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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months ago

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Apple to EU: “Go fuck yourself”

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

There's a strain of anti-anti-monopolist that insists that they're not pro-monopoly – they're just realists who understand that global gigacorporations are too big to fail, too big to jail, and that governments can't hope to rein them in. Trying to regulate a tech giant, they say, is like trying to regulate the weather.

This ploy is cousins with Jay Rosen's idea of "savvying," defined as: "dismissing valid questions with the insider's, 'and this surprises you?'"

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/344825874362810369?lang=en

In both cases, an apologist for corruption masquerades as a pragmatist who understands the ways of the world, unlike you, a pathetic dreamer who foolishly hopes for a better world. In both cases, the apologist provides cover for corruption, painting it as an inevitability, not a choice. "Don't hate the player. Hate the game."

The reason this foolish nonsense flies is that we are living in an age of rampant corruption and utter impunity. Companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder. Governments really do ignore horrible crimes by the rich and powerful, and fumble what rare, few enforcement efforts they assay.

Take the GDPR, Europe's landmark privacy law. The GDPR establishes strict limitations of data-collection and processing, and provides for brutal penalties for companies that violate its rules. The immediate impact of the GDPR was a mass-extinction event for Europe's data-brokerages and surveillance advertising companies, all of which were in obvious violation of the GDPR's rules.

But there was a curious pattern to GDPR enforcement: while smaller, EU-based companies were swiftly shuttered by its provisions, the US-based giants that conduct the most brazen, wide-ranging, illegal surveillance escaped unscathed for years and years, continuing to spy on Europeans.

One (erroneous) way to look at this is as a "compliance moat" story. In that story, GDPR requires a bunch of expensive systems that only gigantic companies like Facebook and Google can afford. These compliance costs are a "capital moat" – a way to exclude smaller companies from functioning in the market. Thus, the GDPR acted as an anticompetitive wrecking ball, clearing the field for the largest companies, who get to operate without having to contend with smaller companies nipping at their heels:

https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/27/another-report-shows-gdpr-benefited-google-facebook-hurt-everyone-else/

This is wrong.

Oh, compliance moats are definitely real – think of the calls for AI companies to license their training data. AI companies can easily do this – they'll just buy training data from giant media companies – the very same companies that hope to use models to replace creative workers with algorithms. Create a new copyright over training data won't eliminate AI – it'll just confine AI to the largest, best capitalized companies, who will gladly provide tools to corporations hoping to fire their workforces:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

But just because some regulations can be compliance moats, that doesn't mean that all regulations are compliance moats. And just because some regulations are vigorously applied to small companies while leaving larger firms unscathed, it doesn't follow that the regulation in question is a compliance moat.

A harder look at what happened with the GDPR reveals a completely different dynamic at work. The reason the GDPR vaporized small surveillance companies and left the big companies untouched had nothing to do with compliance costs. The Big Tech companies don't comply with the GDPR – they just get away with violating the GDPR.

How do they get away with it? They fly Irish flags of convenience. Decades ago, Ireland started dabbling with offering tax-havens to the wealthy and mobile – they invented the duty-free store:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty-free_shop#1947%E2%80%931990:_duty_free_establishment

Capturing pennies from the wealthy by helping them avoid fortunes they owed in taxes elsewhere was terribly seductive. In the years that followed, Ireland began aggressively courting the wealthy on an industrial scale, offering corporations the chance to duck their obligations to their host countries by flying an Irish flag of convenience.

There are other countries who've tried this gambit – the "treasure islands" of the Caribbean, the English channel, and elsewhere – but Ireland is part of the EU. In the global competition to help the rich to get richer, Ireland had a killer advantage: access to the EU, the common market, and 500m affluent potential customers. The Caymans can hide your money for you, and there's a few super-luxe stores and art-galleries in George Town where you can spend it, but it's no Champs Elysees or Ku-Damm.

But when you're competing with other countries for the pennies of trillion-dollar tax-dodgers, any wins can be turned into a loss in an instant. After all, any corporation that is footloose enough to establish a Potemkin Headquarters in Dublin and fly the trídhathach can easily up sticks and open another Big Store HQ in some other haven that offers it a sweeter deal.

This has created a global race to the bottom among tax-havens to also serve as regulatory havens – and there's a made-in-the-EU version that sees Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands competing to see who can offer the most impunity for the worst crimes to the most awful corporations in the world.

And that's why Google and Facebook haven't been extinguished by the GDPR while their rivals were. It's not compliance moats – it's impunity. Once a corporation attains a certain scale, it has the excess capital to spend on phony relocations that let it hop from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, chasing the loosest slots on the strip. Ireland is a made town, where the cops are all on the take, and two thirds of the data commissioner's rulings are eventually overturned by the federal court:

https://www.iccl.ie/digital-data/iccl-2023-gdpr-report/

This is a problem among many federations, not just the EU. The US has its onshore-offshore tax- and regulation-havens (Delaware, South Dakota, Texas, etc), and so does Canada (Alberta), and some Swiss cantons are, frankly, batshit:

https://lenews.ch/2017/11/25/swiss-fact-some-swiss-women-had-to-wait-until-1991-to-vote/

None of this is to condemn federations outright. Federations are (potentially) good! But federalism has a vulnerability: the autonomy of the federated states means that they can be played against each other by national or transnational entities, like corporations. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to regulate powerful entities within a federation – but it means that federal regulation needs to account for the risk of jurisdiction-shopping.

