#UP Board 12 Result 2017

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Spirit warned investors that merging with Jetblue would be illegal

++++

Jetblue is trying to buy Spirit Airlines. It’s a terrible idea. Consolidation in the US aviation industry has resulted in higher fares, less reliable planes, spiraling junk-fees, and brutal conditions for flight- and ground-crews. The four remaining US major airlines, who gobbled their rivals, are three times more profitable than their European counterparts:

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/04/22/a-lack-of-competition-explains-the-flaws-in-american-aviation

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/12/they-put-it-in-writing/#that-was-then

That’s great news if you’re an airline shareholder. It’s terrible news if you’re hunting for your lost bags, or if you’re a flight attendant or pilot being squeezed, or if you’re being hit for billions in covid bailouts — or if you’re one of one million Americans who were stranded during Christmas week by the failure of Southwest Airlines’ IT systems, which use duct-tape and wishful thinking to hold together the IT systems of all the airlines SWA bought:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/16/for-petes-sake/#unfair-and-deceptive

The collapse of competition in the US airline industry is the result of a deliberate policy, the “consumer welfare” theory of antitrust, which says that monopolies are “efficient” and good for the public. It’s a theory that took root under Reagan, and was reaffirmed and expanded by every president, R or D, since.

Until now. For the first time in two generations, the Biden administration has taken up the neglected, noble art of trustbusting, blocking mergers and promising to break up the mergers we’ve already seen, through enforcers like Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division and Lina Khan at the FTC:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Which is bad news for the proposed Jetblue/Spirit merger. Last week, the DoJ filed suit to block the merger, joined by the AGs from NY, MA and DC.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.254267/gov.uscourts.mad.254267.1.0.pdf

Notably, Pete Buttigieg — who has been historically shy of using his prodigious powers as the boss of a large agency — will also block the merger:

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/usdot-statement-justice-departments-lawsuit-block-proposed-jetblue-spirit-merger

Spirit’s shares are in the toilet. Writing in his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller explains why shareholders are bolting for the doors: the case against the Jetblue/Spirit merger is incredibly strong. A slam-dunk, even:

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/an-end-to-airline-consolidation

Spirit, after all, is America’s most famous budget airline. That means that it attracts fliers by undercutting the Big Four. That puts downward pressure on the Big Four, who are faced with the choice of taking lower profits to retain fliers’ business, or losing all the profit when those fliers take Spirit. Remove Spirit from play and that downward pressure on fares disappears. You don’t need newfangled “neo-Brandeisian” antitrust to see why this is bad — even under “consumer welfare” antitrust, anything that will obviously make prices go up is prohibited (indeed, this is the only thing consumer welfare antitrust cares about).

How do we know that a Jetblue/Spirit merger is a price-increasing, illegal antitrust violation? Spirit says so.

[Image ID: A slide prepared for Spirit Airlines’ board, titled ‘Shareholders should think about the conversation with regulators,’ and laying out the case that a Jetblue/Spirit merger is illegal.]

This is truly delicious! You see, last year, there was a bidding war for Spirit and Jetblue was the outside bidder. Spirit’s board wanted to convince their shareholders to reject Jetblue’s bid, so they commissioned some aviation economists to do a study on the matter, which Spirit then circulated to its investors.

That report is unequivocal: it estimates that a Jetblue/Spirit merger will be a disaster. Spirit’s participation in a route lowers fares by 17%. When Spirit stops competing on a route, fares go up by 30%. Spirit CEO Ted Christie called the proposed merger “unlawful” and “unethical”:

https://simpleflying.com/spirit-ceo-shareholder-rejection-jetblue-cynical-disruptive-offer/

Spirit is a major competitor to Jetblue. As Stoller notes, they compete on hundreds of routes, and are adding more all the time. Jetblue clearly understands that removing Spirit as a competitor would let it raise fares. As one Jetblue manager — quoted by the DoJ — explained: “I don’t think we should be selling the [Spirit] fare if [Spirit] is not serving the market.” Jetblue’s internal memos on the merger include an executive stating that the merger will allow the airline to realize “efficiencies” by reducing service and increasing fares. This isn’t the kind of “efficiency” we want.

Stoller notes that even with this damning evidence, there are still some spoilers. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has cut a deal to back the merger, even though Florida stands to suffer the most of any state from this merger due to the number of Spirit flights taking off from its airports. And, Stoller notes, the judge presiding over the case is an 82 year old Reagan appointee — a ideology-addled dotard named William Young.

But, Stoller notes, with Buttigieg and the DOT on the case, it’s hard to see how this merger can go through — the DOT has very broad powers to block mergers that reduce routes and don’t have to meet the same evidentiary standards as the DoJ would in court.

Stoller thinks Buttigieg has had a “moment of truth” — that outside pressure from activists and critics convinced the secretary that his future political fortunes would be better served, on balance, by boldly using his powers (and pleasing the public), rather than sitting on his hands (and pleasing future industry donors):

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/pete-buttigiegs-moment-of-truth

If that’s so, it’s welcome news. While I would prefer that our political leaders acted boldly in the public interest out of a sense of duty, I will happily settle for bold action motivated by fear of the voters’ wrath.

[Image ID: A crashed WWI biplane, redecorated in Spirit airlines livery. The scene is decorated with text-snippets cut out of a Spirit Airlines internal investor presentation slide advising that merging with Jetblue is ill-advised and possibly illegal.]

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

since i am at home and have access to my yearbooks, it is now time for the roundup of “some of my favorite quotes from people’s yearbook signatures”, a non-exhaustive list:

2010-11 (3rd grade):

-“have a great summer savvanah”—kid in my class who spelled my name wrong lmao

2011-12 (4th grade):

-“your the most legendary person i have ever met”—one of my besties to this day

2012-13 (5th grade):

-“when the world looks down on you, give them 5 and a half reasons to look up at you. you are brilliant. you are a good person. never lose that. never stop dominating.” —one of the then-high school juniors for some reason (i got signatures and messages from SEVERAL juniors and seniors that year for some reason lmao)

-“too bad”—a kid in my class

*could not find 2013-14 :(*

2014-15 (7th grade):

-“stay cool and rock on with those dance moves and work on skating”—another kid who was in our production of xanadu, where i successfully campaigned with the director to not make everyone rollerskate because some of us (myself included) could not rollerskate

-“the cat whiskers come from within”—a girl in the grade below me with whom i am still buddies

-“you are the smartest person i know and don’t let anyone take that away from you”—my now IRL best friend, the first year after he moved to our school, and this was even though at the time we were in the middle of an INTENSE academic rivalry that put a damper on our friendship for a while

2015-16 (8th grade):

-every single kid who wrote HAGS!!! (have a great summer) because it’s funny <3

-“you have been happy when i have been sad so uh…thanks for always cheering me up with just a smile”—a kid in the grade below me

-“savannah, it is really fun having you in the class and i hope we got the party started for you every english class!”—the same kid who spelled my name wrong in 3rd grade; every day at the start of english class i’d say “let’s get this party started!”

2016-17 (9th grade):

-“…you’ll have to come check in and draw me more memes!”—my 9th grade history teacher, context being that she pitted all the kids in my grade against each other in a year-long history meme war and i, being a dumbass, did not know how to make memes online using generators and shit, so i HAND DREW all of my memes on her board and she would take pictures for my entries (for the record: i did not win)

-“this is a good yearbook. you are a good person. have a good summer.”—one of my guy friends in my class

-“we’re gonna need you in quiz bowl. also how is this handwriting.”—another guy in my class; the reference to the handwriting was because we had to proofread each other’s handwritten essay drafts in english class and i straight up could not read like half of his and he got PISSED as a result

2017-18 (10th grade):

-“dear savannah, have a great summer! read lots of books and eat lots of food because those things make you happy and happiness is great.”—one of my friends in my class, also that is sound advice

-“*sine graph* there, i sined it.”—my precalculus teacher

-“i am ‘cosining’ it.”—the same kid who wrote the handwriting comment the previous year; written directly under the previous signature

-“savannah, mashed potatoes…”—the bestie who wrote the “legendary” comment in 4th grade; the whole message was much longer but we had an inside joke going about how i’m super-picky about my mashed potatoes lol

2018-19 (11th grade):

-“you are just the sweetest little ol’ thang”—one of my friends in my class

-“thanks for making this a great year. you’ve always been so nice to me. never forget that no matter what, you have a good heart, don’t forget that!”—one of the seniors that year; we were in all the musicals and choir together for a few years

-“stay frosty! your joy for life is special, don’t ever let anyone diminish it. change the world.”—a beloved history teacher who moved away after that school year

*no signatures for 2019-20 because COVID :(*

[yeniasworld]

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Adaptable and results-driven Fixed Assets Accountant with extensive experience in delivering first-class financial management. Expertise in meeting deadlines, critical decision-making, and conducting detailed financial analyses. Proficient in accounts payable, financial reconciliation, and assets management. Demonstrated excellence in improving processes and supporting company growth through strong analytical and quantitative skills.

EXPERIENCE

Sales Ledger Assistant

Colefax Group – London, England | 02/2023 – 07/2023

• Verified accuracy of statements from clients, suppliers, and internal employees.

• Reconciled Purchase Orders (POs) for accurate inventory reporting.

• Managed month-end closing entries to ensure detailed reporting and recordkeeping.

• Collaborated with credit control to chase outstanding sales invoices.

• Maintained up-to-date bank records by regularly checking imported bank statements.

• Managed internal inbox, resolving queries within strict internal Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

• Updated general ledger documents to maintain accurate transaction records.

Fixed Asset Accountant

Room 307 Limited – London, England | 08/2021 – 12/2022

• Advised finance management, Directors, and the Board on asset investments and tax efficiency.

• Conducted economic research on profitability, liquidity, and asset management.

• Presented financial data and forecasts to stakeholders for strategic decision-making.

• Produced financial reports comparing planned and actual budgets for investment insights.

• Utilized manual and automated methods for calculating insurance rates and premiums.

Senior Accounts Payable

Room 307 Limited – London, England | 01/2019 – 07/2021

• Managed multi-company Outlook email accounts.

• Prepared and analyzed financial statements to assess accuracy and compliance with procedural standards.

• Processed supplier invoices and updated accounts using Sage 200 and xLedger.

• Assisted with weekly payment runs and year-end audit requests.

• Utilized Invoice Scanning (OCR) systems to distribute invoices for approval via Workflow software.

• Identified and resolved discrepancies by improving existing accounting practices.

Account Assistant (Intern)

ITRS Group – London, England | 09/2018 – 11/2018

• Reconciled discrepancies in accounts receivable general ledger accounts and reports.

• Managed petty cash, recording entries and verifying documentation.

