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goodlucktai · 5 months ago

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9, raph and leo?

dialogue prompts

9. “I know, I know it hurts.”

When Raph was eight years old, the twins decided they needed their own bedrooms and, like with all other things they had ever decided, they made it everyone else’s problem. As a united front, the two of them had the capacity to wear down a squad of Navy Seals in a manner of days, let alone one overtired single father.

The campaign for separate bedrooms turned out to be a long con. Donnie had been denied an evil science laboratory by Splinter multiple times, on the grounds of it being dangerous, and Donnie being seven, and evil being bad. But a room of his own could be whatever he wanted, and he wanted a lab.

It took most of a week for Splinter to discover that the twins were still doubled up in the room that was ostensibly Leo’s while Donnie’s was being used for nefarious purposes, but by then Donnie had installed an electronic lock on the door that he built out of components gutted from old kitchen appliances and was fully ready to die on that hill.

While Pops and Donnie were locked in a contest of wills that would ultimately go in Donnie’s favor (because Splinter’s achilles heel back then—and even now—was that he thought little turtles at their most sulky and unreasonable were just adorable) Raphie had looked at Leo with a confused frown on his face.

“How come you went along with it, Lee? You didn’t even get your own room.”

Leo shrugged, bright gold eyes shining with interest as he watched his twin and his father argue back and forth. He was following it carefully, probably ready to join in if it looked like Donnie was going to lose—more engaged than he ever was playing video games or flipping through comics.

At the time, all Leo said was, “Just wanted to see if I could.”

Raph thought it was because he was a troublemaker, and he maintained that idea up until Mikey—intuitive beyond his years, even as a sweet little six year old—said he figured it was just that Leo’s head went as crazy fast as Donnie’s did, only in ways that didn’t involve breaking and building things.

A full decade later, Raph knows Mikey was right on the money. Looking back, he sees a kid who was wickedly smart and terribly understimulated. Leo didn’t create trouble for the heck of it, he just liked having problems to solve. He wanted conversations and tricks and puzzles, he needed hoops to jump through like dolphins did on TV, or else he’d get cranky and sneaky.

Their world became a much simpler, more peaceful place once Leo got his first phone and discovered an online chess app with a leaderboard.

All this to say, Leo has had a mind for strategy since before he could talk in full sentences. He’s a natural-born leader, and after the failed Krang invasion, he really stepped up and took it seriously. Raph is so proud of him he doesn’t have words big enough to contain the size and shape of it all. It isn’t as hard as he had imagined it would be to let go of the reins and give Leo the room he needs to shine.

Some days are better than others. For the most part, Leo says jump and his brothers don’t even ask how high, they just shoot for the rafters. Their teamwork is cohesive, as solid as it was when they initially realized their ninpo, and Raph thinks he’d feel sorry for the Shredder if that guy showed his face in their town again.

But there are also days like today, when Leo says something that Raph’s big brother meter pings as Leo being silly, stirring shit up for lack of better thing to do, and he doesn’t linger on it past that initial knee-jerk impression.

They’re working with a group of mutants out of Hell’s Kitchen, mutants who are walking the line between vigilantism and outright crime. They’re rough around the edges, but good-natured for the most part. The turtles kept bumping into that other group as they crisscrossed around the city until finally their leader, Old Hob, said, “Why don’t we just get on the same program instead of stepping on each other’s heels?” and a tentative partnership was formed.

It’s been a week since then, and in that time Raph and his brothers have been firmly adopted by the grown-up mutants, who ask pointed questions about what time they went to bed the night before and whether or not they had a decent breakfast and how their online classes are going.

“This must be what having overbearing aunties is like,” Donnie said to April on the phone none-too-quietly, and Sally, feline mutant and aforementioned overbearing auntie, knocked her knuckles on his battleshell reprovingly. But that about summed it up.

There was one spanner in the works, and that was Liam.

——

“Anyone else getting bad vibes from that guy by the way?” Leo says one day.

There’s something performative about it, his usual pomp and charisma with a plastic edge. Mikey tilts his head like a service dog who just caught the scent of a potential medical emergency. Donnie looks up from his phone, eyes keen the way they only are when he and his twin are about to communicate with the telepathy they’ll deny they have.

But Raph is having a bad pain day, and his well of patience for shenanigans is much shallower than it normally is.

“Leon, don’t start,” he says, rubbing the slider’s head playfully to take any sting out of the dismissal. “If I have to put up with any middle child nonsense today I’m gonna scream.”

There’s a beat, his second-youngest brother visibly hesitating on a mental fork in the road. He’s gotten so good about being forthcoming but his first impulse is still to play along, deny, conceal-don’t-feel. He still has this idea in his head of what a good leader is supposed to be, and he’s still willing to whittle parts of himself away that don’t fit that mold.

To his credit, Leo tries again. “I don’t like him,” he says with less certainty.

“You don’t have to be best friends with the guy,” Raph replies. There’s enough warning in his tone that Leo knows to drop it. “Just get along until we go home.”

He works his shoulder, trying to do something about the solid ache it’s become, and Leo’s eyes drop to the mass of scarring there and then flit away. He starts to outline the route their patrol is going to take, reaching into his belt bag for the jar of Tiger Balm he’s taken to carrying with him and handing it over to Raph as he talks.

Raph smiles, the warmth in his chest ballooning up to swallow the impending impatience and annoyance brought out by pain. That warmth stays with him through their whole run, even as Donnie video-calls April and deadpans “POV you’re tailing some guy who didn’t get the memo that armed robbery is cringe as hell,” even as Mikey goes out of his way to jump and tumble off a fire escape in time to give Mondo a high-five as he skates by in the opposite direction, even as Leo progressively gets quieter the closer they get to their two AM check-in at the Mutanimals’ railyard base.

Looking back, Raph can count all the red flags he missed and hates himself a little more for each one. Leo sometimes causes problems for fun, and he likes to see what trouble he can get away with or get himself out of, and he is a downright menace to society when he’s bored—but he’s good. He’s sweet, and charming, and wants to help. He wouldn’t have raised an issue with the other group of mutants, potentially cutting ties with useful allies, unless he had a decent reason to.

And that reason, Raph discovers that night—after information has been exchanged and all that's left is to hang out at the base watching TV and playing table tennis until Splinter inevitably texts to remind his sons of their curfew—is Liam.

He doubles back into the meeting room where he left his phone and sees the goose mutant has put himself between Leo and the only exit, head lowered on a serpentine neck, beak open to show a flash of sharp teeth in a display that Raph’s animal hindbrain reads clearly as threat.

His grip on the doorframe causes it to crack.

“Leo,” he says in a voice he doesn’t recognize.

His little brother’s head jerks up, half-hopeful, half-disbelieving. Later, Raph will hate himself for putting even a sliver of doubt in Leo’s mind, for unknowingly invalidating his feelings. Leo should never be surprised that his big brother showed up for him. He should never have been left to fend for himself in a situation that made him uncomfortable, especially after he found the courage to be upfront about it.

“C’mere,” Raph says, lifting an arm—a little turtle’s cue to tuck themselves safely against Raph’s side.

Whatever his expression is doing, it’s caused dead silence to blanket the room like a foot of packed snow. Liam looks markedly unhappy to see Raphael standing there, but Leo runs to meet him.

A strategist, a faceman, a leader, and barely seventeen years old.

“We were just talking,” Liam says with a lightness that rings as false.

“Next time I find out you and my brother were just talking, I’ll wring your skinny neck,” Raph replies, matching his tone. Liam may be twice Raph’s age, but he’s half Raph’s size, and Raph has gone head-to-head with the Krang general and the Shredder and walked it off each time. Raph is fully prepared, in this moment, to murder this fucking goose.

Leo taps on Raph’s carapace, just as one of his violent inner voices is lifting its head in the back of his brain and considering making an appearance. On Leo’s end, a warning that someone else is coming from down the hall. On Raph’s end, a reminder that his first priority is the one he’s holding.

He turns, keeping Leo beside him, in time to see Hob appear around the corner. The cat mutant stops dead in his tracks, slitted eyes moving from Raph, down to Leo, to the doorway beside them, and back again.

