#Lab Supplies Market

[industrynewsupdates]

Lab Supplies Procurement Intelligence Competitive Landscape

The global lab supplies category is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 7.5% from 2023 to 2030. Growth of the category can be attributed to a rise in life science research and clinical laboratory testing, and growth in financial support and investment for biotechnology and pharmaceutical research & development. The category is anticipated to witness steady growth over the forecasted timeframe due to uninterrupted and ongoing supply of laboratory equipments. Over time, laboratories have evolved into multifunctional research spaces where a wide range of testing procedures and comparison studies are conducted. The market need for laboratory supplies has increased as a result of this. In addition, the field of lab supply research has become increasingly dominant over the past ten years. As a result, academic institutions have expanded their labs, which has further fuelled the category's growth.

Technologies that drive the global category include automation, cloud, advanced analytics, smart lab devices, single-use technologies, nanotechnology, and 3D-printing. Workflows in laboratories are being revolutionized by automation, which reduces human error and streamline repetitive operations. Faster and more precise data generation is made possible by robotic devices for high-throughput screening, chemical synthesis, and sample handling. in addition, latest lab equipments are capable in recording data and adding it on cloud. The apparatus can also notify a scientist or lab technician in case of malfunction. Furthermore, Researchers are becoming more knowledgeable about intricate chemical systems because of developments in analytical techniques. Unmatched detail is being provided by methods like electron microscopy, NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy, and HRMS (high-resolution mass spectrometry), which is propelling advancements in disciplines like drug development, materials research, and metabolomics.

Order your copy of the Lab Supplies Procurement Intelligence Report, 2023 - 2030, published by Grand View Research, to get more details regarding day one, quick wins, portfolio analysis, key negotiation strategies of key suppliers, and low-cost/best-cost sourcing analysis

The category for lab supplies is fragmented, with the presence of regional and global suppliers. Players in the industry are investing heavily in improving existing products and launching new products with cutting-edge features and technologies to streamline sampling operations. For instance, in 2022, Waters Corporation released ‘Extraction+ Connected Device’ which records & automates solid phase extraction technique utilized in sample preparation for research applications in clinical studies, environmental, forensic, food, and biological applications. In addition, the players are indulging in activities such as mergers & acquisitions, partnerships, etc. to increase their market share and stay competitive. Since the category is fragmented, the buyers in this category possess higher negotiation power as they can look for alternative providers who can provide at a lower cost with better quality. However bargaining power of big players is still high owing to their operational and functional capabilities, making it challenging for the buyers to get the price of their choice.

Cost of products (equipments, disposables, reagents), labor cost, transportation cost and insurance cost are the key cost components in this category. In 2022, the cost of raw materials reached all-time highs for plastic converters in North America, Europe, and Asia. Also, the price of consumables getting shipped from North America, Europe, and Asia got affected by the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Goods being transported by rail from China has increased recently, which has decreased the need for shipping containers as well as the costs connected with gasoline for transportation. The prices of centrifuges offered in the category ranges from USD 27 to USD 63,000 depending on type of centrifuge (mini, micro and benchtop), RPM speed and relative centrifugal field (RCF). In addition, the prices of incubators offered in the category ranges from USD 31 to USD 49,900 depending on chamber size, temperature ranges, and features (smartphone notification, alarms, etc.)

North America region dominates the global lab supplies category, holding over 37.6% of global market share. The need for products offered in the category throughout the region is being greatly influenced by rising research & development investments in number of industries, including chemicals and pharmaceuticals in the United States. In addition, favourable government regulations, active engagement of FDA in monitoring clinical test findings and advances, and the growing number of approvals is further supporting the growth of the category in the region. Furthermore, assessing the range of products offered by a supplier, lead time being guaranteed by a supplier, ensuring that the supplier offers technical assistance post sales, comparing the prices offered by different suppliers are some of the best sourcing practices considered in this category.

Browse through Grand View Research’s collection of procurement intelligence studies:

• Drug Testing Procurement Intelligence Report, 2023 - 2030 (Revenue Forecast, Supplier Ranking & Matrix, Emerging Technologies, Pricing Models, Cost Structure, Engagement & Operating Model, Competitive Landscape)

• Ammonia Procurement Intelligence Report, 2023 - 2030 (Revenue Forecast, Supplier Ranking & Matrix, Emerging Technologies, Pricing Models, Cost Structure, Engagement & Operating Model, Competitive Landscape)

Lab Supplies Procurement Intelligence Report Scope

• Lab Supplies Category Growth Rate: CAGR of 7.5% from 2023 to 2030

• 5% - 10% increase (Annually): Pricing Models

• Cost-plus pricing, Fixed pricing: Supplier Selection Scope: Cost and pricing, Past engagements, Productivity, Geographical presence

• Supplier Selection Criteria: Industries served, years in service, geographic service provision, certifications, types of products, features, technical support, lead time, regulatory compliance, and others

• Report Coverage: Revenue forecast, supplier ranking, supplier matrix, emerging technology, pricing models, cost structure, competitive landscape, growth factors, trends, engagement, and operating model

Key Companies 

• Agilent Technologies, Inc.

• Becton

• Dickinson and Company

• Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.

• Danaher Corporation

• Hilton Instruments Ltd.

• Medline Industries, LP

• PerkinElmer Inc.

• Sartorius AG

• Shimadzu Corporation

• Th. Geyer GmbH & Co. KG

• Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

• Waters Corporation

Brief about Pipeline by Grand View Research:

A smart and effective supply chain is essential for growth in any organization. Pipeline division at Grand View Research provides detailed insights on every aspect of supply chain, which helps in efficient procurement decisions.

Our services include (not limited to):

• Market Intelligence involving – market size and forecast, growth factors, and driving trends

• Price and Cost Intelligence – pricing models adopted for the category, total cost of ownerships

• Supplier Intelligence – rich insight on supplier landscape, and identifies suppliers who are dominating, emerging, lounging, and specializing

• Sourcing / Procurement Intelligence – best practices followed in the industry, identifying standard KPIs and SLAs, peer analysis, negotiation strategies to be utilized with the suppliers, and best suited countries for sourcing to minimize supply chain disruptions

[phagodyke]

grrr.... my boss came in and asked to talk to me for a moment and basically she was asking how I distinguish between production stock/my stock bc the stock/supply staff had insinuated to her that I'd been stealing their stock which I HAVEN'T!!!! I would never + my boss knows that but she still had to ask.... so annoying

[athenese-dx]

Athenese-Dx wishes you peace and happiness this Gandhi Jayanti!

Happy Gandhi Jayanti!

Visit → https://athenesedx.com/news/happy-gandhi-jayanti-2024

GandhiJayanti #MahatmaGandhi #India #athenesedx #IVD #MedicalLabTechnician

[tinydefector]

Hi, since the requests are open, could you write brainstorm x human or perceptor x human SFW/NSFW at your discretion. I just read your book "Human's effects" and I really liked the way you wrote brainstorm. Have a nice day.

Human effects 11 - Brainstorm

So I'll be doing more of these with characters, and if I have another part asked for Brainstorm on this series, it will be a smut piece.

Brainstorm x Human reader

Warnings: light lust mention

Word count: 2.7k

Masterlist

Brainstorm masterlist

Human effects masterlist

__________________

Brainstorm's optics focus on the data pad in his servos, a hum resonates from him along with a small chirp as he filters through the multiple different subjects he had been doing research on. His processor aches from the amount of engex he had consumed the cycle before while at swerves.  The seeker haphazardly pays attention as he walks down the hallway of the corridors of the ship toward the lab, his optics flicker when they lock on the one of  liaisons, very specifically the Ambassador that he along with many others from the night before hand had been ‘fantasises’ about. 

 

 He had so many questions he wanted to ask them in person about human biology but in honesty didn't know where to start, they were an organic species, bipedal mammals who in many aspects were very similar to Cybertronians. His optics linger on them, taking in their frame type, tone and all up rather visual appeal. He could understand why humans were so sought after on the black market, they were soft and rather plus from what he could observe. 

" heya stormy" they call out with a smile as they make their way over to him. Brainstorm jolts from his musings, systems heating with embarrassment at being caught distracted by his thoughts, his engine lets out a hitched whine as fans whirl. But their smile seems warm, non-judgmental, and he relaxes fractionally, they didn't have the ability to read his processor, he was fine he rationalised to himself. 

"Ah, greetings, Ambassador!” He attempts to mask the fluster that was creeping across his plating, wings twitching lightly. "Lovely sol to find you up and about, I wasn't expecting to see you down in the labs this Cycle." He pauses with a. Raised optic rid wondering why they were down their way, they normally didn't make it a habit to visit the scientist. 

“ picking up some equipment Nautica got for my team, she's been helping a lot with our long range transmitter and also with us getting supplies on Ultra Magnus' request” they hum while carrying a small crate. 

His field radiates enthusiasm, if they were down here at that moment perhaps they had some time to spare him for his own pursuit in knowledge.  "Might I beg for a moment of your time? As Cybertron's chief scientist, I was hoping to inquire about Human biology if you had the time. our records only have some much information on your people and i believe a lot of it is rather outdated, if you'd feel comfortable sharing it could offer insights aiding our alliance." He asked, it was worth a shot and if they Were to busy he could always ask one of the other humans.  

They give Brainstorm another sweet smile as they begin walking beside him towards his destination, they hike their crate of equipment highter as to keep grip on it. "Sure I'm happy to answer questions, it's not like I have much going on at the moment, last I heard Megatron and Mags have Rodimus doing my paperwork as punishment for trying to take Rikko Asteroid surfing.” they laugh as the words fall from their lips. Remembering the look on the speedster face when he had more reports dropped on him. 

“ but if we are gonna play twenty questions you better make it fun!" They tease in a singy song voice. Brainstorm's optical ridges curiously curiously beneath his faceplate at the human's playful jest. He lets out his own amused chuckle at the idea of Rodimus suffering even more paperwork, he didn't envy the Captain and even less so the aching processor he was most likely nursing after the drinks from the late cycle. 

"Scientific inquiry as a game, eh? Now there's an intriguing proposition!" His wings fluttered, promptly intrigued with the idea. Data collection through entertaining exchange sounded rather fun compared to the normal exchange he had with Perceptor. A mischievous lilt crept into his tone as he slowly matched their pace walking together his optics flicker down to them taking in just how small they were compared to him. They just met his knee plating joints. humansWeren't nearly as small as a lot of Cybertronians were lead to believe. He remembered the first time ever seeing them he was quite taken back over their size originally expecting them to fit into the pal of his servo. But seeing them in real life had made him realise a lot of what he believed or old records were rather incorrect over humans, and their biology. 

