#Multibillion-Dollar Industry

[xtruss]

Five Things You Should Know Before Trusting That Supplement

Collagen. Probiotics. Every Letter of Vitamin Under the Sun. Your Local Drugstore is Full of Them—But How Much Do They Actually Do For You?

— By Amy McKeever | February 28, 2024

Rows of Gel Capsules on a Blue Surface. Although Dietary Shupplements have Become a Multibillion-Dollar Industry, they're not all effective—and some could even be harmful. Photograph By Helner Müller-Elsner, Laif/Redux

What if you could take one pill and suddenly have more energy, better skin, and a healthier heart? That’s the promise that beckons every time I walk by the supplements aisle at my local drugstore—filled with fish oil capules, jugs of collagen powder, magnesium chews, and every letter of vitamin under the sun.

It’s tempting. So it’s no wonder that supplements are projected to balloon to a $200-Billion Global Industry By 2025.

But I've always had a healthy dose of skepticism about how much any of these supplements can really do and whether they’re worth the cost. These are some of the insights from our previous reporting on supplements—with the very important caveat that you should always consult your doctor first about health decisions.

1) Supplements Aren’t Strictly Regulated.

Nearly every story we’ve published about supplements hits on one key point: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate dietary supplements in the same way as it does food and drugs—meaning companies don’t need to submit products to the FDA for approval before putting them on the market.

This can lead to some misleading labels. Jen Messer, a registered dietitian and president elect of the New Hampshire Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, pointed our reporter Daryl Austin to an analysis of 57 dietary supplements. It found that 84 percent didn’t contain the amount of ingredients claimed, 40 percent didn’t have any of the ingredients claimed—and 12 percent “contained undeclared ingredients, which is prohibited by the FDA," she said in our November 2023 article.

It also means that companies don’t need to provide the FDA with evidence that their products actually do what their labels purport to do. “It's the Wild West right now,” David Hibbett, a professor of biology at Clark University, told us in our January 2024 story about the booming market of mushroom supplements like chaga and lion’s mane. “The evidence is still very, very limited and, certainly in my mind, does not warrant the very strong marketing of these products as nutritional supplements.”

2) Not Everyone Should Take Them—Even Multivitamins.

I grew up thinking that taking a multivitamin a day was the epitome of health, but this isn’t true for everyone, we reported in June 2023—and you should consult a doctor before you start a daily multivitamin regimen.

There are a few reasons why. For one, multivitamins can interfere with certain drugs like antibiotics or blood thinners. Additionally, people with liver or kidney disease might not be able to efficiently clear the high levels of nutrients contained in a multivitamin. Finally, it’s possible for anyone to get too much of a good thing. (More on this in a bit.)

Ultimately, as with everything, it comes down to your individual needs.

3) The Body Doesn’t Break All Vitamins Down the Same Way.

But it’s not just your own personal health factors to keep in mind. Some vitamins are also absorbed differently in the body—which can make a big difference in deciding whether to take them.

Experts warned in a story we published in November 2023 to be particularly careful with vitamins A and E because they are fat-soluble. This means that the body stores these nutrients in your liver and fatty tissues for future use rather than quickly breaking them down and metabolizing them as it does for other types of vitamins. Large doses of either one could actually harm you.

4) It’s Possible to Overdo It.

As I’ve been alluding to here, there is such a thing as vitamin toxicity—or consuming so much of these nutrients that they actually begin to harm rather than help you.

Take, vitamin A, for example: Exceeding the daily upper intake limit of 3,000 micrograms can ultimately cause issues like joint pain, liver damage, and birth defects. High doses of vitamin E can interfere with blood clotting, causing hemorrhages, among other issues. And an excess of vitamin D can cause nausea, muscle weakness, confusion, vomiting, and dehydration.

5) Food is the Best Way to Get Nutrients.

Many nutrients like collagen and vitamin C are already abundant in the foods that make up a typical diet—and eating whole, unprocessed foods, such as fiber-rich vegetables and fruit, is often a more efficient way to get the vitamins, minerals, and probiotics your body needs, Cleveland Clinic nutritionist Gail Cresci told us in March 2023. “Taking a probiotic or a probiotic supplement," she said, "isn’t going to fix a bad diet."

[remyfire]

I admittedly do love watching creators be sheepish about and ultimately embrace tropes because tropes are how I and mine make our living, and they are my favorite.

[ephemeral-winter]

something i fundamentally don't understand about esports twitch etc is that i still don't understand the audience at all. maybe i just spent too much time at a formative age being ignored by a boy i liked while he played mario kart but it is literally like watching paint dry. to me

[mynamesdrstuff]

the ghost of frida kahlo appearing every time I consider doing anything to my eyebrows:

[mossmx]

In my scale of fucked up things to find sexy worms it's DEFINITELY not weird...

and that says a lot about my life lol

in all seriousness though I go by taxonomy so worms are more "acceptably" sexy than plants because our LCA is closer

On the other hand plants survived by being so sexy that all other beings help them reproduce...

So I guess the only thing I can be sure of is that rocks are the weirdest thing to want to fuck in my fuckability scale lol

[txttletale]

the fact that US college sports is a whole multibillion dollar industry is fucking insane and perverse. talking to people whose like entire towns sports culture is based around university teams where the athletes dont even get fucking paid is like if you woke up tomorrow and plays could only be held at mcdonalds and every theater troupe had to be mcdonalds employees and people thought this was normal. like what is going on over there

[butch-reidentified]

so very interesting to me how doctors are awful & regressive & harmful for "assigning" babies a "gender" at birth (which doctors make $0 off of - they make money off of the birth, sure, but not the "assignment" itself), but so based & progressive & selfless for giving anyone and everyone, including children, life-altering experimental treatment & irreversible surgeries with minimal or zero vetting and misinformed/uninformed "consent" (which is a multibillion dollar industry)

[amaditalks]

Every year all of the big diet companies have to come up with some brand new labeling for their plans in order to encourage people to get on the January weight loss train.

This year, Weight Watchers is going further than they’ve ever gone before, by announcing that they have created a new system to give their members access to prescriptions for drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro.

Let me remind you that these drugs only work while you’re taking them. As soon as you stop, all of your appetite comes back. Your desire to eat returns, and because it has been artificially suppressed it may feel much stronger and less controllable than it was before you took the drugs. Many people who come off these drugs, usually because of cost (because insurers are balking at coverage for weight loss) or shortages (because so many people are taking them for weight loss, which is leaving the diabetics who need them up shit creek) or side effects report that the first weeks are really difficult, mentally painful and often binging occurs.

Additionally, all of these drugs carry a real risk of creating a terribly painful and potentially deadly condition called Gastroparesis, in which your gastrointestinal system just stops functioning, you cannot digest and process food at all.

You do not need to lose weight to be healthy. You do not need to lose weight to be beautiful or attractive, to have success, or love. You do not need to lose weight in order to pursue fitness. If you have particular health needs or goals that can only be achieved by changing the way you eat, (e.g. lowering cholesterol or blood glucose or addressing gastro issues) that does not mean that you need a weight loss diet plan, just one designed toward your needs.

But more than anything, you do not ever need to put another penny into the coffers of the multibillion dollar weight loss industry, which, if it actually had a way to take a fat person and make them thin permanently (something that cannot even be achieved by surgeries that drastically rearrange digestive systems) would be a multi quadrillion dollar industry instead. 

[mokulule]

The Number You Have Called Cannot Be Reached 1

So figured I could show what else I am working on aside from Salt in the Bones with @clockwayswrites. I still blame Clock for this though, they are way too fun to brainstorm with, and I have too many WIPs already. Ship: Dead on Main (Danny/Jason) Warnings: angst/depression and canon typical violence

Danny was sick and tired of this city, this entire dimension in fact. And this vigilante family, or whatever they were, were more dogged in their pursuit of him than the GIW or his parents had ever been - all this for a few gizmos.

Danny rolled his eyes and ducked a kick from the most violent midget since Youngblood.

Seriously he was just trying to build a portal home, and it wasn’t like he was hurting anyone. He’d mostly stolen from villains anyway! And Wayne industries was like a multibillion dollar company, they shouldn’t miss a few scraps or prototypes. It would hardly put a dent in their budget.

Midget was back on his feet and had now drawn a freaking sword. Yeah, this was it, Danny needed to leave before bigger and battier arrived. He faked left but then spun right around the probably actual literal kid with the real sword, jumped to the railing and kicked off towards the next rooftop. Ignoring gravity’s pull for a just a couple of seconds was the only reason he landed safely on the other roof.

He felt a moment of worry that the kid would try following him and glanced back, but the child was fuming in safety on the other side, having lost that grappling gun thing he used earlier in the chase, it seemed Danny was safe for now. The kids mouth was moving, probably talking to more of the heroes.

He wasn’t gonna be safe for long, but Danny allowed himself a moment to breathe in relief. Suddenly his breath stuck coldly in his throat and he froze. Impossible! The shades of this city barely tickled his throat, he hadn’t met anything that would even halfway classify as a ghost to his senses. Urgency was like a cold hand around his throat, a desperate longing hummed in his core as he slowly spun trying to get a sense of where - he only managed to see a blur of red before a heavy weight knocked into him slamming him to the ground. The cold mist in his throat was pushed out in a pained oof, and his head bounced first on one thing then another, but that didn’t matter because his core was singing; close, not alone, hug!

