#also HI GRAS

[intotheelliwoods]

FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST <- <-

Fullmetal Alchemist

My entry (well, entries) for this weeks theme "Heros and Villains" for the @tmntfashioncompetition !!

Its Sprout! Dressed as the guy I might have taken inspiration from back when I first designed his prosthetic- I mean automail-

My opponent is the lovely one and only @bluesgras <3 <3

Bonus:

References:

[maraune]

A radioapple AU is ghosting in my brain where Hell itself decides it will have Alastor as its new Queen and not only claims him as the new Hell matriarch but also thinks he is the perfect partner for their sad King and tries to do sth about.

Ensue the fabric of a dimension itself shipping that strange demon and fallen angel and trying its damnest to get them together.

Bonus points if everyone but the two of them realize whats going on

[vanhelsingapologist]

Your blood, my water.

—

Haven’t drawn him in many moons which means I colored a sketch I’ll never finish.

[fayevalcntine]

The whole framing of Lestat as the sole symbol of patriarchy that fandom is so desperate to put him in doesn't work unless you deliberately ignore how he was also a victim of rape and abuse before he was turned. People want him to be fit into this strict role of "father figure/violent husband/perpetrator" that is only that and not even a whole person, and in doing so they need to push aside the fact that despite being his family's provider, he was also pushed into that role when his father forbid him from joining a monastery or gaining an education that he wanted. Lestat wanted to run away with a theater group as a kid, and actually managed to do so once Gabrielle gave him her blessing and monetary support in order to go to Paris. He didn't always want to be the provider, he was forced into that role and became despondent when he thought he would never get a chance to leave his home.

His new life prior to being turned is pretty much the antithesis to the whole "Lestat is a manly man who would sooner throw up than be compared to a woman" spiel: he lived with another man in Paris while also being an actor, having left his family and "responsibility" to them. The only family member he was ever close to was his mother, all the other male members shunned or ridiculed him. Add onto that the fact that his turning firmly placed him within the role of the damsel/victim: he's kidnapped from his bed by a stranger, taken into a tower and left to rot while being fed on for a week, before then being raped and violently turned all while never even being asked if he would consent to it in any normal circumstance. But you of course have to ignore all of this if you want him to only represent the aggressor/patriarch while Louis is the helpless unhappy matriarch of the family.

My issue isn't that I think Louis isn't a victim, it's that it's not unrealistic for Lestat to be an aggressor/abuser while also displaying traits that aren't regularly assigned to stereotypical depictions of male characters. He's abusive to Claudia while also having been a victim of abuse from his own family. He's not a good maker/teacher, but he also didn't even have one when he was turned. He's the provider/attempted protector of the family and seemed to like being that, while also having run away from his own family prior to this to act in a theater in Paris. He's a rich white man while also being obviously effeminate in public spaces, even to Tom's own bigoted humor.

Like Louis' own complicated story with being his family's benefactor and provider, you can't firmly place Lestat as being one thing or another in terms of gender ideals without deliberately ignoring parts about him that don't fit this. And I don't think it's an absolute necessity, when even in Louis' own story, Lestat isn't stripped of his effeminate mannerisms or behavior while also being the abusive maker/father/lover.

[ratatatastic]

the rituals are intricate

florida panthers @ new york islanders | 10.26.24 (x)

[fucklestat]

My headcanon is that Louis and Lestat DID hook up during the Mardi Gras party. We just didn't see it. The sexual tension was too wild to ignore. I don't think they did. When they went back to the coffin room to change into their cute little white shirts, Louis gave him one last good time. I just know it.

The only evidence I have is that Lestat comes back out of the room with his face wiped CLEAN. No blush, no eyeliner, no lipstick. The campiest queen in New Orleans. Barefaced and butch at his own after party?? Sus.

Meanwhile Louis is still in a full face of make up. They both changed in the same room, but only one of them washed their face. So that begs the question: What was on Lestat's face that wasn't on Louis's? Because between the two, Louis is the least likely to keep the make up on. But he did. And Lestat didn't. Why 🧐🤔

Because he gave Lestat the De Pointe Du Lac supersoaker special. Full blast. Right in the face.

