Pinochet had ordered the bodies of the executed to be dug up and dumped at sea, or into the crater of a volcano. Investigators now hope that modern technology might help pinpoint massacre and temporary burial sites that might still yield vestiges of the dead.

Ariel Dorfman had been working as a cultural and press adviser in La Moneda, and was lucky to survive. Most of Allende’s staff were executed in the first days after the coup.

“This was a tragedy for Chile, for Latin America and for the world, because we were trying to open a way to a more just, radical society without violence,” Dorfman, a novelist, playwright and academic, told the Observer.

Trials are under way in a last-gasp effort at accountability before the perpetrators die of old age. On Monday, seven former soldiers aged between 73 and 85 were finally jailed after the criminal chamber of the Chilean supreme court upheld their convictions for the murder of Victor Jara, a celebrated folk singer and Allende supporter who was tortured and then shot 44 times.

Many of the details of the 1973 coup and the ensuing dictatorship remain unknown. Pinochet and the junta were efficient when it came to destroying evidence and the US has been grudging in declassifying its own records, which have emerged in a dribble over the years. Under pressure from Chile’s current president, Gabriel Boric – a 37-year-old former student activist – and from progressive Washington Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the US has declassified two new documents: presidential intelligence briefings given to Richard Nixon on the day of the coup and three days earlier.

It was hard to understand why they had been withheld for so long. They confirmed what had already been generally established: that the CIA had not directly stage-managed the 11 September coup. The presidential daily brief for 8 September contains reports of a plot by naval officers, but adds: “There is no evidence of a tri-service coup plan.”

“Should hotheads in the navy act in the belief they will automatically receive support from the other services, they could find themselves isolated,” the intelligence briefer told Nixon.

Even on the day of the coup itself, Nixon was told that, although some army units appeared to have joined the effort, “they may still lack an effectively coordinated plan that would capitalise on the widespread civilian opposition”.

Jack Devine, who was serving as a CIA clandestine officer in Chile in 1973, was eating lunch in an Italian restaurant in Santiago on 9 September when he got a message to call home. It was his wife, who told him a coup was coming.

One of Devine’s sources, a businessman and former naval officer, was leaving the country and had been unable to find the CIA man, so had gone to his house and told Mrs Devine to pass on his tipoff: “The military has decided to move. It is going to happen on September 11.”

Devine told the Observer: “That is the first clear sign that a coup was coming, just a couple of days ahead of time. We were caught by surprise. That’s the first evidence that something was coming. And many of the people still didn’t believe it in Washington and the CIA.”

There is no question, however, that the US had helped set the stage for the military takeover. From the time of Allende’s election on 4 September 1970 at the head of the Popular Unity alliance, the White House, led by Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, began plotting to get rid of him.

The CIA planned a putsch the following month, before Allende could even hold his inauguration. US spies found willing officers and supplied them with guns, cash and guarantees of US support for a military government. The plot led to the murder of the commander-in-chief, René Schneider, who had stood by the incoming president, but it fell short of toppling Allende when plotters in the military pulled out.

In a telephone conversation on 23 October, Kissinger told Nixon that there had been “a turn for the worse”.

“The next move should have been a government takeover, but that hasn’t happened,” he said, describing the Chilean military as “a pretty incompetent bunch”.

“They’re out of practice,” Nixon replied.

After the failure of the 1970 coup, Devine said, “Nixon sent out specific instructions to the CIA that there be no more coup plotting.” The US administration focused instead on undermining the Allende government, which had been elected by a slender margin and was facing substantial internal opposition. Washington coordinated with its allies in Latin America to block Chile’s access to international finance, persuaded US companies to leave Chile, manipulated the global price of copper, Chile’s principal export, and helped foment strikes within the country.

The Nixon administration was also quick to throw its support behind the junta. When shocked US diplomats sent reports of the slaughter that had followed the coup, Kissinger told his aides: “I think we should understand our policy – that however unpleasant they act, this government is better for us than Allende was.”

Pinochet found another powerful friend on the world stage when Margaret Thatcher was elected in Britain in 1979. She restored Chile’s export credits and dropped an arms embargo on the regime, selling it jet fighters and training its troops.

A succession of Tory ministers visited Chile, admiring the high economic growth rate and the wholehearted adoption of the absolutist monetary policy extolled by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. A group of Chilean economists who had studied there, known as the Chicago Boys, took top positions in Pinochet’s government, and the country became a test case for the policies of privatisation, deregulation and tight control of the money supply. Complicating social factors, such as trade unions and popular resistance, had been taken out of the picture.

“The Chilean coup was a triumph of the anti-communist movement in the United States and Latin America. You can’t get around the fact that it led to the defeat of democratic and progressive governments all over the region,” said John Dinges, who lived through the violent early years of the Pinochet era as one of the few US journalists to remain in the country after the coup.

“There was a youth-oriented revolutionary movement, which was sometimes quite extreme, advocating armed struggle, and that was also physically eliminated. So the violence was successful,” Dinges, the author of two books on the Pinochet regime, said. “More than 80% of the population of Latin America was under rightwing military dictatorships by the end of 1976.”

The Pinochet regime coordinated with fellow military-run governments in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil to eliminate leftwingers and social activists in Operation Condor, a concerted slaughter across the region. It had US support, in the form of technical support, training and military aid, through the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, all in the name of fighting communism.

The coup’s lasting legacy around the world has been defined mostly by the international backlash to its shocking cruelty. It galvanised the human rights movement in Europe and the US. In Washington, the US’s involvement shocked politicians such as Senator Frank Church, who oversaw the first congressional hearings on the CIA’s covert activities which ultimately led to constraints on its future operations.

The martyrdom of Allende and his experiment in democratic socialism inspired a generation of leftwing political activists around the world.

The record of the Allende government is complicated. The Popular Unity alliance never commanded a parliamentary majority and was deeply split. Rapid nationalisation and blanket pay rises for workers brought with them mismanagement of state enterprises and hyperinflation. But because it was violently cut short, many different myths grew up around what might have been.

“It became like a Chilean mirror. People read into Chile what they wanted to see,” said Tanya Harmer, associate professor in Latin American international history at the London School of Economics.

“Across the world, the diverse groups on the left learned the lessons they wanted to learn from the coup. Social democrats viewed it as constitutional democracy overthrown, so it was about the rule of law. The more radical left read it as evidence that you could never have a revolution without an armed struggle.”

Dorfman argues the Allende government and its destruction changed the course of progressive politics. “There were lessons to be learned and they have endured: the need for vast coalitions to effect that structural change, and the way in which Chile’s suffering created a consciousness about human rights violations,” said Dorfman, who has written an assessment of the Allende legacy in the New York Review of Books, and a novel about Allende’s death, The Suicide Museum.