• Processed accounting documents such as invoices, sales orders, and purchase orders.

• Communicated with vendors and clients to facilitate payments and reduce outstanding balances.

• Prepared month-end closing entries for accurate record-keeping.

Finance Intern

Legg Mason (Acquired by Franklin Templeton) – London, England | 06/2018 – 08/2018

• Assisted with client and supplier queries, payments, filing, and administering penalties.

• Collaborated in a team to present strategies for improving distribution effectiveness through automation.

• Updated financial spreadsheets with daily transactions and expenses.

• Prioritized tasks to meet deadlines and manage workflow efficiently.

• Performed double-entry bookkeeping for accurate financial record-keeping.

CORE QUALIFICATIONS

• Complex problem-solving

• Process improvement

• Assets management

• BACS payment processing

• Financial reconciliation

• Budget development

• Financial report analysis

• Team management

• Sage 200, xLedger, Workday

• General ledger maintenance

• Accounts payable/receivable

• Deadline and target-oriented

• Multi-currency expertise

EDUCATION

BA (Honours): Accounting and Finance

Middlesex University – London, England | 2017

Diploma of Higher Education: Business Studies

Newham Sixth Form College – London, England | 2014

GCSEs: Business Studies

Brampton Manor Academy – London, England | 2012

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award (2011)

• Raleigh International Costa Rica and Nicaragua Award (10-week expedition, 2014)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• LinkedIn Profile: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/yenias-o-9a1282b2?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app]

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.3 (after 1930)

1925 – USS Shenandoah, the United States' first American-built rigid airship, was destroyed in a squall line over Noble County, Ohio. Fourteen of her 42-man crew perished, including her commander, Zachary Lansdowne. 1933 – Yevgeniy Abalakov is the first man to reach the highest point in the Soviet Union, Communism Peak (now called Ismoil Somoni Peak and situated in Tajikistan) (7495 m). 1935 – Sir Malcolm Campbell reaches a speed of 304.331 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over 300 mph. 1939 – World War II: France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, forming the Allied nations. The Viceroy of India also declares war, but without consulting the provincial legislatures. 1939 – World War II: The United Kingdom and France begin a naval blockade of Germany that lasts until the end of the war. This also marks the beginning of the Battle of the Atlantic. 1941 – The Holocaust: Karl Fritzsch, deputy camp commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, experiments with the use of Zyklon B in the gassing of Soviet POWs. 1942 – World War II: In response to news of its coming liquidation, Dov Lopatyn leads an uprising in the Ghetto of Lakhva (present-day Belarus). 1943 – World War II: British and Canadian troops land on the Italian mainland. On the same day, Walter Bedell Smith and Giuseppe Castellano sign the Armistice of Cassibile, although it is not announced for another five days. 1944 – Holocaust: Diarist Anne Frank and her family are placed on the last transport train from the Westerbork transit camp to the Auschwitz concentration camp, arriving three days later. 1945 – A three-day celebration begins in China, following the Victory over Japan Day on September 2. 1950 – "Nino" Farina becomes the first Formula One Drivers' champion after winning the 1950 Italian Grand Prix. 1954 – The People's Liberation Army begins shelling the Republic of China-controlled islands of Quemoy, starting the First Taiwan Strait Crisis. 1967 – Dagen H in Sweden: Traffic changes from driving on the left to driving on the right overnight. 1971 – Qatar becomes an independent state. 1976 – Viking program: The American Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars. 1978 – During the Rhodesian Bush War a group of ZIPRA guerrillas shot down civilian Vickers Viscount aircraft (Air Rhodesia Flight 825) with a Soviet-made SAM Strela-2; of 56 passengers and crew 38 people died in crash, 10 were massacred by the guerrillas at the site. 1981 – The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, an international bill of rights for women, is instituted by the United Nations. 1987 – In a coup d'état in Burundi, President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza is deposed by Major Pierre Buyoya. 1989 – Cubana de Aviación Flight 9046 crashes into a residential area of Havana shortly after takeoff from José Martí International Airport, killing 150. 1989 – Varig Flight 254 crashes in the Amazon rainforest near São José do Xingu in Brazil, killing 12. 1997 – Vietnam Airlines Flight 815 (Tupolev Tu-134) crashes on approach into Phnom Penh airport, killing 64. 2001 – In Belfast, Protestant loyalists begin a picket of Holy Cross, a Catholic primary school for girls. 2004 – Beslan school siege results in over 330 fatalities, including 186 children. 2010 – After taking off from Dubai International Airport, UPS Airlines Flight 6 develops an in-flight fire in the cargo hold and crashes near Nad Al Sheba, killing both crew members on board. 2016 – The U.S. and China, together responsible for 40% of the world's carbon emissions, both formally ratify the Paris global climate agreement. 2017 – North Korea conducts its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.

[insipid-drivel]

The wonderful thing about archaeology and anthropology is that, regardless of what bones may or may not say, how someone’s grave or memorial is arranged reveals very telling details that allow for more accurate understanding of pre-Christian and non-Christian burials and the identities of the people in them! Meet Birka!

“Birka” was discovered in about 1878 in a 10th century chamber-grave in Birka, Sweden. Up until 2017, archaeologists believed Birka to be a cisgendered male. The kicker? Birka and her grave were used for decades as a prime example of what male Viking burials of high status were supposed to look like! After extracting usable DNA from Birka and running the results, it turns out that Birka was AFAB!

“This was significant because the grave, which was excavated in 1878, had long been seen, and repeatedly published, as a spectacular example of a high-status warrior burial—an identity with intriguing implications in the light of our new sex determination.” -Source

For over 130 years and after over 50 published papers, archaeologists had no idea that their poster-skeleton for a Viking “Leader of Men” was, in fact, AFAB.

Archaeologist and ethnographer Hjalmar Stolpe (1841–1905) excavated a burial chamber in the 1870s, and Birka’s grave became known as "one of the most iconic graves from the Viking Age." The gravesite was marked by a boulder on top of an elevated terrace that came into direct contact with a nearby garrison. Inside, the grave included "a sword, an axe, a spear, armour-piercing arrows, a battle knife, two shields, and two horses, one mare and one stallion". 

For the next 128 years, the skeleton was assumed to be that of a "battle hardened man" and compared to "a figure from Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries".

Things got even more interesting in the 1970′s when chromosome technology reached the point where it was possible to determine whether someone’s remains possessed XX, XY, XXY, XYY, etc. chromosomes. All the way back in 1970, Birka’s chromosome report came back XX, but there were still so many tokens of what were thought to always be MALE tokens of badassery that Birka’s status as a cismale remained.

Meanwhile, those arguing for Birka’s acknowledged status as at least being AFAB called attention to this interesting bit of analysis of Birka’s burial site:

From Wikipedia:

Analysis of the contents of the grave showed that it contained a game set with a board and pieces, noted as typically symbolizing strategic thinking, which has led to speculation "that she was an officer who could lead troops into battle".[12]The Guardian reported, "Gaming pieces – perhaps from hnefatafl, a sort of precursor to chess – suggest the female warrior from grave Bj 581 was a battle strategist."[13] According to Kjellström, "Only a few warriors are buried with gaming pieces, and they signal strategic thinking."[12] This may also indicate that she was  a member of the military caste.[7][14]The Washington Post reported, "The warrior was, in fact, female. And not just any female, but a Viking warrior woman, a shield-maiden, like the ancient Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones."[7] Archaeologist David Zori noted, "numerous Viking sagas, such as the 13th century Saga of the Volsungs, tell of 'shield-maidens' fighting alongside male warriors".[3]An analysis of the weapons indicates the weapons had been used by a trained warrior and were not ceremonial.[15]

*This isn’t to say that Birka wasn’t a man or identified as male! There is evidence among various Nordic tribes throughout history of acknowledged/accepted trans Vikings depending upon date and the tribal politics in question. The Nordic peoples were highly aware of, if not accepting of, various forms of non-binary gender and sexuality. We just don’t know for sure what sort of persuasions Birka had, considering we don’t even know what Birka’s real name was, much less examples of gendered pronouns ascribed to them.

"When they dig up your bones they'll know if you're a MAN or WOMAN"

First of all. No they won't. Apparently determining if someone is a man or woman in archeology is very fucking difficult.

But second of all. There's people in 2022 that genuinely believe women have 1 less rib than men because of what the Bible says.

So not only is determining the sex of bones really fucking hard. But there's people in 2022 that don't know what a woman's skeleton looks like.

There is a greater than zero chance that you're bones will be discovered in 500 years and people will have zero fucking clue what your sex assigned at birth is. And honestly I think that's very gender.

(Plus the skeletal system way of recognizing people doesn't really account for things like people being assigned female at birth but they really have male internal anatomy. Or women who may develop "masculine" skeletal structures because they have PCOS which causes them to produce a high amount of testosterone. It's estimated 6% of women have PCOS.)

-fae

[ivogfan]

Ivo's done an article for iNews!! It should be in tomorrow's print/digital editions!

"I learnt the names and constituencies of all 650 MPs. I’ll never do it again" - Ivo Graham (iNews)

"As a champion procrastinator addicted to trivia and games, I loved it."

Where were you on the night of the last general election, 12 December 2019? Whether you were appalled or somehow delighted by the scale of that night’s landslide, it probably came as more of a surprise than its widely-forecasted reversal this time around.

And I was processing that surprise in the same way I have spent far too much of my adult life: isolating myself from those around me and preparing a quiz.

The ploughing of this frankly baffling furrow had begun in 2017, when, after three cheery but repetitive solo stand-up shows about Mario Kart, Nokia 3210s and the other mainstays of my emotionally repressed boarding school adolescence, I’d decided to launch myself into current affairs with, by the very loosest of definitions, a “political show”.

Of course, 2016 had provided various jumping-off points for this, but while Brexit and Trump had prompted many of my peers to interrogate the big issues more passionately than ever, I, a filibustering coward with an audience still largely made up of family friends, had decided to turn the whole thing into an actual exam. I miss exams! I found them very stressful at the time but I find actual adulthood much more so!

And so I began “work” on Educated Guess (not a bad title TBF), a show where I used my guilt about not knowing enough about politics as a very mealy-mouthed segue to its central “stunt”, that I’d learned all 650 MPs of the UK.

Or, as a popular meme format might have it:

No one:

No one:

No one:

Ivo: OK, so I’ve learned all 650 MPs of the UK.

As a champion procrastinator addicted to trivia and games, I loved learning the 650 MPs of the UK. Finally, an actual project for the long, doomscrolling trains and coaches home from gigs: uploading the full House of Commons onto the Quizlet revision app, and testing myself in every spare moment I could, preparing for the thrilling/baffling denouement of the show in Edinburgh that August, where audiences would be invited to shout out their home constituency and I would bellow back their MP as fast as I could.

