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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

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How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me WEDNESDAY (Apr 11) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Audre Lorde counsels us that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," while MLK said "the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me." Somewhere between replacing the system and using the system lies a pragmatic – if easily derailed – course.

Lorde is telling us that a rotten system can't be redeemed by using its own chosen reform mechanisms. King's telling us that unless we live, we can't fight – so anything within the system that makes it easier for your comrades to fight on can hasten the end of the system.

Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.

In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.

All of this was grossly exacerbated by tech monopolies. Tech barons aren't smarter or more evil than newspaper barons, but they have better tools, and so now they take 51 cents out of every ad dollar and 30 cents out of ever subscriber dollar and they refuse to deliver the news to users who explicitly requested it, unless the news company pays them a bribe to "boost" their posts:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The news is important, and people sign up to make, digest, and discuss the news for many non-economic reasons, which means that the news continues to struggle along, despite all the economic impediments and the vulture capitalists and tech monopolists who fight one another for which one will get to take the biggest bite out of the press. We've got outstanding nonprofit news outlets like Propublica, journalist-owned outlets like 404 Media, and crowdfunded reporters like Molly White (and winner-take-all outlets like the New York Times).

But as Hamilton Nolan points out, "that pot of money…is only large enough to produce a small fraction of the journalism that was being produced in past generations":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-will-replace-advertising-revenue

For Nolan, "public funding of journalism is the only way to fix this…If we accept that journalism is not just a business or a form of entertainment but a public good, then funding it with public money makes perfect sense":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-funding-of-journalism-is-the

Having grown up in Canada – under the CBC – and then lived for a quarter of my life in the UK – under the BBC – I am very enthusiastic about Nolan's solution. There are obvious problems with publicly funded journalism, like the politicization of news coverage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor

And the transformation of the funding into a cheap political football:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-defund-cbc-change-law-1.6810434

But the worst version of those problems is still better than the best version of the private-equity-funded model of news production.

But Nolan notes the emergence of a new form of hedge fund news, one that is awfully promising, and also terribly fraught: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet owned by short-sellers who pay journalists to research and publish damning reports on companies they hold a short position on:

https://hntrbrk.com/

For those of you who are blissfully distant from the machinations of the financial markets, "short selling" is a wager that a company's stock price will go down. A gambler who takes a short position on a company's stock can make a lot of money if the company stumbles or fails altogether (but if the company does well, the short can suffer literally unlimited losses).

Shorts have historically paid analysts to dig into companies and uncover the sins hidden on their balance-sheets, but as Matt Levine points out, journalists work for a fraction of the price of analysts and are at least as good at uncovering dirt as MBAs are:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper

What's more, shorts who discover dirt on a company still need to convince journalists to publicize their findings and trigger the sell-off that makes their short position pay off. Shorts who own a muckraking journalistic operation can skip this step: they are the journalists.

There's a way in which this is sheer genius. Well-funded shorts who don't care about the news per se can still be motivated into funding freely available, high-quality investigative journalism about corporate malfeasance (notoriously, one of the least attractive forms of journalism for advertisers). They can pay journalists top dollar – even bid against each other for the most talented journalists – and supply them with all the tools they need to ply their trade. A short won't ever try the kind of bullshit the owners of Vice pulled, paying themselves millions while their journalists lose access to Lexisnexis or the PACER database:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

The shorts whose journalists are best equipped stand to make the most money. What's not to like?

Well, the issue here is whether the ruling class's sense of solidarity is stronger than its greed. The wealthy have historically oscillated between real solidarity (think of the ultrawealthy lobbying to support bipartisan votes for tax cuts and bailouts) and "war of all against all" (as when wealthy colonizers dragged their countries into WWI after the supply of countries to steal ran out).

After all, the reason companies engage in the scams that shorts reveal is that they are profitable. "Behind every great fortune is a great crime," and that's just great. You don't win the game when you get into heaven, you win it when you get into the Forbes Rich List.

Take monopolies: investors like the upside of backing an upstart company that gobbles up some staid industry's margins – Amazon vs publishing, say, or Uber vs taxis. But while there's a lot of upside in that move, there's also a lot of risk: most companies that set out to "disrupt" an industry sink, taking their investors' capital down with them.