“Problem?”

“We’re going home,” Raph says, a rumble in his voice he wouldn’t know how to temper even if he wanted to. “And we’re not coming back. Don’t call us unless someone’s dying or there’s another alien invasion.”

“Knock on wood,” Leo mumbles near-silently.

Old Hob doesn’t answer right away. It’s impossible to tell what the older mutant is thinking on a good day, outwardly recalcitrant and unfriendly, even though he has never snapped at Mikey’s cheerful rambling or Leo’s wheedling attempts to goad him into yet another chess match or even Donnie’s accidental ninpo-related shortage of every appliance in the Mutanimals’ kitchen. He and Sally and Ray and Herman all go out of their way to make their base comfortable and accessible to the turtles and Mondo and Pete, like it really matters to them that the younger mutants have a safe place tucked away that they can fall back on.

And Raph had appreciated that, up until now. Up until they proved it wasn’t safe, actually. Up until he’d seen a grown man leering meanly at his baby brother, just because he thought he could keep getting away with it.

When Hob does speak, all he says is, “Get home safe, boys.”

Raph shoulders around him, and collects Donnie and Mikey from the main room immediately. Mikey says, “Woah, are you guys okay?” and Donnie shoots a poisonous look behind them, like if he glares hard enough he can see back in time to what happened to put those expressions on Leo and Raph’s faces.

“We’re peachy, Miguelito,” Leo says, disquietingly convincing. “Just had a difference of opinion with our hosts is all.”

“Stay out of Hell’s Kitchen from now on until I say so,” Raph adds sternly.

Raph tells dad about Liam when they get home, because there is no universe where that doesn’t happen, and Leo immediately gets hauled into Splinter’s room for what sounds like a very serious conversation. Raph, Donnie and Mikey cluster shamelessly outside the door to eavesdrop, and some frightened thing in Raph’s heart lets out the breath it’s been holding when Leo says, “Nothing happened, papa, I promise. He was just weird.”

“Let him be weird to my Baby Blue one more time and I will show him exactly why your father was the undisputed Battle Nexus champion,” Splinter says. He cups Leo’s face and rubs his thumb over a striped cheek, as if he’d like to keep his son right there where no one had the capacity to hurt him. “Thank you for telling us. I’m so proud of you. I will actually kill him if he looks at you again.”

Leonardo smiles brightly, daddy’s boy of the family and glutton for attention that he is, those leftover dregs of anxiety in his eyes finally melting away.

“I think we should let dad kill him,” Donnie announces, eyes icy, tone flat.

“Nah,” Mikey says, disingenuously cheerful. “Next time we run into Liam I’m setting him the fuck on fire!”

“Language,” Raph scolds by rote, but his heart isn’t in it.

He can’t get that scene he walked in on back at the railyard out of his head. He can’t help thinking what if something worse had happened because I didn’t listen?

It feels like there’s a ghost in his chest, rattling his heart. He’s haunted by the what if.

——

After dinner, Leo looks at Raph meaningfully and points at the infirmary. Doctor Leo’s orders supersede all others, 100% of the time, so Raphael sighs and surrenders his controller to Mikey’s grabby hands without bothering to make the token argument. He keeps driving Princess Peach off the track anyway.

“Have you been stretching?” Leo says, feeling along Raph’s upper arm, where the muscles are visibly knotted. Even his careful touch hurts—that whole side of his body is tender with pain. Raph can’t help but flinch when his shoulder spasms and Leo hisses. “Shit, sorry, I know, I know it hurts. God, Raphie, you gotta say something before it gets this bad. I’m not afraid to bench you, big guy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Raph says, amused by his little brother’s no-nonsense tone, warmed by the care Leo always takes with his family when they’re sitting in his infirmary and putting their hurts in his hands.

There’s nothing performative about him here. It’s just Leo, stripped of every false layer.

“Let’s try to massage it out,” Leo says, all his attention bent to the task. “Then we’ll apply heat.”

Raph hums, watching him work. His arm radiates pain, and he has to grit his teeth as Leo goes to work on the knots and the ache flares close to unbearable and wanes to a dull throb and then flares again.

“Hey,” Raph says before he can overthink it any more. “What would you have done if I didn’t see you and Liam?”

Leo pauses, but only for a split-second. He’s as good as cornered here, because there’s no way he’ll leave Raph when he’s in pain, and there’s nowhere to hide. Thankfully for Raph’s sanity, he doesn’t try to pretend he doesn’t know what they’re talking about, even if he takes a long moment to finally answer.

“Would’ve made Angie make me a Portal Promise to never be alone with him,” Leo admits. Flushing slightly, he mumbles, “It’s, uh, a thing we do—we both make portals, you know, so—it just means we have to keep that promise no matter what happens or what rules we have to break, and we won’t get in trouble later as long as we’re honest.”

Raph’s heart hurts. His little brothers are so sweet, and people exist in the world who would hurt them, and he has no idea how to reconcile that. He hates that both things could be true at the same time.

“Tello doesn’t need to be encouraged to stay away from people, and I’m pretty sure he can read my mind? But I would’ve told him anyway,” Leo goes on. “I tell him everything. I’d try to word it so he didn’t get angry enough to do something drastic, like, cut the brake lines on Liam’s Toyota Corolla. And I’d have to make it sound like you and I were on the same page, otherwise he’d go to you about it, and you’d—uh, be annoyed that I didn’t drop it, I guess.”

Getting impaled by the Krang hurt less than this, Raph thinks. He feels sick.

“Leo—”

“I know,” Leo says quickly, a little too loud. “I know that I don’t always take stuff seriously. It’s not your fault for thinking—you know. You didn’t do anything wrong, Raphie. I just gotta grow up.”

This kid, who—like the rest of them—has already matured well past his age, well before he should have had to. Who’s terrified of letting his family down, who has so much he thinks he needs to live up to. Any perceived failure weighs on him like the death penalty, and Raph knows he had a hand in that.

He needs to listen. Even when he’s aching and short-tempered. Even when Leo is talking around something that scares him. Maybe especially then.

“Can we make a deal?” Raph says, reaching up to hold Leo’s hands still under one of his own. Leo is staring hard at Raph’s plastron and doesn’t seem willing to lift his eyes for love or money, but he jerks his head in a nod. “Next time I’m not hearing you, and it’s something serious like today was serious, tell me, and I’ll stop.”

Leo’s mouth twists a bit. If it were for anyone else’s sake, he’d get in Raph’s face and make himself heard no problemo, but it’s an entirely different story when it’s his own safety in question. That part of Leo that wants to always rely on his brothers is constantly at war with the part that believes he’s not supposed to need anyone’s help anymore.

It would be impossible for him to plant himself like a tree and refuse to be budged and demand Raph’s attention if he thought for one second that it would make Raph angry at him.

“What if we came up with a code word?” Raph offers, squeezing Leo’s hands. “If I’m being a stubborn punk, you can tell me the code word, and I’ll listen, and I won’t get mad. Even if it turns out to be a mistake or a misunderstanding. Okay?”

He finally gets a peek of gold as Leo dares to make eye contact. He looks embarrassed, like they’ve made a huge deal out of this for no good reason, and hiding inside his shell until everyone promises to pretend like nothing happened is looking more tempting by the second.

But he’s Leo, their fearless leader. He stared down that portal into the prison dimension without flinching. If he can do that, he can do anything.

“What word?” he finally says.

“You pick,” Raph tells him.

A smile creeps onto Leo’s face, picking its way carefully across shaky ground.

“‘Goose’,” he suggests.

"‘Goose’ it is," Raph replies firmly, committing it to memory.

He lifts his good arm and drags his little brother into a solid hug, ignoring the twinge in his back and side. Leonardo scrambles to return the embrace, shoving his face against Raph’s unscarred shoulder and clinging for all he’s worth. Which is a lot. He’s worth so much.

Later, when Raph’s got the electric heating pad on his arm and he and Leo are watching TikTok compilations to pass the time, Mikey comes through the infirmary door at top speed, waving his phone above his head like a maniac.

