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jymwahuwu · 8 months ago

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Content warnings: yandere, angst(?), some descriptions of capitalism, you're locked up

Summary: You are a bakery owner and you and your shop are going to be evicted by the IPC. Unfortunately, Aventurine is the one handling the plans.

Note: I suddenly want to write this very much...sorry, I don't know what I am writing...🥹

According to the calendar of your home planet, you spent all your savings and bought a bakery three years ago.

Once upon a time, you had your own ideals, which were woven into unrealistic dreams in your childhood paintings. When you become an adult, you realize that adults use lies to pile up in school and blow up beautiful bubbles. Those lies are probably the beginning of your idealized misfortune. Your dream goes from unrealistic to another. Under consumerism, you want a property of your own, with one room, a large living room, an open kitchen, and a ceiling where you can sleep while looking at the stars. Approximately 8,000,000 credits. You deposit money into the Cosmic Bank. Staring at the rising numbers in the bank account with tired eyes, health has been replaced by some slowly rising numbers and countless nights.

Then, you collapse. Your ideal transforms into a spaceship for 1,200,000 credits. However, classmates and friends of Universe University in the same year shared on social media that they had gotten married step by step, had children, and had a lovely next generation from the artificial womb. The venue for their proposal was on a romantic planet with endless sea, sky and seagulls. A growing sense of comparison creates unnecessary suffering. Others tell you, go ahead, just like others, work, save money, buy a house, buy a car, get married, have children, bring new blessings to the universe, and believe in an Aeon you like.

Best is Qlipoth. They said. Everyone said so.

That's the Aeon that IPC fervently believes in. They may not necessarily know about the walls and protections made by Qlipoth, but people must know that IPC is a huge company involved in the economy of the entire universe. Their golden bodies symbolize enviable wealth in people's eyes.

But spacecraft are out of reach. You figured this out through a cheap and unpalatable 10-credit lunch and a scolding from your boss. You know you should set a more realistic goal.

Then let’s get a car with 30,000 credits. There are also jewelry for 50,000 credits. I'll go shopping after get off work. you said so.

You walked into the store and bought a car that met your expectations despite the salesperson's inner eye rolls and eager sales. Stroking its shell, eager joy surges into your heart, as if your hard work has been transformed into a visible reward. This is valuable. And jewelry, you buy a necklace that sparkles around your neck.

Your face was hot with excitement. There is value in this, keep it to yourself and it will appreciate in value!

Trembling with excitement, there is endless emptiness behind the joyful smile. Cosmic Express is responsible for delivering express delivery to your home. You browse the Internet and buy a list of unnecessary things to fill your misery and pain and stop the bleeding that might come out.

Then one day you quit your job after another scolding, knowing that you are just a cog in the functioning of society. You don't want to live like this anymore, but you don't know how to live without money and without getting married like others. You buy a spaceship ticket and wander off randomly. Romantic, casual and comfortable life. You think idealistically again to cheer yourself up. No matter where you go, you have to start a new life.

You arrive on a new planet, a beautiful and highly developed space society. The dome has a transparent dome woven from Qlipoth that envelopes the entire planet. You have heard that IPC has its headquarters here, but some say it is just one of its branches. Regardless, they obsessively imitated the architecture of Aeon Qlipoth, constructing a towering building with a beautiful transparent glass dome. It is stationed on the planet like a banyan tree, tirelessly absorbing money and energy.

You bought a small, independent bakery on one of the shopping streets, renovated it and prepared it for opening and used up almost all the credit in your bank account. But, you are happy, from the bottom of your heart, practicing your baking recipes and thinking about a bright future. On opening day, you put up a sign with a design on it. And greets all guests warmly. They smell the aroma of bread, follow the traces and step into your store, buying this and that bread and drinks. The aroma of food, warm bread, that is the breath of life.

One month after opening, Aventurine stepped into your bakery. When socializing at work, he accompanied his clients to drink and enjoy haute cuisine, with a charming smile. During lunch, he would choose a coffee shop or an elegant restaurant to sit and browse the stock market and invest. Those tens of millions of money came and went, only in exchange for a smile or a sip of coffee from him. Wonderful afternoon. Beautiful gamble. But that day, he smelled a different aroma of bread, and realized that a new store had opened in the commercial street.

He walked into the store and browsed the golden bread. Aventurine spent 2 minutes choosing toast and croissants, listening to the sound of money arriving on his phone. He glanced at you, who was in uniform and busy. It was inevitable that he thought from a professional and utilitarian perspective, wondering how this narrow store did not meet the requirements of modern business. Decoration, bread production, marketing, and store staffing. It would be foolish to hire just one clerk. Hiring just one more clerk can lead to more revenue. You obviously have your hands full.

He spent 2 minutes in line. When it was Aventurine's turn to pay, you gave him a warm smile, as warm as sunshine. These days, you remember some familiar faces of your customers. You're a little surprised by the new-faced customers arriving at the store.

You greet him and ask if he wants a takeout or just enjoy it in the store.

"Right here, thank you." Aventurine replied.

So Aventurine sat down, right in the bakery. He munched his bread and invested his money, living his daily life. Day after day, weeks and months passed. Occasionally, he pays attention to you. You always do all the work in the store, packing the bread, putting it on the shelves, and doing the cashiering. So one day, He asked out of curiosity. “Isn’t the bakery owner going to hire an extra employee?”

You opened your eyes wide and smiled awkwardly. "I-I'm the owner of this bakery."

Ah, so here's the answer. Aventurine nodded, you may not have more funds, but he accidentally started to invest and play, just like the play he had not completed in childhood. He loved investing, which was like finding a pearl in the ocean, playing Monopoly, playing with his assets. A desire arose spontaneously, satisfying his heart. "Have you considered expanding the store and staff? I see your bakery is very popular. I've witnessed many, but none like this, and swear there's some potential here."

"Really?" You were a little shy in the compliment. He was surprised at your naivety. "Thank you, but I have no plans yet."

"Oh, you're eating Brioche today." You looked down at the bread he selected. "You are a familiar face. Let me give you a discount. It only costs 200 credits."

Aventurine was about to refuse, but heard your question. "If you don't mind, could you tell me what you do for a living?"

He didn't understand the specific reason. Aventurine didn't want to reveal his work in front of you, so he muttered vaguely. "I'm in the gambling business."

"You mean the casino?" You blinked.

"Yeah, yes," he replied.

"That must be hard…" You recalled the casino in the drama, where the gamblers seemed likely to fight. He must have been mediating frequently there. After thinking about it, you gave him extra drinks and bread. “Here’s today’s special offer!”

Aventurine held the drink at a loss, feeling that the cold drink was radiating heat.

On a rainy and windy afternoon, Aventurine won't sit at your outdoor table. He returned to the IPC with the bread and pressed the button for the lift. One of the members of Ten Stonehearts saw him and asked caringly. "I can't see you eating in the office lately. Can you be full just by eating bread?"

"It's okay. I fill up easily." He smiled politely, even though he had eaten some more bread… He didn't refuse your offer.

He finished chewing the bread while scrolling through your bakery’s social media feeds on his phone. You like to update the bakery's social media and have accumulated about a few hundred likes per post. In the photo, you shared a new type of bread, and your passion for life is reflected in your eyebrows and eyes.

The department meeting is just after lunch. The holographic screen fluttered IPC's business plans and developments. IPC announced that one of its small plans was to acquire a new commercial street and all the businesses would have to move out. His eyes reflected the glowing words- your bakery is on that commercial street.

Gradually, that friendly customer who works at the casino becomes too busy to visit your bakery, or he finds a new restaurant. There's something empty inside you, like a piece is missing.

New signs were posted in the neighborhood, and other store owners who often borrowed flour and other supplies from each other knocked on your door and told you that the Interastral Peace Corporation was buying the street and that every store was going to be evicted. This will be the place where a new type of space commercial city will be built. Many companies will settle in and open stores. It will be beautiful and modern, just like other space commercial cities. You'd better discuss a compensation plan with IPC now and strive for better terms.

IPC may compromise, but with other economic systems of the entire planet, not with a small commercial street. They do what they say they will do.

Like a bolt from the blue, you repeatedly confirmed and asked questions. Why does it have to be here? Why? What are their plans? How much will the compensation be? The IPC wants the compensation to be as small as possible, and the shop owners will fight for it, but the court is on their side. So don’t be too tough in your attitude, be more diplomatic, be more worldly, and seek more benefits for you. they said.

Many shop owners have signed up for the compensation plan. You are one of the few shop owners who are too stubborn to embrace the world. Guard this shop like a dragon guarding the last treasure. As the deadline gets closer, you notice more rude customers, the ingredient supplier says they can no longer serve you, and some negative messages and reviews appear to smear you. There are also people in all-black uniforms looking outside your store. That's downright creepy.

But you are not afraid, what you are afraid of is that something will be taken away from you again. Those capitalists are used to taking something from you and then giving you something in compensation. Before it was salary, now it's compensation plans.

Occasionally, you bow to reality and pay attention to some new stores, but those prices cannot be bought with compensation.

One night, before you close the shop, you hear the sound of construction work, destroying the original shops. It's not loud and noisy, it's a new space construction technology, but you're terrified and just want to pack up and go home. You have filed a complaint with the court. Once again, you place your hopes on the ethereal, and then you see a figure appear at the window of the bakery.

Ah, it's that customer. He must be here to support you and buy bread.

You maintained your smile and greeted him, "I haven't seen you recently. Where have you been?"

Aventurine just stared. There was some compassion in his expression, and his features were soft. He knew that the gentlest of measures would not work. “…let me talk to you about the new compensation plan.”

You were stunned for a while. "…What do you mean?"

He hands you a card with neatly printed handwriting and the IPC logo.

“Aventurine, Senior Manager in the IPC Strategic Investment Department”

You held the card and read it for a while before looking up at him. Your throat was dry but tears were streaming down your face. The holographic screen projects a new plan, specially prepared for you stubborn, idealistic people, to provide better compensation.

"…Go away, I don't want to see you!" You paused for half a minute before getting angry and pushing him out of the store. What flows inside is anger at the betrayal, even though you know he doesn't have to support you. Aventurine's arms opened up to embrace you. You were shocked, struggling, and sobbing. "I don't want to see you…you are with them…I have nothing, and you still want to take it away…"

Halted like an emotional kitten, you whimpered, tired from sobbing, sleep overtook you and darkness enveloped you.

You opened your eyes and found yourself in a luxurious room, with stars visible on the ceiling and a soft quilt covering you. Pillow supports your head. You adjusted to the light for a few seconds, frowned, and moved your hands, but the sound of the chain sounded. You looked at the chains on your hands, stunned, shaking and struggling. "What-what's going on?"

"Ah, you're awake." Aventurine opened the door and came in. He touched your forehead, and you realized that the clothes you were wearing had also been changed. They were a set of pajamas. "What happened?" You shook the chain in your hand in confusion. "Someone attacked us last night?" "Um, it's not like that actually."

Aventurine comforted you and shushed you. "You're locked in. Shhh...shhh, don't scream. I know this may be hard to accept at first, but you'll see the benefits."

He explained, to your expression like a frightened little animal. "…For business purposes, I looked into your background. You've been having a hard time, haven't you? Now you finally have time to relax. This is one of my houses, and it's yours, too."

"I didn't ask you..." Tears welled up in your eyes. Are you going to be locked up? "I know." Aventurine stroked your head gently. "I know, now just relax. I'll take care of the bakery. We'll open a new one somewhere with the ocean, you know, new plans."

You noticed that he used the word "we," which made your heart feel strangely warm. You were speechless, closed your eyes, turned around, a tear flowed down your cheek, and the chain creaked.

This is your new reality, but at least you can rest, right?

#aventurine x reader #aventurine x you #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x you #honkai star rail aventurine #hsr aventurine #hsr aventurine x reader #honkai star rail x you

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lackadaisycats · 11 months ago

Note

Hi, I was just wondering if you were aware of this or not.

Although I get it from a money point of view, the 'opt out' thing is still disappointing for me.

I wish it were an 'opt in' thing instead.

Yeah, I'm aware. But it's probably worth it to spread this around so other people here know that there's an 'opt out' option. This isn't something new, by the way. Just about every other major social media platform has already sold / is actively selling your data for AI training and for other purposes. The bigger players are training their own AI models on the data/activity/content of their userbase too. And whatever existent information could be scraped by external parties without the permission or knowledge of you or the platform's parent company has also already been gathered up. So, that this place is on board too is par for the course. Disappointing? Yes. But surprising? Not really. Oh boy, we humans sure are the hot commodity of our time. Hooray. We're the MVPs of capitalism (most valuable products).

Anyway, this is bleak, and I have to go make some cat animations.