Contrast that with monopolies: backing a company that merges with its rivals and buys every small company that might someday grow large is a sure thing. Shriven of "wasteful competition," a company can lower quality, raise prices, capture its regulators, screw its workers and suppliers and laugh all the way to Davos. A big enough company can ignore the complaints of those workers, customers and regulators. They're not just too big to fail. They're not just too big to jail. They're too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Would-be monopolists are stuck in a high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate, they can screw over everyone else and get unimaginably rich. But if one party defects, they can raid the monopolist's margins, short its stock, and snitch to its regulators.

It's true that there's a clear incentive for hedge-fund managers to fund investigative journalism into other hedge-fund managers' portfolio companies. But it would be even more profitable for both of those hedgies to join forces and collude to screw the rest of us over. So long as they mistrust each other, we might see some benefit from that adversarial relationship. But the point of the 0.1% is that there aren't very many of them. The Aspen Institute can rent a hall that will hold an appreciable fraction of that crowd. They buy their private jets and bespoke suits and powdered rhino horn from the same exclusive sellers. Their kids go to the same elite schools. They know each other, and they have every opportunity to get drunk together at a charity ball or a society wedding and cook up a plan to join forces.

This is the problem at the core of "mechanism design" grounded in "rational self-interest." If you try to create a system where people do the right thing because they're selfish assholes, you normalize being a selfish asshole. Eventually, the selfish assholes form a cozy little League of Selfish Assholes and turn on the rest of us.

Appeals to morality don't work on unethical people, but appeals to immorality crowds out ethics. Take the ancient split between "free software" (software that is designed to maximize the freedom of the people who use it) and "open source software" (identical to free software, but promoted as a better way to make robust code through transparency and peer review).

Over the years, open source – an appeal to your own selfish need for better code – triumphed over free software, and its appeal to the ethics of a world of "software freedom." But it turns out that while the difference between "open" and "free" was once mere semantics, it's fully possible to decouple the two. Today, we have lots of "open source": you can see the code that Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook uses, and even contribute your labor to it for free. But you can't actually decide how the software you write works, because it all takes a loop through Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook's servers, and only those trillion-dollar tech monopolists have the software freedom to determine how those servers work:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/04/which-side-are-you-on/#tivoization-and-beyond

That's ruling class solidarity. The Big Tech firms have hidden a myriad of sins beneath their bafflegab and balance-sheets. These (as yet) undiscovered scams constitute a "bezzle," which JK Galbraith defined as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

The purpose of Hunterbrook is to discover and destroy bezzles, hastening the moment of realization that the wealth we all feel in a world of seemingly orderly technology is really an illusion. Hunterbrook certainly has its pick of bezzles to choose from, because we are living in a Golden Age of the Bezzle.

Which is why I titled my new novel The Bezzle. It's a tale of high-tech finance scams, starring my two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench, and in this volume, Hench is called upon to unwind a predatory prison-tech scam that victimizes the most vulnerable people in America – our army of prisoners – and their families:

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

The scheme I fictionalize in The Bezzle is very real. Prison-tech monopolists like Securus and Viapath bribe prison officials to abolish calls, in-person visits, mail and parcels, then they supply prisoners with "free" tablets where they pay hugely inflated rates to receive mail, speak to their families, and access ebooks, distance education and other electronic media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

But a group of activists have cornered these high-tech predators, run them to ground and driven them to the brink of extinction, and they've done it using "the master's tools" – with appeals to regulators and the finance sector itself.

Writing for The Appeal, Dana Floberg and Morgan Duckett describe the campaign they waged with Worth Rises to bankrupt the prison-tech sector:

https://theappeal.org/securus-bankruptcy-prison-telecom-industry/

Here's the headline figure: Securus is $1.8 billion in debt, and it has eight months to find a financier or it will go bust. What's more, all the creditors it might reasonably approach have rejected its overtures, and its bonds have been downrated to junk status. It's a dead duck.

Even better is how this happened. Securus's debt problems started with its acquisition, a leveraged buyout by Platinum Equity, who borrowed heavily against the firm and then looted it with bogus "management fees" that meant that the debt continued to grow, despite Securus's $700m in annual revenue from America's prisoners. Platinum was just the last in a long line of PE companies that loaded up Securus with debt and merged it with its competitors, who were also mortgaged to make profits for other private equity funds.

