#add-in development company

[i4technolab]

Are you looking to boost your productivity while working with Microsoft Office 365 applications? Look no further than custom add-ins. These add-ins extend the functionality of Office 365 applications and provide users with a wide range of features and capabilities that are not available earlier. From automating repetitive tasks to integrating with third-party tools, custom add-ins can help streamline your workflow and improve your overall productivity. This article will explore the essentials of Office 365 Add-ins development including what they are, how they work, and the benefits they offer.

[trashycosmos]

i don't think it's even been 5 days since i learned of palworld but i'm 1000% getting it as soon as i can. it's been all over my tiktok feed and i'm OBSESSED

[introvertgoat]

ooouuu

me: is depressed

my twt acc: suspended

r u next finale: jiwoo jeemin jeongeun (aka the talented girlies) all eliminated and 2 minors in the lineup 🤕🤕

[theabstruseone]

I slept in and just woke up, so here's what I've been able to figure out while sipping coffee:

Twitter has officially rebranded to X just a day or two after the move was announced.

The official branding is that a tweet is now called "an X", for which there are too many jokes to make.

The official account is still @twitter because someone else owns @X and they didn't reclaim the username first.

The logo is 𝕏 which is the Unicode character Unicode U+1D54F so the logo cannot be copyrighted and it is highly likely that it cannot be protected as a trademark.

Outside the visual logo, the trademark for the use of the name "X" in social media is held by Meta/Facebook, while the trademark for "X" in finance/commerce is owned by Microsoft.

The rebranding has been stopped in Japan as the term "X Japan" is trademarked by the band X JAPAN.

Elon had workers taking down the "Twitter" name from the side of the building. He did not have any permits to do this. The building owner called the cops who stopped the crew midway through so the sign just says "er".

He still plans to call his streaming and media hosting branch of the company as "Xvideo". Nobody tell him.

This man wants you to give him control over all of your financial information.

Edit to add further developments:

Yes, this is all real. Check the notes and people have pictures. I understand the skepticism because it feels like a joke, but to the best of my knowledge, everything in the above is accurate.

Microsoft also owns the trademark on X for chatting and gaming because, y'know, X-box.

The logo came from a random podcaster who tweeted it at Musk.

The act of sending a tweet is now known as "Xeet". They even added a guide for how to Xeet.

The branding change is inconsistent. Some icons have changed, some have not, and the words "tweet" and "Twitter" are still all over the place on the site.

TweetDeck is currently unaffected and I hope it's because they forgot that it exists again. The complete negligence toward that tool and just leaving it the hell alone is the only thing that makes the site usable (and some of us are stuck on there for work).

This is likely because Musk was forced out of PayPal due to a failed credit line project and because he wanted to rename the site to "X-Paypal" and eventually just to "X".

This became a big deal behind the scenes as Musk paid over $1 million for the domain X.com and wanted to rebrand the company that already had the brand awareness people were using it as a verb to "pay online" (as in "I'll paypal you the money")

X.com is not currently owned by Musk. It is held by a domain registrar (I believe GoDaddy but I'm not entirely sure). Meaning as long as he's hung onto this idea of making X Corp a thing, he couldn't be arsed to pay the $15/year domain renewal.

Bloomberg estimates the rebranding wiped between $4 to $20 billion from the valuation of Twitter due to the loss of brand awareness.

The company was already worth less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for it in the first place, meaning this may end up a worse deal than when Yahoo bought Tumblr.

One estimation (though this is with a grain of salt) said that Twitter is three months from defaulting on its loans taken out to buy the site. Those loans were secured with Tesla stock. Meaning the bank will seize that stock and, since it won't be enough to pay the debt (since it's worth around 50-75% of what it was at the time of the loan), they can start seizing personal assets of Elon Musk including the Twitter company itself and his interest in SpaceX.

Sesame Street's official accounts mocked the rebranding.

[agapi-kalyptei]

As a user, I 100% agree. As a software developer, I also 100% agree. But only that apps should be less bloated, and not that freezing hardware growth would help.

The problem is not so frequently in developers being lazy (if anything, usually just inexperienced), but I'd say 90% of the time the main problem are harsh deadlines, and in general the predatory nature of software marketplace. If you have a good idea that DOES have a mainstream appeal, there WILL be a large software company swooping in, allocating 100+ developers to the project, and taking over the market.

Putting aside that most startups are unprofitable, and are about gaining growth to woo potential investors when they go public, the main software paradigm in almost areas of software development (besides like, control software for trains or particle accelerators) is to hurry the hell up to deliver new things on the market constantly.

The problem isn't in developers writing poor code to deliver a feature; it's because most everything has been done before, and is available as (usually) open source libraries, which you would be foolish to not use. Reinventing the wheel is expensive. Regardless of what language and platform you use to develop, you generally need dozens, hundreds, or thousands of these small 3rd party packages to deliver even a hello world app.

Not to mention that you want your app to work on literally thousands of different devices. So maybe instead of using the system libraries (like WebView), you package in your own, so you can rely on the exact version with its exact features.

They all add up. Now your 20 lines of code compiles to 100+ MB of bloat on disk, and you need 300MB RAM just to open some blank Electron app on a desktop OS.

In the 90s there was a rumor / joke that Microsoft and Intel have a secret deal: Windows will be buggy and slow so that Intel can sell more chips.

In reality it's much more about people getting used to fancy new features (having new content pre-loaded when you open an app without any delays, cloud save, shiny buttons and animations, statistics, fancy editing tools, nested comment replies, whatever you cannot even think of because it became so ubiquitous it's invisible; and corporations mining more of your data, spying on you more, but also having things like background error reporting and analytics to improve the quality and experience and fix bugs). All of these are the straws that break your "ancient" 2 year old phone's back.

we should globally ban the introduction of more powerful computer hardware for 10-20 years, not as an AI safety thing (though we could frame it as that), but to force programmers to optimize their shit better

[jcmarchi]

Jarek Kutylowski, Founder & CEO of DeepL – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/jarek-kutylowski-founder-ceo-of-deepl-interview-series/

Jarek Kutylowski, Founder & CEO of DeepL – Interview Series

Jarek Kutylowski is the founder and CEO of DeepL, an advanced AI-powered translation tool known for its impressive accuracy and natural-sounding translations.