Enter the Digital Markets Act, a new Big Tech specific law that, among other things, bans monopoly app stores and payment processing, through which companies like Apple and Google have levied a 30% tax on the entire app market, while arrogating to themselves the right to decide which software their customers may run on their own devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

Apple has responded to this regulation with a gesture of contempt so naked and broad that it beggars belief. As Proton describes, Apple's DMA plan is the very definition of malicious compliance:

https://proton.me/blog/apple-dma-compliance-plan-trap

Recall that the DMA is intended to curtail monopoly software distribution through app stores and mobile platforms' insistence on using their payment processors, whose fees are sky-high. The law is intended to extinguish developer agreements that ban software creators from informing customers that they can get a better deal by initiating payments elsewhere, or by getting a service through the web instead of via an app.

In response, Apple, has instituted a junk fee it calls the "Core Technology Fee": EUR0.50/install for every installation over 1m. As Proton writes, as apps grow more popular, using third-party payment systems will grow less attractive. Apple has offered discounts on its eye-watering payment processing fees to a mere 20% for the first payment and 13% for renewals. Compare this with the normal – and far, far too high – payment processing fees the rest of the industry charges, which run 2-5%. On top of all this, Apple has lied about these new discounted rates, hiding a 3% "processing" fee in its headline figures.

As Proton explains, paying 17% fees and EUR0.50 for each subscriber's renewal makes most software businesses into money-losers. The only way to keep them afloat is to use Apple's old, default payment system. That choice is made more attractive by Apple's inclusion of a "scare screen" that warns you that demons will rend your soul for all eternity if you try to use an alternative payment scheme.

Apple defends this scare screen by saying that it will protect users from the intrinsic unreliability of third-party processors, but as Proton points out, there are plenty of giant corporations who get to use their own payment processors with their iOS apps, because Apple decided they were too big to fuck with. Somehow, Apple can let its customers spend money Uber, McDonald's, Airbnb, Doordash and Amazon without terrorizing them about existential security risks – but not mom-and-pop software vendors or publishers who don't want to hand 30% of their income over to a three-trillion-dollar company.

Apple has also reserved the right to cancel any alternative app store and nuke it from Apple customers' devices without warning, reason or liability. Those app stores also have to post a one-million euro line of credit in order to be considered for iOS. Given these terms, it's obvious that no one is going to offer a third-party app store for iOS and if they did, no one would list their apps in it.

The fuckery goes on and on. If an app developer opts into third-party payments, they can't use Apple's payment processing too – so any users who are scared off by the scare screen have no way to pay the app's creators. And once an app creator opts into third party payments, they can never go back – the decision is permanent.

Apple also reserves the right to change all of these policies later, for the worse ("I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further" -D. Vader). They have warned developers that they might change the API for reporting external sales and revoke developers' right to use alternative app stores at its discretion, with no penalties if that screws the developer.

Apple's contempt extends beyond app marketplaces. The DMA also obliges Apple to open its platform to third party browsers and browser engines. Every browser on iOS is actually just Safari wrapped in a cosmetic skin, because Apple bans third-party browser-engines:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

But, as Mozilla puts it, Apple's plan for this is "as painful as possible":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-ios-browser-rules-firefox

For one thing, Apple will only allow European customers to run alternative browser engines. That means that Firefox will have to "build and maintain two separate browser implementations — a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear."

(One wonders how Apple will treat Americans living in the EU, whose Apple accounts still have US billing addresses – these people will still be entitled to the browser choice that Apple is grudgingly extending to Europeans.)

All of this sends a strong signal that Apple is planning to run the same playbook with the DMA that Google and Facebook used on the GDPR: ignore the law, use lawyerly bullshit to chaff regulators, and hope that European federalism has sufficiently deep cracks that it can hide in them when the enforcers come to call.

But Apple is about to get a nasty shock. For one thing, the DMA allows wronged parties to start their search for justice in the European federal court system – bypassing the Irish regulators and courts. For another, there is a global movement to check corporate power, and because the tech companies do the same kinds of fuckery in every territory, regulators are able to collaborate across borders to take them down.

Take Apple's app store monopoly. The best reference on this is the report published by the UK Competition and Markets Authority's Digital Markets Unit:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

The devastating case that the DMU report was key to crafting the DMA – but it also inspired a US law aimed at forcing app markets open:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2710

And a Japanese enforcement action:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And action in South Korea:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-considers-505-mln-fine-against-google-apple-over-app-market-practices-2023-10-06/

These enforcers gather for annual meetings – I spoke at one in London, convened by the Competition and Markets Authority – where they compare notes, form coalitions, and plan strategy:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

This is where the savvying breaks down. Yes, Apple is big enough to run circles around Japan, or South Korea, or the UK. But when those countries join forces with the EU, the USA and other countries that are fed up to the eyeballs with Apple's bullshit, the company is in serious danger.

It's true that Apple has convinced a bunch of its customers that buying a phone from a multi-trillion-dollar corporation makes you a member of an oppressed religious minority:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Some of those self-avowed members of the "Cult of Mac" are willing to take the company's pronouncements at face value and will dutifully repeat Apple's claims to be "protecting" its customers. But even that credulity has its breaking point – Apple can only poison the well so many times before people stop drinking from it. Remember when the company announced a miraculous reversal to its war on right to repair, later revealed to be a bald-faced lie?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Or when Apple claimed to be protecting phone users' privacy, which was also a lie?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The savvy will see Apple lying (again) and say, "this surprises you?" No, it doesn't surprise me, but it pisses me off – and I'm not the only one, and Apple's insulting lies are getting less effective by the day.