Inside Chile, the coup’s legacy is still being fought over. A recent Mori poll found only 42% of Chileans thought it had destroyed democracy, compared with 36% who said it had saved the country from Marxism.

Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington, who has led the pressure on the US government to declassify its documents on the coup, warned that denialism about the atrocities of the Pinochet era was strengthening, along with the rise of the far right.

“It is a Rosetta Stone for the discussion over the threat of authoritarianism versus the sanctity of democracy,” said Kornbluh, who is the author of a book based on the documents declassified so far, The Pinochet File. “And Chile is having that debate about its past because it’s dealing with this threat right now – and a number of other countries including the US, and countries in Europe, are facing the same issue.

“The coup in Chile was really the repression of a lot of hopes and dreams around the world, and I think that dynamic still resonates and is still relevant today.”

[sjsmith56]

Affirmation - A Private Man, Chapter 24

Summary: With Christmas just days away, a decision is finally made about the Avengers and Bucky has to decide whether to move on with them or continue the life he has built in Brooklyn.

Length: 6.7 K

Characters: Bucky, Tracey, Rebecca, Janice, Rhodey, John Walker

Warnings: Some moments of disappointment and angst.

Author notes: There are some long monologues in this, as official announcements are made. Divider by vecteezy.com.

<<Chapter 23

The rest of December passed quickly enough. The Christmas party at the newcomer's centre, the first event held there since the water main broke, was a success. Receiving coverage on television due to the presence of the reporter, it garnered a lot of interest from people wanting to volunteer their time helping those who needed the centre's services. With all the food contributions brought in for the party, that included foods for other cultural celebrations, there was more than enough for people to sample the different tastes of many different countries. Samira and Amina both received inquiries about their baking and were interviewed about being Muslims who were actively involved in a Christmas celebration.

"It's just being respectful," said Amina to the reporter, as if it should be obvious. "When we celebrated Eid, after the completion of Ramadan, we extended an invitation to our non-Muslim friends to attend the celebration. In the past I've been to Hindu festivals, and a celebration of Chinese New Year. We've been to some Hanukkah, and Diwali events this winter, with an invitation to attend some upcoming Kwanzaa events as well. These people are my friends, some of them dear friends. I celebrate them."

The reporter also pointed out the centre received active support from several prominent people including Bucky Barnes and Captain America, pointing out that other Avengers attended the party, including Thor, War Machine, Falcon, Spider-Man, and the newest member Hawkeye. When he closed his segment, the reporter also announced that the centre had received a grant from the Stark Foundation, to cover expenses in maintaining the building, as well as being in talks with the Wakandan International Outreach Centre to provide technology support in training individuals for IT jobs. With one of Samira's pastries in hand the reporter signed off by taking a bite and rolling his eyes at how good it was.

After the Christmas party Bucky invited the other Avengers back to the house to relax and enjoy some Christmas cheer. They officially announced Tracey's pregnancy and the purchase of a house in Brooklyn. Rhodes officially announced that funding and approval had been secured for the Avengers to become a permanent rapid response team. It was tempered by his next announcement.

"The funding is contingent on us being based in one location which is still being determined," he said. "I tried to point out that we come from all over the place, some of us with other jobs and responsibilities. I'm still working on convincing them that with the cooperation of the sorcerers in providing portals that can transport us instantaneously we don't need to be in one spot, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff are insistent on following a strict military model." He looked at Bucky specifically. "You just bought a house and I'm very happy for you. If you want to step away from the Avengers I understand and support you 100 percent."

"If that's how it is, that's how it is," replied Bucky, who tried not to show his disappointment. "I do appreciate you trying. I do like my job on the docks, and they have been very accommodating to me."

As the others talked about other things Bucky slipped away into the back yard, where the fairy lights were on. He stood on the back step just breathing, then felt someone putting a jacket over his shoulders. Turning around he saw Tracey and put his arm around her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You must be disappointed."

"I am but not surprised," he answered. "Can you imagine the military mobilizing to try and stop Ross? They would have spent too long arguing which branch of the military were best suited to send out before finally deciding on an aircraft carrier to search for another aircraft carrier. They would have radioed over asking for them to surrender then wonder why Ross's mercenaries were hell bent on ignoring the rules of engagement when they began firing missiles at them. By then Ross would have already been off the coast of Africa sending in his air crews, with Ghost, an enhanced human who can materialize and dematerialize at will probably at the forefront to get through the Wakandan shields. Then the government maybe would send in a Seal team or a strike force of elite soldiers to intercept, but it would take them at least 10 hours flying at Mach 2 to even reach Wakanda which would have already been breached and likely conquered. What do they say about possession being 9/10ths of the law? Ross would have control and would tell them to fuck right off, and they would because he's one of them."

She rubbed his back, sad that he was so upset by this decision. Neither of them heard Rhodes until Bucky heard the sound of his leg braces.

"I'm out of practice," said Bucky, cynically. "You almost snuck up on me. Some super soldier I am."

"I prefer to think that you were pre-occupied," said Rhodes. "Because you're the best damn soldier I've ever known. Your analytical abilities alone rival the best chief warrant officers I've ever served with. I'm angry at the Joint Chiefs for pulling this power play, because that's what it is, their attempt to maintain a semblance of control over the Avengers. Hell, even the President apologized for this. He knows the only reason we succeeded is because we were able to mobilize immediately, using a combination of our own intelligence gathering, portals and a quinjet to get to where we needed to be at the time we needed to be there. All because of you anticipating what Ross was going to do while you were working a day job and getting ready for your wedding."

"And yet, here we are, still hamstrung because the Avengers still don't have autonomy," replied Bucky. He gave out a frustrated sigh. "I know that you're trying Rhodey, and that you're navigating a very complex political system. But at some point, I have to fold. With a wife and a baby on the way I ...."

"No, don't give up," interrupted Rhodes. "I think they need to have a taste of their own medicine. I'm convinced the Avengers work best with you as one of the leaders, the tactical leader. So, we pull our own power play. Unless we have total autonomy, including not being tied to a specific location, then we don't form. We are the best of the best and I don't think they quite understand that. If I do this, they're going to recall me to Washington, and I want you with me when I go. I want you to tell them what you told Tracey just before you realized I was listening."

"You really think they're going to listen to me?" asked Bucky. "I'm still the Winter Soldier to them."

"Maybe to the Generals but I can tell you that the enlisted men think you're the goat, which means the greatest of all time. You're the sergeant they all respect, the guy who gets things done, and doesn't bullshit anyone. We need you, Buck. The Avengers just don't work without you."

Bucky turned his head to look at Tracey, silently asking for her advice.