This whole exercise, a frenetic mind palace of word-association shortcuts like “James Cleverly – Braintree”, was accurately assessed by multiple reviewers as “not technically comedy”, but my own pathetic adrenaline levels have rarely spiked as high as during those quizzes, or in the bar after the show, where the geographical heckles continued to come thick and fast.

“Glasgow East?”

“Paul Sweeney!”

“No, that’s Glasgow North East!”

“OK, sorry, thanks for coming!”

The “class of 2017” had had to be hastily revised that summer after Theresa May’s majestic squandering of her majority in June, and many of my exhaustively-revised new intake would not see out a full term either, when two and a half years later, in December 2019, 43.6 per cent of British voters shuffled, shivering, to the polls, to give the fridge-dwelling party king a fat mandate for his oven-ready deal.

I witnessed those results from a TV studio in west London, where my unique history of comedy-adjacent data regurgitation had seen me generously, if optimistically, invited to be part of Channel 4’s election coverage. I was set the challenge of learning all the new MPs, as they came in, in time for a heavily caffeinated quiz at 5am.

Unfortunately, the exit polls proved so atmosphere-inhalingly depressing in both the Channel 4 studio and green room that most of the comedy comms, including my own, were abandoned, replaced by extended round-table analysis such as Stanley Johnson riffing about pilots in burqas and Amber Rudd threatening to deport Nish Kumar.

What possible light relief could an Old Etonian comedian, however apologetic, bring to this most gracious of victory parades? So needless to say I was quite colossally relieved not to have to bring my “let’s see if I’ve managed to remember all the new Red Wall Tories!” cul de sac to the table in the wee smalls.

That being said, DOA as it clearly was from the moment Huw Edwards revealed the scores, my bit wasn’t fully and finally confirmed to have been cancelled until 2am, so I was still there in the green room for hours, the loneliest character of the whole enterprise, not even attempting any gallows humour with the rest of the jilted jokers, because I was sat on my own updating my Quizlet Premium, just in case. It was the night I learned the name Jonathan Gullis. It was a truly miserable night.

Today’s election will, we can only hope, begin a political era less dismal than the last. There are going to be a lot of new MPs and they will have a hell of a job on their hands. I am going to take a keen interest in how they get on. But I am not going to learn all of their names.

Ivo will be performing his shows Grand Designs and Carousel at the Edinburgh Fringe from 31 July to 25 August ivograham.com

(Photo: Matthew Stronge)

[stockstr]

London Stock Exchange History

London Stock Exchange History

The London Stock Exchange was founded in Sweeting's Alley in London in 1801.[3] It moved to Capel Court the following year.[3]

In 1972, the Exchange moved to a new purpose-built building and trading floor in Threadneedle Street. Deregulation, sometimes known as "big bang", came in 1986 and external ownership of member firms was allowed for the first time.[3] In 1995, the Alternative Investment Market was launched and in 2004 the Exchange moved again, this time to Paternoster Square.[3]

Between April and May 2006, having been rebuffed in an informal approach, Nasdaq built up a 23% stake in the Exchange.[4] The stake grew to 29% as a result of the London exchange's share consolidation.[5] Nasdaq has since sold its investment.[6]

Stock Strategy

In 2007, the Exchange acquired the Milan-based Borsa Italiana for €1.6bn (£1.1bn; US$2bn) to form the London Stock Exchange Group plc. The combination was intended to diversify the LSE's product offering and customer base. The all-share deal diluted the stakes of existing LSE shareholders, with Borsa Italiana shareholders receiving new shares representing 28 per cent of the enlarged register.[7]

On 16 September 2009, the London Stock Exchange Group agreed to acquire Millennium Information Technologies, Ltd., a Sri Lankan-based software company specialising in trading systems, for US$30m (£18m). The acquisition was completed on 19 October 2009.[8]

On 9 February 2011, TMX Group, operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange agreed to join forces with the London Stock Exchange Group in a deal described by TMX head Tom Kloet as a 'merger of equals' (though 8/15 board members of the combined entity will be appointed by LSE, 7/15 by TMX).[9] The deal, subject to government approval would create the world's largest exchange operator for mining stocks.[10] In the UK, the LSE Group first announced it as a takeover, however in Canada the deal was reported as a merger.[11] The provisional name for the combined group would be LTMX Group plc.[12] On 13 June 2011, a rival, and hostile bid from the Maple Group of Canadian interests, was unveiled for the TMX Group. This was a cash and stock bid of CA$3.7 billion, launched in the hope of blocking the LSE Group's takeover of TMX. The group was composed of the leading banks and financial institutions of Canada.[13] The London Stock Exchange however announced it was terminating the merger with TMX on 29 June 2011 citing that "LSEG and TMX Group believe that the merger is highly unlikely to achieve the required two-thirds majority approval at the TMX Group shareholder meeting".[14]

In July 2012, the LSE bought a 5% stake in Delhi Stock Exchange.[15]

On 2 June 2014, the LSE became the 10th stock exchange to join the United Nations' Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative.[16][17][18]

On 26 June 2014, the LSE announced it had agreed to buy Frank Russell Co., making it one of the largest providers of index services.[19]

In January 2015, Reuters reported that the London Stock Exchange Group planned to put Russell Investments up for sale, and estimates the sale will produce $1.4 billion.[20]

In March 2016, the company announced it had reached an agreement with Deutsche Börse to merge. The companies would have been brought under a new holding company, UK TopCo, and would retain both headquarters in London and Frankfurt.[21] On 25 February 2017, the London Stock Exchange Group PLC stated it wouldn't sell its fixed-income trading platform in Italy to Deutsche Börse AG, to appease anti-trust concerns. The planned merger between the two exchanges, which was estimated to create the largest exchange in Europe, was subsequently described as "at risk" by the Wall Street Journal.[22] The merger attempt was blocked by EU Competition Regulator on 29 March 2017 stating that "The Commission's investigation concluded the merger would have created a de facto monopoly in the markets for clearing fixed income instruments".[23]

In August 2019, the company agreed to buy Refinitiv in an all-share transaction valuing the target at $27 billion.[24] Shortly thereafter, on 11 September 2019, LSEG itself became the target of a £32 billion bid by the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, subject to abandoning its plans to buy Refinitiv.[25] LSEG rejected the takeover bid two days later.[26] In order to secure the Refinitiv deal, in July 2020, LSEG announced that it was considering selling its Italian assets including MTS, Italian bond trading venue and potentially Borsa Italiana.[27]

On 18 September 2020, LSEG entered into exclusive talks to sell the Italian Bourse to Euronext.[28] The acquisition was announced on 9 October of that same year and was completed on 29 April 2021.

[onlineaccountingcourses]

Latest GST News, Information, Notifications & Announcements-2023

On 28th February 2023, the food central tax rate notifications and the compensation cess rate notifications were announced by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC). Those rate changes were announced at the 49th GST Council meeting held on the 18th of February 2023. All the revisions relating to the GST rate changes shall be effective from 1st March 2023. 

Rab, also called liquid jaggery, sold loose or without pre-packaging is exempt from GST under Notification No. 04/2023-Central Tax (Rate). As a result of this change, Rab/Liquid jaggery now has a GST rate of nil for loosely sold Rab. Furthermore, the GST rate on pre-packaged and labelled Rab is from 18% to 5% as per Notification No. 03/2023-Central Tax (Rate).

As per Notification No. 03/2023- Central Tax (Rate) has changed the GST rate on pencil sharpeners from 18% to 12% by ensuring its re-classification under HSN code 8214. Furthermore, this change has taken effect from 1st March 2023. 

The GST Council recommended taxing services provided by courts and tribunals under the reverse charge mechanism in its 49th meeting. Accordingly, Notification No. 13/2017 was revised into Notification No. 02/2023-Central Tax (Rate) to include courts and tribunals in its scope.

On 28th February 2023, the government also revised Notification No. 01/2023-Central Tax (Rate), extending GST exemption to another service. As an educational institution, any board, authority, or body set up by the Central or State Governments, including the National Testing Agency (NTA), will conduct entrance examinations. Only such services will be considered for exemption, not any other. 

A final CBIC notification, 01/2023-Compensation Cess (Rate), revises Notification No. 1/2017- Compensation Cess. (Rate), dated 28th June 2017. As a result, coal rejects sold to a coal washery or generated by a coal washery that does not qualify for a tax credit are exempt from cess. The exemption applies to coal rejects supplied to coal washeries in addition to coal washeries' supplies.

For more information, Visit us at: https://academy.tax4wealth.com/

[gillis77]

66. President Trump ordered a halt to U.S. tax money going to international organizations that fund or perform abortions.

67. Trump imposed sanctions on the socialists in Venezuela who have killed their citizens.

68. Finalized new trade agreement with South Korea.

69. Made a deal with the European Union to increase U.S. energy exports to Europe.👀👀

70. Withdrew the U.S. from the job killing TPP deal.

71. Secured $250 billion in new trade and investment deals in China and $12 billion in Vietnam.

72. Okay’ d up to $12 billion in aid for farmers affected by unfair trade retaliation.👀👀

73. Has had over a dozen US hostages freed, including those Obama could not get freed.

74. Trump signed the Music Modernization Act, the biggest change to copyright law in decades.

75. Trump secured Billions that will fund the building of a wall at our southern border.

76. The Trump Administration is promoting second chance hiring to give former inmates the opportunity to live crime-free lives and find meaningful employment.

77. Trump’s DOJ and the Board Of Prisons launched a new “Ready to Work Initiative” to help connect employers directly with former prisoners.👀👀

78. President Trump’s historic tax cut legislation included new Opportunity Zone Incentives to promote investment in low-income communities across the country.

79. 8,764 communities across the country have been designated as Opportunity Zones.

80. Opportunity Zones are expected to spur $100 billion in long-term private capital investment in economically distressed communities across the country.

81. Trump directed the Education Secretary to end Common Core.👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

82. Trump signed the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund into law.

83. Trump signed measure funding prevention programs for Veteran suicide.👀👀

84. Companies have brought back over a TRILLION dollars from overseas because of the TCJA bill that Trump signed.

85. Manufacturing jobs are growing at the fastest rate in more than 30 years.

86. Stock Market has reached record highs.

87. Median household income has hit highest level ever recorded.

88. African-American unemployment is at an all-time low.(was until Covid bullshit)

89. Hispanic-American unemployment is at an all-time low.

90. Asian-American unemployment is at an all-time low.

91. Women’s unemployment rate is at a 65-year low.

92. Youth unemployment is at a 50-year low.

93. We have the lowest unemployment rate ever recorded.

94. The Pledge to America’s Workers has resulted in employers committing to train more than 4 million Americans.

95. 95 percent of U.S. manufacturers are optimistic about the future— the highest ever.

