#Code for Good

[jcmarchi]

Building technology that empowers city residents

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/building-technology-that-empowers-city-residents/

Building technology that empowers city residents

Kwesi Afrifa came to MIT from his hometown of Accra, Ghana, in 2020 to pursue an interdisciplinary major in urban planning and computer science. Growing up amid the many moving parts of a large, densely populated city, he had often observed aspects of urban life that could be made more efficient. He decided to apply his interest in computing and coding to address these problems by creating software tools for city planners.

Now a senior, Afrifa works at the City Form Lab led by Andres Sevstuk, collaborating on an open-source, Python-based tool that allows researchers and policymakers to analyze pedestrians’ behaviors. The package, which launches next month, will make it more feasible for researchers and city planners to investigate how changes to a city’s structural characteristics impact walkability and the pedestrian experience.

During his first two years at MIT, Afrifa worked in the Civic Data Design Lab led by Associate Professor Sarah Williams, where he helped build sensing tools and created an online portal for people living in Kibera, Nairobi, to access the internet and participate in survey research.

After graduation, he will go on to work as a software engineer at a startup in New York. After several years, he hopes to start his own company, building urban data tools for integration into mapping and location-based software applications.

“I see it as my duty to make city systems more efficient, deepen the connection between residents and their communities, and make existing in them better for everyone, including groups which have often been marginalized,” he says.

“Cities are special places”

Afrifa believes that in urban settings, technology has a unique power to both accelerate development and empower citizens.

He witnessed such unifying power in high school, when he created the website ghanabills.com, which aggregated bills of parliament in Ghana, providing easy access to this information as well as a place for people to engage in discussion on the bills. He describes the effect of this technology as a “democratizing force.”

Afrifa also explored the connection between cities and community as an executive member of Code for Good, a program that connects MIT students interested in software with nonprofits throughout the Boston area. He served as a mentor for students and worked on finding nonprofits to match them up with.

Language and visibility

Sharing African languages and cultures is also important to Afrifa. In his first two years at MIT, he and other African students across the country started the Mandla app, which he describes as a Duolingo for African languages. It had gamified lessons, voice translations, and other interactive features for learning. “We wanted to solve the problem of language revitalization and bring African languages to the broader diaspora,” he says. At its peak a year ago, the app had 50,000 daily active users.

Although the Mandla App was discontinued due to lack of funding, Afrifa has found other ways to promote African culture at MIT. He is currently collaborating with architecture graduate students TJ Bayowa and Courage Kpodo on a “A Tale of Two Coasts,” an upcoming short film and multimedia installation that delves into the intricate connections between perceptions of African art and identity spanning two coasts of the Atlantic Ocean. This ongoing collaboration, which Afrifa says is still taking shape, is something he hopes to expand beyond MIT.

Discovering arts

As a child, Afrifa enjoyed writing poetry. Growing up with parents who loved literature, Afrifa was encouraged to become involved with the theater and art scene of Accra. He didn’t expect to continue this interest at MIT, but then he discovered the Black Theater Guild (BTG).

The theater group had been active at MIT from the 1990s to around 2005. It was revived by Afrifa in his sophomore year when Professor Jay Scheib, head of Music and Theater Arts at MIT, encouraged him to write, direct, and produce more of his work after his final project for 21M.710 (Script Analysis), a dramaturgy class taught by Scheib.

Since then, the BTG has held two productions in the past two years: “Nkrumah’s Last Day,” in spring 2022, and “Shooting the Sheriff,” in spring 2023, both of which were written and directed by Afrifa. “It’s been very rewarding to conceptualize ideas, write stories and have this amazing community of people come together and produce it,” he says.

When asked if he will continue to pursue theater post-grad, Afrifa says: “That’s 100 percent the goal.”

[problemnyatic]

the steven universe hate is insane bc people are (or at least were) more upset that fictional war criminals got fictional hugs than they recognize that it singlehandedly advanced queer rep in children's media by lightyears and then straight up ate heavy retaliation for the nerve.