For years, Securus and Platinum were able to service their debt and roll it over when it came due. But after Worth Rises got NYC to pass a law making jail calls free, creditors started to back away from Securus. It's one thing for Securus to charge $18 for a local call from a prison when it's splitting the money with the city jail system. But when that $18 needs to be paid by the city, they're going to demand much lower prices. To make things worse for Securus, prison reformers got similar laws passed in San Francisco and in Connecticut.

Securus tried to outrun its problems by gobbling up one of its major rivals, Icsolutions, but Worth Rises and its coalition convinced regulators at the FCC to block the merger. Securus abandoned the deal:

https://worthrises.org/blogpost/securusmerger

Then, Worth Rises targeted Platinum Equity, going after the pension funds and other investors whose capital Platinum used to keep Securus going. The massive negative press campaign led to eight-figure disinvestments:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-05/la-fi-tom-gores-securus-prison-phone-mass-incarceration

Now, Securus's debt became "distressed," trading at $0.47 on the dollar. A brief, covid-fueled reprieve gave Securus a temporary lifeline, as prisoners' families were barred from in-person visits and had to pay Securus's rates to talk to their incarcerated loved ones. But after lockdown, Securus's troubles picked up right where they left off.

They targeted Platinum's founder, Tom Gores, who papered over his bloody fortune by styling himself as a philanthropist and sports-team owner. After a campaign by Worth Rises and Color of Change, Gores was kicked off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board. When Gores tried to flip Securus to a SPAC – the same scam Trump pulled with Truth Social – the negative publicity about Securus's unsound morals and financials killed the deal:

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1578034977828384769

Meanwhile, more states and cities are making prisoners' communications free, further worsening Securus's finances:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the FCC the power to regulate the price of federal prisoners' communications. Securus's debt prices tumbled further:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

Securus's debts were coming due: it owes $1.3b in 2024, and hundreds of millions more in 2025. Platinum has promised a $400m cash infusion, but that didn't sway S&P Global, a bond-rating agency that re-rated Securus's bonds as "CCC" (compare with "AAA"). Moody's concurred. Now, Securus is stuck selling junk-bonds:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

The company's creditors have given Securus an eight-month runway to find a new lender before they force it into bankruptcy. The company's debt is trading at $0.08 on the dollar.

Securus's major competitor is Viapath (prison tech is a duopoly). Viapath is also debt-burdened and desperate, thanks to a parallel campaign by Worth Rises, and has tried all of Securus's tricks, and failed:

https://pestakeholder.org/news/american-securities-fails-to-sell-prison-telecom-company-viapath/

Viapath's debts are due next year, and if Securus tanks, no one in their right mind will give Viapath a dime. They're the walking dead.

Worth Rise's brilliant guerrilla warfare against prison-tech and its private equity backers are a master class in using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. The finance sector isn't a friend of justice or working people, but sometimes it can be used tactically against financialization itself. To paraphrase MLK, "finance can't make a corporation love you, but it can stop a corporation from destroying you."

Yes, the ruling class finds solidarity at the most unexpected moments, and yes, it's easy for appeals to greed to institutionalize greediness. But whether it's funding unbezzling journalism through short selling, or freeing prisons by brandishing their cooked balance-sheets in the faces of bond-rating agencies, there's a lot of good we can do on the way to dismantling the system.

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/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

Image: KMJ (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boerse_01_KMJ.jpg

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

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importantstudentbusinessspy-blog · 3 months ago

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Academia - The Library

Masterlist

Pairing: Aged up Damian Wayne x f reader

Tags: NSFW, academic setting, rivals to lovers, friends with benefits, smut, fingering, edging, oral, p in v, semi-public sex

Damian thought once would be enough. It wasn't. Because every week, you'd still show up to class well kept in your neat little outfits, still the image of perfevmction. And he still wanted to. Mess. You. Up.

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The previous weekend

Damian had some free time on the weekend, so he flew to help his grandfather with an undertaking. After a brutal but successful meeting, which ended with Damian and Rhas acquiring 50% of equity shares from a competitor company, Damian was desperate for some releif. He donned his training clothes and was headed down to the dojo in his grandfather's keep.

When he turned a corner, an arm landed on his shoulder, an annoying voice calling his name. "Damian!"