"You should do it," she said quietly. "I know that you really want this. Don't let it slip out of your fingers because you're worried about me and the baby. I knew that night in the Bahamas that it's what you're meant to be doing."

"But it means you'll be alone," he replied.

"Never," she said. "Not where it counts, in here." She pressed her chest with her clenched fist. "Each time you come back we'll pick up where we left off and it will be glorious. I know that now. Nothing will really keep us apart, not where it matters."

"I'll just leave you two out here," muttered Rhodes, backing away as he felt the emotion flowing between the couple.

Sliding his hand onto Tracey's neck, Bucky gazed deeply into her eyes, so consumed was he with his love for her. She got him and understood him completely. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against hers.

"I'm afraid to leave you," he admitted. "What if I don't come back?"

"You could get crushed by a sea can at the docks," she said, making him laugh a short grim laugh. "I have to believe we met because we were meant to be together. You'll always be with me. Always."

Their lips crashed together fiercely as if they would never see each other again. The feel of Tracey's body against his was as if she were a part of him, so closely did they fit together. When he looked at her face softly illuminated by the fairy lights in the garden, he drank in every feature on her face.

"Alright, I'll keep on believing we can make the Avengers happen," he said. "I believe in us first; this marriage is the priority, always. If it ever gets too hard for you, I have to know because I will choose you every time."

They kissed once more to seal their pact and returned into the warmth of the house. Rhodes made eye contact with Bucky from where he sat on the sofa with his arm around Janice and Bucky nodded to him. He was still in.

The time before Christmas went quickly. They bought a new SUV originally planning to trade in Tracey's smaller car but Janice offered to buy it when her divorce was finalized and the house sold so they transferred ownership to her, telling her it was a gift. Their possession date for the new house was set for the end of February and they began planning what to get done for renovations before they moved in.

Bucky's return to work was memorable as he was greeted by a desk covered in post-it notes, each with a different message, some funny while others were more heartfelt. It was evident he was an object of pride for the dock workers, their own real-life hero. He took it in stride, laughing at the sight of his multi-coloured desk, then grumbling in a good-natured way as he peeled the individual notes off, reading their message before sticking them into a messy pile. The docks were busy that final week as many container ships were docking and unloading their cargos before they went to a different dock for repairs or maintenance. Ship's crews were given leave to return home to their families for the holidays. Many of the cranes had Christmas trees attached to their booms, lit up in bright lights.

On the afternoon of the 24th he had just finished wishing his crew a Merry Christmas as they were released to have five days off before returning to work on Monday, the 30th. The other supervisors were doing the same with their crews. As Bucky headed into the building where the offices were, Rick leaned out of his.

"Call for you on line 2," he said.

"Thanks, I'll take it at my desk," said Bucky, heading in and taking his fluorescent supervisor's vest off. He picked up the phone receiver and pressed line 2. "Barnes here."

There was silence for a moment. "It's John Walker," said the voice. "Please don't hang up."

"John," answered Bucky, feeling anger building up in him. "What do you want?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so ashamed that I wasn't strong enough to stop them from turning me. I couldn't even tell anyone that they were experimenting on me. It was like whenever I wanted to tell someone, even Olivia, that a hand came over my mouth, preventing it from working."

Bucky said nothing, then he heard the shakiness in Walker's breath, the anguish the man was feeling being expressed in his voice.

"Go on," replied Bucky. "Was anything you said to me on the level?"

"Yes, all of it," answered the other man. "I wanted out, but they found out before I met with Matt Murdock. They must have bugged my phone or my car. I don't know how they knew but I was called into a meeting a couple of days later and that Mordo was there. I told Val that I wanted out of my contract, and she was all apologetic then said to give them another chance. He said something and then it was like there was a gap in my memories. When I met with Murdock, he didn't seem to believe me. Maybe I was already being changed then."

"I believe you were," said Bucky. "Apparently Dr. Strange went through time, and said it took several sessions for Mordo to change you completely."

"Yeah, Strange and that other sorcerer, Wong, changed me back on the ship," said Walker. "It was like it was all a bad dream, everything I said to you, everything I did. I feel like I can't trust my own mind anymore. Olivia ... she's standing by me, but I see it every time she comes to see me in the lockup that a part of her still ...."

His voice trailed off and Bucky recognized the sounds of a man struggling not to cry. He could feel his own anger dissipating, as he knew exactly what Walker was going through.

"Listen," he said firmly. "You're not on the Raft, right?" Walker agreed. "That already means that the authorities believe you and with you telling them everything you remember, that will be the beginning of making amends. You need counselling. Don't go see Dr. Raynor as you know each other personally. I'll see if I can find someone who can be objective with you. Then you need to come clean with your wife about everything, including what you did when you were still in the military and what happened in Latvia."

"No, she'll leave me," answered Walker in a strained voice.

"But it's eating away at you," said Bucky. "Sam and I knew that right from the beginning. Lemar was the one that held you together and without him you're falling apart. Not even Olivia's love is enough to keep that from happening. The only way you'll know if that love is strong enough is if you're brave enough to tell her everything and ask her to help heal you. If she decides that it's not enough then you have to live with that, accept it, and move on. Trust me, John, you can't go on the way you are now. I've been there and it's an awful way to exist, because it sure as hell is not living."

"You'd help me?" asked Walker. "After all that's happened and my part in it, you would still help me?"

Bucky took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He had come a long way in his own journey but knew it would never be over as part of him still experienced guilt and remorse over the Winter Soldier's actions. But he had opened his heart to love, had become more involved in the community, had volunteered at the newcomer's centre, and the result had been that for the past half year he was happier than he had been since the war. At the other end of the line was a man who had wronged him, going through a similar journey. Was he not as deserving of a hand to raise him up?

"I'll help you," he said to Walker. "One vet to another. Honestly, I'm not ready to forgive you yet and I'll never forget what you did. But I'm also someone who was in a similar position, and I wouldn't have come through it unless people reached out and gave me a hand."

That broke the dam as he heard weeping for several minutes. Patiently, he waited through it, knowing that Walker needed to let it out. When he heard the loud cleansing breath a few minutes later he knew that it was a beginning.

"Bucky, thanks," breathed Walker. "I'll do what you asked. I've cooperated with the investigators. They've assigned me a public defender, but do you think that Murdock would represent me? Even though he didn't trust me he seemed to be an honest man."

"That's up to him," said Bucky. "You just remember that it was Ross and Fontaine that decided to do this to you. I found out that Ross saw me being tortured while I was the Winter Soldier. He was a guest of Alexander Pierce. It appears he always wanted an army of super soldiers to do his bidding. Makes him as bad as HYDRA."

"Well, that makes two of them because Val was there when Mordo was," replied Walker. "How do these people end up with the power they do? Once again, I'm sorry. I hope you have a good Christmas. You deserve it, Bucky."

