#basically i have been work and baked all day and its been problem solving gold

[spacecharr]

Good fucking lord, I can see through time and perceive the cosmos.

basically how my brain feels right now

[light679]

More OC HCs (if you want!)

I will always want to talk about my OC’s (: thanks for asking! :3 I’ll talk about both of them!

Light: Light is basically an older version of the player character. She goes through the events of the game that the OC does, but is 21 years old. She’s still best friends with Hop, who is also like 20 in my AU. (For reference, Leon and Raihan are about 5 years older at 25-26). Light has a very balanced team of Pokemon, but some of her common Pokemon are: Dragapult, Cinderance, Blastoise, Corviknight, Gallade and Arcanine. She meets Arcanine when she gets knocked off her Corviknight by a Dynamaxed Pokemon in the Dusty Bowl and the Growlithe protects her and watches over her until someone arrives to take care of her. 

She has rose gold hair, green eyes, is normal height (around 5′3-5′4), athletic build with thicker thighs. She’s definitely into working out and training with her Pokemon, and generally strives to work on her own body while she trains her Pokemon. Light is a very empathetic and caring character, very sweet and loving to those around her. She’ll sometimes show her love by baking or cooking if she really likes you. There were plenty of times in her Gym Challenge that Hop snuck over to her tent area to beg for some dinner, so she got into the habit of always making extra. 

Light has struggled with some insecurities about her win against Leon for the title of Champion, wondering if her win was a fluke. Of course, everyone else can tell it clearly wasn’t, especially since she’s still undefeated in the Galarian Stars Tournament a year after its beginning. Her love for each Pokemon on her team equally as an ace, rather than having one pivotal Pokemon that is her strongest and closest ally, is her greatest strength in battle, and she connects with Pokemon very easily. Her Corviknight is the most protective, pretty wary of anyone who comes near her at first. 

In my fanfiction, she begins a relationship with Raihan first, which began with the two trainers constantly bickering and Raihan wanting to beat her in battle, seeing her as a new rival. He hadn’t been expecting to lose to her in the Championship Finals and took it pretty hard when he did. After being together for quite some time, Raihan still had trust issues and couldn’t open up to her fully, which ultimately hurt Light and she turned to Leon as a friend.

Leon had been growing close with throughout her entire Gym Challenge, and especially after the events of the Darkest Day. As someone who’s also been Champion, Leon understood the things Light was going through really well, and she understood what he was going through after the Darkest Day, making their friendship an incredibly strong bond. The two lean on each other several times throughout the story before Light realizes her feelings for him. Leon realizes his feelings well before she does, trying to respect her relationship with his best friend. Which all comes crumbling down when Raihan hurts Light enough to break them up and she turns to confide in her friend. They wind up having to rush off to save the day on the Isle of Armor, and Light realizes her feelings after Leon saves her life. There’s a bit of time where Light is a little torn between the two men, but ultimately decides that Leon is the one who never gave up on her. 

Arie: Arie comes into the sequel of my fanfiction. She’s tall, pale and slendre with lavender colored eyes and strikingly angular features. She’s a dark and ghost-type trainer whose team consists of: Absol (shiny, her ace that she calls Red), Gengar, Dusknoir, Froslass, Shiftry and Umbreon. She comes from Hoenn originally (essentially the MC from Hoenn). Her father was actually good friends with Kabu, so she regards him almost as an uncle. She became the champion of the region, but was quickly bored and decided to move on from the region a few years after giving up the role. During her Gym Challenge and throughout her youth, she was incredibly close with Wally, who she eventually began to date and was almost married to. Wally’s refusal to travel to new regions with her and Arie’s refusal to stay was what ultimately caused a split in the relationship. Before she left, she began training at Brawley’s fighting-style gym. Arie prefers to train in places that she’s at a disadvantage in, particularly fighting gyms or dojos, which eventually leads her to the Isle of Armor. 