DeepL is on a mission to break down language barriers for businesses everywhere. Over 100,000 businesses and governments and millions of individuals in 228 global markets trust DeepL’s Language AI platform for human-like translation and better writing. Designed with enterprise security in mind, companies around the world leverage DeepL’s AI solutions that are specifically tuned for language to transform business communications, expand markets, and improve productivity. Founded in 2017, DeepL today has over 1,000 passionate employees and is supported by world-renowned investors including Benchmark, IVP, and Index Ventures.

Can you walk us through the early vision behind DeepL and how the company’s goals have evolved since its founding?

When I started the company back in 2017, we were at a turning point with deep learning. It had really started to gain traction, which inspired the name of our company. We’ve always had a vision of empowering organizations to thrive and scale globally without a language barrier standing in the way, which is still our mission today. So we had started experimenting with the technology and its application within language, and quickly saw how powerful it could be – it was clear that neural networks and AI were going to be the next big breakthrough in translation, and that what we could achieve with neural networks would far surpass existing traditional solutions.With this in mind, we decided  to package our findings into a product and share it with the world.

What began as a fun project quickly evolved into something more significant. Just a few months after officially launching our inaugural product, DeepL Translate, in 2017, we had some of the most important European and German companies knocking on our door, interested in deploying our solutions. This realization about the relevance and critical importance of our product to larger organizations inspired us to dive deeper into their problems, and invest time really understanding how our technology could solve them. We built out a more concrete commercial strategy and clear monetization plans, focusing first on releasing the product to the public and figuring out the business side later. Fast forward to today, and we’ve grown considerably, expanding our team, our products, and our customer network. We now have millions of individual users of our specialized AI translation and writing tools, and over 100,000+ business and government partners worldwide, including 50% of the Fortune 500 and leaders like Nikkei (owner of the Financial Times), Coursera, Deutsche Bahn, Zendesk and more.

You founded DeepL in a field already dominated by major players like Google and Microsoft. What was your strategy to carve out a niche in such a competitive landscape?

We’ve been up against Big Tech since we first started out, which has kept us agile, innovative, and motivated to offer our users the best solution out there. But I challenge anyone claiming they’ve solved the challenge of language for business and enterprise-use-cases with general models – this is where DeepL stands out and is really unique in the world of Language AI and translation.

We’re different from general-purpose AI systems in that we’ve built our AI translation and writing solutions to be specialized for language use-cases; this specialization enables us to achieve higher accuracy and precision while minimizing hallucinations and misinformation. It’s one thing to translate a menu while you’re on vacation – but most of our customers are businesses and knowledge workers, where the stakes are much higher. Imagine a lawyer who needs to translate highly nuanced, critical, and confidential legal documents; or a major media publisher who relies on our platform to translate thousands of stories a day, in real time, that are then distributed to millions of global readers. These complex use cases demand a level of accuracy, customization, data privacy, and security that general models can’t provide. Data protection and security are also central to our offering, so we adhere to the highest privacy and security standards including all GDPR requirements, offering state-of-the art data encryption and more.

DeepL has recently launched its first in-house LLM. How does this model differ from other large language models in the market, and in what context is it considered superior?

Our next-generation translation models are powered by proprietary LLM technology designed specifically for translation and editing, which sets it apart from other models on the market and sets a new industry standard for translation quality and performance. Unlike general-purpose models that rely solely on public Internet data, DeepL’s LLM benefits from over seven years of proprietary data curated specifically for content creation and translation. It also uses human model tutoring, with thousands of hand-picked language experts who are trained to refine and enhance the model’s translation quality.

Because of this, we’re proud that DeepL is widely considered to be the most reliable and preferred Language AI solution for businesses and professionals out there. In blind tests, professional translators have found that our next-generation LLM requires significantly fewer edits than other platforms, with Google and ChatGPT requiring between two and three times as many edits to get the same quality.

Can you explain the process behind training DeepL’s LLM? How much human input is required to maintain accuracy and nuance in translation, and how do you balance that with the computational aspects of AI development?

We train our LLM on a combination of highest-quality linguistic data, as well as the expertise of thousands of hand-picked language experts. This two-pronged approach, combining both computational aspects with human feedback, allows us to support our customers at scale while also ensuring that the quality and nuance of our translations remain on point. Human input is really crucial, primarily in data curation, quality assessment, and providing feedback for continuous improvement. DeepL’s translation quality just wouldn’t be where it is without this aspect.

DeepL has recently expanded into 165 new markets and added support for three new languages. What was the strategic thinking behind targeting these markets and languages, and how has the expansion impacted DeepL’s user base?

Language is a global problem that touches businesses across almost every industry – whether they’re facing language barriers internally among colleagues, or externally with customers and in diverse markets where they operate. And as a research-led company, everything we do is informed by our mission to break down language barriers, and the feedback we’re hearing from customers and businesses. Our decision to expand the availability of our products – DeepL Pro is now available across 228 global markets – and add new language capabilities, like the recent launch of Traditional Chinese, is rooted in our mission to break down these barriers, guided by customer feedback and market research.