“Look what Mondo sent me!” he shouts at full volume. “I put it in the group chat!”

The video shared in the Mad Dogz chat shows Liam being kicked out of the railyard, his bags tossed into the road. Sally is going off at him at the top of her lungs, and Hob is standing by with his arms folded like he’s fully ready to let her maul the guy, and the rest of the grown-up mutants are making it pretty clear with their body language that the goose isn’t welcome anymore.

“Dunno what they saw on the security cam, but they effin’ hated it,” Mondo says in the recording, unbothered by the absolute chaos unfolding in front of him. “Good riddance, Liam sucks. Oh, Mikester, Hob wants to know if you guys’ll be back in the Kitchen for Herman’s D&D oneshot on Saturday so he knows how much food to order. He said you should bring your dad around this time—as if we need another boring old man in the group, ugh. Anyway, let me know and I’ll pass it along, dude!”

A weight Raph hadn’t even realized he was still carrying melts off his shoulders. Leo huffs under his breath, a disbelieving little laugh.

“Can we go, Raphie?” Mikey asks with wide eyes. “Don worked so hard on all our character sheets. He even 3D-printed custom figurines.”

“My bard is going to carry this team,” Donnie says loudly from the next room, because he’s never met a private conversation he wouldn’t shamelessly listen in on.

It’s so important to the Mutanimals that their young friends feel safe with them, and here’s proof of that in Mikey’s hands. Raph doesn’t fully understand why they care, but he’s grateful that they do. It didn’t hit him until now how much it hurt to have the railyard taken away—and how relieved he is that they can go back, after all.

He squeezes the arm he still has around Leo’s shoulders, prompting his brother to look up at him.

“What do you say, Fearless?” he says warmly. “Your call.”

Raph’s listening this time.

#rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #hamato raphael #hamato leonardo #a team #my writing #tmnt fic #prompt #magicalspacedragon #this kind of went all over the place but im super out of it tonight unforch :(

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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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Picture this, if you will: hundreds of grey-haired grannies ganging up to face down a group of neo-Nazi skinheads. Some of the skinheads have beer bottles in their hands. The grannies are armed with nothing more than umbrellas and hand-knitted woolly hats. It sounds like a corny sketch for a TV comedy show. But no. It’s election time in Germany’s eastern Länder (federal regions), and the grannies are out on the streets.

There’s no Granny Party. The movement, called in German Omas gegen Rechts (Grannies against the right), has grown into a national and international force since it was founded in 2017 by an Austrian psychotherapist and evangelical priest, Monika Salzer.

It is widely assumed here that apathy and low voter turnout will result in a far-right victory. But election posters showing a cartoon granny with a rainbow flag carry a simple message: “Granny says – go out and vote!” Apart from the rainbow, a symbol of tolerance, sexual liberation and diversity, there is no instruction on how to vote.

In between elections, the Grannies are busy knitting and babysitting. But they also raise funds, for example by baking and selling cakes, to finance the poster campaign and a set of beer mats that make up a pub quiz.

In Leipzig, my new home town, the Grannies have raised enough money to install three new Stumblestones (Stolpersteine). These are little brass plaques inscribed with the names of people whom the Nazis deported and murdered in the 1930s and 40s. The new plaques commemorate the Wesly family – Hermann, a Jewish publisher of music and books, his wife, Berta, and their daughter, Margot. Berta and Hermann were taken to Auschwitz and murdered in the gas chambers. Margot escaped to England – but the British authorities put her in a concentration camp too, as an enemy alien.

A violin and an accordion were played during the installation of the little plaques where the Weslys’ house once stood. The stonemason’s hammer punctuated the music with a slow beat. Then Granny Gisela read out a short account of how the family was persecuted and how we must never forget. Many spectators were in tears. The memorial is on the doorstep of the new building that now stands on the site – a kindergarten. Its head teacher joined the ceremony and promised to find a way of explaining the story to the kids “without scaring them too much”. I remarked that it was a very special moment. Granny Sylvia put me right.

“Sadly, it’s not so special. This brings the number of Stolpersteine in Leipzig to almost 800. There is one on almost every street,” she said, before inviting us all to join her for coffee and cake.

Later she shared a link to the Stolpersteine app in the Google Play store (also on Apple). It’s true – there are hundreds of Stumblestones. Many are not for Jewish victims, but for brave souls like William Zipperer who tried to stop the Nazis and save their neighbours. He was executed in January 1945 for plotting against the state.

As a mark of respect, the Grannies regularly go out to polish the small memorials set into the pavements, to light candles and lay flowers.

There is another side to the movement. They are part of the Antifa, Germany’s radical ultra-left. Not quite as radical as Lina Engel, the antifascist activist who is serving jail time in Dresden for plotting physical attacks on neo-Nazi pubs and meetings. Nor have any Grannies been caught setting fire to building sites where executive homes are replacing the old affordable blocks of flats – a typical Antifa action.

They upload videos to TikTok. And they are taking their campaign out of the city and into villages and suburbs where right wing parties recruit people who feel neglected or “left behind” by the Berlin government.

“Solidarity without borders instead of right wing propaganda,” says the Radical Grannies’ poster, urging supporters to join them in a mass demonstration. These are Grannies who don’t knit.

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ajmakoko · 3 months ago

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Summary of evidence and concerns:

Trump is a Russian asset working for Putin (see book American Kompromat by journalist Craig Unger or Active Measures documentary with Hillary Clinton(1), sources below). Elon and Trump are working together (2). They both have substantial ties to Epstein (3) (4) (5) (6). Trump stole election software in 2020 (7). Similarly, Elon Musk has been in contact with Russia for the last 2 years (8). This includes during the Ukraine War when Russia began using Starlink (9) while it was claimed they got them third party and not from Musk himself; however now appears imo to show Elon is a doublecrosser.

Starlink, Elon's satellite company, was installed in some voting machines across the country (10) and may have interfered with vote tabulation. Voting machines were found to be connected to the internet (11). An independent report on voting machines concluded that tabulation tampering was possible with current voting machines, so hand counts are vital (12). In September, Politico had an investigation finding Russian malware on a state voter registration database (13). Also, there were malicious fake texts from fake DNC organizations, connected to Elon who donated to them, that were fishing voter info (14).

Elon had results of election on an app 4 hours before official counts had it (15), per Joe Rogan podcast in a discussion to Theo Von. Earlier this year, Tana Monogeau, released info that she'd been offered millions of dollars to endorse the Trump campaign and that she knew others had taken the deal (16).

They will release more info admitting their fraud because they are a Russian asset trying to start a civil war here (speculation). They want us to be confused about sources and who to trust and what's real, they want to release the truth to anger us and lies to anger us. Trump has refused to write an ethics statement for transition of power saying he will transition peacefully (17). JD Vance has also told the EU that unless they allow X unfettered access to the EU (to spread propaganda), they will withdraw the US from NATO (18) - which will prompt wars or takeover either way and weakens Germany, who is entering an election since their government couldn't agree on Ukraine budget. A Russian space chief said Elon Musk’s plan to bomb Mars is a cover to put nuclear weapons in space (19).

Also speculation, are reports of widespread ballot rejection, especially for signatures. There are articles claiming already that it is because GenZ does not know cursive (20) - except the signature simply must match your driver's license. It's not a cursive writing test. Avocado toast but with gen z voting fraud. We do not yet have the ballot rejection rates but typically they are around 1% to 1.5% (21).

Crypto is how right wing conservatism got funded here. It's why it took off- it was basically UBI for those men, funded by foreign intelligence for this purpose along with other uses for crypto like dark money, drugs, trafficking, etc (22)(23). The least informed people we knew were investing in crypto when it was starting, mining bitcoins. They couldn't tell you what a stock or tariff is, yet they were making bank in crypto trading. Crypto trading, especially memecoins, appears to be an obvious scam to most because it's the stock market without ownership. So why were these 4chan pedophiles and nazis doing so well? Because it was just meant to give them money the whole time. And crypto is great for transferring money internationally from shady organizations to shady people (24). Far right catchphrases and meme campaigns dispersed online including X, give out the key words/catchphrases for the new coin that isn't a scam and will disperse money. People who are deep in these groups interner algorithms get these keywords first and normal outsiders will either not notice or will stay away. No normal person wants a coin that references Hitler if they are just scrolling memecoins.

