#and i only refrain from adding it if i know it to be factually wrong in a way that matters

[hotvintagepoll]

I know you’re not the one who writes the propaganda but I just feel the need to note that The Sound of Music takes place in 1930s Austria, not the 1940s

I have gotten this ask twice now so. posting it to let everyone know not to tell me about it again

[inspirationdivine]

Wine and Pies || Lydia and Simon

Lydia and Simon have a revealing conversation, right up until the pie prizes arrive. 

Set Wednesday

Lydia pulled the curtains closed on the dying light of dusk, as purple skies gave way to black night. Today had been long and exhausting in equal measure, and she felt loose limbed as she flopped into the couch. She tucked a leg under her, running her hands through her damp hair from her earlier shower. Soft classical music was playing through her speakers. Over the course of their entanglement, Lydia had gotten less and less particular about her appearance late in the evening. The more they were stuck, the less it had mattered. Curling up in the living room in a fluffy dressing gown with a book or crossword puzzle with Simon nearby doing his own this had almost become normal. “Do you want a drink or anything? Simon?” It was ideal, really; the couch was soft on Simon’s unusually-sore body, the music was quiet enough that he could hear every note without it irritating his ears and, most importantly, Lydia seemed comfortable as she joined him on the couch. He glanced over at her as she addressed him, his attention going from absent in his puzzle-solving to dedicated, ready to do whatever it was she asked of him but this time, she was asking if he wanted something. “Uh…” He paused, wondering if she was asking out of his necessity or if this was something else. “No, ma’am, I’m okay,” He replied respectfully first, feeling his eyebrows twinge subtly. “Unless you had something in mind.” He added; he had gotten used to her asking if he needed or wanted little things here and there and he had grown comfortable enough with asking her in turn if there was something he felt he needed. Tonight wasn’t exactly atypical but it HAD been a long day… “...Wine?” He asked timidly, tilting his head ever-so-slightly. Was that what she wanted him to say? 

Lydia’s couldn’t help the indulgent smile that followed his request, along with the most disbelieving eye roll. “That wasn’t a test. None of this is a test, you know. It was just a question.” She stood up, still smiling, and walked just far enough to reach the wine cooler. Navigating around their bond had become easier over the last little while, such that she’d barely felt it tug at her today because she was so used to staying in Simon’s orbit. Lydia brought back the wine with two wine glasses, a deep fruity red for them both to enjoy. “We’ve seen each other in more than enough revealing situations in the last week, you should know by now that my bark is much worse than my bite.” Though they both knew the limit of their bond seemingly down to the inch by now, Simon still leaned slightly to give her more slack as she went around and retrieved a bottle of dark red wine and two glasses, blue eyes following her figure. “You have a point,” He agreed before hastily adding “er, about the having spent time around each other.” Far be it for him to tell someone or agree with someone on saying their bark was worse than their bite. Part of him wanted to apologise already; he didn’t usually drink so the thought of relaxing on a couch listening to classical and sipping wine never occurred to him. She was tasteful though, the way she positioned herself on the couch, the way her gown draped over her fair shoulders and even her fingers running through her hair and holding a glass of wine - she was picturesque. He refrained from apologising, instead taking one of the glasses carefully. “Thank you.” He said instead. “Today was… strangely long. I’m not even sure why.”

Lydia just laughed at his usual tact. No matter how much her mood doured when they had to interact with the outside world, whenever she was pulled out of her element and into his, in the evenings, when there were no more pretences about trying to work or anything like that, and it was just the two of them, it was easier to have fun with it, and with him. “Today did feel long. I think it’s that the sun keeps setting later, and we’re both trying to do so much.” It was also draining, spending so much time with the same person day in, day out. That didn’t really need saying anymore. “Once we solve this, what are you going to do, for fun?” Simon glanced at her with a small smile (he enjoyed the sound of her genuine laughter), then looked down at the wine he swirled in his glass rhythmically. “Oh, I’m… probably just gonna go back to doing what I did before,” He shrugged his good shoulder. “I don’t really… do that much.” There was an objectivity to his voice, not self-pitying or pathetic but mildly factual. “I go to work, then wander around town people-watching or I just go home, feed my birds and sleep.” He scoffed; it sounded very boring when he mentioned it like that. “What about you?” He asked, looking at her. “I’m sure you have a plethora of hobbies and ways to occupy your schedule.”

“No secret bowling games? Illegal urban exploration? Although in a town like this the latter is probably not advisable.” Lydia coaxed him, leaning in a little more curiously. “It doesn’t surprise me that you’re the quiet type. And I’m sure that here in Wicked’s Rest there’s more to see than your regular city people watching.” Lydia fingered her wine glass, swirling her glass in thought as she considered his question. The most honest answer wasn’t one she was sure she could give him. Simon was sweet, and good natured, and soft. Lydia had no doubt that if she told him her main plan was to continue hunting, it would frighten him away. The thought made her distinctly uncomfortable. “Return to the art circuit. There’s this art gallery with exclusive parties that I want to get into. Eat. I play poker with a small group of people on Thursday nights. That, and, well, there are a few people I want to check on. I imagine I’ll make that a priority.” “Sorry, nothing as exciting as secret bowling games,” Simon chuckled. “I’ve seen some weird stuff while people-watching, though.” Part of him wanted to add that most of his spare time consisted of helping other people out with various and sundry activities or problems but kept the comment to himself. Nothing but the last thing she said surprised him and he quirked an eyebrow slightly. She checked on people? He had gotten to know a fair amount about his host during their forcible stay together and he was able to tell that she had a well-hidden quality of empathy and kindness about her, so the more he thought about it, the less surprised he should’ve been but it still caught him off-guard compared to the ‘eat and go to an exclusive art gallery party’-- wait, eat? Eat what? He remembered her saying that she didn’t eat human food but he didn’t press the matter at the time. “That’s sweet of you,” He referred to the last bit first. “What would you eat?” He decided to ask at the risk of upsetting her; she was private and he didn’t like to ask pressing questions but he supposed his curiosity got the better of him; what would someone like her eat if she didn’t eat human food?