Danny’s head spun, his whole body felt pained and smushed. A man, no a freaking tank, was laying on top of him. Body armor dug into his ribs, probably something there was bent or broken and he felt certain that ominous red helmet had left a mark where it hit his forehead. Also his hair felt a bit wet beneath him. Yet that didn’t matter because he was so overwhelmed, warm with hands and feet tingling from the humming joy in his chest. Hug! His core sang again.

Somewhere in the fog in his head he recognized this was no hug, but he hurt, his head was spinning, and he was not alone and he was happy and wasn’t that more important than a bit of pain? Oo o oO

Jason was unsure what was going on.

He’d managed to tackle the elusive thief Dick had so “creatively” nicknamed the Ghost for his ability to go invisible and the inability for them to land a decent hit on him. In fact if he hadn’t seen footage from previous run-ins with the man, Jason would have thought they wildly exaggerated his skills.

After all the man had frozen up strangely when Jason pulled himself onto the rooftop as he listened only with half an ear to the demon brat angrily grumbling in the comms, that he would have had him had he not been a coward who ran away all the time. Their thief was slowly turning around as if looking for something, the green glass of his goggles reflected in the moonlight and for a moment gave the illusion they were glowing.

Jason had not wasted a moment, got to his feet, crossed the distance in a mere three large steps before he crashed into the man - so, he’d halfway expected the man to move and therefore hadn’t prepared to soften another person’s landing. His helmet hit the shorter man’s forehead and his head rebounded and hit the roof with a sound that made Jason internally wince. The next moment there was a snapping sound and a gasp as the man’s ribcage was caught between the roof and Jason - he really wore no armor, just that thin hoodie. No matter what B said about the danger of the stolen items, Jason was really starting to doubt they had a budding super villain on hand.

He immediately made a move to get up, but stopped, a strange feeling of something overtaking him. It took a moment for him to discern because of the dichotomy, but it was… happiness? What the fuck, it wasn��t his emotions, that made no sense. The pits had only ever sent him rage and in rare moments gruesome satisfaction. This was joy, he felt almost like he was floating caught in a wave at the beach, weightless, happy, warm in the sun. He shook his head pushing the foreign emotions away like he would the pit and focused on his dazed perp.

There was something wet glistening in his unruly black hair.

“Fuck,” Jason muttered, thankfully too low for the helmet to project, but loud enough that he got a breathless but insistent “report” back from Bruce where he was clearly hurrying toward their destination.

“I knocked the Ghost down, he’s bleeding from a head wound,” he muttered at his comms as he pulled the goggles up to get a look his eyes to check for signs of concussion, but immediately froze. The goggles, he’d thought it was a trick of the light earlier, but no, his eyes were glowing - bright and green and just a shade lighter than the Lazarus pits. A shudder ran cold down his back. Somehow the foreign emotions were coming from him, Jason was sure of it, but it explained absolutely nothing! Unrestrained joy? Was this some kind of shock response?

More footsteps landed on the roof and Jason didn’t need to look to know it was Bruce with the Brat along for the ride. He finally remembered he’d been trying to get off the other man at some point.

Oo o oO

No, no, no, Danny’s core protested when the other ghost moved away, and he clutched onto what he could grab, which he dazedly recognized as a very nicely muscled arm. The other arm, because human shaped ghosts have two arms (good job Danny), supported Danny by holding onto one of his arms and that was good. Getting upright gave him the worst moment of vertigo, and his breath whooshed out of him. His legs were like jello and didn’t support him, but that didn’t matter, because his new friend had a good firm grip, could probably even hold him up entirely without Danny clutching his arm, good friend, mine. He butted his head into his chest because that was what he could reach and just leaned there. His core hummed so happily he felt like he’d almost shake apart.

Friend.

Mine

Good friend

…

Why no response?…

Hello? Danny was confused, why wasn’t he getting a response. Also why did his head and chest hurt so bad?

“Tt, what is the matter with him?”

The question, delivered in a haughty voice was like a bucket of ice water on his senses. He gasped and pushed away from where he’d been nuzzling some guy’s chest! Alarmed, he stumbled, but dodged the hands reaching for him, to support him, to catch him, he wasn’t sure. There was the big bat and the midget and the tank in the red helmet; the guy who felt like a ghost and he just wanted nothing more than to go back to him, and- Danny shuddered taking another step back, his face was hot and flaming red right now. This was, this was- he couldn’t-

Hiding his powers be damned; he sunk through the roof.

So embarrassing! He closed his eyes fighting tears as he sank down down down, all the way into the ground where they for sure couldn’t follow him. All the while his insides screamed, because he didn’t want to be lonely anymore. Fuck, he just wanted to go home.

He was so sick and tired of this city.

So... yeah hope you enjoyed this, now I can reveal why I blame Clock, they said and I quote "Danny, like a cat with catnip suddenly" and now Danny is a cat, what can you do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Jason's gonna have to lure this feral ghost in slowly with food and hugs.

edited with link to the next part:next Masterpost where you can subscribe: link

[flowerishness]

Inula helenium (elecampane) and Apis mellifera (western or European honey bee)

Elecampane is native to Eurasia, from Spain to western China, but has become 'naturalized 'in parts of North America. This healthy specimen is growing on the west coast of Canada. This plant's species name, helenium, refers to Helen of Troy.  Her abduction by Paris of Troy led to the Trojan War. In Greek mythology, elecampane sprung up from where her tears fell on the ground.

It's only fitting that this elecampane is being pollinated by another imported species, the European honey bee. Centuries of careful selection have created honey bees which produce far more honey than the colony needs, and beekeepers harvest the surplus honey. Honey bees are a multibillion dollar industry, used mainly as pollination services for commercial, monoculture crops. But these worker bees are obviously 'slacking off' and getting a taste of their distant homeland. I bet their babies love elecampane-flavored honey.

[redroomreflections]

Not Easily Broken Chapter 3

Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Reader

Summary: Natasha and Reader go through a tragic divorce

Masterlist | General Masterlist

3/10

Note: Yes, it's getting finished besties.

W/c: 6k (whew!)

TW: Mention of miscarriage

Natasha wasn’t your first kiss but she’s the first kiss that mattered. You can remember that moment like it was yesterday. The first time she placed her lips on yours. Eleven years ago if you remember it correctly. You had recently been appointed the Creative Director at Stark Industries. Besides Pepper Potts, you were Tony's, right-hand man. You were the woman in charge of overseeing every single creative process dealing with the multibillion-dollar company. You spent more time traveling and in the office than you liked but it came with its perks. With a great salary and good benefits package you wouldn’t complain at all even if most of your time was spent rolling your eyes at the ideas Tony would come up with.

You would see Natasha briefly during your time at the tower. She would be in the room one second and gone the next. It was only after getting to know her you realized that Natasha purposely distanced herself from everyone and everything. There were only three women in the world who could scare Tony Stark. Pepper Potts, Natasha Romanoff, and you. You’d giggle at every snide remark Tony would make only after Natasha had left the room. You would agree with her on many of the times she put him in his place. The more you saw Natasha the more you wanted to know the woman behind the moniker Black Widow. Without knowing why you made it a mission to see more of her. So, you dropped in on Tony more. You’d ask for Natasha’s input, always remembering to include her. She tried to hide the look of surprise when you would ask her what she thought. As if her expertise was only in the field of battle.

You made her laugh on every occasion. Your thoughts were consumed by the redheaded woman with the gorgeous smile.

As Tony’s employee, you were invited to his parties. Boy, did he throw a lot of them. Many of them you would skip. No one would miss you there. At least not that you noticed. It wasn’t until the night of Tony’s New Year’s Eve party that things changed for you.

You were dressed in a sparkly black number. The dress was short and backless. It hugged your curves in all of the right places and you looked damn good. You felt sexy and ready for the new year to come. There were a few men and women eyeing you all night. Some had even dared to approach you. You didn’t care about their advances. None of them interested you when the one you truly wanted was in the very same room.

Natasha commanded the room with her presence. Every click of her heels and sway of her hips left all eyes on her. She charmed the room. She chatted, made jokes, and even kissed Rhodey on the cheek under the mistletoe leftover from Christmas. Natasha was breathtaking and yet you could tell she wasn’t having a good time. She seemed stiff and on guard. There was a certain air about her that you weren’t sure if other people picked up on. Natasha was a spy after all so she always had to be alert. You could see the way she tensed when Richard Matthews, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, placed his hand on her forearm as he flirted with her. Her eyes quickly cut to his hand before they flew back up to his face. She seemed to be analyzing his flirting but enjoying herself. She flirted back with him just as hard and for a moment you wondered if she would sleep with him that night. Natasha wasn’t yours. You were barely friends and yet the thought of her and that man being together made you sick. You felt the nausea roll over you and you excused yourself to the kitchen. Only a few of the catering staff remained as they packed up for the night. A cleaning crew would come to clean in the morning.

You waited for them to exit the kitchen before clutching the counter. You leaned your weight against it taking deep breaths as you tried to reel yourself in. You were in love with Natasha. You were in love with the Black Widow. A startling truth that had sent you spiraling. Before you could think any further on what this meant the sound of her honey-smooth voice caressed every inch of your body.