Image: Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil from Brazil (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annelid_worm,_Atlantic_forest,_northern_littoral_of_Bahia,_Brazil_%2816107326533%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Hubertl (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015-03-04_Elstar_%28apple%29_starting_putrefying_IMG_9761_bis_9772.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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digitaleblog · 1 year ago

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DİGİTALE TREND - MEGA+

Linkbuilding Expertise en Uitbesteden - Digitale Trends

In de digitale marketing van vandaag bestaat er een effectieve strategie om uw online aanwezigheid te versterken en uw rankings te verhogen: linkbuilding. Deze strategie is essentieel voor het vergroten van de populariteit van uw website en het verbeteren van uw ranking in zoekmachines.

Wat is linkbuilding-expertise?

Experts op het gebied van linkbuilding zijn professionals die links uit externe bronnen beheren om de paginaautoriteit van uw website te vergroten. Deze links vergroten de geloofwaardigheid van uw site en sturen signalen naar zoekmachines die kwaliteitsinhoud aangeven.

Linkbuilding Uitbesteden: waarom is het belangrijk?

Het linkbuildingproces kan een complexe taak zijn, en bedrijfseigenaren zoeken vaak hulp die hierin gespecialiseerd is. Door het uitbesteden van linkbuilding kan een deskundig team deze taak professioneel uitvoeren. Dit helpt bedrijfseigenaren zich te concentreren op hun vakgebied en het link building specialist ervaren handen over te laten.

Linkbuildingstrategie voor digitale trends

De linkbuildingstrategie voordigitaletrend.nl moet het delen van originele en hoogwaardige inhoud omvatten. Het strategisch gebruiken van trefwoorden is belangrijk om de doelgroep aan te trekken en sterke signalen naar zoekmachines te sturen. Bovendien moet ervoor worden gezorgd dat de website zijn concurrentievoordeel behoudt door interactieve inhoud en trends in de branche te volgen.

Conclusie

Link building uitbesteden is een integraal onderdeel van succesvol zijn in ai marketing. Digital Trends kan de geloofwaardigheid en online aanwezigheid van websites vergroten door samen te werken met een deskundig linkbuilding-team.

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nostalgebraist · 2 years ago

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@oakfern replied to your post “it's going to be fun to watch the realization...”:

i feel like this is going to play out very similarly to voice assistants. there was a huge boom in ASR research, the products got a lot of hype, and they actually sold decently (at least alexa did). but 10 years on, they've been a massive failure, costing way more than they ever made back. even if ppl do think chatbot search engines are exciting and cool, it's not going to bring in more users or sell more products, and in the end it will just be a financial loss

(Responding to this a week late)

I don't know much about the history of voice assistants. Are there any articles you recommend on the topic? Sounds interesting.

ETA: Iater, I found and read this article from Nov 2022, which reports that Alexa and co. still can't turn a profit after many years of trying.

But anyway, yeah... this is why I don't have a strong sense of how widespread/popular these "generative AI" products will be a year or two from now. Or even five years from now.

(Ten years from now? Maybe we can trust the verdict will be in at that point... but the tech landscape of 2033 is going to be so different from ours that the question "did 'generative AI' take off or not?" will no doubt sound quaint and irrelevant.)

Remember when self-driving cars were supposed to be right around the corner? Lots of people took this imminent self-driving future seriously.

And I looked at it, and thought "I don't get it, this problem seems way harder than people are giving it credit for. And these companies show no signs of having discovered some clever proprietary way forward." If people asked me about it, that's what I would say.

But even if I was sure that self-driving cars wouldn't arrive on schedule, that didn't give me much insight into the fate of "self-driving cars," the tech sector meme. It wasn't like there was some specific deadline, and when we crossed it everyone was going to look up and say "oh, I guess that didn't work, time to stop investing."

The influx of capital -- and everything downstream from it, the trusting news stories, the prominence of the "self-driving car future" in the public mind, the seriousness which it was talked about -- these things went on, heedless of anything except their own mysterious internal logic.

They went on until . . . what? The pandemic, probably? I actually still don't know.

Something definitely happened:

In 2018 analysts put the market value of Waymo LLC, then a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., at $175 billion. Its most recent funding round gave the company an estimated valuation of $30 billion, roughly the same as Cruise. Aurora Innovation Inc., a startup co-founded by Chris Urmson, Google’s former autonomous-vehicle chief, has lost more than 85% since last year [i.e. 2021] and is now worth less than $3 billion. This September a leaked memo from Urmson summed up Aurora’s cash-flow struggles and suggested it might have to sell out to a larger company. Many of the industry’s most promising efforts have met the same fate in recent years, including Drive.ai, Voyage, Zoox, and Uber’s self-driving division. “Long term, I think we will have autonomous vehicles that you and I can buy,” says Mike Ramsey, an analyst at market researcher Gartner Inc. “But we’re going to be old.”

Whatever killed the "self-driving car" meme, though, it wasn't some newly definitive article of proof that the underlying ideas were flawed. The ideas never made sense in the first place. The phenomenon was not really about the ideas making sense.

Some investors -- with enough capital, between them, to exert noticable distortionary effects on entire business sectors -- decided that "self-driving cars" were, like, A Thing now. And so they were, for a number of years. Huge numbers of people worked very hard trying to make "self-driving cars" into a viable product. They were paid very well to do. Talent was diverted away from other projects, en masse, into this effort. This went on as long as the investors felt like sustaining it, and they were in no danger of running out of money.