“What kind of things have you seen?” Lydia asked curiously. She smiled at his comment, shaking her head. There was a moral duty to help people in one’s community, and White Crest had far too many wayward souls. Her attention quickly turned to her glass at his question. Too honest, perhaps. It wasn’t like she hadn’t eaten, in a perfunctory kind of way. Locking herself behind doors and cradling Chloe and Sammy for thirty minutes at a time. Chloe would curse her out softly for leaving them alone for so long, Sammy would pick at his cuticles and say nothing, resting his head against her chest. It wasn’t much, just enough to soothe the longing in their chests, and hers in turn. Enough to keep their loyalty strong. If you don’t think you’re doing the wrong thing, then why are you hiding us? Chloe had asked. Lydia had slammed the door in their faces seconds later, the question left unanswered. “My diet is that of life itself,” she replied quietly, not out of shame but out of fear. “I can take it in increments, from any living individual's body.” Though he knew she had asked him a question first, Simon found himself acutely interested in her answer to his own question, which he was sure was an inappropriate response to someone saying that they drained the life force from people; normally, he thought, that would prompt someone to avoid everything to do with that person but for some reason, he didn’t. He also didn’t think that she had fed off of him, or at least not that he was able to tell. Then again, he wasn’t sure what that experience felt like. He wanted to ask, but… Was that what she did behind the doors? He wondered why she didn’t just drain his life force and call it a day - maybe it was too tedious? The question burned inside him, as did a few others. Simon knew she didn’t like humans… were they the ones she fed off of? Was he supposed to think she was a monster because of this? So far, he’d only met one person in White Crest who chose to be the supernatural species they were, so he was under the impression that she didn’t choose to be this way. Could he fault her for what she was? Of course he couldn’t, nor would he. He also wondered if that was one of the reasons why she was so private. He found himself tilting his head slightly again, keeping his blue eyes on her with a gentle expression. He opened his mouth to respond but honestly didn’t know what to say without making it seem like he was either undermining her honesty with a light response, ignoring what she said by answering her first question or being far too dire, which didn’t properly reflect how he was feeling with this information. “I appreciate you telling me,” is what he eventually opted to go with, his tone lacking any form of negativity or malice. “Sorry… I didn’t mean to be nosy.” He looked away from her and down at his own glass this time. “I was just curious.”

“That’s quickly becoming one of my least favourite words,” Lydia teased him lightly, ducking her head so that he could see she was smiling even as he looked down at his glass. “You wouldn’t have asked if you’d thought it was an intrusion, and I wouldn’t have answered had I thought it was a step too far. You needn’t apologise for expressing curiosity. If anything, it seems to have served you well so far, considering how little you knew two months ago.”  Nothing. He had barely known at all. Simon was in so many ways a pup. Sometimes he didn’t look like he knew what to do himself. “You don’t have to make yourself so small, you know.” “S--” Simon cut himself off and instead, catching Lydia’s smile, returned it with a small, unsure smile of his own; he was glad that his question didn’t seem to ruin her mood. What she said did bring up a good point he had been neglecting whether intentionally or not; he really didn’t know anything about what he knew now before he moved into town. Some of it - a lot of it - was much easier to digest for him but he was thankful for so many opportunities TO learn through his annoying questions and curious inquiries. He was thankful again for her patience and he started to look up from his glass again but couldn’t quite make it to her face and he settled for keeping his eyes absently on the floor. He had a handful of things he could’ve responded to her with but filed them away as ‘unimportant’. “I just…” He searched for something to say that wouldn’t make it seem like he was talking about himself. “Other people are more interesting.” He said, not dishonestly, using the little boost in confidence at what he said to look at Lydia once more. “Like you. I think you’re fascinating to observe and listen to, how you solve problems, how you spend your time, even what you eat.” His face grew more expressive as he talked. “Your expressions, what makes you happy, what upsets you; you’re an impressive force of nature who’s bold and knows what she wants… at least most of the time.” 

Lydia held his gaze as he spoke. She didn’t immediately sit straighter, or preen, or tease him. Her ego was already engorged, but his words sank right into a small ache into her chest. “Thank you. I’m glad you think so,” Lydia murmured. “It would be a terrible fate to be stuck to someone you couldn’t tolerate to think about. I must say, though, that I disagree with you. There are not many more individuals in this town that are more interesting than you.” Albeit, most of them were human, but that didn’t change much. “You shouldn’t talk of yourself like that.” His brow faltered; had he said the wrong thing? Simon realised after he was done that he probably put her on the spot with his… ramble. He had to stop doing the whole ‘flowery talking’ thing he tended to do. He did scoff at what she said though, not out of disrespect for her or what she said but rather at himself for giving her that impression. “There are,” He replied with a false smile on his face this time, looking back down at his wine. “Like all the people I’ve seen. There was this one who ran around barking like a dog in school until she was 17,” He remarked. “I’ve met people here who can do extraordinary things; there’s this kid who invented a machine combined with magic that he could remotely activate to deliver a fatal electric shock. I met a witch who turned mayonnaise into super glue. Nora’s an extremely talented painter and an expert of fear. I’ve met other werewolves who have full control over themselves and describe it as this amazing thing, like they actually like BEING w--” He cut himself off sharply after he said that last part and cleared his throat. “So while I appreciate the compliment, I’m… just a guy.” He said quietly. 

That made her heart ache too - that smile that didn’t reach his eyes, as he looked away. His crowfeet barely shifted. Lydia might never truly understand the difficulty of being changed, of having your identity ripped into something new, but it didn’t change how much it horrified her when people admitted how little they liked themselves. “You don’t think that your pianist abilities, your kindness and the way you make people comfortable around you aren’t also incredible things?” She asked softly, shifting her weight to sit a little closer. Lydia bit her lip. “Do you not like being a werewolf because you don’t feel in control?” She asked quietly. That seemed to be the crux of it, for him, for Jeff, for Remmy. Simon didn’t move when she got closer but he wasn’t looking at his glass anymore; his gaze was unfocused, half-lidded and somewhat narrowed and an exhale escaped his thin lips. “No, not really.” It was his turn to murmur, feeling himself tense up slightly and he tried to work up another half-smile but he never got there, the corner of his mouth twitching instead. He considered not responding to her question about being a werewolf at all; he felt inherently wrong in how he felt about that situation, like he was incorrect in his judgements or feelings regarding the whole ordeal. He hadn’t been honest with but one person since he suffered the Bite eight months ago; at this point, it was easier for him to just shrug it off like it didn’t matter which… despite what anyone said to the contrary, it didn’t. “And, uh… I suppose. Sor-- Er, I didn’t mean to bring that up; I don’t know where it came from.” He did release a nervous chuckle this time. “It’s nothing, really. I just figure people don’t mind me being around for… some reason.” Because I’m ineffectual and blend in well to the background. 