We are at an exciting moment in AI, where adoption is not just a trend but a necessity. Companies are ready to embrace AI but are looking for technology that delivers real value and ROI, and we’re proven to drive significant impact – a 2024 Forrester study revealed that the use of DeepL delivered 345% ROI for global companies, reducing translation time by 90% while driving a 50% in workload reduction. By growing our reach and capabilities, we can deliver these real-world benefits to even more markets, people, and businesses. Take Traditional Chinese, for example – it’s the primary language for over 33 million people worldwide. So this is really driving the scale of our business and helping us to meet rising demand globally. Today, we have a network of over 100,000+ business customers, and it’s growing fast.

With over 100,000 customers, including major organizations like Deutsche Bahn and Zendesk, what are the primary challenges and opportunities you’ve encountered while scaling to meet enterprise and governmental needs?

When we’re in the room with a customer, they’re clear on the value and ROI we can provide to them – – even in the US, where you might think English is the only language spoken, most companies operate with multilingual teams and navigate the complexities of a global marketplace. A lot of people forget that! The value and impact of our specialized AI translation tools and writing services is clear. So it’s not a question of whether they should implement language AI tools, but one interesting question we do hear a lot from enterprises is around the personalization capabilities of our service.

Enterprises often adhere to specific brand guidelines and require AI solutions that reflect their unique brand voice and industry terminology. They want to be able to communicate consistently, both internally and externally, at scale – whether they’re writing something or translating a document, they want the content to sound like something they’ve written themselves, in their specific brand style. At DeepL, we’ve designed our tools with this in mind and offer a variety of more interactive, customization features including DeepL Glossary, which allows businesses and professionals to customize translations for specific words and phrases; as well as features like tone setting and more. This level of fine-tuning and the ability to make the content their own is something that is really important to our customers.

As DeepL expands and its AI models are used more broadly, what are some of the key ethical considerations you prioritize when developing language AI systems, particularly when handling sensitive or confidential information?

Any organization considering AI tools should always ask these questions when evaluating models and companies. Many AI solutions do not provide adequate security, often share user data with third parties, and train their AI models on user text, creating mistrust and making many users hesitant to use these tools with work-related documents. As I touched on earlier, DeepL takes a different approach – security is core to our mission and product offering.

Our customers come from a wide range of industries, including highly regulated sectors such as financial services and legal, and the confidentiality and security of their data is essential. It’s core to our product offering that we adhere to the highest enterprise-grade privacy and security standards to protect user data, including state-of-the-art data encryption and GDPR, ISO 27001 and Soc2 Type 2 compliance. We also do not use any text from our subscribers to enhance or train our AI models, understanding that many of our users translate sensitive information.

What can we expect next from DeepL in terms of product development? Are there any major features or innovations that you’re particularly excited about?

We’re a research-driven AI company focused on innovating with purpose, and our purpose is to solve the language problem for people and businesses everywhere. Looking to the future, we’ll continue to incorporate customer feedback into our development and focus on expanding the capabilities of our Language AI platform to make it an even more comprehensive solution for all language-related business needs. A lot of what we’re hearing from customers today is that the more interactivity and personalization we can provide, the better. So expanding our features and functionality to address this is a really interesting area for us, looking at how to make the DeepL experience even more dynamic and engaging for our users.

In the next 5 to 10 years, where do you see DeepL’s technology fitting within the broader AI landscape, especially as AI continues to rapidly evolve?

5 years is really a long time for AI development so to me what really matters is the next 12 months! We are working on bringing the same revolution and disruption that we did with written language to other multimodal capabilities, which I am excited about.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit DeepL.

[hurgablurg]

44 Studios, 80 Games, 4,532 Jobs, $1.5 billion

jesus fucking chriiiiiist how do you fuck up so badly

[louistonehill]

A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways. 

The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to “poison” this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive preview of the research, which has been submitted for peer review at computer security conference Usenix.   

AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Stability AI are facing a slew of lawsuits from artists who claim that their copyrighted material and personal information was scraped without consent or compensation. Ben Zhao, a professor at the University of Chicago, who led the team that created Nightshade, says the hope is that it will help tip the power balance back from AI companies towards artists, by creating a powerful deterrent against disrespecting artists’ copyright and intellectual property. Meta, Google, Stability AI, and OpenAI did not respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment on how they might respond. 

Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool that allows artists to “mask” their own personal style to prevent it from being scraped by AI companies. It works in a similar way to Nightshade: by changing the pixels of images in subtle ways that are invisible to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models to interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows. 

Continue reading article here

[reasonsforhope]

"For [Tanner] Green, the chief engineer at Not a Wheelchair, this is one of the thousand complications standing between his team and a rather lofty goal: upending the manual wheelchair marketplace.

If you’ve heard of Not a Wheelchair, it’s likely because of its owners, Zack Nelson, the star of the 8.8-million-subscriber YouTube channel JerryRigEverything, and his wife Cambry, a para and manual wheelchair user. The Nelsons got into the mobility equipment business a few years ago when they released The Rig, an electric, adaptive off-road device with a simple yet robust and functional design priced significantly lower than anything else on the market. Now, they’re bringing that same ethos to manual wheelchairs.

Not a Wheelchair aims to offer a base-model, custom manual wheelchair at a similar or better quality than most of the insurance-approved wheelchairs in the U.S. for $999.

Yes, that’s just under $1,000 for everything — wheels, handrims, tires, side guards and rigid, angle-adjustable backrest included. And the company plans to have a turnaround time of weeks, rather than the monthslong slog that it typically takes from order to delivery.

When I first heard about this, it sounded awesome and a bit far-fetched. It’s hard to find a pair of quality wheelchair wheels for less than $500. Same with a rigid backrest. How were they going to offer both, plus a custom wheelchair frame without compromising on quality? I drove to their headquarters in Utah to find out...

So how does Not a Wheelchair’s base model chair stack up to other options on the market? I hate to sound like a preacher, but … it’s totally reasonable! It hits the mark of being at least as good, if not better, than the majority of insurance-approved wheelchairs in the U.S.