Often the "tech sector" feels less like a product of free-market incentives than it does like a massive, weird, and opaque public works product, orchestrated by eccentrics like Masayoshi Son, and ultimately organized according to the aesthetic proclivities and changing moods of its architects, not for the purpose of "doing business" in the conventional sense.

Gig economy delivery apps (Uber Eats, Doordash, etc.) have been ubiquitous for years, and have reported huge losses in every one of those years.

This entertaining post from 2020 about "pizza arbitrage" asks:

Which brings us to the question - what is the point of all this? These platforms are all losing money. Just think of all the meetings and lines of code and phone calls to make all of these nefarious things happen which just continue to bleed money. Why go through all this trouble?

Grubhub just lost $33 million on $360 million of revenue in Q1.

Doordash reportedly lost an insane $450 million off $900 million in revenue in 2019 (which does make me wonder if my dream of a decentralized network of pizza arbitrageurs does exist).

Uber Eats is Uber's "most profitable division” 😂😂. Uber Eats lost $461 million in Q4 2019 off of revenue of $734 million. Sometimes I need to write this out to remind myself. Uber Eats spent $1.2 billion to make $734 million. In one quarter.

And now, in February 2023?

DoorDash's total orders grew 27% to 467 million in the fourth quarter. That beat Wall Street’s forecast of 459 million, according to analysts polled by FactSet. Fourth quarter revenue jumped 40% to $1.82 billion, also ahead of analysts’ forecast of $1.77 billion.

But profits remain elusive for the 10-year-old company. DoorDash said its net loss widened to $640 million, or $1.65 per share, in the fourth quarter as it expanded into new categories and integrated Wolt into its operations.

Do their investors really believe these companies are going somewhere, and just taking their time to get there? Or is this more like a subsidy? The lost money (a predictable loss in the long term) merely the price paid for a desired good -- for an intoxicating exercise of godlike power, for the chance to reshape reality to one's whims on a large scale -- collapsing the usual boundary between self and outside, dream and reality? "The gig economy is A Thing, now," you say, and wave your hand -- and so it is.

Some people would pay a lot of money to be a god, I would think.

Anyway, "generative AI" is A Thing now. It wasn't A Thing a year ago, but now it is. How long will it remain one? The best I can say is: as long as the gods are feeling it.

#oakfern #ai tag

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thegianpieromennitipolis · 5 months ago

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SENSI DELL'ARTE - di Gianpiero Menniti

L'ILLUSIONE DELL'ONFALO

Lo stile è davvero uno dei segni tangibili dell'arte, di ogni espressione, sia essa un testo pittorico o plastico, un'architettura oppure un'opera di scrittura.

In un luogo, qualcosa accade.

Si staglia, s'imprime nello sguardo e suscita un irrefrenabile moto d'animo.

È il primo passo.

Prima lentamente e poi con impeto, i luoghi si moltiplicano: non per mera imitazione ma per slancio creativo.

Così, quando nel 1874, a Parigi, nello studio del fotografo Nadar sul Boulevard des Capucines si tenne la prima mostra "Impressionista", il fuoco di quello stile già diffondeva i suoi lapilli nell'emisfero sud del globo, in Australia, a Melbourne.

Lì si formò la scuola detta di "Heidelberg" - dal nome di una località a est, nella periferia rurale della città - e sempre a Melbourne si tenne, nel 1889, la prima mostra passata alla storia con questo titolo: "9 by 5 Impression Exhibition".

Tra i 183 dipinti, almeno 40 erano di Arthur Streeton, non meno di 46 di Charles Conder, assieme ai contributi minori di Frederick McCubbin e Charles Douglas Richardson.

Ma la parte più cospicua spettò, con 63 opere, a Tom Roberts (1856 - 1931) artista di origine britannica.

E britannica sembra essere l'influenza "impressionista" - Turner, Whistler - che colse la vena figurativa di quella che venne annoverata come la prima scuola artistica veracemente australiana.

Ma il ceppo originario s'era già formato nella seconda metà degli anni '80, il "Box Hill artists' camp", con il gruppo di artisti "en plein air" che in seguito costituirono l'ossatura della "Heidelberg School".

Certamente, Roberts fu il più intenso nel lasciarsi cogliere dallo slancio di misurarsi con la cattura dell'istante nella naturalezza del primo impatto.

E se è vero che le sue tele echeggiano Whistler pur concedendosi inizialmente all'impronta vaga di Constable, le stesse mostrano un notevole coraggio nell'esplorare i fondamenti della visione sensibile, della costruzione im-mediata dell'immagine pittorica.

Così, le tracce irrequiete dell'arte migrarono lasciando l'Europa, annebbiata dalla "Belle Époque", nella tragica illusione di essere l'omphalòs (ὀμφαλός), l'ombelico del mondo.

- "Going home", 1889, National Gallery of Australia; "Treno serale per Hawthorn", 1889, Art Gallery of New South Wales; "Andante", 1889, Art Gallery of South Australia.