Damian turned and offered a nod to Asher, one of his mother's lackeys.

"Yo, check this out," Asher rolled up the sleeve of his button-up to expose a bandage on his arm. "From that attack in Shanghai. Pretty brutal, huh?"

Damian knows. He lead it.

"Eighteen stitches, man," Asher continued bragging on.

Damian recalled the first time he ever got that amount. He was five, and his grandfather taught him how to endure the pain from a katana slice. Ever since then, Damian knew that being scarred was nothing to be proud of - rather, it was a symbol that he let someone get close enough to harm.

He offered Asher an approving nod. "Clean cut?"

Asher nodded. "Slid out from under him. Just like you taught me."

"Good man." Damian patted his shoulder.

"Damian," a new, gruff voice had called. From the end of the hall, a short, chubby man in a suit was approaching them. Damian let go of the notion that he was ever going to get to the dojo as he turned to meet his grandfather's business partner from Malta.

"Enzo," Damian took Enzo's offered hand and shook it. Standing close together, Damian was two heads taller and enjoyed the privilege of getting to look down at one of the richest men in the world.

"I heard you got her." Enzo spoke in Maltese. "The tiger." He said before glancing sideways at Asher.

The lackey turned to look at Damian, who in turn nodded, dismissing him. Asher obediently strode away.

"Yes," Damian answered back in Maltese. "We do have her."

"Is she up for sale?"

"Yes, she is in the auction tonight."

"Ah," Enzo's right eye twitched. "Me with my pet tiger. Imagine that." He said eagerly.

To save his life, Damian couldn't come up with what possible activity one needed a pet tiger for, but the rich could be sold on anything. He simply nodded.

"Is she pretty?"

The tiger? "It depends on your preference." Damian offered so as to not betray how the question confused him. His family needed better company.

Enzo rubbed his hands together excitedly "You know what im gonna do? Ill invite that dickbag who busted my operation in Greece for dinner-"

Damian did not want to be an accomplice to wherever this was going. "Let's keep that between you and god. I'm sorry, Enzo. I'm late for a meeting."

At last, in the training room, he obliterated the punching bag. Letting the sweat blend in with the blood from his knuckles, he tried desperately to focus on his hits and turn his mind off.

Why was he so distracted? Things are going well. Wayne techs stock has been on the rise for the week, and Gotham's crime scene was cooled down. And yet, there's this small itch in his brain he can't get rid of. You.

Not good. You were a distraction. Distraction wasn't going to help his reach his goals.

His mother found him like this hours later, still punching the bag with fervor.

Thalia threw a dart at the bag, aiming to pierce it. Without looking, Damian caught the small flying object before it could land. Panting, he turned around to his mother.

"Damian," she walked up to him. "You've been here for hours. Come eat."

"Right." He exhaled, only now registering the heat rising from his hands. "Coming."

"Is there something you want to talk about?"

He removed his gloves and ran his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. "Just having a weird day."

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That damned checkered dress sat so well on you. You wore it over a ruffled white button-up with long sleeves and a tie. So fucking cute.

The way you dressed, the way you carried yourself - it was obvious you derived joy from being perceived. The urge to tear it off you was overwhelming. The urge to hide you from anyone's view but his own was overwhelming. Damian grasped at his pencil, grinding his teeth together.

"Can anyone tell me why this works only in zero G?" Your professor asked, referring to a phenomenon he was explaining. Sure enough, no one spoke, and then you raised your hand. As usual.

"Yes?" The professor nodded at Damian, whose hand went up a moment after yours.

Damian didn't miss the moment you followed the professor's gaze to him, and your raised arm fell in disappointment. Your reactions always animated.

Maybe one time wasn't enough, he thought. Maybe twice will do it.

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You favored the den on the second highest floor of the Gotham University Library. You usually reserved it for yourself when you need to concentrate; really isolate yourself. You were given a particularly difficult assignment this week. An interesting one, but a difficult one; to explain a phisics theory you were taught using historical conflict examples.

You studied the subject through and were now working on your essay outline when the door opened, and Damian appeared behind it, green eyes surprised to see you. He leaned back and glanced at the sign outside of the door, confirming the room number before clearing his throat. "I booked this room from three to six."