“Fancy seeing you here,” You could picture the smirk on her face as she spoke. You took another deep breath before turning to Natasha. She glanced behind her as the swinging door stood still again. Her eyes never left yours as her brows knit in concern. “Y/n, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” You frowned. “I just..” Natasha waited expectantly for you to say something. She waited for you to tell her what was on your mind. You could come up with a lie and say you had too much to drink but nothing came out of your mouth. Before you could stop yourself you closed the distance between the two of you to hold Natasha’s face between your hands. You searched her eyes for any resistance, you waited for her to say no, but nothing came. Her breath caught in her chest as she waited for you to kiss her.

“Do it.” She dared you. You pounced with a fierce press of your lips to her. Your senses were overwhelmed with Natasha. She smelled delicious, tasted divine, and the feel of her pressed against you was heavenly. You were pretty sure you had died and gone to heaven as you lowered your hands to wrap around her waist. You pulled Natasha closer so that you were pressed chest to chest. The stilettos she was wearing worked to her advantage as she wrapped her arms around your neck. The sounds of the party fell on deaf ears as your tongue explore her mouth. Only when a moan left her lips did you pull back. Your eyes widened and you moved with an apology at the tip of your tongue.

“Don’t,” Natasha spoke softly. She tilted her head to kiss you again. “I’ve been wanting to do that for so long.” She whispered.

“Really?” You asked.

“Since the day I met you.” She shrugged.

“Well, why didn’t you say anything? Or do anything?” You asked incredulously.

“I dropped hints but you’re a tough nut to crack.” Natasha reminded you. Suddenly you were pulled back to all of the times Natasha dropped by your office. She was always around whenever you had a meeting with Tony. She even texted you to ask for your coffee order a few times. Now that you think about it, it didn’t seem like she did any of the stuff she did for you for anyone else.

“Oh.” It dawned on you. Natasha’s way of flirting was different from the Black Widow’s. Her display out there with Richard was vastly different from the way she handled you.

“Yeah,” Natasha half-smiled. You could see the slight nervousness in her expression. “I’ve never done this before.” She dropped her arms to her side. You immediately missed the contact. You wanted to have her close all the time if you could. “Dated without the expectation of sex. Most of my relationships were curated for work. I-I don’t know how to be someone’s anything. For you, I’m willing to try.” The vulnerability Natasha was showing at that moment made your heart soar.

“I’m willing to try too.” You told her. You reached out your hand and she took it. You pulled her back into you. You took the lead and wrapped her arms around your neck again. It was that night you knew you were a goner. The next few months you and Natasha were inseparable. You were on cloud nine when it came to Natasha.

Everything was easier with her. The two of you had your own traumas and insecurities to work through but it was easy. Loving Natasha was easy despite how much she insisted she wasn’t made for it. As your love for her grew so did your desire to marry her. Two years into your relationship you tied the knot. You bought the very same home you grew your family in. Five bedrooms, three baths, a nice backyard for your future children to play in. Life with Natasha was everything you ever wanted. You welcomed Ryan into the world two years into your marriage. Then Emma. Life with Natasha was magical until it wasn’t.

You don’t want to dwell on the ugly too much. At least not when you’re in the arrival line of Orlando International Airport. You do focus on how the rental you’re in smells “new car fresh”. You tap your fingers against the steering wheel hoping to stave off some of your boredom. You glance around at the moving cars weaving in and out of the line when you spot them. Your family. They’re a few feet away and it’s clear they don’t notice you. You can see Natasha instruct the children to wait there as she reaches behind her in search of her carry-on. She pulls out her phone to check what you assume is her Imessage app. She checks the phone and tucks it back into her pocket. She thinks you’re not going to show. When it’s your turn you honk the horn and pull in front of them. You unbuckle your seatbelt and park the car all within a few seconds. You make sure it’s safe to open your door before exiting the car.

Natasha’s look of surprise is quickly masked by something else. She thought you would send a car for them instead. There’s a cheer from Emma as she spots you. She jumps up and down in place as she hugs her blanket to her chest.

“Mommy, you’re in Florida too?” Emma asks as you plant a kiss on the top of her head. You give Ryan a kiss on his head before grabbing at their luggage.

“Yes, I am.” You smile down at her.

“You didn’t give Mommy a kiss,” Emma points out as you place their things gently into the trunk of the car.

“Oh, it’s okay, she doesn’t need to.” Natasha dismisses but Emma’s pout grows. You realized that you two should have talked about how you were going to handle things with the kids before now.

“But Mommy always kisses hello?” Emma reminds you. She’s confused. If you both were here in the same place it must mean you were going to be together again. That meant her mommies could kiss each other again. Right?

“Emma, remember what we talked about?” You’re not seriously going to lecture her about consent in the middle of the airport but she might need a reminder.

“It’s fine,” Natasha leans over to you, placing her hand on your forearm, as she moves to kiss your cheek. She leans back with fluttering lashes as she crosses her eyes to the kids. This was not a conversation you needed to have right now. You nod and she turns to them. “Mommy is going to show us around Florida. We’re going to be staying with her on our vacation. I wanted it to be a surprise for you.” She’s lying. If you know Natasha and you do, she didn’t tell the kids to protect their hearts if you changed your mind. You didn’t blame her.

“Yeah, I’m going to show you so many cool places,” You tell them.

“Disney World?” Ryan questions.

“Whatever you want.” You tap his nose. “Now what do you say we get this show on the road before Mommy gets a ticket?” You gesture over your shoulder to the airport police hovering a few feet away. You help Emma into her booster seat while Natasha helps Ryan into his. Soon enough you’re on the road and on your way to your hotel. The car ride is relatively silent. Ryan and Emma seem to be holding their own conversation about who they’re going to see when they go to DisneyWorld. You glance over to Natasha to see that she’s watching you.

“I’m really glad you came,” You inform her. “Thank you for taking a chance on me. Again.”

She shrugs half-heartedly. What is she supposed to say? Everything she wants to say would probably be best told when the children are asleep. When you’re alone. You turn back to the road to drive as you both listen to the kids and their stories.

There’s a bit of a problem when you arrive at the hotel. The rooms you got were connected by one door. No big deal. The first room was the one you’d been sleeping in since you arrived two days ago. It was equipped with a king-sized bed, flat-screen tv, and a very impressive mini-fridge. The second bedroom had two double beds and many of the same amenities. The rooms themselves were impressive. It was the kids who made things a bit more difficult for you.

“I want my own bed.” Ryan declared as he tossed his shoes somewhere in the corner. Natasha sighed from behind him as she grabbed the offending items to place them inside the closet. Emma followed after her brother as she plopped onto the second bed.

“I want my own too.” She smiled sweetly up at you.

“Um, one of these was for your mom,” You scratch the back of your head. Natasha’s eyes fly to yours. “I just didn’t want to assume that you wanted to sleep in bed with me.” You try to mumble but by the mischievous smirk on Emma’s face, she’s heard you. What was with her and this matchmaking thing she has going on? Ryan seems to be in on it too as he looks between the two of you.

“We think the kids should have their own room. No mommies allowed.” Ryan shrugs as though he’s not trying to hurt your feelings.

“I’m being kicked out by my own kids.” Natasha rolls her eyes. “I am fine sleeping there. With you.” Natasha tries to appear nonchalant.

“Okay, well let’s take your bags right in here,” You grab for one of Natasha’s suitcases and she follows you into the next room. The door is still open when you hear Emma’s little voice trail into your room.

“Do you think they’re going to make a baby?”

“You need a penis to do that,” Ryan tells her as if it’s obvious.

Your eyes widen and look to Natasha for answers.

“There was a kid, Connie Clark, in Ryan’s class who apparently had ‘the talk’ with her parents so naturally she came to school and told everyone.” Natasha wheeled her bag to the closet. “Which means Ryan told Emma which also means I had to have a very awkward conversation with them about their bodies, autonomy, and the very, very basic parts of where babies come from.” Right. Another thing you missed. While you did find it a bit funny it was only a reminder that you were missing out on a lot. Natasha and you have always had those conversations with the kids together.

“Seems there still may be a few things we have to discuss.” Natasha shook her head. She looks at the bed and the side you’ve taken.

“I can sleep on the pull-out couch they have,” You tell her, and she holds up a hand to stop you from speaking.

“Is sleeping with me going to upset you?”

“No, no, I just don’t want to move too fast with you and mess things up.”

“Well if all we’re doing is sleeping you can’t mess things up,” Natasha assures you. She moves to pull you to sit on the bed. “I came because I wanted to. I came because I want this to work.”

“Me too,” You confess. You find yourself focusing on her lips.

“You know I never did get a proper hello kiss,” Natasha says. She leans over to caress your cheek just as you turn to her. You don’t hesitate this time. Kissing Natasha was all you ever wanted to do. It’s the first time your lips have been on hers since the day in the kitchen. On Emma’s birthday. It lasts longer than you anticipated as you allowed yourself to get lost in Natasha. It’s the sneaky giggling from behind you that causes you to pull away. You can’t tell which one of them has made those obscene kissing noises but you’re sure you can take a guess. “Our kids are assholes.” Natasha opens her eyes slightly. There’s that glint of happiness in her eyes you haven’t seen in a while. Her guard is down.

“That they are,” You bring your hand up to Natasha’s lip to wipe your gloss from a corner of her mouth. Her eyes darken in lust and for a second you wonder if you’re going to survive the night with her in the same bed. You clear your throat and look over to the open door that connects your room. “Okay, you two, let’s get you fed. Where are we going to eat today?” You stand from the bed. You leave Natasha sitting there with her thoughts as you wrangle the kids.

