#Theft of Food

[glacierruler]

Is Responsibility Really Something That Comes With Great Power?

(temporary title)

AO3

Masterpost | Next Chapter

Chapter 1: Food Fight

Fun Fact: I created a whole pantheon for this AU!

Content Warnings: Hallucinations, Theft of Food, Mentions of Murder

Thank you so much @pandagobrr for cheerleading!

Taglist: @cutebisexualmess @oatmeal-stans-the-trash-rat

Remy was sure that his god was trying to kill him. What with the dreams, the doors, the hallucinations, he was sure that all of this was just a cosmic prank on him in some form. Especially with what was probably his quest right now. Considering he was in a Denny's ordering crepes, well more like looking at the menu and the only option that wasn’t obscured was the crepes; why his god would want Denny's crepes, he had no idea, but here he was in dream form.

“Can I wake up now? Can’t really get you Denny’s if you don’t let me go!”

As usual, there was no reply, but Remy found himself waking up. In the middle of the night. Because of course he had to be awoken at this time to go get Denny’s for a god. (Although maybe he shouldn’t be too upset, he did ask to be released from his dreams after all, and this time it was rather quick instead of him staying there for another few hours, bored out of his mind or terrified). Although, the all too familiar headless figure standing a few yards away still creeped him out, sure he was used to it, but he’d rather it leave him alone. At least it was better than when he heard voices before bed. Sighing, he got out of the covers, and put on his most flamboyant outfit, the leather cropped jacket was a comfort at this point.

The trip to Denny’s was hardly horrible, but it wasn’t great with how groggy Remy was. He was just grateful that the bus system ran all night for some reason. Although he wouldn’t begin to decipher why, it was probably a mix of different gods’ sponsors creating something unique here in the past however long the bus system had been there. It was a little lonely, but he took comfort in the fact that if he stared ahead enough, the headless thing following him wasn’t able to do anything. Yet. He knew it probably could, considering his god, but only if he did the wrong thing enough times. Sometime he did talk to it, usually when he was feeling exceptionally alone, as there was no point otherwise. People feared him, some even thinking him the cause to their kids’ own madness or hallucinations. Which was completely rude, he had no control over that! And technically the gods only had minimal control over their domains. Some people were just more susceptible to those domains than others, which gave the gods greater access to mess with them. It was science 101, maybe 102; possibly theology. Still it was incredibly lonely being blamed for the sins of the world but asked for amazing dreams. Honestly, he was tempted to give nightmares for the next week to the next person who asked him for anything. It was getting tiring. Still, not like he blamed them, his god was terrifying. Mostly being inhuman in visits, and the human version was still terrifying, the eyes looked so off. I mean were they even trying? Or was it a form they took specifically so they could eat Denny’s?

Maybe Remy could be easier on his god, but maybe his god could be easier on him as well. Always communicating through doorways, this dream being one of the more cohesive ways Remy had figured out what they wanted. Not only that, but he’d yet to get a stable job, as just doing nothing in the city wasn’t going to get him enough copper to rent the apartment he was in for much longer. He was beginning to think having the god of wealth as a patron would be really rewarding.

Walking into Denny’s, Remy went up, and gave his most charming smile.

“Hello, welcome to Denny’s! We’ll seat you shortly!”

“Wonderful hun! Would you happen to be able to make mine to go. I’d love to enjoy the food here, but I’m on official business.”

“Of course, just tell the staff serving you once you’ve been seated, which will be shortly.”

“Thank you doll!”

“Of course, hope you enjoy the food sir!”

Empty platitudes aside, Remy sighed. At least he hadn’t been here long enough for too many rumors about him being connected to his god to go around. He might get weird looks by his temporary apartment, but out here, no one really knew who he was. And he’d like to keep it that way if possible.

Sitting down in his booth, he waited for the waitress to get to him.

“Hello and welcome to Denny’s! What can I get you tonight?”

“Just a little question,” Remy looked at the menu again, hoping he hadn’t forgotten anything from his dream, “do you do to-go orders?”

“Of course we do! What would you like to get?”

“Just some crepes, if you’d be so kind hun.”

“Of course! Anything else?”

“I’m good with just that.”

“Alright, that should be right out for you sir!”

**********

Virgil was exhausted, yet for some reason, sleep wasn’t an option. His sister, Emile, was sleeping soundly in the room next to his. Yet he couldn’t seem to sleep. Not with the wind calling him like this. What did his god want in the middle of the night?