Touring the factory, I saw other prototypes scattered all around the facility. There’s a beefier, four-wheel drive version of The Rig that the company just launched. There’s a track wheelchair that’s still in development. It’s clear that Not a Wheelchair doesn’t intend to stop at a simple, manual wheelchair. Inexpensive components, more advanced electric off-road devices, power assist, it’s all on the table. “We’re just really excited to see where this leads,” says Green."

-Article and video via New Mobility, October 1, 2024

[i4technolab]

Word add-ins are one of many developer options you have on the Office add-in platform. In this blog, we can add the add-in using angular. Add-ins are just small web applications that run in one place and are served over HTTPS in the Office client.

[fuck-customers]

(half rant half story)

I'm a physicist. I work for a company that helps develop car parts. Essentially, car companies come to us with ideas on what they want from a part or material, and we make/test the idea or help them make/test it. Usually this means talking to other scientists and engineers and experts and it's all fine. Sometimes this means talking to businesspeople and board execs and I hate them

A bit ago when AI was really taking off in the zeitgeist I went to a meeting to talk about some tweaks Car Company A wanted to make to their hydraulics- specifically the master cylinder, but it doesn't super matter. I thought I'd be talking to their engineers - it ends up being just me, their head supervisor (who was not a scientist/engineer) and one of their executives from a different area (also not a scientist/engineer). I'm the only one in the room who actually knows how a car works, and also the lowest-level employee, and also aware that these people will give feedback to my boss based on how I 'represent the company ' whilst I'm here.

I start to explain my way through how I can make some of the changes they want - trying to do so in a way they'll understand - when Head Supervisor cuts me off and starts talking about AI. I'm like "oh well AI is often integrated into the software for a car but we're talking hardware right now, so that's not something we really ca-"

"Can you add artificial intelligence to the hydraulics?"

"..sorry, what was that?"

"Can you add AI to the hydraulics system?"

can i fucking what mate "Sir, I'm sorry, I'm a little confused - what do you mean by adding AI to the hydraulics?"

"I just thought this stuff could run smoother if you added AI to it. Most things do"

The part of the car that moves when you push the acceleration pedal is metal and liquid my dude what are you talking about "You want me to .add AI...to the pistons? To the master cylinder?"

"Yeah exactly, if you add AI to the bit that makes the pistons work, it should work better, right?"

IT'S METAL PIPES it's metal pipes it's metal pipes "Sir, there isn't any software in that part of the car"

"I know, but it's artificial intelligence, I'm sure there's a way to add it"

im exploding you with my mind you cannot seriously be asking me to add AI to a section of car that has as much fucking code attached to it as a SOCK what do you MEAN. The most complicated part of this thing is a SPRING you can't be serious

He was seriously asking. I've met my fair share of idiots but I was sure he wasn't genuinely seriously asking that I add AI directly to a piston system, but he was. And not even in the like "oh if we implement a way for AI to control that part" kind of way, he just vaguely thought that AI would "make it better" WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEANNNNN I HAD TO SPEND 20 MINUTES OF MY HARD EARNED LIFE EXPLAINING THAT NEITHER I NOR ANYONE ELSE CAN ADD AI TO A GOD DAMNED FUCKING PISTON. "CAN YOU ADD AI TO THE HYDRAULICS" NO BUT EVEN WITHOUT IT THAT METAL PIPE IS MORE INTELLIGENT THAN YOU

Posted by admin Rodney.

[foldingfittedsheets]

A friend I had briefly in my teens years was this girl in Arizona. She was a junior when I was a freshman, and as I was socially awkward and very lonely she kind’ve pulled me under her wing for a while. I don’t remember how we met, but I remember riding in her car and meeting her cute miniature Doberman.

But the thing I remember most about this girl was that she loved lying to me. And I had a massive but I acknowledged crush on her so I adored being lied to. Her natural charisma and storytelling was hypnotic.

It’s not what it sounds like because it wasn’t malicious but she came up with this in depth lore to tell me about this fake job she had. I know autistic people are meant to be credulous but I truly never believed her stories, I just adored her storytelling and was very ready to listen to whatever tale she spun that day. Another of her friends chided her once for teasing me but I genuinely never minded.

In her lore she moonlighted as a Professional Liar. People would hire her to get close to a target they wanted rattled. She’d make friends, develop a strong relationship, foster a dependency on her, then disappear. Then when they were confused and missing her sometime when the employer needed their target rattled she’d show back up as a glimpse to knock them off balance. Often it was implied she’d faked her death in the interim.

That itself was fine, it was an okay story. But in order to support that lie she’d make up tons of supporting details that were way more fun. She had this fake boyfriend who got high as balls on a mission and ended up seeing a sheep in a field and carrying it to a farmhouse to try to buy it because he wanted a puppy. I liked that one but suspected she didn’t know how big sheep were.

She’d IM chat with me as this made up boyfriend sometimes; once she had him ask me if I noticed her limping and he told me she’d just lost a toe but was covering for it like a champ. That one was fun.

She told me about something she called “purple charge” which was a way to get instant night vision. I did try looking that one up on the off chance, but was sadly disappointed there.

She said that Professional Liars had such high stakes jobs that they needed a week of insane time where they just partied so hard it was like a Dionysus rave and her IM boyfriend persona implied she’d killed someone during one of those stints.

I had such a fun time with her elaborate fiction that I’d often ask follow up questions and she had to do a lot of world building to keep up with my fascination. We’d get to class and I’d have three or four new questions which I think is why her friend thought her teasing was too far. They genuinely thought I believed her but I was just loving the fiction.

If any of this sounds malicious I’ll also add that when I got harassed on a roleplaying board she went out guns blazing to go after the guy who’d been harassing me. She genuinely enjoyed my company.