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

Lunch with the family is fun. It’s amazing how easily you’re able to slip back into your roles with them. Ryan talks to you about his new leggo set while Emma pretends she’s a queen as she sips her lemonade. Natasha is content to watch you interact with them both. They’ve missed you it’s clear and you’ve missed them just as much. There’s a message on your phone that chimes and you tuck it away for later. Whoever it is can wait. You took your meetings earlier this morning with the sole purpose of spending time with your family. Nothing would ruin this for you.

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

The next destination on your list is the Sea Life Orlando Aquarium. You want to say you bought the tickets for the kids but you can feel Natasha vibrating with excitement as she grips your hand. Sometime during your entry into the aquarium, her hand slipped into yours and she never let go. The kids walked ahead of you as you entered the first hall. Seeing the kids happy with the sea life was amazing, seeing Natasha excited was an entirely different feeling. She didn’t have much of a childhood to go and do all of this. During the time you dated and throughout your marriage, there were times when you’d take her to experience things for the first time. The aquarium was her favorite. Despite how much she protested the idea of an animal she loved them. Especially sea animals.

The 360 aquarium proved to be the most fun as Natasha crouched down with the kids to point out the different types of fish. She smiled widely turning to see if you were paying attention as Ryan read from the information slate. It looks beautiful on her. Happiness. Her smile stops you in your tracks as you watch the way she interacts with them. The way she loves them. She guides them while reading about the fish whenever she gets a chance. You didn’t doubt that a lot of it she already knew. As you continued through the aquarium you almost expected Natasha to take your hand again and she did. It all felt right.

******************* It’s later that night that you feel the awkwardness of your situation. How even after nine years of marriage you’ve gone through a divorce that has changed the both of you. After helping Natasha put the children to bed you both go through your night routines separately. While Natasha is in the shower you check emails and answer back any that you find pressing. You roll your eyes when you find that Tony wants to put a real shark tank in one of his hotels. Totally not your problem right now. You send him a quick text before plugging your phone up for the night. You didn’t hear the shower shut off or Natasha exit the bathroom until she was sitting on the bed in a silk pajama set. It’s a plain shirt and shorts but it does manage to turn you on with the amount of skin you’re seeing. Natasha dries her hair with a towel and it’s then you notice her arms are more defined than you last remember them.

You move to sit next to her and she stops her towel drying to look at you. You take the towel into your hands to help her. She melts into you as she allows you to take on the task.

“Today was fun,” Her voice is raspy and filled with exhaustion. The activities of today are catching up to her.

“Yeah,” You say. When you’re done you toss the towel onto a nearby chair. You could deal with it later. You lower your arms to rest them at Natasha’s waist as you try to keep your composure. She smells like vanilla and coconuts. It’s only recently that she’s used a soap that has a scent. Being a spy she was always very diligent in not making herself noticeable in any way.

She stiffens in your arms just before she allows you to continue. With your left hand, you sweep her hair to her other shoulder to expose her neck. You press a tentative kiss against the flesh before trailing more down her shoulder. Natasha sighs as your touches become more firm. Your hands rub her sides and move down to the top of her thighs. You massage her skin as she leans further into you. It’s not inherently sexual but you can feel yourself becoming wetter just at the feel of Natasha. You dare to run your fingers up the leg of her shorts. Natasha allows you to. Her skin is smooth and soft under your fingers. At least until you feel the raised skin a little higher on her thigh. It’s at an awkward angle and it would be hidden behind her shorts but probably noticeable in a bikini. It’s higher up on her thigh. You feel around it feeling her once again stiffen as you try to assess the freshness of this wound.

“It was four months ago.” Natasha’s voice is devoid of any emotion. You furrow your brows. “I was in Madripoor with Steve and we took down a few guys interfering with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s database. Stabbed me right in the leg before he got away.” How didn’t you know this? Where were the kids at the time? Did she take care of herself while tending to them? “It’s old news. Seriously.”

“I’m sorry, Natasha.” You distance yourself more for her than you. “I’m so sorry.” You say for really no reason at all. You’re not the one that stabbed her or sent her on the mission. Natasha could take care of herself.

“Me too.” She whispers before she climbs into the bed. Your moment of intimacy is over and you know the both of you are too tired to discuss the implications of that. You hate that this even needed to be discussed. You felt like a stranger when it came to Natasha. She’s been through so much these past few years and you have a feeling you’re only scratching the surface. You climb onto your side of the bed, reaching for the string of the lamp to turn it off, as you think about just how much you’ve missed.

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

The next day proves to be different for all of you. Work has you swamped with meetings that run over more than usual. There are only a few more days you have left here in Florida and you’d rather be spending them with your family. Disney World was supposed to be today. You promised them. Again. Yet you have to shoot a quick text to Natasha informing her to take them on her own as you don’t see yourself getting out of here any time soon. You don’t want to imagine how pissed she would be and how disappointed they would be.

You notice your phone go off throughout the day but you’re too busy to get into it. You know it’s Natasha keeping you updated. She’s probably sent you so many pictures and videos of the kids. Hopefully, you’ll be done with your last meeting in time for dinner. As a creative director, you can’t leave things to the other employees. Not like this. So you hunker down and keep pushing through in hopes of getting back to the hotel with your family.

It’s dark when you enter the hotel room. You cross the room to kick off your shoes before tiptoeing to Emma and Ryan’s bedroom. They’re fast asleep. Emma with her blanket tucked into her and Ryan with a new toy by his side. You kiss both of their heads before returning to your room.

You notice the balcony door is open and the cool breeze from there. Natasha is sitting in one of the chairs peering out at the pool below you. You’re on the third floor so not too high up but it’s still an impressive view. You decide to join her.

“Hey, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know that would take so long. We had to go over contracts, marketing, things with legal.” You tell her as you move to give her a kiss on her forehead. You sit down in the chair beside her. Natasha glances at you for a second before returning her gaze back to the view. There’s a silence that sits between the two of you before she speaks.

“Did I make a mistake coming here?” Natasha asks. She picks up her glass of red wine to sip from it.

“What, Nat, no.” You tell her.

“Hmm,” She swallows the wine. She sets down her cup and looks over to you. “It shouldn’t hurt. I should be used to it by now. You are too busy for us. We don’t fit into this new life you’ve made and no matter how much you’re trying it’s just not working.” Your heart drops as you realize you really did mess up.

“I’m-”

“You’re sorry.” Natasha finishes for you. “I know. I think we would have been fine if you’d bothered to answer any of the texts I sent you. If you bothered to reply at all. I’m not pushy and I’m not clingy. You know this. I couldn’t help but feel I was back in that same space of being the doting and loving housewife who waits and waits and begs for their spouse to love them.”

“You don’t have to beg with me, Natasha.” You assure her. “I didn’t think it would bother you for me to give this one day. I mean this is a work trip.”

“That you invited us to.” She reminds you.

Right.

“I changed all of my schedules. The rest of the week is open to be with you guys.” You inform her. Natasha tilts her head to see if you’re telling the truth. You are.

“Can I ask you what changed?” Natasha suddenly asks. “What shifted for you? You had been creative director when we started dating. The past few years you’ve been distant. You can’t just say you’re busy. We’ve both always been busy.”

“Nat,” You sigh. You really didn’t want to get into this. At her look you know it’s now or never. “I don’t know.” It’s the truth. “After we had Emma I began to feel lost. I felt like I lost who I was and the only way to salvage that was work. I felt weighed down by something and I couldn’t quite tell what it was. We had opposite schedules and it all was just so easier to be at work and know my role there.”

“You felt like we weighed you down?”

“Nat, no, that’s not what I’m saying.” You shake your head. “I felt the opposite. I felt happy. I felt loved but I was afraid. That eventually I’d become the imposter that I felt since I was a little girl. Eventually, it would all blow up in my face. But it’s not so black and white. We grew apart for a bit. We distanced ourselves in more ways than one.”

“Right,” Natasha says.

“Natasha, you have to understand that while I take the blame for everything I’ve done you’re not as innocent as you think.” You want to take it back before you fully said it. It could have been worded differently. The look in her eyes tells you that much. Too late.

“What did I do? Please tell me.” Natasha sits up a bit straighter.

“Nat, I’m not trying to be combative.” You glance behind you to make sure the children aren’t coming. “I meant that both of us have had times where we were less than nice to each other. I remember that day a few years ago you came home and started arguments for no real reason at all.”

“There was always a reason.” Natasha frowned.

“So tell me what!” You say a bit louder than necessary. “Everything I did to apologize and make better it never happened. As much as you’d like to think that you were being the perfect wife there are moments where I just couldn’t make you happy. We didn’t know how to work through our problems. That much is clear. The entire reason for the divorce was to give us both that breath of air.”

“As if you didn’t have it before,” Natasha mutters.

“Fuck, Nat,” You cry out. “This is exactly what happens. You beat around the bush. You don’t say what you mean until you’re angry and ready to throw it in my face. Do you want me to say I was busy? Yes, I’ll admit that. Do you want me to say how I’ve disappointed our kids? I’ll admit that too. Do you want me to say that I’m the sole reason our marriage went to shit? Not going to happen.”

“That’s not what I want.” Natasha looks down at her hands.

“Then tell me, I’m not Wanda, I don’t. I can’t read minds.” You wave your hand for her to look at you. “If I did it would save me a lot of trouble let me tell you. What is it that you want from me, Nat?”

“I wanted you to be there,” Natasha shouts over you. “I wanted you to be there. Okay.” She’s speaking past tense.