 "Very well. First question: what gives you energy - nutrient paste, energon, the taste of victory?" His visor gleamed roguishly the last question was more a tease but he found it amusing to watch their reaction. The liaison lets out a hearty laugh at the first question. " hahahah oh by the stars, you really don't get alot of human Visitors do you?. So most of what humans as a whole eat is a mix of meat, fruit and vegetables. We need a mixed diet due to being an omnivorous species, but it varies person to person" they explain, giving his leg a gentle nudge with their elbow. 

Brainstorm cycled his optics,parsing this new data on their nutritional requirements with keen interest, it also gave him more information to jot down later.but he is utterly fascinating that a species derived sustenance from multiple organic compounds rather than a single standardised fuel source. "Meat, fruits and vegetation, you say? Truly extraordinary." He made a note to research Earth's ecological climate zones and harvest periods, he was rather interested in seeing what earth produced, Earth had become one of the largest suppliers of energon when cybertron was being rebuilt as it was a common occurring element on earth, it became the main trade source between the two planets.

"What about cybertronians? Do you guys only consume Energon or do you have other things, i know earth supplies quite a lot of energon to cybertron but do you guys only consume it ?" As they returned the query, he waved a languid hand. "Energon in its various forms comprises the bulk of a Cybertronian's fuel intake, though rarely do we consume it in its raw state. Refining introduces necessary additive alloys and minerals to suit an individual's frametype and occupation. Medics also develop specialised fuel mixes for patients. But we do consume other elements, oils, metals and crystals are other necessary for different platingsor frame types " His wings fluttered in delight talking about the different compounds of energon and how it was used. He was no chemist but did enjoy dabbling in creating different flavoured energon.

 "Recreational enjoyment of other sustenance is not unheard of, however. Certain sensory-inducing additives have been experimented with at social gatherings, such as High grade, energex are a subcategory of energon which has a different effect on a processor compared to casual energon, med grade and such" he hums while explaining the different types of fuel, from the causal to the luxurious. 

“Ah so similar to Alcohol for humans, that's quite amusing actually and explains why Rodimus tends to look like he's hung over” they chuckles again remembering how dead on his feet he looked that morning when they had met for a meeting with the command.

“Oh I wasn't aware humans also had similar, but yes energex and high grade have a rather intoxicating effect and lossens intakes while in group gatherings.” He replies. As they make their way into the laboratory. Perceptor is off in the distance and shoots them both a look as Brainstorm slowly lifts them up onto the bench. Before continuing their conversation. 

“ you mentioned something about chemists, what do cybertronian chemists do?” The Ambassador asks while they place their crate down and begin engaging in conversation once again. Brainstorm felt Preceptor's optics tracking the pair curiously as he began another explanation. “Chemists tend to have a range of different fields, the easiest way for me to explain would be to say that Swerve is a Chemist” His optics shimmer in delight as they trade back Information with the human sitting on the bench. 

“I thought Swerve was a bartender?” They reply with a tilted head, their brows pinch in an almost adorable expression to Brainstorm. He has to keep his engine from making a whine at the adorable look. His EM field dances with interest for them. 

“Indeed, chemists work with making, distilling energon and other substances. So in one way Swerve is a chemist but so is Ratchet but they make very different products” He explains. 

“That's so cool, almost like being a human chemist, baker and bartender in one” they hum as they take in the new information they were learning. His optics linger on their hands for a moment before he decides to change the subject of fuel sources. 

"With your permission, I find human epidermal structures utterly absorbing," he began. "The intricate pigmentation patterns, tactile sensitivity... might I?" A single digit hovered millimetres above a forearm, awaiting the liaison's consent before even the faintest contact. It takes them a moment to register the terms from Brainstorm but once they realised he was asking to examine their arm. “Oh sure just wait a second” reply before rolling their sleeves up, hold their arm out to Brainstorm to look at. It catches Preceptor's attention as he raises an unamused optic at how brasin Brainstorm was being.

 "Also heads up you don't need to treat me like glass, humans are pretty resilient so you're not gonna hurt me by touching me unless you're actually trying" they inform. "My thanks for the clarification, as I explained earlier, a lot of our records on Humans is rather outdated, however I'd rather not cause you harm" he responded gently, servos dancing over their arm gently as he takes in the man different markings, patterns and colours that mark their skin. It's highly fascinating to him and he found another reason he believed humans were sought after. It wasn't a subject of cybertronian history he liked but he was interested in learning why humans were so sought after. Soft, pliable, small and would have mostly been very docile. It sent a rattle up his spinal struts as he tries to push the thought a side. 

A single digit traced the patterns of tactile receptors watching the way the little bumps spread across their skin in a visual response to his touch. "Fascinating... your epidermal sensory network far surpasses initial database entries. I've never seen such colours either its stunning" His field pulsed appreciative curiosity as he traced the lines and marking that look like they are hidden under the Ambassador's skin, it makes him wonder how far the marking go but decided it would be pushing it to try and see more, but he knows he will be fantasising about tracing the markings. 

From the corner, Perceptor cleared his vocalizer. "Yes, human biological studies hold fascinating merit. Brainstorm, do refrain from unnecessary experimentation." The other bots voice calls out as he shoots Brainstorm, another disapproving look. 

Brainstorm dips his helm respectfully as he pulls away lwtting the Liason pull their sleeve back down. "No disrespect intended, Perceptor. Merely exploratory observation. Scientific progress warrants cross-cultural exchange plus we need to also rework our old records on human functions, biology and culture." His visor brightened, dispite Preceptor's tone Brainstorm was thrilled with the new knowledge he had gathered just from this meeting.

"Oh don't worry Percy. I doubt Stormy brought me here to experiment on, plus he's curious. I can't say I'm not also curious about you guys either, Earth doesnt have alot of information on Cybertronians outside of the small stuff we had from when you guys were stuck on earth. So i'm happy trading information because we are both interested in learning about each other's people. " They shoot back at the other scientist. Preceptor's optic ridges pinched ever so slightly at the human's familiar tone, though he made no further protest. If they felt at ease with Brainstorm's studies, who was he to force caution upon willing participants? "See that your... observations proceed responsibly," he calls out, it's aimed at Brainstorm but the seeker does not fret too much. 

The two continue chatting between each other trading information with small jokes between them every now and then. The liaison kicks their legs back and forth on the table. It gives Brainstorm the opportunity to truly look at them and appreciate how soft they are, a lustful thought crossing his mind and EM field pulsing lightly which makes Perceptor snap his helm to look at them again. Perceptor narrowed his optics warily at Brainstorm. :. Brainstorm a word.: the other scientist states through comms which makes the seeker go ridged, wings flickering in discomfort. 

Clearing his vocalizer loudly, Perceptor took a deliberate step forward. "Perhaps we will catch you another Cycle Ambassador, Brainstorm and I have much work to attend to, and we wouldn't wish to keep you any longer" he interjected coolly. For his part, Brainstorm cycled a ventilation and reined in his field, hed just had Perceptor call him out on it and the embarrassment was showing with each flutter of his wings. 

The Liaison gives the two scientists a wave once they are set back on the ground. "Well I'll catch you both another time, I'm going to go talk with Swerve about energon, you have me rather intrigued to learn more " They call out lifting their crate back up while heading to the door. Once they had left the Lab it had Brainstorm shifted warily under the weight of Preceptor's dissecting gaze. 

"The human liaison has graciously undertaken representing their kind aboard an unknown vessel to foster cooperation between species. Jeopardising such an auspicious start through any misguided impulse would severely damage relations." 

Pausing his tasks, Perceptor affixed Brainstorm with a searching stare, optics bright with both caution and care for his foolish yet brilliant colleague. "I need not remind you of one of your talents, the fragility of organic creatures compared to our frames.”

Brainstorm shuffled awkwardly beneath the Preceptor's scrutinising gaze. His usually nimble processors faltered grasping a suitably cogent response, field radiating discomfort through scrambled modulations. How to explain such rash intrigues ebbing his usually steady rationale? "Ah...you raise entirely fair points, as always, Perceptor," he demurred, fidgeting with a gripper. "To be perfectly forthright - and at the risk of sounding like a sparkling with his first crush - there's simply something innately captivating about these diminutive humans! Their resilience, ingenuity, curiosity..." His plating flustered with static. 

"And I'll admit, it's not just my scholarly interest piqued. Even the most stoic among us seem charmed by our new small friends." He cycled stabilising ventilation. Wings fluttering weakly, Brainstorm inclined his helm. "Brainstorm pleas for the love of whatever deity you believe be it primus or else Do Not Frag the Ambassador!, they are one of our heads, they work closely with our captains and if you mess Slag up it will be your helm" Perceptor groans out as he pinches his nasal ridge.

Brainstorm's plating flared hotly at Preceptor's emphatic directive. "I - of course not, you must think me a complete naïve sparkling!" he sputtered, waving his gripper defensively. "Mere scholarly observation was my intent, nothing untoward, I assure you, yes I'm intrigued by Humanity and the liaison is rather charming I'm interested in the scientific study of humanity, to rewrite the small knowledge we have on them!"  

Venting sulkily, he leaned against the bench servos tapping into the metal. "Though I'll note, my interests seem far from singular. Last night's engex-fueled discussions had a few of us a little too invested in compatibility. All I'm saying is curiosity seems widespread! So while your cautions are well-founded..." His plating flustered again helplessly, wings fluttering as they would when he was interested in something. 

 "Brainstorm we are not doing this" Perceptor states as he turns away from his fellow scientists. "Wait just a klik, Percy - don't think I fail to spot tangled undercurrents in that rigid plating of yours," he pushed, emboldened by this newfound insight. Cycling closer, his field pulsed a teasing nudge against his colleague's. "For all your lofty speeches cautioning restraint... could it be you harbour doubts following your own advice?" He teases only to get a nasty glare from the other mech. but decides it's better to just ignore Brainstorm at that point. “you know Swerve has bets on you, says your a dark horse waiting for a chance to sweet the Ambassador off their Pedes” Brainstorm states trying to get a reaction out of Perceptor. It gets a wrench thrown at him. 

___________________

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[five-rivers]

Prompt: Danny’s birth was an accident.

A lab accident, to be precise.