She doesn’t actually stay at the dojo very often. After working really hard to become strong at the dojo and face Mustard often, Arie started wandering off from the dojo, opting to stay out in the wild and fend for herself, which she did for several months on end. She became fast friends with Klara, but otherwise doesn’t socialize much on the island and prefers to be by herself with Absol. If it weren’t for Klara, she’d probably borrow enough outfits from the dojo to last her several months without replacement and with washes in nature. When she’s feeling lonely or wants to have a good time, she’ll often take a Flying Taxi into Hammerlocke to meet a man or woman at the bar to take back to her motel for the night, but since she hates flying, she doesn’t do this very often (this is actually how she meets Raihan, though she doesn’t go home with him that night). Since her failed engagement, Arie hasn’t been in any relationship that’s lasted longer than the few hours of a one-night stand in fear of getting close to and hurting anyone else with her lack of wanting to be tied down to one region.

Arie meets Leon and Light when the two come into the Isle of Armor to find some Max Mushrooms in hope of solving a problem around Galar and Leon accidentally got lost. From her previous experiences in Unova (another region she traveled to briefly) that were similar , Light asks Arie to come back to the mainland with them and share her experience, as well as help out. Arie reluctantly agrees and ends up being assigned to stay in Hammerlocke with Raihan and Piers. Since she’d met Raihan a few nights prior, they jumped pretty quickly into a friends with benefits type of relationship. 

After meeting her, Piers ends up being a little flirty with and interested in Arie, and Raihan notices this, (somewhat) jokingly suggesting a threesome that ends up actually happening after a long day of trying to solve Galar’s problems together.  Bonus headcanon: Arie met her Absol in Hoenn when she saw the other Absols trying to bully Red into staying away from them. Absol tend to like to be isolated from people and other Pokemon a little more and an absol with bright red coloring doesn’t blend in well to the surrounding environment. Arie stood up for the Pokemon, which bonded with her immediately. Her first Pokemon was Seedot, which her dad helped her catch when she was younger and she still keeps on her team. 

[justalittlelitnerd]

By A Thread by Lucy Score

We weren’t touching. But it felt like the space between us was charged with something. It was acting like a defibrillator on my heart.

This book had everything I want in a romance: a sassy, non-damsel heroine and a hero with soft boi vibes (I am a complete sucker for assholes covering up soft, warm centers). 

Don’t let the office romance aspect dissuade you (it’s obviously a common, but controversial trope in romance b/c power dynamics and whatnot), this is not ~in my experience~ a conventional office romance. 

First, Ally only ends up working at Dominic’s company after he gets her fired and his mom (who’s also his boss at the magazine she also owns) makes the job offer in reparation.  

Second, in addition to the two characters being completely at odds from the first meeting (he got her fired after all), Dominic is staunchly against an office romance not only because of his own values and awareness of power dynamics but because of his father’s history of sexual harrassment and assault. When they eventually fall into bed together (because duh this is a romance) he immediately offers to quit his job so the power dynamics of the office wouldn’t be an issue. 

That being said Dominic is an overbearing, and at times straight up controlling, son of a bitch (sorry as Ally would say his mother is lovely) and it made me want to throat punch him sometimes, but at the same time so did Ally’s stubbornness and pride. 

Score has a talent though for balance because any time Dominic started to get out of control, Ally wouldn’t hesitate to go head to head with him and speak her mind and the honesty and directness was refreshing. 

The ending felt a little bit rushed because clearly Dominic was trying (although in ways that were grossly overbearing and were exactly what Ally didn’t want him to do) and she made it clear that she couldn’t forgive him and I wanted more of a conversation or thought process to why she finally did aside from “that’s what love is.” 

This book was fun and funny and sarcastic and their banter made the story flow and is definitely the main reason I would consider rereading this romance.

Keep reading for some top notch quotes!

It wasn’t out of the kindness of my heart. I had neither kindness nor a heart. I considered it atonement for being an asshole.

Clearly, she wasn’t intimidated by an asshole in Hugo Boss with a haircut that cost more than her entire outfit. I basked in her disdain. It was miles more comfortable for me than the terrified glances and “Right away, Mr. Russo”s I got in the hallways at work.

It had been too long since I’d squashed a disrespectful underling. I itched to do it now. She looked not only like she could take it but that she might even enjoy it.