The call ended and Bucky looked at the receiver in his hand before replacing it on the cradle. Pulling his cellphone out he opened the contact list and brought up Matt Murdock's name. Pressing on the call icon he waited while it rang but it went to voicemail.

"Hey, it's Bucky," he said. "I have a favour to ask. If you don't accept it's alright but I believe in second chances. John Walker was turned without his consent, but he is now cooperating with the authorities. He has a public defender representing him, but you know most of those guys are only there until they get offered a better job. If you could perhaps represent him, I would appreciate it and I will pay whatever rate you wish. It doesn't mean I've forgiven him. That will take time, but I think he just needs a hand to get back on track. Anyways, if I don't hear from you have a Merry Christmas."

He was about to put his phone back in his pocket when he had another thought and made the call. It was a long shot but no one should be alone on Christmas Day. They were already going to have Rhodey with them; one more wouldn't be a problem. The woman he spoke to was surprised to receive his call and wouldn't commit but promised to give it serious thought. If that was the best she could give him it would have to be enough.

Pulling open the bottom drawer of his desk he pulled out a paper bag wrapped around a bottle and took it to Rick's office. He was on the phone but his eyes lit up when he saw Bucky pull the bottle out, a very good scotch. Quickly, he finished his call and looked at him with a smirk.

"Drinking on the job?" he joked. "I know it doesn't affect you but damn, Bucky."

"This is a thank you," replied Bucky. "To apologize for the past month and everything that went down that kept me away from this fine place of employment. It's also to prepare you for next year."

"That sounds ominous," stated Rick. "What's up?"

He pulled two glasses out of his desk drawer and gestured to Bucky to crack the bottle open. Bucky poured them each a good portion and capped the bottle. Holding his glass up to Rick he toasted him then drank some of the amber liquid.

"They're forming the Avengers again and they want me to be part of it," said Bucky. "Even though they're still working on the logistics I've agreed because, let's face it, I'm better at that than I am riding a desk as a dock supervisor."

"I wouldn't say that," replied Rick. "You're well thought of here. Your crew operates well and I think a lot of it has to do with you. Is this your notice?"

"Not exactly. I want to stay on but I know being supervisor isn't workable considering I could be called out on a moment's notice."

Rick took another drink out of his glass and put it down. "Well, this is as good a time as any to tell you something," said Rick. "They're winding down container ship operations at the dock here cutting back on operational hours to start with. They're moving operations gradually to New Jersey and Red Hook. This area is to be redeveloped for light industrial, pleasure boat marinas, and affordable residential. It's going to take years but it's in the works and next year is when the ships will start to be redirected to the other facilities. We won't be filling vacancies in the crews starting in the new year, although supervisor positions will still be filled by internal promotions."

Bucky sat back and sipped his scotch. "What about those people currently working?" he asked.

"They'll be given the opportunity to move to the new locations," said Rick. "I'm thinking of retiring myself."

"End of an era," said Bucky. "Not surprised though. The newcomer's centre I volunteer at say they've been lobbying for more affordable housing. Immigrants still want to live in New York but are finding it less affordable. Which is unfortunate as they helped make New York what it is."

"I agree," said Rick. "My grandpa was from Italy. Got on at the navy yards before the war."

"My dad worked there," commented Bucky with a quick smile. "Small world." He drained his glass. "Well, thanks for the news. I'm going to talk to Tracey about it. She's pregnant. We bought a house in Midtown because Rebecca's place is too small for a baby and four adults."

"Already?" smiled Rick. "You work fast. Congratulations. You'll be a good dad."

Bucky stood up, offered his hand to Rick and the two men wished each other a Merry Christmas. Back in his office Bucky straightened up and looked around. He would miss this but he also knew he could leave it behind. It seemed like more than one thing was telling him to stick with the Avengers. As he clocked out and headed for the security gate he looked up at the grey sky and the light snow that was falling. Perhaps there would be enough for a soft blanket over everything by the next morning.

On the way home he stopped off at the jewellers. It was busy, filled with men buying a last-minute gift. The manager finished serving her customer and waved Bucky over to an open spot at the counter. She went to a locked cabinet and brought out a tray with four small boxes. The first, containing a pair of pearl stud earrings received a nod from him. The second box holding a white gold bracelet with two diamonds also received a nod from him when he read the inscription. The manager opened the 3rd and 4th box one after another and pushed them towards him. The white gold locket was opened to show the picture of him on one side and Tracey on the other. The engraving on the back received a soft smile from him. Then he picked the fourth box up and looked at the emerald and diamond earrings, giving the manager an approving nod.

"I must say the women in your life are very lucky," said the manager. "I've never had a customer who bought such beautiful gifts for his mother-in-law, sister, and wife all at once."

"They all mean a lot to me," said Bucky. "Haven't had the funds to show it before. You'll be able to wrap them and tag them properly?"

"Absolutely," said the manager. "Give me ten ... maybe fifteen minutes to get them wrapped real pretty. Why don't you go next door and get a coffee while you're waiting? If you pay now I can bring them over to you."

Taking out his bank card from his wallet Bucky paid what was owing then went next door, ordering a coffee at the same place where he and Tracey had their first "date." He thought back to that afternoon where she revealed that she was emotionally involved and had asked to be removed from Rebecca's case. Never did he think they would realize how much they meant to each other, and end up married, and expecting their first child. For all the trouble that happened that year their relationship was solid, strengthened by Tracey's resolve and support. He truly believed he was one lucky man to have her love. His attention was taken by the jewelry store manager bringing his package to him. Shaking her hand in thanks he took it and finished his coffee then hurried the rest of the way back home. As he stepped up the front steps the door was opened and Tracey came out, hugging him.

"What's this?" he asked, amused at her coming outside. "I haven't even walked in the door yet."

"I'm delaying you," she laughed. "Someone is finishing wrapping your present at the dining room table. What's that you have in your hand?"

"Nothing," he smiled. "Just something I found in the middle of the road."

"Give it to me and I'll put it in the garbage," she said, trying to take it.

He raised it up, out of her reach, then trapped her with his free arm and kissed her while they both laughed, earning some whistles from the neighbours who were sweeping snow off their sidewalks. Janice came to the door and said it was safe for Bucky to come inside. With a wave to the neighbours they both went inside where Bucky opened his bag and placed the small boxes on the tree branches.

"I thought you said it was nothing," accused Tracey, grinning.

"I lied," he answered. "No peeking until tomorrow."

It smelled wonderful in the house. There was a roast in the oven, and he could discern the scent of apples and cinnamon. Janice came out of the kitchen with a mug of hot apple cider.

"I put a little extra something in it," she said, with a wink. "Rhodey will be here soon."