96. As a result of the Republican tax bill, small businesses will have the lowest top marginal tax rate in more than 80 years.👀👀

97. Record number of regulations eliminated that hurt small businesses.

98. Signed welfare reform requiring able-bodied adults who don’t have children to work or look for work if they’re on welfare.🙌����

99. Under Trump, the FDA approved more affordable generic drugs than ever before in history.

100. Reformed Medicare program to stop hospitals from overcharging low-income seniors on their drugs—saving seniors 100’s of millions of $$$ this year alone.👀👀

101. Signed Right-To-Try legislation allowing terminally ill patients to try experimental treatment that wasn’t allowed before.

102. Secured $6 billion in new funding to fight the opioid epidemic.❤️❤️

103. Signed VA Choice Act and VA Accountability Act, expanded VA telehealth services, walk-in-clinics, and same-day urgent primary and mental health care.👀👀

104. U.S. oil production recently reached all-time high so we are less dependent on oil from the Middle East.

105. The U.S. is a net natural gas exporter for the first time since 1957.

106. NATO allies increased their defense spending because of his pressure campaign.

107. Withdrew the United States from the job-killing Paris Climate Accord in 2017 and that same year the U.S. still led the world by having the largest reduction in Carbon emissions.👀👀

108. Has his circuit court judge nominees being confirmed faster than any other new administration.

109. Had his Supreme Court Justice’s Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh confirmed.

110. Moved U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.👀👀

111. Agreed to a new trade deal with Mexico & Canada that will increase jobs here and $$$ coming in.

112. Reached a breakthrough agreement with the E.U. to increase U.S. exports.

113. Imposed tariffs on China in response to China’s forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and their chronically abusive trade practices, has agreed to a Part One trade deal with China.

114. Signed legislation to improve the National Suicide Hotline.👀👀

115. Signed the most comprehensive childhood cancer legislation ever into law, which will advance childhood cancer research and improve treatments.

116. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by Trump doubled the maximum amount of the child tax credit available to parents and lifted the income limits so more people could claim it.

117. It also created a new tax credit for other dependents.

118. In 2018, President Trump signed into law a $2.4 billion funding increase for the Child Care and Development Fund, providing a total of $8.1 billion to States to fund child care for low-income families.

119. The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) signed into law by Trump provides a tax credit equal to 20-35% of child care expenses, $3,000 per child & $6,000 per family + Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) allow you to set aside up to $5,000 in pre-tax $ to use for child care.

120. In 2019 President Donald Trump signed the Autism Collaboration, Accountability, Research, Education and Support Act (CARES) into law which allocates $1.8 billion in funding over the next five years to help people with autism spectrum disorder and to help their families.👀👀

121. In 2019 President Trump signed into law two funding packages providing nearly $19 million in new funding for Lupus specific research and education programs, as well an additional $41.7 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the most Lupus funding EVER.

122. Another upcoming accomplishment to add: In the next week or two Trump will be signing the first major anti-robocall law in decades called the TRACED Act (Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence.) Once it’s the law, the TRACED Act will extend the period of time the FCC has to catch & punish those who intentionally break telemarketing restrictions. The bill also requires voice service providers to develop a framework to verify calls are legitimate before they reach your phone.

123. US stock market continually hits all-time record highs.

v Because so many people asked for a document with all of this listed in one place, here it is. No links provided to remove bias — as Google search is easy. Print this out for family, friends, neighbors, etc. I encourage you to drop this list off to voters before the 2020 election, too!

v Trump did all of this while fighting flagrant abuse and impeachment charges.

[hakesbrother]

Homes For Sale San Antonio Tx

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The October 1998 Central Texas floods have been among the costliest floods in United States historical past, leading to $750 million in damage and 32 deaths. In 2002, from June 30 to July 7, 35 in of rain fell within the San Antonio space, resulting in widespread flooding and 12 fatalities. Natural vegetation in the new homes san antonio San Antonio area consists of oak-cedar woodland, oak grassland savanna, chaparral brush, and riparian woodland. San Antonio is on the westernmost limit for each Cabbage palmetto and Spanish moss. The West Side is predominantly Hispanic/Latin American and working class, with pockets of wealth within the northwest and far west.

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Males have a median income of $30,061 versus $24,444 for females. About 17.3% of the inhabitants and 14.0% of households are below the poverty line. Of the total population, 24.3% of these beneath the age of 18 and 13.5% of these sixty homes for sale san antonio tx five and older were dwelling under the poverty line. In 2019, households had a median revenue of $53,571 and a mean income of $72,587. An estimated sixteen.8% of the population lived at or beneath the poverty line.

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[theconstitutionisgayculture]

SCHOOL SHOTINGS ARE INCREDIBLY RARE

Contrary to what the media would have you believe, school shootings are very, very rare. If you take all the school shootings in the US since the 1970s, there have only been roughly 1,400. Compare that to the number of murders per year in the US, which from 1990-2020 has fluctuated between nearly 25,000 and as low as 14,319. But wait, you say. 1,400 is still a really big number! No, it's not. We have 330 million people living in the US. 72 million of those are children. But wait, you say again. How can you compare the number of shootings to the number of children? You need to compare the number of children killed by school shootings! Ok. Let's do that, then.

In 2020 there were 72 million children in the US according to the US census. According to the K-12 school shooting database, during that year there were 27 children killed in school shootings. That's 27, out of 72 million. But wait, you say yet again. You're just cherrypicking the year 2020 because most kids were out of school for most oft he year because of covid! If you pick a year when school was in session all year, that number will shoot up! Well, I picked 2020 because that was the census year, but you're right. Let's go back to the school shooting database again and look at 2018, which is the year where the highest number of children was killed in a school shooting in American history. And there were...51 children killed. For contrast, let's look at how many children die from choking to death. In 1968 there were 719 deaths from children choking; in 2017, there were 184. Even when choking deaths among children have decreased by 75% since the same time the school shooting database has started tracking shootings, and even though school shooting deaths have gone up since 1970 (they've also gone down, and up, and down again, there's no real trend to how many shootings or deaths there are) there has never been a year where more children have been killed in a school shooting than have choked to death. You'll find the same with every single other common cause of death in the US, if you want to go look at the numbers further.

So, now that we've proven that deaths from a school shooting aren't just uncommon, they're rare, let's go back to the incidents themselves. 1,400 is still a big number, right? It's a scary number out of context. How could we have had 1,400 school shootings since 1970?

The answer lies not in gun culture, or in violent rhetoric online, or in the rise of "white supremacy", or in QAnon dark web message boards. The answer is mostly in the criteria for what counts as a school shooting. For that, let's go to the school shooting database itself. I'll just screenshot the front page for you:

Please read that carefully.

...when a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of the week. What that means is that if there are no kids in school and someone shoots a gun and the bullet hits the grass at an empty school, that counts as a school shooting. If a kid brings a gun to school and shoots no one, that counts as a school shooting.

For context on that, let's take 2022. In 2022 there have been 138 shootings that count as school shootings. My God, you say, that's nearly one every three days! Our children are in constant danger!

Not exactly. Out of those 138 incidents, only two involved active shooters. What does an "active shooter" mean? Let's once again let the school shooting database tell us:

So, to summarize, in 2022, despite the official number of school shootings being 138, only two of them resulted in deaths or injuries. Two. And you can look through the data for every year on the database and you'll see similar results. The total number of school shootings is always higher than the number of shootings with an active shooter. But when the media reports on the numbers, they don't make this distinction. They report the numbers as if every incident results in dead children, because the media is lying to you about pretty much everything. They have an agenda to push, and they'll push it regardless of the facts. And the facts are that school shootings are very rare. The facts are that defensive gun use of any kind far outstrips harm caused by guns. Guns are a net positive. They're how we defend ourselves and our families from anyone who would try to do us harm or violate our rights, from a criminal breaking into our homes to the government rounding us up and shipping us off to concentration camps. Don't let the media and the government scare you into demanding your rights be taken away. Your children are safe at school. From guns, at least. But sexual abuse at schools is a whole other topic.

[rwood2477]

Dude has been in office for 3 years.... what has he done? Other than dodging the darts the media and Pelosi have thrown?!?

what has PRESIDENT TRUMP and his cabinet accomplished.....

Here you go.

* Trump recently signed 3 bills to benefit Native people. One gives compensation to the Spokane tribe for loss of their lands in the mid-1900s, one funds Native language programs, and the third gives federal recognition to the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Montana.

* Trump finalized the creation of Space Force as our 6th Military branch.

* Trump signed a law to make cruelty to animals a federal felony so that animal abusers face tougher consequences.👀👀

* Violent crime has fallen every year he’s been in office after rising during the 2 years before he was elected.

* Trump signed a bill making CBD and Hemp legal.👀👀

* Trump’s EPA gave $100 million to fix the water infrastructure problem in Flint, Michigan.

* Under Trump’s leadership, in 2018 the U.S. surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of crude oil.

* Trump signed a law ending the gag orders on Pharmacists that prevented them from sharing money-saving information.

* Trump signed the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” (FOSTA), which includes the “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act” (SESTA) which both give law enforcement and victims new tools to fight sex trafficking.👀👀

* Trump signed a bill to require airports to provide spaces for breastfeeding Moms.

* The 25% lowest-paid Americans enjoyed a 4.5% income boost in November 2019, which outpaces a 2.9% gain in earnings for the country's highest-paid workers.

* Low-wage workers are benefiting from higher minimum wages and from corporations that are increasing entry-level pay.

* Trump signed the biggest wilderness protection & conservation bill in a decade and designated 375,000 acres as protected land.

* Trump signed the Save our Seas Act which funds $10 million per year to clean tons of plastic & garbage from the ocean.👀👀

* He signed a bill this year allowing some drug imports from Canada so that prescription prices would go down.

* Trump signed an executive order this year that forces all healthcare providers to disclose the cost of their services so that Americans can comparison shop and know how much less providers charge insurance companies.

* When signing that bill he said no American should be blindsided by bills for medical services they never agreed to in advance.

* Hospitals will now be required to post their standard charges for services, which include the discounted price a hospital is willing to accept.

* In the eight years prior to President Trump’s inauguration, prescription drug prices increased by an average of 3.6% per year. Under Trump, drug prices have seen year-over-year declines in nine of the last ten months, with a 1.1% drop as of the most recent month.