Following the gentle tug around his arms, he flew to Denny’s. His bat wings were equipped instead of his usual raven ones because it would be fitting for the night. He noticed as the tug was leading him towards a stranger exiting the restaurant, someone Virgil had never seen before. And oh, oh no. His god was not about to have him socialize at midnight. That was a horrible idea, who talks to strangers in the middle of the night. Except the tugging got stronger, and not wanting his feathers turned to stone which would cause his bat wings to be heavier, he followed. Thankfully, due to his mostly dark dress, the stranger hadn’t noticed him. Yet. Maybe if he was lucky, he’d just have to ask for the stranger’s name or maybe they had been praying to the god of wind for a good breeze or even a companion. And then Virgil could talk to the stranger and leave them well enough alone afterwards. Hopefully.

However, Virgil was never good at guessing what his god wanted. Not realizing the situation his god was putting him in, until he nearly accidentally wacked the stranger’s food out of their hands.

Thankfully whoever they were, they had pretty good reflexes for someone awake and exiting a Denny’s at midnight.

“Okay babes,” their voice dry and annoyed. “I’m going to believe that was an accident, and that you didn’t just try to purposefully knock this food out of my hands. Because if you did, then we’re gonna have a problem. And trust me hun, you do not want to have a problem with me.”

Normally in a situation like this, Virgil could just turn and leave. However, the wind around them was tugging him more and more. For some reason his god wanted him to mess with whoever this was for whatever reason. So gritting his nerves, he prepared to probably ruin this person's night.

He reached for the food again, twisting the wind to his advantage. Preferring to look like a bully than getting his wings turned to stone. Oh how he wished it had been the stranger who picked a fight and not him, simply because he would have had something to say. And also because he wouldn’t feel as bad. No sooner than the to-go box had left the stranger’s hands had Virgil started seeing things. And he’d really really wished he knew how to kill a god. Specifically his god.

Shapes, and figures danced across his vision, making him paranoid, and it did not help that he heard footsteps rushing up behind him. Although those were all too real.

“OH MY GOD!!! Virgil what happened?” His sister asked, looking between him and the stranger; his sister who was not supposed to be there.

“Huh?” Was all he managed to get out.

“Alright babes!” The stranger shouted over the other voices staring at the both of them suspiciously. “I don’t care what god told you to try and ruin my night. But one of you is repaying for that meal or I’m asking my god to keep this effect on you forever. And trust me hun, my god is not fun when angered.”

Virgil watched as his sister sighed softly, nodding at what the stranger said.

“How much was it? Also apologies. I think this is the fifth time this week his god has made him do something so reckless.”

“Thirty should cover it hun. And you don’t have to apologize, you’re not the one who wrecked my god’s want of Denny’s.”

“Why Denny’s?”

Virgil really wished his sister would at least pay more attention to the fact that he couldn’t talk for some reason. Yet again, here she was, chatting it up with a stranger. If he hadn’t seen her way with nature and healing he probably would guess she was sponsored by the god of peace or something. But nope! Emile was just really friendly.

What absolutely did not help the situation was the way the wind solidified against him, and started cackling in his ear; he didn’t care how light and breezy it was, his god did not just get to laugh at him.

“Oh my,” they whispered, “you really got what was coming to you.”

Perhaps if Virgil banged his head in the parking lot he’d stop hearing his god’s laughter in his ears. And maybe he wouldn’t see this stupid headless figure while he was at it. Sadly he missed the exchange of money from this stranger and his sister, but he did notice when the headless figure went away.

He heard Emile’s sigh and rolled his eyes, proceeding to lay down on his back only to immediately get up because someone could viably run him over like that.

“Why are you up?”

“Because you are lucky enough to have a sister who notices when you open the window.” Emile huffed. “Now, you owe me thirty bucks. In some form at some time. Come on. Maybe we can get a little sleep before the sun rises. Also you’ve got some crepe in your hair.”

[hasufin]

Shrinkflation

So, I found out a fun fact this last weekend!

Every state has a Department of Weights and Measures. One of their jobs is to make sure that companies are actually selling you the quantities they claim they're selling. For example, this is the department which tests gas pumps and makes sure they're really pumping out a gallon of gas when they charge you for a gallon of gas.

So....

If you happen to, just as an example, notice that your 1lb (16 ounce) box of San Giorgio spaghetti actually only has 10oz of noodles, and you weigh your other boxes of spaghetti to discover they run from 10 to 14 ounces but never the full pound they're supposed to have, and that's why you never seem to have enough pasta for leftovers the next day, then you can report that to the Department of Weights and Measures.