#thegianpieromennitipolis #arte #arte contemporanea #impressionismo #Tom Roberts

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mochademic · 1 year ago

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100 Days of Productivity [Day: 55] || 100 Jours de Productivité [Jour: 55]

this holiday season I am extra thankful for caffeine, as I would not be surviving without it. I don’t think I’ve gotten to bed before 2A.M. for the last week, but somehow I’m still able to wake up for 6 without a problem. I haven’t been stressed; on the contrary, I’ve been quite satisfied & thankful. looking at where I was at the beginning of this year compared to now is almost surreal. & the best part of it all? I vowed to take this year slowly. I told myself I would stop over-working for the sake of the “grind-set”. the truth — or at least my truth — is that you must first get to know who you are & where your limits really are before you can successfully challenge yourself without burnout. could I have gotten more done? sure. we can always get more done. but that’s because there’s always going to be something else. but I’ve accomplished more than I ever have, & I have the results to prove it.

after finishing my first market weekend, I spent today working on custom orders & answering emails. this is probably one of the last days I’ll have this week to get preliminary work out of the way. I’m making the most of it.

currently listening // labour by Paris Paloma

En cette période de fêtes, je suis particulièrement reconnaissante à la caféine, sans laquelle je ne survivrais pas. Je ne pense pas m'être couché avant 2 heures du matin la semaine dernière, mais j'ai réussi à me réveiller pour 6 heures sans problème. Je n'ai pas été stressé ; au contraire, j'ai été très satisfait et reconnaissant. Regarder où j'en étais au début de l'année par rapport à maintenant est presque surréaliste. et le meilleur dans tout ça ? Je me suis promis de prendre cette année au ralenti. Je me suis dit que j'arrêterais de me pousser jusqu'au point de rupture au nom du "grind-set" dont beaucoup de gens disent qu'il est nécessaire pour réussir. La vérité - ou du moins ma vérité - est qu'il faut d'abord apprendre à se connaître et à connaître ses limites avant de pouvoir se lancer des défis sans s'épuiser. Aurais-je pu en faire plus ? Bien sûr, il est toujours possible d'en faire plus. Mais c'est parce qu'il y a toujours quelque chose d'autre à faire. Mais j'en ai fait plus que je n'en ai jamais fait, et j'ai les résultats pour le prouver.

Après avoir terminé le premier week-end de marché, j'ai passé la journée d'aujourd'hui à travailler sur des commandes personnalisées et à répondre à des courriels. C'est probablement l'un des derniers jours que j'aurai cette semaine pour faire du travail préliminaire. Je vais donc en profiter au maximum.

Chanson // labour par Paris Paloma

#100 days of productivity #day 55 #100dop #100 jours de productivité #jour 55 #100jdp #studyblr #study motivation #studyspo #study aesthetic #study blog #bookish #gradblr #coffee

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blahideiasquefuncionam · 1 year ago

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Elevando Seu Marketing com o Curso I.A Marketing - Módulo Relâmpago da Black Friday! 🚀

¡Bienvenido a la revolución del Marketing Digital! Como fundador de IdeiasBlah.com.br y con más de 20 años de experiencia en Marketing, Ventas y Coordinación de Equipos, estás a punto de dar un paso crucial para transformar tus estrategias de marketing y impulsar tus resultados. ¡Inscríbete Ahora y Sé el Arquitecto de tu Propio Éxito! 🚀 Sobre mí – Una Jornada de Éxito: Desde los primeros pasos en…

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#blackfriday #estratégia #agencia de marketing #ai #ai en marketing #Black Friday #branding #Curso I.A Marketing #growth driven design #ia #IA no Marketing #Innovación #inteligencia artificial no marketing #lo que nos espera #marketingdigital #Módulo Relámpago

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sjsmith56 · 6 months ago

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Flash Forward - Part 2 - Eyes of the Father

Summary: Raina Barnes goes into labour and Bucky and Lacey await the birth of their first grandchild.

Length: 4.1 K

Characters: Bucky, Lacey, Tom, Raina, Bruce Banner.

Warnings: Some description of labour, reflection on how the serum affected Bucky’s daughter.

Author notes: This is it. The final chapter. Bucky becomes a grandfather. This is nearly all fluffy and soft Bucky, so enjoy.

<<Chapter 29

👩‍🍼 👨🏻‍🍼

Two and a half years later

The farmer's market was packed and Raina Barnes wondered if she should have come at all. Her cravings had got the best of her and she wanted her spicy salsa desperately. With both Bucky and Tom training today she phoned her mother-in-law Lacey asking if she would take them both to the market so she could pick up the spicy salsa that was only available at that particular farmer's stand. She felt a hand on her elbow and Lacey leaned towards her.

"You okay?" her face concerned. "You seemed hesitant there for a moment."

"I'm okay," replied Raina. "Let's just get the salsa and go."

They walked to the stall, bought several jars of the salsa and began walking back to the car. Just as they got to the parking lot Raina felt a stretching across her back. She breathed out in response and Lacey looked at her sharply. Shaking her head like it was nothing Raina took another few steps and then stopped again, this time putting her hand on her back. Lacey put her arm around the young woman and encouraged her to walk the few more steps to the car. Opening the back seat door she gestured to Raina to get in.

"Why the back seat?" she asked.

"You're in labour," said Lacey. "I've had three super soldier babies and you're definitely going to have that baby today. Are they painful?"

"Just twinges in my back," said Raina. "I'm not due for two more weeks."

"Doesn't mean anything to the baby," replied Lacey. "Super soldier babies develop faster. You planned on having it at the medical centre right?"

Raina nodded. She felt another twinge and this one was uncomfortable. Lacey got into the front seat and started the car. They were forty minute's drive from the compound. Hopefully the baby wouldn't arrive before then. Lacey activated the AI.

"Friday, alert Dr. Banner that Raina Barnes is in labour and en route to the medical centre," she said. "ETA is forty minutes. Alert Tom Barnes as well."

"Understood, Mrs. Barnes," said the female voiced AI, resurrected after the reconstruction of the Avengers compound. "Is transport in your private vehicle? I have your location near Chappaqua. Access to local traffic lights can be obtained to streamline your journey."