#lackadaisy #lackadaisycats

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tieronecrush · 11 months ago

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BNBG (brand new baby girl)

frankie morales x curvy OF/cam girl f!reader

summary: frankie has been needing distractions from a hurdle in his sobriety, so he ventures to his frequented subscription service platform to take his mind off things. he sees the title of your page, intrigued immediately, and dives deep into your content. catching your attention on a livestream with his confident commands, frankie becomes infatuated with you and an avid viewer before he decides to DM you one day...and then ends up with a brand new baby girl.

wc: 11k

rating: E (very)

warnings: daddy kink!! **cover does not depict anything about the reader, simply vibes of softness**, vague descriptions of reader's body (plush, thick, curves, soft, etc. no definite descriptors used otherwise. picture her as you want but she is mid to plus size in my head 🫶), no age specified (only that reader started out of college, no specifications of when she went to school), discussions of addiction & drug use, childless frankie au, sex work, sex livestream, consumption of porn, unestablished relationship, online relationship, pet names (conejita, baby, babygirl, pequeña, bunny, etc.), gratuitous descriptions of frankie's dick, SMUT, male masturbation, female masterbation, sex toys, both frankie & reader have thoughts about the other (unprotected piv, fingering, oral, etc.), major dirty talk, d/s dynamics, some fluff sprinkled in <3, this might be lowkey problematic that frankie uses porn to cope (esp reader's porn) buuuuut hopefully it's hot

a/n: cover design & dividers by me 💋 this is an unhinged daydream of mine, hope y'all enjoy! huge thank you to my besties @kiwisbell and @northernbluess for beta-reading 💓

The time on Frankie’s phone screen turns over to well past midnight. Bedroom pitched black save for the blue light illuminating his face as he scrolls on Instagram, unable to fall asleep from thoughts stirring. He wants to scratch the itch — to pick at the scab that’s been growing in his brain for over a year. Temptation runs hot in his veins. A craving, deep in his gut. A strong inhale or the rub of his fingertip against his gums. It would be fast. And it would only last less than half an hour — he could manage it one more time, he was sober enough for that, wasn’t he? He indulges himself in other aspects now: drinking, food, lax with his once regimented workout routine.

Frankie can hear the voice of his sponsor, the one he listens to speak at his weekly meetings in the musty church hall. Sure, his sponsor’s got valuable advice for him, having been sober for decades now, but he can’t relate to Frankie. Not really. He doesn’t know the level of temptation he’s consistently faced with, doesn’t know the fucked up shit he’s seen that got him into the substance in the first place.

His sponsor tells him to get into meditation. That it helps him turn his brain off when he has a craving, redirecting the energy into himself and crushing the aching want for it. Or some spiritual bullshit that Frankie doesn’t understand.

And besides, he’s found his own means of meditation.

Exiting the social media app, he opens his browser and types in the website. The light of the phone illuminates his face enough for his saved login to work, bringing him into his plane of piety. Where he escapes at least three times a week, late nights like now and the occasional mid-afternoon or morning on his desperate days off. When the urge is too strong. When he’s formulating a plan of how to get his hands on a tiny baggie, he loses himself — distracts his brain here.

Scrolling through his usual subscriptions, nothing seems to be hitting the spot. One hand grips his phone, thumb gliding along the screen, while the other cups his hard-on through his boxers, palming himself as he searches for something to get off to.

That’s when he sees it — the perfect combination of words that draws him in by the title. Clicking the page, he’s quick to pledge his monthly amount, eager to get access to all that lies beyond the paywall. And what he’s greeted with, pulls a sigh from his lips in the quiet room, his large hand squeezing his cock through the thin fabric elasticated around his waist.

“Fuck…” he mumbles to himself when he sees that there’s a live stream happening. A cosmic intervention for him, he thinks, a sign that he’s meant to satiate his vices with this.

With you.

The screen changes to a vertical view of you in front of the camera, iPhone seemingly propped up against something while you sit on your mattress. It’s so…delicate and soft. Those are the words he can think of to describe the backdrop that he takes in quickly. Billowing white comforter on your bed, pillows surrounding you. The first thought he has is that it looks like a bed he could easily sleep in — much more inviting than his. There are touches of blush pink, sky blue, and more. A complete rainbow of desaturated colors.

It all compliments you. Centered in the frame, the next sound you make drags his eyes back to your form as you move around. Another squeeze to his cock draws a longer sigh from his lips as he combs across the view of your body, scantily clad in a thong and a bra covered in cherries. The cups of the bra push up the weight of your breasts, spilling over the edge. His tongue runs across his lips to wet them, a new craving ravaging his mouth as he wonders what you would taste like with the skin of your tits dampened by his saliva.

The rest of your body is as softly lined and curving as your chest, waist swooping into your hips as you sit on your knees in front of the camera. Thick thighs spread with the press of your calves into the back of them, the inside of them meeting at the apex and providing cover for what he so badly wants to be shown. There’s a line of your stomach above the waist of your panties, supple skin glistening. Delicious, is all he can think to himself. You look so fucking delicious that it floods his mouth with saliva, enough that he feels the overwhelming need to push his boxers down, freeing his hard cock to rest against his stomach until he’s spitting into his palm and starting a slow, languid pace.

The grain of his palm drags against the length of his cock as he keeps a steady flick of his wrist. Not too fast, but not achingly slow. Enough to start stoking the burning coals in the pit of his stomach as he watches you on the small rectangular screen. Puffs of hot air leave his mouth, his jaw hanging open while he watches you shift to reach for something out of frame, the first look at your ass gifted to him. Rounded swell of curves with the fabric of your thong dipping between them. The slight jiggle of your cheeks makes Frankie moan quietly, taking the briefest moment to picture that same ripple in your skin from him fucking you from behind.

“Shit…” he grumbles under his breath, minorly increasing the pressure of his grip to squeeze his cock as his hand moves, desperate to mimic the feeling of someone — apparently you, despite not knowing anything close to your name.

Skin on skin catches on the base of his dick and he exhales sharply with his teeth bared, opening his palm to spit once again. It’s not enough, but he continues the slide of his wrist as he sets his phone down on the mattress briefly, reaching over to his nightstand, pausing once again to dispense a pump of lotion into the palm of his right hand. Wrapping the moistened hand around his cock again, he starts a faster pace before slowing down to drag out his pleasure longer.

Returning into the frame fully, he sees your face for the first time and coughs as his open-mouthed inhale seizes in his throat. His fingers circle the base of his cock, squeezing hard as he takes in your face. Perfectly primped with a layer of makeup, but he can tell you’ve got the kind of beauty that wouldn’t ever need changing or enhancing — effortless. Velvety skin, as silky as the rest of your body but with an added glow. Bright eyes that are shining with mischief and want, and a smirk that’s as playful; he finds himself shutting his eyes again, for a few lazy strokes as he pictures that face, and your plush, pliable body, on your knees in front of him. Eagerly awaiting his cock to fill your mouth.

Fuck, you’re really doing a number on him tonight. He needed this. His desperation for a high of any kind coats his open mouth with each labored breath.

Focused back on his phone, you show off the treasure that you dug for off-camera. A lilac vibrator, one that fits the length of your hand, with a swell of size rounded off at the tip and tapered in at the end. Leaning closer to your camera, Frankie groans when your tits bounce, spilling out of your bra with a tiny nip slip that he catches immediately. And it only makes him want to see more.

“Mm, c’mon, pretty girl, show me something here. M’fuckin’ dying…Necesito la distracción (I need the distraction),” Frankie speaks toward the screen, feeling pathetic as he barters with you in the one-way system.

As if you heard his pleas, you adjust your position, laying back on the mountain of pillows to prop yourself up and letting one leg fall open. Even in the lowered lighting of the room you’re in, presumably your bedroom, he can make out the wet patch covering your folds. He finds himself wondering if the act of getting off in front of a camera, in front of people watching live, is what gets you wet. Or if you have a fluffer like he’s heard they do in porn.

He’d wanna be your fluffer.

Or maybe he’d want to be the one to fuck you in the porno. At least both of you’d get to finish then.

“Think I need someone who knows better than me to tell me what they wanna see.” Your voice is saccharine, the slight fry in your voice jolts his hips into his hand, mumbles of curses slipping from his lips. “Anybody have any suggestions for me, chat?”

A low hum starts when you press the button of the vibrator in your hand, spreading your knees further to open your core to the view of the camera completely. Your opposite hand to the toy hooks into the crotch of your thong, pulling the small bit of fabric, practically a string with the amount it’s covering.

Frankie’s mouth waters as the speed of his hand picks up, the grip of his fingers not nearly as satisfying as the clench of a pussy, but he’ll make do. He has been for a year; you know what they say, no relationships for the first year sober. That, and he couldn’t find anyone that could take his mind off of coke long enough for him to get it up. So eventually he just let it be.

Now, though, he’s painfully hard. The quick movements of his hand send a shock of pleasure up to his brain, veins contracting with the extra effort to keep the blood supply to his cock. Thumb brushes over his tip, mixing in his precum with the other lubrication, a hiss from behind his teeth shot out from the stimulation. His gaze is glued onto his rectangular screen, huffing out deep breaths while you press the vibrator against your clit. There’s a quiver in your thighs that he notices, as if this is your first touch after teasing yourself, or someone else teasing you. Sensitive already.

Biting your lip, your eyes scan the screen as you read aloud, “FiveFingersAtFreddys said ‘Take your bra off please.’ Well, actually he said ‘Take your tits out’ but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, dude, and say that you actually do have good manners.”

He laughs, and it’s a first for him. Laughing at someone’s jokes as he jerks off, alone.

You comply with the request, taking the vibrator away from your clit to reach around and unclasp your bra. Tossing the material aside, you lean back into the pillows again and the next sight nearly makes Frankie come right then and there until he takes his hand away completely. Laid out, legs open and fingers pulling your panties aside, vibrator pushing into your clit and driving a high-pitched moan from your lips. All while you're bare from the waist up, cushioned torso melting into your heavy tits, pert nipples bringing them to a point. The form of a Greek classics statue, one with fleshy outlines carved impeccably from marble.

“La obra maestra (A masterpiece)…” Frankie whispers to himself, the squelch of his lotioned hand working his hard length bringing him back into his body, a moan slipping from his mouth.

“I think I need someone else to tell me how I should play with myself. M’so wet, jus’ wanna touch myself but I don’t know where to start. All seems like—like it’s going to feel so good,” you stutter out when your hips buck against the vibrator, a whimper echoing from your chest as you turn your attention to the chat again, awaiting intriguing instructions.

Maybe it’s sexual frustration, maybe it’s pathetic. Maybe it’s the intense fucking craving to replace his need for coke high with a need for an orgasm, but for whatever reason chosen, Frankie finds himself clicking on the comment box with his thumb, typing wildly with one finger. He takes a second to read it for spelling errors before he presses send. Too lost in it all now to care.

Your eyes perk up, smirk growing on your face when you read the influx of chat replies. One must have caught your eye because the vibrator is being left to the side again. Fingers hook into the waist of your panties, slowly pulling them off as you read aloud the comment that caught your attention.

“There’s a new name I see here…Maybe we should do what you want, Mr. FlyingFish. Consider it a welcome gift from me to you.” His heart is pounding in his chest, hand gripping tighter and twisting around his dick as he fucks his fist, mumbles of curses spilling out as he listens to you repeat what he desperately typed not a minute prior. It sounds dirtier coming from you, despite his best efforts at politeness, “You said ‘Please show off how many of your little fingers fit into your pretty pussy. Think a pretty girl like you deserves to fuck her fingers…’ Alright, FlyingFish, you’ve got me blushin’ from that request and that is difficult to do, sir. Thank you for calling me a pretty girl. I promise I’m smart, too. I’ll be sure to count ‘em for you.”

One finger slips into your dripping entrance easily, the other hand reaching for the vibrator and replacing it at your clit while your finger starts to fuck shallowly, “One finger…”

Whines of frustration crack over his small speakers before a bigger moan falls from your lips, a second finger slid into you alongside the first, “Oh, fuck…That’s two. Mm, how am I doin’? FlyingFish, d’you think I can get another?”

Frankie’s wrist flicks rapidly now, the direct address to him driving him mad as the sounds of his arm slapping against his stomach and thigh clap in his room and cut into the sounds your pussy is making as you get yourself off. He types as quickly as he can, strings of curses flowing from his mouth as the heat of his desire burns red hot inside of him. He’s so fucking close but he wants to watch you fall apart at the same time. Wants to be the reason you come.

“Oh, shit—you’ve got a mouth, FlyingFish. ‘I’d hope you can take another, otherwise, you couldn’t take my cock.’ Is that a promise, Fish? You saying you got a big dick for me to take?”

You whimper and he’s edging himself, squeezing hard to stay together when you inadvertently use his call sign. The closest thing you have to his name, and all he can think about is you screaming it while he’s fucking you. He wants to tell you it’s a promise only if you follow through, indulging in the fantasy of actually getting to touch you only for a moment. But instead, his attention is completely drawn to a third finger stretching your cunt in full view of the camera, your wanton moans popping in his speakers and driving his forearm to burn with the strain of muscle as he attempts to fist his cock even harder.

“Fuckfuckfuck…Come for me, baby, please fucking come on those fingers,” he begs no one but himself, a blinding white heat licking the entire inside of his body as he balances on the edge. Waiting for you to fall first.

“Oh my god, fuck…” The last word is drawn out, pitching up at the end as your fingers fuck faster, squelching sounds of your wetness flooding his mouth as his brain pleads for a taste of your cunt. “I don’t think—I don’t think I can get a fourth. M’gonna fucking come—ah! Oh, fuck me, Fish…”

You barely whisper his name, or at least what is his name to you, but it’s singlehandedly what punches out his guttural moan, ropes of warm, sticking spend coating his hand as he keeps moving and spilling onto his stomach. It’s prolonged, the tension in his calves relaxing after he spills the most come he has in a while.

Airy, light, a rush of blood back to his head has his whole body tingling with a high. Satiating his cravings from earlier, dissolving the want, the need, for anything of the sort. Instead, it’s replaced with thoughts of you — the image of you laying fucked out on his phone, adding his own touch of imagination when he closes his eyes to see you as you are but covered with his come the same way he is. Normally, this is when the smallest bit of shame crawls up his spine and sits at the nape of his neck, but instead, he melts into warmth. Faced with your smile as you sit up and lean over toward the camera again, laughing to yourself as you end the live.