"I thought he was coming tomorrow," said Bucky. "Where's he sleeping?"

Janice blushed. "We're sharing the bed downstairs, alright? I offered as it's more comfortable for him than the couch. It's not like either of us are kids." She pouted slightly and Bucky offered her a hug which she accepted. "He said he has something to tell you. He's doing a group video call with everyone after dinner."

"Okay, Mom," he joked, earning him a playful swat on the arm as she went back into the kitchen. He called from behind her. "Can I help?"

"No, we've got it covered," replied Rebecca in a loud voice from the kitchen. "You relax with your wife."

Doing as he was told Bucky sat in the armchair and patted his lap, joined immediately by Tracey.

"Hi," he said softly. "How was your day?"

"Good," she said. "I had morning sickness. After you left."

"Sorry I missed it?" he smiled then he kissed her. "That means that growth hormone is being produced, doesn't it?"

"Yup, completely normal in a pregnancy," she replied. "How was work?"

"Good, found something out." She looked at him expectantly. "They're going to be slowing down operations there starting in the new year and eventually relocating everything to New Jersey or Red Hook. The docks are going to be redeveloped into light industrial, pleasure boat marinas and affordable residential development."

"Oh no," she said. "What about everyone that works there?"

"They'll be able to transfer to the new areas but I'm guessing if they end up in New Jersey they'll have to move," he said. "No new hires either but they will still promote to supervisor from within. I think I should offer my notice. When the Avengers start up I can focus on that, with volunteer work during my downtime."

"Are you good with that?" she asked softly.

"Yeah, I'm good with that," replied Bucky, kissing her. "I think it was meant to happen this way. I'll only be torn between home and the Avengers, not a regular day job as well."

He was grinning when he said that, proving that he really was good with it. She ran her hands through his hair and kissed him back. When the doorbell rang, she hopped off and opened it, greeting Rhodey as he entered with an overnight bag.

"Buck, my travelling case for the suit is in the trunk of the rental car," he said. "Would you mind?"

"No problem," said Bucky, heading out the door and bringing the bulky case in. He gave Rhodey a wicked grin. "I'll put it downstairs next to your sleeping accommodations."

"Don't get snarky with your boss," said Rhodes with a gleam in his eye.

He stepped further in and entered the kitchen giving Rebecca a kiss on the cheek and Janice a hug and a kiss. Tracey watched them with interest as her mother hadn't said much about her relationship with Rhodes but if they were sharing the bed downstairs then it obviously had progressed. Not that it mattered to Tracey. For all the years that her mother had put up with her father's abuse Tracey was happy that someone made her mom feel good about herself.

During dinner Bucky tried to get Rhodes to reveal what the news was but the man wouldn't bite, saying he wanted to tell everyone in North America at one time.

"So, does that mean everyone overseas already knows?" asked Bucky, pulling his phone out.

"Don't bother them," replied Rhodes. "They wouldn't appreciate it. You'll know soon enough." He looked at his watch. "Another hour. Keep your curiosity to yourself for one more hour."

After a dessert of apple pie and ice cream Bucky started picking up the plates to put them away in the dishwasher while Tracey began putting leftovers in the fridge. She ran some water in the sink for the things that wouldn't fit and washed them while Bucky dried. Once everything was put away Rhodes pulled his laptop onto the living room coffee table. He set up a group video chat and waited for everyone to check in.

"Sit next to me," he said to Bucky. "You're going to see some new people on this chat as we extended an invitation to the enhanced humans that Ross and Fontaine abducted. A few have bowed out, not wanting to be tied to any organization. That's their right. We won't force them, but they have been advised that if they provide their services independently it should be for legitimate work only."

Peter, Kate, Joaquin, Sam, and Yelena Belova all connected. Shortly after Bruce, Clint, Scott, Hope, and Shaun also joined the chat. Finally, the President and Secretary General of the UN also connected. Bucky looked at Rhodes who grinned.

"It looks like we're all here," he said. "I held a session this morning with Princess Shuri of Wakanda, Thor and King Valkyrie of New Asgard, Alexei Shostakov, Melina Vostokoff and Antonia Dreykov who have all agreed to be part of the Avengers when it is feasibly possible for them. At this time the other enhanced humans that were abducted by Ross have declined the invitation but are aware that any services they provide must be to legitimate parties only. If they are found to be involved in an illegal activity they will be subject to being taken into custody by us. Which leads to the next part of this announcement. Secretary General Uboku, I give the floor to you."

The African diplomat bowed his head. "Thank you, Colonel Rhodes. It is my pleasure to announce that the Avengers will be resurrected as a rapid response team under United Nations sponsorship. What this means is that funding for the organization will come from all member countries. The Sokovia Accords that were negotiated under the leadership of Thaddeus Ross have been officially repealed. They will be replaced by a new agreement that will leave the acceptance and organization of missions to the Avengers themselves. Responsibility for damages caused by their actions in dealing with insurgents, terrorists, and any other entity causing disruption will be charged to those entities whose illegal activities prompted the intervention in the first place. To that event a new internationally binding law has been passed at the United Nations this morning that allows member countries to seize the assets of those entities. In other words, if they break it, they buy it. Mr. President, if you would continue with your portion of this meeting."

"Thank you Mr. Secretary General," said the President. "May I ask, Sergeant Barnes, if your sister is present?"

"Yes sir, she is," said Bucky, as Rhodes changed the angle of the laptop so that she was visible. "Mr. President, may I present my sister, Rebecca Barnes Proctor."

"Mr. President," nodded Rebecca.

"It is a pleasure to meet you onscreen," he replied. "I hope some day you will be able to come to the White House. Your determination to make sure your brother was treated with dignity and respect alerted me to something very wrong in Washington, in fact our whole country. For so many years we were under the impression that Thaddeus Ross was protecting American interests in a manner that was consistent with our ideals. Your phone call to me that one day showed me a side of the man I trusted for so long that was disturbing and alarming. Among the discoveries we made as we launched an investigation was his involvement with the head of HYDRA, Alexander Pierce, specifically in his collusion with him in the continued imprisonment and torture of your brother Sergeant James Barnes. This was in addition to his responsibility for the super soldier serum project undertaken by Dr. Bruce Banner, who also deserves an apology for how he was used, abused, and hunted as a criminal when he attempted to withdraw his cooperation. Dr. Banner, I am pleased to see you as part of this meeting tonight and hope you are able to continue with your research studies that have already benefitted the world. I am sorry for the lack of oversight which allowed Thaddeus Ross to threaten your existence as a private citizen. It will never be repeated. To ensure the rights of all enhanced humans a 28th amendment will be proposed that will enshrine their rights to be free of coercion, expectation of service, or discrimination. We invite several of you to be participants in the creation of this amendment, ensuring your rights as full citizens. The final part of my announcement is to assure you that while we will have a base of operations that you may call your headquarters, it will not require you to live on site, except by your choice. Colonel Rhodes has convinced us that with the cooperation of the Masters of the Mystic Arts you will have access to portals that can bring all of you together in one spot in a matter of moments. Considering how quickly you mobilized to deal with Thaddeus Ross and Val de Fontaine's task force it is our belief that you be given the freedom to live as you see fit. Tomorrow, on Christmas Day, both Secretary General Uboku and myself will formally announce the resurrection of the Avengers as a rapid response team that will respond to threats to humanity, including safeguarding the sovereignty of all countries, no matter if they are members of the United Nations or not. On a personal note, thank you to those of you who mobilized against Ross and his hired thugs. All of them, with the exception of John Walker, who was turned without his consent, are currently residents of the Raft. They will face trial by video conferencing. Ross, as an active member of the military has already faced court martial, has been found guilty, sentenced to life imprisonment, and stripped of his rank and all benefits. He is now persona non grata, unwelcome to join our society. I am willing to answer any questions if any of you have any."