I find myself looking back on our friendship very fondly. I can’t remember her last name or have any way of looking her up, but she really was a professional liar to me. The only downside is that I’m completely faceblind so if she ever wanted to pop unexpectedly into my life I’d have no idea it was her.

[jarofstyles]

Cabernet

This can be read as a standalone I think, but! Here is a second part of Merlot! It's spicy and sweet so I hope you guys like it. Unsure if there will be any more parts (I’m open if you guys have more ideas!) but I do love a good dilfrry.

Check out our Patreon for early access and 200+ exclusive writings!

WC- 4.1k

Warnings- smut, age gap relationship, anal (for those who asked ur welcome!), unprotected sex, cumplay, Dom/sub elements

-------

Harry was by far the best man she had ever dated. 

Their age gap was evident at times, but not in a bad way. It was rather cute when he had been confused about videos she sent or his own excitement to show her the movies or books he was referencing. The added element of their dynamic was learning from one another. Harry had been teaching her about publishing and helping her flesh out the first draft of her book while she sat in his office some days, helping him out in return by getting him coffee or lunch or an occasional shoulder massage when he got particularly stressed. An unofficial assistant of sorts. 

“I feel like if I have to write the word ‘said’ one more time, my brain is going to explode.” She grumbled, pushing her laptop across the couch and leaning back on it. The leather seat in his office was by far the most comfortable one she had sat on and he happily invited her to come into the office to see him as often as she wanted. It was both practical and selfish on both ends.It was easier to work in a space like this and with the understanding that Harry really did have work he was doing, she focused on her own stuff. A quiet pair of people working in each other’s company. 

Add in the fact that he was the boss man, it made it much easier for her to come and go as she pleased. 

“Mm, sometimes authors get stuck with words in their novels. They’ll have phrases they repeat a few too many times, usually gets called out in editing and fixed. It’s not a bad thing. But with words that are action words like that, there are options. Y’know, depending on the scene and tone. Murmured, muttered, peeped, whispered, whined, moaned, huffed, grumbled. Those sorts of words.” He tapped his pen against the desk as he lifted his eyes to her. 

It didn’t get old. Seeing her pretty face sitting in his office looking the way she did, much more comfortable than the night they’d first met, but still appropriate for an office setting.

Sometimes he did let his mind wander into the roleplay aspect, wondering if she had been his real assistant if he would have made a move. If Y/N was the Y/N he knew now? Probably. Scandalous. 

Today she wore a pair of black flowy pants and a matching turtleneck, but on top she had a chunky knit cardigan that was utterly adorable. It had yellow moons and stars, a deep purple color with sleeves she had to push up so they didn’t hide her hands. His girl leaned into the office aesthetic when she came in so she didn’t stick out too much but with him or when they were at his place or out together, he loved seeing her dressed in her normal clothing. She looked soft, whimsical almost. Like a little fairy. 

“Hm. Good point. I need to write down all the synonyms in my notes app and defer to that because if I’m getting tired of writing it, I know whoever ends up reading it will get tired of seeing it too.” Her lips puffed to blow a strand of hair that had fallen from her bun, brows furrowed as she failed and made her hand ready up to tuck it behind her ear instead. 

Again, cute.

“Not necessarily.” He replied, leaning back in his chair. “We’re our own harshest critics. I doubt they’re paying that much attention to that. The majority of people will be paying attention to world building, character development, plot, sex scenes, all that fun stuff. The exact wording isn’t always the most important thing. But it shows that you care about quality.” He shot her a grin. “So you will be successful.”

“Mmm… and not because I’m fucking the publishing head?” She grinned as she stood up, stretching her arms out. 

“Well. That helps.” He wouldn’t deny it. She had a leg up, but he wouldn’t publish just anything. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t publish shit work. It isn’t worth the reputation of my company. Your writing is genuinely good, my sweet.” He knew the drill by now. Her heeled boots were kicked off by the couch and she made her way over to him, the tiredness starting to hit her as she happily perched herself on his lap. 

“Good to know.” She snorted before pressing a kiss to his scruffy cheek. The facial hair had grown but he was shaping it currently. She promised she’d be okay with whatever he did to it but didn’t want anything to happen to the mustache. That wasn’t allowed to go. “What are you working on? Anything fun?” 

“No, nothing incredibly interesting I’m afraid.” His hand squeezed her hip underneath the cardigan. “I was working on some contracts earlier but every so often I pick up some submissions and read through them myself. This one is very bland, unfortunately. There’s potential, absolutely. Their writing style is lovely, but the plot falls flat and the characters are one dimensional. S’like they chose a specific stereotype and did nothing to differentiate them.” It was unfortunate.” It was a shame he came across all too often.

“It’s obvious this person is trying but they’ve never observed or met someone with these traits. I don’t think you absolutely have to follow the rule ‘write what you know’, but I think a lot of the best works come from drawing from our own experiences. Romance, for them, doesn’t seem to be a passion. They’d do better with mystery with their writing style as it is, but they have to improve on other aspects first.” 

“Is it hard for you to see stuff like that?” She asked curiously, fiddling with the collar of his shirt. “I can tell you’re a little disappointed with it, so I have to wonder if it happens a lot.”

“It does. And it is hard when you see someone with potential not living up to it but I have faith that if we send them some constructive criticism notes that maybe they won’t see it as an attack but as a place of genuine care. I’m going to have someone meet with them I think, give them my notes and have them explain it in nicer terms than the plain ones I used. Maybe they can work on it again and add more and we’d have a best seller.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I can see they care about it in the way they put details in, but it needs more.”

There was something incredibly attractive about listening to him talk about it. It was always attractive to see someone care and talk about their passions; but Harry was on another level. She could see it on his face that he was disappointed and knew the person could do better. While it made it all the more nerve wracking for her own novel, she had him working with her along the way.