Once the government has been taken over, they can force their memecoin as the national currency and then rug pull, which is also what Musk is likely going to do to Tesla at the same time. The entire point is to bankrupt America for Putin and his cartoon villain cohorts. Musk is already saying he wants to withdraw from US currency due to national debt (Trump added most of the national debt) (25).

If you're in Germany, take note. They are coming for you next, your election is soon.

News Links

(1) https://youtu.be/5umiMThrlsA?si=mwgr4U2c2jleJEBj

(2) https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/elon-musk-weighing-trump-staffing-decisions-sources/story?id=115730434

(3) https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/trump-infiltrate-voting-machines-georgia-2020.html

(4) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-interview.html

(5) https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-girlfriend-dated-kimbal-musk-brother-of-tesla-founder-elon-musk-2020-1

(6) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fire-and-fury-the-podcast/id1750757108

(7) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/trump-jeffrey-epstein-tapes

(8) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-to-know-about-elon-musks-reported-phone-calls-with-putin-and-why-it-matters

(9) https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-using-thousands-spacex-starlink-terminals-ukraine-wsj-says-2024-02-15/

(10) https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnewsvideo/comments/1gnxqmw/elon_musks_company_starlink_praised_by_tulare/

(11) www.nbcnews.com/news/ncna1112436

(12) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/inside-georgias-effort-to-secure-voting-machines-as-experts-raise-concerns

(13) https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/01/us-election-software-national-security-threats-00176615

(14) https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/10/pro-trump-dark-money-network-tied-to-elon-musk-behind-fake-pro-harris-campaign-scheme/

(15) https://grabien.com/story.php?id=499986

(16) https://www.buzzfeed.com/natashajokic1/tana-mongeau-paid-political-endorsement

(17) https://apnews.com/article/trump-transition-planning-ca3a6be50d147b04b6498184e5599b1e

(18) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jd-vance-elon-musk-x-twitter-donald-trump-b2614525.html

(19) https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/499968-russian-space-chief-elon-musks-plan-to-bomb-mars-is-a-cover-to-put/

(20) https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-voters-struggle-signatures-cast-mail-ballot-problems-2024-11

(21) https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2024:_Analysis_of_rejected_ballots

(22) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/far-right-extremists-raise-millions-cryptocurrency-bitcoin/

(23) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/opinion/crypto-cryptocurrency-money-conspiracy.html

(24) https://apnews.com/article/cryptocurrency-coronavirus-pandemic-technology-business-europe-f7f754fc2c68b0eb0d712239323f26c3

(25) https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/11/10/its-unsustainable-tesla-ceo-elon-musk-issues-us-serious-bankruptcy-warning-amid-huge-bitcoin-and-dogecoin-price-surge/

Personal Testimony from the dickbags themselves:

youtube.com/live/HBPNfAUPz08?si=PZQa_D_wbN9VoA6y

In the first minute:

"Your votes are rigged. We can win New Mexico."

"If you can watch your vote counter, if we can bring God down from heaven (he's referencing Starlink), we can win this, win California, win a lot of states."

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/if-trump-loses-im-fcked-elon-musk-in-interview-with-tucker-carlson/articleshow/114024254.cms

“If [Trump] loses, I’m f*cked… How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”

Why does Elon think he would go to prison though? For what crime?

youtu.be/Zmc0EN8XAY8?si=5u_mJNte37r4JmUb

Trump:"Our little secret is having a big impact"

If Trump was so sure the election was rigged and they were going to turnover every state including California, then why hasn't he asked for a recount in all the states with representatives that didn't get elected that he thought would be? Shouldn't he be suing for recounts? He did it last time. Why doesn't he want an investigation this time?

#AssetForfeitureTrumpMusk

If they get locked into years of asset forfeiture from layers and layers of state and municipal claims and lawsuits (which will require discovery lol), we may be able to stop them. Which is likely part of why they are moving to bitcoin as well.

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feng-shui71 · 2 months ago

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resident evil oc headcanons because they’ve been rotting in my notes app for the past week and I need somewhere to dump it:

Jordan Manalang:

• Is the older twin by around 10 minutes, Jordan holds this over Jaiden’s head a ton. I like to think they’re both really mischievous and cause a ton of trouble at RPD with the Chris, Joseph and Forest troupe, they’re often spotted arguing or making fun of eachother.

• Insert that one Boondocks clip of Huey getting Riley to say that he’s gay. Jordan is Huey coded and Jaiden is Riley coded.

• Very superstitious and just loves anything related to the morbid or the macabre.

• I like to think Jordan’s natural hair is more curly like Jaiden’s. Unfortunately she straightens her hair every day, it’s just easier for her. Wesker hates this and likes playing with her waves.

• Loves music a ton and can play guitar, I like to think her and Wesker sing a lot together in their spare time, only she’ll ever be able to hear that from him, his singing voice is very similar to Frank Sinatra’s. Junior knows how to play guitar because of her and she hogs the mic during karaoke. I like to think she can dance too.

• I headcanon her voice to be akin to the likes of Uma Thurman, very raspy and sultry, you can hear the maturity in her voice.

• I forgot to put this in the Jordsker headcanon post, but I think another one of their pasttimes would be stargazing. Jordan points out the constellations she thinks are pretty while Wesker goes on a huge ramble about whichever myth or story corresponds to said constellation. Her freckles remind him of the stars.

• Practicing Christian, prays before every case that Alpha Team is sent out to investigate.

• I’m still on the fence of her whereabouts during Re2-3 but for now I think she moved out of Raccoon City after the Arklay Incident and after her recovery. I think she cleaned out whatever was in Wesker’s desk at the S.T.A.R.S. office and cussed Irons out before taking her leave. Wesker was no longer there with them and I think after S.T.A.R.S. disband she had no more incentive to stay, it would’ve made her grieving process harder anyway.

• I think I brought it up once or twice in my past artworks but Jordan was shot by Wesker while inside of the mansion, she was getting in the way. She has a metal plate installed near her right temple as a result and experiences chronic headaches.

• Besides Jackie, Chris and Barry are Jordan’s best friends at S.T.A.R.S. Wesker hates this and does not like how close she is with Chris, subtly tries to control her by making remarks about him in an attempt to make her see Chris in a different light.

• I think she’s close with Jill and Rebecca too as a trio, women in male-dominated fields stick together. However unlike the latter friendships Jordan sees Rebecca as her third kid whereas she sees Jill as a bad ass little sister who needs to get smacked sometimes.

• Campaign wise during Re1 I think she’d be with Wesker obviously but spend most of her time alone in the mansion since he’s off “investigating”, nothing suspicious here.

• MBTI is ENTP

Jaiden Manalang:

• Very much a playboy and is every woman’s nightmare. Is very superficial and takes care of himself a ton, he’s very keen on self-discipline and plans his day accordingly, including things such as a very strict workout regiment or a 12 step skin-care routine. He has no issue getting dates with women, however his behaviour is what drives them away, Jaiden is by no means a bad guy, he’s very loving and sweet however he is an extremely clingy and jealous person, this attitude causing many girls to take their leave. He longs for a relationship and a family for himself and is somewhat envious of his sister’s “success” with her relationship. Filipino men are EVIL.

• Speaking of women, Jaiden has been trying to chase Jill ever since they met and so far has been extremely unsuccessful, he also flirts with the RPD Secretary. Human Resources hates him.

• Prior to the Arklay Incident, I think Jaiden tried to form a brotherly bond with Wesker, the two having more of a love/hate relationship. He thought Wesker was a good fit for Jordan, he was rich, treated Jordan well and was overall a gentleman. I think initially Wesker put up with him for the sake of Jordan but then started to grow fond of the man, you’ll never get this out of him though. Matter of fact, you won’t get either of them to acknowledge their mutual respect for each other. On more boring days at the S.T.A.R.S. office, you can spot the two throwing a football back and forth in the RPD parking lot. After Arklay, Jaiden absolutely hates his guts and shittalks Wesker at any opportunity.