Lydia leant back, shifting to curl her other leg under her too, in a rather feline manner. She knew better than to keep pushing. “I hope you find someone to mentor you,” was all she said, her gaze compassionate. She’d been about to add something else, but… Lydia could smell butter. Butter and flour, baking? Maybe? “Do you have something in the oven?” She asked, just before the air in front of her exploded into a confetti of flakey pieces of pie crust. A piece of paper and a tin dropped out of the explosion into her lap, and Lydia jolted, eyes flaring. Picking up the piece of paper, Lydia frowned. “Simon? Why does this say that I’ve come third in the weird pie contest?” Simon did catch her look when she replied and he found himself regulating his breathing when she responded with her hidden gentleness, unaware up until that point that he must’ve been getting nervous as his mind kept starting and erasing and restarting sentences until he found the right combination of words. He himself wanted to say something too when he also caught the smell of something. Food, like a cake that was almost ready to come out of the-- He heard her ask about if he had something in the oven and he resisted the urge to give her a  somewhat dry look as if to say ‘like you wouldn’t know if I had something in the oven’ but he didn’t have to refrain for long when the air exploded and Lydia recoiled as something landed in her lap. He tilted his head with curiosity, then almost physically bounced with a childish excitement. “Oh! Remember those pies I wanted to make? When we submitted them, I wrote your name on the slip.” He explained as he looked at the tin briefly but ultimately looking back at Lydia.

“You can’t be serious,” Lydia said, looking at him. But he was. She huffed, rolling her eyes in frustration. “Why would you do that?” She stood up, throwing the pie crust flakes off her dressing gown and onto the floor. “I realise I helped, but Simon, this was your idea, your work. Why wouldn’t you take credit for that?” The tin can rolled off her lap and clattered to the floor, after huffing for a moment she bent down to pick it up. “A tin for storing negative thoughts in? What kind of prize is this?” His gaze followed her as she stood, pie flakes fluttering about her like glitter and Simon didn’t immediately answer her, instead giving her a look that was a mixture of timid hopefulness and somewhat like a dog that got caught breaking a benign rule. “Yeah but it was your oven, house and know-how that kept the kitchen from combusting.” He replied, head shaking slightly with instinct as the tin clanged on the floor before she picked it back up. He eyed the tin with raised eyebrows. “A lot of people have receptacles they hold negative thoughts in but usually those are in the forms of diaries or other written documents.” He couldn’t deny that he was curious though. Perhaps you wrote down the negative thoughts on pieces of paper and put them in the tin? It wasn’t a very… original idea but he supposed it could’ve been worse, especially considering he hadn’t anticipated on even being available to be judged alongside the people that made actual pies for actual people.

“Simon, did you consider that perhaps I didn’t want my name involved in major town affairs?” Lydia retorted, her eyes hard to his mischievous look. As soon as she said it, the tin grew heavier in her hand, and the thought vanished from her mind entirely. “I- What did I just say?” Simon’s head cocked further to the side, almost like he was hearing something distant and shrill and he was trying to listen better. “Uh… you got mad at me for putting your name on the submission form,” He recalled in a manner of speaking. Honestly, the thought hadn’t occurred to him that she probably didn’t want to be recognised in a pie-making competition though to his credit, he absolutely didn’t enter that contest with the intention of winning; he just wanted to do something nice for everyone’s dogs. “Sorry…” He apologised out loud this time, his expression falling as his brow furrowed. “I didn’t know that it would actually be judged or that it would… win anything.”

“Uh, oh,” Lydia said. Why didn’t she remember that? All the same, Simon deflated, and Lydia felt bad that whatever she didn’t remember had done that. “Just… don’t do it again. I work hard to… maintain myself in a certain way in the public view. For important reasons. It frightens me to lose control of that.” Her hand dropped and she lost her grip of the can as it suddenly became much heavier again, and it smacked against the floor hard enough to leave a dent. The previous sentence once again lost from her mind. “That’s deeply disturbing. Either way, I do believe it’s yours now. These prizes belong to you. Your work, your innate creativity. I won’t claim credit for that. In fact,” Lydia picked up the certificate again, the corners of her lips turned up. “Let’s restore this to what it should be, hm?” Simon flinched from the sound again and his brow furrowed when she dropped the tin - he knew that she tended to be careful and precise with her movements so it was unusual for him to see her drop something as though she wasn’t holding onto the thing carefully. “I’m sorry… I’ll keep that in mind in the future, I pr-- Uh, yeah.” He scooted over on the couch closer to where she was sitting and leaned forward to pick the tin up curiously, glancing up at Lydia who was holding the certificate. The tin didn’t… SEEM that heavy but he shook it in his hands as if to see if it had anything in it. Empty. Very curious. “. ..Sorry, restore what?” He asked rather dumbly, bringing his full attention back to her.

“The certificate,” Lydia replied patiently, her momentary anger returning back to a quiet simmer, with a real, if pointed smile. She looked at the tin in his hand suspiciously, more questionable than anything else about this whole situation. What kind of third place prize was it, anyway? “No public attention, no one needs to know but you and me, but at the very least the certificate should have the right name on it. Luckily, I happen to be an expert in covering up damage on things. You’re not going to dissuade me, so come on.” Simon set the tin on the couch beside him as he kept his eyes on Lydia. His expression flitted from timidly curious to mournful that they were in this position to gentle in his smile, all passing in a matter of seconds in his eyes and brow. He stood up slowly, still holding the glass of wine and though part of him wanted to dispose of the certificate altogether - he knew he was going to have trouble seeing it without thinking about that time he didn’t read the room properly and unintentionally threw Lydia into the public eye - she had said that he wasn’t going to dissuade her, and she was correct. He wouldn’t. “I can-- I can go tell them that it was my idea…” He offered. “If that would help wipe the tarnish from your reputation.” His stomach was in knots; the more he thought about it, the more foolish he felt. He just wanted to-- and the way she smiled when-- and the looks she gave him when he screwed up-- How he failed on purpose to get her to join him in something. He thought he might’ve been frustrated; he knew he should’ve mentioned that he didn’t want to be judged as an actual contestant. And for what, a piece of paper and an empty tin? He exhaled, unclenching his jaw and he felt his grip on the glass loosening - he was thankful for the new moon, otherwise he might’ve accidentally shattered it. “You are an expert, indeed,” He replied softly, glancing down at her demure, regal frame and giving her a small smile.