The problem with researching something as esoteric as ghosts was that you had to source all your own materials. If you wanted to know how high ectoplasm concentrations affected human cells, you either had to buy from ethically dubious medical supply companies or use your own.

Maddie used her own. Or Jack's. They worked together, and he was fine with it, so it was essentially the same thing, ethically, if not biologically.

Either way, they kept a whole variety of tissue samples, sourced from themselves. Cheek swabs, bone marrow samples, skin, hair, a tooth Jack had to get pulled, blood, serum and whole, a couple biopsies from different organs, spinal fluid, sperm, a collection of egg cells.

If they were going to market their inventions as family friendly and safe, they needed to know it wasn't going to render anyone sterile. They had Jazz already, and one child was quite enough, but other people might want more. Or assurances it wasn't going to mutate their children, before or after birth. Although in Maddie's opinion, that was quite ridiculous. Ectoradiation was quite different from electromagnetic radiation, or alpha radiation, or other traditional types.

So, that was what Maddie was researching now. Eggs and sperm. She wasn't about to do anything fertilized, of course. Too many ethical problems. But she would put a different concentration of ectoplasm in each test tube for one set, then duplicate those concentrations for the second set, then set up some eggs in one set of vessels, and a sample of sperm in the other, then run them for the same amount of time. Fourteen with eggs, fourteen with sperm. A bit of an odd number, but that's what happened in independent labs. Test tubes broke, and then if you wanted to control your experiments, and keep everything the same, you had to do things in odd numbers. Or buy new test tubes. But the more time you spent shopping, the less time you spent experimenting.

She started with the eggs. One by one, putting them into the the test tubes. One... two... three... four... bottom of the column... five... six... seven... eight... bottom of the column... nine... ten... eleven... twel--

"Maddie! I'm taking Jazz out to see you know who for you know what!"

"Dad!" said Jazz, her two-year-old voice squeaky with outrage. "I know we're going to the doctor!"

"Oh, right!" she called back. "That was today, thanks you for remembering, hun!" Usually, she was the one of them to remember important dates, but Jack was really on top of things for Jazz. It was nice.

"No problem, Mads! Good luck with the mutation experiment!"

"Thanks!" She turned back to the rack of test tubes. Now, where was she? She'd just finished that row... She had sorted them by row, hadn't she? Of course she had. So, she should start with the sperm. Right

She picked up the pipette and started from the top of the column. One.. two... three... four... She kept going, until she hit fourteen, and still had two test tubes left.

Well. That wasn't good. She must have-- Had she overlapped? Or had she just not finished filling the egg test tubes? If the latter, she could just put the last two eggs in the last two test tubes. And label them a little more carefully. She rearranged her worktable and peered into the container she'd carried the thawed eggs over in.

One. One unopened egg.

Hands shaking slightly, Maddie counted back to the thirteenth test tube. The one with the second-highest concentration of ectoplasm. The one that she had almost certainly put both an egg cell and sperm into. She pulled it out of the rack and set it in an empty one, then sat and stared.

This was a serious mistake.

Oh, she knew she could just dump it out in the sink or in the biological waste box, or any number of other things. Even moving at their fastest, sperm took a while to get into an egg. It might not have gotten there yet. And even if it had... Few people would consider a single cell a human being. But... Maddie had been raised Irish Catholic. She couldn't...

She sighed. Before she got carried away, she needed to check to see if it had even... taken, she supposed she should call it. If there was any life there. The ectoplasm could very well have acted as an inhibitor.

She licked her lips and reached for a microscope. First, find out what had happened, then talk to Jack, and then... then they would decide what to do. Together.

[metamatar]

$200k seems like quite a reasonable cost for a small sterile lab. It's not a plan to make it at home, it's a plan to make it in your town. As of now, there are so few insulin plants that the economies of scale aren't optimal for distribution (but they are for profits!)

did you miss the part that it was speculative? that it has never been demonstrated? also no, the economies of scale are fine for distribution cold chain distribution it is a solved problem. people aren't struggling to get insulin bc it can't be delivered, they're struggling bc its expensive.

im not sure you understand what economies of scale means, it means when you try to do things at larger scale – you are generally able to deploy productive technologies and innovations in organisation (specialisation) which make things easier to produce (less labour and capital input) on average. things become cheaper to produce. it is cheaper to weave cloth at a factory than in a loom you install in your backyard. that's why open insulin can only hypothetically get a vial down to the price of for profit insulin in the uk. big pharma is able to profit from insulin at 7 dollars a vial, ie it's even cheaper to produce. this is like, adam smith pin example.

the existence of a big factory or doing things at scale doesn't create destructive megaprofits... this is such a bizarre worldview of the world. you have to make a very sophisticated argument to prove this, which imo is immediately debunked by the reality of worker organised cooperatives in factories or even state run industrial production. profit tends to be a function of factors like labour relations + market dynamics like supply, demand and competition. us healthcare sucks bc your workers don't have rights, private insurance colludes with hospitals and competitors and the govt doesn't regulate pharma companies who are providing an inelastic good (medicine.)

also addressing this bc some people are mad at me but the only part of my argument that cites a piece hosted on RAND corp is the extremely high price of US insulin compared to every other country in the world. its like 30x. i don't think that is a fact that's a capitalist conspiracy, the data can be confirmed with other sources too, it just illustrates how dysfunctional US healthcare is. like, when your enemies agree...

[6azia]

02| Blood Hidan/YN

—summary. (Y/N)’s expression didn’t change, though his eyes gleamed with cruel amusement. “You’ll have your chance for bloodshed. Patience is a virtue, even for those like us.” Or (Y/N) and Hidan go out alone w/ opposite temper

—content warning. Lil blood, jashinism(I think), bottom (Y/N), top hidan, forst se-, no aftercare

—word count. ~3,2k

—azia's notes. The smut will hopefully get better and sry posting late forgot

𝔎𝔦𝔫𝔨𝔱𝔬𝔟𝔢𝔯-𝔏𝔦𝔰𝔱

The flickering light of a nearby torch cast long shadows on the walls of the old black market outpost. The air was thick with the pungent scent of iron, smoke, and unspoken deals. (Y|N) leaned casually against a wooden beam, his cold eyes scanning the crowded underground marketplace. This wasn’t the usual task he relished-gathering information, cutting deals, restocking supplies for the Akatsuki-but it needed to be done.

Beside him, Hidan huffed impatiently, his scythe propped against his shoulder, clearly not thrilled about the errand either.

“I can’t believe they sent us out here for this,” Hidan grumbled, sneering at the merchants and shady dealers surrounding them. “Weapons and info? This is grunt work. I don’t see why we couldn’t just slaughter the lot of ‘em and take whatever we need.”

(Y|N) took a tired puff of his cigar, an unsettling glint in the tired eyes of his that always seemed to unnerve even his closest allies only looked unimpressed at the Jashinist. “There’s a time for slaughter and a time for... subtlety, Hidan. We need these weapons suppliers alive if we want to stay well-equipped. And more importantly,” he paused, his voice dropping to a whisper, “we need information about Orochimaru’s movements. He’s been slippery ever since he left the Akatsuki. We can’t afford to be rash.”

Hidan scoffed. “You and your damn subtlety. All I hear is excuses not to get blood on our hands.”

(Y|N)’s expression didn’t change, though his eyes gleamed with cruel amusement. “You’ll have your chance for bloodshed. Patience is a virtue, even for those like us.”

The pair moved deeper into the market, the dim lighting creating a maze of shadowed corners and narrow alleyways lined with weapon stands and black-market traders. A few of the dealers eyed them warily. Most recognized (Y|N) immediately—his reputation as a trafficker and mercenary for the Akatsuki was well known in the underworld. Hidan, however, drew attention for an entirely different reason. His imposing figure and the gleaming, three-bladed scythe on his back left no room for doubt that violence was never far from him.

(Y|N) led the way toward a secluded corner, where a large, bald man with a scarred face and an array of high-quality blades spread across his stall stood waiting. He was one of (Y|N)’s contacts, a reliable supplier of rare and powerful weapons. (Y|N) knew he could trust the man to provide what they needed without asking too many questions.

“We need resupply,” He said smoothly, puffing a big cloud out, his voice low and raspy as always. “And you know how I feel about prices. Don’t test me today.”

The merchant nodded nervously, his eyes darting between the merchant and Hidan. “Of course, of course. Same deal as always. High-quality blades, kunai, and some specialty weapons. I’ve got what you need. Just came in yesterday.”

(Y|N) raised a brow, his gaze narrowing. “You mentioned specialty weapons. Anything... exotic?”

The merchant leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I’ve got something from one of Orochimaru’s old labs. Don’t ask how I got it, but it’s dangerous. Experimental. Might be useful if you’re looking for an edge.”

Hidan’s interest piqued at the mention of Orochimaru. “Tch, the snake freak. Let me guess, more of his weird science projects?”

(Y|N) stepped closer, eyes gleaming. “Show me.”

The merchant carefully pulled out a small, sealed container from beneath his stall. Inside were a series of small, dark-metal darts, each laced with what appeared to be a faint purple toxin. “Poison-coated. Something designed to paralyse the chakra network completely. No known antidote yet.”

(Y|N) smile widened. “Perfect.”

While (Y|N) inspected the weaponry, Hidan tapped his foot impatiently. “Alright, we’ve got the weapons. Now, where’s this info on Orochimaru? That’s what I’m more interested in. I wanna know where that bastard is hiding so I can offer him up to Jashin.”

The merchant gulped. “Information on Orochimaru... it’s risky, but I’ve heard rumors. Word on the street is he’s set up some hidden lab in the Land of Rivers, experimenting on a new batch of test subjects. Something about creating the perfect vessel. That’s all I know, I swear.”

(Y|N) tilted his head, digesting the information. Orochimaru had always been obsessed with immortality and power, but the mention of a "perfect vessel" piqued his interest. His ties with Orochimaru from the old days still lingered like a ghost, though he had no loyalty left to the snake. If anything, his curiosity was purely strategic.

“He’s experimenting again, is he?” He murmured, more to himself than anyone else. “And he’s in the Land of Rivers... intriguing.”

Hidan growled in frustration. “Enough talk. Are we going after him or not? The Akatsuki wants him dealt with, and I want to tear him apart.”

(Y|N) chuckled darkly. “Soon, Hidan, soon. But Orochimaru isn’t a target we can just rush into. We need more information before we make a move. We know where he is, but we need to know what he’s working on. If he’s preparing something big, we’ll want to hit him at the right moment.”