• Toronto-man accent. Will not elaborate I’m just projecting onto him.

• I am horrible at drawing it but Jaiden’s hair is on the curly side, parts of his hair range from 2a to 2c.

• Like Jordan, Jaiden sees Rebecca as his child and assumes the role of an “Uncle” for her. I like to think they cross paths at some point during the mansion incident and Jaiden tries to protect her. Takes the brunt of any attacks from the undead, by the end of it he’s all scuffed and cut up.

• During Re2-3, He’s with Jill. Absolutely hates Carlos’ guts (sorry Jaiden unfortunately you’re the dollar store version of him)

• I think campaign-wise during Re1 he’d be paired with Forest or Enrico. Within the Bravo team I like to think him and Enrico are like how Chris is with Wesker, a Captain and his right-hand man. Enrico keeps Jaiden grounded whereas Jaiden’s laid-back presence helps to ease Enrico’s tension when it comes to missions.

• He’s actually much much smarter than he looks and actually exceeds Jordan in intelligence, unfortunately nobody takes him seriously because of his rambunctious attitude so everyone thinks hes the local idiot. Everyone referred to him and Jordan as “Dumb and Dumber” at the S.T.A.R.S. office, guess who was referred to as “dumber”. (Other nicknames for the twins included things like “Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum”, etc.)

• MBTI is ESTP

Alvina Wesker:

• HUGE daddy’s girl. As the first-born, she was spoiled a ton by Wesker growing up and he’d get her anything her little heart wanted, they’d have to sneak around Jordan and promise eachother not to tell her otherwise she’d get pissed.

• Prefrontal cortex started developing wayyy too early. After Wesker left them, Jordan had to take on extra work to provide for the family, leaving Alvina to basically help raise Junior, the stress of it all making her brain mature much, much faster and take on responsibilities a kid her age really shouldn’t have.

• As a result of this, I like to think Alvina and Junior are extremely close despite the age gap between them, she’s always looking out for her little brother.

• Suffers from Golden-Child Syndrome, she’s seen as the “good” one and is held at a much higher standard than Junior. Alvina is very much an overachiever because of this however it takes a massive toll on her psyche, if she fails to be the “best” at something it causes her to breakdown and question her worth, what if she can’t really do this? you won’t amount to anything with a 4.5 gpa. Self-loathing thoughts like these are common and she fears having to face her parents when their expectations aren’t met. Deep, deep respect towards parental figures is a huge Asian ideology that is ingrained into Alvina and she tries her best to honour their wishes, despite some of them being theirs and not her personal wants.

• Valedictorian of course!

• I like to think her voice is a mix of Marceline’s from Adventure time and Maya Hawke’s if that makes sense.

• When she was younger, her and Junior were enrolled into a ton of activities to make them as skilled as possible. They were both enrolled into dance, Junior Hiphop with Alvina doing ballet, as she got older I think she switched to Hip-hop and it’s one of her favourite activities, Junior on the other hand stopped going when Jordan stopped forcing them to go and only retained some fundementals.

• Lanky as fuck, I think she’s pretty tall because of Wesker’s genes standing at around like 5’10-5’11.

• As for sports she plays basketball obviously every Filipino got that superpower, however I also think she’d be a soccer kid, just a feeling.

• Junior’s a cultured skater kid but Alvina’s vibe is more of like a down-town girl/clean girl aesthetic. Definitely makes you turn your head when you walk past her on the street, someone you’d compliment their outfit on when sitting next to on the bus or in the girls washroom.

• Like Junior, she can play an instrument but only Bass. She’s very average at it and can only really play some songs from memory, the rest you gotta pull up tabs or sheet music for.

• MBTI is ISTJ

“Junior” Raphael Wesker:

• Although he pursued film, he loves music and dabbles in it as a hobby. Can freestyle, sing and plays several instruments. (Guitar, Piano, Drums.) I think what contributed to it was the fact that Jordan picked up on this when he was still really young, did what every single Filipino parent did and enrolled him into singing and piano lessons in hopes of transforming him into like the next Beyoncé or something. Pulling a 6 year old Junior into every single karaoke motive at family functions is Jordan’s favourite party trick.

• Absolutely smitten with Sherry it’s not even funny, I think growing up she had like the “girl next door” vibe since she was older, being Alvina’s age.

• Alvina and Sherry are the only people that refer to Junior as “Raphael”, (“Rafa” or “Raf” as nicknames) completely breaking off the tie that he has to Wesker due to their shared first names, an act that is done in respect of Junior’s wishes. He hates his first name and the fact that he’s forever tied to the evil deadbeat, so he’d rather be called anything else besides Albert. “Junior” as a nickname still ties him to Wesker, so the use of his middle name gives him his own sense of self.

• Takes after Jordan, he reminds her of her when she was younger, it’s scary how much he mirrors her. It’s not a surprise though, Junior has always looked up to her.

• Since Jordan and Barry are close friends, it’s only natural for their children to be close too. Junior and Moira are friends and like to go run around disturbing the peace, activities like graffiti, lighting things on fire, typical stupid teenager things. They both bond over their shared feelings on father figures however every so often, Junior gets annoyed. He understands her feelings about Barry but is somewhat envious of her situation, atleast she still has a father.

• Like I said before, I imagine his voice headcanon to be like Tyler, the Creators. Very deep like Wesker’s crooning voice, however lacking the posh sound, being a much more rougher and juvenile tone.

• Just as smart as Alvina, was going to pursue Comp-Sci prior to film but decided against it last minute as he believed he would regret his decision of passing up pursuing a passion he loved. Also he’s just a huge burn-out and doesn’t like to work. Bare minimum kind of guy.

• MBTI is INFP, however I think he’s an Ambivert. When he’s with fellow introverts he becomes the extrovert of the group and vice versa.

#ok so the takeaway is they all play ball #i have more i think these are just what came to mind #resident evil #resident evil oc #oc x canon #fengshuioc #fengshuispeaks #can you tell im a bit too inspired by kill bill #jackie steele mentioned because i cant go a stars post without mentioning her heheuuhehheuehe

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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We should ban TikTok('s surveillance)

With the RESTRICT Act, Congress is proposing to continue Trump’s war on Tiktok, enacting a US ban on the Chinese-owned service. How will they do this? Congress isn’t clear. In practice, banning stuff on the internet is hard, especially if you don’t have a national firewall:

https://doctorow.medium.com/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography-33aa668dc602

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/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories

My guess is that they’re thinking of ordering the mobile duopoly of Google and Apple to nuke the Tiktok app from their app stores. That’s how they do it in China, after all: when China wanted to ban VPNs and other privacy tools, they just ordered Apple to remove them from the App Store, and Apple rolled over:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

That’s the completely foreseeable consequence of arrogating the power to decide which software every mobile user on earth is entitled to use — as Google and Apple have done. Once you put that gun on the mantelpiece in Act I, you damn betcha that some strong-man backed by a powerful state is going to come along and shoot it by Act III.

The same goes for commercial surveillance: once you collect massive, nonconsensual dossiers on every technology user alive, you don’t get to act surprised when cops and spies show up and order your company to serve as deputies for a massive, off-the-books warrantless surveillance project.

Hell, a cynic might even say that commercial surveillance companies are betting on this. The surveillance public-private partnership is a vicious cycle: corporations let cops and spies plunder our data; then the cops and spies lobby against privacy laws that would prevent these corporations from spying on us:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#hun-sen

Which makes the RESTRICT Act an especially foolish project. If the Chinese state wants to procure data on Americans, it need not convince us to install Tiktok. It can simply plunk down a credit card with any of the many unregulated data-brokers who feed the American tech giants the dossiers that the NSA and local cops rely on.