He never told her where to go with her story in terms of ideas, but how to improve the mechanics. Reading over bits and telling her to take away a certain detail and add more in other places, or giving suggestions about how things could flow smoother. He’d listened to her storyboard, after showing her the author equivalent of it, and gave his honest feedback from a publisher's point of view and then from a boyfriend’s point of view.

Sometimes it was more obvious that he was the one with miles more life experience in these instances but she couldn’t be upset about it when it only aided in strengthening their relationship. 

“I see.” She looked at the manuscript on the desk with the red pen of doom. “Oof. The red pen is out… and you’ve used it a lot.” 

“Well, there are errors.” He chuffed, kissing her cheek in return. “Did you get enough done?” The word count goal had been 3,000 for today, but he didn’t make it for her. It was all on her. He simply helped keep her accountable.

“I did more. I think… 4.5?” She tilted her head trying to remember. “Now my head feels like soup.” It did feel like mush right now. That was why the laptop was closed and abandoned and she was finding comfort in the man. It was like a reward. 

“That’s ace, my dove. Amazing.” He praised. The pride he felt for her was earned fair and square. She had been applying herself more now than ever. Since their first night together they hadn’t really separated, seeing each other at least a few times a week. Her work ethic was there as she had zeroed in on what she wanted. “Why don’t we finish this up and go back to mine, mm?” 

Harry had been holding off all week. He’d gone a bit rough one night and even though she said she was fine, he wanted to give her body time to relax. As much as he loved sex, he had wanted her body to enjoy it more than anything else. Not be overly swollen and sore the next day. 

Today was going to be the day to break that. A full week of nothing but heated kisses, and she was as needy as needy could get. He felt her perk up at the mention, sitting up straighter in his lap. 

“Please! Let’s go. We can get food on the way home but I think we have some pressing matters to attend to.” She sniffed, standing from him and offering a hand to help him up. “Chop chop. Get a move on, mister.”

——-

Two rounds in and he knew she could take it. Her poor cunt was a mess and he knew that as pretty as it was all drippy and swollen, she had been aching for him to get a try into her other hole. They’d had a proper discussion about it, and he had effectively been edging her the entire night. Fair? No, but she knew how he rolled. The promised pleasure first, experiments after. Just in case she wanted to stop, she got something out of the night. 

She’d been warming his cock for a bit as he held her in his arms, cooing soft praises about how good of a girl she was, how brave she had been to ask for something new tonight when he felt her get impatient. She didn’t need to say it. He knew her well enough now to understand what she wanted. Pulling his cock out and rubbing the tip against her asshole, pressing against it and spreading the sticky cum over the rim.  “Want me t’fuck this tight little ass too?  Fill you from both ends."

“Wanna try.” She nodded, panting as her cunt contracted and his cum dribbled out of her pussy. “You’re so big I… I dunno if I can take it. Go slow.” Y/N knew she was slightly cock drunk but she also trusted him. He’d made her feel good already, took his time with everything else why wouldn’t she want to test this with him?

“Okay, my sweet. Just relax.” Harry wasn’t nervous, but he was cautious. His girl was precious cargo, and he wanted to make sure it felt as good as it could. He’d done the work of stretching her with his fingers, but it was going to be a challenge to get him in there regardless. He slowly pushed his thick head past the tight rim of her back hole. Watching her face intently, his own contorted with pleasure. "You're doing so good, doll," he encouraged softly. "Just relax and let me in. You can take it."

The pressure was intense, and she hissed out a breath as he slowly pushed more and more of himself into her. His thick head stretched her wide, and he paused, letting her adjust to the new sensation. "Breathe." The reminder was whispered as he realized she was holding her breath, his hand carding through her hair tenderly.

"That's it, baby. You're taking it so well. Always do so good f’me." He praised, his voice low and soothing. He slowly pushed more of himself into her, inch by inch, his thick prick spreading her wide. She could feel every vein, every ridge, as he slowly filled her up.

As he slid deeper, Harry could feel the intense pressure and stretch around his girth. Her tight little hole was gripped tightly around his shaft, the muscles fluttering and contracting as he pushed his way inside. She felt like she was being split in two, her body struggling to accommodate his bigger size- but she was. Slowly but surely, he sunk into her fully.

She had done it. 

“Fuck.” She sobbed out, clinging to him as he got down to the base. Never in her life had she felt so full that way, so stretched. Only Harry could make her feel this way. It wasn’t just the physical feeling, but the emotional one too. She trusted him more than she trusted anyone else. His guidance was priceless.

"You're doing so good, You’ve got it all in. Jus’ gotta let it adjust." he soothed, his voice strained as he fought to keep control. Giving her a moment to adjust, his hands stroking her hair and her cheeks, his thumb brushing away her tears. "You feel so hot around me, doll. So tight. Knew y’would be."

“I wanna be… I want you to feel good.” She whispered, looking at him with wet eyes. “It’s just so big. I’m tryin’ to take it.” It surely wasn't a beginner cock but she wasn’t known for taking the easy way.

"You're doing so well, baby," he reassured her, his hands never leaving her. He slowly pulled out halfway before sinking in again, a little faster this time. "That's it... take me all the way in."

It was the fourth time he did it that she felt the pleasure. Both from the action and the thatch of hair at the base of his cock rubbing against her swollen clit, making her gasp. Her eyes fell shut as she leaned her head back, slowly relaxing into the bed.

He watched her face contorted in pleasure, his heart swelling with pride. "Look at me," he commanded, his voice rough. As she opened her eyes, he began to pick up the pace, his hips pressing against hers. "M’so proud of you. Look at you, taking every bit of me.”

Y/N sent him a blissed out smile as her hand slipped between them, rubbing her own clit slowly as he fucked into her ass. There was nothing rushed about it, nothing frantic, and it felt good just to be. Her muscles relaxed, making it feel even better as his cock filled her hole. Soft moans left her mouth as she curled her other hand around the back of his neck, pulling him down so he was close. “Are they the best holes you’ve had?”