* He created a White House VA Hotline to help veterans and principally staffed it with veterans and direct family members of veterans.👀👀

* VA employees are being held accountable for poor performance, with more than 4,000 VA employees removed, demoted, and suspended so far.

* Issued an executive order requiring the Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs to submit a joint plan to provide veterans access to access to mental health treatment as they transition to civilian life.

* Because of a bill signed and championed by Trump, In 2020, most federal employees will see their pay increase by an average of 3.1% — the largest raise in more than 10 years.

* Trump signed into a law up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave for millions of federal workers.

* Trump administration will provide HIV prevention drugs for free to 200,000 uninsured patients per year for 11 years.👀👀

* All-time record sales during the 2019 holidays.

* Trump signed an order allowing small businesses to group together when buying insurance to get a better price👀👀

* President Trump signed the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act that provides funding for states to develop maternal mortality reviews to better understand maternal complications and identify solutions & largely focuses on reducing the higher mortality rates for Black Americans.

* In 2018, President Trump signed the groundbreaking First Step Act, a criminal justice bill which enacted reforms that make our justice system fairer and help former inmates successfully return to society.

* The First Step Act’s reforms addressed inequities in sentencing laws that disproportionately harmed Black Americans and reformed mandatory minimums that created unfair outcomes.👀👀

* The First Step Act expanded judicial discretion in sentencing of non-violent crimes.

* Over 90% of those benefitting from the retroactive sentencing reductions in the First Step Act are Black Americans.

* The First Step Act provides rehabilitative programs to inmates, helping them successfully rejoin society and not return to crime.

* Trump increased funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) by more than 14%.👀👀

* Trump signed legislation forgiving Hurricane Katrina debt that threatened HBCUs.

* New single-family home sales are up 31.6% in October 2019 compared to just one year ago.

* Made HBCUs a priority by creating the position of executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs.

* Trump received the Bipartisan Justice Award at a historically black college for his criminal justice reform accomplishments.

* The poverty rate fell to a 17-year low of 11.8% under the Trump administration as a result of a jobs-rich environment.👀👀

* Poverty rates for African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans have reached their lowest levels since the U.S. began collecting such data.

* President Trump signed a bill that creates five national monuments, expands several national parks, adds 1.3 million acres of wilderness, and permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

* Trump’s USDA committed $124 Million to rebuild rural water infrastructure.👀👀

* Consumer confidence & small business confidence is at an all time high.

* More than 7 million jobs created since election.

* More Americans are now employed than ever recorded before in our history.

* More than 400,000 manufacturing jobs created since his election.

* Trump appointed 5 openly gay ambassadors.👀👀

* Trump ordered Ric Grenell, his openly gay ambassador to Germany, to lead a global initiative to decriminalize homosexuality across the globe.

* Through Trump’s Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team (ACTeam) initiative, Federal law enforcement more than doubled convictions of human traffickers and increased the number of defendants charged by 75% in ACTeam districts.

* In 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) dismantled an organization that was the internet’s leading source of prostitution-related advertisements resulting in sex trafficking.

* Trump’s OMB published new anti-trafficking guidance for government procurement officials to more effectively combat human trafficking.

* Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations arrested 1,588 criminals associated with Human Trafficking.

* Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services provided funding to support the National Human Trafficking Hotline to identify perpetrators and give victims the help they need.

* The hotline identified 16,862 potential human trafficking cases.

* Trump’s DOJ provided grants to organizations that support human trafficking victims – serving nearly 9,000 cases from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018.👀👀

* The Department of Homeland Security has hired more victim assistance specialists, helping victims get resources and support.

* President Trump has called on Congress to pass school choice legislation so that no child is trapped in a failing school because of his or her zip code.👀👀

* The President signed funding legislation in September 2018 that increased funding for school choice by $42 million.

* The tax cuts signed into law by President Trump promote school choice by allowing families to use 529 college savings plans for elementary and secondary education.👀👀

* Under his leadership ISIS has lost most of their territory and been largely dismantled.

* ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was killed.

* Signed the first Perkins CTE reauthorization since 2006, authorizing more than $1 billion for states each year to fund vocational and career education programs.

* Executive order expanding apprenticeship opportunities for students and workers.

* Trump issued an Executive Order prohibiting the U.S. government from discriminating against Christians or punishing expressions of faith.

* Signed an executive order that allows the government to withhold money from college campuses deemed to be anti-Semitic and who fail to combat anti-Semitism.

* President Trump ordered a halt to U.S. tax money going to international organizations that fund or perform abortions.

* Trump imposed sanctions on the socialists in Venezuela who have killed their citizens.

* Finalized new trade agreement with South Korea.

* Made a deal with the European Union to increase U.S. energy exports to Europe.👀👀

* Withdrew the U.S. from the job killing TPP deal.

* Secured $250 billion in new trade and investment deals in China and $12 billion in Vietnam.

* Okay’d up to $12 billion in aid for farmers affected by unfair trade retaliation.👀👀

* Has had over a dozen US hostages freed, including those Obama could not get freed.

* Trump signed the Music Modernization Act, the biggest change to copyright law in decades.

* Trump secured Billions that will fund the building of a wall at our southern border.

* The Trump Administration is promoting second chance hiring to give former inmates the opportunity to live crime-free lives and find meaningful employment.

* Trump’s DOJ and the Board Of Prisons launched a new “Ready to Work Initiative” to help connect employers directly with former prisoners.👀👀

* President Trump’s historic tax cut legislation included new Opportunity Zone Incentives to promote investment in low-income communities across the country.

* 8,764 communities across the country have been designated as Opportunity Zones.

* Opportunity Zones are expected to spur $100 billion in long-term private capital investment in economically distressed communities across the country.

* Trump directed the Education Secretary to end Common Core.👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

* Trump signed the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund into law.

* Trump signed measure funding prevention programs for Veteran suicide.👀👀

* Companies have brought back over a TRILLION dollars from overseas because of the TCJA bill that Trump signed.

* Manufacturing jobs are growing at the fastest rate in more than 30 years.

* Stock Market has reached record highs.

* Median household income has hit highest level ever recorded.

* African-American unemployment is at an all time low.

* Hispanic-American unemployment is at an all time low.

* Asian-American unemployment is at an all time low.

* Women’s unemployment rate is at a 65-year low.

* Youth unemployment is at a 50-year low.

* We have the lowest unemployment rate ever recorded.

* The Pledge to America’s Workers has resulted in employers committing to train more than 4 million Americans.

* 95 percent of U.S. manufacturers are optimistic about the future— the highest ever.

* As a result of the Republican tax bill, small businesses will have the lowest top marginal tax rate in more than 80 years.👀👀

* Record number of regulations eliminated that hurt small businesses.

* Signed welfare reform requiring able-bodied adults who don’t have children to work or look for work if they’re on welfare.🙌🙌

* Under Trump, the FDA approved more affordable generic drugs than ever before in history.

* Reformed Medicare program to stop hospitals from overcharging low-income seniors on their drugs—saving seniors 100’s of millions of $$$ this year alone.👀👀

* Signed Right-To-Try legislation allowing terminally ill patients to try experimental treatment that wasn’t allowed before.

* Secured $6 billion in new funding to fight the opioid epidemic.❤️❤️

* Signed VA Choice Act and VA Accountability Act, expanded VA telehealth services, walk-in-clinics, and same-day urgent primary and mental health care.👀👀

* U.S. oil production recently reached all-time high so we are less dependent on oil from the Middle East.

* The U.S. is a net natural gas exporter for the first time since 1957.

* NATO allies increased their defense spending because of his pressure campaign.

* Withdrew the United States from the job-killing Paris Climate Accord in 2017 and that same year the U.S. still led the world by having the largest reduction in Carbon emissions.👀👀

* Has his circuit court judge nominees being confirmed faster than any other new administration.

* Had his Supreme Court Justice’s Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh confirmed.

* Moved U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.👀👀

* Agreed to a new trade deal with Mexico & Canada that will increase jobs here and $$$ coming in.

* Reached a breakthrough agreement with the E.U. to increase U.S. exports.

* Imposed tariffs on China in response to China’s forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and their chronically abusive trade practices, has agreed to a Part One trade deal with China.

* Signed legislation to improve the National Suicide Hotline.👀👀

* Signed the most comprehensive childhood cancer legislation ever into law, which will advance childhood cancer research and improve treatments.

* The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by Trump doubled the maximum amount of the child tax credit available to parents and lifted the income limits so more people could claim it.

* It also created a new tax credit for other dependents.

* In 2018, President Trump signed into law a $2.4 billion funding increase for the Child Care and Development Fund, providing a total of $8.1 billion to States to fund child care for low-income families.

* The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) signed into law by Trump provides a tax credit equal to 20-35% of child care expenses, $3,000 per child & $6,000 per family + Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) allow you to set aside up to $5,000 in pre-tax $ to use for child care.

* In 2019 President Donald Trump signed the Autism Collaboration, Accountability, Research, Education and Support Act (CARES) into law which allocates $1.8 billion in funding over the next five years to help people with autism spectrum disorder and to help their families.👀👀

* In 2019 President Trump signed into law two funding packages providing nearly $19 million in new funding for Lupus specific research and education programs, as well an additional $41.7 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the most Lupus funding EVER.

* Another upcoming accomplishment to add: In the next week or two Trump will be signing the first major anti-robocall law in decades called the TRACED Act (Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence.) Once it’s thelaw, the TRACED Act will extend the period of time the FCC has to catch & punish those who intentionally break telemarketing restrictions. The bill also requires voice service providers to develop a framework to verify calls are legitimate before they reach your phone.

* US stock market continually hits all-time record highs.

* Because so many people asked for a document with all of this listed in one place, here it is. No links provided to remove bias as Google search is easy. Print this out for family, friends, neighbors, etc. I encourage you to drop this list off to voters before the 2020 election too!

*Trump did all of this while fighting flagrant abuse and impeachment charges.

——-please explain to me why you have a problem with OUR president? Because he has misspoke a few times? Tell me when you find a perfect person, please....I’ll wait! I’ll tell you why, because the media has skewed him in such a negative light and unfairly report his accomplishments to undermined those achievements! Why? Because the media is complicit in every single thing this man is trying to undo! Start thinking for yourself!

🇺🇸WWG1WGA🇺🇸

🇺🇸🇺🇸Are you tired of winning yet?🇺🇸🇺🇸

❤️SHARE THIS❤️

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The battle for Ring Zero

In @brucesterling​’s Locus review of my novel Walkaway, he describes the book as “advancing and demolishing potential political arguments that have never been made by anybody but [me].” That is a fair cop. I spend a lot of time worrying about esoteric risks that no one else seems to care about.

https://locusmag.com/2017/06/bruce-sterling-reviews-cory-doctorow/

For example: for twenty years now, I have been worrying about the shifting political, technical and social frameworks that govern our fundamental relationships to the computers that are now woven into every aspect of our civil, personal, work and family lives.