“Tarnish my reputation? I think that might be putting it a tad strongly. You made pies for dogs. You weren’t like,” Lydia cringed. “that Adam fellow.” She led him into her studio, where he had already been several times before. They’d brought him in a comfortable chair, so that he could sit and read while she worked in silence for hours at a time. She grabbed an easel from by the wall and her paint pallet from the desk. It only took a drop of solvent to reactivate the restoration grade paints on there. In the lights she could see the cream shade of the certificate, the quality of the dense paper it was printed on. She saw sunflower yellow and ice pink and white, colours she could pick and mix by heart. Forty years of this, and it was easy to match the paint to the paper, carefully painting over the delicate loops of her name. “Much like you don’t like to turn the spotlight on yourself, I don’t like to lose control,” Lydia said quietly. It was easy to talk like this, focused only on the paint in front of her. With one last look for now at the tin and setting his glass on a passing table - he wasn’t going to drink it, he didn’t think - Simon followed Lydia to the studio, familiar by now in the path they took and still matching her pace as resolutely as ever. He supposed it could’ve been worse; his submission COULD’VE had a creepy melted face on it but that was… a bit much. ‘Tarnish’, while indeed a strong word, still felt like it could’ve applied but he hoped she knew that that wasn’t his intention. Either way, they were in the studio by the time he reached the end of that line of thought and he followed her around until she seemed to be set up and part of him, though he was still sore from the day, wanted to stand close enough to her to observe her work but one of the last things he wanted to do was crowd her so he settled in the chair, leaning forward on his knees and keeping his eyes on her as she worked. “Sometimes I have a hard time picturing an instance where you wouldn’t be in control,” He said mildly, rubbing his hands together absently. “Or at least be able to recover quickly.” He added as if to note their specific scenario with it.

“Yet you have seen me less in control than I think I have been the entire time I have lived here,” Lydia replied, setting down her paint brush. If one looked closely, of course, the paint was obvious. The lettering of the rest of the document was ink, not paint. But if one looked at a simple glance, they would see what they should. Credit where credit was due. Lydia had no capacity for creativity, her inspiration was made to give, not keep. But she hadn’t given any here. Whatever… dubious artistic talent the judges had seen in the pie, they hadn’t come from her. Lydia had operated the oven and the easy unstick spray. Lydia had been a tool in his art, nothing more. “Fixed.” Her tone was still cool, still unimpressed. Her hand curled into a tiny little fist, and then flexed again. “I appreciate that you’re trying to remedy this. Likely, time will be the better treatment here. Trying to change anything more would lead to more unwanted attention.” “You’re probably right,” Simon sighed, his brow furrowing and he swallowed whatever urge he wanted to say along the lines of ‘it was nice seeing that you were at least pretending to have fun towards the end of that night’; he was finding himself doubting if that’s what was happening or if that’s just what he wanted to see. He wasn’t sure what he wanted-- well, yes he did… right? He knew one thing for certain and that was to be more careful with how he… went about doing things. Part of him wondered if he put Lydia’s name on the submission to let her get the credit or more to make sure he didn’t get attention. He hadn’t thought about it being a selfish move on his part until just then and that just twisted more knots in his stomach. “Thanks for… fixing it,” He said quietly but genuinely and though he wanted to apologise yet again, he didn’t and decided to leave it at that, his hands knotting around each other nervously.

“It’s rightfully yours,” Lydia replied with finality, standing up. She rubbed her face, and thought about the sad bottle of wine left half finished in the living room, and the strange weighted tin prize. There were pie crust flakes scattered everywhere, that would get rubbed into the couch and flooring if they weren’t careful. The conversation had been so pleasant, before, soft and delicate, and heartwarming. Lydia’s shoulders slumped as she looked back up at Simon, exhausted and now disgruntled. She pushed a smile onto her features, and said, “Let’s go to bed.” Simon caught the shift in body language, getting the feeling that he had ruined the night with his… stupid pie stuff. Always something, always something for him to screw up. Her smile looked artificial, like she didn’t want to. Maybe he was just imagining it. He paused for a moment before getting to his feet slowly. “Yes, ma’am,” He replied softly.

 @inconvenientsimonstrocity

[bigskydreaming]

Hi, this is a vagueblog that is very very Vague and not at all a blatantly passive aggressive response to an anon comment on someone’s fic about a Certain Favorite Topic of Mine (aka Let Dick Be Angry About People Being Dicks To Him).

But arguing that Dick was entirely and solely in the wrong for how everything went down between him and Tim, on the basis that “and the idea that a 16 year old should be responsible in any way for not helping someone 7-8 years older than him grieve is ridiculous” is textbook woobification.

Know why?

Because we’re talking about Tim.

As in the character whose entire existence as Robin is predicated on taking it upon himself to help Batman in the wake of Bruce’s grief for Jason, due to how it was affecting both his violence against criminals and his own recklessness.

So it is categorically disingenuous and dishonest to act like Tim is some helpless little baby at age sixteen who its completely ‘ridiculous’ to expect to take even a single scene anywhere throughout his solo series in which he jets around the world, solo, having adult adventures against adult villains with zero adult supervision by his own choice.....

And think “hey, maybe I, the kid who at age twelve made it my literal mission to help Batman through his grief....could take five seconds to look at this other Batman and acknowledge....he needs help because he’s drowning in his own grief.”

This is the blatant double standard that annoys people about certain Tim stans. 

Tim may have been sixteen, but we’re talking about a family of superheroes who have been doing adult acts since their preteens. We’re talking about a kid who’s helped save the world by this point, and how he responds to ‘being wronged’ by an older brother who in the most frequently referenced continuity was fired as Robin when hardly any older than Tim was there. Only Dick was actually fired, and by Bruce himself, and with the latter making NO effort to keep Dick from leaving, as opposed to Dick who made every effort to keep Tim from leaving. Tim left because he wanted to, despite Dick wanting him to stay. Dick left because he felt Bruce didn’t care if he stayed, because Bruce made no effort to get him to stay.