It does have real flaws that are worth discussing, but it also put their male protagonist in dresses and skirts and played it straight and even empowering, they aired a lesbian wedding on television, it was a genuinely queer, genuinely diverse piece of media through and through. It did a lot of real good for the real world.

But also the fictional characters caused fictional harm to other fictional characters, and didn't get an onscreen firing squad sentence. So, you know, it's basically ontologically evil in real life.

[huiracha]

[shepscapades]

Surely this will have no negative consequences whatsoever!

[hinamie]

spiraling

[irlplasticlamb]

if you go, i’ll stay. you come back, i’ll be right here.

prints + merch + commission info

[bwlkins]

There are two types of people in GO fandom waiting for S3: 

[101suouexpressions]

You know the friendship is real when your first instinct against danger is to protect the group's little puppy.

This is one of the scenes that I adore SO much. You can tell that both Suou and Sakura made the decision to shield Nirei subconsciously. This is so important because usually Sakura would charge into the battlefield and leave Nirei in the care of Suou since he was aware that Suou could do that with ease.

The look of surprise on their faces when they saw the other doing the same thing is so priceless. I think at that moment they really realised how much they had grown on each other.

[chevalierlogan]

[yardsards]

"i don't ship laios and marcille-" oh yeah same, their relationship is so much more compelling to me viewed through a platonic lens than a romantic one

"-like, marcille clearly hates laios" are we reading/watching the same series??? did you just stop after the first couple chapters??? look at their relationship development, that's her friend! her bestie, even!!!

[jcmarchi]

Four from MIT named 2025 Rhodes Scholars

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/four-from-mit-named-2025-rhodes-scholars/

Four from MIT named 2025 Rhodes Scholars

Yiming Chen ’24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo have been selected as 2025 Rhodes Scholars and will begin fully funded postgraduate studies at Oxford University in the U.K. next fall. In addition to MIT’s two U.S. Rhodes winners, Ouigbo and Nair, two affiliates were awarded international Rhodes Scholarships: Chen for Rhodes’ China constituency and Hector for the Global Rhodes Scholarship. Hector is the first Haitian citizen to be named a Rhodes Scholar.

The scholars were supported by Associate Dean Kim Benard and the Distinguished Fellowships team in Career Advising and Professional Development. They received additional mentorship and guidance from the Presidential Committee on Distinguished Fellowships.

“It is profoundly inspiring to work with our amazing students, who have accomplished so much at MIT and, at the same time, thought deeply about how they can have an impact in solving the world’s major challenges,” says Professor Nancy Kanwisher who co-chairs the committee along with Professor Tom Levenson. “These students have worked hard to develop and articulate their vision and to learn to communicate it to others with passion, clarity, and confidence. We are thrilled but not surprised to see so many of them recognized this year as finalists and as winners.

Yiming Chen ’24

Yiming Chen, from Beijing, China, and the Washington area, was named one of four Rhodes China Scholars on Sept 28. At Oxford, she will pursue graduate studies in engineering science, working toward her ongoing goal of advancing AI safety and reliability in clinical workflows.

Chen graduated from MIT in 2024 with a BS in mathematics and computer science and an MEng in computer science. She worked on several projects involving machine learning for health care, and focused her master’s research on medical imaging in the Medical Vision Group of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Collaborating with IBM Research, Chen developed a neural framework for clinical-grade lumen segmentation in intravascular ultrasound and presented her findings at the MICCAI Machine Learning in Medical Imaging conference. Additionally, she worked at Cleanlab, an MIT-founded startup, creating an open-source library to ensure the integrity of image datasets used in vision tasks.

Chen was a teaching assistant in the MIT math and electrical engineering and computer science departments, and received a teaching excellence award. She taught high school students at the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Math and was selected to participate in MISTI Global Teaching Labs in Italy.

Having studied the guzheng, a traditional Chinese instrument, since age 4, Chen served as president of the MIT Chinese Music Ensemble, explored Eastern and Western music synergies with the MIT Chamber Music Society, and performed at the United Nations. On campus, she was also active with Asymptones a capella, MIT Ring Committee, Ribotones, Figure Skating Club, and the Undergraduate Association Innovation Committee.