"Oh, sorry." You began collecting your notes.

Damian eyed your paper. "You working on Stelios' lab?"

You made his gaze. "Yeah,"

"Same," he dropped his bag on the floor near the chair and sat opposite to you on the big table. "Stay. We can share the room."

Your brows rose as you began to lower your things. "Really?"

He nodded. "What'd you get on his last assignment?"

"Ninety two. You?"

He clicked his tongue, shaking his head, and wispered. "Show off. I got a ninety."

You let out a chuckle. "Now who's the show off." You murmered, looking back at your paper. This was the first time the two of you had spoken since spending the night together. You were glad it was so casual.

"How's your neck?" You asked the question that's been eating at you for the past couple of days.

His hand lifted to pat the back of his neck, where you'd seen his scar a few days ago.

Today, he went for a business casual attire. A navy green T was unbuttoned at the top and tucked into his jeans. His long and veiny arms, which flashed a series of memories in your mind, sported a Rolex on one wrist and a leather bracelet on the other. The same ring you saw his father wear was on his index finger, with an engraved 'W'. "It's nothing. My barber got clumsy."

You nodded. "Is it healed?"

"Are you worried about me?" He raised a sharp brow. Green eyes interrogated you behind long lashes.

You looked away, unable to hold his gaze. You felt yourself go hot and suddenly you regretted the decision to wear the long-sleeved top that hugged your neck and arms under your dress. "You say it like its a bad thing."

"Not at all." He admitted, leaning back against his chair and opening his laptop.

The two of you sat there for a long time, how long exactly... you don't know. The room was warm and dimly lit by a yellow lightbulb above your heads, the light reflecting off of a small whiteboard on the east wall. The only sound was coming from the heater.

Every once in a while, you glanced up to watch as he typed away on his computer. Stoic and focused on his task. You admired that he was such a dedicated learner. Studious. Serious. Intimidating. Handsome...

Your lower lip was caught between your teeth before you realized what you were doing and looked back down at the textbook you were reading, copying your last piece of evidence.

An hour passed, and you were done typing up the first draft of your essay. You were stuck on one specific part and wished you could consult someone about your evidence. You licked your lips nervously. "Damian?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you mind looking over my third argument? It's supposed to be the strongest, but I don't know if the way I phrased it, the connection would be understandable."

He nodded and gestured you to pass him your laptop. You did. After a minute of assessing him, tisked. You eyed him expectantly.

"You used the phalynx formation as an example?" He asked.

"Yeah,"

He looked up at you. "Funny."

"What?"

"I did the same thing."

"Really?"

He handed you his computer. You looked at his essay and worried your bottom lip. "Is he gonna think one of us cheated?"

He folded his hands. "Mhmm. I'll change mine just in case."

"No, I'll change mine." You assured.

"Y/n," his voice sotened. "Your explanation is exceptional. Stelios is a good prof, he deserves to read it."

You doubted your paper would even get to the professor. Usually, the TAs marked the lab papers. Though saying that would be irrelevant. "What about your paper?" You ask.

His eyes roamed over the paper. "Tell you what. I'll come up with another third argument. But since I'm being so generous. I'll give you the opportunity to do the same. Then we'll compare. The best argument wins."

You raised a brow, not sure whether you should feel insulted or intrigued. On one hand, the challenge of it seemed interesting. On the other hand, you felt slightly patronized. But the former outweighed the latter. Plus, it was good practice. You sat back and crossed your arms. "Deal."

He raised his Rolex and began to click buttons. "Is thirty minutes enough time?"

You nodded.

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Half an hour later, you put down the book and pen. You stood up and wiped down the writing left on the whiteboard.

Behind you, Damian checked his Rolex and pursed his lips, impressed. "Right on time."

"You ready to hear my idea?" You asked.

He leaned back in his chair. "Lets hear it,"

You began drawing a formation and added the formula on the side.

"Hmm," he hummed behind you before adding. "Echelon formation. Gettysburg."

"Exactly." You smiled over your shoulder. Then excitedly turned around and began to explain your argument. God, this project had been fun.

By the time you finished writing out your demonstration, the whiteboard was covered in calculations. You turned around, the rush of the epiphany flowing through your veins.