"Excuse me sir," said Peter hesitantly. "I'm Peter Parker."

"Spider-Man," said the President. "I'm aware of you, young man, having been read into your situation. How go your studies?"

"F-fine sir, thank you," stammered Peter. "I'm just curious. Will we be paid?"

Both the President and the Secretary General smiled. "Yes, you will," said the President. "We can't expect you to put your life on the line for free now, can we? You will be paid a retainer of $6000 per month, plus a daily rate of $500 per day when you are on mission. Those rates will be revisited on a yearly basis. You will receive full medical benefits, plus have full life insurance and pension payments made on your behalf. You will still have to pay taxes but we have created a special tax rate for you which will be very advantageous. We want you to feel appreciated for what you do. Goodness knows you have done so much already without expectation."

There were no more questions and the President and Secretary General signed off. After their images disappeared Rhodes was peppered with questions but he put his hands up in surrender.

"I know you have all sorts of questions," he said. "I don't have all the answers yet as some details still need to be worked out. Suffice it to say we're back in business. I'll be in command. I want Sam and Bucky in leadership positions." Bucky started to protest but Rhodes smiled. "Don't underestimate your abilities Buck. Nearly everyone on here will follow you, me included. Your analytical abilities are among the best I've ever seen." Everyone else on screen nodded their heads or said they agreed. "So, tonight and for the next week, enjoy time with your friends and families. In the new year we will get down to business and begin to build the Avengers back to what they were always meant to be: a group of remarkable individuals brought together to face extraordinary threats. Merry Christmas everyone."

Rhodes closed his laptop and leaned back, smiling.

"What happened to me going to Washington with you?" asked Bucky.

"Wasn't needed," said Rhodes. "When I told the President that we couldn't do this right if we were forced to operate under US military control and forced to live on a military base he contacted the United Nations and presented the case that we would be better as an independent organization with rapid response capability. Turns out the world was watching when Ross made his play. They were not happy with the influence that corporate interests had on political matters. If it could happen to Wakanda, whose technology and defences are superior then any one of those member countries were also at risk. We weren't beholden to a country, military or corporate interest. We were there, standing up to Ross, because it was the right thing to do. Plain and simple."

That evening was a happy one for everyone in the Proctor / Barnes house. There was music, some dancing, and lots of talking. When Rebecca went to bed Bucky started reading The Box of Delights to her. It was another book from her childhood, a much longer one that would take all of the Christmas week to read. Still in print, it brought good memories for the brother and sister. After Bucky kissed her goodnight and turned off the light Tracey put on a Nat King Cole Christmas album. She drank hot chocolate while the other three finished the apple cider, boosted by a little bit of whiskey. It was a Christmas Eve like nothing she or her mother Janice had ever experienced with her father. It was mellow, quiet, and something that was repeated many times over the years.

Chapter 25>>

Series Masterlist

Please support the author by reblogging.

[yongzs1218]

📍Macau Museum 澳門博物館

This museum is located in the centre of the Mount Fortress and consists of three floors (the first two underground and the third above the Fortress). It exhibits the history and folk culture of Macau (including Taipa and Coloane).

此博物館位於大炮台中央，共三層（首兩層在炮台地下，第三層在炮台上）。展示了澳門（包含氹仔和路環）的歷史與民俗文化。

P2: Stone tools unearthed at the Hác-Sá site. The archaeological discovery of the Hác-Sá site represents a major breakthrough in the understanding of rotary machinery in the history of Chinese science and technology. The Hesha Jade Workshop has also become an important milestone in the history of Chinese jade craftsmanship.

P2：黑沙遺址出土的石器。黑沙遺址的考古發現，代表着中國科技史上旋轉機械認識的重大突破。黑沙玉作坊也成為中國古玉工藝學研究史上重要的里程碑。

The reconstruction of the manufacturing process of rock crystal ornaments 4,000 years ago

復原4,000多年前水晶飾物製作的完整流程

Establish a rotary machine, used in the manufacture of rings and earrings in rock crystal

發現環玦管鑽加工轆轤機械

P3: Kraak Porcelain found in Macau (Kraak porcelain: Chinese blue and white porcelain shipped to Europe by galleon at late Ming Dynasty). This is an evidence that Macau was a major transit point for the early porcelain trade from East to West.

P3：澳門發現的克拉克瓷（明末由大帆船運至歐洲的中國青花瓷器），證明澳門是東西方早期瓷器貿易的重要中轉站。

P4: Bell of St. Paul’s 聖保祿大鐘

P5~P6: Macau Houses in Various Styles 澳門各式風格的房屋

P7: Fire Cracker Industry 爆竹業

P8: The Market-Square in-front of Hong Kung Temple (19th century)

P8：康公廟前地市集（十九世紀）

P9~P10: Pawn Brokers’ Towers 押店高樓（典當業）

[thesilliestrovingalive]

Updated: February 24, 2025

Celaphios

POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING: Viewer discretion is advised due to references to death, discrimination, abuse, and neglect.

Real name: Celuphoisa

Occupation: Foot soldier of the Invader army (formerly) and battle supplier for the Regular Army

Future plans: To learn from the wrongdoings of the Invaders by preserving their culture and utilising their technology for the greater good

Abilities: He shares the same enhanced senses as other Invaders and has identical abilities to the winged Invader Drones.