“What, Nat, be there for what?” Your voice is lower and more hushed as you realize how broken she sounds. Her tears are falling quicker this time and it startles you. “Nat?”

She looks down at her hands avoiding your gaze as she speaks. “Do you remember November 5th a few years ago? I kept nagging you about an appointment we had.” You shake your head in the negative. “Well, I do because I programmed it into both of our calendars.” At your look of confusion, she continues. “You had an impromptu work trip and I figured you just forgot about the day and that I could just reschedule. But I had this bright idea and I went to the doctor’s alone.” Natasha rolls her eyes at herself. “So I went. I wanted to know for myself. Whether I could.” Natasha isn’t speaking in complete sentences which still leaves you a bit confused and you’re catching on quickly. Your eyes widen. You’re putting two and two together. You remember it now. The trip had been a month-long and had taken up all of your energy. You remember her calling you and you being excited about finally making progress with work. It takes everything in you to recall the way she sounded. Over the phone, Natasha sounded different but you thought she was just missing you. “I wanted to surprise you.”

“No, no, no,” You shake your head. You don’t know if it’s possible but your brain is thinking before you can stop it. “Please, Natasha.” You move from your chair to sit on your knees in front of her. Had she been pregnant? Did she miscarry? How could you not have noticed? You want to puke with the thought of Natasha clutching her stomach in pain as she lost her baby. Your baby. Alone. She can see the wheels turning in your head.

“It never happened.” She reveals. “Even after the reversal of the tubal ligation that the Red Room gave me, it didn’t happen. The doctor said that with my line of work and how much trauma I’ve taken to my abdomen even with IVF, the chances of it happening were slim to none.” She lowers her eyes to her lap. This is the most vulnerable you’ve ever seen Natasha and you know it’s taking a lot out of her to tell you this. “I just… I wanted to give you a baby.” Natasha blinks back the tears and your heart shatters instantly. “I wanted to feel them inside of me. I wanted my belly to grow too. I wanted that for myself and I know it’s stupid that I ever thought I could.” Natasha’s bottom lip trembles and you know she’s trying to keep herself from crying any further.

“You’re not stupid for wanting that, Tasha.” You reach your hand up to take hers in yours.

“Aren’t I? I mean, before I met you, I knew it could never happen and I was fine with it.” Natasha shakes her head. “I was fine with never having that. I resented you for giving me hope. I resented you for being what I couldn’t. That’s when the fighting continued. You didn’t notice and all I wanted for you was for you to hold me and tell me things were going to be okay.”

“And I just worked and worked and assumed that you weren’t happy because I wasn’t making you happy.” You summarize. Fuck.

“Please don’t blame yourself for what I just told you.” Natasha frowns. “ I didn’t lie. I was still happy with you. I still wanted you. I wanted that depression to go away and I wanted to forget I ever even tried. I wanted us to push forward.”

“Instead we became something entirely different.” You say. Natasha nods in agreement. “We were too many things at once without ever really being together at the time. We grew into something ugly and we never addressed it healthily. I became distant because I thought I couldn’t make you happy and then you thought the same. I just want to make it clear you’re not less of a woman than me because of this. I wanted you and still want you despite all of it. I love you, Natasha. I love you and I always have.”

“How do we fix this?” Natasha peers out over the balcony. “How do we fix us without falling into the same pattern?”

“We take it one day at a time.” You say. “We do the work. We stay honest. And I- I take off of work for a while.”

“What, y/n, you don’t have to do that.” Natasha looks at you again.

“No, I think I do,” You assure her. “At least for now. My family needs me. I want to be there for you.”

Natasha’s green eyes show just how much she’s hurt and heartbroken all at once.

“Okay,” She says finally. You stand to lead her back to the bed. She follows and waits for you to crawl under the covers. You raise the cover for her to climb in and you take her into your arms. She turns so that she’s the small spoon to your big one. She’s pressed so close to you and you never want to let her go. You can feel the sobs rack her body as she silently cries. You can feel your own tears drenching your pillow as you kiss the back of her head.

Marriage was hard. Marriage was tough. But so were you.

You and Natasha would work on things together. You would take it one day at a time just like you said.

---> next part

[iww-gnv]

On Thursday morning, before my first sip of coffee, the alerts started flooding my phone. My employer, Microsoft, was laying off 1,900 workers and it was all over the news. I work at the video game company ZeniMax, which was acquired in 2021 by Microsoft, so I felt a familiar, sickening feeling start to take hold. But I can’t say it came as a surprise. So many people in our industry have lost their jobs this way recently. In 2023, at least 6,500 video game workers were laid off (unofficial trackers have that number much higher). And even before this latest round, 2024 hadn’t shown any sign of improvement. The video game industry is huge. It was bigger than the movie and music industries combined following the 2020 pandemic surge, and while it has dropped a bit since then, it remains a multibillion-dollar industry. However, it’s still relatively young and lacks a history of successful worker organizing.

[reasonsforhope]

Amazon delivery drivers and dispatchers walked out of their delivery facility on Thursday to demand that Amazon bargain with them. The 84 drivers currently on strike have held picket lines before, but this is the first time Amazon drivers have walked out in the U.S., according to a Teamsters press release. 

The drivers, who work for the Amazon delivery service partner (DSP) Battle-Tested Strategies in Palmdale, California, unionized with the Teamsters in late April, and are demanding that Amazon come to the bargaining table to negotiate a contract. Drivers have already negotiated and ratified a contract with the DSP, which voluntarily recognized their union. 

Amazon has previously stated that, because the drivers don’t work directly for Amazon—they work for the DSP, which is then contracted by Amazon—that the company is not obligated to bargain with them. For the past month, the union has been trying to prove that wrong, saying that, despite Amazon placing all responsibility onto the DSP, it is in fact in “complete control” of the DSP’s operations. 

“We are on the picket line today to demand the pay and safety standards that we deserve,” said Raj Singh, one unionized driver on strike, in a statement. “We work hard for a multibillion-dollar corporation. We should be able to provide food and clothes for our kids.” 

The drivers’ contract with the DSP guarantees a higher wage, protections against the extreme heat of California summers, and the right to refuse unsafe deliveries. Heat is an industry-wide hazard for delivery drivers. Motherboard has previously reported on how UPS drivers must deal with temperatures of over 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. Earlier this week, the Teamsters won a tentative agreement with UPS guaranteeing improved heat protections and air conditioning in trucks...

“Amazon has no respect for the rule of law, the health of its workers, or the livelihood of their families,” said Randy Korgan, the director of the Teamsters Amazon Division, which has been working to organize Amazon facilities to protect workers and maintain wage standards in the delivery and logistics industry. “Workers are on strike today because the only thing this corporate criminal cares about is profits. We are sending a message to Amazon that violating worker rights will no longer be business as usual.”

-via Motherboard at Vice, June 15, 2023

[mariacallous]

In July 2020, a 72-year-old attorney posing as a delivery person rang the doorbell at US district judge Esther Salas’ house in North Brunswick, New Jersey. When the door opened, the attorney fired a gun, wounding the judge’s husband—and killing her only child, 20-year-old Daniel Mark Anderl.

The murderer, Salas said, had found her address online and was outraged because she hadn’t handled a case of his client fast enough. In her despair, Salas publicly pleaded, “We can make it hard for those who target us to track us down … We can't just sit back and wait for another tragedy to strike.”

She wanted judges to be able to keep their home addresses private. New Jersey lawmakers delivered. Months after the murder, they unanimously enacted Daniel’s Law. Today, current and former judges, cops, prosecutors, and others working in criminal justice can have their household’s address and phone numbers withheld from government records in the state. They also can demand that the data be removed from any website, including popular tools for researching people such as Whitepages, Spokeo, Equifax, and RocketReach.

Companies that don’t comply within 10 business days have to pay a penalty of at least $1,000. This makes New Jersey’s law the only privacy statute in the US that guarantees people a court payout when requests to keep information private are ignored.

That provision is being put to a consequential test.

In a pile of lawsuits in New Jersey—drummed up by a 41-year-old serial entrepreneur named Matt Adkisson and five law firms, including two of the nation’s most prominent—about 20,000 workers, retirees, and their relatives are suing 150 companies and counting for allegedly failing to honor requests to have their personal information removed under Daniel’s Law.

These companies, which Adkisson estimates generate $150 billion annually in sales, may now be on the hook for $8 billion in penalties. But what’s more important to him is the hope that this narrow New Jersey law could act as a wedge to force data brokers to stop publishing sensitive data about people of all professions nationwide. He’s hoping that this multibillion-dollar pursuit, with its army of union cop households, may be a catalyst for better personal privacy for us all.

If he doesn’t win, the oft-derided data broker industry would have proved that it has a right under the First Amendment to publish people’s contact information. Websites could avoid further regulation, and no one in the US may ever be guaranteed by law to become less googleable. “I never thought we would have such a hard time, that it would turn into such a battle,” Adkisson says. “Just home address, phone number, remove it. One state. Twenty-thousand people.”

This is the first definitive account of how the fate of one of the country’s most intriguing privacy laws came to rest on the shoulders of Adkisson’s latest tech startup, Atlas.

Matt Adkisson is almost your prototypical lifelong entrepreneur. He quit high school at 16 to code video games and small-business websites. His parents insisted, though, that he audit classes across the street from their home, at the US Naval War College in Rhode Island. So he began learning about national security. One lesson he picked up: When judges live in fear and can’t rule impartially, democracies can wither.