Damian sat still one arm resting on the table, the other held in a position in which his fingers were playing with his full bottom lip. But he wasn't looking at your explanation on the board. His heated gaze was on you.

You cleaned your throat nervously, capping the marker and putting it down. "What do you think?"

He sat quietly for a moment eyes moving between you and the board. Suddenly he spoke, his words sending a wave of heat to your core. "Come here."

Your eyes widened. And you took two careful steps until you stood in front of him, your hands held in front of you. It was ironic. He was sitting and gazing up at you, but it felt like he held all the power over you.

Suddenly his hand reached to your dress, giving it a sharp pull tug, pulling your down to sit on his lap.

Your breath hitched, your hands trembling on his hard chest.

"Do you know how hot you are when you're passionate about something?" He whispered, licking his lips.

Your cheeks reddened. "Thanks,"

"Kiss me," he ordered.

You eyed the rectangular window at the door it was covered by a blurred glass, but still. "What if someone sees? Or hears?" You whispered.

"What if they do?" He challenged. "Dont make me ask you twice, y/n." He squeezed your hip in warning.

Cupping his face in your hands, you rushed to kiss him. He cupped your nape and pulled you closer, tongue caressing yours and entering your mouth. His hips grinded up, the top of his pants rubbing against your tights.

You let out a soft giggle against him. "Damian, not the 4th floor of the library, it's such a cliché".

His hand slid under your skirt, drawing circles against your tights. You were about to give another half-assed protest when you heard a tear come from between the two of you, followed by a wave of cold air against your thighs.

"No!-" You began but his other hand covered your mouth.

"For a second there, it sounded like you were going to be loud." His tone was soft but also threatening at the same time. His palm still covered your mouth as his other hand slid into your panties under your torn tights. "We can't have that now, can we... what if someone hears?" He threw your earlier words back at you.

You struggled to suppress your wimpers behind his hand. You were about to bring up the fact that he needed to stop ruining your clothes, but the deliciously slow movement of his fingers against you had your back arching. Your hands gripped the bottom of the chair behind yourself, as you forgot what you were about to say. Your eyes rolled back, and you moaned his name, muffled by his hand.

"Can't keep quiet, huh baby?" He taunted.

"I'm trying," your voice came out muffled behind his hand. Feeling bold, you lowered his hand, whispering. "Please, I'll be good. Just be quick with it."

"What if I don't wanna be quick with it?" He asked. "What if I wanna drag it out like I did last time?"

You began shaking your hand, knowing there's no way you could hold back your reactions if he were to edge you again. You were already getting fingered in the campus library, the stakes were pretty high. You lowered your lips, brushing them against his ear. "Or you we can go to my room."

He shook his head. "No can do, perfect girl." He hummed your nickname. "You're gonna come right here in this room - " His finger sped up against you. You bit your lip to silence your sounds.

"More than once." He continued.

Your mouth dropped with a silent moan.

"And every time you're gonna study in the library, you're gonna remember that." He finished, rubbing with speed and intensity. You began shaking, and he removed his finger, holding your hips down to rub against the bulge in his jeans.

He did a quick job of unzipping his pants and pulling down his underwear. "Look what you do to me, baby. Look."

You looked down to see him lined up against your entrance, and your eyes widened. Meeting his gaze again, you pleaded. "Wait, Damian, not again, please. I'm still too sensitive - "

There was a nock at the door.

Your hand shot up to cover your mouth. Damian didn't look worried. He just leaned back, holding eye contact with you, and spoke loudly to the person on the other side. "This room is till booked for another hour."

Then he pulled your hips down and until you sat on his dick. Unable to help yourself. Desperately, your hand covered your moth to stop your squeal. But he caught it. Damian grinned up at you, his chest rumbling with a silent chuckle.

"Oh. Uh, my bad." Spoke a masculine voice from the other side of the door before you heard footsteps retreat.

"Do you think he knows?" Damian grinned up at you.

You shook your head as he began to thrust into you with a steady pace. You kept your hand covering your mouth as he fucked you. Suddenly, he stood up, holding you up in his arms and walked you towards the whiteboard. He positioned the two of you with your back against the board and your legs wrapped around his torso, then began thrusting into you again. "You did such a good job on my project, baby. Such a smart girl."

Your eyes rolled back as you were filled with him, particularly when he hit a spot inside you that made you feel so hot.