Specifically, I’m worried that as computers proliferate, so too do the harms in which computers are implicated, from cyberattacks to fraud to abuse to blackmail to harassment to theft. That’s partly because when a computer is in your door-lock, burglaries will increasingly become cybercrimes. But it’s also partly because of something fundamental to the nature of computers: their infinite configurability.

At its very foundational level, the modern computer is “general purpose.” Every computer we know how to make can run every program we know how to write. That’s why computers are so powerful and so salient: computers can do so many things, and any advance in computing power and efficiency ripples out to all the things computers can do. Investment in improvements to computers used in cars result in advances to computers used in fitness trackers, thermostats and CCTV cameras.

That general-purposeness is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means that we don’t have to invent a whole new kind of computers to power an appliance like a printer. On the other hand, it means that our printers can all run malware:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

On balance, and without minimizing their harms and risks, I am in favor general-purpose computers. Partly, that’s because I think general-purpose computers’ contributions to our lives and civilization outweigh the problems of general-purposeness. But, even more importantly, I think that the collateral damage of trying to remove general-purposeness is infinitely worse than even the worst problems created by general-purposeness.

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

Here’s why: we don’t actually know how to make a computer that can run some programs, but not all of them. Rather than invent that impossible computer, people who try to solve the problem of general-purposeness try to approximate it by creating computers that are capable of running “bad” programs, but refuse to do so.

There is a vast, important difference between a computer that’s not capable of running unauthorized programs and a computer that refuses to run unauthorized programs. The former is an appliance, while the latter is a device that treats its owner and users as potential attackers whose orders can be countermanded by the device’s manufacturer.

I can’t stress how important this distinction is. Designing a computer that treats the person who depends on it as an attacker is a terrible, nightmarish idea. It is literally the principle that animates the first dystopian science fiction tale: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,” a 200 year old novel whose lessons we have still not learned.

20 years ago, some Microsoft security engineers came up with a clever thought-experiment about how computers might be redesigned to prevent malicious software from attacking their users. They called it “Palladium” (or, more formally, the “Next Generation Secure Computing Base”).

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

They proposed soldering a second, sealed, cryptographic co-processor onto your computer’s motherboard. This co-processor — the Palladium chip — would be tamper resistant, designed to self-destruct if you attempted to decap it or remove it from the board (literally — it would contain brittle, acid-filled compartments that would burst and ruin the chip if you tried).

This cryptographic co-processor could perform two important functions.

First, it could serve as a source of ground truth for your computer. The chip could observe all parts of the boot-up process and create cryptographic signatures denoting which code was loaded at each stage. When your computer was finished booting, the OS could ask the co-processor, “Was I tampered with? Did I boot the original manufacturer’s OS, or did someone tamper with me in ways that might blind me to my own processes?” That is, your computer could determine if it was a head in a jar (or a body in the Matrix) or whether it could trust its senses. It could know whether it was running on “bare metal” or inside a virtual machine that could feed it false telemetry that might compromise its user’s security.

Second, the secure co-processor could answer challenges from remote parties that wanted to know whether they could trust your machine before they communicated with it. Say I want to send you a Signal message: I trust that Signal is encrypted end-to-end and that means that no one between me and you can read the message in transit. But how can I know if your computer is safe? Maybe it’s got malware running on it that will steal the messages after your computer decrypts them and send them to our mutual enemy.

With Palladium, I can send your computer’s secure co-processor a random number (called a “nonce,” which inevitably confuses British people), and ask it to combine that random number with the manifest of the boot components and OS it observed during the computer’s boot, sign it with its secret, private key, and send it back.

That signed manifest lets me do something I could never do before: discover what kind of computer someone else is running, without actually inspecting that computer. Provided I trust the secure co-processor, I can know which OS my counterparty is using. Provided I trust that OS, I can know whether my counterparty’s computer will leak the secrets I’ve sent to them over Signal.

Cool, right?

I think it is cool. This process — called “remote attestation” — is a new theoretical capability for computers, one that is especially useful in an environment in which we communicate over great distances with computers we have no control over. The fact that those computers can run every program — including malicious ones — makes remote attestation even more salient, as it might let us detect and exclude computers that have been compromised from our networked activities.

But it’s also incredibly risky. Fundamentally, this security model involves creating computers that override their users and owners, running software that the person using the computer cannot disable or even detect. This security model addresses the fact that users — or processes masquerading as users — can install bad software on our computers by creating a sealed, low-level controller that can interdict user-level processes.

But how can we trust those sealed, low-level controllers? What if manufacturers — like, say, Microsoft, a convicted criminal monopolist — decides to use its low-level controllers to block free and open OSes that compete with it? What if a government secretly (or openly) orders a company to block privacy tools so that it can spy on its population? What if the designers of the secure co-processor make a mistake that allows criminals to hijack our devices and run code on them that, by design, we cannot detect, inspect, or terminate?

That is: to make our computers secure, we install a cop-chip that determines what programs we can run and stop. To keep bad guys from bypassing the cop-chip, we design our computer so it can’t see what the cop-chip is doing. So what happens if the cop-chip is turned on us?

This literally keeps me up at night. It is such an obviously terrible idea to built a world of ubiquitous computers that we put our bodies inside of, that we put inside our bodies, that we trust our whole civilization to, that are all designed to run programs we can’t see or halt.

Fast forward from Palladium to today. All the risks of secure computing have come to pass. I could give examples from lots of companies’ products, but I’m going to stick with Apple. Why Apple? Because they have a huge, talented security engineering division and they have effectively infinite capital. If any company could do secure computing right, it would be Apple. But:

Eight years’ worth of Apple’s secure enclaves are unpatchably compromised:

https://checkm8.info/

Apple uses its security measure to block its competitors’ app stores:

https://cydia.saurik.com/

Apple caved to Chinese state pressure and blocked all working privacy tools from its App Store to enable mass surveillance of Chinese users:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-vpn/apple-says-it-is-removing-vpn-services-from-china-app-store-idUSKBN1AE0BQ

Now, Apple’s secure computing infrastructure isn’t nearly as comprehensive as the Palladium proposal. As far as I can tell, no one is doing the “full Palladium.” But Apple’s version of Palladium shares the same foundational problems as Palladium itself, and has some new ones as well.

Apple doesn’t use separate secure co-processors to do remote-attestation and check for unauthorized software. Instead, it uses a “secure enclave,” which is basically a subsection of the main chip that is subject to heightened testing and design constraints in order to make it as secure as possible. Like a co-processor, the secure enclave is designed to be both inscrutable (users can’t inspect or terminate its processes) and immutable (users can’t change it).

This means that, by design, any time someone finds and exploits a defect in a secure enclave, it can operate in ways that users can’t detect or stop. It also means that there is no way to remediate a defect in a secure enclave: if you can patch a secure enclave to fix a bug, then an adversary could patch it to introduce an exploitable bug.

Like Palladium, secure enclaves are break-once, break-everywhere, break-forever. They have forever-day bugs. But unlike Palladium, secure enclaves are not physically separate from the main processor, making them easier to attack and exploit.

But remember, the most significant attacks on Apple’s security were accomplished with Apple’s help. Apple uses its security infrastructure to keep users from switching App Stores, and also runs an App Store that, until recently, allowed stalkerware apps and blocked anti-stalkerware apps:

https://www.digit.fyi/stalkerware-apple-victims-comment/

Likewise, when the Chinese government decided to ban its residents from using VPNs to hide their activity from state surveillance, Apple was a willing collaborator, and Apple — not the Chinese state — blocked those privacy tools.

The “insider threat” from this secure computing model is all around us. The fact that one computer can’t force another computer to truthfully disclose its operating environment as a condition of further communication helps criminals, but it also helps anyone on the wrong end of a power-imbalance.

Your boss can put a camera in your office, but they can’t watch you through the camera in your laptop. Your school district can monitor your in-class conversations, but they can’t monitor your networked conversations. Your government can subpoena your communications, but they can’t recover the chats you’ve deleted. Your abusive spouse can make you show them your saved messages, but they can’t follow you around when they’re at work and find out that you’re talking to a shelter.

If your boss or your school district or the cops or the government or your spouse or your parents can detect your operating system at a distance — if they can give it orders that you can’t countermand, dictating which software you can run — then your computer becomes their computer. Everything your computer knows about you — or can know about you — they can know, too. They can do it at scale. They can store deep histories and go back to them later when you arouse their suspicion. They can automatically parse through the stream and algorthimically ascribe guilt to you and punish you.

In short, if you’re worried about “Disciplinary Technology,” you should be really worried about this secure computing model.

Now, it’s been 20 years since the first Palladium paper and no one is doing a full Palladium. The incomplete Palladium approximations in the field have only rarely been leveraged for insider attacks.

I think that’s a matter of political economy, not technology. The technologists who appreciate the power of remote attestation and secure bootloaders are also largely skeptical of them because they can’t be patched and because they can be abused. As a body, these technologists stand up for the right of computer users to understand and alter how their computers work. They defend the right of researchers to disclose defects in computers — even widely used computers and reject the idea of “security through obscurity.”

Generally, I think of this as “my side” in this fight. This is the side that rejects disciplinary technology used for trivial or bad purposes:

Preventing cheating during remote test-taking:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/17/proctorio-v-linkletter/#proctorio

Spying on work-from-home employees:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#bossware

Spying on students and their families:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District

Repossessing Teslas:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Disabling cars after a missed payment:

https://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/17/aa.bills.shut.engine.down/index.html

Forcing you to buy official printer ink:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Spying on people who lease laptops:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/09/ftc-halts-computer-spying

Bricking gear the manufacturer doesn’t want to support anymore:

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/04/05/google-reaches-into-customers-homes-and-bricks-their-gadgets/

But not everyone on my side is as foursquare against this stuff as I am. Many of them make exceptions, for example, for corporate compliance systems (to prevent insiders from stealing customer data), or to keep unsophisticated users from installing malicious apps.

I’m a lot more dogmatic about this stuff. Partly, that’s because even the “good” uses are ripe for abuse. The same tool that stops an employee from stealing user data also stops whistleblowers from gathering evidence of corporate crimes. App stores that permit stalkerware and block anti-stalkerware aren’t doing anything for their users’ security.

But let’s say that we could fix all that stuff (I don’t think we can). I would still worry about this security model because of what it would do the culture of security research and information security overall.