Hidan rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. As much as he hated (Y|N)’s cautious approach, even he had to admit that Orochimaru was no ordinary target. Still, the anticipation of the coming bloodshed was enough to keep him satisfied-for now.

The two gathered the weapons and prepared to leave the market. (Y|N), ever calm, carried himself with his usual air of eerie control, while Hidan was already imagining the chaos and destruction that would follow once they tracked down Orochimaru.

As they moved through the dim alleys, (Y|N) took another breath and spoke again, his voice low and sinister. “Orochimaru’s obsession with immortality has made him reckless. The more he experiments, the more mistakes he makes. And mistakes, Hidan... those are what we’ll use to bring him down.”

Hidan grinned, his bloodlust barely contained. “I don’t care how we do it. As long as I get to see him bleed.”

(Y|N)’s cold eyes glinted in the shadows. “Oh, you will. But not before we get what we need from him. Patience, Hidan. This is a game of serpents, and only one of us will survive.”

As the two Akatsuki members disappeared into the misty night, the black-market dealers whispered amongst themselves, fearful of the violence that always seemed to follow the Akatsuki duo wherever they went. Somewhere in the Land of Rivers, Orochimaru was already preparing his next twisted experiment, unaware that the shadows were closing in around him.

The mission to track down Orochimaru had stretched far longer than either of them expected. Days turned into weeks as they traversed the desolate forests of the Land of Rivers, inching closer to Orochimaru's elusive hideout. Along the way, the tension between the two Akatsuki members shifted in strange, unexpected ways.

At first, their relationship had been purely one of necessity. (Y|N)’s calculating mind, always several steps ahead, grated against Hidan’s impulsive nature. Where Hidan sought the immediate satisfaction of blood and chaos, (Y|N) lived for the slow, methodical game. It was a dynamic that kept them clashing. But over time, something began to change.

In the stillness of their nights on the road, as the moonlight filtered through the trees and the crackling of their campfire provided the only noise, Hidan found himself watching his partner. The way the older man’s dark eyes flickered with an unfathomable intelligence. The way his pale hands moved with unsettling grace as he prepared poisons or sharpened his blades. The way he basked into the smoke of his expensive cigars. The way the smoke danced from his plump lips to his imposing figure. There was something hypnotic about (Y|N)’s calmness, his eerie confidence in every situation, that drew Hidan in-though he would never admit it.

One night, as they set up camp, Hidan threw his scythe against a nearby tree and sat by the fire, his frustration more palpable than usual. “This is taking too damn long,” he growled, rubbing a hand through his silver hair. “We’ve been out here for weeks, and still no sign of that snake bastard.”

The other whitehead sat across from him, a small smile playing on his lips as he lightened himself another cigar. “Patience, Hidan. Orochimaru is a slippery one, but he can’t hide forever. The longer we wait, the more careless he becomes.”

Hidan glared at him. “You and your patience. I’m getting tired of this game. I need something-literally anything-to keep me from going crazy out here.”

(Y|N) looked up from his bingo book, his gaze locking onto Hidan’s with that unsettling calm. “Going crazy? Or are you just craving blood again?”

Hidan snorted. “You think I can’t handle a little waiting? I’m not some child who needs to be distracted. It’s just that... all this sneaking around, it’s not my style.”

(Y|N)’s smirk deepened, his eyes glittering with amusement. “No, it’s not. But maybe that’s why you’re so fascinated by me.” He blew a small cloud to the Jashinist.

Hidan’s expression darkened, his fist clenching at the insinuation. “Fascinated? By you? Don’t flatter yourself, old man.”

(Y|N)’s voice lowered, almost to a whisper, as he leaned forward slightly, his gaze never leaving Hidan’s. “Oh, I think you are. You’re drawn to things you don’t understand, Hidan. You crave destruction and blood, but there’s something about control—about subtlety—that intrigues you, even if you won’t admit it.”

Hidan opened his mouth to retort, but something in (Y|N)’s gaze made the words die in his throat. There was a tension between them that hadn’t been there before. Something unspoken, simmering beneath the surface.

Hidan shifted, uncomfortable with the strange heat building between them. “You think you know me? You think you can analyze me like one of your little experiments?”

(Y|N) chuckled softly, the sound dark and almost mocking. “You’re more predictable than you realise.”

That was enough to set Hidan off. He stood abruptly, crossing the small distance between them and grabbing (Y|N) by the collar of his robe. “You think I’m predictable?” he growled, pulling (Y|N) closer. Hidan's nostrils filled with smokey and earthy smell of (Y|N), unknowingly memorising it.“Then why don’t you tell me what I’m gonna do next, huh?”

(Y|N)’s smile didn’t waver, even as Hidan’s grip tightened. His voice remained low and calm, like a snake coiled and ready to strike. “You’re going to kiss me.”

The words hit Hidan like a punch to the gut. His eyes widened in shock, but his grip didn’t loosen. Instead, his breath quickened, the intensity of the moment pressing down on him like a vice. He could feel (Y|N)’s calm heartbeat under his fingers, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, Hidan didn’t know what to do next.

And yet, the tension between them was undeniable.

With a low growl, Hidan yanked (Y|N) closer, their faces inches apart. His mind was racing, but his body moved on instinct. Without thinking, he pressed his lips against (Y|N)’s in a fierce, almost violent kiss. It wasn’t soft or tender; it was raw, a clash of heat and intensity as their lips collided.

(Y|N), to Hidan’s surprise, responded in kind. His lips were too hot at first, but they cooled down quickly as the kiss deepened. (Y|N)’s hands slid up Hidan’s arms, pulling him closer, and for a moment, the two of them were locked in a battle of control and surrender. It was a power struggle, just like everything else between them, but this time it was played out in the intimacy of their kiss.

Hidan’s mind was a whirlwind of emotions-confusion, anger, desire-but he didn’t pull away. His grip on (Y|N)’s collar loosened, and his hands moved to the back of (Y|N)’s neck, pulling him even closer. The kiss grew more intense, more desperate, as if they were both trying to prove something to each other through the sheer force of their lips.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, they broke apart, both of them breathing heavily. Hidan’s eyes were wild, his heart racing. He couldn’t believe what had just happened, and yet, at the same time, it felt inevitable.

(Y|N), as usual, was calm. His dark eyes gleamed with that same eerie amusement, though there was a flicker of something else in his gaze-something darker, more primal. “I told you,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. “You’re predictable.”

Hidan, still breathless, glared at him. “Shut up. That didn’t mean anything.”

(Y|N) chuckled softly, his fingers brushing against Hidan’s neck before pulling away. “Whatever you say, Hidan. But you and I both know... this changes things.”

Hidan’s fists clenched, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t have the words, didn’t have the energy to argue. All he knew was that something between them had shifted, something that neither of them could ignore. He could still taste Isa on his lips, could still feel the heat of the kiss lingering between them.

(Y|N) stood, smoothing out his robe as if nothing had happened. “Rest up. We’ll continue the search tomorrow.”

Hidan watched him for a moment, his mind still reeling from the kiss, but he said nothing. For once, Hidan didn’t have a retort, didn’t have a smart-ass comment. He just stood there, feeling a mix of emotions he didn’t fully understand.

As (Y/N) walked away, disappearing into the shadows beyond the fire, Hidan felt a strange pull in his chest. It wasn’t love-he didn’t believe in that crap;but there was something between them now, something that couldn’t be undone.

And for the first time, Hidan found himself craving more than just blood. (Y|N) took the hint and stepped closer; their bodies now flush against each other. Both letting a sight slip out at their proximity. It wasn’t unusual for them to be close to each other, however the unsaid promise of more hung heavy in the air.

”I really fucking hate you, old man” Hidan breathed out and gripped the hair on the back of (Y|N) head. The laters head got pushed back, exposing the tender flesh to the Jashinist. “Just try to be quiet” was whispered around the exposed flesh and a moan was pulled off the old man’s throat as Hidan parted his thin lips to lightly suck on the blemished skin.

The cigar fell out of (Y|N)’s hands but he didn’t seem to care. His hands gripped the front of Hidan’s cloak, trying to get the warm material off him. Hidan only chuckled and unexpectedly bit down on the place where the neck and shoulder met. He stayed in that position even as (Y|N) tried to push him off and even insult him, which didn’t really happen often.

Hidan’s color started to change and the two started to feel the desires of the other more pronounced. “Hah-didn’t think I would do that now, old man” Hidan mumbled on the latter neck while lapping on the hot blood oozing out. (Y|N) tried to keep his composure but it was hard when feeling every little thing his partner felt. Hidan’s hard on was pressing against the others, his hips moving experimentally and nearly buckling in from the immense pleasures. It was one thing feeling his own pleasure; but feeling the others too was something else.

“Hurry up!” (Y|N) breathed out impatiently, hooking his now free hand on the other's waistband. Hidan let a groan out and started to kiss other parts of (Y|N) neck.

After struggling with their clothes Hidan caged the older man more, letting their hard dicks stimulate each other.

“Shut up” Hidan muttered, too fixed to not crumble from the fireworks of his feelings. He hooked one hand around the other's leg, so he would get access. (Y/N) could only take a small shallow breath, not expecting Hidan sudden thrust. The whitehead stayed still by the sudden burning sensation and the other frowned at him. Their faces are contoured by pain and pleasure alike.

Not long the accumulated pre from the top let him move slowly, however he didn't get far with (Y/N)’s leg hooking around him. So he stayed still to let the other adjust. At that peaceful moment he swore quietly while rocking his hips to his ability. With that earning a deep moan in return and a mind numbing he knew they both shared. “P-please, move” His partner mumbled barely audibly. Hidan only huffed and gripped the leg which was trapping him with, accidentally, too much force.

His mind still hasn’t wrapped around the fact that he would feel every single thing he would do to the other, so naturally knees buckled at the feeling of someone breaching him and gripping him with a strength he didn’t know he possessed. It nearly made him let go, however the pained expression on the other let him continue. “Hah- don’t be such a pussy. Can’t even handle a bit of pain?” Hidan managed to hiss, what surprised him was the tight squeeze from (Y/N).

“Fuck-What a sick fucker you are, I bet you would get off if the Akatsuki saw you like that” The white head chuckled. (Y/N) closed his eyes in shame and slowly tried to rock his hips. His cock could even feel a hint of warmth, however it couldn't compare to his hot face while they did this sinful act. Hidan didn’t even really start to thrust and (Y/N) already cummed on their remaining clothes, without much warning.