THIS is the kind of investigative journalism we’re lacking in our society. thank you for your service 🫡

[starsnores]

I dunno about Gamzee but Kurloz gives me strong New Orleans vibes

is it the chucklevoodoo stuff bc it would make sense if that was part of it

[empyreansentinel]

you reminded me that writing this was such a powertrip im almost mad i havent made him speak fr*nch (joke censor) almost at all since. (then again, i do know a little bit of french, just not anything of the dialect. je suis un idiot.)

REALREALL such a missed opportunity they didnt have him speaking french in BL3. whats the point of making space louisiana if theres no space cajun.

[5-pp-man]

Yang; if I saw Robby nobody would be able to stop me

Allo & Gras; From what, boss..?

Yang; nobody would be able to stop me

[tang3r1n]

okay i’m being a lil hyper today and i CANNOT get the idea of an island empress reader having Luffy wrapped around her finger, plus the island itself UGH i’ve already though of it all guys. pls encourage me to talk more cause i have a 4 page goodbye doc for this fucking reader.

kay so basically my entire thought is empress reader on a very distant yet powerful island, like she’s friends with everyone and her island has a neutrality agreement bc of this, meaning marines and pirates have to be chill and natural around each other or smth

anyways- some day the Strawhats are just sailing around when Nami starts freaking tf out abt ‘THIS FUCKING ISLAND I FUCKING FOUND HER YES FUCK’ and literally screaming to find their big ass transponder snail meanwhile everyone else is just shocked she’s genuinely tweaking

come to find out Nami n her family (might be agaisnt cannon but fuck off) we’re regulars of reader’s island back when they were both lil girls and they bonded so hard that they still write each other and Nami has slowly been nudging the crew to get closer n closer to her island just so she can geek out with her childhood bestie

so they all are like ‘lmao okay that’s chill’ and park it and Nami just takes off. i’m talkin they turn around and she’s bolting toward the massive ass golden castle or smth, and they just kinda chill while the islanders greet them and start slowly (normally) taking them to the castle. they’re like weirdly neutral abt Nami screaming like a banshee, mainly cause the older islanders remember her and know it’s a lot for her

so they literally barely make it to the first step of the entrance before two shrill screams ring out and Nami comes out dragging this gorgeous, young ass empress out, covered head to toe in jewels and charms, even her hair is filled with crystals tied to her braids and spirals of gold and silver are strategically placed everywhere. she’s got obviously tribal tattoos and symbols decorating her entire body, her thick form’s dressed in the more beautiful silk robes and she’s got the brightest smile as she openly sobs int Nami’s arms

and Luffy, for the first time in his life, is completely shellshocked from her, just like ‘:0’ and STARING at the empress while she tries to compose herself

Obviously she’s aware of who they are, shooting them all pleasantries and looking down at Luffy (mf is like 5’6 im sorry i’m 5’11 I LOVE SHORT LUFFYSS KAKDKSKQ) and giving him just the sweetest smile and soft lil ‘hello Captain’ and oh god he’s literally shaking his hands are sweaty what-

then Usopp’s just like ‘HAH srry he’s never seen such a pretty lady before’ and they’re all giggling at his absolutely stary-eyed face as he’s just dead silent, heart racing in front of this goddess.

[telomeke]

MY SCHOOL PRESIDENT – TINN AND GUN'S PET NAMES FOR EACH OTHER

At Ep.5 [2/4] 5.10 we saw that Gun's pet name for Tinn in his phone is "ไอ้ประธานนักเรียน!!"

Phonetically this is pronounced something like "ai prathaan nakriian!!", where the "ai" is a rude honorific to address guys, and "prathaan nakriian" means "Student President".

The "ai" honorific can also be used as a vulgar curse by placing it in front of a fierce animal's name (so thai-language.com tells me).

AND it can also be placed in front of a pet's name, to denote affection when calling that pet.