Wilhem Hector

Wilhem Hector, a senior from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, majoring in mechanical engineering, was awarded a Global Rhodes Scholarship on Nov 1. The first Haitian national to be named a Rhodes Scholar, Hector will pursue at Oxford a master’s in energy systems followed by a master’s in education, focusing on digital and social change. His long-term goals are twofold: pioneering Haiti’s renewable energy infrastructure and expanding hands-on opportunities in the country‘s national curriculum.

Hector developed his passion for energy through his research in the MIT Howland Lab, where he investigated the uncertainty of wind power production during active yaw control. He also helped launch the MIT Renewable Energy Clinic through his work on the sources of opposition to energy projects in the U.S. Beyond his research, Hector had notable contributions as an intern at Radia Inc. and DTU Wind Energy Systems, where he helped develop computational wind farm modeling and simulation techniques.

Outside of MIT, he leads the Hector Foundation, a nonprofit providing educational opportunities to young people in Haiti. He has raised over $80,000 in the past five years to finance their initiatives, including the construction of Project Manus, Haiti’s first open-use engineering makerspace. Hector’s service endeavors have been supported by the MIT PKG Center, which awarded him the Davis Peace Prize, the PKG Fellowship for Social Impact, and the PKG Award for Public Service.

Hector co-chairs both the Student Events Board and the Class of 2025 Senior Ball Committee and has served as the social chair for Chocolate City and the African Students Association.

Anushka Nair

Anushka Nair, from Portland, Oregon, will graduate next spring with BS and MEng degrees in computer science and engineering with concentrations in economics and AI. She plans to pursue a DPhil in social data science at the Oxford Internet Institute. Nair aims to develop ethical AI technologies that address pressing societal challenges, beginning with combating misinformation.

For her master’s thesis under Professor David Rand, Nair is developing LLM-powered fact-checking tools to detect nuanced misinformation beyond human or automated capabilities. She also researches human-AI co-reasoning at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence with Professor Thomas Malone. Previously, she conducted research on autonomous vehicle navigation at Stanford’s AI and Robotics Lab, energy microgrid load balancing at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, and worked with Professor Esther Duflo in economics.

Nair interned in the Executive Office of the Secretary General at the United Nations, where she integrated technology solutions and assisted with launching the High-Level Advisory Body on AI. She also interned in Tesla’s energy sector, contributing to Autobidder, an energy trading tool, and led the launch of a platform for monitoring distributed energy resources and renewable power plants. Her work has earned her recognition as a Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing Scholar and a U.S. Presidential Scholar.

Nair has served as President of the MIT Society of Women Engineers and MIT and Harvard Women in AI, spearheading outreach programs to mentor young women in STEM fields. She also served as president of MIT Honors Societies Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi.

David Oluigbo

David Oluigbo, from Washington, is a senior majoring in artificial intelligence and decision making and minoring in brain and cognitive sciences. At Oxford, he will undertake an MSc in applied digital health followed by an MSc in modeling for global health. Afterward, Oluigbo plans to attend medical school with the goal of becoming a physician-scientist who researches and applies AI to address medical challenges in low-income countries.

Since his first year at MIT, Oluigbo has conducted neural and brain research with Ev Fedorenko at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and with Susanna Mierau’s Synapse and Network Development Group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His work with Mierau led to several publications and a poster presentation at the Federation of European Societies annual meeting.

In a summer internship at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, Oluigbo designed and trained machine-learning models on CT scans for automatic detection of neuroendocrine tumors, leading to first authorship on an International Society for Optics and Photonics conference proceeding paper, which he presented at the 2024 annual meeting. Oluigbo also did a summer internship with the Anyscale Learning for All Laboratory at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Oluigbo is an EMT and systems administrator officer with MIT-EMS. He is a consultant for Code for Good, a representative on the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Undergraduate Advisory Group, and holds executive roles with the Undergraduate Association, the MIT Brain and Cognitive Society, and the MIT Running Club.