"Yes, it's my private vehicle," said Lacey. "I will advise if traffic light control is required."

She looked in the rear view mirror and saw Raina's face respond to the latest twinge. Her daughter-in-law was definitely uncomfortable.

"Raina are you wearing a watch?" she asked. "We may have to start timing if these twinges get stronger."

"No, my hands and wrists were swollen this morning, so I didn't put it on," replied the younger woman. "They are getting stronger and lasting longer."

"Okay, just breathe deeply when they come and try not to panic," said Lacey calmly. "Friday, you better get into traffic control and see if you can speed this trip up."

"Understood," replied the AI. "I can take control of your vehicle as Dr. Banner wishes to speak with you."

Lacey agreed to the AI's request and removed her hands from the wheel. Bruce's face came up on the dash display.

"I have Raina in the back seat," said Lacey. "They started out as twinges in her back, but she said they are getting stronger and lasting longer."

"Raina, are they still in the back or do you feel it in your abdomen?" he asked.

"They're all over my abdomen now," she replied, then she took a deep breath and tried to breathe through the contraction. Bruce heard the change in her breathing and looked at a clock in the medical centre. When Raina relaxed her breathing, he noted the length of the contraction. "That was a pretty long contraction. How bad was it on a scale of one to ten?"

"A six?"

"I'm going to call for a quinjet rescue," he said. "This being Raina's first baby I don't want to take any chances. Is there a parking lot nearby you can get to that will allow the quinjet to land?"

Friday answered. "Sending you coordinates."

A minute later the AI pulled into a parking lot and stopped the vehicle. Lacey pushed her seat forward then relocated to the back seat, kneeling on the floor in front of Raina. She could see the young woman looked scared and took her hand.

"You'll be okay," she said soothingly. "The quinjet will be here in minutes at the most. The first baby is always the hardest because you've never done this before. As much as it hurts as soon as that baby is born, you'll forget it all because he or she will be in your arms, and you'll have done this magnificent act of giving birth."

"It's a boy," said Raina, in a scared voice. "Tom wanted to see Dad's face when he puts the baby into his arms and tells him we're naming him James."

Lacey smiled at Raina calling Bucky Dad. It hadn't mattered to them that she called them by their first names but he would be happy she felt comfortable enough around him to call him Dad. Raina squeezed Lacey's hand again as she tried to breathe steadily through the contraction. Lacey counted through it until Raina let out a final big breath.

"That was an eight, at least," said Raina. "Oh, Mom, what if I have the baby here, in the back seat of your car?"

"Well, I've given birth three times," said Lacey, trying not to cry at being called Mom. "I think I can walk you through it. We won't have to because the quinjet is here now."

It landed gracefully beside the vehicle and Lacey smiled when she saw Bucky was at the controls. The back ramp lowered, and Tom came out followed by two medics from the medical centre with a gurney. Tom ran to the car and poked his head inside.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice worried.

"Mom has been helping me through the contractions," said Raina, trying to reassure him. "Can she fly back with us?"

"Friday can drive the car back to your place after dark," he said to Lacey. "If you want to come, I'd be happy with that."

"I would like to come," said Lacey. "Friday, can you return the car to our house?"

"Understood," said the AI. "Access to security features on your vehicle has been acquired. You may take the vehicle key with you."

Tom stood back and let the medics help Raina out of the vehicle and onto the gurney. Lacey grabbed both of their purses and the salsa, locked the car, and followed the couple back up the ramp. Bucky, still in the pilot's seat looked back at her, smiled and turned back to his duties. The medics locked the gurney into place as the ramp was closed and Lacey belted herself in, watching as Raina was set up with intravenous and monitoring units. Then the medics and Tom belted themselves in as Bucky lifted off the ground and began the acceleration towards the compound. It only took a few minutes before he landed on the pad, and they could unbelt again. Raina had another contraction and the medics talked her through it, noting the time and strength on the monitors. As Tom walked quickly beside them while they pushed the gurney off the aircraft Bucky finished his checklist before unbuckling his straps and getting out of the pilot's seat. Lacey put her arms around his neck as he kissed her.

"I'm going to be a grandpa today, aren't I?" he asked.

"And I'm going to be a grandma," she replied. "She called us Mom and Dad."

His face lit up. "Really? I love her like a daughter. She's been good for Tom. Just like you were good for me."

They walked into the medical centre and sat in the waiting area holding hands. After a time Bucky released her hand and put his arm around her so she could rest her head on him. Remembering something she pulled her phone out of her purse and called Laura's phone. Her face came up right away.

"I just wanted to let you know that Raina is in labour," said Lacey. "Your Dad and I are at the medical centre waiting so you and your brother will have to get dinner for yourselves."

"We can handle it," said her daughter. "I'm going to be an Aunt. Oh, I kind of got into trouble at school today. The principal wants to see both of you tomorrow."

"What did you do?" asked Bucky, rolling his eyes. "Who did you punch out this time?"

"Dad, I was intervening in a bullying situation," replied Laura. "I don't punch people out for no good reason any more, and I did pull my punch so I didn't hurt him. It was more of a shove, anyways, to get him off the kid he was beating on. That boy is backing me up so I'm not facing suspension. I think the principal just wants to reaffirm that I won't use my enhanced abilities to hurt people or damage property."

"I apologize for assuming the worst," said Bucky. "If you were stopping a bully then I'm good with it and I'll make sure that principal knows it."