And yet time and again, the narrative is twisted so that Dick ‘fired Tim’ instead of calling him his equal (actual canon), kicked Tim out, instead of begging him to stay (actual canon), and asking other people to spy on Tim, follow him, and talk to him instead of handling it himself, when per actual canon....the reason Dick did all of those things was because he was still concerned about Tim and Tim wouldn’t allow Dick to talk to him and check up on him himself.

How do you hold someone responsible for not having a conversation that the other person literally refuses to let them have?

And yet, for over a decade, that is precisely what fandom has done.

And someone actually writes a story where in contrast to the dozens and dozens of stories that take the singular perspective that Dick wronged Tim and should grovel for his forgiveness, they instead suggest that Tim was mature and responsible enough at the time that he at least should have been capable of acknowledging that he wasn’t the only member of his family grieving and having a difficult time, and Dick wasn’t doing any of that to neglect or hurt him.....and this is what’s so objectionable to someone, they have to go on anon on that very story’s actual comment thread and argue that the author is being unreasonable and that Dick should be the one apologizing to Tim here, yet again, like the dozens and dozens of already existing stories posit?

Peoples’ issue with Tim and Tim stans and these stories aren’t that we don’t like Dick being criticized for his handling of the situation or people saying Tim was hurt by all of that....its that its treated as valid and factual for Tim in all these other stories to say things like “you’re never there for me” because the one time Dick didn’t support Tim exactly in the specific ways Tim wanted, despite years and years and years of dropping everything to rush to Tim’s side whenever he needed as Robin....

This apparently constitutes proof that Dick is “never there for Tim” instead of always doing his best to be there for Tim, except this one time he was literally overwhelmed and couldn’t be everything for everyone exactly as they wanted him to be. And yeah, unfortunately, he had hoped that Tim could pick up a little of his slack for a change. 

And he still tried to be there for Tim, after Tim blew up at him, he just literally couldn’t be because Tim left and avoided him the literal minute after Dick did one thing he didn’t agree with.

And thing is, that’s not to suggest it was a LITTLE thing, by any means. That Tim didn’t have every right to be emotional and upset and hurt by Dick’s decision. Its not even that its wrong to say that yeah, ideally, Dick should have pulled Tim aside and had a conversation about what he wanted to do with Robin before Tim found out from Damian.

But that’s not what Dick’s condemned for in fandom, is it? The common refrain isn’t “well, I know it was a tough time for Dick as well, but he should have talked about it with Tim first”....its “Dick is such a hypocrite for doing the exact same thing that Bruce did to him and giving Robin to someone who didn’t deserve it after firing Tim despite everything he’d done to prove himself over the years.”

These are completely different levels of criticism, and its blatantly dishonest to treat them as interchangeable, or to object when someone’s clearly taking issue with the latter, and instead try to frame it as though Dick stans are just unable to accept Dick ever doing anything wrong at all on any level - such as with the former.

Like, when people can’t handle one story existing that suggests hey, they were both in the same situation of being brothers who’d both lost their second father and felt lost and grieving, and it might be nice for a change if instead of just seeing Tim erupt at Dick over and over for being so fucking flawed as a brother and a human being back then, Dick has a chance to for once say he feels hurt that his little brother didn’t seem to give a shit about what he felt at the time, or didn’t seem to want to acknowledge all the other times Dick had been there for him, at his own expense....

That is the kind of thing that makes people feel like Tim stans have a victim complex or an insistence on seeing Tim as perpetually victimized and never ever doing anything that might hurt his siblings as well.

I mean, I can acknowledge and understand why Tim was hurt by Dick’s choices and the way things went down....and why Dick was too overwhelmed to be as on top of handling everyone’s feelings as he usually is or likes to be. They’re not mutually exclusive.

It was a shitty situation. It didn’t have to mean that either of them were shitty people.

But you all have ZERO chill, and after years and years of one singular narrative that posits that Dick was operating from a plateau of emotional zen and all his decisions should be weighed and measured against his own peak performance standard of catering to his family’s emotional needs (when almost no examples of the reciprocal even exist)....

Like, sorry if some of us are exhausted of trying to be mutually understanding and are more interested in focusing on the viewpoint of the character who’s been bashed to hell and back by that one singular narrative. Ad nauseam.

Apologies to @octoaliencowboy for jumping in and I’ll happily delete this if they prefer, but I thought their story was fucking excellent and something that some Dick fans have long wanted to read for a change of pace.

[mikemortgage]

AP FACT CHECK: Trump camp suggests AG found illegal spying

WASHINGTON — With release of the special counsel’s fuller report looming, President Donald Trump and his campaign are twisting the words of his attorney general and the facts of the Russia investigation.

His 2020 campaign is telling supporters in fundraising pitches that Attorney General William Barr had revealed illegal spying against Trump during the 2016 presidential race. But it’s not true. While Barr told lawmakers that he believed spying took place, he never concluded it was illegal and made clear several times he was not suggesting a crime had occurred.

Meanwhile, Trump kept up his refrain that special counsel Robert Mueller had totally exonerated him despite Mueller’s exact quotes in Barr’s summary that he did not. A redacted version of Mueller’s full report is expected in the coming days.

The misstatements were among a number of factual faux pas and flips in rhetoric this past week.

With his government seeking to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Trump seemed to draw a blank on a hacking organization he praised to the rafters during the 2016 campaign because of the discomfort it caused his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

And speaking before Monday’s tax filing deadline, Trump seemed to change the grounds upon which he is refusing to release his taxes: It’s not because he can’t, but because he doesn’t want to.

A look at the claims:

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

TRUMP CAMPAIGN: “Just this week, Attorney General William Barr said what the President has thought all along, he believes ‘unlawful spying did occur’ against Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.” — fundraising email sent Saturday to Trump supporters.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN: “AG Barr believes the Obama Admin illegally spied on Pres Trump.” — text sent Friday to Trump supporters.

THE FACTS: The email puts words in Barr’s mouth and seeks to raise money in doing so.

Barr never said there was illegal spying.