But saving democracy wasn't his passion. Making money was. He headed off to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with designs on becoming a consultant or investment banker, but dropped out before senior year. Like so many other young people in the midst of the Web 2.0 frenzy, he had an entrepreneurial itch. Without telling them, Adkisson cashed out his parents’ tuition payment, and in 2006, he and a friend slept under office desks for a month before founding a company called FreeCause with Adkisson’s brother to develop marketing tools for Facebook games. Adkisson later bought shares of the nascent social media startup. Both bets paid millions. In 2009, FreeCause sold for about $30 million.

Adkisson upgraded to nights on a friend’s couch in San Francisco, where he used his wealth to invest in or start dozens of other software companies. As they sold, he became a comfortable multimillionaire. It was his last big deal, in 2018, that set him down the path of privacy crusader. He had sold Safer, which developed a Google Chrome competitor called Secure Browser, to antivirus maker Avast for about $10 million.

Adkisson and a cofounder recall that during a meeting over lakeside beers near offices in Friedrichshafen, Germany, after the deal closed, an Avast executive demanded they feed search activity from Secure Browser’s millions of users to Jumpshot, a sibling unit that was selling antivirus users’ browsing history to companies wanting to study consumer trends.

Adkisson stood to make millions of dollars in bonuses from the proposed integration. He refused. It was too intrusive to share that intimate data, he says, and a violation of trust. (Avast declined to comment on the episode. It shuttered Jumpshot, and this year agreed to pay $16.5 million to settle US government charges over the service’s allegedly deceptive data usage.)

Adkisson left Avast in December 2020 thinking he would keep adding to his portfolio of over 300 startup investments or pursue something in AI, like automating brushstrokes to create on-demand oil paintings. But he couldn’t shake the Friedrichshafen incident. For his web browsing, he started to use VPNs and the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo. He tried to get websites to remove his new East Coast home address. Those efforts mostly failed; companies had no obligation to comply.

These websites that sell addresses or phone numbers typically get that data by buying voter or property records from governments, and user account details from companies willing to deal. The easy access to data enabled by the aggregators can be vital to services like identity verification or targeted advertising. But the customers also can include people who are looking for an old friend. Or investigating a crime. Or someone with a grudge against, say, a judge.

As Adkisson dug into the data broker industry in 2021, he read about how a law that went into effect the year before had given Californians a right to demand companies delete their personal information. So Adkisson and two cofounders launched a service they called RoundRobin, to help Californians do just that for a fee. Services like DeleteMe and Optery were already selling deletion assistance, but Adkisson felt they were more marketing spin than serious tech.

RoundRobin joined the well-known startup accelerator Y Combinator in April 2021 and began developing software to simplify making requests. But the startup had no way to enforce the takedowns it wanted to charge customers for; only California’s attorney general could sue for violations of the nascent law. Data websites ignored RoundRobin.

Given Adkisson’s pedigree, investors held out hope. California privacy activist Tom Kemp, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and others invested about $2 million in RoundRobin that August. But the struggle continued. The cofounders renamed the company to the more serious-sounding Atlas Data Privacy in January 2022. It didn’t help. But then, a break. Just as Adkisson was considering giving up and his initial cofounders were pulling out, a relative of his in California who had worked in law enforcement mentioned Daniel Anderl’s murder—and the law it inspired in New Jersey. “Fate delivered the Garden State,” Adkisson says.

He soon reached out to law enforcement experts, including a former Boston police commissioner and a retired Navy rear admiral. The two told Adkisson stories about cops who were attacked in their homes. They urged him to press on.

The first organization to return Adkisson’s cold calls was the New Jersey State Policemen's Benevolent Association, the state’s largest police union. They said a few of the organization’s 31,000 members needed help containing some inadvertently leaked contact information. Adkisson and a cofounder, J.P. Carlucci, took a stab. Despite limited success, union members were excited by Adkisson’s moxy. In July 2022, a union leadership group voted unanimously to offer Atlas’ service as a benefit to members with the intention of using Daniel’s Law to demand websites remove phone numbers and addresses. The cost, spread across all members paying for the union’s legal protection plan, was hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, Adkisson says.

In August 2022, with the deal signed and thousands of members soon enrolled, Atlas established headquarters in Jersey City, New Jersey, and set out to prove it could deliver better results than back in California. For that, it needed litigation power.

The first six law firms Adkisson called refused to take up the New Jersey cases. They worried about their financial return and the likelihood of success. Judges had discretion over the $1,000 payouts, plaintiffs had to prove physical harm, and to even bring a case, attorneys had to mobilize each plaintiff individually. It wasn’t a good equation.

Over seafood in San Francisco on the waterfront, one attorney sketched out for Adkisson revisions to Daniel’s Law that could make Atlas’ job easier. Adkisson took those suggestions back to the police union, which in turn used its weight in Trenton to push lawmakers to enact the changes. By December 2022, legislators introduced amendments requiring judges to impose financial penalties on websites that failed to honor removal requests, allowing those covered by the law to sue more liberally, and enabling attorneys to more easily bring big cases. In July 2023, just after the third anniversary of Daniel’s murder, the governor signed these amendments into law.

Atlas stayed focused on recruiting more users, from the police union and beyond. Newly hired staff—the company grew to a total of eight people—learned the lingo, like don’t refer to state troopers as “officers.” Adkisson let clients call him directly 24/7 for technical support. He drove his Jeep Cherokee more than 50,000 miles to every corner of the state. The Atlas team spent 18 hours on back-to-back days at a correctional facility to catch every shift, plying union guards with Crumbl Cookies and Shake Shack. “Word started to spread, like, ‘Who the hell are these people?’” Adkisson says. “That brought us credibility.”

Days before last Christmas, Atlas finished the software for users to select the companies to which they wanted to send emailed data removal requests. The tired team gathered over Zoom watching a tally rise as the emails landed in data brokers’ inboxes. Altogether, Atlas would deliver 40 million emails to 1,000 websites on behalf of roughly 20,000 people over the next five months.

Helping users with only the easy targets—the ad-supported websites that tend to pop up when googling someone’s name—“would have been a band-aid on a wound that needed much deeper treatment,” Adkisson says. To provide what it viewed as comprehensive support and more than what competitors offer, Atlas also was facilitating takedown requests to mainstream services such as Zillow and Twilio. They tend to supply data through fee-supported advanced tools that don't pop up on a standard Google query.

Twilio denies that it provides data subject to Daniel’s Law. Zillow didn’t respond to WIRED’s requests for comment. Atlas, Adkisson says, spent about $1.3 million in labor and fees to verify websites it targeted were actually providing home addresses and phone numbers.

The startup got its first response on December 26. Red Violet, whose Forewarn data dossiers help real estate agents vet potential clients, was demanding Atlas cease and desist, erroneously claiming that Daniel’s Law applied only to government agencies and not private companies. Adkisson had expected the legal teeth of the updated Daniel's Law to inspire widespread compliance. This was a rough start. “Demoralizing,” Adkisson says.

Other companies responded with demands to see ID cards of Atlas clients, apparently suspicious that the startup was making up its customers or people demanding takedowns were pretending to work in law enforcement just to be covered by the law. Adkisson told one company they could call requestors to authenticate demands. After all, it had their numbers. Another company suggested that if Atlas clients wanted anonymity, they should have used an LLC to buy property instead of their own names.

Akisson says the most retaliatory response came from LexisNexis, which lets police and businesses search for people's contact information and life history, typically for investigations and background checks. He alleges that instead of removing Atlas clients’ phone numbers and addresses from view, LexisNexis needlessly froze their entire files in its system, impeding credit checks some were undergoing for loan applications.

LexisNexis spokesperson Paul Eckloff disputes that freezing was an overreach. The company deemed that step as necessary to honor the requests submitted by Atlas users to not disclose their data. “This company couldn’t be more dedicated to supporting law enforcement,” he says. “We would support common sense protections.” But he described Daniel’s Law as overly punitive.

To Adkisson, the people being punished were the cops, judges, and other government workers he had met on his Jeep excursions through New Jersey. Among them were police officers Justyna Maloney, 38, and her husband, Sergeant Scott Maloney, 46, who work in Rahway, a tiny city along the border with New York City.

In April 2023, Justyna was filmed by a YouTuber who runs the channel Long Island Audit, which has over 842,000 subscribers. He often films himself trying to goad police into misbehavior, and Justyna asking him to leave a government office became his newest viral hit. Followers inundated the Rahway Police’s Facebook page with about 6,500 comments, including death threats, slurs, and links to the Maloneys’ address and phone numbers on SearchPeopleFREE.com and Whitepages. Scott says Facebook wouldn’t remove the comments linking to the contact information. Neither would the police department, citing First Amendment concerns. Tensions boiled.

In August 2023, Scott received texts demanding $3,000 or “your family will be responsible for paying me in blood.” The texts listed his sister’s name and address. An hour later, the same number sent a video of two ski-masked individuals bearing guns inside an unknown location. Atlas wasn’t up and running yet, so Scott, determined to delete all his family’s contact data online, sat on his lagoonside deck every evening for weeks, crushing Michelob Ultras to stay calm as he navigated takedown forms. He put in so many requests to Whitepages for his family that it barred him from making more.

The Facebook comments linking to the Maloneys’ address only came down after they sued their bosses last November for violating Daniel’s Law. This past January, a state judge ruled that the risk to the couple “far outweighs” potential harm to the police department from censorship complaints.