For three decades, security researchers and corporations have sparred over disclosure of defects in digital products and services. The companies argue that they should have a veto over who gets to warn their customers when their products are found defective. They insist that they need this veto, because it lets them fix the bugs before they’re disclosed. That may sound reasonable, but in practice, companies routinely fail to fix those bugs or warn their users that they are at risk. Companies are terminally compromised when it comes to bad news about their own products.

Thankfully, we largely operate under an environment in which anyone can disclose true facts about defective products. That’s thanks to a combination of the First Amendment and lawyers like EFF who defend programmers, but also thanks to the generally unified position among technologists that security through obscurity is bankrupt.

That’s where the real worry comes in. Recall that, by design, secure enclaves and cryptographic co-processors can’t be updated — they are break-once, break-forever systems. Any bug in one of these is a forever-day vulnerability.

And there are an increasing number of applications that tech-minded people favor that are heading towards this security model. It’s not just compliance and protecting naive users. These days, there’s a lot of action in the anti-cheat realm.

Gamers and technologists have a lot of overlap, and cheats ruin games. What’s more, the e-sports world has turned these cheats from annoyances into multi-million-dollar spoilers. I worry that we’re going to see more and more people switching from the “computers should obey their users” camp to the “computers should control their owners” side.

The cheat/anti-cheat war is getting closer and closer to that model. The rise of “kernel hacks” and “kernel defenses” have moved the fight into “Ring Zero” — the lowest (accessible) level of the computer’s operating system. The natural next step? “Ring Minus One” — secure processing modules.

https://www.wired.com/story/kernel-anti-cheat-online-gaming-vulnerabilities/

The worst part of all this is that none of it will accomplish its goals. It doesn’t matter how much you lock down a computer, you will never prevent cheats like this one:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-computer-vision-auto-aim-that-works-on-any-game/

I’ve been pointing this out to “computer controls the user” advocates for twenty years, and they always have the same answer: “It may not stop bad guys, but it keeps honest users honest.” As Ed Felten wrote 19 years ago, “Keeping honest users honest is like keeping tall users tall.”

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2003/03/06/keeping-honest-people-honest/

Esoteric as all this stuff might be, it really worries me. Switching to a default assumption that our computers should control us, not the other way around, is a terrifying, dystopian nightmare. It’s a live issue: Apple is telling Congress this right now:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/18/apple-says-antitrust-bills-increase-risk-of-iphone-security-breaches.html

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

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

[dangerousstrawberryshark]

I Can Do Anything I Want

Requested from no one.

Tom Holland x Male Reader

(Tom be looking sexy)

Warning: Violence, kidnapping, psychotic Tom, mention of nudity, all character are above the age of 18

Background: March 21st, 2030, 7:00 PM, you were getting ready to bunker down with your mom and dad. You hoped that nothing would happen tonight but someone decided to come in and give you a visit.

Tom is 20 and you are 18

M/n: Male name.

L/n: Last name.

F/n: Friend's name

Word count: 2900

I hope you enjoy it!! Sorry if it is bad! And there are probably many mistakes and grammar errors. 

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DISCLAIMER: I MEAN NO OFFENSE, DISRESPECT, OR HARM TO ANY OF THESE CELEBRITIES! THIS IS JUST FICTION.

«⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕»

MINORS DNI. FEMALE READERS… I’LL ALLOW YOU TO READ MY FICS BUT DO NOT FETISHIZE ANY OF MY STORIES

«⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕»

You were sitting on the couch with your mom sitting on the left side, and your father on your right side. You were waiting for the announcement to come on. ‘It's almost 7:00 PM…” you thought to yourself. The holiday you hated the most was about to begin.

Just then the emergency broadcast came on with that ear-shattering sound. And the screen on the TV turns blue with the symbol of the NFFA in the background.

“This is not a test.”

“This is your emergency broadcast system announcing the commencement of the Annual Purge sanctioned by the U.S. Government.”

“Weapons of class 4 and lower have been authorized for use during the Purge. All other weapons are restricted.”

“Government officials of ranking 10 have been granted immunity from the Purge and shall not be harmed.”

“Commencing at the siren, any and all crime, including murder, will be legal for 12 continuous hours.”

“Police, fire, and emergency medical services will be unavailable until tomorrow morning at 7 AM when the Purge concludes.”

“Blessed be our New Founding Fathers and America, a nation reborn.”

"May God be with you all.”

Then the air horn sirens blared meaning the Purge officially began. Your family has already set up defenses. You, of course, never participate. Your family put out blue flowers to show that they don’t want to participate but they support the purge.

You know your parents, they didn’t support this “holiday” at all. Come on now, 12 hours without any laws. Your parents spoke out against it.

Some (well most) Americans find the Purge to be successful. Unemployment rates plummeted down to 1 percent, crime rates decreased, and the economy was revived.

If you are wondering how this came into reality, it all started back in 2014.

(little history of how the Purge became a tradition in American society.)

In 2014, the United States was facing economic collapse, rising social unrest, and multiple wars. The economic collapse was worse than the Mortgage Crisis of 2008. Neighborhoods across the country were destroyed by an opioid epidemic.

Then a party was founded as a substitute for the Republicans and Democrats, they called themselves the New Founding Fathers of America or NFFA.

In 2016, the first experimental Purge took place and it proved to be successful. Then in 2017, the second experimental Purge began this time it was Nationwide.

Not long after that, the 28th amendment to the US constitution was ratified meaning that Purging is now an American right.

The Purge starts on March 21st at 7:00 PM and it ends at sunrise, March 22nd, 7:00 AM. all crime is legal for 12 hours, no killing high government officials, and don’t use explosives or bioweapons. Those who don’t follow the rules will be hanged.

This resulted in crime and unemployment rates dropping down 1 percent, government spending down 37 percent, and the GDP soared to 37.21 trillion dollars.

Still, many people disagreed with this because it was believed that the Purge was used as means of population control, and to decrease the poor population but they couldn’t do anything about it.

(little history lesson over. I just wanna include that part for those who have never seen the purge.)

We got off the couch and went to go do our own things. “Sweetie do wanna eat dinner?” my mom said, I smiled. “Yes please.” she smiled at me and went to go cook dinner. You went upstairs to chill in your room. Your window was boarded up but you could easily remove it when things go down.

————————————————————————————

Time skip (8:00 PM)

————————————————————————————

It's been one hour since commencement. You were up in your room just watching YouTube videos. Your mother was downstairs cooking Lasagna (or whatever your favorite dish is) your father was downstairs watching the news.

The news would keep up with things happening tonight. Were watching a live stream showing what was happening on the outside. Building on fire, people killing each other, and parties. All of this was caught on drones.

You would hear the occasional screams and gunfire in the area but you and your family were secure.

Then you heard banging on the front door. The door and windows were boarded up with wood planks. ‘Who is that?’ you thought, you were worried it was one of your bullies who decided tonight was the night they get to get rid of you.

You went downstairs to see your parents. They had fear in their eyes, then the door busted one. Three men wearing tuxedos with masks on walked in. then they pulled out their guns, that’s when you dashed and went up into your room.

Your parents tried to run but they were quickly gunned down. You could hear gunshots go off and their screams filled the house.

You locked your bedroom door and ran to the window to remove the wood plank blocking it. You could hear the footsteps coming up the stairs. One of them called out to you, “M/n⁓ where are you⁓? Come out from hiding… are you in your room?”

You recognized that deep British accent, it was Tom! Tom Holland from your class! ‘What did I do to him? I never did anything wrong to him!’ but that didn’t stop you from removing the plank. You jumped out the window and ran for it.

Tom busted through your door to see that you have escaped. He gritted his teeth and went downstairs to see his twin brothers sitting down on the couch with their masks off.

“So he got away?” the older twin said. “Yeah, he did. We’ll find him though. He isn’t stupid enough to go downtown. He’ll probably head to his friend's house.” Tom said a little anger that his precious lover had gone away.

“We already took care of his friends. But we couldn’t get to one of them.” The younger twin said, Tom nodded and went out to go find you.

(Btw Tom's parents live in the UK and they don’t know what he is doing. Tom’s brothers are just helping him catch you)

————————————————————————————

Time skip (9:00 PM)

————————————————————————————

You were running to your friend's house hoping they would help you. You had to be careful while running through the streets, there were purgers everywhere. The city of Los Angeles was crawling with them, especially in the downtown area.

Thankfully you took your phone with you to see what time it was. ‘9:00 PM.’ you turned off your but you made sure it was on silent mode so it wouldn't bring attention to you.

You had a little encounter with Purgers but they were quickly gunned down by a machine gun attached to the back of a car. You saw vehicles on fire, dead bodies, and an old lady just watching a body burn.

‘This is all crazy!’ you thought as you ran faster just to get off the streets but what you didn’t was that someone was following you.

After running for 30 minutes you finally arrived at one of your friend’s houses. You didn’t realize that their barricades were broken until you twisted the knob on the door.

You walked in to see the whole place trashed. You walked through the rooms to see F/N parents dead, lying on the floor. Their eyes were open, you see nothing in them. “Please don’t be dead…” you said putting your hand over your mouth as you tried not to cry out loud.

You slowly walked up the stairs and approached F/N’s room. There you saw it, F/N lying on the floor dead as well. You burst out crying but that ended when you heard a car pull up.

“Find him!” you knew who that was immediate. You couldn’t run anywhere because they were downstairs, and the window had steel as a barricade. So, you hid in F/n’s closet.

You knew they had a pile of clothing in the corner, so you buried yourself in their clothes. You heard their footsteps walking up the stairs, and them breaking down the door. Then you heard them in the room.

You could see a figure walking through a small hole in the clothing pile. You covered your mouth so you wouldn’t breathe too hard. “CLEAR!” the figure yelled and went back downstairs. You heard their conversation from downstairs because of how the walls were thin.

“I thought he would be here!” Tom yelled, and out of anger shots one of his own men. The twins and the other weren’t fazed by this. They knew Tom had a few screws loose.

Then you heard them leave but you didn’t believe they actually left so you decided to stay where you were for the 2 to 3 hours.

————————————————————————————

Time skip (3:00 AM)

————————————————————————————

While waiting you accidentally fell asleep (why? because of plot purposes and I'm the author)and you realized that it was 3:00 AM, 4 hours till the Purge ends. You thought you could stay here but then you smelt something burning.

You got out of the pile to see the room was on fire. ‘What?! How?’ you quickly got and ran before the roof caved in on you. The backdoor was barricaded but due to the fire, it melted the steel allowing you to escape. (is that possible?)

You were on the run again but before you left, you noticed a group of people watching the house burn. ‘Are those my teachers?’ The group was your teachers from different classes. You knew they didn’t like F/N at all.

‘What has this country become?’ if this keeps happening, if more innocent people keep dying, then the nation will become the “Nation of Murders.” you decided to ignore them and run.