During a Senate hearing Wednesday, the attorney general actually made clear he had no specific evidence to cite that any surveillance was illegal or improper.

“I think spying did occur,” Barr told lawmakers. “But the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.”

He later added: “I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred. I am saying that I am concerned about it and looking into it.”

——

TRUMP: “I’ve been totally exonerated. No collusion. No obstruction.” — remarks Wednesday at the White House.

TRUMP: “I’m not concerned about anything, because frankly there was no collusion and there was no obstruction.” — remarks Thursday with South Korea’s president.

THE FACTS: Barr’s four-page summary of Mueller’s nearly 400-page report did not “totally” exonerate Trump. Mueller specifically states in the report, as quoted by Barr: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

The summary of principal conclusions by Barr, released in late March, notes Mueller did not “draw a conclusion — one way or the other — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction,” but rather set out evidence for both sides, leaving the question unanswered of whether Trump obstructed justice. Barr said ultimately he decided as attorney general that the evidence developed by Mueller was “not sufficient” to establish, for the purposes of prosecution, that Trump committed obstruction.

In Senate testimony Wednesday, Barr acknowledged that Mueller did not ask him to draw a conclusion on the obstruction question, nor did he know whether Mueller agreed with him. Barr said he would be able to explain more fully after releasing a public version of Mueller’s report.

——

WIKILEAKS

TRUMP, asked if he still “loves” WikiLeaks: “I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing.” — remarks Thursday with South Korea’s president.

THE FACTS: WikiLeaks was very much Trump’s thing in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, when candidate Trump showered praise on the anti-secrecy organization night after night.

On the same October day that the “Access Hollywood” tape emerged, revealing that Trump had bragged in 2005 about groping women, WikiLeaks began releasing damaging emails from Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. Trump and his allies seized on the dumps and weaponized them.

“WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks,” Trump said in Pennsylvania.

“This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove,” Trump said in Michigan.

“Boy, I love reading WikiLeaks,” Trump said in Ohio.

All told, Trump extolled WikiLeaks more than 100 times, and a poster of Assange hung backstage at the Republican’s debate war room. At no point from a rally stage did Trump express any misgivings about how WikiLeaks obtained the emails from the Clinton campaign or about the accusations of stealing sensitive U.S. government information, which led to the charges against Assange on Thursday. The U.S. is seeking Assange’s extradition from Britain.

Asked Sunday about Trump’s claim he knew nothing about Wikileaks, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News the president “was making a joke during the campaign and was talking about the specifics of the case at that moment.”

——

TAX RETURNS

TRUMP: “As you know, I got elected last time with this same issue. … I would love to give them, but I’m not going to do it while I’m under audit.” — remarks Wednesday to reporters at the White House.

THE FACTS: Nothing’s preventing Trump from releasing his tax returns.

Being under audit is no legal bar to anyone releasing his or her returns.

Asked repeatedly at a House hearing Tuesday whether any regulation prohibited a taxpayer from disclosing returns when under audit, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig responded “no.”

Trump declined to provide his tax information as a candidate in 2016 and as president, something party nominees have traditionally done in the name of the transparency. By withholding his tax returns, Trump has not followed the standard followed by presidents since Richard Nixon started the practice in 1969. During the campaign, Trump said he wanted to release his returns but because he was under a routine audit, “I can’t.”

After the November midterm elections, Trump claimed at a news conference that the filings are too complex for people to understand.

——

JOB APPROVAL

TRUMP, tweeting a Fox Business Network graphic showing his “soaring approval” at 55% overall: “Great news! #MAGA” — tweet Thursday.

THE FACTS: The graphic on the Georgetown University poll was incorrect: The poll found 55% had an “unfavourable” rating of Trump, not his job approval, from a different poll question. Fox Business issued an on-air correction but Trump’s tweet remains.

——

CLIMATE CHANGE

TRUMP: “We withdrew the United States from the one-sided Paris climate accord, where you don’t do any more drilling for oil and gas. That was going to cost us a lot of money. No more oil and gas with the Paris accord. That’s good for Paris, but that’s not good for us. Right?” — remarks Wednesday at a ceremony for the signing of executive orders meant to accelerate pipeline construction.

THE FACTS: Wrong. The Paris accord does not ban any form of energy development. It does not impose emission caps on signatory countries. The accord is a set of voluntary targets determined by individual nations.

——

IMMIGRATION

TRUMP: “Mexico must apprehend all illegals and not let them make the long march up to the United States, or we will have no other choice than to Close the Border and/or institute Tariffs. Our Country is FULL!” — tweet April 7.

THE FACTS: Despite the overwhelmed southern border, there’s plenty of room in the United States. Dozens of countries have greater population density. It’s only full in terms of the people Trump doesn’t want.

His claim of a U.S. with no vacancies for more immigrants is at odds with his own statement two months ago that encouraged “the largest” influx of legal immigrants ever. It also belies a U.S. reality of aging baby boomers and falling birth rates, which make immigrants increasingly important to sustain a level of population growth for the U.S. economy to keep expanding.

The nation’s population growth is at its lowest since 1937, with the 18-and-under population declining both nationally and in 29 states, according to William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution. Economists say that restricting immigration would probably weaken economic growth. A shrinking labour force could also harm the health and stability of safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Trump himself seemed to acknowledge the realities during his State of the Union address in February, declaring, “I want people to come into our country, in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.” He’s now describing a U.S. bursting at the seams, unable to take any immigrants, including those seeking legal asylum.

Immigrants as a whole make up a greater percentage of the total U.S. population than they did back in 1970, having grown from less than 5 per cent of the population to more than 13 per cent now. In 2030, it’s projected that immigrants will become the primary driver for U.S. population growth, overtaking U.S. births.

——

TRUMP on separating migrant children from their parents when caught crossing into the U.S. illegally: “I’m the one that stopped it. President Obama had child separation.” — remarks to reporters Tuesday.

THE FACTS: No, he’s the one who started it on a broad scale. He instituted a “zero tolerance” policy aimed at criminally prosecuting all adults caught crossing into the U.S. illegally. That meant detention for adults and the removal of their children while their parents were in custody. During the Obama administration and the early Trump administration, such family separations were the exception. They became the rule under his policy. He suspended the practice in June because of a public uproar.