As Adkisson looked to sue noncompliant data websites, he had no trouble signing up the Maloneys as plaintiffs. And because Daniel’s law now made it possible, thanks to Atlas and the police union’s lobbying, to collect guaranteed penalties from data websites, Adkisson had been able to secure five law firms, including prominent national firms Boies Schiller Flexner and Morgan & Morgan, and some attorneys who personally knew the Daniel of “Daniel’s Law.”

On February 6, Atlas and the legal team began filing lawsuits, naming the Maloneys and about 20,000 other clients as plaintiffs. In state court, 110 cases remain unresolved across five different counties. Thirty-six lawsuits are being contested in federal court before Judge Harvey Bartle III, who is based in Philadelphia but commutes across the Delaware River to Camden, New Jersey, because judges based in the state were conflicted out by virtue of being eligible for Daniel’s Law protections.

Eight defendants quickly filed motions to dismiss in state court, but they were all denied. At the federal level, most companies are arguing together that the New Jersey statute violates their First Amendment right to freedom of speech. It’s an argument that’s allowed personal information to stay online before. Federal courts have given leeway to publication of lawmakers’ contact information and actors’ birthdates, leaving doubts over whether cops and judges and their homes and phones would fare any better.

Defendants have told Bartle to consider a US Supreme Court decision in 2011 that found a law in Vermont that protected doctors’ privacy unreasonably singled out data use by drugmakers. Atlas’ foes view Daniel’s Law as similarly arbitrary because it holds New Jersey agencies to different standards than their companies when it comes to keeping data private. They also say it’s unfair that they must remove numbers that cops still list on personal websites.

Some companies fighting the lawsuits note that the $1,000 penalty that the law guarantees may lead to companies acting out of fear and removing more data than needed, or honoring requests that are actually invalid. What’s more, these defendants say that Atlas’ true motivation is money. They claim that instead of trying to quickly protect those already signed up when last year’s amendments passed, Atlas sought out more users to run up the potential monetary judgment and duped them into paying for protections they could exercise for free themselves.

Adkisson disputes the accusations. He says Atlas needed time to finish its platform and ensure it was able to properly log usage, so that judges wouldn’t dismiss cases based on technicalities like takedown requests ending up in spam folders. The startup also won’t be profiting from the lawsuit, he says. Two-thirds of any proceeds will go to the users represented; anything he and Atlas are left with after covering the costs of bringing the lawsuits would be donated to law enforcement charities and privacy advocacy groups through Atlas’ nonprofit arm, Coalition for Data Privacy and Security. Privacy is “a very real, tactical, and visceral need,” Adkisson says.

He was reminded of that this past May when he took WIRED in his Jeep to meet with Peter Andreyev, a cop in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, and president of the statewide Policemen's Benevolent Association. Around dusk that day, Adkisson handed Andreyev a search result for his name on DataTree.com, a website that sells property records. Andreyev slipped on his black-rimmed glasses and brought his linebacker figure toward a conference table to review the page. It took him just two seconds to tense up. “Oh shit,” he said.

He stared at a street-view image of his home, and a birds-eye shot with his address overlaid. The square footage was in there too, for good measure. His head visibly rattling and legs restless, Andreyev pounded the table. “I—I’m pretty infuriated by this.”

Like many law enforcement officers, the 51-year-old rarely goes a day without nightmares about some known thug or detractor attacking him and his family. The DataTree printout reinforced for him that it would take just a few clicks for anyone to target him in the vulnerability of his own home. WIRED pulled up Andreyev’s report from DataTree with just a free trial.

As Andreyev continued to study the page, Adkisson pointed out something he viewed as particularly galling. In February, Atlas had sued First American, the $6 billion title insurance company that operates DataTree, for allegedly not complying with removal requests. Andreyev had been listed as one of the lead plaintiffs, alongside the Maloneys. In the following weeks, DataTree removed Andreyev’s address from one section of the search result for his name but left it up on the map that Andreyev was now staring at. “That’s no way compliant,” Andreyev said. “Fuck, it pisses me off.” First American declined to comment. As the legal battle plays out, Andreyev says he's left to continue looking over his shoulder—even at home.

The antidote of making officers more difficult to find could require greater creativity from those investigating or advertising to them, says Neil Richards, a Washington University School of Law professor and author of Why Privacy Matters. But it doesn’t make the work impossible. Richards, who isn’t involved in the Atlas litigation, says courts need to recognize that “privacy protections are a fundamental First Amendment concern, and one that's even more important than a company's ability to make money trafficking in phone numbers and home addresses.”

In the coming months, Judge Bartle will decide whether cops and judges living in fear imperils public safety. If so, he’ll have to settle whether Daniel’s Law is the least onerous solution. A loss for Atlas and its clients would effectively be treating “anything done with information” as free expression, Richards says, and stymie further attempts to regulate the digital world.

On the other hand, a victory for Atlas could be a boon for its business. Adkisson says tens of thousands of people across the country have joined the company’s waiting list: prison nurses, paramedics, teachers. All of them, he adds, anticipating someday gaining the same removal power as New Jerseyans. Since the beginning of 2023, at least seven states have passed similar measures to Daniel’s Law. None of those, however, include the monetary penalty that gets lawyers interested in pursuing enforcement. “Step one is, win here,” Adkisson says, referring to New Jersey.

After the dispiriting start, he thinks momentum is swinging in Atlas’ favor. In August, the startup raised its first funding since 2021, about $8.5 million in litigation financing and equity investment.

Adkisson says compliance with more recent removal requests is increasing, and a few defendants are settling. In September, a state judge approved the first deal, in which NJParcels.com owner Areaplot admitted to 28,230 violations of Daniel’s Law and accepted five years of oversight. PogoData, a revenue-less website that had made property owners’ names searchable, settled this month. Bill Wetzel, its 79-year-old hobbyist owner, would owe $20 million for breaching the deal but he says he supports removing names of officers in harm’s way.

Then again, against the better-funded defendants with more at stake and unpredictable courts, Adkisson recognizes that a broader victory for privacy and Atlas is uncertain. In telling his story, he wants to ensure there’s opportunity for people to learn from any missteps if Atlas fails. But his advisers, including former boss Steve Avalone, don’t expect Adkisson to give up easy. They describe him as the ultimate gadfly—unorthodox, tenacious, and wealthy. “There’s few people with that horsepower and that charisma,” Avalone says.

For his part, Adkisson says he’s driven by a sad truth. The tragedies, fueled in part by contact information online, that judge Salas wanted to bring an end to after her son’s murder haven’t stopped. Last October, a man allegedly shot to death Andrew Wilkinson, a Maryland state judge, who hours earlier had denied the man custody of his child. The National Center for State Courts said it was the third targeted shooting of a state judge in as many years.

Maryland investigators say they believe the now-deceased assailant found Wilkinson’s address online, though they never recovered definitive evidence beyond a search query for the judge’s name. When he heard about the murder the day it happened, Adkisson immediately googled Wilkinson. His address was right there.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 11/19/2024

no silly little witticism here this week! just heartfelt thanks for helping me pay my rent this month :)

listening

absolutely wild pick from last week's spotify weekly recommenced, Things Will Fall Apart by Louis Cole feat the Metropole Orkest and conductor Jules Buckley. it's been on loop all week for me and im a little sad it won't pop up in my spotify wrapped

when you make a dance pop song with a full orchestra backing, it has a really interesting effect somewhere between Golden Age of Hollywood swashbuckling film score and marching band?

Yes, understood Things will fall apart just likе they should This little shred was good Don't think it through Things will fall apart, they always do At least, something's always true

the syllables are so choppy they don’t even register to me as English at first, i was fully willing to believe this was German for the first couple lines. like @dying-suffering-french-stalkers, i have a deep fondness for works about putting an era to bed. or works focused on the sunsets of things, or one of the last living practitioners of an art. putting the chairs up on the table, sweeping the floors, and turning the lights out and locking the door behind you. this song has that sort of quiet post-wake-party remembrance.

however once you think the song has ended but it keeps going, you can turn it off. you don’t really need that extra minute and a half of strings and light vocalizations.

Lately, Louis Cole has been doing live shows with the Netherlands’ Metropole Orkest and conductor Jules Buckley. Cole recorded nothing with the ensemble. In a press release, he says, “Sometimes, when I’m mixing my own solo stuff, I’ll feel like a song needs a little magical dust. But mixing an entire orchestra and your own rhythm section, there’s so much human energy! You don’t have to add any magic. It was there the whole time.”

i don’t hear many pop songs this millennium with a full orchestral backing. perhaps i need to look harder. unfortunately spotify took this extreme interest in this song as a newfound extreme interest in electroswing, which is really not what this song is. i hope this artist does more albums like this so they can wear grooves in my brain

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reading

very hard to focus on anything book length this week. some depressing local news (my local paper's links do Not want to preview nicely here, which is annoying:

At a city council meeting in October, district Vice President Dan Joyce told council members that the management district was not attempting to "criminalize homelessness." The city’s civility ordinance bans people from sitting, lying down or placing personal items or bedding on sidewalks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

cool piece from our pals at 404 Media. i am So fascinated by crime infrastructure

Based on interviews with malware developers, hackers who use the stolen credentials, and a review of manuals that tell new recruits how to spread the malware, 404 Media has mapped out this industry. Its end result is that a download of an innocent-looking piece of software by a single person can lead to a data breach at a multibillion-dollar company, putting Google and other tech giants in an ever-escalating cat-and-mouse game with the malware developers to keep people and companies safe.