[ask-the-rag-dolly]

anyways good episode

[totally-here]

3 times Phantom's Guardian was Mentioned + 1 Time He Showed Up

One

Phantom’s introduction to Young Justice wasn’t as dramatic as Empress’ or Slobo’s, or even Arrowette’s first introduction to the cave. No, it wasn’t during the Olympics, or on a battlefield, and he didn’t come in injured and looking for help. 

Impulse just brought Phantom in one day and insisted that he should join because he’s their age, interested in justice, and now that Greta’s human again they need another ghost member. So Phantom stayed, popping in and out for missions but never really sticking around all that long. 

Today is one of the days that Phantom’s with them on a mission, that being looking around a lab of the Brain’s that had an energy surge recently, despite it being presumably abandoned. 

Kon got paired up with Phantom to check the rest out first, since they both have better hearing than Anita and Tim, who were both still in the main room working on checking the computers for previous activity. 

The room is dark except for the light green ball glowing slightly above Phantom’s hand. He waves it around enough for it to reflect off of glass, then throws it up to the ceiling. The light expands enough to illuminate the room. 

Phantom mumbles about not knowing he could do that. Kon ignores him and moves closer to inspect the glass tubes to the side of several monitors set up. 

“Looks like cloning equipment,” Phantom says, casually. He drags a finger through the dust gathering on one of the monitors. “Don’t think they’ve been activated recently, though, so that’s good.”

“What? You got a problem with clones or something?” It’s a quick and defensive answer, and Phantom puts his hands up in surrender. 

“Not in concept.” He shrugs and joins Kon near the tubes. “But not a lot of people ask before making clones.”

“So I don’t need to sic Superman on you?” Obviously Kon could chew Phantom out himself, but few can do a “not mad, just disappointed” face better than Clark. 

Phantom scrunches his face. “Why would you need to?” 

Kon stops pretending to inspect the tube and stares at Phantom. “You do know I’m a clone, right?” The blank look on Phantom’s face tells him that no, he did not. “Well I am. Clone of Superman, though we’re pretty much brothers now.”

“Cool,” Phantom says, not a bit less friendly. He hesitates for a second before continuing, “Could I maybe ask you how you got there? Me and my clone have landed on cousins, but that was also, like, given to us by her evil dad. So.”

Phantom trails off. Huh, that makes three members of the team that have been cloned. Not a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened three times. 

“You’re making sure she feels accepted, right?” 

“Yeah! Well, whenever she’s around. She,” Phantom waves his hand around, looking for the right word, “She’s a wanderer. Exploring the world and stuff. But Richard has a room for her at home, and I remind her of that whenever she does stop by.” 

“Well, first of all, don’t push it so hard,” Kon says. Phantom nods enthusiastically. “And second, who’s Richard?”

Kon doesn’t know a lot of Richards, and he doesn’t think that Phantom ever mentioned one before. Or even if he remembers his living life. 

“Oh, he’s my, uh, guardian? I guess that’s the best term. The guy I’m living with who forces me to go to school sometimes.” Phantom looks away and back to the tubes. 

Before Kon can ask for more details, Robin and Empress come in with a report of dead computers and wanting to know where they’re at with the cloning room.

They’re unimpressed with their lack of progress.

Two

Wally doesn’t really need to come by the Hamilton Lodge that often, not when that’s Young Justice’s territory and he doesn’t want to get involved in all of That.

But Red Tornado said that the team has a file on a planet that’s very quickly becoming a league problem, and he figured it might be a good time to try to check in with Bart, anyway. Make sure he hasn’t run any cars off cliffs again and all that. 

So he stops by Manchester to ask Bart about the file, then they both head East to actually find it. 

When they arrive at the hotel minutes later, Wally’s surprised to actually find it… clean? There’s no visible trash or overturned furniture or anything else he’d expect from an abandoned hotel filled with teenagers. Well, maybe not filled, lately. He doesn’t think anyone’s living here currently, with Greta at Elias’ for the school year and Slobo gone. 