——

TRUMP on the family separations: “President Obama had the law. We changed the law, and I think the press should accurately report it but of course they won’t.” — remarks to reporters Tuesday.

THE FACTS: This is false. Trump did not achieve any change in the law.

Trump’s zero-tolerance policy was of his own making. His administration is operating under the same immigration laws as Obama’s.

During the Obama administration and before Trump’s zero-tolerance policy was introduced, migrant families caught illegally entering the U.S. were usually referred for civil deportation proceedings, not requiring separation, unless they were known to have a criminal record. Then and now, immigration officials may take a child from a parent in certain cases, such as serious criminal charges against a parent, concerns over the health and welfare of a child or medical concerns.

——

ENERGY and ENVIRONMENT

TRUMP: “We have the cleanest air and water, they say, in the world. We are the best.”– remarks Wednesday at the signing of orders on pipelines.

THE FACTS: Not true about air.

U.S. drinking water is among the best by one leading measure.

Trump’s own Environmental Protection Agency data show that in 2017, among 35 major U.S. cities, there were 729 cases of “unhealthy days for ozone and fine particle pollution.” That’s up 22 per cent from 2014 and the worst year since 2012. Findings for 2018 are incomplete.

The State of Global Air 2019 report by the Health Effects Institute rated the U.S. as having the eighth cleanest air for particle pollution — which kills 85,000 Americans each year — behind Canada, Scandinavian countries and others.

The U.S. ranks poorly on smog pollution, which kills 24,000 Americans per year. On a scale from the cleanest to the dirtiest, the U.S. is at 123 out of 195 countries measured.

On water, Yale University’s global Environmental Performance Index finds 10 countries tied for the cleanest drinking water, the U.S. among them. On environmental quality overall, the U.S. was 27th, behind a variety of European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia and more. Switzerland was No. 1.

——

TRUMP: “With the help of the incredible workers in this room, the United States is now the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world, anywhere on the planet. Not even close. Made a lot of progress in the last two and a half years, haven’t we? Huh? Took down a lot of barriers.” — signing ceremony.

THE FACTS: As he’s done many times before, Trump is crediting himself with things that happened under Obama.

Here’s what the government’s U.S. Energy Information Administration says: “The United States has been the world’s top producer of natural gas since 2009, when U.S. natural gas production surpassed that of Russia, and the world’s top producer of petroleum hydrocarbons since 2013, when U.S. production exceeded Saudi Arabia’s.”

As for crude oil specifically, the information agency says the U.S. became the world’s top crude oil producer last year. That is largely attributed to the shale oil boom that began during the Obama administration, which has sent production from the Permian Basin in the southwest surging.

——

TRUMP: “Under this administration, we have ended the war on American energy like never before.” — signing ceremony.

THE FACTS: It wasn’t much of a war. U.S. petroleum and natural gas production has increased by nearly 60% since 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration, achieving pre-eminence during the Obama administration. That said, the Trump administration is more closely aligned with fossil fuel interests as it works to restrain environmental obstacles and the power of states to stand in the way of pipelines and other energy development.

——

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Jonathan Lemire, Mary Clare Jalonick, Ellen Knickmeyer and Seth Borenstein in Washington and Nomaan Merchant in Houston contributed to this report.

——

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

Follow https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

from Financial Post http://bit.ly/2DbIV0E via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[viralhottopics]

Were on the Brink of a Revolution in Crazy-Smart Digital Assistants

Heres a quick story youve probably heard before, followed by one you probably havent. In 1979 a young Steve Jobs paid a visit to Xerox PARC, the legendary R&D lab in Palo Alto, California, and witnessed a demonstration of something now called the graphical user interface. An engineer from PARC used a prototype mouse to navigate a computer screen studded with icons, drop-down menus, and windows that overlapped each other like sheets of paper on a desktop. It was unlike anything Jobs had seen before, and he was beside himself. Within 10 minutes, he would later say, it was so obvious that every computer would work this way someday.

As legend has it, Jobs raced back to Apple and commanded a team to set about replicating and improving on what he had just seen at PARC. And with that, personal computing sprinted off in the direction it has been traveling for the past 40 years, from the first Macintosh all the way up to the iPhone. This visual mode of computing ended the tyranny of the command linethe demanding, text-heavy interface that was dominant at the timeand brought us into a world where vastly more people could use computers. They could just point, click, and drag.

In the not-so-distant future, though, we may look back at this as the wrong PARC-related creation myth to get excited about. At the time of Jobs visit, a separate team at PARC was working on a completely different model of human-computer interaction, today called the conversational user interface. These scientists envisioned a world, probably decades away, in which computers would be so powerful that requiring users to memorize a special set of commands or workflows for each action and device would be impractical. They imagined that we would instead work collaboratively with our computers, engaging in a running back-and-forth dialog to get things done. The interface would be ordinary human language.

Pipe Down, Jarvis

For decades, the talking tech in movies has eclipsed anything weve been able to build in the real world. Thats finally starting to change.

Computer from Star Trek | A kind of proto-Google with a voice, the Enterprises computer provides status updates, calculations and tea, Earl Grey, hot.

HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey | HAL, the psychotic AI with an FM-DJ voice, is able to control every last detail of a mission to Jupiter.

KITT from Knight Rider | Michael Knights in-dash AI partner is sarcastic, indestructible, and always ready to get Knight out of a jam.

Jarvis from Iron Man | You never see Jarvis, but his diagnostics, worried nagging, and instant calculations are crucial to Iron Mans superheroness.

Samantha from Her | She starts by reading his emailand eventually becomes much more than a helpful assistant in Theodore Twomblys ear.

One of the scientists in that group was a guy named Ron Kaplan, who today is a stout, soft-spoken man with a gray goatee and thinning hair. Kaplan is equal parts linguist, psychologist, and computer scientista guy as likely to invoke Chomskys theories about the construction of language as he is Moores law. He says that his team got pretty far in sketching out one crucial component of a working conversational user interface back in the 70s; they rigged up a system that allowed you to book flights by exchanging typed messages with a computer in normal, unencumbered English. But the technology just wasnt there to make the system work on a large scale. It wouldve cost, I dont know, a million dollars a user, he says. They needed faster, more distributed processing and smarter, more efficient computers. Kaplan thought it would take about 15 years.

Forty years later, Kaplan says, were ready. And so is the rest of the world, it turns out.