Harry’s face was lax in his own pleasure as he felt her tight ass clench around his cock. “Fuck, baby,” he groaned, his breath hot against her lips. “They are. So fucking tight, so perfect. Can’t compare them t’anything else.” He kept up his steady rhythm, loving how her body moved with his. “You feel so good. Can never get enough of you.” He whispered, brushing a stray hair out of her face before stroking her puffy lip. They were so pretty. Kissing wasn’t something he’d thought much of before, but he hadn’t kissed Y/N. She had changed everything for him. 

“Better than that silly ex wife?” She prodded, watching with a little smirk as she watched him think it over. Y/N had a feeling she was by the way be was acting,  but she wanted to hear it.

"Way better." he grunted, his hips snapping forward. "Little minx, y’just need to ask that, hm? No need to be jealous. She never gets t’have me again. Only y-you." He stuttered as her hand moved around his neck and she squeezed down hard on him. "Her holes were nothing compared to yours, doll. Nothing."

Y/N giggled as she choked him a little bit, watching his eyes widen before pulling. It was obvious that while he was the big man in charge- she could have fun too. “That’s what I like to hear. I’ll tell you a secret, Harry.” Her lips brushed his as she kept the grip on his throat. Her lips were swollen and sensitive, the coarse facial hair brushing it and making her want to moan. “None of the boys my age have ever made me cum. They never fucked my ass. Never fucked me raw. And you did it all.”

"And I'm gonna keep doing it," he rumbled, eyes burning with lust as she kissed him. His hand tightened in her hair, tugging gently and pulling her deeper into the kiss. “You’ve got a man now, no need to think of those boys.You want me t’keep being nice to you? Keep making you cum?”

“If you keep fucking me like this, I do. Want my man to be so, so nice to me.” She gasped as he pushed all the way in, balls rested snug against her ass as he slowly humped into her, the comfort of the fullness making her fingers work harder on her clit. “Gotta- Gotta prove you can keep up with me, old man. That you c-can live up to the hype. I like the bit of silver at your temples but…” Her moan was broken as he pulled out and pushed back in, jostling her. “Gotta prove why older guys are b-better for pretty little things like me.”

"Oh, I'll prove it to you," he growled, picking up pace as he pounded into her tight ass. She had no idea just how badly he’d needed her to walk into his life. Thank god she had. This was everything he had ever wanted. "And right now, you need me to wreck this little hole until you can't walk straight. You need me to show you how a real man handles his woman. I'll give you everything you crave, everything you need. You just have to let go and trust me.” The man had every intention of proving how much better he could be for her than she could ever imagine.

"Fuck, look at this cunt." He muttered, reaching down to spread her dripping pussy apart. "It's absolutely soaked, just dripping down. Love it, hm?” The smugness in his tone would usually make her scowl but there was no denying it. The proof was right there. It was undeniable. “You're so turned on, baby. It's making it easier for me to fuck this tight little ass of yours." The glossy, hard flesh glistened with slick, dripping down onto the bed beneath her. His own cum intermingled with her own, making his movements smoother as he pushed in and out of her, coating her holes with their combined essence.

Her face was a mask of pure ecstasy, her eyes rolled back in her head as she whimpered in pleasure, her hands gripping the sheets beneath her. Her asshole clenching and unclenching around his thick cock with each thrust, trying to milk him for all he was worth. Her body was feeling tingly, her legs trembling as he fucking into her ass, the sound of her arousal and his hips hitting her skin filling the room. She was completely lost in the pleasure, her mind clouded by the overwhelming sensation of being thoroughly fucked.

As she reached the peak of her orgasm, he took over and began rubbing her clit with his own thumb, the sensation sending waves of pleasure cascading through her body. She cried out, her pussy gushing as she came harder than she would have imagined being fucked like this. She was so overwhelmed that she could only hold limply onto his arms as he continued to pound into her, his thick cock stretching her hole as it thrust through the waves of her intense orgasm.

His face contorted, vein bulging in his neck as he struggled to hold back. "You feel too good, baby. I can't... I can't hold back any longer." His heavy balls drew up close to his body, ready to unleash another load inside of her. The feeling of her taut muscles milking him, the way she clung to him with every fiber of her being, it was too much. He was sensitive himself, but he wanted to deliver everything she wanted.

"Please, Harry...Please,come inside me... I wanna feel you fill me up. Want it everywhere." She panted, her voice desperate with need. Half of the fun of sex was seeing him lose that control he so easily held in all other scenarios. She wanted to make him feel just as good as he made her feel. He deserved it.

His restraint shattered at her words.  "Fuck, you're gonna get what you asked for."

With a guttural groan, he buried his face in the crook of her neck and let go, his hot load pulsing into her hole in thick ropes. She felt each ribbon scalding her , marking her as his. "That's it, take it all... That’s m’girl.” He kept cumming, his cock twitching as he filled her. Ribbon after ribbon filled her up until she was overflowing with his load, almost overwhelmingly so. He finally slowed, his chest heaving, before gently pulling out of her ass, his cock glistening with the evidence of their fuck.

With a sense of possessive pride, he watched as his cum began to leak out of her stretched hole, dripping down her thighs. It was satisfying in the filthiest way. Primal and caveman in every sense of the word, he loved knowing that he had done it. He’d taken every one of her holes and made her his in the dirtiest type of way. He gently spread her cheeks apart, admiring the sight of his mark leaking from her. "Look at that... You're so full of me, S’that what you wanted?”

“Mhm.” She smiled, slightly drunk on the orgasm and the fact that he had pushed her further than anyone else had before. it was a good feeling in her body, the beginnings of soreness and the calming heat of his hands as he caressed her the way he wanted. “Exactly what I wanted. Think M’gonna have to keep you around so we can do that again.”