“Um, if you’re still here, thanks for that FlyingFish. Felt fucking good…And to everyone else, I’ll stream again on Monday night, same time as always. Night, everyone. Have a good weekend.” All he hears before the sound cuts out is your excited giggles, the brightness of your post-orgasm joy stretching a smile across your face. He’s faced with a black screen, staring back at himself in the reflection with the shit-eating, smug grin he has on his face.

Now he’s got plans for Monday night.

Frankie hasn’t been able to get you out of his head. He’s hooked. Images of your sloping curves flash behind his eyes on the days when you’re not available to watch, his hips fucking his fist in bed, the shower, even on his couch with the blinds all open because he was that needy. Thoughts of you replaced his thoughts of the white powder, chasing after the different high he’s gifted by your voice, your body — all through a screen.

He’s caught himself rasping affections as he pictures you, hissed compliments as he comes and imagining what he’d say if you were in front of him. Letting him use your mouth or your cunt. He’s even gotten into a habit of imagining his head between your legs; the hardest he came is the one time he pictured you sitting on his face and all of the pretty sounds you’d make for him. Fuck, cariño, that’s so good. Mm, bonita, you’re such a good girl. Love doin’ what you’re told, don’t you, baby?

The fact that he doesn’t even know your name but is this infatuated isn’t lost on him. He knows he has an addictive personality, but this feels different. Like he was meant to find you for some reason. His sponsor would tell him it’s a call from the universe that this is all part of his ‘journey to sobriety’, but really, he just thinks that you’re fucking hot. And the tiniest part of him thinks you might like him watching too, even though you have no idea who he is.

Each time he watches you live, his thumb taps across the keyboard, responding to your requests and even adding in some encouragement. Virtually having conversations with you, he quickly became a frequent flyer (your joke, not his). You listen to him. Like the sweet girl that you are. Taking his suggestions — his demands when you beg — and showing off for him, a whimpering mess when he’s done with you.

At times, it feels like he’s the only one watching, or at least the only one that matters to you. With the amount of times his username falls from your lips, it’s easy to fall into a bubble of you and him. You’ve picked up the habit of referring to him as ‘Fish’ and it’s driven him mad, the closest thing to his name that he’ll hear you say. You give him material to think back about for days after. I love a man that knows what he wants, Fish. You can boss me around, Fishie. I always know what you tell me to do is gonna feel so fucking good.

All of this over the last few weeks has built up his courage, which is why he finds himself sitting on his couch with your profile open, the sun barely set outside. A random baseball game plays on his TV, but his focus is completely on his phone, writing and deleting a DM to you about ten times.

It has to be right. Friendly, but not stalker-ish. Flirty, but not creepy. Commanding enough to get your attention among what he imagines are countless messages in your inbox.

After another good ten minutes drafting a message, his thumb hovers over the ‘Send’ button for a few seconds. Squeezing his eyes closed, he lowers his finger and hits the button, anxiety washing over him as he opens his eyes to stare at the blue bubble.

No going back now.

Standing at the stove, water boils over the side of the pot while you pour in the uncooked pasta noodles. A few drops hit your skin, mumbles of curses leaving your lips, “Fucking shit!”

You stir the pasta before reaching for the nearest kitchen towel to wipe the once-scalding water off of your hand. A deep sigh exhales, relaxing your shoulders as the ding of a notification draws your attention to your phone lying on the marble countertop next to you.

What you find on your lock screen sends a shock of excitement down your spine, the warmth of anticipation radiating around your body to tingle your fingers and toes.

[Direct Message:] FlyingFish

Quick to swipe up, the device unlocks with a scan of your face and opens a new notification when you click on it with your thumb. Subconsciously, your opposite thumb has ended up between your teeth, biting down on the skin as you hold back an eager grin while you wait for his message to load.

You’ve never had this reaction to a message before, actually, it was usually the opposite. Rolling your eyes, ignoring the men until the last moment. Only responding to keep them enticed and subscribed — all of which keeps more money in your pocket. That’s really why you started this whole thing anyway.

FlyingFish:

Hey

A puff of air exhales through your nose, a chuckle cutting the otherwise silent kitchen. Shaking your head to yourself, you can’t help but smile at your screen. Heartbeat fluttering, you internally kick yourself for having such a reaction to such a simple message. Not even knowing who this person is, you find yourself typing back a response.

Hey there Fish

Guess I never actually asked if I could call you that

You turn back to your task at hand, continuing to cook your dinner and attempting to put out of your mind all of your assumptions about this person messaging you. You’d guess it’s a guy, an educated inference based on the demographics of your audience, but everything else is a complete mystery. The one time he insinuated he had a big dick stuck in your mind, and based on his behavior, you’d like to assume he isn’t lying. An image of a man sticks out to you each time you whimper his nickname, on camera and that handful of times off camera and alone: tall, solid, and strong. Brunette, only because that’s your type. Rough hands and commanding touches. Someone to bend your stubborn will into submission. He’s confident, at least through the chat, and he seems to know what he’s talking about. Each time you see his username pop up, you can feel yourself start to get wetter. Since you started this whole gig, there hasn’t been anyone quite like him. It’s always people asking for more for them — Show us your tits. Say my name. Turn around so we can see your ass.

But with him, it’s the opposite. He asks for more for you, which you guess is what he gets off to, not that you mind. Bet one more finger would feel even better for you, baby. Curl your fingers, cariño. You reaching that special spot? Gotta get deeper for me, baby. Rub slower, drag it out. Promise it’ll be even sweeter at the end.

Always polite but stern in his demands. Never too much, mostly not enough for your taste. He’s built up an appetite in you that you haven’t had before, a desire to please and to be good for him. All of it doesn’t feel like performing when he’s telling you what to do, it feels like he’s there, deep rasp in your ears as you picture thick fingers in place of yours and tight grips on your plush curves. Fingerprint-shaped bruises left behind and sore muscles in your thighs from holding yourself up as he asks you to come for him over and over and over.

A vibration against the hard surface of the countertop refocuses your gaze from a thousand yards away. Turning to grab your cell, you rub your thighs together in hopes of relenting the ache between them from your daydreams. Wet panties get caught in your folds, discomfort only momentary before you lean over the counter and open your legs, reading the mystery man’s response.

You can call me anything you want bonita

But I will tell you that Fish is pretty close to my name

Fish is close to your name?

What is it? Bass? Salmon? Trout?

Funny

Fish is short for Catfish which was my call sign with my Special Ops team

Ahhh a military man. You know I like a man in uniform

Oh really? :)

Don’t wear it anymore but does it still count if I was once a man in uniform?

Hmm

:( please?

I wanna be liked by you

Showing your cards there Fishie

Not trying to play it cool?

Once you get to know me baby you’ll come to find out that me and cool don’t really go together.

I doubt that’s true

So Catfish is your call sign? Who came up with that?

My buddies on my team

Said I couldn’t grow a beard for shit and that it looked like I had whiskers

So Catfish

Well I don’t wanna call you Fish if it’s mean like that :(

What’s your real name? If you wanna tell me

Are you gonna sell my identity and let someone tank my credit score?

Never

It wouldn’t benefit me much if your card gets declined every month

I appreciate the honesty baby haha

My name’s Frankie

I like your name Frankie :)

It’s nearly an hour of messaging back and forth, flirting intermingled with genuine curiosity about the other’s life, history and background. Frankie learns that you were struggling to find a job straight out of university and needed to make rent, so you figured it couldn’t hurt to try out selling content. You detailed briefly the time that you grew your following, telling him about your Instagram too, which he follows in that instant. The notification makes you laugh and you follow him back despite the profile being completely empty of any information besides his name. Not even a profile picture. He learns that you don’t speak much to your parents anymore, that your siblings live across the country so you don’t get to see them much.

He tells you about his family — no siblings, parents that live in another part of the state and refuse to visit him in the city — and his chosen family, the Special Ops guys. Laughter hiccups from your chest when he recalls a few of the better stories from them, telling you about each other them as if he was preparing you to actually meet them. He has that thought, briefly, about all of you out for drinks. How they would probably like you as much as he does; your charm and sincerity would hook them all just as it has for him. Frankie tells you all about his current hobby, fixing up an old, cherry red 1978 Jeep Cherokee. How the only other time he spends online is searching for car parts, watching Youtube as he works on the vehicle in his garage.

You make a cheeky comment that he must be good with his hands before sending another message immediately:

Would you wanna actually talk? Like on Facetime maybe

Frankie stares at the message, blinking slowly as if it will disappear. You’re asking to talk to him? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? I mean, if he knew that was an option he would have asked himself…

He wouldn’t and he knows he wouldn’t based on the way his stomach has dropped to his feet, his hands have gone clammy and his throat tightened. Swallowing hard, he whispers a small pep talk to himself to work up the nerve to say yes. He wants to see you, he always wants to see more of you, but the fact that you’d see him as well…he can’t cope.

Heat trickles across the back of his neck and up his cheeks, thumbs hovering over the keyboard as his brain completely wipes any thought to respond. Dropping his phone into his lap, both of his hands reach up, one grabbing the brim of his cap and lifting it from his head while the other runs through his hair to push it back away from his face. In the corner of his eye, he catches his left knee bouncing. Lips press together in a thin line, rolling the flesh between his teeth before he picks up his phone again and sends a message back to you with just his phone number.

Not even a minute later, his screen lights up with a list of digits strung together in an unfamiliar order. As if it were possible, he felt his stomach drop lower than his feet, deep into the ground below and burrowing away along with his confidence.

Shit, this was a stupid idea. He’s going to make a fool of himself and you’ll lose interest and he’ll have to think about you every day for the rest of his life and wonder what you’re doing, how you’re doing, even what your name is—

Fuck, he’s gonna miss the call.

Frankie decides that it is much more embarrassing to miss the call he just sent his phone number for than to potentially come off as uncool, so his finger swipes to the right to answer. Quickly, he turns off his camera before you notice, opting for the level of anonymity to remain.

“Hi, Frankie…” Your candied voice drips with sweetness around his name. He’s been imagining you saying it, trying to get it right in his mind over the past few weeks, but hearing it now he relishes in the fact that none of them were right. None of them sounded like spun sugar, like it did just now.

You fill the frame from your shoulders up, the same bright smile on your face that he’s seen at the end of each live, after he’s had his fun with you, but looking completely different out of that context. It’s a bit shy, demure in the way you're resting in your bed against your pillows, t-shirt on and fresh-faced. You look beautiful. And it makes him feel a bit silly that you can’t see his reaction.

“Hey, bonita. M’sorry I don’t have my camera on, jus’ nervous. Didn’t want you to hang up right away gettin’ a look at this mug,” he says with self-deprecating laughter at the end, watching as your brows knit together with a pout on your lips.

“You don’t have to apologize, Frankie. M’happy to do whatever you’re comfortable with. Besides, if your voice gives me any indication of your looks, you’d probably be making me way more nervous.” Teeth bite into your bottom lip as you hold in a grin, a hand coming into view to nudge at your nose. He’s seen you do it a few times on live, whenever you’re waiting in anticipation. For him, he’d like to think.

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?” he teases, the smirk playing at his face evident in his flirty tone.

“You jus’ sound…nice.”

“Nice? That’s all? Why would that make you nervous, baby?”

A sigh slips from your lips, rolling your head back as he hears the smallest whine from you. His cock jumps in his sweats, already half hard from the flirty back and forth in your messages.

“God, you’re going to be a problem with all those pet names,” you say exasperated. Frankie laughs at his screen, feeling like an idiot sitting here alone and smiling like a fool. You’re cute when you’re mad.

“You can tell me your name and I can use that instead?” he propositions, licking his lips as he awaits the piece of information he’s been chomping at the bit to have.

“No! I mean, I’ll tell you my name, but…I like the nicknames. Keep them. Please.” Your words scramble out and it makes him grin wider, witnessing you as nervous as he’s feeling. When you give him your name, he repeats it a few times, rolling it around in his mouth, tasting the syllables on his tongue. Delicate, floral, sweet but a slight tang. Smooth as it rolls across his vocal cords, soothing the rising heat he’s feeling with a refreshing chill. Like peaches and cream.

The two of you chat back and forth for a while, pride swelling in his chest when you laugh at his stupid jokes or give him a compliment, despite being none-the-wiser to his looks. He’s quick to make you blush with his comments, telling you how beautiful he thinks you are. And Frankie’s thanking himself for keeping his camera off, because at times during the call, his eyes drift to your chest, blatantly staring at your perked up nipples through the thin fabric of your t-shirt. It grows his hard on, the softness of your breasts bouncing around as you restlessly squirm during the call enticing him to picture getting his mouth on them. He’d guess you’d taste the same as your name.

The next time you move, he watches your chest again before a sight in the background catches his eye, drawing a chuckle from his mouth. A stuffed bunny lays next to you in your bed, messy with age and love. A soft pink color with a red ribbon tied around its neck, he finds the need to ask about it prodding in his mind.

“Is that who films everything for you?” he jokes, watching your face twist with confusion before looking to your side and bursting out in a laugh. Returning your eyes to the camera, you shake your head timidly.

“No, unfortunately he’s pretty limited to cuddling.”

“He? Didn’t know you had a man in your life, baby. Feels like we shouldn’t be talking like this in front of him.” The sound of your laughter quickens his pulse, the melody trilling in his ears with comfort.

“Well, I guess if you could offer me more than cuddling, he could be demoted.”

“I think I can offer more, Conejita.” Frankie watches as something akin to excitement, but burning brighter, flashes in your eyes. You sit up more, one eyebrow raising in challenge.