"W- what did you end up picking?" You struggled to ask, as you were curious. "For your third argument." You clarified.

"I didn't." He panted against your mouth. "I worked on my business course midterm."

Your made dropped, and your brows furrowed. "You asshole!" You whispered against his lips. "You - ah! You tricked me into writing the assignment for you!"

"Sure did, sweetheart." He smirked bit your neck, just above your collarbone. "Guess you're not the only smart one."

You moaned. Why did being outsmarted by him feel so... hot? Like being taken advantage of but in a good way.

"You getting close, baby?" He asked.

"Yes!"

He kissed you then. Whispering, "Come for me, perfect girl."

Not needing to be told twice, you did.

#smut #batman #damian wayne x you #damian wayne x reader #damian wayne #damian al ghul

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beauty-funny-trippy · 1 month ago

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⠀Project 2025 — the plan that puts a twinkle in racists' eyes, smiles on misogynists' lips, and an extra pep in the fascists' goose-step — is coming one step closer to reality. The American Accountability Foundation (AAF), an advisor to Project 2025, has compiled a list of 20 general officers and senior admirals (including a disproportionately high number of female officers), urging Pete Hegseth (or anyone who becomes the next Secretary of Defense) to terminate them. Why? Because they made statements approving of diversity and equity in the military. To be clear, the AAF is not asking for the firing of officers who made racist comments, or derogatory remarks about women. They seem to be totally fine with the bigotry. Unbelievably, they are asking to end the distinguished careers of officers who have made statements opposing racism and misogyny in the armed forces. Hegseth has embraced Trump’s effort to end programs that promote diversity in the ranks, and fire those who reflect those values. Other Trump picks, like Kash Patel for FBI director, have suggested targeting those in government who are not aligned with Trump. Imagine being fired from your job because the boss doesn't like who you voted for. Even though Trump has repeatedly disavowed Project 2025, due to his status as a world famous pathological liar, no one is shocked that he is filling his administration with extremists who are advocates of the Project. But every decent person who is paying attention to Trump's cabinet picks is rightly alarmed and appalled.

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markrosewater · 2 months ago

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Hi Mark! How are the Magic IP sets selling compared to the UB ones? I am worried that UB's success will lead to fewer Magic IP products.

Universes Beyond sets, on average, sell better (there's a lot of power in tapping into popular properties), but in-multiverse Magic sets are important to Wizards as a business for numerous reasons:

Universes Beyond sets are all licensed properties. That means we have to go through approvals of every component which adds a lot of time and resources (Universes Beyond sets, for example, take an extra year to make). It also means there are decisions outside of our purview. We get to make all the calls on in-multiverse Magic sets.

Because of this, there's a greater danger of a timeline slipping. In-multiverse Magic sets are a constant that we can plan around. That's for important for long-range planning.

Universes Beyond sets come with a licensing cost. In-multiverse Magic sets do not.

The Magic brand is bigger than the card game. The upcoming Netflix show is an example of this. Every time we do an in-multiverse set, we're growing that brand. There is business equity (aka we are creating something that gains value over time) in doing our own creative.

We control the creative in an in-multiverse Magic set. If we need to change something about the world to better fit the needs of play, we can. Universes Beyond sets have additional mechanical challenges (such as having enough fliers) because the creative is locked. It's important to have a place to do cool mechanical things we need to build around.

Making in-multiverse Magic sets is creatively very satisfying, and the people who make Magic want to make them.

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deathbyattrition · 2 years ago

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"Imagine what their families would be going through!" Sure, weeping their loss I guess. But unlike us they also still have an obscene amount of wealth in their hands and would likely make sure it stays in their hands at the expense of many working class people. The kid is literally the only one I feel bad for and not much for that because he's my age and I myself am a working class pakistani teenager.

Why are y'all "eat the rich" until it actually comes to the eating part? Did nobody realize that if we french revolution this shit as so many suggest we do, the people we'd kill would have families and friends too? So many tragedies caused by them in the world and that thought makes you queasy?

They are, in fact, humans too. Humans that are capable of alot of cruelty. Their death is infact a loss of human life and it's absolutely fucking hilarious that you picked now to realize that. So what now? Are you gonna fight for their rights? Rehabilitate them? Loser.