They will want to know where you bought the item, and then will investigate whether the store or the manufacturer is routinely shorting customers. If they do, they will issue a fine to the offending party, you will be eligible for a refund, and under some circumstances lawsuits may follow.

Now, I don't know the outcome of the complaint I just initiated, but they did not want to know specific receipts or times of purchase. Which is good for me as I didn't keep any of those things, at the time I just said "Wow, fuck San Giorgio" and switched brands. But this is still enough to get an inspector out.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Me, my joyfriend, and Ruby from Steven Universe were hunting down Spinel from Steven Universe, because she stole Ruby's toast.

This would make sense if it was for a few minutes.

The hunt for the stolen toast went for *years.*

[newsfromstolenland]

working at a grocery store should be enough to radicalize anyone

when I worked at loblaws, which is owned by one of the wealthiest families in canada, we were not permitted to put baby formula on the shelves. it had to go behind the customer service desk, because too many people were stealing it. being that I'm of the opinion that no one should have to pay to eat, I pretended not to know store policy and put it on the shelves anyway. the cheapest of baby formulas cost more than a quarter of what I made in an 8 hour shift. and yes, this is the same grocery chain that pays minimum wage to the majority of their workers, and student wage to workers under 18.

I saw someone banned from the store for attempting to shoplift diapers, another for taking bread. you know the age old "would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family?"? yeah, a grocery chain owned by a billionaire family will ban you for that. and yes, this is the same grocery chain that admitted to a price fixing scheme based around the cost of bread.

the store manager instructed us to keep an eye out for people who "looked homeless", and to watch them while they were in the store to ensure that they didn't steal anything. and yes, this is the same grocery chain that denied drivers overtime wages unless they worked over 60 hours a week.

and we were unionized! imagine how they would have treated us if we weren't! and yes, this is the same grocery chain that blamed product theft on their workers.

basically, seeing the way that grocery stores underpay workers while boosting their prices and having over the top policies to prevent people from accessing basic human necessities should be enough to make anyone despise capitalism.

[scorpiusmalfoylovesoscarwilde]

I truly wish I had any artistic talent just so I could lowkey redo all dramione fanart with Astoria because oh my god the ratio of dramione to drastoria fan content is so heartwrenchingly depressing

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A "secure" system can be the most dangerous of all

Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing Bruce Schneier explain that “security” doesn’t exist in the abstract. You can only be secure from some threat. A fire alarm won’t protect you from burglaries. A condom won’t protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about “security” without any mention of who is being made secure, and from which threat?

Take the US welfare system. It is very “secure” in that it is hedged in by a thicket of red-tape, audits, inspections and onerous procedures. To get food stamps, housing vouchers, or cash aid, you must navigate a Soviet-grade bureaucratic system of Kafkaesque proportions. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the USA has become a “Utopia Of Rules” (as David Graeber put it), subjecting everyday people to the state-run bureacracies that the USAUSAUSA set endlessly ridiculed the USSR for:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

(The right says it wants to “shrink the US government until fits in a bathtub — and then drown it” — but not the whole government. They want unlimited government bloat for that part of the state that is dedicated to tormenting benefits claimants, especially if its functions are managed by a Beltway Bandit profiteer who bills Uncle Sucker up the wazoo for rubber-stamping “DENIED” on every claim.)

The US benefits system has a sophisticated, expensive, fully staffed anti-fraud system — but it’s a highly selective form of anti-fraud. The system is oriented solely to prevent fraud against itself, with no thought to protecting benefits recipients themselves from fraud.

And those recipients — by definition the poorest and most vulnerable among us — are easy pickings for continuous, ghastly, eye-watering acts of fraud. These benefits are distributed via prepaid debit cards — EBT Cards — that lack the basic security measures that every other kind of card has had for years. These are simple magstripe cards, lacking basic chip-and-pin defenses, to say nothing of contactless countermeasures.

That means that fraudsters can — and do — install skimmers in the point-of-sale terminals used by benefits recipients to withdraw their cash benefits, pay for food using SNAP (AKA Food Stamps), and receive other benefits.

It’s impossible to overstate how widespread these skimmers are, and how much money criminals make by stealing from poor people. Writing for Businessweek, Jessica Fu describes the mad scramble benefits recipients go through every month, standing by ATMs at midnight on the night of the first of every month in hopes of withdrawing the cash they use to pay for their rent and utility bills before it is stolen by a crook who captured their card number with a skimmer:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-28/ebt-theft-takes-millions-of-dollars-from-the-neediest-americans

One of Fu’s sources, Lexisnexis Risk Solutions’s Haywood Talcove, describes these EBT cards as having the security of a “glorified hotel room key.” He recounts how US police departments saw a massive explosion in EBT skimming: from 300 complaints in January 2022 to 18,000 in January 2023.