“What could you offer me, Frankie?” It’s a loaded question. He could be polite, steer the conversation away from where he so desperately wants it to go, to be a gentleman. It would be easy to make a joke, to get you both to move on.

But he always wants to see where this could go. You’re the one who wanted to talk on the phone in the first place. And he would never suggest anything to make you uncomfortable, and he thinks that you know that. It’s like what the two of you do in your lives — a conversation, a back and forth that may end up benefitting both of you.

“Depends on what you’re lookin’ for, Conejita. I’m a man of many talents.” The words are slick on his tongue, silvery with enticement.

“Hm…” you ponder out loud, tapping your index finger against your bottom lip before turning back to the camera, “Can you cook?”

“Decently. Can’t claim I’m a chef, but I feed myself. And m’pretty good at a grill and makin’ some of my mamá’s recipes. Insisted on teaching them to me so they didn’t end with her.”

Grinning warmly, he feels his heartbeat kick up against his chest, thumping hard at the sight of you giving him that look. “That’s so sweet that she taught you. You can teach me, then someone else in the world will know her recipes too.”

Christ, you’re so fucking adorable. He doesn’t know what he wants more in the moment: to keep talking and simply listen to your voice, or to flirt his way into something more.

“She might be a better teacher than me, baby. Would probably be over the moon if you asked to learn since she had to force me a bit,” he laughs along with your quiet giggle, taking a deep breath when you bite down on your bottom lip.

“Are you a good teacher of other things?”

“I’d like to think so. Haven’t I taught you new things already, Conejita?”

There goes his heartbeat when you look away from the camera, smirk lifting your cheekbones as your demeanor goes shy, shrugging your shoulders as you lay back again, shifting to get comfortable.

“You have…And now I’ve learned how sexy your voice is, too. I’ll be picturing everything you type now to be said in your voice.”

Frankie breathes out a chuckle, a heat burning the nap of his neck, trickling down his back. He feels the effects of his blood rushing below his belt, ever-so-slightly lightheaded as he quietly palms his bulge in his sweatpants.

“My voice is sexy?”

“Um, duh. Are you kidding me? You sound all…rugged and raspy and deep. Like you could manhandle me easily,” you admit your thoughts easily, and he sighs quietly at the thought of having you in front of him to throw around his bed and mold you into the positions he dreams of getting you into.

“No tienes ni idea de lo que haría contigo (You've got no idea what I would do with you)...” he mumbles under his breath, hearing a soft whimper from you. One of your arms is slung across your front, pressing your breast into the other and he can take a guess as to what your hand is up to. “You want some help, baby? I bet you’re jus’ feeling so needy, aren’t you? Listening to my voice got you that worked up?”

“Mhmm…I need it, Frankie…” Your voice has the edge of a whine and he exhales slowly as he hears you beg for him. Not his call sign or a username. His name. Him. There’s no one else who’s making you feel this way, no one else striving for attention.

He pushes his pants down, pulling his hard cock out to start slowly stroking. You’ve left him aching, dripping precum that his fingers smear around his length to lubricate as he moves up and down in a teasing pace.

“Use your manners, Conejita. What d’you say?”

“Please. Please, Frankie. I wanna hear your voice, I want you to tell me what to do.” He hisses from behind his teeth as he squeezes his cock at the base, leaning his head back against his headboard before his focus zeroes in on you on his screen, asking for his guidance, his control to get you off. No one else privy to the sights he’s seeing.

“Good girl. Such a good girl for me, baby. Why don’t you take off your shirt for me? Let me see you, bonita.” Wetting his lips with his tongue when you move to prop your phone up on your mattress, an expert at framing yourself perfectly. The thin, worn fabric of your sleep shirt slips over your head, leaving you on full display for him — already pantyless. Whether you started the call with any on is a mystery to him, but now, he settles back to tell you exactly what he wants from you…what he knows will feel good for his conejita.

“Okay, bunny, lean back for me…That’s it, get comfortable. Good girl.” Looking into your camera to your side, a nervous smile plays at your lips, shyness overcoming you as you wait with bated breath for Frankie, who’s still a mystery to you, to instruct you. It’s driving him mad, how trusting you are of him without ever seeing his face. Such a sweet girl. His sweet girl.

“Show me how you like to play when no one’s watching.”

When his phone dings one evening a few weeks later, Frankie pulls himself out from under the hood of his project car. A familiar fizz bubbles over his body, a Pavlovian response that’s been built over the last few weeks he’s been talking to you. There have been text chains, full of flirty sincerity, and more phone calls, all with his camera off but not all ending like that first one. There have been times when the two of you have had long conversations, full of laughter and learning about the other. A few calls have ended with you falling asleep, stuffed bunny tucked under your chin and pillowy lips parted slightly with deep, even breaths.

Admittedly, he’s grown attached. Maybe a bit much for…whatever this relationship or friendship is, but he can’t help the teenage giddiness he’s felt with every text chime, ringtone, or dial that he’s found you on the other end of.

He’s got a crush.

So immediately at the peal of his cell, he’s reaching for the rag on his workbench, wiping his hands clean of grease before reading over your message.

Conejita:

Hiii 😚

Are you busy?

Grinning like a fool at the gray bubble, Frankie begins to type out a response before abandoning the message and clicking the phone button at the top of your name instead. Pressing the speaker to his ear, he runs a thumb across his bottom lip while he listens to the trill of the dial tone. Steps pace him across the garage, counting them in his head as he waits for an answer.

“Hey, stranger.” The line clicks on and your voice immediately draws a smile across Frankie’s face, hearing one of yours in your upbeat tone.

“Hey, Conejita. What’s up with you?” Even your presence over the phone calms his nerves, sparking kindling low in his gut that spreads down to his toes and up to the back of his neck. Frankie tucks his phone between his ear and shoulder as he wanders back over to the carhood, shutting it carefully. He retreats inside, washing his hands as he listens to you recount your day.

“...So then I got pissed off and left ‘cause she was being so unreasonable. And then I wanted to talk to you ‘cause, I dunno.” The intensity in your cadence slows down toward the tailend of your story of an argument with a friend of yours; Frankie chuckles, biting his tongue while you sigh deeply and he dries his hands off on a kitchen towel.

“You don’t know why you wanted to talk to me? Don’t get all shy on me now, cariño,” he teases you, receiving a frustrated huff on the other end. “Well, for what it’s worth, I agree with you. She sounds like she has a stick up her ass. And m’glad you wanted to call me, Conejita.”

“D’you wanna switch to Facetime?”

“‘Course, I do. Always wanna see your face, jus’ one sec…” Frankie climbs his stairs two at a time, reaching the landing as his screen lights up with the Facetime request from you. He answers it, camera off, while he changes out of dirty clothes and listens to you chatting about plans for the weekend. He mentions going out with the guys tomorrow night, and you make a jest that gets him laughing, both of you bantering back and forth before he settles back on his bed.

“Y’know, I am content to chat with you like this, Frankie. But I keep wondering what you look like…” In the small rectangle of his screen, you lean forward to fill more of it, cleavage exposed in your bralette. He’s been waiting for this to be brought up again, and feeling so much more comfortable with you, he can’t admit he hasn’t thought about it. But with that stronger connection comes the anxieties. What if he isn’t what you pictured? What if he isn’t your type? What if you don’t like him anymore?

Frankie thinks he’s decent looking enough — he hasn’t had much trouble pulling girls since he was a teenager, but not being the most commanding or charismatic in the room, he has had his bouts of struggle in the relationship department.

“Please, Frankie. S’not fair I get to hear your sexy voice and not know what you look like. Pretty please, I’ll give you something special if you do,” you bargain with a pout on your face, bottom lip protruding and puffy. He wants to kiss it away, bite down on the glossy flesh, work away your frowning moue with his own mouth. Wonderings of what you taste like.

Coming back into himself, he wears a proud, intrigued smirk that you’re blind to except for the way his words curl around his slick, silvery tongue, “Oh, is that right, bunny? What if I wanna know what the something special is to decide?”

“Not how it works, silly. Either you want something special or you don’t.” A stern shake of the head, sitting up straight as you raise an eyebrow at him.

He sits with it for a moment, thoughts warring on the inside. In the end, his realistic side barters that either way could end badly: he doesn’t turn the camera on and you get frustrated, ending it, or he does turn the camera on and you don’t like the look of him, ending it. A phantom whisper of your voice, bubbly and bright, reminds him that it could make everything even better, and that ultimately is what convinces him.

“Alright, alright. You make a convincing argument, Conejita.”

A beaming smile stretches across your face as you draw a leg up to your chest, resting your head on your kneecap while you hold back your excitement and anticipation. Frankie takes in the sight of you, astir on tenterhooks.

“Here goes nothing,” he mumbles to himself before his thumb is pressing the camera button, illuminating himself on your screen. He sees himself in the smaller rectangle in the corner, grimacing before he laughs softly and grins, awaiting your reaction with waves of solicitude raging inside.

You see him, your Frankie. Filling your phone screen. Finally.

A nearly inaudible gasp leaves your lips, blocked from the mic by your knee. Studying his face, you witness the lines next to his eyes deepening as he laughs, his shy smile growing on his face. Big brown eyes strike your chest, their sincere softness making you want to fall into their warmth and stay there forever. Like the comforting heat of a mug of coffee on a chilly morning. You note that your visualizations were correct, mostly. Brown hair, curling out from under the cap branded with Standard Oil that sits on his head. Wide set shoulders that extend out of frame, a build to him that screams he most definitely can manhandle you around in bed. His call sign makes a bit more sense to you, seeing patches in his short beard, admiring the one on his left cheek that is shaped like a heart. Simply endearing. The image of him in front of you sends a shock to your core, wet spot in your panties growing as you begin to imagine what the rest of him looks like.

Hot is all you can think. Frankie is fucking hot.

His voice cuts through your trails of admiration, joking around to break the silent tension, “So are you gonna ask me to keep my camera off now?”

As you swallow to recover some of your composure, shaking your head back and forth quickly before a genuinely eager smile paints your expression. Leaning closer to see more of his details, freckles across his neck and where his shirt exposes a sliver of his chest, the peak of his cupid’s bow shaded by his mustache, long eyelashes that reach toward his eyebrows. You drop your knee from in front of you, leaning an elbow on the surface of your desk and resting your shin in your palm.

“Frankie, respectfully, what the fuck? You’re so hot.”

A boisterous laugh rolls from his chest, the same shy smile returning with a blush across his cheeks, “Conejita, you’re the hot one between us.”

“No, no, I’m being serious. You’re like — Damn. Your smile. And you have pretty eyes, Frankie. And you’re just like…really fucking hot. I can’t even think of another word. You should be the one doing what I’m doing.”

“Oh, c’mon, you’re only seeing my face, baby.”

“Yeah, and? It’s a pretty face…Wanna sit on it.” Your giggle cuts through his speakers, and Frankie groans at the comment. Saliva coats your mouth as you watch the muscles in his neck tense, licking your chops like a prowling lion. If only he was in front of you right now…

“Diablita…eres una problema. (Little devil…you’re a problem.) Do I get my special something now?”

Another giggle and a mischievous smirk make Frankie’s brows stitch together in frustration, your shoulders shrugging as you toy with the strap of your bra, hooked under your index finger, “Actually, I think I wanna move the goalpost. Will you show me what I’m missin’, Frankie? I wanna see more.”

Desire burns bright and wild inside of you, ache building between your legs as your arousal drips from your panties and onto your thighs. You’d been picturing him — all of him — for weeks. Ever since that first message. But now, seeing him on your phone screen, your imagination is running wild with newfound information and attempting to fill in the blanks. He has to be big, thickness would be just right. He’s the quiet type, unassuming in his own looks, which means he has to have a virtually perfect dick. It's the rules of the universe. Undecided if he’s cut or not, but regardless, picturing your manicured fingers wrapped around it and tongue licking at his tip. Watching him come undone from you. Stomach tensing, those long fingers that you sneak a peek of when he adjusts his hat wrapped up in your hair. Rasping moans. What would he taste like?

Frankie shakes his head, a quick tsking drawing your attention back to the moment as he looks on with a teasing expression, “Conejita, I don’t think it works like that.”

“Okay, then no special something for you. Your choice, Francisco.”

He watches as you move the strap back up your shoulder, the soft snap of the elastic against your skin. Huffing out a frustrated breath, he mumbles, “No serías tan valiente si estuvieras aquí conmigo, mocosa. (You wouldn’t be so brave if you were here with me, brat.)”

Uncaring in whatever annoyances he was airing with you, you watch him sit up further in the frame, knocking off his cap and reaching for the hem of his shirt. Despite his words, he lifts his shirt over his head, looking back at the camera, bare shoulders and chest on display, “This is what you get for now, bunny.”

Satisfaction glows from your smile, biting hard into your bottom lip while Frankie watches your eyes search everywhere on your screen besides his own. A stern clearing of his throat breaks your trance, a commanding expression on Frankie’s face.

“You promised me something, Conejita.”

A deep pout replaces your grin, huffing in defiance as you slip your bra straps from your shoulders, “Can’t you please take the rest off? Show me what I wanna see, Frankie. Please.”

“Nah uh. Quit demanding, baby. Y’know that’s my job. Now tell me, what are you gonna do for me to get what you want?” His unwavering voice surprises you, despite hearing it for weeks. With the added heat factor of his looks, you crumble a bit quicker, clenching your thighs as you sigh and nod obediently.

“I’ll do anything, Frankie. Jus’ tell me what to do, I wanna make you happy.”