Today, Kaplan is a vice president and distinguished scientist at Nuance Communications, which has become probably the biggest player in the voice interface business: It powers Fords in-car Sync system, was critical in Siris development, and has partnerships across nearly every industry. But Nuance finds itself in a crowded marketplace these days. Nearly every major tech companyfrom Amazon to Intel to Microsoft to Googleis chasing the sort of conversational user interface that Kaplan and his colleagues at PARC imagined decades ago. Dozens of startups are in the game too. All are scrambling to come out on top in the midst of a powerful shift under way in our relationship with technology. One day soon, these companies believe, you will talk to your gadgets the way you talk to your friends. And your gadgets will talk back. They will be able to hear what you say and figure out what you mean.

If youre already steeped in todays technology, these new tools will extend the reach of your digital life into places and situations where the graphical user interface cannot safely, pleasantly, or politely go. And the increasingly conversational nature of your back-and-forth with your devices will make your relationship to technology even more intimate, more loyal, more personal.

But the biggest effect of this shift will be felt well outside Silicon Valleys core audience. What Steve Jobs saw in the graphical user interface back in 1979 was a way to expand the popular market for computers. But even the GUI still left huge numbers of people outside the light of the electronic campfire. As elegant and efficient as it is, the GUI still requires humans to learn a computers language. Now computers are finally learning how to speak ours. In the bargain, hundreds of millions more people could gain newfound access to tech.

Voice interfaces have been around for years, but lets face it: Thus far, theyve been pretty dumb. We need not dwell on the indignities of automated phone trees (If youre calling to make a payment, say payment). Even our more sophisticated voice interfaces have relied on speech but somehow missed the power of language. Ask Google Now for the population of New York City and it obliges. Ask for the location of the Empire State Building: good to go. But go one logical step further and ask for the population of the city that contains the Empire State Building and it falters. Push Siri too hard and the assistant just refers you to a Google search. Anyone reared on scenes of Captain Kirk talking to the Enterprises computer or of Tony Stark bantering with Jarvis cant help but be perpetually disappointed.

Ask around Silicon Valley these days, though, and you hear the same refrain over and over: Its different now.

One hot day in early June, Keyvan Mohajer, CEO of SoundHound, shows me a prototype of a new app that his company has been working on in secret for almost 10 years. You may recognize SoundHound as the name of a popular music-recognition appthe one that can identify a tune for you if you hum it into your phone. It turns out that app was largely just a way of fueling Mohajers real dream: to create the best voice-based artificial-intelligence assistant in the world.

The prototype is called Hound, and its pretty incredible. Holding a black Nexus 5 smartphone, Mohajer taps a blue and white microphone icon and begins asking questions. He starts simply, asking for the time in Berlin and the population of Japan. Basic search-result stufffollowed by a twist: What is the distance between them? The app understands the context and fires back, About 5,536 miles.

Mohajer rattles off a barrage of questions, and the app answers every one. Correctly.

Then Mohajer gets rolling, smiling as he rattles off a barrage of questions that keep escalating in complexity. He asks Hound to calculate the monthly mortgage payments on a million-dollar home, and the app immediately asks him for the interest rate and the term of the loan before dishing out its answer: $4,270.84.

What is the population of the capital of the country in which the Space Needle is located? he asks. Hound figures out that Mohajer is fishing for the population of Washington, DC, faster than I do and spits out the correct answer in its rapid-fire robotic voice. What is the population and capital for Japan and China, and their areas in square miles and square kilometers? And also tell me how many people live in India, and what is the area code for Germany, France, and Italy? Mohajer would keep on adding questions, but he runs out of breath. Ill spare you the minute-long response, but Hound answers every question. Correctly.

Hound, which is now in beta, is probably the fastest and most versatile voice recognition system unveiled thus far. It has an edge for now because it can do speech recognition and natural language processing simultaneously. But really, its only a matter of time before other systems catch up.

After all, the underlying ingredientswhat Kaplan calls the gating technologies necessary for a strong conversational interfaceare all pretty much available now to whoevers buying. Its a classic story of technological convergence: Advances in processing power, speech recognition, mobile connectivity, cloud computing, and neural networks have all surged to a critical mass at roughly the same time. These tools are finally good enough, cheap enough, and accessible enough to make the conversational interface realand ubiquitous.

But its not just that conversational technology is finally possible to build. Theres also a growing need for it. As more devices come online, particularly those without screensyour light fixtures, your smoke alarmwe need a way to interact with them that doesnt require buttons, menus, and icons.

When I started using Alexa late last year, I discovered it could tell me the weather, answer basic factual questions, create shopping lists that later appear in text on my smartphone, play music on commandnothing too transcendent. But Alexa quickly grew smarter and better. It got familiar with my voice, learned funnier jokes, and started being able to run multiple timers simultaneously (which is pretty handy when your cooking gets a little ambitious). In just the seven months between its initial beta launch and its public release in 2015, Alexa went from cute but infuriating to genuinely, consistently useful. I got to know it, and it got to know me.

This gets at a deeper truth about conversational tech: You only discover its capabilities in the course of a personal relationship with it. The big players in the industry all realize this and are trying to give their assistants the right balance of personality, charm, and respectful distanceto make them, in short, likable. In developing Cortana, for instance, Microsoft brought in the videogame studio behind Halowhich inspired the name Cortana in the first placeto turn a disembodied voice into a kind of character. That wittiness and that toughness come through, says Mike Calcagno, director of Cortanas engineering team. And they seem to have had the desired effect: Even in its early days, when Cortana was unreliable, unhelpful, and dumb, people got attached to it.

Theres a strategic reason for this charm offensive. In their research, Microsoft, Nuance, and others have all come to the same conclusion: A great conversational agent is only fully useful when its everywhere, when it can get to know you in multiple contextslearning your habits, your likes and dislikes, your routine and schedule. The way to get there is to have your AI colonize as many apps and devices as possible.

To that end, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nuance, and SoundHound are all offering their conversational platform technology to developers everywhere. The companies know that you are liable to stick with the conversational agent that knows you best. So get ready to meet some new disembodied voices. Once you pick one, you might never break up.

David Pierce (@piercedavid) is a senior writer at WIRED.

Read more: http://bit.ly/2jcdA2u

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