Laura blew them both a kiss and Lacey ended the call. Their daughter had experienced difficulties growing up, especially after she began puberty at age eleven. Bruce explained that her hormonal surges had made her impulses hard to control. More than once she had punched out a wall or a tree, knowing that she could hurt a person if she did the same to them. Putting her on birth control had helped and she became more amenable in the time since she was started on the hormones. As far as they knew she wasn't sexually active and hoped she would wait as long as she could before taking that step. Like Tom found when he went to college, once she started sexual activity she would be open to just about anything before finding her life mate. Doing it in college was still more socially acceptable than doing it in high school even in this day and age.

"She is a good kid at heart," said Bucky, as if he had been reading Lacey's mind. "Girls have it tougher than boys. Right from the start they're inundated with conditioning to be subservient towards boys and men. Even though we've tried to avoid it at home she still feels it at school and elsewhere. If she put a bully in his place I'm proud of her, end of story."

Lacey smiled at Bucky's observation. For a man born in 1917 he was quite open minded. When Tom first told them in his first year of college he had been with a few guys as well as women she had worried about Bucky's reaction. Then he told Tom that it didn't matter because he knew what kind of man his son was and who he loved didn't change that. Bucky previously brought up the thought that Laura might be gay, based on her preferences in clothing, hairstyle, and the posters on her bedroom wall. Emphatically, he told Lacey that if their daughter was gay, he would be there for her no matter what. Lacey snuggled herself closer to Bucky's side as they waited.

"We could go to my office," he said suddenly. "I have a couch in there now."

She laughed. "Our first grandchild will be born soon, and you want to get frisky on your office couch?"

"It sounds suspect when you say it that way," he admitted. "I'm just getting anxious."

The door to the labour and delivery unit opened and Tom came out. He put his arms out to both of them and wept as they hugged. Remembering his own reactions to Laura and Steve's births Bucky just held him at first. Lacey rubbed his back.

"He's beautiful, Dad," gasped Tom, finally. "Mom, how do you women do it? Raina was incredible. I love her so much."

"A boy," said Bucky, his face alight. "I'm so happy for you. Everything's okay with both of them?"

Tom nodded, his face glowing as he grinned. "Bruce said you can meet your grandson in about an hour. He wants to run some tests on him, and Raina still has to feed him before I get my skin time with him."

He hugged his parents affectionately again then returned to the birthing suite. Bucky grabbed Lacey's hand, practically dragging her from the medical centre, through the pedway to food services. Lacey started to laugh.

"What?" he asked. "I'm hungry. We have an hour so I thought we should eat."

"I thought you were taking me to your office to break in your new couch," replied Lacey.

He laughed. "We could take a detour after we eat, if there's time."

They stood and looked at the menu. Bucky ordered two cheeseburgers and fries while Lacey ordered a vegetarian stir fry. They both poured themselves a coffee and sat at a table waiting for their order.

"Do you think the tests are going to confirm the baby is also a super soldier?" asked Lacey.

"That's what Bruce is expecting," he said. "They've learned a lot about the serum from my blood and the kids. It surprised me what they learned so far."

In the years since Bucky became an Avenger, Bruce Banner and Shuri had studied his blood serum trying to find out why he was so emotionally stable, compared to John Walker who had taken the serum created from Isaiah Bradley's blood. They believed it all came down to the state of mind of the person receiving the serum. Bucky had always been a reluctant killer, even when he was an army sniper in World War II. He accepted the role in order to protect his fellow soldiers but never enjoyed it. When he was a HYDRA asset the creation of the Winter Soldier persona had been the only way for them to bend him to their will and even then it didn't always last. When he wasn't that killer he resisted, and his protector instincts kicked in multiple times resulting in torture and memory wipes being inflicted on him. A significant portion of his PTSD was from his anguish over not being able to resist HYDRA enough. Isaiah Bradley was brutalized almost to the point of madness when his blood was forcibly taken from him which conceivably affected the blood quality. The serum created from his blood that was given to the Russian death squad in 1991 exacerbated their innate killing talents, making them uncontrollable. The remaining blood which Wilfred Nagel used to create the serum in Madripoor had varying effects on the Flag Smashers and on John Walker. Several of the Flag Smashers were also reluctant killers, not wanting to be as violent as Karli Morgenthau's mania had allowed her to become. John Walker's untreated PTSD locked in his violent behaviour, allowing him to feel justified when he went too far. There was concern about that being passed on to his children but there was hope that the calmness of their mother might balance it. So far, that had proved true as his children seemed to fit into society better than their father.

When Laura reached puberty and began lashing out there was concern but Bruce determined it was the combination of the super soldier serum and puberty itself which was wreaking havoc with her self control. After a heart-to-heart talk between him, herself and her parents she was put on birth control hormones. Once her monthly cycle was regulated, her hormone levels became stable and like Bucky, her protector instincts kicked in. Bruce theorized the HYDRA serum was never meant to be given to women in the first place. In HYDRA's fascist and misogynistic view women were child bearers only, receptacles for the Winter Soldier's superior sperm.

Shuri also had a theory that the Winter Soldier never impregnated any women, not only because of the chemical toxicity making him sterile but also because the serum was looking for the right life mate. Bucky and Lacey had only one night together which resulted in a pregnancy but were faithful to each other for the nine years they were apart. In their almost 15 years of marriage since their reunion neither had been unfaithful. Tom, a virgin when he went to college, became promiscuous with both men and women in that venue until finally meeting Raina. Even then they didn't consummate the relationship until their fifth date, both remaining faithful to the other ever since. In Shuri's opinion, that span of dates without sex started the "locking in" process in the relationship, making both of them attuned to only the other.