He grins on the screen, sincere softness peeking out, “Oh, baby, y’know it’s easy to make me happy. Jus’ gotta be a good little bunny, yeah?” He hums, licking his lips as he ponders what he wants from you tonight, a night he wants to fill with another milestone for the two of you. He’s only seen you use a small vibrator or your fingers on the phone with you, but he knows what else you have. He’s watched the video of you using it on your profile only about ten times.

“Get your pretty pink toy for me, Conejita. Y’know the one. And then get on the floor and you’re going to show me exactly how you use it.”

There’s rustling as you follow his instructions, stripping bare and suctioning the toy to your hardwood floors, propping the phone up for him to see it all. The hot pink dildo bobbles from you moving around it, glistening with lube that you applied — even though with one glance at your cunt, both you and Frankie know you wouldn’t need it. Straddling over the silicone, you slowly tease your entrance with it, whining before you make one more attempt to Frankie watching you with a smugness in his smirk.

“Please, Frankie, can’t you please show me your cock? I wanna picture it while I fuck myself. Wanna know if it’s how I imagined…Dream about it a lot.” He can read right through your tactics, but his dick can’t. It strains against his zippered jeans, throbbing under the fabric for some sort of relief. He squeezes his palm over it once, exhaling as he shakes his head, strong in his convictions.

“Be a good girl, and I’ll show you what you wanna see.” No more room for negotiations.

“Yes’sir.”

Frankie’s mouth hangs ajar while his focus trains on the apex of your thighs. Watching you slowly sink down, the bright pink rubbery toy disappears inside of you. Whimpers slip from your lips as you brace your hands on your thighs, fingers digging into the plush skin. Need burns brightly in his chest and below his belt, clenching his jaw while he imagines biting the meaty part of you, leaving teeth marks in his wake before settling his mouth at your entrance.

Your hips set a quick pace, desperate for the high you’ve been dripping for since getting on the phone with Frankie. A low growl followed with a disapproving tut clicks over the speakers of your phone.

“Slow down, baby girl. Not a race…” Frankie corrects, and the only response you have is a frantic nod, turning your movements to a drag. The toy fills you up, stretches you the most that you have ever been. Pain heats your feelings of pleasure, intensifying it all in the lightness of your limbs and head. The ridges of the faux veins of the fake cock impress into your walls, the tip of it notching at the spot inside of you that Frankie taught you to reach. It only skates by it, whines accompanying your frustrations.

Frankie, on the other end, listens to the squelch of your pussy around the silicone. The sound drives him to fully cup his erection through his pants, palming himself with heady breaths as your own moans for him drive the iron hot brand of need deeper into his skin. He can see your need for a change, your need to be given permission to chase that feeling that’s within reach.

“Lean back, little bunny. Sit back on your hands and use your hips…Show me more of that pretty pussy,” he instructs, cool and confident while his hips buck up into his hand. Being his perfect girl, you do as he says and change positions, gasping when you sink down onto the toy. Your cunt clenches around it, a satisfied smirk painting Frankie’s face. He knows he’s gotten you to hit that special spot. With the grip your entrance has around the base of the dildo, he wonders if you’ll pop it off of the floor on your next thrust.

“Oh, fuck…Frankie, wish you were here. Tell me—tell me what you’d do to me if you were here,” you beg, your hips still dragging at the new angle.

A groan escapes Frankie at your request, biting down hard on his lip and taking his hand away from his lap to deny himself the temptation.

“You love hearing me say all the dirty things to you, huh Conejita?” Without waiting for an answer, he continues, “If I were there with you, I’d would be—shit—I’d be devouring you right now. Fucking you with my tongue and my fingers, making you squeeze me and getting your come all over my face. Gotta get you ready for me, bunny. After, I’d flip you over. Get your pretty ass up for me, and I’d fuck you senseless. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Turn it all off up there and just let me take care of you…”

Nodding, your hips start to move faster as Frankie speaks to you. He doesn’t have the heart to tease you anymore, letting you start to take what you want for a bit. Your moans pitch up, tits bouncing with your nipples pebbled and the rest of your soft curves twisting as you rock back and forth on the toy.

“Yes, please. I want that,” you mewl, heavy breaths erratic.

“That’s right. My baby deserves it all,” he says with a sigh, his large palm squeezing his hard cock again, slowly unzipping his jeans and slipping his hand into his boxers to grip himself at the base. “I’d fuck you until that pretty little brain of yours was filled up only with thoughts of how good I make you feel. How good you are for me, pretty girl…Look at you go, bouncing on that toy. Rub your clit, Conejita. Slow, at least for right now.”

You follow his orders, supporting yourself on one arm. Slow circles against your clit have you shuddering with pleasure, a twitch of your tummy as you moan. Your eyes flutter shut, face twisting with overwhelming need. Frankie drinks in the sight, indulging himself in a few long strokes of his cock before he hears it.

“Daddy…” you breathe, near a whisper, but it’s audible to him. Lost in yourself, you don’t even notice you’ve let it slip until it comes again, “Oh my god, Daddy.”

The surprise of it shocks your eyes open, stuttering your hips as you narrow in on your screen. Frankie’s eyes grow dark, licking his lips as he holds in a loud moan. His fingers grip the base of his aching cock, holding off at the edge. So close to coming when he heard that word drip from your mouth like melted sugar.

He can tell you’re attempting to gauge his reaction, nervous settling in as you attempt to move on from it and continue fucking yourself closer to finishing. Frankie’s eager to take it in stride, clearing his throat before he gives it right back to you, opening that door that he knows won’t be shut any time soon. At least not by him.

“Yeah, that’s right, baby. Let Daddy tell you what you need, yeah?” He chuckles darkly, satisfaction thumping in his veins while you nod and whimper yes yes yes back to him, “Y’know, if you like that lil’ toy, baby, Daddy’s cock will feel even better. S’bigger than that fucking thing.”

“Oh, fuck, I need to—I need you, Daddy, please!”

“I know, Conejita, I know. Poor little thing jus’ needs Daddy to be filling her up, huh? You wanna know what my cock feels like inside of you, don’t you, pequeña?” He hisses with a buck of his hips into his fist, squeezing his eyes shut for a brief second.

“Yes, yes, please, Daddy! Please,” you choke on a breath and Frankie can see you twitch at your inner thighs from the full-on view of your pussy, your tell-tale sign that you’re about to come.

“Y’know the rules, Conejita. Better ask before you come.”

“Please, please may I come?” you moan, rubbing faster circles against your clit and grinding down on your toy.

“Oh, bunny, you can ask nicer than that. May I come…?” he leads, smirking devilishly when you nearly squeal from the way he’s holding you out on the edge. Teetering on the verge of that high that he knows well, he can see your legs faltering with a cramp.

“Please may I come, Daddy?” Your eyes open, heavy-lidded and lips parted with shallow breathing. Frankie gets lost in the sight, wrecked from his direction, his words, a sheen of sweat over your skin and the arousal coating your thighs. A fucking dream.

“Mm, come for Daddy, baby girl—” he’s interrupt as you erupt in a high-pitched moan, mouth wide open as you string together mumblings Oh fuck, Daddy, feels so good. Need you so bad…

“Good girl.”

Frankie hums contently, chuckling as a dopey grin finds your face, blinking through the orgasmic haze. Laying back, you slip the toy out of your pussy, leaving it to wobble in place and spreading your legs around it. One arm comes to rest against your forehead, breasts rising and falling with deep, recovering breaths. He’s blocked of the view that would make this moment even sweeter, licking his lips before he speaks up.

“Lemme see that fucked cunt of yours, bunny. Let Daddy see what belongs to him.” You sit up again, popping the toy off of the floor and laying it to the side to be cleaned later. Frankie hums as you part your legs more, the glittering of your come dripping on your thighs and across your swollen pussy. “Eres un buen oyente, pequeña. (You’re a good listener, little one.)”

“What’s that mean?” you ask, a long exhale punctuating the question.

“You’re a good listener, little one.” Frankie grins when you grow shy, inching your legs together before he tsks again, one hand coming into frame to motion for your lower limbs to part again.

“Y’know, it would look even prettier with my come dripping out of ya, baby.”

“Please.”

“What, Conejita?”

“Don’t tease me anymore…Can’t take it, Daddy.” You lips push out in a pout, subtle but he can catch the change in expression.

“Nah uh, no pouting, bunny. Who said that I was teasing? I’m going to make it happen.”

Sweetness slips from your lips in a giggle, leaning over to pick up your phone and hold him closer to your face.

“So, if I was a good girl, doesn’t that mean I get to see what I asked for before?” Wiggling in eagerness, Frankie feigns ignorance, scratching at his beard as he shrugs, acting as if he didn’t nearly come in his pants multiple times in the last few minutes.

“I dunno, Conejita. What did you ask me for? Gonna have to remind me.”

“Your cock. I wanna see it.” Your pout sneaks back, biting your lip. “May I please see your cock, Daddy?”

“I think I could do that for you, baby. Asking so nicely. Such a good girl for Daddy, yeah?”

“Always.” A giggle bubbles up from your tummy, biting down on your lip as Frankie takes you in, shaking his head in subtle disbelief. How the hell did clicking for one subscription get him here, having Facetime sex with you?

He obliges your original requests, moving to prop his phone up in front of him, stripping down his jeans first. The sight of his bulge waters your mouth, pupils widening in want at the outline of his cock. No tricks of the light, no chance of manipulation like some men in your DMs do. All natural.

And Frankie wasn’t lying. He’s big.

The reveal comes when he tugs his boxers down to his ankles, settling in front of the camera again. His heavy length rests against his lower stomach, precum dripping into his dark happy trail. Your eyes drag over the veins ribbing him, leading down to show off that he’s tastefully groomed. Swallowing saliva, you lick your lips as his large hand wraps around, slow strokes that gently shift the foreskin away from his tip. The end of his cock glistens with pebbles of precum, red and aching. Frankie hisses at the contact, the veins in his neck straining against his skin while he starts to fuck his fist.

“You look so pretty, Daddy,” you compliment sweetly, grinning at him as he laughs quietly back at you.

“Such a sweet little bunny. You think you can take me in your tight little cunt?” A long exhales concaves his chest, quiet moans as his hand picks up pace.

You return his regular favor of talking him through it, detailing how good of a girl you’d be for him, telling him all that he would be allowed to do to you. The sounds Frankie makes has you dripping again, getting his permission to fuck your fingers, both of you driving each other to a peak, your second one taking the breath from your lungs as Frankie comes at the same time. Whimpers escape your mouth as you envy his hand and stomach being covered in his release, biting your tongue and crowding the screen as he shows off how much you made him come.

“Wish I was there to clean you up, Daddy.”

“Right back at you, Conejita.”

A few days later, Frankie calls you after one of your livestreams, grinning like a schoolboy when you answer in only your underwear. You laugh as you set your phone down on the surface of your dressing, his childish smirk turning to a pout as he stares at your white painted ceiling. Calling out to him, you ask for one second while you tug a sweatshirt over your head, shuffling around before grabbing the device and relaxing back on your bed, bunny in your lap.

“Hi, baby,” Frankie coos, one side of his mouth lifting in a smile as he drinks in your cozy, drowsy demeanor. Cuddling with the toy against your chest, you grin back at him, curling up onto your side like a cat.

“Hi, Frankie,” you mumble back, exhaustion heavy in your eyes.

“You sleepy, little bunny?” A slow nod answers his question. “Alright, I won’t keep you up for long then. Just had a question for you.”

The vague proposition piques your interest, your eyes shooting open and the camera being brought closer to your face, “What’s your question?”

Frankie works his lips between his teeth, nerves crackling over his entire body. Realistically, he knows you’ll say yes, but there’s still that chance for rejection in the moment. His left leg bounces against his couch, hand running over his face as he takes a deep breath in, “I was wondering if you’d wanna come visit me here in Florida? If you don’t have time—”

“I would love to come visit, Frankie,” you agree immediately, a sincere smile growing on your face. Frankie mirrors your excitement with a goofy grin, the creases next to his eyes deepening and his dimple cratoring his cheek. “I’ll even book my flight right now, that’s how eager I am.”

Shaking his head furiously, he clicks his tongue in a tut, scolding you playfully, “Hey, hey. No, none of that. I’m not letting my baby pay, I’m the one who asked you to come.”

“But—”

“Nope, no buts. Except yours getting onto a plane and coming to see me,” Frankie laughs at his own joke, earning a playful eye roll as you hold back your own chuckle. “Oh, c’mon, that was funny, Conejita. I can tell you want to laugh.”

The two of you go back and forth while he books your flight on his laptop, showing off the confirmation number once it’s all gone through. Both of you wear shit-eating grins on your faces, sitting in disbelief.

Frankie can’t help the rush of anxiety, unable to tell if it’s solely from his excitement. All he can think about is having you in front of him, in the flesh, in person. No screens between the two of you, no broken signals or shitty wifi interruptions. Hearing your voice without the strain of speakers, getting to touch you, taste you, hear you, feel you all over him. There’s the flash of a vision of you laid out underneath him, making your little sounds that drive him crazy and digging your nails into his back…

“Gonna let Daddy spoil you while you’re down here, baby girl?” Frankie smirks as you stretch sleepily, biting down on your lip.

“You’re flying me out, isn’t that spoiling me enough? Shouldn’t it be my turn to spoil you then?”

“Think you know the answer to that, baby. Having you in front of me is spoiling me enough, I jus’ wanna take care of you.”

The simple statement brings a smile to your face, shyly tucking your face into your pillow. The rest of the call relaxes you back to near sleep, listening as Frankie tells you all about what he’ll take you to do. Your drowsiness catches up with you, drifting off on the phone. Frankie chuckles quietly to himself, sitting with you for a moment silently before he goes to hang up.