Every American tech giant is at least as bad for privacy as Tiktok is — yes, even Apple. Sure, Apple lets its users block Facebook spying with a single tap — but even if you opt out of “tracking,” Apple still secretly gathers exactly the same kinds of data as Facebook, and uses it to power its own ad product:

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

There is no such thing as a privacy-respecting tech giant. Long before Apple plastered our cities with lying billboards proclaiming its reverence for privacy, Microsoft positioned itself as the non-spying alternative to Google, which would be great, except Microsoft spies on hundreds of millions of people and sells the data:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Tech’s surveillance addiction means that Tiktok’s own alternative to the RESTRICT Act is also unbelievably stupid. The company has proposed to put itself under Oracle’s supervision, letting Oracle host its data and audit its code. You know, Oracle, the company that built the Great Firewall of China 1.0:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/selling-china-surveillance

We should not trust Tiktok any more than we trust Apple, Facebook, Google or Microsoft. Tiktok lied about whether it was sending data to China before:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access

And even if it keeps its promise not to send user data to China, that promise is meaningless — it can still send the vectors and models it creates with that data to China — these being far more useful for things like disinformation campaigns and population-scale inferences than the mere logs from your Tiktok sessions.

There are so many potentially harmful ways to process commercial surveillance data that trying to enumerate all the things that a corporation is allowed to do with the data it extracts from us is a fool’s errand. Instead, we should ban companies from spying on us, whether they are Chinese or American.

Corporations are remorseless, paperclip-maximizing colony organisms that perceive us as inconvenient gut-flora, and they lack any executive function (as do their “executives”), and they cannot self-regulate. To keep corporations from harming us, we must make it illegal for them to enact harm, and punish them when they break the law:

https://doctorow.medium.com/small-government-fd5870a9462e

After all, the problem with Tiktok isn’t the delightful videos or the fact that it’s teaching a generation of children to be expert sound- and video-editors. The problem with Tiktok is that it spies on us. Just like the problem with Facebook isn’t that it lets us communicate with our friends, and the problem with Google isn’t that it operates a search engine.

Now, these companies will tell you that the two can’t be separated, that a bearded prophet came down off a mountain with two stone tablets, intoning, “Larry, Sergey, thou shalt stop rotating thine logfiles and, lo, thou wilt data-mine them for actionable market intelligence.” But it’s nonsense. Google ran for years without surveillance. Facebook billed itself as the privacy-forward alternative to Myspace and promised never to spy on us:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

The inevitabilist narrative that says that corporations must violate our rights in order to make the products we love is unadulterated Mr Gotcha nonsense: “Yet you participate in society. Curious. I am very intelligent”:

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Of course, corporations push this narrative all the time, which is why American Big Tech has been quietly supporting a ban on Tiktok, which (coincidentally) has managed to gain a foothold in the otherwise impregnable, decaying, enshittified oligarchy that US companies have created.

They have conspicuously failed to call for any kind of working solution, like a federal privacy law that would ban commercial surveillance, and extend a “private right of action,” so people could sue tech giants and data-brokers who violated the law, without having to convince a regulator, DA or Attorney General to bestir themselves:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

Instead, the tech giants have the incredible gall to characterize themselves as the defenders of our privacy — at least, so long as the Chinese government is the adversary, and so long as its privacy violations come via an app, and not buy handing a credit card to the data-brokers that are the soil bacteria that keeps Big Tech’s ecosystem circulating. In the upside-down land of Big Tech lobbying, privacy is a benefit of monopoly — not something we have to smash monopolies to attain:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

Not everyone in Congress is onboard with the RESTRICT Act. AOC has come out for a federal privacy law that applies to all companies, rather than a ban on an app that tens of millions of young Americans love:

https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-first-tiktok-congress-ban-without-being-clued-in-2023-3

You know who agrees with AOC? Rand Paul. Yes, that absolute piece of shit. Paul told his caucusmates in the GOP that banning an app that millions of young American voters love is bad electoral politics. This fact is so obvious that even Rand fucking Paul can understand it:

https://gizmodo.com/rand-paul-opposes-tiktok-ban-warns-republicans-1850278167

Paul is absolutely right to call a Tiktok ban a “national strategy to permanently lose elections for a generation.” The Democrats should listen to him, because the GOP won’t. As between the two parties, the GOP is far more in thrall to the Chamber of Commerce and the rest of the business lobby. They are never going to back a policy that’s as good for the people and as bad for big business as a federal privacy law.

The Democrats have the opportunity to position themselves as “the party that wants to keep Tiktok but force it to stop being creepy, along with all the other tech companies,” while the GOP positions itself as “the party of angry technophobes who want to make sure that any fun you have is closely monitored by Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pinchai and Tim Cook and their pale imitations of the things you love about Tiktok.”

That’s not just good electoral politics — it’s good policy. Young voters aren’t going to turn out to the polls for performative Cold War 2.0 nonsense, but they will be pissed as hell at whoever takes away their Tiktok.

And if you do care about Cold War 2.0, then you should be banning surveillance, not Tiktok; the Chinese government has plenty of US dollars at its disposal to spend in America’s freewheeling, unregulated data markets — as do criminals, petty and organized, and every other nation-state adversary of the USA.

The RESTRICT Act is a garbage law straight out of the Clinton era, a kind of King Canute decree that goes so far as to potentially prohibit the use of VPNs to circumvent its provisions. America doesn’t need a Great Firewall to keep itself safe from tech spying — it needs a privacy law.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

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

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

[Image ID: A modified vintage editorial cartoon. Uncle Sam peeks out over a 'frowning battlement' whose cannon-slots are filled with telescopes from which peer the red glaring eyes of HAL 9000 from '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Topping the battlements in a row are Uncle Sam and three business-suited figures with dollar-sign-bags for heads. The three dollar-bag men have corporate logos on their breasts: Facebook, Google, Apple. Standing on the strand below the battlements, peering up, is a forlorn figure with a Tiktok logo for a head. The fortress wall bears the words 'RESTRICT Act.']

#rand paul is right actually ugh ugh ugh #politics #oracle #restrict act #privacy #privacy without monopoly #tiktok #commercial surveillance #trade war #bytedance #apple #google #facebook #meta #usausausa #generational warfare #electoral strategy #pluralistic #aoc

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beardedmrbean · 6 hours ago

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Under the striking glass vaults of the Grand Palais in Paris, world leaders and tech titans gathered for a two-day summit dedicated to artificial intelligence. The heart of the event space, tucked in between the Seine and the iconic Champs-Élysées, was organised like an exhibition hall packed with dozens of stands showcasing the various ways AI can be used.

Climbing up the stairs in the building’s majestic nave, a display of flags decorated the railing, boasting the different nationalities taking part in the summit. At the top, a handful of key players gathered on Monday afternoon in the VIP lounge to discuss the impact AI could have on democracies.

But a few VIPs were missing. Representatives from some of the most influential companies in the sector including Open AI, Google and Microsoft played hooky.

Their absences were criticised by Meredith Whittaker, president of the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal who worked at Google for over a decade and helped organise mass walkouts, partly fuelled by the company’s handling of AI ethics, before resigning in July 2019.

“The large-scale approach to AI is damaging [societies],” she said.

Security threats

“AI has profound consequences on our private lives,” Whittaker continued. To illustrate her point, Whittaker referred to the handful of telecoms companies in the US including Verizon and AT&T who fell victim to a sweeping Chinese-linked espionage operation known as Salt Typhoon in December last year. A vast amount of US users had their metadata taken as a result, and officials associated with both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s campaign ahead of the November presidential elections were targeted.

“From a security standpoint, what happened was a disaster. And it was made possible by backdoors [programmes that allow hackers to access a computer system or encrypted data remotely] being installed by authorities who were meant to be the only ones to access them,” the Signal president explained.

For Whittaker, AI was “born from the business model of surveillance”. And when it comes to hacking, “data can be used as a weapon” against US democracy.

The threat is undeniable for Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics, who shares Whittaker’s views. Rinkevics explained how, “due to the geopolitical and geographical situation” of his country, “Latvia has been exposed to cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns” in recent years. With Russia as its neighbour, Latvia and the other Baltic countries Estonia and Lithuania bore the brunt of cyber-attacks in recent years. EU member states have repeatedly been the target of Russian cyber-attacks in 2024.

Before he went into detail about the specific threats Latvia faces, Rinkevics stressed that “the priority is to protect critical infrastructure and monitor the situation in the Baltic Sea", where several undersea telecoms, power and data cables were sabotaged in recent months.