Still, the room smells slightly of artificial pine scent, and Bart perks up before disappearing and reappearing rapidly, holding a teammate up by his armpits. Said teammate just accepts this, his legs folding into a wispy tail, and head rolling against his shoulders. 

“This is Phantom!” Bart holds him up higher. Phantom waves. Wally’s only heard of him through Max’s updates, the same way he would hear about Preston or Carol, but with more wariness about the supposed ghost. 

Actually looking at the pale face and glowing green eyes contrasting against the darker than dark jumpsuit, Wally’s a little more ready to accept his claim at being undead. 

“He stress cleans,” Bart explains, moving to carry Phantom under his arm. Wally bites down the urge to tell him to put him down, but only because Phantom doesn’t resist the hold, only moving to get into a more comfortable position. His hands are touching the floor. “So what happened?” 

Bart directs the question downwards, and Phantom heaves a very dramatic sigh. Definitely a teenager. It does raise the question of who exactly this kid’s mentor is. Hopefully he does have one. Maybe he’s the Spectre’s kid?

Phantom phases through the arm holding him only to lay on top of Bart’s hair. “I accidentally called Richard dad. And then fled.” 

Bart nods sagely. “Classic. One time I accidentally called Max dad, so I had to start a fire to distract him.”

Phantom sighs again, almost dreamily. “Genius.” 

Wally doesn’t have time to unpack all of that. Well he does, but he’s not going to, because there’s really only one Richard that comes to mind that might have the heart to take in a dead kid, even if he doesn’t go by his full name.

But surely Dick would have told him, or any other Titan, if he had adopted a kid. Right?

But there’s still a little shadow of doubt. Maybe Dick wanted it to be a secret, or it was really new or had a rocky start. Phantom doesn’t seem to hold himself like a Bat, but it’s not a guarantee Dick would have trained him. 

“The lodge looks nice,” Wally offers out loud, which Phantom shrugs at and wraps his tail around Bart’s head to keep secure. “Anyway, Impulse. The file on Myrg?” 

“Oh yeah!” Again, Bart disappears then reappears a few seconds later with a paper file. They really need to start digitizing more of these things. “That’s the planet where we played baseball so that they wouldn’t destroy Earth!” 

“You what.” 

The prospect of Dick following in his dad’s footsteps is forgotten in the face of what the hell Young Justice got up to on Myrg. 

Three

Tim may be in a…Predicament. 

It’s not his fault. Really. He knew what he was doing. He couldn’t let a civilian fall for the trap. But they were already so close, so he just, kinda, pushed himself into the rope instead. 

So there Robin is, tied upside down in a warehouse, with the Joker below next to an overly complicated control panel. The clown’s rambling about bombs hidden all over the city that Tim knows Batman is already tracking down with Batgirl. 

Tim’s not really paying attention to the rant because of that, more focused on wiggling enough to get the spare mini-birdarang out of his glove to cut the rope without notifying the Joker. 

“Yikes, bad time?” Asks Phantom’s voice beside him. Based on the source and accounting for the slight echo, he’s floating with his head near Tim’s, likely upside down. “Want some help?” 

Tim gets the birdarang out and starts sawing at the thick rope. They should be fine anyway, but stalling the Joker for extra time would be helpful. “Can you possess the Joker? Just hold him still.”

“The correct term is overshadow, but sure.” The voice disappears, and a few seconds later the Joker freezes. 

His body jerks forward, then backward, and a laugh chokes out of his throat. His hand claws over his mouth at the noise and he hunches over. All movement halts before he rights himself, shaking out his hands and rolling his shoulders. Phantom looks up at Tim and his eyes are glowing. 

Tim cuts through the rope, kicking and using the momentum to right himself and land on his feet. He brushes past Phantom in Joker’s body to handle the control panel. He turns off the radio broadcast and dismantles the bomb strapped to the panel.

Threat handled, he turns to Phantom and holds up some handcuffs. “Let me arrest you?”