Just as he wanted to swear he was hit with the same back arching pleasure. With a deep thrust he emptied himself. The both of them were left with a warm fuzzy feeling. While (Y/N) was just basking into the afterglow, Hidan let him nearly collapse.

“Help would be nice, ya know!” (Y/N) tried to frown and look intimidating. Hidan let a huff out and looked down at the once serious man, who now is looking with a beat red face and big eyes at the slowly normal turning skin of his. Hidan really could get used to having someone looking at him with such eyes and not robot-like ones that wanna kill him at every minute.

After coming down he looked down at the now sitting partner and he realised if he focused enough he could even see some dried tears in those once sharp eyes. Hidan only smiled at this and went to lie down too, deciding that being the best solution with (Y/N) still cock drunk.

The sky was already dark, so why not sleep a bit and just pray to Jashin-sama that no enemy shinobi tries to rob them. Or should others come, Hidan really needs some more sacrifices. With one last thought the white head's eyes grew heavy and he fell asleep into a dreamless dream, without a second glance at the other.

[athenese-dx]

Congrats Dear Partners!

It’s great to acknowledge the contributions of our business partners. Grow together! Grow More!!

Visit → https://athenesedx.com/news/icor-ioracon-2024/

#athenesedx #IVD #india #businessgrowth #businesspartner #achievement #clinicallaboratory #varanasi #UttarPradesh #medicallab #biochemistry #ioracon #ioraconference #thankyou #pathology #pathologylab #MedicalLabTechnician

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Sympathy for the spammer

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers – not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate "retail investors" who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).

It's ever been thus. The California gold rush was a con, and nearly everyone who went west went broke. Famously, the only reliable way to cash out on the gold rush was to sell "picks and shovels" to the credulous, doomed and desperate. That's how Leland Stanford made his fortune, which he funneled into eugenics programs (and founding a university):

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/9780316592031/

That means that the people who try to con you are almost always getting conned themselves. Think of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) scams. My forthcoming novel The Bezzle opens with a baroque and improbable fast-food Ponzi in the town of Avalon on the island of Catalina, founded by the chicle monopolist William Wrigley Jr:

http://thebezzle.org

Wrigley found fast food declasse and banned it from the island, a rule that persists to this day. In The Bezzle, the forensic detective Martin Hench uncovers The Fry Guys, an MLM that flash-freezes contraband burgers and fries smuggled on-island from the mainland and sells them to islanders though an "affiliate marketing" scheme that is really about recruiting other affiliate markets to sell under you. As with every MLM, the value of the burgers and fries sold is dwarfed by the gigantic edifice of finance fraud built around it, with "points" being bought and sold for real cash, which is snaffled up and sucked out of the island by a greedy mainlander who is behind the scheme.

A "bezzle" is John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." In every scam, there's a period where everyone feels richer – but only the scammers are actually cleaning up. The wealth of the marks is illusory, but the longer the scammer can preserve the illusion, the more real money the marks will pump into the system.

MLMs are particularly ugly, because they target people who are shut out of economic opportunity – women, people of color, working people. These people necessarily rely on social ties for survival, looking after each others' kids, loaning each other money they can't afford, sharing what little they have when others have nothing.

It's this social cohesion that MLMs weaponize. Crypto "entrepreneurs" are encouraged to suck in their friends and family by telling them that they're "building Black wealth." Working women are exhorted to suck in their bffs by appealing to their sisterhood and the chance for "women to lift each other up."

The "sales people" trying to get you to buy crypto or leggings or supplements are engaged in predatory conduct that will make you financially and socially worse off, wrecking their communities' finances and shattering the mutual aid survival networks they rely on. But they're not getting rich on this – they're also being scammed:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4686468

This really hit home for me in the mid-2000s, when I was still editing Boing Boing. We had a submission form where our readers could submit links for us to look at for inclusion on the blog, and it was overwhelmed by spam. We'd add all kinds of antispam to it, and still, we'd get floods of hundreds or even thousands of spam submissions to it.

One night, I was lying in my bed in London and watching these spams roll in. They were all for small businesses in the rustbelt, handyman services, lawn-care, odd jobs, that kind of thing. They were 10 million miles from the kind of thing we'd ever post about on Boing Boing. They were coming in so thickly that I literally couldn't finish downloading my email – the POP session was dropping before I could get all the mail in the spool. I had to ssh into my mail server and delete them by hand. It was maddening.

Frustrated and furious, I started calling the phone numbers associated with these small businesses, demanding an explanation. I assumed that they'd hired some kind of sleazy marketing service and I wanted to know who it was so I could give them a piece of my mind.

But what I discovered when I got through was much weirder. These people had all been laid off from factories that were shuttering due to globalization. As part of their termination packages, their bosses had offered them "retraining" via "courses" in founding their own businesses.

The "courses" were the precursors to the current era's rise-and-grind hustle-culture scams (again, the only people getting rich from that stuff are the people selling the courses – the "students" finish the course poorer). They promised these laid-off workers, who'd given their lives to their former employers before being discarded, that they just needed to pull themselves up by their own boostraps:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/#solidarity-forever

After all, we had the internet now! There were so many new opportunities to be your own boss! The course came with a dreadful build-your-own-website service, complete with an overpriced domain sales portal, and a single form for submitting your new business to "thousands of search engines."

This was nearly 20 years ago, but even then, there was really only one search engine that mattered: Google. The "thousands of search engines" the scammers promised to submit these desperate peoples' websites to were just submission forms for directories, indexes, blogs, and mailing lists. The number of directories, indexes, blogs and mailing lists that would publish their submissions was either "zero" or "nearly zero." There was certainly no possibility that anyone at Boing Boing would ever press the wrong key and accidentally write a 500-word blog post about a leaf-raking service in a collapsing deindustrialized exurb in Kentucky or Ohio.

The people who were drowning me in spam weren't the scammers – they were the scammees.

But that's only half the story. Years later, I discovered how our submission form was getting included in this get-rich-quick's mass-submission system. It was a MLM! Coders in the former Soviet Union were getting work via darknet websites that promised them relative pittances for every submission form they reverse-engineered and submitted. The smart coders didn't crack the forms directly – they recruited other, less business-savvy coders to do that for them, and then often as not, ripped them off.

The scam economy runs on this kind of indirection, where scammees are turned into scammers, who flood useful and productive and nice spaces with useless dross that doesn't even make them any money. Take the submission queue at Clarkesworld, the great online science fiction magazine, which famously had to close after it was flooded with thousands of junk submission "written" by LLMs:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

There was a zero percent chance that Neil Clarke would accidentally accept one of these submissions. They were uniformly terrible. The people submitting these "stories" weren't frustrated sf writers who'd discovered a "life hack" that let them turn out more brilliant prose at scale.

They were scammers who'd been scammed into thinking that AIs were the key to a life of passive income, a 4-Hour Work-Week powered by an AI-based self-licking ice-cream cone:

https://pod.link/1651876897/episode/995c8a778ede17d2d7cff393e5203157

This is absolutely classic passive-income brainworms thinking. "I have a bot that can turn out plausible sentences. I will locate places where sentences can be exchanged for money, aim my bot at it, sit back, and count my winnings." It's MBA logic on meth: find a thing people pay for, then, without bothering to understand why they pay for that thing, find a way to generate something like it at scale and bombard them with it.

Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that "you can't con an honest man." But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn't their honesty – it's their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.

These people reason – correctly – that all the people getting really rich are scamming. If Amazon can make $38b/year selling "ads" that push worse products that cost more to the top of their search results, why should the mere fact that an "opportunity" is obviously predatory and fraudulent disqualify it?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

The quest for passive income is really the quest for a "greater fool," the economist's term for the person who relieves you of the useless crap you just overpaid for. It rots the mind, atomizes communities, shatters solidarity and breeds cynicism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The rise and rise of botshit cannot be separated from this phenomenon. The botshit in our search-results, our social media feeds, and our in-boxes isn't making money for the enshittifiers who send it – rather, they are being hustled by someone who's selling them the "picks and shovels" for the AI gold rush:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

That's the true cost of all the automation-driven unemployment criti-hype: while we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The manic "entrepreneurs" who've been stampeded into panic by the (correct) perception that the economy is a game of musical chairs where the number of chairs is decreasing at breakneck speed are easy marks for the Leland Stanfords of AI, who are creating generational wealth for themselves by promising that their bots will automate away all the tedious work that goes into creating value. Expect a lot more Amazon Marketplace products called "I'm sorry, I cannot fulfil this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/12/24036156/openai-policy-amazon-ai-listings

No one's going to buy these products, but the AI picks-and-shovels people will still reap a fortune from the attempt. And because history repeats itself, these newly minted billionaires are continuing Leland Stanford's love affair with eugenics:

https://www.truthdig.com/dig-series/eugenics/

The fact that AI spam doesn't pay is important to the fortunes of AI companies. Most high-value AI applications are very risk-intolerant (self-driving cars, radiology analysis, etc). An AI tool might help a human perform these tasks more accurately – by warning them of things that they've missed – but that's not how AI will turn a profit. There's no market for AI that makes your workers cost more but makes them better at their jobs:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Plenty of people think that spam might be the elusive high-value, low-risk AI application. But that's just not true. The point of AI spam is to get clicks from people who are looking for better content. It's SEO. No one reads 2000 words of algorithm-pleasing LLM garbage over an omelette recipe and then subscribes to that site's feed.

And the omelette recipe generates pennies for the spammer that posted it. They are doing massive volume in order to make those pennies into dollars. You don't make money by posting one spam. If every spammer had to pay the actual recovery costs (energy, chillers, capital amortization, wages) for their query, every AI spam would lose (lots of) money.

Hustle culture and passive income are about turning other peoples' dollars into your dimes. It is a negative-sum activity, a net drain on society. Behind every seemingly successful "passive income" is a con artist who's getting rich by promising – but not delivering – that elusive passive income, and then blaming the victims for not hustling hard enough:

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/12/blueprint-trouble

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

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

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

[longitudinalwaveme]

Twister---Fictober 2024

Day 13: “That’s Not the Point.” 

“My weather wand is not a weapon! It was intended for humanitarian aid, not as a toy for you to sell to private military contractors,” Clyde Mardon insisted. Lex Luthor, the billionaire whose company was funding the majority of his research, gave him an oily smile. 