Just say you don't truly want to eat the rich and go. You may want wealth redistribution and equity, but you don't want to get your hands dirty to do that. There's no shame in admitting it, just know that you won't be making that big of a difference.

Edit: It came to my attention that the 19 year old was reluctant and terrified at entering the submersible and confided in his aunt about it. He may have been an adult but clearly did not deserve dying because of his father on fathers day, he had an ounce of self preservation unlike his idiotic old man but went there for his approval anyway.

The rest? Fuck em.

Another edit: So apparantly the news source that reported the above was sketchy so idk

#oceangate #submarine #missing submarine #titan submersible #submersible #titanic #fuck billionaires #anti capitalist #i dont give a shit about shahzada dawood especially as rich assholes didnt experince a thing when I witnessed the floods that shook pakista #anyway #I dont want to respond much so argue amoungst yourselves

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lunaeclipse1057-ao3 · 7 months ago

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Hi guys! I'm here to tell you about some of the stuff Project 2025 would do to America.

Number One: Making America a Christian Nation. What this means is the separation of church and state would be gone, and Trump will implement a "Bible-based system of government". Practicing other religions could be banned.

Number Two: Climate Change. Project 2025 will be completely removing most of the nation's regulations to help our environment. Abandoning ways to reduce greenhouse gases, abolishing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, relaxing regulations on fossil fuels, encouraging fossil fuel usage, and supporting arctic drilling.

Number 3: Letting states control education. No more nationwide education, every state chooses what it wants to do. Possibility of removing accommodation plans for students who need it, no more free school meals even for free and reduced lunch plans, and the quote "Education is a private rather than a public good."

Number 4: Giving the president more power. The branches of government are supposed to balance each other out, make sure no one branch gets too powerful. This will make that a lot harder.

Number 5: Foreign Affairs. Congressional approval would not be required for the sale of military equipment and ammunition to a foreign nation. Also "The word gender would be systematically purged from all USAID programs and documents"???? "Such aid will not be allocated for helping poorer countries address the impact of climate change; rather, it will be devoted to advancing the interests of fossil fuel companies"????

Number 6: Healthcare. Removing Medicare's ability to negotiate medicine prices, denying gender-affirming care to trans people, forcing people to have a nuclear family basically.

Number 7: All of this bullshit. It's all shit, but please take a look at the last sentence of paragraph 4: "Trump has also spoken of rounding up homeless people in blue cities and detaining them in camps."

Number 8: LGBTQ community. "Proposes the recognition of only heterosexual men and women, the removal of protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity, and the elimination of provisions pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from federal legislation." "The goal here is to move toward colorblindness and to recognize that we need to have laws and policies that treat people like full human beings not reducible to categories, especially when it comes to race." THEN LET US BE WHO WE ARE. THIS IS THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF WHAT YOU ARE SAYING.

Number 9: Banning pornography. Just let people be people. We have needs. Let us be. Especially when Trump had that sneaky link that led him being charged on 34 counts.

Number 10: Abortion. Are we really going to let white males who don't know where the clitoris is decide what Women get to do with their bodies? You said in the pornography thing that it leads to the exploration of women, but isn't this doing the exact same thing?

In conclusion, Project 2025 would take away numerous rights that we deserve as human beings, including, but not limited to, having a clean environment, the right to an education, access to necessary medication, freedom of expression, sexual media, women's choice with their own bodies, and possibly freedom of religion, one of America's first amendment rights.

I'm scared. I am a queer minor with school accommodations, who has no way out of America.

I don't want to flunk out of high school because my accommodations got taken away from me.

I don't want to have a child at all, let alone before I turn 18 because I got raped and can't get an abortion because of what the government says I can and can't do with my body.

I don't want to be trapped in an area where I can barely breathe because of all the pollutants in the air.

I don't want to be discriminated against, harassed, or dehumanized because of my gender identity and sexuality.

I don't want to be forced to be a Christian.

I'm scared of my own country, and what it could do to me. I don't want to die.

Vote Blue. Or else America could be turned into a suppressive dictatorship.

Note: I will be unpinning this because there have been a lot of comments that make me think I may have said some things wrong in this post. I don't want to completely remove it, because a lot of people have reblogged it to spread information, but I will be removing it from my pin.

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