“Night, Conejita. Can’t wait to see you.”

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thoughtportal · 4 months ago

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For those living in one of the 22 states where abortion is banned or heavily restricted, the internet can be a lifeline. It has essential information on where and how to access care, links to abortion funds, and guidance on ways to navigate potential legal risks. Activists use the internet to organize and build community, and reproductive healthcare organizations rely on it to provide valuable information and connect with people in need.

But both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are now actively pushing for federal legislation that could cut youth off from these vital healthcare resources and stifle online abortion information for adults and kids alike.

This summer, the U.S. Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill that would grant the federal government and state attorneys general the power to restrict online speech they find objectionable in a misguided and ineffective attempt to protect kids online. A number of organizations have already sounded the alarm on KOSA’s danger to online LGBTQ+ content, but the hazards of the bill don’t stop there.

KOSA puts abortion seekers at risk. It could easily lead to censorship of vital and potentially life-saving information about sexual and reproductive healthcare. And by age-gating the internet, it could result in websites requiring users to submit identification, undermining the ability to remain anonymous while searching for abortion information online.

Abortion Information Censored

As EFF has repeatedly warned, KOSA will stifle online speech. It gives government officials the dangerous and unconstitutional power to decide what types of content can be shared and read online. Under one of its key censorship provisions, KOSA would create what the bill calls a “duty of care.” This provision would require websites, apps, and online platforms to comply with a vague and overbroad mandate to prevent and mitigate “harm to minors” in all their “design features.”

KOSA contains a long list of harms that websites have a duty to protect against, including emotional disturbance, acts that lead to bodily harm, and online harassment, among others. The list of harms is open for interpretation. And many of the harms are so subjective that government officials could claim any number of issues fit the bill.

This opens the door for political weaponization of KOSA—including by anti-abortion officials. KOSA is ambiguous enough to allow officials to easily argue that its mandate includes sexual and reproductive healthcare information. They could, for example, claim that abortion information causes emotional disturbance or death, or could lead to “sexual exploitation and abuse.” This is especially concerning given the anti-abortion movement’s long history of justifying abortion restrictions by claiming that abortions cause mental health issues, including depression and self-harm (despite credible research to the contrary).

As a result, websites could be forced to filter and block such content for minors, despite the fact that minors can get pregnant and are part of the demographic most likely to get their news and information from social media platforms. By blocking this information, KOSA could cut off young people’s access to potentially life-saving sexual and reproductive health resources. So much for protecting kids.

KOSA’s expansive and vague censorship requirements will also affect adults. To avoid liability and the cost and hassle of litigation, websites and platforms are likely to over-censor potentially covered content, even if that content is otherwise legal. This could lead to the removal of important reproductive health information for all internet users, adults included.

A Tool For Anti-Choice Officials

It’s important to remember that KOSA’s “duty of care” provision would be defined and enforced by the presidential administration in charge, including any future administration that is hostile to reproductive rights. The bill grants the Federal Trade Commission, majority-controlled by the President’s party, the power to develop guidelines and to investigate or sue any websites or platforms that don’t comply. It also grants the Executive Branch the power to form a Kids Online Safety Council to further identify “emerging or current risks of harms to minors associated with online platforms.”

Meanwhile, KOSA gives state attorneys general, including those in abortion-restrictive states, the power to sue under its other provisions, many of which intersect with the “duty of care.” As EFF has argued, this gives state officials a back door to target and censor content they don’t like, including abortion information.

It’s also directly foreseeable that anti-abortion officials would use KOSA in this way. One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), has touted KOSA as a way to censor online content on social issues, claiming that children are being “indoctrinated” online. The Heritage Foundation, a politically powerful organization that espouses anti-choice views, also has its eyes on KOSA. It has been lobbying lawmakers to pass the bill and suggesting that a future administration could fill the Kids Online Safety Council with “representatives who share pro-life values.”

This all comes at a time when efforts to censor abortion information online are at a fever pitch. In abortion-restrictive states, officials have already been eagerly attempting to erase abortion from the internet. Lawmakers in both South Carolina and Texas have introduced bills to censor online abortion information, though neither effort has yet to be successful. The National Right to Life Committee has also created a model abortion law aimed at restricting abortion rights in a variety of ways, including digital access to information.

KOSA Hurts Anonymity Online

KOSA will also push large and important parts of the internet behind age gates. In order to determine which users are minors, online services will likely impose age verification systems, which require everyone—both adults and minors—to verify their age by providing identifying information, oftentimes including government-issued ID or other personal records.

This is deeply problematic for maintaining access to reproductive care. Age verification undermines our First Amendment right to remain anonymous online by requiring users to confirm their identity before accessing webpages and information. It would chill users who do not wish to share their identity from accessing or sharing online abortion resources, and put others’ identities at increased risk of exposure.

In a post-Roe United States, in which states are increasingly banning, restricting, and prosecuting abortions, the ability to anonymously seek and share abortion information online is more important than ever. For people living in abortion-restrictive states, searching and sharing abortion information online can put you at risk. There have been multiple instances of law enforcement agencies using digital evidence, including internet history, in abortion-related criminal cases. We’ve also seen an increase in online harassment and doxxing of healthcare professionals, even in more abortion-protective states.

Because of this, many organizations, including EFF, have tried to help people take steps to protect privacy and anonymity online. KOSA would undercut those efforts. While it’s true that our online ecosystem is already rich with private surveillance, age verification adds another layer of mass data collection. Online ID checks require adults to upload data-rich, government-issued identifying documents to either the website or a third-party verifier, creating a potentially lasting record of their visit to the website.

For abortion seekers taking steps to protect their anonymity and avoid this pervasive surveillance, this would make things all the more difficult. Using a public computer or creating anonymous profiles on social networks won’t keep you safe if you have to upload ID to access the information you need.

We Can Still Stop KOSA From Passing

KOSA has not yet passed the House, so there’s still time to stop it. But the Senate vote means that the House could bring it up for a vote at any time, and the House has introduced its own similarly flawed version of KOSA. If we want to protect access to abortion information online, we must organize now to stop KOSA from passing.

#KOSA #stop kosa #privacy #censorship #call to action #collective action #reproductive rights #reproductive health #reproductive freedom #reproductive justice #online privacy #internet #technology

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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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As president of the United States, Donald Trump threatened the federally issued licenses of television broadcast outlets that displeased him. In 2017, after NBC News reported a dispute between the president and his military advisors about the size of the nuclear arsenal, the president launched a series of tweets:

These 2017 tweets did not specifically suggest that he would have the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which issues the airwave licenses, revoke them on his order. Instead, they appear to echo the 1972 tactics of Richard Nixon, who, displeased by coverage from the Washington Post, encouraged a third party to file a challenge at the FCC (which ultimately went nowhere).

In response to the 2017 tweets, the Trump-appointed chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, took a firm stand. “I believe in the First Amendment,” he said. “Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on a particular newscast.”

Now, in 2024, as a presidential candidate, Donald Trump has reasserted that broadcasters who displease him should lose their federal airwave licenses. A September 2023 post on Truth Social accused NBC of “Country Threatening Treason.” He added, “Why should NBC, or any of the other corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE?”

The current Chair of the FCC, Jessica Rosenworcel, responded, “the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy. The FCC does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage.”

However, the ability of future FCCs to stand up to such instructions could be at risk. Candidate Trump has promised, “I will bring the independent regulatory agencies, such as the FCC and the FTC, back under Presidential authority, as the Constitution demands.” While the Constitution never mentions regulatory agencies, bringing the FCC under direct presidential control would surely undercut its independent decision-making.

But a president of the United States already has powers beyond coercing the FCC. These powers could be exercised not only against broadcasters, but also against those who operate the internet.

The “Doomsday Book”

During his presidency, Donald Trump asserted, “When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total.” Whether or not presidential authority is “total,” there does already exist a compendium of presidential powers that have been enacted by Congress for use in extreme circumstances.

Reportedly locked in a White House safe are the secret “Presidential Emergency Action Documents” (PEADs). Colloquially known as the “Doomsday Book,” they are a collection of powers authorized by Congress for the president to use in emergencies. Included in this compendium is Section 706 (codified as 47 USC 606), titled, “War Emergency – Powers of the President,” that is tucked away at the end of the Communications Act of 1934, the statute that created the FCC.

TIME Magazine reports, “When Donald Trump was in the Oval Office, members of the national security staff actively worked to keep him from learning the full extent of these interpretations of presidential authority, concerned he would abuse them.”

Here is what Section 706 authorizes:

(c) Upon proclamation by the President that there exists war or a threat of war, or a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency… the President, if he deems it necessary in the interest of national security or defense, may suspend or amend, for such time as he may see fit, the rules and regulations applicable to any or all stations or devices capable of emitting electromagnetic radiations within the jurisdiction of the United States as prescribed by the Commission, and may cause the closing of any station for radio communication…

The next subsection, using similar “national security” criteria, gives the president authority over the wired networks, such as those that carry telephone and internet service. Section 706(d), in pertinent part, authorizes the president to “suspend or amend the rules and regulations applicable to any or all facilities or stations for wire communication… cause the closing of any facility or station for wire communication… [or] authorize the use or control of any such facility or station… by any department of the Government under such regulations as he may prescribe…”

The terms “war or a threat of war, or a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency” are not defined by the Communications Act. Such declarations of national emergency were, however, a go-to solution when Donald Trump was in office. The effort to restrict travel from majority-Muslim countries was justified on national security grounds. Tariffs were levied on foreign steel and aluminum as a national security threat based on their impact on domestic production. When Congress would not give him the funding he wanted for the Mexican border wall, the president simply used a national emergency declaration to reallocate Defense Department funds to build the wall. Reportedly, he even considered declaring that the use of natural gas for electricity production was a national security risk because the gas pipelines could become terrorist targets.

The power of the Chief

Candidate Trump, in September 2023, posted that NBC and other “corrupt & dishonest media companies” are “a true threat to democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” He declared, “The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country.”

A 2021 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) concluded, “in the American governmental experience, the exercise of emergency powers has been somewhat dependent on the Chief Executive’s view of the presidential office.” When he was Chief Executive, Donald Trump explained how he viewed the office: “I have Article II [of the Constitution], where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

The tools to do whatever the president wants—whether at the FCC or in the Doomsday Book—are at hand. As the CRS report concluded, such decisions are dependent “on the Chief Executive’s view of the presidential office.”

The institution that created these broad powers, the Congress, has an important role as overseer of the authority they have delegated to the executive. Congress constantly holds oversight hearings on the agencies of the executive branch; hearings on the unilateral powers granted to the president are warranted. The threshold question for such hearings should be whether there are sufficient guardrails in place to protect against their abuse, and what such protections should look like. Regardless of who wins the election—Congress should review whether the unilateral powers granted to the president in the 20th century need updating for the 21st century.

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scientia-rex · 7 months ago

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Think I’m about done with tumblr. I don’t know how many aesthetic posts I have queued, so you might see more, but honestly, the thought of being on here makes me anxious and the amount of hours I have spent arguing in my head with people I blocked for being Just So Wrong have made it untenable. It’s interesting, because if I were an influencer—if that was how I aimed to make money—this is when the increased engagement with my content would start to feel like I’d accomplished something. But I’m not an influencer, and this takes mental energy away from things that make me happy instead of angry and sad.

I can live without an audience. Social media will continue to chug along without me, offering some people important things while also amplifying fear and isolation. I’ve found that I can keep myself from opening the app now that I’ve gotten out of the habit, and I’m not acquiring any new fun bullshit from people who are—forgive me—largely a lot younger than me, and whose perspectives are often not valuable given just what wildly different points in life we’re at. I don’t have so much free time that I can afford to spend any of it on Internet randos who want to take out their fear and pain on others or consolidate their sense of self by hostility towards outgroup members. Tumblr makes it very difficult to limit interaction—intentionally, I assume—and this also limits usability for people with larger followings.

I appreciate the friends I made along the way but the way this app works, the flood of dumbass notifications drowns you out, so I’m calling it. I had fun for the last 12 years. I’m done, though.

#was it seanan mcguire reblogging that last post that did it? maybe

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goddessinnerglow · 28 days ago

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Become Your Best Version Before 2025 - Day 27

Hobbies & Passion Projects

Hi Goddesses! After exploring all those personal development tools yesterday, let's talk about something that adds real color to our lives, hobbies and passion projects. You know, those things that make us lose track of time and bring a spark to our eyes when we talk about them.

Have you noticed how some of the happiest people you know have interests outside of their daily responsibilities? There's something magical about having activities in your life that you do simply because they bring you joy.

One of the most beautiful things about hobbies is that they don't need to be productive or perfect. They're just for you, for your joy, for that feeling of losing track of time while doing something you love.

Some ways to reconnect with what lights you up:

Think about what you loved doing as a child

Notice what makes you lose track of time

Pay attention to what YouTube videos or social media content you naturally gravitate toward

Remember activities that make you feel energized rather than drained

Think back to when you were younger, what did you love doing just for fun? Maybe you spent hours drawing, built elaborate LEGO creations, or wrote stories in your notebook. Somewhere along the way, many of us let these joyful activities slip away, telling ourselves we're "too busy" or that they're not "productive enough."

Let's change that! Here's how to rediscover or start a hobby that lights you up:

Start Small and Simple

Try one new activity for 15 minutes this week

Use materials you already have at home

Join a free online community or workshop

Watch tutorial videos for inspiration

Finding Your Passion Project

What topics do you love learning about?

Which activities make you forget to check your phone?

What did you dream of doing "someday"?

What skills would you like to develop just for fun?