“Fine. But if she poisons me, I’ll sue her and her entire family. Her great-grandchildren will feel my wrath.” My mother sighed theatrically. “Who hurt you, darling?” It was a joke. But we both knew the answer wasn’t funny.

I knew he felt it, too. That unexpected jolt. Like taking a shot of whiskey or sticking a finger in a light socket. Maybe both at the same time. For one moment of pure insanity, I wondered if he intended to take me over his knee and if I’d let him.

I’d assumed they’d all get used to me. Apparently I’d assumed incorrectly. I was the beast to my mother’s beauty. The monster to the heroine. When they looked at me, they saw my father.

Her tone was steely and anger all but crackled off her. I hoped she got the guy’s balls in the divorce.

“You know, you’d be a lot prettier if you smiled once in a while,” she mused, fluttering her lashes. No wonder women hated it when men said that.

It was fucking cold. February was right around the corner, and if there was anything colder and damper than January in New York, it was fucking February. Of course, fashion didn’t heed below-freezing temperatures. No. Fashion made its own rules outside of time and space and temperature.

I, on the other hand, didn’t trust myself to survive even basic contact. Ally was only safe, my soul was only safe, as long as I didn’t touch her.

He was looming over me, but rather than threatening, it felt intimate, careful, almost safe. Like I wanted to be exactly here with exactly him.

Tell me the top five things you hate STAT. (This is the secret to finding out just how bad a person is in case you need it for interviewing future wives or human sacrifices.)

Somewhere along the line, she’d started talking to me like we were friends. As if that moment of honesty in the bar, those emails exchanged, had somehow made us friendly. And while I craved her next confession, I also couldn’t handle the intimacy. I was ripped down the middle. Torn between wanting to know everything there was to know about this woman and wanting to forget she existed.

I hated it when she walked away from me. It always felt like she took the light and heat with her. I added that to my Hate List.

Those blue eyes weren’t cold now. There was a victorious fire burning in them. And I was acutely aware that I was in immediate danger.

My heart was trying to blast its way out of my chest. I didn’t know where the organ had gotten actual sticks of dynamite, but that’s what was happening. My insides had turned to lava… or magma, whichever metaphor was most appropriate.

“Lots of people dance for money. Prima ballerinas, Jane Fonda, Laker Girls, back-up dancers, Rockettes. All women who make money by moving their bodies. There’s nothing remotely shameful about it,” Faith insisted. “You aren’t doing anything wrong. And anyone who tells you that you are is—” “Part of the patriarchy.”

I hoped to God security was up to the challenge tonight. Because if anyone laid a hand on her, one single finger on her, I was going to lose my shit.

I wondered if I was leaving a trail of body glitter behind me like I was a Questionable Life Choices Tinkerbell.

If mystery bothered him so much, this son of a bitch—wait, no. His mother was a lovely human being. This alphahole was going to suffer. I’d make sure of it.

I wanted to believe in my bones that he was doing this as some stupid mind game, that he got off on playing puppet master with my life. But deep down, I was worried that it was something much, much worse. Dominic Russo was trying to take care of me.

I was so pathetically happy that she was speaking to me in multisyllabic words I would have let her slap me across the face with the folder.

I walked back into the room feeling like Cinder-freaking-rella. If Cinderella’s fairy godmother had given her a sexy, skin-hugging gown the color of crimson or, as I liked to think of it, Dominic Russo’s crushed heart.

Everyone was hitting the open bar like it was last call, and those little appetizers were doing nothing to soak up the liquor. It was entertaining, but I had a feeling this is how bad things happened at office Christmas parties. Inhibitions lowered, tongues loosened, and shit went down.

Oh, boy. I’d heard rumors of Drunk Dominic. But they hadn’t prepared me for the reality of him. He was adorable… and in no way capable of functioning as creative director right now. I needed to get him home.

Damn it. My shattered broken heart was trying to knit itself back together just so it could fall for him all over again.

I hooked my pinky around his and tried not to fall in love with the idiot when he pressed his lips to our joined fingers.

Nights like these changed lives and were retold as stories for years to come. But I didn’t know what my story would be. Would it be the time the up-and-coming designer made me temporarily semi-famous? Or would it be the night I finally realized my heart belonged to a man I was never going to be with?