“With regards to democracy, AI has been used to meddle in elections, especially in Romania,” Rinkevics added. “In Latvia, we passed a law that requires [all content created by] AI to be labelled” so that people can identify when it has been used. Rather than being wary of the technology, Rinkevics believes “we need more expertise to understand exactly where cyber-attacks come from and how to better protect our democracies".

In a leap of faith, Latvia signed an agreement with Microsoft in December last year to develop a National Center for Artificial Intelligence. Its aims include promoting AI and other digital solutions to modernise the country’s administrative processes.

Need for global AI safeguards

From eerily accurate deep-fakes to social media accounts usurped by scammers for money, artificial intelligence has many faces. And that is partly why it is such a threat to democracies. “AI can make it easier to carry out cyber-attacks, which have become more sophisticated now that tools generating complex code can be used to this end,” warned Marie-Laure Denis, President of the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL).

Denis believes that solutions to protect democracies should stem from a diverse range of safeguards, starting with the general data protection regulation (GDPR), implemented in the EU since 2018 that sets out guidelines on how to collect and process personal information from people both within and outside of the continent. “We should develop a trusted AI tool to strengthen the protection of our rights,” she added. “Without guarantees, we can’t have trust. And without trust, we can’t develop AI in the long-run.”

But when it comes to AI and democracy, not all countries feel equally included in the conversation on regulations. Pakistani lawyer and online rights activist Nighat Dad intervened to point out global disparities. “Are our exchanges at this roundtable democratic? Are we talking about the whole world or just the democracies of the Global North?” Dad asked. She founded the Digital Rights Foundation in 2012, an NGO focused on protecting human rights defenders in digital spaces. “Moving forward without diverse voices is unimaginable. All democracies must be able to express themselves.”

Mathias Cormann, secretary-general of the OECD, echoed Dad’s remarks when he spoke of the need for “more effective international cooperation on AI”.

“We need a generalised governance framework to help us develop safe AI,” he said. “But right now, we are a long way from that.”

“At this stage, we don’t know exactly where we’re headed when it comes to AI,” Latvian President Rinkevics concluded. “The priority for companies is to reap the benefits [of AI]. And the priority for countries is likely a little different. But in any case, we are a long way from having a global AI agreement.”

#nunyas news #there's positives and negatives #and potential sever risks with all of this

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cyber-sec · 9 months ago

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Over 90 malicious Android apps with 5.5M installs found on Google Play

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/over-90-malicious-android-apps-with-55m-installs-found-on-google-play/

More info: https://www.zscaler.com/blogs/security-research/technical-analysis-anatsa-campaigns-android-banking-malware-active-google

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freelancer6 · 5 months ago

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paidmediaadvertising · 5 months ago

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What Are Custom Audiences in Targeting Options in Messages?

In the realm of digital marketing, precision targeting is key to achieving higher engagement and conversion rates. One of the most powerful tools available to marketers is the ability to create custom audiences. Custom audiences allow businesses to reach specific groups of people based on their unique behaviors, interests, and demographics. This blog explores the concept of custom audiences in targeting options, specifically within the context of PPC and digital marketing messages, and how leveraging these audiences can enhance your Paid Media Advertising services company and overall Digital Marketing strategy.

Understanding Custom Audiences

Custom audiences are groups of people curated based on specific criteria that align with your marketing goals. These criteria can include past interactions with your brand, demographic information, online behaviors, or interests. By targeting these specific groups, marketers can create highly relevant and personalized advertising campaigns.

Types of Custom Audiences

There are several types of custom audiences that marketers can create and use in their PPC campaigns:

Website Custom Audiences: These audiences are created based on visitors to your website. You can target users who have visited specific pages, spent a certain amount of time on your site, or completed specific actions such as making a purchase or filling out a form.

Customer List Audiences: This type involves uploading a list of customer information, such as email addresses or phone numbers, to the advertising platform. The platform then matches this data with its users to create a custom audience.

App Activity Audiences: If you have a mobile app, you can create audiences based on users' interactions with your app. This can include users who have installed your app, made in-app purchases, or achieved certain milestones.

Engagement Audiences: These audiences are based on interactions with your content on social media platforms. For instance, you can target users who have watched your videos, liked your posts, or shared your content.

Benefits of Using Custom Audiences

1. Enhanced Relevance

Custom audiences allow you to deliver highly relevant messages to specific groups of people. By targeting users based on their past interactions with your brand or their specific interests, you can create personalized ads that resonate more effectively with your audience.

2. Improved ROI

By focusing your advertising efforts on a well-defined audience, you can increase your return on investment (ROI). Custom audiences help ensure that your ads are seen by people who are more likely to be interested in your products or services, leading to higher conversion rates and better overall campaign performance.

3. Better Engagement

Ads that are tailored to the interests and behaviors of your audience are more likely to capture their attention and drive engagement. Custom audiences enable you to create more engaging and compelling ads, resulting in higher click-through rates and increased interaction with your brand.

4. Effective Retargeting

Custom audiences are particularly useful for retargeting campaigns. By targeting users who have already interacted with your brand, you can remind them of their interest and encourage them to take further action, such as completing a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.

How to Create Custom Audiences

Creating custom audiences typically involves a few key steps, depending on the advertising platform you are using. This is a broad synopsis of the procedure:

Define Your Criteria: Determine the specific criteria you want to use to create your custom audience. This could include website visits, customer lists, app activity, or social media engagement.

Set Up Tracking: Ensure that you have the necessary tracking mechanisms in place to collect the data needed to create your custom audience. This might involve installing tracking pixels on your website or integrating your app with the advertising platform.

Upload Data: If you are creating a customer list audience, upload your list of customer information to the advertising platform. The platform will then match this data with its users to create your custom audience.

Create the Audience: Use the platform’s tools to create your custom audience based on the defined criteria. You can usually specify additional parameters, such as the time frame for website visits or the specific actions users must take to be included in the audience.

Test and Optimize: Once your custom audience is set up, test different ad variations to see which ones perform best. Use the insights gained from these tests to optimize your campaigns and improve performance over time.

Case Study: Successful Use of Custom Audiences

Consider the example of a mid-sized e-commerce company that used custom audiences to improve its PPC campaign performance. By creating custom audiences based on website visitors who abandoned their shopping carts, the company was able to deliver targeted ads reminding these users to complete their purchases. This retargeting campaign resulted in a significant increase in conversion rates and overall sales.

Additionally, the company created custom audiences based on their email subscriber list. By targeting these users with personalized product recommendations and exclusive offers, they saw a substantial boost in engagement and repeat purchases. The combination of these strategies helped the company maximize its advertising budget and achieve better ROI.

Conclusion

Custom audiences are a powerful tool in the arsenal of digital marketers. By allowing for highly targeted and personalized advertising, they can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your PPC and digital marketing campaigns. Whether you are looking to retarget previous visitors, engage with your app users, or reconnect with your email subscribers, custom audiences offer a way to reach the right people with the right message at the right time.

Incorporating custom audiences into your Paid Media Advertising services company strategy can help you achieve better engagement, higher conversion rates, and improved ROI. Start leveraging the power of custom audiences today and see how they can transform your digital marketing efforts.

#ppc services #paid media advertising #digital marketing services #digital marketing #targeting

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galilleon · 1 year ago

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Obsidian is a LIFESAVER for TTRPGs

This is a heads up for other DMs or even dedicated players, especially for those interested in detailed, interconnected notes that need to be organised.

Try out Obsidian. It's a stellar note-taking application/program that HAS FULLY SUPPORTED MODS (plugins) in the app itself

This isn't an advert or something, the app is just exactly what I've been wanting for a long time, that I never really acknowledged until someone showed me how insanely useful it could be.

Why does that matter?

The reason 'mods' are so good in such an application is that, usually in note-taking apps, developers stick to a vision and scope and don't go beyond it to keep it all simple for newcomers to pick it up.

The problem with most is that eventually, you get deep into using a note-taking application, and you find an extreme limitation that almost completely roadblocks your progress, and is very infuriatingly annoying to work around.