Phantom obliges, turning the Joker’s body around and putting his hands behind his back. Tim lets him walk by himself out of the warehouse and moves the handcuffs around a lamppost. The Joker’s body jerks again, then slumps forward, just as Phantom reappears next to him, scowling down at the unconscious body. 

“That felt really slimy. Zero out of ten, would not do again,” Phantom grouches. 

“Why’re you in Gotham?” Tim asks. It’s not like Phantom makes a habit of visiting. The last time he came into the city, he complained about feeling the dead under the streets. Fortunately, that let Tim uncover a few tunnels that Talons travel through. Phantom, however, was unnerved by the Talons and left quickly. 

“Oh, Solomon Grundy’s back in our sewers. Richard said I should probably tell one of you Gotham heroes, since you keep track of those guys.” He shakes out his hands like they were cramped in the Joker. 

They hadn’t seen Grundy in a while. Tim assumed he was currently in a less violent personality. “What’s he doing?” 

Phantom shrugs. “Just chilling. Mostly underground. I tried to talk to him but he only grunted back at me. He also tried to pick me up, dunno what that was about.”

“Maybe because you’re both dead?” Tim guessed. That would be a surface level connection. Ivy and Woodrue have had more luck working with Grundy than anyone, and Phantom definitely doesn’t have the connection to the Green that’d help with that. 

Police lights turn around the corner, and Tim shoots a grapple to get to the roof above them. Phantom follows, but disappears as soon as they’re on the roof. Going back home, probably. 

Cass drops down from the roof she was listening on. “Richard?”

“Not the same one.”

They both stick around long enough to watch the Joker get put into the cop car. 

Plus one

A spaceship landed in the forests of New York, and Cassie’s team was the first to respond to it. Technically not respond, but check it out, since there wasn’t any alert or anything. 

Still, Wonder Girl has Empress, Robin, and Superboy on the other side of the ship, watching what looks like the back door, while she, Impulse, and Phantom watch the other door and main window. She has binoculars, but the windows are so tinted she can’t quite make anything out. 

No aliens have come out yet, and she hesitates to have anyone go in, in case whoever inside does turn hostile. 

Impulse has offered to run through a total of five times already, and it’s a testament to his restraint that he hasn’t, and a testament to Cassie’s that she hasn’t yelled at him yet. Phantom at least isn’t being annoying, but he’s not necessarily helpful, either. He’s not even watching the spaceship anymore. Now he’s trying to make a flower crown out of dandelions. 

“Door’s opening on our side,” Robin says from the comms. “But no one’s coming out.” 

“Alright, good enough to try to get in,” Cassie decides. She turns to Phantom, who’s closing off the circle of flowers. Beside him, Impulse has since pulled out a gameboy. “Phantom, go in invisibly through the open door and report back. Try to see what their plans are.” 

“Oh, sure. One second.” Phantom finishes the crown and tries to put it on Bart’s head. It doesn’t quite fit over his mane of hair, but Phantom shrugs and leaves it sitting there anyway before going invisible. 

“Maybe I should shave my head again,” Bart says as his game character dies. 

He gets a resounding no in response. 

Half an hour later they have a very annoyed Green Lantern lecturing them about league jurisdiction and knowing when to call someone else. 

Apparently, the alien ship was just stopping to complete some maintenance, and did not appreciate any spying on them, and especially did not appreciate who did it. Green Lantern was more than happy to explain that Wonder Girl’s team is not really a part of the Justice League and he can help with their maintenance. They denied his help and left to find a place with less people in it. 

“-and you!” Green Lantern rounds on Phantom next, but Cassie knows none of them are really listening. Sure, they messed up by freaking out the visiting aliens, and yeah maybe they should have contacted the league about it, but they’ve dealt with stuff worse than this! It’s not Cassie’s fault she thought that this would have stuck to the formula. 

“Who even are you?” Green Lantern runs a hand through his black hair, stupid green gauntlets shining in the sunlight. “Do I need to call your mentor?” He frowns. “Or do they know you mess up alien technology by just being around it?” 