The skimmer rings are extremely well organized. The people who install the skimmers — working in pairs, with one person to distract the cashier while the other quickly installs the skimmer — don’t know who they work for. Neither do the people who use cards cloned from skimmer data to cash out benefits recipients’ accounts. When they are arrested, they refuse to turn on their immediate recruiters, fearing reprisals against their families.

These low-level crooks stroll up to ATMs and feed a succession of cloned cards into them, emptying account after account. Or they swipe cards at grocery checkouts, buying cases of Red Bull and other easily sold grocery products with some victim’s entire SNAP balance.

Some police agencies are pursuing these criminal gangs and trying figure out who’s running them, but the authorities who issue SNAP cards are doing little to nothing to stop the pipeline at their end. Simply upgrading SNAP terminals to chip-and-pin would exponentially raise the cost and complexity that thieves incur.

Indeed, that’s why every other kind of payment card uses these systems. How is it that these systems were upgraded, while SNAP cards remain in mired in 20th century “glorified hotel room key” territory? Well, as our friends on the right never cease to remind us: “incentives matter.”

When your credit card gets cloned, it’s your banks and credit card company that pays for the losses, not you. So the banks demanded (and funded) the upgrade to new anti-fraud measures. By contrast, most states have no system for refunding stolen benefits to skimmers’ victims.

In other words, all of the anti-fraud in the benefits system is devoted to catching benefits cheating — a phenomenon that is so rare as to be almost nonexistent (1.54%), notwithstanding right wingers’ fevered, Reagan-era folktales about “welfare queens”:

https://blog.gitnux.com/food-stamp-fraud-statistics/

Meanwhile, the most widespread and costly form of fraud in the benefits system — fraud perpetrated against benefits recipients — is blithely ignored.

Really, it’s worse than that. In deciding to protect the welfare system rather than welfare recipients, we’ve made it vastly harder for benefits claimants who’ve been victimized by fraudsters to remain fed and sheltered. After all, if we made it simple and straightforward for benefits recipients to re-claim money that was stolen from them, we’d make it that much easier to defraud the system.

“Security” is always and forever a matter of securing some specific thing, against some specific risk. In other words, security reflects values — it reveals whose risk matters, and whose doesn’t. For the American benefits system, risks to the system matter. Risks to people don’t.

It’s not just the welfare system that prioritizes its own risks against the people it exists to serve. Think of the systems used to fight drug abuse in clinical settings.

Medical facilities that use or dispense powerful pain-killers have exquisitely tuned, sophisticated, frequently audited security systems to prevent patients from tricking their doctors or pharmacists into administering extra drugs (especially opioids). “Extra” in this case means “more drugs than are strictly necessary to manage pain.”

The rationale for this is only incidentally medical. Someone who gets a little too much painkiller during a medical procedure or an acute pain episode is not at any particular risk of enduring harm — the risks are minor and easily managed (say, by keeping a patient in bed a little longer while they recover from sedation).

The real agenda here is preventing addiction and abuse by addicted people. There’s a genuine problem with opioid abuse, and that problem does have its origins in overprescription. But — crucially — that overprescription wasn’t the result of wimpy patients insisting on endless painkillers until they enslaved themselves to their pills.

Rather, the opioid epidemic has its origins in the billionaire Sackler crime family, whose Purdue Pharma used scientific fraud, cash incentives, and other deceptive practices to trick, coerce, or bribe doctors into systematically overprescribing their Oxycontin cash cow, even as they laundered their reputation with showy charitable donations:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/12/monopolist-solidarity/#sacklers-billions

The Sacklers got to keep their billions — and people undergoing painful medical procedures or living with chronic pain are left holding the bag, subject to tight pain-med controls that forces them to prove — through increasingly stringent systems — that they truly deserve their medicine.

In other words, the beneficiary of the opioid control system is the system itself — not the patients who need opioids.

There’s an extremely disturbing — even nightmarish — example of this in the news: the Yale Fertility Clinic, where hundreds of women endured unimaginably painful egg harvesting procedures with no anaesthesia at all.

These women had complained for years about the pain they suffered, and many had ended up needing emergency care after the fact because of traumatic injuries caused by undergoing the procedure without pain control. But the doctors and nurses at the Yale clinic ignored their screams of pain and their post-operative complaints.

It turned out that an opioid-addicted nurse had been swapping the fentanyl in the drug cabinet for saline, and taking the fentanyl home for her own use.