Obsidian has a solution to this. Community Plugins

The Community Plugins are basically mods that are created by other users like you to fulfill your needs and wants for the darn thing. They used it, found something lacking or something with potential and added it in.

So you can start it default to keep it simple, and when you find that you want something that you want or need, just search it up in-app and add it.

Et voilà! Low skill floor, very very high skill ceiling, extreme customisation as per your preferences and needs.

Any guidance?

There is a guide made specifically for TTRPGs below. The site and the first few videos from the series really helped me get into Obsidian and helped me to explore it all on my own later.

Importantly, they show you how to install the app from scratch, have you enable useful settings, guide you in the basics of plugins, and recommend a bunch of great, useful plugins catered especially to DnD.

For those interested, later parts of the series continue for a really long while as it gets into many intricacies of the app.

The site:

The video series:

#d&d #dm tools #dungeons and dragons tips #dungeon master tips #dm advice #dm tips #ttrpg #dungeons and dragons #dungeon master

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tsreviews · 9 months ago

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Opus Review: ChatGPT-4o App for Easy WarriorPlus Promotion

The Super-Sexy Funnel:

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The New 2024 The World's First Auto Affiliate Link Promoter App

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In this upgrade our team sets up the software for your customers.

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Your customers will be able to activate all the automation tools within

ONYX.

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Your customers will get 200 done-for-you proven money-making campaigns that have made us $50,000.

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Your customers will get bumped up to 85% across the entire funnel with additional tutorials on how to promote the funnel to make sales.

Key Features

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Auto-Promotion of WarriorPlus Affiliate Links: Opus’s standout feature is its ability to automatically promote WarriorPlus affiliate links. Imagine the convenience of having an AI assistant that effortlessly generates revenue for you.

Image Understanding: GPT-4o is much better at understanding and discussing images. Opus leverages this capability to enhance its responses when you share images.

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#affiliate marketing #Opus Review #Opus #Opus Software #Affiliate Marketing

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prajna-alva · 11 months ago

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Gophish Setup Guide: Launching Phishing Campaigns

Phishing Scenario : CASE 1 - Breaking news

Objective: The objective of this phishing campaign is to lure employees into clicking a malicious link disguised as breaking news from the company. The landing page masqueraded as a Gmail sign-in page, prompting users to enter their login credentials. This page was designed to steal users' email account credentials.

Install Gophish framework

Make the required changes in the config.json file

Launch Gophish and our first step would be to set up the sending profile by which we will send out phishing emails.

Let’s assume that the target company is using Gmail server

(When setting up the sending profile in Gophish using a Gmail account, you have to enable 2FA and give app access to Gophish)

Since our target company is using Gmail server, we will use Gmail email on our phishing campaign so we have set host as smtp.gmail.com:587. After creating the sending profile, we have to test if the sending profile works by sending a test email.

We're using the email address [email protected] as our designated Gmail account for sending phishing emails. Make sure to include the password that was generated when granting Gophish access to this Gmail account. After configuring the sending profile, we can test it by sending a test mail.

This is what the test mail will look like:

Email Template

The next step involves integrating an email template for the phishing campaign. We can opt for a pre-made template, for example, here we use a Breaking News email template, for initial testing. We can incorporate a tracking image within the emails to monitor various engagement metrics, including email opens, clicks, and receipt statuses. It also has an option where we can add a link which will redirect the victim to the landing page. On the landing page we can proceed to request for more valuable information from the user.

Landing Page

In the third step, set up a landing page where targets will be directed after clicking a link in the email. This landing page plays a crucial role in the phishing campaign, as it's where you can capture sensitive information like passwords. Gophish defaults to using http://0.0.0.0:80 for the landing page, but we can customize it to look like a legitimate login page or other enticing content to attract targets. We'll need to specify a redirect page where users will be sent after submitting their credentials.

In the User & Groups section, you'll need to input the email addresses of your targets. Gophish framework requires you to provide the first name, last name, email address, and the rank of each target individual on the user groups page. You can also upload target details from a CSV file stored on your local system using import feature.

Install and set up Ngrok:

Install ngrok via Apt with the following command:

curl -s https://ngrok-agent.s3.amazonaws.com/ngrok.asc \

| sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/ngrok.asc >/dev/null && echo "deb https://ngrok-agent.s3.amazonaws.com buster main" \

| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ngrok.list && sudo apt update && sudo apt install ngrok

Run the following command to add your authtoken to the default ngrok.yml configuration file.

ngrok config add-authtoken 2crm6P5lWlbTm4rwoGqn0QSHhPA_6nf7WmMJFKXVSD2SgBohF

Create an index.html page for the landing page and launch python http server in the port 8001

• python3 -m http.server 8001

Note: Verify in the browser if it's actually accessible.

We can also use other login page cloning techniques like built in gophish cloner, or Github projects (we used), Custom or by using third party clones (ex-goclone).

If it's a php file use the following command instead:

• php -S localhost:8001 -t .

Launch ngrok :

ngrok http http://localhost:8001/

Use the URL under forwarding and paste it on the Gophish URL section in the campaign page shown below:

Creating Gophish Campaign:

Go to the Campaigns section.

Choose the right email and landing page templates.

Enter the landing page server URL.

Select the target group.

Start the campaign and monitor its progress.

Once we click on the link we are directed to the landing page, where we can enter our credentials.

You can find all the phishing reports related to a specific campaign on the Dashboard in the Gophish framework. Here, you can see details such as sent emails, opened emails, clicked links, submitted data, and any emails reported as phishing by the targets. This page provides a comprehensive overview of the ongoing phishing campaign.

Phishing scenario: Case 2 - Password Reset Campaign

The aim of this phishing campaign is to trick users into divulging their login credentials by pretending to offer account protection in response to a fake mailbox compromise.

Users received an urgent email claiming their mailbox was compromised. They were directed to a phishing landing page disguised as a password reset portal.

Upon clicking the link, Users were redirected to a fake password reset page resembling the email service provider's design, where they were prompted to enter their login credentials.

#cybersecurity #phishing #red team #gophish

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adbluemediareviews · 1 year ago

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What is AdBlueMedia ?

AdBlueMedia, a distinguished company in the field of CPA networks, operates within the United States and boasts a robust server infrastructure. It active offers a unique opportunity for income generation through its diverse Cost per Action campaigns. As a content creator, design AdBlueMedia equips you with valuable tools such as offer panels, lockers, and the capability to integrate cache and curl mechanisms, enhancing your ability to monetize your work. Each time a visitor successfully completes an offer, you not only earn rewards but also benefit from real-time payments. Over the years, this approach has garnered widespread recognition and praise on a global scale, amassing an extensive user base in countries like Morocco, Bangladesh, Algeria, and Egypt, among others.

“AdBlueMedia: Pioneering Excellence in CPA Networks and Affiliate Marketing”

AdBlueMedia’s acclaim isn’t limited to being a top-tier CPA network with a notable view generator “Content Locker” facility Or Like ”Human verification”. It has emerged as an industry leader due to its high-performance metrics and uniquely user-friendly interfaces. Catering to a diverse user base, including newcomers, it provides an accessible pathway to income generation through affiliate marketing.

This comprehensive guide on AdBlueMedia takes you through the processes of account creation, highlighting different time and online offer types, effective ways to earn money, available payment methods, and key considerations ahead of opening a new account.

“AdBlueMedia’s Innovative Approach to Content Creation and Uniqueness”

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Search about AdBlueMedia’s Offer Types mode :

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Launched in 2023, AdBlueMedia’s server operates as a CPA network, providing the option to secure your content behind offer grids. When a digital offer is successfully completed, an immediate currency payment is triggered. AdBlueMedia’s payments range from 1 to 20 US dollars for each fulfilled offer, with the specific amount contingent on the participant’s location.

Visitors interested in accessing your content must initially complete a brief survey or a similar task that involves providing their personal details. This innovative strategy has gained popularity and proven effective in generating revenue from both mobile and desktop traffic you can gate it from pinterest, google seo, facebook groups…, making it a valuable addition to the digital landscape.

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