“I’d hope so.” He laughed tiredly, pushing back down to take her mouth for another kiss. “I’m far from finished with you, sweet little thing. But I think I’ve ravaged your body enough. Think you need a bath and some tea, get you ready to sleep.” 

Aftercare wasn’t something she’d experienced in any other relationship either, but she realized now it was probably a Harry exclusive thing. He was phenomenal at it. A lot of things, honestly. He experimented with her responsibly, took care of her after every round of sex, checked in on her, made sure she was eating proper meals, and helped her with her career. She’d lucked out with him. Whatever his ex wife was thinking, she had no clue- but she wasn’t about to waste a single bit of him.

“Do you have chamomile?” She asked softly, pecking his lips in return. 

“What do you take me for? Course I’ve got it.” He scoffed, pinching her chin. “But if I didn’t, I’d find some for you. Know it’s your favorite. Added it to the grocery list, along with your cereal, your rancid battery acid energy drinks, and the sweet and salty popcorn.” 

“It’s good battery acid, I’ll have you know.” She giggled, carding her fingers through his hair. He did have a bit of gray going on the temples but it was sexy. Just hearing how much he cared and put effort into the tiny things made her giddy. 

“Yeah, yeah. We can talk about your poison in the morning. It’s time to get clean and go t’sleep. Tomorrow may be the day you write five thousand words. You never know.”

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #31

August 9-16 2024

President Biden and Vice-President Harris announced together the successful conclusion of the first negotiations between Medicare and pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. For years Medicare was not allow to directly negotiate princes with drug companies leaving seniors to pay high prices. It has been a Democratic goal for many years to change this. President Biden noted he first introduced a bill to allow these negotiations as a Senator back in 1973. Thanks to Inflation Reduction Act, passed with no Republican support using Vice-President Harris' tie breaking vote, this long time Democratic goal is now a reality. Savings on these first ten drugs are between 38% and 79% and will collectively save seniors $1.8 billion dollars in out of pocket costs. This comes on top of the Biden-Harris Administration already having capped the price of insulin for Medicare's 3.5 million diabetics at $35 a month, as well as the Administration's plan to cap Medicare out of pocket drug costs at $2,000 a year starting January 2025.

President Biden and Vice President Harris have launched a wide ranging all of government effort to crack down on companies wasting customers time with excessive paperwork, hold times, and robots rather than real people. Some of the actions from the "Time is Money" effort include: The FTC and FCC putting forward rules that require companies to make canceling a subscription or service as easy as signing up for it. The Department of Transportation has required automatic refunds for canceled flights. The CFPB is working on rules to require companies to have to allow customers to speak to a real person with just one button click ending endless "doom loops" of recored messages. The CFPB is also working on rules around chatbots, particularly their use from banks. The FTC is working on rules to ban companies from posting fake reviews, suppressing honest negative reviews, or paying for  positive reviews. HHS and the Department of Labor are taking steps to require insurance companies to allow health claims to be submitted online. All these actions come on top of the Biden Administration's efforts to get rid of junk fees.

President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden announced further funding as part of the President's Cancer Moonshot. The Cancer Moonshot was launched by then Vice-President Biden in 2016 in the aftermath of his son Beau Biden's death from brain cancer in late 2015. It was scrapped by Trump as political retaliation against the Obama-Biden Administration. Revived by President Biden in 2022 it has the goal of cutting the number of cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years, saving 4 million lives. Part of the Moonshot is Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), grants to help develop cutting edge technology to prevent, detect, and treat cancer. The President and First Lady announced $150 million in ARPA-H grants this week focused on more successful cancer surgeries. With grants to Tulane, Rice, Johns Hopkins, and Dartmouth, among others, they'll help fund imaging and microscope technology that will allow surgeons to more successfully determine if all cancer has been remove, as well as medical imaging focused on preventing damage to healthy tissues during surgeries.

Vice-President Harris announced a 4-year plan to lower housing costs. The Vice-President plans on offering $25,000 to first time home buyers in down-payment support. It's believed this will help support 1 million first time buyers a year. She also called for the building of 3 million more housing units, and a $40 billion innovation fund to spur innovative housing construction. This adds to President Biden's call for a $10,000 tax credit for first time buyers and calls by the President to punish landlords who raise the rent by over 5%.

President Biden Designates the site of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot a National Monument. The two day riot in Illinois capital took place just blocks away from Abraham Lincoln's Springfield home. In August 1908, 17 people die, including a black infant, and 2,000 black refugees were forced to flee the city. As a direct result of the riot, black community leaders and white allies met a few months later in New York and founded the NAACP. The new National Monument will seek to preserve the history and educate the public both on the horrible race riot as well as the foundation of the NAACP. This is the second time President Biden has used his authority to set up a National Monument protecting black history, after setting up the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument on Emmett Till's 82nd birthday July 25th 2023.

The Department of The Interior announced $775 million to help cap and clean up orphaned oil and gas wells. The money will help cap wells in 21 states. The Biden-Harris Administration has allocated $4.7 billion to plug orphaned wells, a billion of which has already been distributed. More than 8,200 such wells have been capped since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2022. Orphaned wells leak toxins into communities and are leaking the super greenhouse gas methane. Plugging them will not only improve the health of nearby communities but help fight climate change on a global level.

Vice-President Harris announced plans to ban price-gouging in the food and grocery industries. This would be a first ever federal ban on price gouging and Harris called for clear "rules of the road" on price rises in food, and strong penalties from the FTC for those who break them. This is in line with President Biden's launching of a federal Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing in March, and Democratic Senator Bob Casey's bill to ban "shrinkflation". In response to this pressure from Democrats on price gouging and after aggressive questions by Senator Casey and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the supermarket giant Kroger proposed dropping prices by a billion dollars