(via longreads) my interest in how and why systems fail extends to invasive species management. plus i used to live in florida just above the everglades and these fuckers (the snakes) were everywhere

[I]magine thousands upon thousands of pythons, their slow digestion transforming each corpse into python muscle and fat. Unaided, Florida’s native wildlife doesn’t stand a chance. “That’s what I think about with every python I catch,” Kalil says. “What it ate to get this big, and the lives I’m saving by removing it.” Biologists are taking a multipronged approach to the issue. They have experimented with enlisting dogs to sniff out both pythons and nests—a technique that has proved difficult in such hot weather and inhospitable landscapes. Ongoing projects use telemetry to track pythons to find “associate snakes.” Researchers use drones, go out in airboats, or even take to helicopters to locate their subjects in the interiors of the Everglades. Always, agencies and individuals are looking for the next best methods. “But for now, the python contractor program is the most successful management effort in the history of the issue,” Kirkland says. “We’re capturing more and more—something that is indicative of the python population out there and indicative of us getting better at what we do.”

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watching

continuing noirvember, watched hitchcock's Notorious to see if i still dislike hitchcock. the answer is yes. there are bond girls and there are hitchcock girls, and not that bond girls are paragons of female agency in film, but hitchcock girls are mostly fluttering little pathetic things. a scrap of agency they showed in the beginning of the film becomes a running joke and something their noses are rubbed in for the rest of the film. not for me!

patrick mcgoohan is leading me into some real dad-ass movies. Ice Station Zebra (1968, dir. Sturges) is a real you're stuck at home sick with your dad and it's on TV for the whole afternoon kind of movie. they truly do not make two and a half cold war submarine espionage films in super panavision with an overture, intermission, and interact music any more. i get why howard hughes was really obsessed with this one. it is a suspense film, but full of people competently going about their business, which i find oddly comforting.

unfortunately i do not feel this really needed to be two and a half hours long. the loving closeups of sub interiors and instrumentation really did keep me amused, though. despite how cluttered every shot is with actors, there is tremendous clarity of purpose and motion with the camera movement. just a really technically brilliant film.

how similar the russian and american control rooms and instrumentation were made me chortle. ties nicely into a little diatribe mcgoohan goes on much later in the film, "The Russians put our camera made by our German scientists and your film made by your German scientists into their satellite made by their German scientists." funny and darkly true! every allied nation had some sort of Operation Paperclip going on! mcgoohan is the focus of every scene he's in, as a spy who is really hanging on by the last remaining shreds of his fingernails.

i had a good time with it, but one of many cold war suspense films im glad exist in the world but don't necessarily need to see again. it might join Escape from New York as a film i put on when im very sick though.

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playing

this pc needs some sort of replacement something, bc it has a really persistent overheating problem. it only tolerates powerwasher simulator on the lowest possible settings and genshin impact on basically mobile settings. it does not even want to run new vegas. i popped my head out of goodsprings to look out over the desert at the Strip and it said no thank you! too many polygons! naptime!

speaking of genshin, major update this week and new character i will be pulling for. she has a sister who died in the last patch, which i do Not care for as someone with a beloved little sister, but her moveset and skills are unique so far in the game. i feel like her skills are little too complicated for me to fully take advantage of with my "hit enemy very hard until he is dead" playstyle but she has a limited flight ability that will genuinely be very useful for exploration.

if i do not get her when i hit pity on the banner i won't bother pulling another nine times or whatever, bc the next patch has a character i really desperately want and i am saving for her

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making

the local crew is all getting art this year, bc i already have bristol board and a selection of small frames and zero budget. people who have pets are So easy to get gifts for bc u can simply get them stuff for their pet or that looks like their pet. way less gray cat than black cat merch in the world tho

aiming to send out international holiday cards by the end of the week, and canadian cards by american thanksgiving. the rest of you they'll get there when they get there ok

[thepotentialof2007]

Quick reference for the LH excerpts from Kate Wagner's behind the scenes at COTA article.

All sports are powered by the personalities of their practitioners, and Formula 1 has those in spades—the chipper, effusive Daniel Ricciardo; Mr. Suave, Carlos Sainz; plucky George Russell; the deep-feeling Charles Leclerc; and, perhaps above all, the sport's longtime great champion, a man from some of the humblest beginnings in motorsport, the regal and soft-spoken Lewis Hamilton, who just announced an absolutely shocking move to Ferrari after an illustrious 11 years and six championships behind the wheel of a Mercedes (and six seasons and one championship with Mercedes-powered McLarens).

. . . .

The day's activities commenced with a tour of the garage. In the garage, there are many mysteries one is not allowed to know or see. The use of phones is forbidden lest one incur accusations of espionage. When we got into the garage, Lewis's car was naked, its insides visible for all to see. I think this was the moment where my respect for the sport as it exists really made itself clear. It is hard to describe what I felt looking at that car. The closest phrase I have at my disposal is the technological sublime. I pictured a living, breathing animal of extraterrestrial origin, hooked up to a thousand arcane sensors that delivered messages in little pulses. All the tubes and sculpted carbon-fiber parts and the endless net of wires all working in service to the godhead engine, formed something totally incomprehensible to me, a feat of engineering so vast it breached the realm of magic. Hamilton himself walked through in his helmet, unexpectedly on an errand. After being in the presence of the car, I perceived him differently than before, when he was just a guy driving in circles on TV. The scope of his capabilities became more directly known to me in the face of that which I believed to be unknowable. All of that was built in service of him. He stopped and looked into the open maw of the car. The tour guide led us hurriedly into the back room where the coffee and tire bags were stored so that no one could listen to what Lewis said.

About half an hour later, they brought him up to the paddock to talk to us. It wasn't a press conference, but rather a kind of a TED Talk. The questions were rote and a guy with a microphone asked them as though they were being broadcast on television. Hamilton talked rotely about how much he loved America and the fans here, talked—to the people who needed reassurance—about how the car was "getting there" but made it pointedly certain that they knew it still needed some work, which surprised me, making me realize this was still a private setting. I come from a sport where chivalry never died and no one is allowed to say anything negative because it is "unsportsmanlike" and every cyclist has to play his part in the farcical pageant of being a dull, humble farmer's son. It is a pretty open secret that a lot of cyclists don't like their bike sponsors but they would never, ever, ever say it. It's somewhat contradictory, but the sheer financial calculus of F1 is what makes it possible for Hamilton to be critical. This is a multibillion-dollar industry putting its full heft behind him doing well. It's reminiscent of the patronage system of precapitalist times, when rulers and nobles with endless riches paid musicians and composers to live in the palace with them.

. . . .

Frustrated, I returned to watching the cars as they started up again, knowing that the drivers were pushing them to their limits, engrossed in their personal kaleidoscope of motion and color. Hamilton was in one of them. In the last shootout, he drove differently than before. A great verve frayed the lines he was making, something we can only call effort, push. Watching him, I understood what was so interesting about this sport, even though I was watching it in its most bare-bones form—cars going around in circles. The driver is the apotheosis of quick-moving prowess, total focus and control. The car is both the most studied piece of human engineering, tuned and devised in lab-like environments and at the same time a variable entity, something that must be wrestled with and pushed. The numbers are crunched, the forms wind-tunneled. And yet some spirit escapes their control, and that spirit is known only by the driver. Yes, we watch this perfect blend of man and machine, but we speak of the machine as though it were not of human origin, as though the machine, being born from science could—eventually, through its iterative processes—sublimate human flaws. The driver, being human, knows this is false. His intimacy with the machine is the necessary missing connection, and even if the machine were perfect, it was made for imperfect hands. But it is never perfect. The gaps in its perfection are where disasters transpire, but also miracles. As we waited for the van to take us where we were parked, a part of the track was still visible to us. Hamilton distinguished himself by the lines he cut along the corner and the loudness of his engine, that pushing. We heard over a loudspeaker that he had finished third, a remarkable improvement above the last two sprints, where he lagged behind in the midfield. This made everyone in our camp happy. They always called him by his first name. It reminded me of how I used to talk about cyclists after I started interviewing them, with the swagger of knowing them.

. . . .

When Hamilton came into the room he was wearing a cool pair of pants with shimmery colored mesh sewed in and had an exhausted appearance, having come just from the track. We were allowed to talk to him but were told not to make any recordings or transcriptions. When he spoke, it was notable how often he mentioned his father and how deeply-felt his political convictions were. Some people are totally different off the record, but Lewis was simply a more lively version of himself. I find him a fascinating figure. A lot of fans either love or hate him, see him, paradoxically, as both humble and arrogant. The word quiet is better. Not reserved, not shy, just quiet. He belongs to a special group of people. The ones I've met in life include the violinist Hilary Hahn and Pogačar, the Tour de France winner—human beings who walk the earth differently, with an aura that transcends it. He appeared perpetually relaxed, controlled and refined, both present with us in the room but on a higher plane within. We used to call this magnificence when we believed in kings. I don't know what we call it now. Excellence, maybe. The irony of parading someone incredible like that around in the backrooms of petrochemical executives is not lost on me. I was grateful that I got the opportunity to speak to Lewis Hamilton, someone I am not ashamed to say I admire. I would have preferred it if they let him go home and rest instead.