Bucky thought of all that information they learned and theorized about. A little part of him rebelled against the thought that the serum made him love Lacey but it really didn't matter because he did love her and only her. The thought of having her on his office couch aroused him and she noticed the look on his face.

"You're really considering it," she said, biting down on her lip in a way that made him want her more.

"We can add it to the list of different places we've made love in," he replied, nonchalantly.

Their food arrived and he took a bite of his first cheeseburger, watching her intently as she ate her stir fry. She watched him back and slipped her sneaker off to run her foot up his leg. A smile crossed his face.

"Challenge accepted," he said.

By the time they finished eating he was almost ready to have her on the table. Then she looked at her watch.

"Look at that time," she said, with a sly smile. "I guess we can go meet our grandson now."

"This isn't over," he replied.

Lacey giggled and offered him her hand. They walked back to the medical centre and asked if they were allowed to see their grandson. Tom came out right after, asking where they had been.

"Eating," said Bucky. "I was hungry."

"Right," said Tom, unconvinced.

He led them to the birthing suite where they both had to wash their hands, even though the baby's immune system was strong. Raina held the baby while Tom asked Bucky to sit in the chair. Taking his son from his wife Tom placed him in Bucky's arms.

"Dad ... Grandpa, meet James Edward Barnes," he said.

Bucky looked up at Tom surprised. "You want to name him after me?"

"Yeah, we do," replied Tom. "Your first grandchild."

Bucky gently touched James' cheek then leaned over and kissed him. "Thank you, he's beautiful," he whispered, becoming overwhelmed. "I wish I had been there when you were born."

"I know," said Tom, kneeling next to his dad and his son. "I'm glad you're here for him. You've been a great dad and I hope I learned enough from you to be a good dad for James."

Tom put his arm around Bucky's shoulder and kissed him on the side of the head. Lacey and Raina watched, both of them getting tears in their eyes at the love their men were displaying to each other and the baby.

"How are you doing?" Lacey asked the younger woman.

"It was just like you said," replied Raina. "Once he came out the pain didn't matter. I never knew what it felt like to love someone like this. It's different than how I love Tom but just as strong."

"Remember that feeling," smiled Lacey. "Especially when he's kept you up all night because he's hungry, or the first time he jumps off a building. It's going to happen, trust me."

She hugged Raina and they both cried a little. After about ten minutes of Bucky holding James, he decided it was Lacey's turn and he stood up to let her have the seat. Gently he put the baby into her arms, and he hugged Tom again, then went to Raina and hugged her. Lacey put her finger in James' tiny hand, cooing as he grasped it tightly.

"Hello James," she said softly. "I'm Grandma and I can tell you right now that you will be so loved. You're very special and as you grow up you will feel like you can do almost anything. When you're ready you can come to the farm. Grandpa and I will show you the horses, and the goats, and chickens. You'll meet Sarge who is going to love you. Little boy, you are so precious to all of us."

She kissed him tenderly then looked at her son, reaching out with her hand to his and squeezing it. All the years of raising him without Bucky came back to her. Thank the gods for Clint and Laura, then Terry for being her support until she and Bucky were reunited. Tom just smiled as he knew, just as he knew this baby would never be alone. He had a family, in the people in this room, his siblings, Raina's family and everyone in the Avengers who would care for this little boy. When Raina started yawning Bucky and Lacey said their goodbyes, kissing and hugging the couple several times. They left the medical centre and stood outside the doors holding each other.

"Let's go home," said Bucky.

"What about your office couch?" asked Lacey.

"It's not going anywhere."

She nodded and he led her down to the garage where his motorcycle was. He fitted his helmet onto her head then mounted the motorcycle, waiting until she got on behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He started it up and slowly exited the parking garage. Instead of racing home he took his time, enjoying the feel of the wind in his hair, and Lacey's arms around him. When he pulled into the farmyard their car was already there, parked next to the recharging station. He plugged the motorcycle in, then plugged the car in. Lacey waited for him and they walked into the house together. A light had been left on in the kitchen but the rest of the house was dark. If Natasha and Steve had made themselves dinner there was no sign of it as everything was cleaned up and put away.

"We have good kids," noted Bucky.

"Yes, we do," replied Lacey.

She ran her arms around his waist and looked up at him expectantly. He bent over and kissed her tenderly. Then he pulled his phone out and picked out a playlist, setting it to play. He wrapped his artificial arm around Lacey and pulled her other hand close between them. As When I Fall in Love began playing Lacey placed her head on his chest while he bent over her, and they began dancing to the beautiful voice of Nat King Cole. Nothing was said and there were no fancy moves, it was just to be close with the one they loved the most. They were so involved with each other they didn't hear Laura and Steve come out of their rooms and watch them from the darkness of the stairs.

"I love it when they dance like this," whispered Laura. "They love each other so much."

"I hope I love someone that much when I'm older," whispered Steve back.

"You will," she replied. "We both will, when the time is right. It's what we Barnes do. We protect and we love. Dr. B. told me when we had that heart to heart talk, it's genetic. I can't wait."

Steve smiled at his older sister. She smiled back then jerked her head back to their bedrooms. They would find out tomorrow if Tom's baby was a boy or a girl. Silently, they both crept back up the stairs, leaving their parents to have their intimate moment before they went to bed. Of all the parents to have they knew they had the best. Both were calm and understanding, always truthful and always showing them they were loved. More importantly they always showed the love between each other, a love born out of one night together over 24 years before. It was the kind of love to aspire to.

THE END

Series Masterlist.

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