Making Time for Fun

Schedule short, regular "play dates" with yourself

Keep supplies easily accessible

Join local groups or online communities

Share your progress (only if you want to!)

Hobbies and passion projects aren't just fun, they're good for you! They can:

Reduce stress and anxiety

Boost creativity

Improve work-life balance

Create opportunities for new connections

Build confidence through skill development

Here's a secret: hobbies don't need to be Instagram-worthy or turn into a side hustle. They're valuable simply because they bring you joy and help you unwind.

Quick action step: Pick one hobby or passion project you'd like to explore. It could be something brand new or an old interest you'd like to revisit. Start with just 15 minutes this week.

What hobby or passion project are you curious about? Let's share ideas and inspire each other! Drop a comment below, I'd love to hear from you.

See you tomorrow for Day 28! Remember, making time for activities that bring you joy isn't selfish, it's essential for becoming your best self.

♡ ☆:.｡ Keep glowing, babes! ♡ ☆:.｡ With love, Goddess Inner Glow.

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sukunasweetheart · 1 year ago

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after learning that sukuna canonly speaks in an elegent and poetic way and uses old japanese terms (that sadly gets lost in translation) i can’t stop thinking of him being a literature or terminology professor😖 like this man would say romantic things to you out of nowhere and you’re like “what?🥴” and he says “what? what’s the big deal🤨”

no bc picture sukuna with glasses and a coffee in one hand, wearing an awfully smart outfit, his passion for jujutsu replaced with passion for literature, a tall mf who has an unapproachable aura in every way possible

his classes are by no means, for the weak. high demand, but high results. meaning, if you successfully endure and manage to grit your teeth through his assignments and harsh, but reasonable critique, you will have attained something very valuable from the experience, because this man expects nothing but the best from students who sit through his classes and want to learn about the art of literature + poetry

so many college students develop a crush on him, despite his difficult personality...

his lovelife is rather stagnant, however. literature professor!sukuna is too careful about who he brings into his life, being mostly uninterested in romance and the turmoil it brings to a person. he isn't fond of the idea that he could be potentially swayed so easily by one singular person. how awful would it be that your entire mood could depend on one individual? he was pretty content with spending the rest of his life as a single man, so be it.

but really, nobody is immune to the nature of falling in love... it can be something that happens at the snap of one's fingers. or it can be gradual, like a slow but firm tug that pulls you in closer towards someone. it can occur almost violently, and you might find yourself thrashing frantically against the net that you've gotten tangled up in. or, it can occur in a way that is as elegant and gentle as how one handles their most beloved books, flipping through each page without leaving as much as a crease behind...

for sukuna, all the boxes can be ticked off. falling in love with you, a fellow professor, was like experiencing all of these at once. the realisation hit like a bolt of lightning, when he caught himself... smiling? when he was reading an email of yours. he had to take off his glasses and pinch the bridge of his nose for that one. there was no way. it happens this quickly?

it's hard to say whether he fell in deep from the start, or if happened more like sinking slowly, helpless, in quicksand. either way, it didn't matter whether he tried to struggle or not, he was only plummeting further.

it only hurt him when he tried to distance himself away. it only hurt him when he tried holding himself back from contacting you. it seemed like everything he did in attempt to quell the thrumming in his heart, only came back to hurt him.

it started off as emails between two professional colleagues. but eventually, it developed into polite follows onto each other's social media accounts. and almost inevitably, personal numbers were then exchanged after much talking in dms. it was very funny, seeing his empty shell of an instagram account, no posts or even a profile picture in place. such clever and well pronounced prose coming from a colourless account.

let's not get into the moment where he first experienced your touch. when handing him a novel, you brushed fingers with him, and sukuna felt a strange tingle that travelled down his spine.

many instances come- where an overwhelming desire to pull you close to him by the waist, grasps him by the throat. the conflicting compulsion and urge to wreck you, but also having the need to treat you like he would a fragile butterfly.

he goes out drinking with you, one evening. already a dangerous move.

in a soft, but a little busy area in maybe a small, cheap restaurant where the two of you are residing. both of you a little tipsy, but not drunk. tipsy enough for lingering gazes. tipsy enough for the little unnoticeable but definitely noticeable touches. tipsy enough to bring out the vulnerability to seep out of yours and his eyes.

you and him, confined in a little cosy and invisible bubble… all and every noise that's made outside of it sounds muffled.

the tilting of your head as you look at him with a flirtatious smile, the reach of your delicate fingers approaching his cheek slowly, but then retracting because you're still unsure, because you're only tipsy.

and he, with his mellow eyes, grabs onto your hand before you can get away. why don't you commit? his searing hot palm clasps over your skin, and it captures you in every way possible.

and you're doing it again. you're batting your eyelashes at him, tempting him into doing something definitively irreversible. now that he's touched you, he can't compel himself to let go. you've done it now. there's nothing he can do to stop this.

your eyes follow as he reaches for his own glasses, still holding onto your hand, grip so firm yet so gentle. sukuna takes them off. carefully places them onto the table. the next order of events should have been so painfully obvious, but it still didn't fail in making your heart pound within your ribcage.

he kisses you so feverishly. he palms your jawline with great tenderness, bringing you in impossibly closer. so enraptured, so infatuated, so sweet. he holds your hand tighter, gliding his large thumb over it.

it brings him an intense amount of joy, touching you like this. it's addicting. and he never wants to let go again. he's a selfish man at heart, already claiming you as his internally, because you enthrall him and induce such pleasure like no one before. oh, how aggravating. but also, simply delightful.

it's time he brought you home. if you've caught someone up in your web, it's only right you take responsibility. will you consume him? or will he do it first?

after this string of events, sukuna is most definitely no longer a single man. having a lover around has its merits, and its disadvantages. but never does the bad outweigh the good, at least when it comes to you.

maybe he'll write an excerpt about you. a little free verse poem. beautifully worded, but incredibly abstract. nobody could guess how it all ties back to you. not even yourself, perhaps. but that's what sukuna intended. he's satisfied with keeping this secret to himself.

you'd think having such a mellow lovelife would also transfer the same softness into his lectures, and assignments. wrong. as a professor, he's still as prickly as ever.

#this didnt meant to be so fucking long bruh but i got carried away oopsiess omg #sukuna x reader #sukuna #jjk x reader #poe answers

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literaryvein-reblogs · 4 days ago

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Some Pop Culture Terms

Brat - someone who is confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant. This new definition celebrates individuality and a carefree attitude, often with a hint of sass and a love for fun. Being labeled “a brat” or “bratty” in this context is more of a compliment, recognizing a person’s ability to challenge norms and express themselves freely without concern for conventional expectations. It is widely used by fans of Charli XCX and similar artists, as well as by individuals who identify with the rebellious, free-spirited attitude it represents.

Clickbait - describes misleading internet content or shocking headline titles that aim to drive traffic to a website. Since 2017, clickbait has been used in tandem with another internet term fake news, as fake news stories are often dressed as clickbait.

Clout chaser - a critical term for a person who is thought to be intent on attaining fame, especially one who tries to do so in ways considered desperate, such as leveraging their proximity to famous people or doing things considered foolish, degrading, or dangerous. It seems to have emerged on social media around 2012.

Compulsion loop - (or core loop) is a cycle of activities that are encouraged to be looped or repeated because of a neurochemical reward (in the form of dopamine) released into your brain. In other words, it’s when you continuously do something because it provides pleasure. Evidence for the phrase compulsion loop dates to the 1990s, though it was applied to technology at least by 2001. If you’ve ever checked your Snapchat, then Twitter, then Instagram, then Snapchat again because, well, it’s been ten minutes and maybe something new came in, then you’ve gotten stuck in a compulsion loop. This happens when you are compelled–often by design–to habitually repeat an activity, especially on the internet or a video game, because it gives you pleasure. And the tech companies know it.

Dream gap - describes a phenomenon where young girls, due to social constructions that women are less capable and valuable than men, are held back from living up to their full potential. It’s notably featured in the Dream Gap Campaign, toymaker Mattel’s efforts to empower young girls.

Grandfluencer - an older influencer, especially one who seems at least old enough to be a grandparent. The popular sense of the word influencer refers to a person who’s known for being influential due to having a large social media following. Though the age of people considered or called grandfluencers varies widely, the term is most often applied to people who are older than 60. It is thought to have been popularized in part by a September 2021 Associated Press article that prominently used the term to discuss the growing trend of older people developing large social media followings.

Mermaid effect - coined by the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, states that, the more time a man spends with a woman, the more he’ll find her sexually attractive–even if he initially finds her unattractive. It’s also sometimes used to refer to a trend in beauty featuring such styles as holographic pastels or mermaid-inspired details. It’s related to a real phenomenon in psychology. The mere-exposure effect says that humans are more likely to develop a preference to familiar things.

Pay it forward - an expression for when the recipient of an act of kindness does something kind for someone else rather than simply accepting or repaying the original good deed.

Pretzel logic - an expression used to describe someone’s “twisted reasoning.” The term spread in the 1980–90s, but it is closely associated with the acclaimed 1974 album and title track Pretzel Logic by rock band Steely Band. The song is, apparently, about reckoning with the passage of time.

Weeping Angel - a type of monster with the capability of sending others back in time by touching them. They are unable to move while being watched by any living creature, including their own kind, and are turned into stone while an observer’s eye is on them. It first appeared in the 2007 Doctor Who episode “Blink.” The episode’s title comes from the advice the Doctor gives: “Don’t blink. Blink and you’re dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. And don’t blink. Good Luck.”

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

#requested #pop culture #writeblr #writing reference #langblr #word list #writing prompt #spilled ink #dark academia #writers on tumblr #literature #linguistics #language #internet #creative writing #writing inspiration #writing ideas #dialogue #writing resources

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 days ago

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Pinkslump linkdump

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

We're less than a month into 2025 and I'm already overwhelmed by my backlog of links! Herewith, then, is my 25th linkdump post, a grab-bag of artful transitions between miscellaneous subjects. Here's the previous 24:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Last week's big tech event was the Supreme Court giving the go-ahead for Congress to ban Tiktok, because somehow the First Amendment allows the US government to shut down a speech forum if they don't like the content of its messages. From now on, only Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk and Tim Cook and the faceless mere centimillionaires running companies like Match.com will be able to directly harvest Americans' most private, sensitive kompromat. The People's Liberation Army will have to build their dossiers on Americans' lives the old fashioned way: by paying unregulated data-brokers who will sell any fact about you to anyone and who know everything about everyone.

After all, the reason the American market matters so much to Tiktok is that America is the only rich, populous country in the world without a federal privacy law. That's why an American is the most valuable user an ad-tech company can acquire. Keep your wealthy Norwegians: sure, they're saturated in oil money and thus fat prizes for ad-targeting, but they're also protected by the GDPR.

If you're an American (or anyone else, for that matter) who wants to use Tiktok without being spied on, Privacysafe has you covered: their Sticktock tool is a private, alternative, web-based front-end for Tiktok, with optional Tor VPN tunnelling:

https://sticktock.com/

As Privacysafe's Sean O'Brien explains, Sticktock is an free/open utility that's dead easy to use. Just change the URL of any Tiktok video from tiktok.com/whatever to sticktock.com/whatever, and you're have a private viewing experience that easily penetrates the Great Firewall of America:

https://bitsontape.com/p/sticktock-share-tiktok-videos

O'Brien – founder of the Yale Privacy Lab – writes that Privacysafe built this because they wanted to help Americans continue to access the great volume of speech on Tiktok, and because they knew that Americans would be using ad-supported, spyware-riddled VPNs to evade the Great Firewall.

Sticktock is a great hack, but it only defends your privacy while you're using Tiktok. For other social media, you'll need to try something else. For example, Mark Zuckerberg is the last person you want to entrust with your data, and always has been. Never forget that as soon as Zuckerberg's Harvard-based nonconsensual fuckability-rating service TheFacebook was up and running, he started offering copies of all his users' data as a flex to his buds:

Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Just ask I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

What? How'd you manage that one?

People just submitted it. I don't know why. They "trust me" Dumb fucks

Don't be a dumb fuck! Lots of people can't manage to leave Meta platforms because they love the people there more than they hate Mark Zuckerberg, and Zuck knows it, which is why he keeps turning the screws on his users. That doesn't mean there's nothing you can do. Over the years, various law enforcement and regulatory agencies have forced Meta to add privacy controls to its services, and though the company has implemented these as a baroque maze of twisty little malicious compliance passages, all alike, it is possible to lock down your data if you try hard enough. My EFF colleague Lena Cohen has a walkthrough of Meta's privacy settings, AKA the world's worst dungeon crawler, which will see you through safely:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/mad-meta-dont-let-them-collect-and-monetize-your-personal-data

If this kind of thing interests you, you can spend a whole weekend learning about it, chilling and partying with some of the most fun-loving, fascinating weirdos in hackerdom this summer. 2600 magazine's semi-annual Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) con – now in its 31st year! – has gone annual, and they're pre-selling tickets at a freakishly low earlybird rate:

https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-hope_16

I keynoted HOPE last year and it was every bit as much fun as I remembered. Sure, DEF CON is amazing, but you can't really call a 40,000-person gathering in the Las Vegas Convention Center "intimate." HOPE is a homebrew, homely, cheap, cheerful and delightfully anarchic hacker con with deep history and great people.