But one of them saw you, “M/n? Is that you?” one of them yelled. You froze, ‘how did they--?’ you turned around to see them walking towards you. “Hey don't worry we ain’t kill you. You are our favorite student!”

You looked at them shocked. “Why are you out here? Aren’t you supposed to be with your parents?” you looked down and began to cry. They noticed and said they didn’t need to know.

“Do you wanna come with us? There’s a neighborhood block party.” you nodded and decided to go with them. ‘So I guess they kill the kids they hate.’ they then took you to one of the nearby parties.

But one of Tom’s men noticed and decided to alert the big boss.

(just to be clear, in the Purge series there isn’t a legal purge. Meaning that you can kill someone who is 18 or younger. Now that’s fucked up.)

You and the teachers arrived at the block party. You see everyone partying, some had creepy masks, and others were naked grinding against each other. You lost your teachers in the crowd so you decided to just hideout.

————————————————————————————

Time skip (6:00 AM, one hour till the Purge ends.)

————————————————————————————

(if you are wondering why Tom didn’t show up early, it's because he was busy doing something else….. Or maybe its because I was too lazy to put anything during that time skip)

You checked your phone and noticed it was 6:00 AM. ‘One more hour!’ you smiled as the night was finally coming to an end. The sun was rising in the distance but people were still partying. ‘I survived the night.’

You even began to party yourself in celebration of surviving. You had a couple of drinks but not enough to be completely drunk. You danced with some people. Overall you were having a good time

But that happiness was short-lived when the gunfire began to go off. People were screaming and tripping over each other as they tried to run away. You already knew who it was. Tom fucking Holland and his group arrived

He noticed you in the crowd and smirked as he can finally have you before the Purge ended. You ran away from the crowd to one of those large garbage containers. You hid behind them hoping Tom won’t find you.

You could still hear the screams of people and more gunfire further down the street. You creeped out from your hiding place and walked back to the street.

You were horrified by what you were seeing. Dead bodies everywhere, your teacher’s dead bodies, and some people you were dancing with. All dead.

Then you heard footsteps behind you, you turned around to see Tom there smiling sadistically at you. You admit he was kind of hot but that doesn’t matter right now. “Why are you doing this? I never did anything to you! And did you find me?! ”

(6:55 AM)

“Why’m I doing this? Well, it's because of M/n…… I love you M/n! You never did anything wrong. And how did I find you? Well, remember there's an app where you can track down certain people’s phones? Well, that’s how I found you, that and one of my men told me.” Tom sounded proud of what he just said.

(6:57 AM)

“I thought I could use this Purge night as a way to finally have you to myself! I hope you share the same feeling like me.” you couldn’t believe what you were hearing.

“Tom…. look, you’re a cute guy, hell I would probably have dated if you just came up to me like a normal person would. But no, you went ahead and killed everyone. You killed my family and friends, and you think I share the same feeling like you! No!” you yelled the tension was thick and Tom was angry.

(6:59 AM)

“I loved you! And they were getting in the way!--” Tom took a pause, “If I can’t have then no one will!” Tom charged at you with his knife. ‘What happened to his gun?’

But you quickly snapped out when he charged at you. You dodged his attack but he stabbed you in the arm. He was about to finish when…

(7:00 AM)

*INSERT SIREN NOISE*

The siren went off meaning the Purge had come to an end. Tom was still going to attack but was stopped when a voice came on, “Stop what you are doing! I repeat stop what you are doing! The Purge has concluded. If anyone does a crime, you will face the consequences.”

Tom stopped what he was doing and looked at you, “Next Purge, I’m going to get you.” Tom then got into his car and drove off.

You felt like you were going to faint from blood loss but then someone drove up to you. “Hey, okay?! Oh my God, we need to get you to the hospital!” they picked you up and carried you into the backseat, and drove you to the nearest hospital.

The radio was on and began to report on tonight’s events. “Just after 7:00 AM, March 22nd Pacific Standard, the Annual Purge was concluded. Reports are coming from all over the nation that this was the most participated Purge yet….

364 days until the next Purge...

THE GOOD ENDING

Bad Ending.

Time skip (6:00 AM, one hour till the Purge ends.)

You checked your phone and noticed it was 6:00 AM. ‘One more hour!’ you smiled as the night was finally coming to an end. The sun was rising in the distance but people were still partying. ‘I survived the night.’

You even began to party yourself in celebration of surviving. Yo had a couple of drinks but not enough to be completely drunk. You danced with some people. Overall you were having a good time

But that happiness was short-lived when the gunfire began to go off. People were screaming and tripping over each other as they tried to run away. You already knew who it was. Tom fucking Holland and his group arrived

He noticed you in the crowd and smirked as he can finally have you before the Purge ended. You ran away from the crowd to one of those large garbage containers. You hid behind them hoping Tom won’t find you.

You could still hear the screams of people and more gunfire further down the street. You creeped out from your hiding place and walked back to the street.

You were horrified by what you were seeing. Dead bodies everywhere, your teacher’s dead bodies, and some people you were dancing with. All dead.

Just then you felt something being injected into your neck. You passed out but before you completely passed out, you got a glimpse of who it was…. It was Tom.

“You're finally mine M/n. I’ll keep you forever…. No one will take us apart….”

PART TWO CAN BE FOUND HERE

[starsovermyhead]

#and bob singer once mentioned that jackles was the first one who said that #though it may be just because he and jensen are close

wait a minute I thought Jared wanted to leave because of his new show but it was Jensen?

(it's about tags to this post)

Well, we don't actually know how things went and who wanted what, but yes, Robert Singer implied it at San Diego Comic-Con 2019:

At 3:41:

Interviewer: When were the first inklings the season 15 would be the last?

RS: I think Jensen and I had sort of talked in general terms about what– you know, what's the end. I said to them, I said, "Look, and I don't know how this sounds, if this gonna have any effect on you guys, but if it seems indefinite, I don't think I could do it much longer." Once I knew there was the final thing, you know, it was easy for me to sign on and say, "Yeah, I'm gonna do it." But then we talked a little more, and I think Jensen sort of got on board more quickly than Jared. But I think once Jensen sort of said this is what he wanted to do, Jared, you know, was in total agreement. I think once we made this decision, everybody was happy with it.

As I also mentioned in the tags, the talk about ending SPN supposedly started after the end of season 12 (so in 2017), so maybe Jared's project wasn't the reason but actually a result of them deciding to wrap things up. I think this was a collective decision overall, but maybe Jensen started thinking about it a bit earlier.

[conradscrime]

The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders

June 06, 2021

Camp Scott opened in 1928 in Mayes County, Oklahoma. On June 12, 1977, three young girls, Lori Lee Farmer (age 8), Michele Heather Guse (age 9) and Doris Denise Milner (age 10) arrived at Camp Scott for a fun girl scout adventure. All three girls were from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma which was a suburb of Tulsa.

Around 7pm that night, a thunderstorm hit and all the girls went into their tents to hide from the rain. Lori, Michele and Doris were tent-mates, sharing tent #8 in the Kiowa unit, which was actually the farthest tent from the camp counsellor’s tent and right by the bathroom.

Around 6am the next morning, June 13, 1977, a camp counsellor woke up and went to go get a shower when she saw a girl’s body in her sleeping bag in the woods. Lori, Michele and Doris had all been brutally murdered. The killer had placed their bodies in a trail leading towards the showers, about 150 yards from their tent, tent #8. 

It was later found that all three girls had been raped, bludgeoned and strangled. A large red flashlight was found on top of the girls’ bodies and a fingerprint was found on the lens. This fingerprint has never been identified. There was also a footprint found in blood in the tent from a size 9.5 shoe. 

It was suspicious to many that no one had heard anything the night the girls were murdered. Surely young girls would have screamed loud enough for someone to hear? A landowner reported they heard what they called, “quite a bit” of traffic on a remote road near the camp between 2:30 and 3am on June 13. 

Camp Scott was evacuated and shut down the day after the murders and has never been re-opened. 

A suspicious event had happened at Camp Scott before the girl scouts had gotten there, about two months before the murders. During an on-site training session one of the camp counsellors found that someone had ransacked her belongings. Inside an empty doughnut box was a hand written note that read in capital letters, “We are on a mission to kill three girls in tent one.” They chalked this up to be a very tasteless prank and discarded the note. 

The note stated they were planning to kill the girls staying in tent #1, and though Lori, Michele and Doris were sleeping in tent #8, some believe the killer could have mistaken their tent for tent #1 since it was the furthest away and near the bathrooms. That is, if the writer of the note and the killer are the same person. 

There was one suspect in particular that police had their eye on from the start. Gene Leroy Hart, who was 33 at the time of the murders, had been at large since 1973 when he escaped from the Mayes County jail. Hart had been convicted of kidnapping and raping two pregnant women and with 4 counts of first degree burglary. 

Hart had actually been raised about a mile away from Camp Scott and was arrested within a year of the murders. He was tried in March 1979 and even though the local sheriff believed him to be “one thousand percent” guilty, the jury acquitted him. Even though Hart wasn’t found guilty for the girls’ murders, he still had to go back to jail to serve 305 more years from his rape convictions. 

On June 4, 1979, almost two years to the date of the girls’ murders, Hart collapsed and died from a heart attack after an hour of lifting weights and jogging in the prison exercise yard. 

Lori and Doris’ families later sued the Magic Empire Council and its insurer for $5 million, arguing that the Camp ignored the note that was found two months prior, threatening to murder three girls. They also brought up the fact that girls’ tent was 86 yards away from the counsellor’s tent. In 1985 by a 9-3 vote, the jurors were in favour of Magic Empire. 

In 1989, DNA testing was conducted that showed three of the five probes matched Hart’s DNA. This DNA would only be found from 1 in 7,700 Native Americans and Hart was Cherokee. In 2008 authorities tried to conduct DNA testing on one of the pillowcases but the results were inconclusive due to being too deteriorated. 

In 2017, 40 years after the murders, $30,000 in donations was raised by the sheriff to conduct new DNA testing using the latest advances in technology. 

Richard Guse, Michele’s father, helped the state legislature pass the Oklahoma Victims’ Bill of Rights. He also helped in finding the Oklahoma Crime Victims Compensation Board. Sheri Farmer, Lori’s mom, founded the Oklahoma chapter of Parents of Murdered Children which was a support group. 

The police and many people still believe that Gene Leroy Hart was responsible for the murders of Lori Farmer, Michele Guse and Doris Milner. They had no other leads and have never looked further into any other potential suspects.

It’s been almost 44 years since the Oklahoma Girl Scout murders and the case still remains officially unsolved.