“Dr. Mardon, when I agreed to fund your little experiment, it was on the basis that my company and I would profit from it—and I have decided that your climate controlling machine will be most profitable to Lexcorp if it is marketed as an international security measure. Humanitarian aid has its place, but it doesn’t bring in very much money,” he said. 

“Mr. Luthor, when you started funding me, we signed a contract that gave me the right to determine when and how my device would be marketed by your company on the condition that company was the only one which would profit off of it. I’m fulfilling my end of the contract. I haven’t taken funding from any other company, and no other company has been given any access to my prototype. You will make a fortune from my weather wand, but not by marketing it as a weapon,” Clyde said. Lex Luthor’s eyes narrowed. 

“Dr. Mardon, I don’t think you understand our relative positions. I have been pouring millions into your research. Nothing you have made would have been possible without my wealth. You, in effect, work for me. So if you know what’s good for you, you will sign off on my marketing plan for your invention and act like you never dreamed that the wand would be used for anything else,” Lex Luthor said coldly. 

“And if I exercise my legal right to not sign off on your plans?” 

“I will ruin your reputation so thoroughly that you will never be able to work in your field again.” 

“Threaten me all you like, Mr. Luthor. I refuse to sign off on a marketing plan that would see my weather wand be used as an instrument of destruction.” 

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

Eleven months after his fateful meeting with Lex Luthor, Clyde Mardon’s life had been pretty thoroughly destroyed. LexCorp had stopped funding his research two days after he refused to sign off on Luthor’s advertising plan, and, thanks to the relentless smear campaign Lex Luthor had launched against him, not a single company or university had offered to fund him in LexCorp’s stead. This wasn’t problematic as far as the prototype of the weather wand was concerned, since he already had all the supplies he needed to complete it, but it was definitely problematic as far as marketing and selling it was concerned. He simply didn’t have the resources to produce such an expensive device en masse. 

What was more, since his funding had included an income for him as well as the resources for his research, when LexCorp had stopped funding him, it put him in need of finding a new job to pay the bills. This had seemed like it would be simple enough, but Lex Luthor had done such a good job of dragging his name through the mud that no one would hire him. Not laboratories, not universities, not even the high school in his home town—and they were desperate for a new science teacher.

 After about two months of being rejected for every post he applied for, one of his old college professors had called him and somewhat apologetically offered him a janitorial position in the college’s labs, saying that he personally knew that Clyde hadn’t done any of the things that he had been accused of but that he hadn’t been able to convince the rest of the college board of that fact. It had taken a lot of arguing just to convince the college to offer him a job at all. Clyde, who had by that point been living off his meager savings for five months and so barely had 500 dollars left in the bank, had accepted the job offer.

And when his parents had learned that their golden boy was keeping a roof over his head by washing bunsen burners and scrubbing lab floors, he suddenly wasn’t their golden boy anymore. His mamá had burst into tears and wailed about how disappointed she was in him, and his papá had called him a failure and told him not to call them again until he had something to show for all the money they had spent on putting him through college. Since 95% of Clyde’s college tuition had been covered by scholarships, and he had paid the remaining 5% himself, it wasn’t particularly clear what money his papá was talking about, but he hadn’t brought that fact up. Reasoning with his papá when he was angry was an exercise in futility. 

A few days later, Clyde had dropped by his parents’ house in the hope that his parents’ anger had blown over and that he would be able to patch things up with them. His papá had responded by telling him that a disgraced scientist wasn’t welcome on their property and then literally slamming the door in his face, and Clyde had been left with the knowledge that his parents, who had spent years living vicariously through his success, believed every lie Lex Luthor had told about him.

Ironically, the only member of his family who was still talking to him, and who had made it clear that he didn’t believe a word of Lex Luthor’s allegations, was the member of the family who had by far the most reason to want to believe the worst about him: his younger brother, Mark, who had grown up in his shadow and had been negatively compared to him by their parents more times than Clyde could count. 

He still believed he had been in the right to refuse to see his weather wand sold to the highest bidder as a weapon, but besides an unviolated conscience, what did he have? 

He had a younger brother who seemed to be perpetually in and out of jail, a dead-end job, and a prototype weather wand that he didn’t have the money to market or mass-produce. 

So much for his grand plans to save the world. 

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

“You’re going to turn me in?”

“I have to turn you in. It’s for your own good, Mark. You finish your time for burglary and pay your debts. They might even forget about this if you voluntarily—”

“You’re the only one I could come to. Clyde, please. I can’t go back!” Clyde knew why his brother was so afraid. The last time he had been incarcerated, Mark had been beaten to within an inch of his life, and that had been in jail. Now that he was on his third burglary conviction, he had been sentenced to prison. Clyde couldn’t blame Mark for being terrified, but all the same, he couldn’t harbor a fugitive on the run—-not even if that fugitive was his younger brother. 

“Central City Police Department. Officer Chyre speakin’.” 

“I can’t!” In a panic, Mark reached for the prototype weather wand, which had been gathering dust on a table for the past few months, but Clyde was closer to it and managed to grab it first. It lit up with electricity, and suddenly a lightning bolt snaked down out of the sky and struck his little brother. 

“Marco! No!” Clyde exclaimed as he ran over to his brother. He hadn’t meant to hurt Mark! All he had wanted was to keep him from grabbing the wand! 

Clyde’s panic only increased when he realized that his brother had gone into cardiac arrest, and he desperately started trying to perform what little he remembered of CPR. 

It wasn’t enough. By the time the police showed up at the observatory, his brother was already dead. 

“What happened here?” one of the officers asked. Clyde could understand why. Not only was he holding his prototype weather wand and cradling his brother’s dead body, but the lightning bolt he had accidentally summoned had torn a hole through his roof. 

“I…I killed him. I killed my own brother,” he said weakly. 

“How? I don’t see any obvious signs of injury,” the officer asked. 

“With…with this,” Clyde replied. He waved the wand, and suddenly heavy rain started falling through the hole in the roof.

“What in the world is that thing?” 

“It’s a prototype climate control device. It can summon up basically any kind of weather you can think of—wind, snow, sleet, hail—-and lightning. I struck my own brother with lightning, and it sent him into cardiac arrest.” 

“Who are you? And who’s your brother?” 

“I…I’m Dr. Clyde Mardon. My younger brother is Mark Mardon. He jumped a train that was supposed to be taking him to state prison for burglary a few hours ago, and turned up here a few minutes before I called you. I told him that I had to turn him in, and he panicked and grabbed for the wand—but I beat him to it. I just wanted to keep it away from him, but I guess….I guess I must have activated it somehow, because it brought down a lightning bolt and...and it killed him. I didn’t want to hurt him. I just wanted to keep the wand away from him. He didn’t know what it was for. I never told him exactly what I was building and—and—and now he’s dead. I…I killed him.” 

It didn’t occur to Clyde until he was handcuffed and sitting in the back of a patrol car that it was generally a bad idea to tell the police you’d killed someone. 

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

Five months after his brother’s death, Clyde found himself in a prison cell. Not for murder—his brother had been a fugitive, and as such the death had been ruled as accidental, if not outright self-defense—but for reckless endangerment and possession of an unlicensed and obviously very deadly weapon. Clyde had tried to argue that the wand was a prototype, and hadn’t been designed for offensive use, but it had no effect. He had been found guilty, and, no doubt thanks to the way that Lex Luthor had destroyed his reputation, the judge had thrown the book at him. He’d been sentenced to two years in prison—nearly as long as the sentence Mark would have served for burglary. 

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

When Clyde had started his prison sentence, he had assumed that his life would come to a very quick and messy end. After all, Mark had nearly been killed in jail, and he had assumed that the hardened criminals in prison would see him as an even easier target than his younger brother. 

He had been wrong. The story of how he had electrocuted his brother had made the rounds in the prison before he had even arrived there, and most of the inmates instead treated him with a wary sort of respect. Even the ones who made derisive comments did so from a safe distance; evidently, they didn’t want to see if the “mad scientist” might be able to dream up a way to electrocute them, too. 

As such, since Clyde obeyed the guards and kept his head down, he remained physically unscathed. 

His mental state was another story. His parents came to visit him exactly once—to disown him. He was a convicted felon now, and they wanted nothing more to do with him. 

“You’re worse than Marco ever was. At least we knew he would be a failure,” his mamá spat as the two of them left the prison. 

Then, of course, there was the fact that he now had plenty of free time on his hands—free time with which to try, and fail, not to think about how he had killed the little brother who had adored him and about how thoroughly his life had fallen apart in only a few years. Some days, he succeeded. More often, he didn’t. 

And being surrounded by criminals–-other criminals, really, since he was a felon now too—wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows. While they mostly respected/feared him enough to leave him alone, being constantly exposed to the anger and bitterness and envy and despair of the other prisoners fed his own negative emotions. 

What was more, even the guards—and those among his fellow convicts who weren’t so bitter or ruthless as to be unpleasant to be around—-seemed to avoid socializing with him. Usually, when he tried to strike up a conversation, they would beg off the conversation, claiming that they wouldn’t be very interesting company for a prodigy who had earned a doctorate at twenty-one. 

The one exception was a decidedly peculiar young man named Roscoe Dillon, an eighteen-year-old university student who had been convicted for getting into an altercation with a police officer after the officer in question had attempted to confiscate what he had believed to be a weapon but which had, in fact, been a top.  Mocking rumors in the prison stated that, upon his arrest, the young man had claimed that tops would ensure that he would be a success as an engineer, because he had come up with a satellite design that was based on the “inner principles of tops”, and that this was why he had reacted so violently to the officer trying to take the top away from him. 

What was definitely not a rumor, and had been broadcast on live television, was that Roscoe had gone to pieces during his trial, rocking back and forth, flapping his hands, and ultimately having a total emotional meltdown when his public defender had accidentally knocked the top he had brought with him to the trial off the table he had been seated at for the trial. Due to his obvious mental instability, the judge had sentenced him to six months in jail, but, after the young man tried to slice open his wrists with a shiv he had bought off of another prisoner, he had been transferred to state prison to serve out the rest of his sentence, on the basis of the fact that the prison had psychiatric medication on hand that simply hadn’t been available at the jail. 

That medication had evidently worked to at least some extent, since he was emotionally stable enough now, but emotional stability wasn’t enough to protect him from the older and more aggressive inmates, who sneered that he was “a lunatic” and “retarded” and whispered that he belonged “in the loony bin, not prison”. A few of them even seemed to take a perverse delight in holding him down, stealing the tops he bought from the prison canteen, and destroying them in front of him. 