Speaking of weird ancient history, my pal Ada Palmer – sf writer, librettist, singer, and Renaissance historian – blew my mind this week with her article on the tower-cities of medieval proto-Italy during the Guelph-Ghibelline wars (1125-1392):

https://www.exurbe.com/the-lost-towers-of-the-guelph-ghibelline-wars/

Once upon a time, Italian city-states were forested with tall towers, like miniature Manhattans. Rich families built these stone towers as a show of wealth and a source of power, since the stone towers were taller than nearby homes and far less flammable, so the plutes of the day could drop flaming garbage on their neighbors, burn them out, and emerge triumphant. This ended with cities like Florence banning towers above a certain height, forcing their warring oligarchs to decapitate their fortresses down to compliance levels.

The images need to be seen to be believed. Ada's got a new book about this, Inventing the Renaissance, "which shows how the supposed difference between a bad 'Dark Ages' and a Renaissance 'golden age' is 100% propaganda, but fascinating propaganda with a deep history":

https://www.adapalmer.com/publication/inventing-the-renaissance/

Palmer is one of the most fascinating writers, thinkers, performers, and speakers I know. This is the book for every history nerd in your life, and also a magic artifact with the power to transform normies into history nerds.

Speaking of scholars finding nontraditional ways to do technical communication to the general public: this week, 404 Media's Emmanuel Maiberg reported on Zara Dar, an OnlyFans model who's racked up millions of Pornhub views for videos that consist of detailed, accessible, fully clothed explanations of machine learning:

https://www.404media.co/why-this-onlyfans-model-posts-machine-learning-explainers-to-pornhub/

Dar's videos cover a variety of poorly understood, highly salient mathematical subjects, like this introduction to probability theory:

https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=65cfae54411b9

Dar's got a pretty straightforward reason for posting her explainers to Pornhub – it pays about 300% more than Youtube does for the same amount of viewership ($1,000 per million views vs. Youtube's $340 per million). But it comes at a cost. Other platforms like Linkedin have banned her for discussing the economics of posting videos to Pornhub, without explanation or appeal.

The reason Dar's in the news now is that the Supremes didn't merely ban Tiktok this week, they also heard arguments about the red state "age verification" laws, in which Alito asked if looking at Pornhub was analogous to reading Playboy, which was famous for interleaving softcore pornography with hefty, serious reporting and editorials. Can you really look at Pornhub "just for the articles?" Seems like the answer is a resounding yes.

These "age verification" laws are jaw-droppingly reckless. Red state lawmakers – and ALEC, the dark money org that wrote the model legislation they're pushing – envision a system where each person who looks at porn is affirmatively identified as a named adult, and where that identity information is indefinitely retained. The most common way of gating services to adults is to demand a credit-card, which means that these weirdos want to create highly leakable databases of every one of their constituents' sexual kinks, which can be sorted by net worth by would-be blackmailers. Remember, any data you collect will probably leak, and any data you retain will almost certainly leak. Good times ahead.

Of course, it wasn't all gruesome policy malpratice this week. In the final days of the Biden admin, antitrust enforcers from multiple agencies launched a flurry of investigations, cases, judgments, fines and sanctions against companies that prey on the American public. The FTC went after John Deere for its repair monopoly:

https://www.404media.co/ftc-sues-john-deere-over-its-repair-monopoly/

And the FTC sued to end a system of secret noncompetes, where employers illegally collude not to hire each others' workers, something the workers are never told:

https://prospect.org/labor/2025-01-17-building-service-workers-ftc-stops-secret-no-hire-agreements/

That's just for starters. Matt Stoller rounds up the "full Tony Montana" of last-week enforcement actions undertaken by Biden's best appointees, an all-out assault on pharmacy benefit managers (most notably Unitedhealth), junk-fee-charging corporate landlords, Capitol One, Cash App, rent-rigging landlords, Southwest Airlines, anesthesia monopolists, Experian and Equifax, private equity plunderers, lootbox-peddling video game companies, AI companies, Honda finance, politically motivatedd debanking, Google, Elon Musk, Microsoft, Hino Motors, and more:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/out-with-a-bang-enforcers-go-after

This is all amazing, but also frustrating, as it exemplifies what David Dayen rightly calls the "essential incoherence" of Bidenism, a political philosophy that sought "balance" between different Democratic Party factions by delegating enormous power to people with opposing goals, then unleashing them to work at cross-purposes:

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-01-17-essential-incoherence-end-of-biden-presidency/

What to make of a president whose final address warned the American public of an out-of-control oligarchy, but whose final executive order was a giant giveaway to the biggest AI companies – and their oligarch owners?

And what to make of a president who oversaw a genocide in Gaza, fronting for an Israeli regime that made a fool of him at every turn, laughed at his "red lines," and demanded (and received) fresh shipments of arms even as they campaigned for Trump?

This had nothing to do with sound electoral politics. The vast majority of Americans supported a cease-fire in Gaza, and have done virtually since the beginning of the bombings. Harris – who reportedly agreed not to criticize Biden's record as a condition of Biden stepping aside – made it clear that she would ignore voters' horror at the mass killing. Voters responded by staying home in droves: 19 million 2020 Biden voters simply refused to cast a ballot in 2024:

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/kamala-harris-gaza-israel-biden-election-poll

A Yougov poll showed that 29% of the "non-voters" who turned out for Biden in 2020 refused to vote at all in 2024 because of Biden's support for genocide in Gaza. Polling during the campaign made it clear that Harris would improve her electoral chances by promising a cease-fire, but that was a bridge too far, even during an election "where democracy was on the ballot."

America is famously a country where legislators and leaders ignore the policy preferences of voters and give elites everything they want. In that world, not voting – even when "democracy is on the ballot" – makes a lot of sense:

https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained

But Biden did do some popular things that elites hated – fighting corporate power, price-fixing, rent-gouging, and other forms of predatory business conduct. The "compromise" the Biden administration made with its elite backers was to call as little attention as possible to all this stuff. The Biden admin did more on antitrust in four years than all the preceding administrations of the previous forty years, combined. Just last week, the Biden admin did more on antitrust than any presidential administration did in a four-year term. And yet, they barely whispered about it.

This is a great example of what Anat Shenker-Osorio calls "Pizzaburger politics." Imagine half your family wants pizza for dinner and the other half wants burgers, so you make a disgusting pizzaburger that makes them all equally miserable and claim that everyone being mad at you is proof that you've been "fair":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/29/sub-bushel-comms-strategy/#nothing-would-fundamentally-change

Handing billionaires a bunch of voter-enraging gimmes and sucking up to ghouls like Liz Cheney didn't buy the loyalty of America's tower-owning, neighbor-incinerating princelings. They gave millions to Trump, whom they knew would hand them billions in tax breaks and a license to loot the country. Worse, this pizzaburger strategy caused voters to stay home by the millions, convinced that they couldn't trust Biden or Harris.

We're heading into another four years of planet-incinerating, human-rights-destroying, immigrant-pogroming, mass-imprisoning misery. The incoming dictator has promised to throw all kinds of people in prison, so maybe we should learn a little about how America's prolific, crowded, nightmare penitentiaries actually function.

David Skarbek is a political scientist who studies prison gangs. In a fascinating interview with Asterisk, he describes the forces that led to the rise of race-segregated prison gangs, from virtually nonexistent for 100 years to ubiquitous:

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/why-we-have-prison-gangs

It boils down to this: in small prisons, it's possible to enforce a social code among prisoners that maintains order. Each prisoner can keep track of the trustworthiness of others and of the safety risks they pose. But once we started building larger prisons, this system broke down, requiring hierarchical, authoritarian structures – gangs – to keep people in line. Gangs are brutal, but they also keep the peace, regulating financial disputes, contraband trade, and the use of violence.

Skarbek thinks that building more, smaller prisons would eliminate gangs – as would increasing the number of guards, which would give the institution the capacity to step in and fill the regulatory void filled by gangs. He's not saying prison gangs are good, but he's explaining why they emerged and why they have remained.

There is no pleasure quite like reading the work of top-flight scholars explaining their areas of research. That's why I subscribe to the RSS feed for Matthew Green's blog about cryptography. Green is a great explainer who works in fascinating areas.

In his latest post, Green talks about the way that AI interacts with end-to-end encryption. After decades of rising catastrophes, mobile device makers and cloud providers finally standardized on end-to-end encrypted cloud storage, meaning that your data in the cloud is so scrambled that the cloud provider can't even guess about what it is (which means that if the cloud gets breached, none of that data can be read by hackers or sold on the darknet):

https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2025/01/17/lets-talk-about-ai-and-end-to-end-encryption/

This works great for cloud storage, but it poses a serious impediment to cloud computing. You can't offload computationally intensive tasks onto someone else's giant data-center if you scramble your data so thoroughly that it can't be read or understood by the computers there. This is especially salient when we're talking about "AI," which involves a lot of data-processing that exceeds the capacity of your phone or laptop.

This presents a serious privacy risk, because it implies that AI companies are going to abandon the idea of end-to-end cloud encryption. They'll need the capacity to decrypt (and possibly retain) all the data you ask their "AI" services to munge in some way. Green uses this conundrum to discuss Apple's solution to this: a "trusted computing" server environment.

I've been fascinated (and horrified) by Trusted Computing ever since a group of Microsoft engineers came by EFF in 2002 to explain their plans for something called "Next Generation Secure Computing Base" (AKA "Palladium") to us:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The idea was to put a second, secure computer into every device. This "trusted platform module" (or, sometimes, "technical protection measure") would be tamper-evident and tamper-resistant, contain some factory-installed, non-modifiable cryptographic signing keys, and run an extremely limited set of programs. It would observe and record the code your computer ran, from the bootloader to the OS and on up.

Other computers elsewhere in the world could "challenge" your computer to prove that it was running an OS and programs that would behave in certain way (for example, that it would block screenshots of confidential messages). This challenge would include a long random number. Your computer's TPM would combine that number with hashes of all the other elements of your computer's operating environment – it's bootloader, OS, etc – and cryptographically sign that using its signing keys. This is then sent back to the other computer as a "remote attestation" about how your computer is configured.

Notably, it's an attestation that is outside of your own control – you can't override it or falsify it. That TPM in your computer isn't loyal to you, it doesn't take orders from you. It's a snitch that tells other people truthful things about your computer, including things you'd rather it not disclose.

Over the years, variations on this idea and its applications have popped up. TPMs aren't necessarily a second chip anymore – these days, they're more likely to be a "secure enclave" – a rectangle of logic gates on your computer's CPU that is designated as "secure" and subject to more strict testing and scrutiny than the rest of the chip. These secure enclaves are used to prevent you from installing a third-party app store on your games console or phone, and to prevent your car from being serviced by an independent mechanic.

But despite all these anti-user applications, Trusted Computing remains a fascinating subject. For example, you could use Trusted Computing to ask a remote technician to assess whether your phone had been infected with spyware, and the spyware (theoretically) couldn't hide from that helper.

This is how Apple proposes to solve the privacy/AI conundrum. Its remote AI servers are outfitted with their own TPMs, and before your phone sends them your data to be AIed, it can challenge the server to send it an attestation that proves that it is running software that will not leak or retain that data, or use it in any way other than for the task you're asking it to perform.

Apple calls this "Private Cloud Compute" and if it comes into widespread use, it'll be the first time in a quarter century that there is a major pro-user application for Trusted Computing, something the industry has touted as on the horizon since the first days of the second Gulf War.

That said, Green writes that he's "not thrilled" with Apple's privacy solution:

it still centralizes a huge amount of valuable data, and its security relies on Apple getting a bunch of complicated software and hardware security features right, rather than the mathematics of an encryption algorithm.

Nevertheless, this is way better than the approach of Apple's competitors, like Openai/Microsoft, who are just YOLOing it. Green points out that even if this works, it's only one of the many privacy issues raised by AI, notably the use of private information in AI training, which this does nothing for. He also worries that techniques like this will cause lawmakers to insist that "client-side scanning" (where your device runs a program that scans it constantly for illegal content and uploads anything suspicious to the police) can be done in a "privacy-preserving" way. It's not true, but it's easy to see how bad-faith would-be spies could spin, "There is a way to do some AI stuff in a more-private way" to "there are no privacy risks with this other AI stuff."

It's a gnarly issue, and like I say, it's one you can easily spend decades chewing on (or at least, one that I have spent decades chewing on). It's interesting how many of the fundamental tech policy questions have been with us since the start of the internet age. This week, I happened on a viral 1994 post explaining the difference between "the internet" and the promised "information superhighway":

https://www.wired.com/1994/11/q-what-is-the-information-superhighway/

It's not entirely prophetic, but it sure lands some blows that still sting, 30 years later:

It's just like the Internet, except:

* It's a lot more expensive. * You can't post, and there's no killfile. * There's no alt.sex or alt.drugs. * The new rec.humor.funny has a laugh track. * There's a commercial break every 10 minutes. * Everything is formatted to 40 columns for TVs. * The free software costs you US$2 per Mbyte to ftp, more for long distance. * There's a commercial break every 10 minutes.

It's just like cable TV, except:

* It's a lot more expensive. * The picture isn't as good. * There are 500 channels of pay-per-view and home shopping. * You can watch any episode of Gilligan's Island or any Al Gore speech for only $2. * There are no public-access channels. * There's a commercial break every 10 minutes.

It's just like renting videos, except:

* It's a lot more expensive. * There's only 1 percent of the selection. * There's no porn. * There's no pause, fast-forward, or rewind, and it costs you another $3.95 if you want to watch something twice. * There's a commercial break every 10 minutes.

It's just like the telephone, except:

* It's a lot more expensive. * There's no one to talk to. * Every number is a toll call. * There's a commercial break every 10 minutes.

(Image: Jen, CC BY 2.0, cropped)

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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/2025/01/18/ragbag/#reading-pornhub-for-the-articles

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