Phantom scoffs and rolls his eyes. “How was I supposed to know their tech would go all fuzzy when I came in?” 

“You wouldn’t have to know if you just stayed out of the spaceship!” 

“Hey!” Cassie cuts in. “Technically that was my call. It’s not all on Phantom.”

“I still could've been more careful,” Phantom says to her, ignoring Green Lantern as they argue about blame. 

“Cut it out for a second, okay?” Green Lantern puts a hand between them and they stop to glare at him. He pulls the hand back. “Look, can I just talk to one of your adults about this?” 

Robin glares. “We don’t need an adult. We have this under control.”

“Only because I’m here now.” 

“I’ll call my mentor,” Phantom says. Kon opens his mouth, most likely to offer to call Superman instead in hopes of a lighter sentence, but Bart covers his mouth, smiling like he knows something Cassie doesn’t. Tim and Anita share a look, and don’t intervene as Phantom pulls out a phone from his chest. 

It rings once before it’s picked up. Cassie can’t hear the other side of the conversation, but Kon’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “Hey, do you think you can pick me up? Green Lantern wants to talk to you.” Phantom looks Green Lantern up and down then says, “No, this one doesn’t have a cape.”

Phantom says goodbye after rattling off their coordinates, hangs up, and stares at Green Lantern in silence for a few seconds. 

And then a swirling mass of black seeps into the space next to Phantom. The end of a cane steps out of it, followed by a leg, then the rest of the immaculately dressed man holding the handle of the cane that’s shaped like a bird’s head. 

“Phantom,” The man says. His voice drips with condescension in only a way a british accent can, yet Phantom smiles up at him. The shadowy portal behind him disappears. “What, exactly, happened?”

“That’s the fucking Shade,” Anita hisses to Robin, who shrugs noncommittedly at her. Green Lantern seems to recognise him too, taking a step back and clenching his hand that holds his ring. 

“Well, the team and I were staking out this spaceship–super cool, by the way–and I went inside to check it out, but my presence messed with their tech–which was an accident–and they freaked out, so I freaked out, and then we kinda got into a little fight until Green Lantern came to mediate.”

“Hm. Is that right?” The Shade asks Green Lantern, who nods slowly, still anticipating an attack. “It seems like the problem’s fixed, then.”

“Well, yes, but–”

“And it does seem about time for these kids to get home, doesn't it?” The Shade pulls out an actual pocket watch, chain and all, from his suit pocket and takes his time in checking it. “I’ll see them home.” 

Shadows grow from behind the team, swirling until they become a giant, gaping maw that swallows them up and spits them out in a different forest, or maybe just a different part of the same forest. 

Either way, Cassie has to take a moment to make sure she doesn’t throw up from the sudden vertigo the shadow portal caused. 

The Shade looks at Phantom, and raises an eyebrow. “You can’t expect me to always bail you out.” 

Phantom shrugs, looking guilty. “I know. Thanks, Richard.”

Oh, so that’s who Richard is. Annoyingly, neither Tim or Bart look surprised by this revelation.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I bought a Good Omens book and when I came back home and logged into Tumblr, everyone was discussing how Good Omens was actually "Slav coded", whatever that meant.

[ghostbsuter]

"I'll pay you 10 times the amount you were given to take me out." Bruce Wayne is, very out of character, super serious and looking at him so intense.

Danny isn't paid enough to figure out why the supposed himbo isn't acting like it.

"You know what? Yeah. Deal." He fishes his phone out, accepting the money transfer and calls his boss for the day.

"Heyyy big guy– yeah‐ I know... anyway! I'm not killing Bruce Wayne, you should find someone different to do it— bye!" And he hangs up, cutting the shouting with a grin.

"If you ever, and I mean, ever need someone out of the way, call me."

He happily hands his contact information to the billionaire and swoops out of the window.

He is rich! So mega rich!

("Did you just buy the mercenary?"

"He's a kid! I panicked!"

"At least you got a phone number??")

[ramblingaro]

decided I’m going to start saying “there’s no romantic explanation for this” when talking about fictional characters