Tacos and home renovation supplies with an entrepreneur, a male exotic dancer, and a drag queen on her day off. Just another glamorous day in the life.

I spent the rest of the day on the couch, which delighted Brownie. We watched the entire first season of The Great British Baking Show and then three episodes of Queer Eye. I was inspired to order and to eat an entire sponge cake from the bakery three blocks over and pondered growing a beard. Then I pondered what Ally thought about beards. And the shame spiral began again.

“I’m not hiding this,” Dom said quietly. “I don’t think I could even if you asked me.” Okay, coming from Dominic Russo, maybe that was kind of a swoony thing to say. It wasn’t a declaration of love, but it was real. These feelings felt real.

“I don’t need to be saved.” Dalessandra and I blinked at each other as the words came out of both our mouths in unison.

I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to take her worries and concerns and problems and solve every last one of them so she could focus all of her attention on me. And Brownie of course. I wasn’t a completely selfish monster.

I didn’t want her drawing lines when I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to redraw them properly. She would live here. She would have anything and everything she needed. No one would ever take advantage of her or lay a hand on her ever again. End of fucking story. I was her Prince Fucking Charming.

“Dom, of course people are going to talk. Trying to avoid being a topic of conversation is a pretty lame way to live life. Sometimes, accepting the discomfort is how good things are earned.”

It was disconcerting to wake up one day and find myself… well. Here. Making plans for two instead of one. Looking forward to sharing things like beds and weekends and closet space. I’d dated before. But I’d never gotten this deep, this fast. I’d never made space in my home for a woman before. Change was happening, and I didn’t know how I felt about it.

Ally didn’t bitch-slap, but Faith did it like it was an Olympic sport and she was a gold medalist.

“Everyone has baggage, Russo. Most of us are just smart enough not to hurl full-sized suitcases at the people we love.”

But sometimes an inch might as well be a mile. And I didn’t know how to cross it. I didn’t know how to ask him for what I needed. Because I didn’t know what I needed.

[jacobhinkley]

Bitcoin Not Dead, Again: Washington Post Gets Schooled

Castle Island Ventures partner and cofounder of Coinmetrics.io, Nic Carter, has had quite enough. Made crazy by mainstream media misunderstanding, ignorance, and downright falsehoods regarding cryptocurrencies, he took to Medium, making the case for why Bitcoin is not dead, again.

Also read: Report: 15,000 Twitter Crypto Scam Giveaway Bots

“Bitcoin is Still a Total Disaster”

“I’m fed up with journalists who are either ignorant or unwilling to learn about cryptocurrency,” Mr. Carter began, “holding forth on its perceived weaknesses. However, there isn’t enough time in the day to rebut all of their nonsense, so I have to be selective.”

Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures, and cofounder of Coinmetrics.io, is obviously tired of journalists and their respective employers failing to understand cryptocurrency basics. The last straw, bringing his anger to a public boil, was a recent article written for The Washington Post’s Wonkblog Perspective, “Bitcoin is still a total disaster,” by Matt O’Brien. It attempts to make the case Bitcoin doesn’t work on any level, to any practical effect.

As Mr. Carter explains, Mr. O’Brien’s Wonkblog piece “relies on mistaken assumptions to paint a misleading picture of the world.” He takes the rant apart, claim by claim, beginning with whether or not bitcoin is a currency. This is a bone of contention within the community itself, so it should be noted Mr. Carter is referencing bitcoin core (BTC) and not bitcoin cash (BCH) in his arguments against the rant by Mr. O’Brien (though BTC and BCH carry similarities).

Mr. O’Brien’s first claim, first sentence really, is BTC’s lack of price stability, and thus this fact discounts it as a currency. Interestingly, and for reasons cited just above, Mr. Carter almost concedes the point, “This assumes that Bitcoin is a currency, and that the definition of currency is normative (‘x should do y’) as opposed to descriptive (‘things of type x have the qualities y and z’). I’d classify Bitcoin the protocol as a complete monetary system, and bitcoin the unit of value as a commodity money, which has the potential to become a gold-like reserve currency. Commodities fluctuate — that’s what they do.” Maybe BTC is more than one thing, seems to be Mr. Carter’s nuanced stance.