He had tried fighting back once—and had promptly been sent to solitary when the others had claimed that he had attacked them because he was, quote, “a nutcase”. 

Upon being released, he had sought out Clyde and struck up a conversation with him, on the basis of having heard that Clyde had a doctorate in meteorology. He professed his own fascination with science—in his case, engineering—and the two of them ended up having a very rewarding discussion about physics. 

One conversation soon led to more, and, after a few weeks, Clyde and Roscoe had developed a friendship, or as close to a friendship as you could have in prison. While Clyde didn’t have the influence to protect Roscoe from the other inmates, he was someone for the younger man to talk to, and, even if roughly fifty percent of everything that came out of Roscoe’s mouth was related to tops in some way, Clyde was glad to listen. It helped him not think so much about how he had killed Mark, or about how he was a convicted felon and that his last hope of ever working in the field of meteorology again was now thoroughly dashed. What was more, a lot of what Roscoe talked about was genuinely interesting (even the chatter about the tops). In spite of his idiosyncrasies—Roscoe constantly rocked back and forth, would clamp his hands over his ears when things got too loud, could not stand the texture of the prison applesauce, and had trouble making eye contact—-he was also clearly brilliant, and had the makings of a great engineer in him. Since Roscoe had so clearly been unwell when he had committed his crime, Clyde hoped that he would still be able to become one someday. 

Seven months into Clyde’s sentence, Roscoe was released. Clyde was relieved to see him leave—-prison was no place for a young man with his peculiarities—-but at the same time, he couldn’t help feeling a little abandoned. Who was he supposed to talk to for the next seventeen months?  

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

When Clyde was released on parole after a year and a half behind bars, the idealistic young scientist had been replaced by a bitterly cynical ex-convict, one who didn’t have the slightest idea of what he was going to do with his life going forward. 

His brother was dead. His parents had disowned him. All of his friends had been tied up in his career as a scientist—-and his life as a scientist was over. No one would even trust him to scrub lab floors now. 

If I hadn’t had the foresight to buy the observatory while I was still being funded by LexCorp, he thought as he stepped out of the taxi that he had paid to take him to Big Water Lake, I wouldn’t even have a roof over my head. 

That being said, it wasn’t much of a home. Everything was covered in dust and grime, and no one had patched the hole in the ceiling, so parts of the floor were waterlogged and growing mold. But until he found a job, he wouldn’t have the money to replace the damaged flooring or to repair the hole. 

“Home, sweet home,” he muttered, and for a second he actually found himself wishing that he was still in prison. At least while he had been behind bars, he hadn’t had to worry about how he was going to support himself as a convicted felon. 

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

After three months of applying for every job he could find, no matter how overqualified he was for it, and being turned down every time, Clyde’s meager savings, most of which he had earned from the work he had done while behind bars, ran out. 

A week after that, the heating, electricity, and plumbing at the observatory were shut off because Clyde hadn’t had the money to pay the utility bills, and, in desperation, Clyde took the one possession he had that still seemed to work—-his car—and drove himself to the neighborhood where he had grown up.

As his car made his way through the streets of Bridgeville, Clyde couldn’t help but morbidly wonder if anyone in the town that had put him on a pedestal and sung his praises when he was a teenaged prodigy would even be willing to hire him to rake their leaves. At this point, even that sounded too good to be true. 

He pulled into his parents’ driveway and swallowed hard. The odds were good that this was just going to end in more embarrassing humiliation, but he had nowhere else to go. He stepped out of his car, hoping against hope that his parents would remember that they had loved him once, walked up to the front of the house, and knocked on the door. 

“Claudio? What are you doing here?” his mamá asked. 

“I…I need a place to stay. I've exhausted all of my savings, and the utilities at my home have been shut off because I can’t pay the bills. I want to support myself. I want to work— but I’ve been applying for jobs for months, and no one will hire me. Please, mamá —-I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Clyde pleaded. His mamá’s face softened. 

“I’ll…I’ll ask my husband. But the decision is his, Claudio,” she said. She disappeared inside the house and came back a few minutes later with his papá. 

“Why should I shelter a convicted felon?” he asked. 

“I know you’re angry with him, Mattías. I am, too, but—well, look at him. He’s so thin,” his mamá said. 

“And you’re willing to accept the disgrace of having him in our house, Paloma?” 

“It’s better than turning him out to beg—and he is—he was—”

“He is not our son. We don’t have a son. But if it eases your mind, I’ll let him stay.” Clyde almost collapsed in relief.

“Thank you, papá,” he said quietly. 

“I hope you don’t think that this is going to be some sort of a vacation. As long as you’re under my roof, you’ll be expected to take care of all the chores that need to be done. Once you find a job, you’ll turn over half your income to me until you earn enough money to move out. And you are not to address me as ‘papá’. I expect you to call me ‘Mr. Mardon’ or ‘sir’. Are we clear?” 

“Yes, sir. We’re clear,” Clyde replied weakly. It’ll only be until I get back on my feet, he told himself. I survived a year and a half in prison, I’ll be able to survive this, too. 

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

After two months at his papá’s beck and call, Clyde was at his wits’ end. He didn’t mind the work—he did, after all, owe his parents for letting him live in their house—but the constant criticism and insults were driving him up the wall, and were giving him a new appreciation for why Mark had run away from home. Few things were more demotivating than having someone respond to everything you did by saying it wasn’t good enough. 

The final straw came one evening when Clyde had accidentally knocked over the coffee pot while cleaning the kitchen. His papá didn’t go on a tirade. He didn’t have to. Instead, he simply grabbed Clyde by the collar and said, 

“You should have died with your brother. You’d be less of a burden to us if you had.” Clyde took the words like a blow, and, as he tried to fall asleep in his room—the room that had once belonged to Mark, and had originally been designed as a closet—-they kept circulating through his brain, over and over.

His own father wished that he was dead. Even though he had finally found a job and was paying his papá half of his salary, even though he had been working as his papá’s housekeeper for months without even so much as a “thank you”, even though he had shrugged off all of the complaints and the insults and the snide remarks, his father still wished that he was dead.

And given the wages he made, if he kept paying his papá half of his salary, it would be a decade before he was able to move out on his own. How was he supposed to survive a decade of constantly being told that he was a failure and an embarrassment?

Was this his papá’s way of punishing him for not being dead? 

Unlike Mark, whose temper had flared quickly but would be gone in a day, Clyde took a very long time to lose his cool—but his anger burned even longer.

And the realization that his papá was deliberately punishing him for something he couldn’t control, after a few years of being punished again and again and again for having had the nerve to stand up to Lex Luthor, was what finally pushed Clyde over the edge into a deadly fury. 

He had wanted to help people. He had wanted to save the world. And he had been rewarded for that by losing everything—his reputation, his job, his parents, his freedom, his clean record, his independence, and, most of all, his little brother. The one who had died at his hands in a horrible accident. It wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t right.

But he would make it right. With his wand, he had the power to make it right. He couldn’t bring his brother back, but he could make the world change so that no one else would ever die.  

Lex Luthor had wanted the wand to be a weapon. Clyde had been sent to prison on the assumption that that was what it was. So Clyde would earn his sentence by making it into a weapon—a weapon he would use to force the world to change.

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

Two days after he left his parents’ house, Clyde Mardon broke into the Central City branch of LexCorp, where his prototype weather wand had been sent when he was arrested, and escaped with both the wand and several thousand dollars. 

A week after that, a struggling tailor with an unusual sideline received a fat check and a request for a costume that would suit a man who could control the weather in the mail. 

And four days after that, the Weather Wizard struck downtown Central City with the force of a hurricane. After giving a demonstration of his power by destroying the LexCorp building (after making sure that all the employees made it out of the building), he gave the city a choice: they could either turn over the city to him voluntarily, and let him fix the mess that it had gotten itself into, or be forced into it by the power of the elements themselves. 

And then the Flash had shown up.

 Clyde hadn’t wanted to fight him. The Flash was a hero. They were on the same side!

“You’re threatening to destroy the city. I don’t see how that’s very heroic.” 

“I’m not trying to destroy the city. I’m trying to save it from itself.” 

“By destroying buildings and threatening innocent lives?” Clyde felt a pang of guilt. True, he had ensured that everyone had been evacuated from the LexCorp building before he had destroyed it, but what if someone had been trapped inside? He already had his brother’s death on his conscience. He didn’t think he would be able to handle any more. 

“I don’t want to hurt anyone. I want to save the world. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. But because of the man who owns the building I destroyed, this is the only way I can do it. He took everything else from me.” The Flash’s eyes went wide. 

“You…you’re not just some random crook. You’re the man who built the weather wand. You’re Dr. Clyde Mardon,” he said. Clyde laughed. 

“‘Doctor’? It’s been so long since anyone called me that, I almost forgot I had the title.” 

“Dr. Mardon, please. Think about what you’re doing! Can’t you see how insane this is?”  

“If I’m so insane, Flash, what do you suggest I do? Go back to slaving away for the parents who wish I’d died with my brother? Go back to a life where I’ll never be able to help anyone else—because I can’t even help myself?” 

“Dr. Mardon, I can understand why you’re upset, but that doesn’t give you the right to lash out at everyone else.” 

“I’m not lashing out at them. I want to help them. I’m going to fix things, so that no one ever has to go through what I went through. So that no one else will ever have to die like my brother died,” Clyde insisted. 

“And you think you can accomplish that with threats? By destroying buildings?” 

“Threats seem to work very well for Lex Luthor.” 

“So you’re going to sink to his level?” 

“I have to. The only thing men like him understand is brute force. And if you stand in my way—I’ll have to deal with you in the same way.” 

And Clyde had tried. That was how he learned that the Flash could run faster than lighting. 

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

For the next few years, the Weather Wizard operated alone. While he was respected in the criminal underworld for his power and ambitions, most criminals were wary of joining his “crusade”, and, among those who did want to join, most of them were far too fond of casual cruelty. Force was a regrettable necessity on the path to saving the world, but it was certainly not something that should be indulged in for one’s own gratification. 

And working on his own meant that he would never risk getting close to anyone; would never accidentally kill another person he cared for in the way that he had killed Mark.

But a blustery fall day changed all that. 

As Clyde was making some needed adjustments to his weather wand, he suddenly heard voices coming from outside of the apartment that he had rented. 