This made national headlines at the time, and it is the subject of “The Retrievals,” a new New York Times documentary series podcast:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html

If the pain medication management system was designed to manage pain, then these thefts would have been discovered early on. If the system was designed so that anyone who experienced pain was treated until the pain was under control, the deception would have been uncovered almost immediately.

As Stafford Beer said, “the purpose of any system is what it does.” The pain medication management system was designed to manage pain medication, not pain itself.

The system was designed to be secure from opioid-seeking addicted patients. It was not designed to make patients secure from pain. Its values — our values, as a society — were revealed through its workings.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/13/whose-security/#for-me-not-thee

[Image ID: A down-the-barrel view of a massive, battleship-gray artillery piece protruding from the brick battlement of a fortress. From the black depths of the barrel shines a red neon 'EBT' sign.]

Image: Bjarne Henning Kvaale (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscarsborg_28cm_Krupp_cannon_4_-_panoramio.jpg

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

[kettle-bird]

Any self-respecting sanitation worker knows to get a bear-proof lunchbox, lest you attract The Critters.

Those kids are always hungry...

[sylunisart]

My horrible pikmin crackship idea

Brittany x Louie x Dingo

Aka the world’s worst polycule

[pepsinister]

me doing ZERO mental math before adding 4-5 entire ghost peppers worth of capsaicin: “he he he a nice little scoop for some kick”

[shi0n]

the stalker guy has been ringing my doorbell every morning but i dont answer.. today he left a bag of gifts outside my door. out of all shion fans this one is the craziest. not the most passionate or loyal but THE craziest...

[nando161mando]

Here is some interesting food for thought. We are providing housing!

[lacewise]

You’d think a documentary about a real life “The Truman Show” with elements of explicitly profiting off of human trafficking and torture (to the point where my mind immediately maps this onto Unit 731) with the victim seeing literally no benefit and the orchestrators stealing massive amounts of unpaid labor (publishing his writings during confinement and keeping the money) and taking literally all associated royalties would go viral but instead there’s surprisingly little fanfare. (I’ve seen maybe half a dozen curated or interviews conversations but no wider discussion.)

The Contestant is about a man who was dehumanized and treated somewhere between a tamagotchi and clipart. (He is kept in a suspended state of unreality deliberately for over a year.) The people behind these actions, which would otherwise be considered serious crimes, have experienced no consequences. And with content like Mr. Beast’s self-confinement still being created and receiving tens of millions of views, it’s pretty clear reality television and its relatives are held to no real ethics or laws, to this day. (Although, the bare minimum of paying people is at least met in Mr. Beast.) So there weren’t societal consequences either. The only lasting impact this seems to have had is creating the eggplant emoji and meaning.

This raises so many questions about social experiments, informed consent (which is vital to any real social experiment) torture disguised as entertainment, the blurring of fiction and reality, the hidden power dynamics in entertainment, parasocial relationships that dehumanize the person at the center, the degradation of working conditions with the undermining or disappearance of unions, dehumanization for the sake of storytelling, and the financial exploitation of all of this. Are people not talking about this because you guys don’t want to know the answer?

Or because you feel reality television show stars and content creators had it coming? Or maybe that entertainment being awful is a foregone conclusion, so there’s nothing to gain via examination?

Why are we letting programs like this happen continuously as if they’re real social experiments and not just torture since they’re so often missing that vital piece of informed consent? Why aren’t we pushing back on showrunners, producers, and hosts imagining themselves as scientists when they see basic scientific ethics as an obstacle? Why aren’t we questioning the fiction we’re sold as the audience, whether we choose to watch or not? Dismissing it all as the same unwatchable trash is only legitimizing the labor exploitation. It’s acting as if the exploitation is an unchangeable premise.

This is a really good article on the documentary and the initial story (tw for in-depth discussions of food, torture, and abuse):

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Crowley from Good Omens crashed his car through my living room wall while I was eating breakfast. He stole my waffle, got back in the Bentley, and drove off. I was so offended I woke up.

[elsewhereuniversity]

Question: if I take home food from a Fair Folk party, can I eat it then without danger of being Taken? This cupcake is mighty tempting...

I am certain you would find yourself in some manner of trouble, whether from partaking in fae food (often bewitching, and occasionally leaving all mortal sustenance tasting of ash on the tongue) or theft (which they infamously feel strongly about). Perhaps a combination of the two!

[1-800-cuupid]

speaking of imvu, can i just say how greasy it is?

[blackgirlsreverything]

Very clear indication that we can no longer afford food