Journalists Do Not Understand Decentralization

Another assertion in the Washington Post rant had to do with volatility being baked-in to Bitcoin. Mr. Carter describes that accusation as “an odd rewrite of history, or more charitably, a very strange interpretation of bitcoin’s purpose. The impossible trinity tells that it’s impossible to have free capital flow, sovereign monetary policy, and a fixed exchange rate all at the same time. Bitcoin was designed with sovereign monetary policy and a free flow of capital. No one underwrites or backs Bitcoin, so it cannot be pegged to a real-world basket of goods. That’s the same with gold. Both have emergent monetary premia. This can’t be planned for — it just so happened that way. Needless to say, Satoshi didn’t design Bitcoin to be unstable, he wanted to solve the problem of double spends with digital cash such that it didn’t rely on a single validator. Its volatility is an emergent property, not a design objective.”

Mr. O’Brien also attempts to use BTC being decentralized as a bug rather than a feature. He writes in the Washington Post that “the only way to [validate transactions in such a scheme] would be for every member of that network to keep a record of every bitcoin transaction there had ever been — that way they knew who had bitcoin to spend — which would require a lot of computing power,” emphasis his.

“This is a common misconception,”  Mr. Carter answers, bent on correction. “PoW and mining ensures that the network deterministically converges to a shared history, without any subjectivity or off-chain coordination. The fact that the minted units have value means that miners are incentivized to behave appropriately in the short and medium term. And the fact that those units are worth $x means that miners will pay anything up to $x to obtain them. This is the source of the large quantities of computing power allocated to the network — the combination of efficient mining hardware and large amounts of value at stake.” Furthermore, the Post journalist confuses running nodes with mining, and with miners. Maintaining the ledger, as it were, is a bandwidth issue, a storage issue, and has nothing to do with mining. The remainder of Nic Carter’s takedown of the Post reads similarly, and is worth a look. He tackles the issue of price manipulation by castigating, “Plain old manipulation? You really mean to tell me you think a $100b network was manipulated into existence?” As for its falling prey to the wealth effect, Mr. Carter counters with empirical data leading to how Bitcoin “is unique among monetary assets because it offers properties not instantiated by gold or the USD. There’s a reason people choose Bitcoin.” He also isn’t afraid to get financially technical, but ultimately finds, “The problem with this article is that the pundit in question has settled on a narrative — Bitcoin is a poor economic system — and then searched for various data points that confirm his view. Bitcoin is volatile, yes. It is an emerging commodity-money that is becoming financialized and growing from a small tribe of enthusiasts to a global user base. Of course it’s volatile. Growth is not linear. Only ‘fragilistas’ demand it to be so.”

Does Bitcoin need defending to the popular press? Let us know in the comments section below. 

Images via Pixabay.

Be sure to check out the podcast, Blockchain 2025; latest episode here. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section.

The post Bitcoin Not Dead, Again: Washington Post Gets Schooled appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin Not Dead, Again: Washington Post Gets Schooled published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions

[bowsetter]

Bitcoin Not Dead, Again: Washington Post Gets Schooled

Castle Island Ventures partner and cofounder of Coinmetrics.io, Nic Carter, has had quite enough. Made crazy by mainstream media misunderstanding, ignorance, and downright falsehoods regarding cryptocurrencies, he took to Medium, making the case for why Bitcoin is not dead, again.

Also read: Report: 15,000 Twitter Crypto Scam Giveaway Bots

“Bitcoin is Still a Total Disaster”

“I’m fed up with journalists who are either ignorant or unwilling to learn about cryptocurrency,” Mr. Carter began, “holding forth on its perceived weaknesses. However, there isn’t enough time in the day to rebut all of their nonsense, so I have to be selective.”

Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures, and cofounder of Coinmetrics.io, is obviously tired of journalists and their respective employers failing to understand cryptocurrency basics. The last straw, bringing his anger to a public boil, was a recent article written for The Washington Post’s Wonkblog Perspective, “Bitcoin is still a total disaster,” by Matt O’Brien. It attempts to make the case Bitcoin doesn’t work on any level, to any practical effect.