Hobbies: Watching Tarma build custom motorcycles and Marco work on complex computer programs and viruses, reading about human cultures, social justice, and ecology, collecting jewels and vintage maps, and building pillow forts

Likes: Receiving pets from those he’s personally comfortable with, stealing watermelons from Allen Jr., Clark feeding him raw fish, and soft pillows

Dislikes: Feeling useless and alone, sexist and transphobic behaviours, losing his satchel bag that Nadia gave him, and watching Gimlet get into fights with his comrades

Favourite food: Peanut butter pie with confetti sprinkles and raw meat (preferably Wagyu beef and mackerel)

Sexuality: Questioning

Gender: Trans (identifies as male)

Design: He resembles a typical Invader Drone, but with distinctively female Grub Invader characteristics, indicating he was born female. Celaphios’ appearance is marked by pearlescent white skin, coppery eyes speckled with metallic blue flecks, and Byzantine purple hands, toes, tongues, and forearms, where a single stripe adorns each. Additional notable features include silvery warts, silver-grey webbing, and iridescent dragonfly wings with maroon ribbing. Unlike most other winged Invader Drones, his are rendered useless due to a congenital deformity, characterised by severely crumpled and slightly shrivelled wings.

Despite his similarities to other Invader Drones, several unique traits set him apart. He's considered a runt because Invader Drones typically stand at 8' 10" (269.24 cm), whereas he measures approximately 7' 5" (226.06 cm). Celaphios bears several battle scars, including a curved gash from the top of his forehead to the left side of his right eye, a jagged chip on the right edge of his lower lip, and bite marks on the back of his head and shoulders. Additionally, he has a distinctive silvery-pink birthmark near the centre of his belly, shaped like a jagged four-pointed star with a subtle bend to the right. He has several dental issues, including missing and chipped teeth. Specifically, he’s missing his right incisor (front row), left premolar (second row), and right canine (second row). Additionally, he has chipped teeth: left canine (front row) and right premolar (third row).

He always carries a satchel bag made of gold-flecked, lavender-dyed leather, adorned with rosy brown straps. The bag's lid boasts an embroidered sea holly, set against the morning sun at its centre. Inside, he keeps a mossy green sketchbook, a set of rainbow-coloured markers, a black pen, a blue jewel with a strange glow, and a photograph of him and Marco's team standing proudly in front of the Sparrowhawk Operations Base.

In addition to his personal items, he wears a rosy brown load-bearing backpack, stocked with a map of his current location and essential supplies such as rations, first aid kits, and spare walkie-talkies. For his own personal comfort, he brings a red-and-black chequered pillow lined with soft white fur whenever he's deployed to the battlefield.

He still operates his trusty Grub Invader Zodematikhus, which has been modified to provide more interior space. The resized cockpit comfortably accommodates his backpack and satchel bag, allowing him to pilot with ease.

Character summary: Born mute, he has developed a unique communication style that combines body language, expressive sounds, and multilingual writing. To convey his thoughts, he often relies on his sketchbook, using markers in a personalised colour code to express his emotions. For instance, red signifies anger, while combining blue and yellow conveys happiness and calmness. Losing his satchel bag would devastate him because it holds sentimental and personal items. The thought of losing it fills him with anxiety and would likely plunge him into a depressive panic.

Whenever he's scared, he reacts in one of two ways: either he flees to find a comfortable hiding spot or he becomes fearful, shivering uncontrollably, closing his eyes tightly, covering his face with his hands, and whimpering pitifully. Whenever he's angry, his nostrils flare and he erupts into a menacing display, hissing and growling. When in this emotional state, he has a tendency to lash out physically, biting, shoving people around, and twisting their limbs. Whenever he's sad, he hides in a corner or desperately seeks comfort, and then breaks down in sorrowful howls and dog-like whining.

Despite being a fully grown adult, he retains a charmingly naive and childlike curiosity. He delights in causing mischief, such as swiping food from others to devour and snatching pillows to construct elaborate forts. Celaphios goes out of his way to persuade people into playing games with him, employing a subtle yet effective combination of gentle nudges, pleasant chirping, and an adorable, pleading gaze. He thrives on attention and affection, loving cuddles, pets, and sharing activities with his favourite people, such as shopping trips and board game nights. However, when left without attention, he tends to become demanding, throwing tantrums and displaying a grumpy, sarcastic, and dismissive demeanour—a situation quickly remedied by quality time and a tasty treat.

Celaphios is fiercely determined and resilient, proudly showcasing his tactical prowess and unapologetically celebrating his battlefield successes. He deeply cares about his loved ones and comrades, particularly those who show him compassion and tenderness. To him, they represent the closest thing to a true family, and he's fiercely protective of them, willing to go to great lengths to ensure their safety. He's a sympathetic and attentive listener who doesn't mind when people turn to him to vent about their problems. He struggles with feelings of uselessness and loneliness, which he finds to be overwhelming and melancholic. To combat these emotions, he makes a conscious effort to be helpful and nurture his relationships. Helping others brings Celaphios personal fulfillment, whether it's something as simple as putting things back in their place.

He has a voracious appetite, finding solace and primal satisfaction in eating. While he strives for a balanced diet, his carnivorous cravings often prove irresistible, inadvertently leading him to consume Regular Army soldiers and innocent civilians. This often leaves him consumed by remorse, especially after discovering the consequences of his actions. It’s because whenever he eats, he becomes hyper-focused on the food and the pleasurable sensations of eating, rendering him oblivious to his surroundings and the people around him. He has mild scopophobia (the fear of being stared at) and is extremely sensitive to rejection, verbal abuse, and physical aggression, causing him to become distressed and miserable.

He dislikes being misgendered, even if it's unintentional, and typically addresses the mistake either politely or more forcefully, depending on the situation and the individual. He’s passionately committed to combating sexism and transphobia, and will openly address harmful behaviours when he encounters them. Celaphios is a vocal advocate for gender equality and trans rights, and has recently expanded his focus to include anti-racism, drawing parallels between the way people treat and view extraterrestrials and the experiences of marginalised communities. He disagrees with the Invaders' ideology and their insatiable drive for conquest, which involves exploiting natural resources harmfully. Instead, he advocates for peaceful coexistence among all life forms and responsible stewardship of nature.

Celaphios regards Red Eye and Gimlet as surrogate parents and deeply appreciates their unwavering protection and care, which makes him feel safe and loved. However, he's troubled by Gimlet's sexist remarks and misogynistic mannerisms and isn't hesitant to respectfully address this behaviour, subtly encouraging Gimlet to grow as a person. Whenever Red Eye and Gimlet must leave for military duties, he becomes visibly distressed, fearing the loss of the only two individuals he considers family.

To alleviate his anxiety during separations, he finds solace in the company of Rumi and Wysteria, who provide much-needed companionship. Over time, he has come to regard Rumi and Wysteria as surrogate sisters. He delights in listening to Rumi's lively accounts of her day and personal experiences, and shares tranquil moments with Wysteria, appreciating nature together. Furthermore, Celaphios takes pleasure in assisting Rumi with distributing supplies to soldiers on the battlefield and goes out of his way to ensure her safety.