This has come full circle in Ep.6 when we see Tinn's pet name for Gun in his phone (Ep.6 [1I4] 3.25):

Tinn's pet name for Gun is "เจ้าหนูชินชิลล่า", which is pronounced something like "jao nuu chinchilla". The "nuu" literally means "mouse" and is also the same "nuu" in "khun nuu" (คุณหนู) that Chanon calls Nuengdiao in Never Let Me Go, and that the bodyguards call Tankhun in KinnPorsche ("khun nuu" means something like "Young Master").

Google tells me "jao nuu" can also mean "youngster" but I don't see it in the dictionary though.

In Thai you can call a chinchilla a "nuu chinchilla" (literally a "chinchilla mouse", the same way you call a hamster a "nuu hamster", literally a "hamster mouse").

The parallel with Ep.5's "ai" is that "jao" can also be placed in front of a pet's name to denote fondness. So Tinn is affectionately calling Gun "jao chinchilla mouse", the way pet owners actively cutify their pets' names sometimes.

BUT IT GETS BETTER.

The "jao nuu" part (เจ้าหนู) is also teasing slang for a boy's penis (something like when you call it a wee-wee, making it cuter, rather than dirty).

So Tinn's pet name for Gun is also "Chinchilla Wee-Wee". 😝

SQUEEEE!!! 🤣

[oglegoggle]

Sometimes I forget that one of my friends is like a legit highly respected geneticist whom is working on curing childhood diabetes until I see him posting on Facebook about some esteemed accomplishment. Then I immediately think about watching him smoke an entire quarter o packed bowl in one single rip then immediately solve two Rubik’s cubes at once, one in each hand, at my Friendsgiving party one year.

[stinkyhyena9000]

i wanna make a sing prompt request thingy for mardi gras but mardi gras isnt for another month and also more importantly it is not a national holiday so no ones gonna know what im talking about without searching it up argghhhhh

[peresephoknee]

still not finished please hold: there’s also a thread where Louis of the past is trying to become an artist in this season as opposed to s1 where he appeared more frequently as audience/reader than creator/collaborator. It mimics the master/pupil dynamic Lestat imposes onto their relationship so it makes sense that in s2, where he is without Lestat, he moves to become the master of his own fate. And isn’t it telling that he gives up photography right around the time he falls for Armand? He's found someone else to control his life but at least this one will make him believe he has an iota of control (see how Armand calls Louis "Maître" even though he is the one showing him all the vampire tricks Lestat never wanted him to know).

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How I got scammed

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/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

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

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

[thenorthsource]

Hello everybody!

We are offering to make any gif/graphics request you ask of us as long as you donate to the vetted families and charities listed below.

We are also collaborating with the following artists:

@adharaphoenix

@cappucosmic

@sofikiii

@asparklethatisblue

@martelldragon

@aemondtargaryen

@amuelia [4 slots open for now]

half body, colored and shaded, two characters, 65$

half body, colored and shaded, one character, 40$

half body, colored and shaded, one character, 40$

bust, colored and shaded, one character, 25$

@snoozingfae

from whom you can request fanart in exchange for donations.

Rules:

- request things related only to the north

- send proof of your donation in asks of our blog and the artist of your choice if you commission art.

Prices:

- graphics: 5$

- gifsets: 5$

- lineart sketch - 10$

- simple coloring - 15$

- complex coloring - 20$

- halfbody portrait - 50$

- fullbody portrait - 100$

PALESTINE

Dina Maliha (€36,331 raised of €50,000 goal) Google Doc of vetted fundraisers; Dina is 160 on the list

Mohamed Hamad (£12,030 raised of £50,000 goal) Mohamed is 145 on the list

Mahmoud Qassas (€15,265 raised of €100,000 goal) Mahmoud is 62 on the list

Mahmoud has recently gotten a severe head injury and therefore his wife requested that we donate to the PayPal for emergency medical funds

SUDAN

Eman Abdulrahman (GFM CHF33,013 raised of CHF50,000 goal, Chuffed $2,548 raised of $30,000) Eman is 213 on the list

Khartoum Kitchen

LEBANON

Lebanon Emergency Shelter and Humanitarian Relief ($18,480 USD raised of $23,000 goal)

Lebanese Red Cross