As Mr. Carter explains, Mr. O’Brien’s Wonkblog piece “relies on mistaken assumptions to paint a misleading picture of the world.” He takes the rant apart, claim by claim, beginning with whether or not bitcoin is a currency. This is a bone of contention within the community itself, so it should be noted Mr. Carter is referencing bitcoin core (BTC) and not bitcoin cash (BCH) in his arguments against the rant by Mr. O’Brien (though BTC and BCH carry similarities).

Mr. O’Brien’s first claim, first sentence really, is BTC’s lack of price stability, and thus this fact discounts it as a currency. Interestingly, and for reasons cited just above, Mr. Carter almost concedes the point, “This assumes that Bitcoin is a currency, and that the definition of currency is normative (‘x should do y’) as opposed to descriptive (‘things of type x have the qualities y and z’). I’d classify Bitcoin the protocol as a complete monetary system, and bitcoin the unit of value as a commodity money, which has the potential to become a gold-like reserve currency. Commodities fluctuate — that’s what they do.” Maybe BTC is more than one thing, seems to be Mr. Carter’s nuanced stance.

Journalists Do Not Understand Decentralization

Another assertion in the Washington Post rant had to do with volatility being baked-in to Bitcoin. Mr. Carter describes that accusation as “an odd rewrite of history, or more charitably, a very strange interpretation of bitcoin’s purpose. The impossible trinity tells that it’s impossible to have free capital flow, sovereign monetary policy, and a fixed exchange rate all at the same time. Bitcoin was designed with sovereign monetary policy and a free flow of capital. No one underwrites or backs Bitcoin, so it cannot be pegged to a real-world basket of goods. That’s the same with gold. Both have emergent monetary premia. This can’t be planned for — it just so happened that way. Needless to say, Satoshi didn’t design Bitcoin to be unstable, he wanted to solve the problem of double spends with digital cash such that it didn’t rely on a single validator. Its volatility is an emergent property, not a design objective.”

Mr. O’Brien also attempts to use BTC being decentralized as a bug rather than a feature. He writes in the Washington Post that “the only way to [validate transactions in such a scheme] would be for every member of that network to keep a record of every bitcoin transaction there had ever been — that way they knew who had bitcoin to spend — which would require a lot of computing power,” emphasis his.

“This is a common misconception,”  Mr. Carter answers, bent on correction. “PoW and mining ensures that the network deterministically converges to a shared history, without any subjectivity or off-chain coordination. The fact that the minted units have value means that miners are incentivized to behave appropriately in the short and medium term. And the fact that those units are worth $x means that miners will pay anything up to $x to obtain them. This is the source of the large quantities of computing power allocated to the network — the combination of efficient mining hardware and large amounts of value at stake.” Furthermore, the Post journalist confuses running nodes with mining, and with miners. Maintaining the ledger, as it were, is a bandwidth issue, a storage issue, and has nothing to do with mining. The remainder of Nic Carter’s takedown of the Post reads similarly, and is worth a look. He tackles the issue of price manipulation by castigating, “Plain old manipulation? You really mean to tell me you think a $100b network was manipulated into existence?” As for its falling prey to the wealth effect, Mr. Carter counters with empirical data leading to how Bitcoin “is unique among monetary assets because it offers properties not instantiated by gold or the USD. There’s a reason people choose Bitcoin.” He also isn’t afraid to get financially technical, but ultimately finds, “The problem with this article is that the pundit in question has settled on a narrative — Bitcoin is a poor economic system — and then searched for various data points that confirm his view. Bitcoin is volatile, yes. It is an emerging commodity-money that is becoming financialized and growing from a small tribe of enthusiasts to a global user base. Of course it’s volatile. Growth is not linear. Only ‘fragilistas’ demand it to be so.”

Does Bitcoin need defending to the popular press? Let us know in the comments section below. 

Images via Pixabay.

Be sure to check out the podcast, Blockchain 2025; latest episode here. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section.

The post Bitcoin Not Dead, Again: Washington Post Gets Schooled appeared first on Bitcoin News.

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