He's on great terms with Nadia, having been instantly drawn to her when she gifted him his satchel bag, which he viewed as a sign of friendship. He frequently joins her on shopping sprees, where she treats him to delicious snacks. On these outings, she often opens up about her problems and shows him a more vulnerable side of herself, one that she usually hides from others. He doesn't get along with Pupipi because she often blatantly ignores him or reacts with snarky disdain. This behaviour makes him feel bad because he genuinely wants to befriend her and prove that not all Invaders are destructive, dispelling the common Martian perception that they're intent on devouring their kind and ravaging the environment.

He has a close Martian friend named Pepawruvi, whom he deeply admires and cherishes due to his exceptional kindness, empathetic understanding that individuals hold diverse beliefs and values, and unwavering dedication to protecting the natural world. Previously, he had formed meaningful connections with a few Invader friends and four of his brothers who uniquely understood his conflicts with his own kind and treated him with respect. Following their tragic and untimely passing, he has profoundly felt their absence and occasionally reflects on cherished memories of them. He harbours intense opposition towards the Invader King, vehemently disagreeing with his colonialist and megalomaniac tendencies as well as his insatiable desire for control.

Backstory: Celuphoisa was born on Venus, six years after arriving in the Solar System. She was born from a union between a battle-hardened male Ravenous Invader and a female Grub Invader, who had been reserved for breeding rather than combat. She was the youngest of her siblings, all of whom were male. As she grew into adulthood, the other Invaders noticed Celuphoisa's deformed wings, prominent birthmark, shorter stature, and muteness, which set her apart from the other winged Invader Drones. Recognizing her anomalies, she was promptly labelled the "runt" of the Invaders, excluded from mating with Male Invader Drones and Morph Changers to preserve their lineage's perceived purity. Despite being dismissed by most of her older brothers, four of them—Kervosha, Ulaphormek, Bnahluzios, and Zubkoyhani—secretly supported her.

Kervosha, Ulaphormek, Bnahluzios, and Zubkoyhani not only taught her how to fight and hone her abilities but also shared some of their food scraps with her, providing sustenance and support in her time of need. She managed to make a few friends who understood her predicament or were facing a similar issue, and they often stuck by each other, especially during battles. She attempted to form bonds with her other brothers, but they responded with physical aggression and verbal insults, mocking her appearance as "hideous" and leaving her feeling isolated. Her parents largely rejected her, although her father occasionally offered words of encouragement before she headed into battle.

After being deemed unsuitable for breeding, the Invader King dispatched her to the frontlines, alongside other female Grub Invaders destined for cannon fodder. Defying expectations, she emerged victorious from every battle throughout her career from the conquest of Europa to the campaign at Pluto. Driven by a fierce determination to prove her worth, Celuphoisa refused to meet the same forgotten fate as her fallen sisters. She wore her battle scars with pride, seeing them as testaments to her resilience, tactical expertise, and status as a warrior. She proudly reminisces about her greatest achievements: single-handedly slaughtering hundreds of Neptunians, leading a raid on the Plutonian stronghold and overpowering its leader, and pilfering advanced alien technology from Methone, while expertly defending herself.

Despite earning respect from female Invaders, she faced persistent disregard from her male counterparts. Witnessing the mistreatment of female Grub Invaders by their male peers, she chose to distance herself from the gender-based discrimination. Adopting a male identity and renaming herself Celaphios, she aimed to blend in with the males and escape the bias. While some remained skeptical, most accepted her after the change. Nevertheless, Celaphios continues to question whether transitioning from female to male was the optimal decision, particularly considering the ongoing discrimination against female Grub Invaders.

He was doing well for a long time, despite occasional bullying from some of the male Invaders. However, his four supportive brothers and close friends consistently had his back and he would put up a fierce fight to scare them off. Tragedy struck when all of Celaphios' brothers, including Kervosha, Ulaphormek, Bnahluzios, and Zubkoyhani, died miserably during the conquest of Cyllene. This incident slowly led him to question the Invaders' intentions and the purpose of their conquests across planets, dwarf planets, and moons. As Celaphios grappled with these doubts, some Invaders, including his closest friends, began to become disillusioned with achieving the Invader King's vision of the New World.

Unfortunately for the rebels, the Invader King had anticipated their move after receiving intel from one of his Heaven Globule heralds about a potential uprising. Celaphios' friends and fellow rebels were dispatched to invade Io, but it was a ruse. His most loyal subjects slaughtered them for sport, deeming them "ideal prey”, and used them as sacrifices to the Invader King to ensure the health of new Invaders. Celaphios was devastated by the news, yet he deliberately pushed aside his grief, knowing that showing sympathy could put him in danger of meeting the same fate.

During the war against the Martians and Monoeyes, he struggled to muster the willpower to fight. The lingering grief over the loss of his brothers and close friends still weighed heavily on him. Furthermore, upon discovering his deep-seated pain, the Invaders escalated their harassment, exploiting his emotional vulnerability and targeting his sexual orientation and gender identity, repeatedly misgendering him. Some even suspected him of being a potential traitor, leading a few to keep a close eye on him, further eroding his sense of security. Stripped of his ability to participate in battles—the one aspect that made him feel like a valuable member of Invader society—Celaphios felt utterly useless and isolated. He was allowed to closely observe current human activities and the evolution of society on Earth, which brought him a sense of comfort and helped him appreciate life beyond Venus and the Rlyathok.

Later in life, the Invader King grew tired of the Invader runts' idle ways. To keep them occupied, he assigned them to investigation missions in uncolonized Earth regions. These missions involved minor terraforming experiments, which were carefully reversed to avoid arousing Martian suspicion. Celaphios, feeling rejuvenated, eagerly followed orders and performed well on these Earth missions. During one mission, just before dawn, Celaphios became distracted by a cluster of sea holly and collided with a Martian. The unexpected encounter startled both beings, as they had been led to believe that each other's species were sworn enemies and a threat to their respective goals.

However, Celaphios decided to push aside the prejudice and introduce himself to the Martian, offering a gift of sea holly. The Martian, though hesitant, accepted the gesture and introduced himself as Pepawruvi. As Celaphios continued to visit Earth, they slowly formed a bond, keeping their unlikely friendship a closely guarded secret. Their conversations often revolved around past experiences, fascinating discoveries about Earth, and the ongoing history of humanity. Pepawruvi nurtured Celaphios' love for nature, emphasising the importance of maintaining natural equilibrium and criticising the environmental harm caused by colonialism and destructive human activities. Before departing to focus on nursing Martian infants and conducting scientific experiments in the Rugname, Pepawruvi gifted Celaphios a blue jewel as a symbol of their friendship.