“You sure about this guy, Dillon? I’ve seen him on the news enough to know he’s powerful, but word on the street is that he’s all wrapped up in some mission to fix the world.”

“Quite sure. I met him during my first stint in prison, and I assure you that he will make an excellent addition to our group.” Clyde identified the second voice as belonging to Roscoe Dillon, the odd young man he had befriended in prison many years ago, and who had gone on to become the supervillain known as the Top. What was he doing here?

“And you sure he ain’t gonna cause trouble?”

“I shouldn’t think he would. He was very kind to me, and he is extremely intelligent and competent.”

“Fine. Then let’s make the pitch.” There was a loud knock on his door, and Clyde walked over to it and opened it. Standing on the other side was Roscoe Dillon, who wasn’t quite as baby-faced as Clyde remembered him being, and a man whose blue glasses allowed Clyde to identify him as Captain Cold. 

“You the Weather Wizard?” 

“I am.”

“I’m Captain Cold, and this is the Top. Apparently, he’s met you before, and, since we’re looking to expand our operations, he suggested that we invite you to join our group. We call ourselves the Rogues. Are you interested?” 

“I don’t think you understand. I don’t do what I do because I want money or power. That’s not the point of being the Weather Wizard,” Clyde said. 

“Right, right. You do it to save the world, or some stupid crap like that. But that don’t mean that you can’t use a team to watch your back while you do it,” Captain Cold said gruffly. 

“And what do you get out of this? What do you want in exchange for ‘watching my back’?” Clyde asked. 

“You watchin’ ours. Face it, we can all use all the help we can get against the Scarlet Speedster,” Captain Cold said. 

“I do hope that you will at least consider joining us. I have a great deal of respect for your intellect, and it would be nice to have someone to talk to about engineering,” the Top added. 

“I’m not sure you really want me to join. I seem to bring very bad luck to the people I care about,” Clyde said quietly. The Top cocked his head. 

“Curious. You brought me nothing but good luck when we were in prison together. If it hadn’t been for you, I do not think I would have made it out alive.” 

“I suppose that’s true—but…but…” 

“But what?” 

“I loved my brother Mark more than anyone in the world. I wanted only the best for him—and I ended up being the one to kill him. I…I won’t be able to live with myself if it happens again.” 

“Is that all you’re worried about? Doc, all us Rogues are more than capable of protectin’ ourselves. You ain’t gonna cause no problems we haven’t seen before.” 

“In that case, I will join on one condition.” 

“What’s that?” 

“My weather wand is a weapon, but it is not one to be used for the sake of casual cruelty. I use it to destroy, when necessary, and to delay the Flash—but not to kill. Not when I already have blood on my hands.” Captain Cold grinned. 

“Then you’ll fit in just fine. I have a policy against lettin’ my guys kill. I’m a common thug, but even I got standards—and I ain’t got no time for anyone who thinks that butcherin’ civilians makes ‘em look big. You got yourself a deal.” 

“Welcome to the Rogues, Dr. Mardon.”

[britt-kageryuu]

Donnie and Mikey are streaming together today. Their models are wearing shirts reading 'Smarts and Crafts Team', blue jeans, lab coats, safety glasses, gloves, and boots. They're messing with some science based crafts on the AR set. Shelldon and River sitting on the a box that has the chat box overplayed on it.

"So we got some resin to try out some crafts we found online." Mikey announced while they put some drop cloths on the floor around the table. "But we don't trust something not spilling, and this stuff can get tricky to clean if things go wrong."

"Which is part of why we're using UV resin, that we can just pop in the basking room for a bit to let set." Donnie says, in flat tone that sounds a bit sarcastic, "We're going to start simple, then work up to complicated, though that may go in reverse with us."

Mikey goes off screen to grab some supplies. While Donnie puts the big bottles of resin on the counter.

A cartoony turtle shell slides across the screen to have cartoon Mikey pop out with fan fare, coins tossed around, and Miss. PaintSlatter Donated $30!

Mikey jogs back in to check the notification. "Thank You, Miss. PaintSplatter for the $30. Oh 'Do Shelldon and River have access to mobile games? Hey Dee?"

"Shelldon doesn't play mobile games, but River plays Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. Partially for the app exclusive items you send to New Horizons, partially to befriend Villagers she wants, but can't find in NH." Donnie answers while he sets up some small molds. Then picks up and tests a heat gun.

"Well, we got the resin, pigments, molds, mold release, heat gun, little charms we plan to put into the resin. Are we missing anything?" Mikey askes.

"Spare gloves, paper towels, and the tall trashcan!" River answers back, then smacks the chatbots out of the chat box!

"And proper ventilation, or maskes." Shelldon says with a bit of snark.

"Right, I'll go get the portable ventilation, and trashcan and Mikey, please grab our ventilator masks from the art closet, a box of gloves, and the paper towels." Donnie instructs while they go grab said items.

Shelldon and River are left to entertain chat.

"What did I find that scared Dee? Sorry, we have been sworn to secrecy under threat of having our game libraries memory reset to no save files." River says.

Shelldon nods with his eyes closed. "And I don't have access to the file that was sent because Dee blocked me from getting it."

"FOR GOOD REASON!" Donnie tells from across the room, as he brings in what looked like an air purifier with a long tube sticking out of the back. "And for those who are confused, yes this is the portable ventilation system. Yes, it's a air purifier that I found in the dump, and heavily modified it." He announces with a bit of pride, "While I'm sure I could find something like this on the market, I wanted to build one myself."

Mikey also returns with his stuff, and organized the counter a bit so there's less of a chance of something getting knocked over.

They proceeded to finish set up, and get started on some simple resin experiments. And at least one small spillover and frantic clean up, before shouting 'You saw nothing!' And a 'Clip Recorded and Saved' from both Shelldon and River, who don't mention it right away.

Chat was still begging for the info of what Scared Dee, but after some were knocked out it calmed down, people started giving suggestions on what the guys could do with the resin.

----------------------

Masterpost

My actual favorite nickname for Donnie is Tello, and I want to have River call him 'Tello Tello', but that can't really happen with most of my story. Unless I can think of another behind the scenes post.

[cloverdaisies]

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— “i want you to make the darkness disappear. i want to drive to crazy. my love is dangerous.”

how to build perfect humans ⊹ thriller / romance * 2.3k

— somewhere in the f u t u r e, undercover agents are trailing the government creation of microchips, inserted into the human brain to collect information in order create a generation of ai that will infiltrate and eventually eliminate all need for the last survivors of the human race. time is ticking…

… NEXT

97’ ➵ YOUNGHOON

gingerbread man ⊹˚. fluff / 0.8k

— “a late night stroll through the xmas markets with boyfriend!younghoon, carols being sung in the distance, the smell of freshly baked gingerbread men and children building snowmen nearby; the feeling of christmas.”

… NEXT

97’ ➵ HYUNJAE

hey chat! ⊹ fluff / streamer au

— two streamers get paired to win a competition between their fellow streamers! most popular man on the app, jae.mp3 ! gets paired with smaller streamer y.n.xi ! will they win? or will they not be able to work together at all? let’s see how they get on! <3

… NEXT

98’ ➵ JUYEON

slow it down ⊹ thriller

— hi (your name) you’ve been invited to play RACEFORTIME! do you accept yes or no? nerve au

nearly witches ⊹ angst

christmas lights ⊹ angst / fluff / 2k+

— the city was lonely, as they say home is where the heart is. as you return to see your childhood friends for the annual christmas get together, old faces resurface unhealed wounds that you wish you could rewind

series: genesis angst / fluff / post apocalyptic au

— ‘the world was destroyed by nuclear warfare, 177 years later the only survivors were those living in a large system of underground bunkers, with food supply running short and rationing proving no longer effective. the higher council decide to send the younger generation of juveniles to the surface to test the earth’s survivability.’

… NEXT

98’ ➵ KEVIN

earth to kevin ⊹ fluff / safe place au

— the boy that lives in outerspace has to make contact with the real world eventually, this short piece documents his small amount of contact with earth. when someone with a raincloud over their world collides with someone that lives in complete disassociation from reality.

… NEXT

98’ ➵ CHANHEE

# ur such an emo! ⊹˚. angst / fluff * / 4.1k+

— “a preppy boy meets his unconventional match in one of the school’s most hated emo’s. from lab partners to cleaning buddies: the events that caused social royalty to fall in love with someone from the very bottom of the high school food chain.”

… NEXT

98’ ➵ CHANGMIN

wish you were sober ⊹ angst / suggestive.

— “nineteen but you act 25 now. real sweet but i wish you were sober.” a ji changmin very lightly suggestive? angst? based on conan gray’s wish you were sober.

art class ⊹ fluff * 5k+

—“your crush on your art professor might be affecting your grades, he was just perfect but you’re just a student. how you accidentally fell in love with art class for the wrong reasons…”

… NEXT

00’ ➵ SUNWOO

media studies ⊹ fluff / diary au

— this document contains a letter to the pretty boy who sits quietly in the back of a poorly lit media studies classroom. ☆

fantasize ⊹ suggestive

— “i fantasize about it all the time if you were mine.. ♪” there was something about your coworker that made you want him, maybe it was his cherry red lips or every charming word that slipped from them - whatever it was, you couldn’t resist. ʚїɞ

piece of string ⊹ fluff

— dear sunwoo, autumn nights are always better when they’re spent with you. please don’t hide yourself, you know you’re safe with me.

… NEXT

00’ ➵ ERIC

trouble to me ⊹ suggestive ish

— should’ve known he was a bad guy, maybe all the red flags would be a good sign? are you really gonna let eric sohn take you on a test drive?

how to survive senior year ⊹˚. fluff * 5k+

— a chaotic how to guide on surviving high school with an 𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 crush on the skater boy with the locker next to urs.

COMING SOON…

97’ ➵ JACOB

𝗈𝗈𝗉𝗌 ! 𝗇𝗈𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗁𝖺𝗌 𝖻𝖾𝖾𝗇 𝗉𝗅𝖺𝗇𝗍𝖾𝖽 𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾 𝗒𝖾𝗍!

99’ ➵ HAKNYEON

𝗈𝗈𝗉𝗌 ! 𝗇𝗈𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗁𝖺𝗌 𝖻𝖾𝖾𝗇 𝗉𝗅𝖺𝗇𝗍𝖾𝖽 𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾 𝗒𝖾𝗍!

‘I KNOW WHO YOU PRETEND I AM’

I KNOW.. WHO YOU PRETEND I AM’