#bill gates success story

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft pinky swears that THIS TIME they’ll make security a priority

One June 20, I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

As the old saying goes, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you." That goes double for Microsoft, especially when it comes to security promises.

Microsoft is, was, always has been, and always will be a rotten company. At every turn, throughout their history, they have learned the wrong lessons, over and over again.

That starts from the very earliest days, when the company was still called "Micro-Soft." Young Bill Gates was given a sweetheart deal to supply the operating system for IBM's PC, thanks to his mother's connection. The nepo-baby enlisted his pal, Paul Allen (whom he'd later rip off for billions) and together, they bought someone else's OS (and took credit for creating it – AKA, the "Musk gambit").

Microsoft then proceeded to make a fortune by monopolizing the OS market through illegal, collusive arrangements with the PC clone industry – an industry that only existed because they could source third-party PC ROMs from Phoenix:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

Bill Gates didn't become one of the richest people on earth simply by emerging from a lucky orifice; he also owed his success to vigorous antitrust enforcement. The IBM PC was the company's first major initiative after it was targeted by the DOJ for a 12-year antitrust enforcement action. IBM tapped its vast monopoly profits to fight the DOJ, spending more on outside counsel to fight the DOJ antitrust division than the DOJ spent on all its antitrust lawyers, every year, for 12 years.

IBM's delaying tactic paid off. When Reagan took the White House, he let IBM off the hook. But the company was still seriously scarred by its ordeal, and when the PC project kicked off, the company kept the OS separate from the hardware (one of the DOJ's major issues with IBM's previous behavior was its vertical monopoly on hardware and software). IBM didn't hire Gates and Allen to provide it with DOS because it was incapable of writing a PC operating system: they did it to keep the DOJ from kicking down their door again.

The post-antitrust, gunshy IBM kept delivering dividends for Microsoft. When IBM turned a blind eye to the cloned PC-ROM and allowed companies like Compaq, Dell and Gateway to compete directly with Big Blue, this produced a whole cohort of customers for Microsoft – customers Microsoft could play off on each other, ensuring that every PC sold generated income for Microsoft, creating a wide moat around the OS business that kept other OS vendors out of the market. Why invest in making an OS when every hardware company already had an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft?

The IBM PC story teaches us two things: stronger antitrust enforcement spurs innovation and opens markets for scrappy startups to grow to big, important firms; as do weaker IP protections.

Microsoft learned the opposite: monopolies are wildly profitable; expansive IP protects monopolies; you can violate antitrust laws so long as you have enough monopoly profits rolling in to outspend the government until a Republican bootlicker takes the White House (Microsoft's antitrust ordeal ended after GW Bush stole the 2000 election and dropped the charges against them). Microsoft embodies the idea that you either die a rebel hero or live long enough to become the evil emperor you dethroned.

From the first, Microsoft has pursued three goals:

Get too big to fail;

Get too big to jail;

Get too big to care.

It has succeeded on all three counts. Much of Microsoft's enduring power comes from succeeded IBM as the company that mediocre IT managers can safely buy from without being blamed for the poor quality of Microsoft's products: "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" is 2024's answer to "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Microsoft's secret sauce is impunity. The PC companies that bundle Windows with their hardware are held blameless for the glaring defects in Windows. The IT managers who buy company-wide Windows licenses are likewise insulated from the rage of the workers who have to use Windows and other Microsoft products.

Microsoft doesn't have to care if you hate it because, for the most part, it's not selling to you. It's selling to a few decision-makers who can be wined and dined and flattered. And since we all have to use its products, developers have to target its platform if they want to sell us their software.

This rarified position has afforded Microsoft enormous freedom to roll out harebrained "features" that made things briefly attractive for some group of developers it was hoping to tempt into its sticky-trap. Remember when it put a Turing-complete scripting environment into Microsoft Office and unleashed a plague of macro viruses that wiped out years worth of work for entire businesses?

https://web.archive.org/web/20060325224147/http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/newsinfo/collateral.aspx?cid=33338

It wasn't just Office; Microsoft's operating systems have harbored festering swamps of godawful defects that were weaponized by trolls, script kiddies, and nation-states:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

Microsoft blamed everyone except themselves for these defects, claiming that their poor code quality was no worse than others, insisting that the bulging arsenal of Windows-specific malware was the result of being the juiciest target and thus the subject of the most malicious attention.

Even if you take them at their word here, that's still no excuse. Microsoft didn't slip and accidentally become an operating system monopolist. They relentlessly, deliberately, illegally pursued the goal of extinguishing every OS except their own. It's completely foreseeable that this dominance would make their products the subject of continuous attacks.

There's an implicit bargain that every monopolist makes: allow me to dominate my market and I will be a benevolent dictator who spends his windfall profits on maintaining product quality and security. Indeed, if we permit "wasteful competition" to erode the margins of operating system vendors, who will have a surplus sufficient to meet the security investment demands of the digital world?

But monopolists always violate this bargain. When faced with the decision to either invest in quality and security, or hand billions of dollars to their shareholders, they'll always take the latter. Why wouldn't they? Once they have a monopoly, they don't have to worry about losing customers to a competitor, so why invest in customer satisfaction? That's how Google can piss away $80b on a stock buyback and fire 12,000 technical employees at the same time as its flagship search product (with a 90% market-share) is turning into an unusable pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Microsoft reneged on this bargain from day one, and they never stopped. When the company moved Office to the cloud, it added an "analytics" suite that lets bosses spy on and stack-rank their employees ("Sorry, fella, Office365 says you're the slowest typist in the company, so you're fired"). Microsoft will also sell you internal data on the Office365 usage of your industry competitors (they'll sell your data to your competitors, too, natch). But most of all, Microsoft harvest, analyzes and sells this data for its own purposes:

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

Leave aside how creepy, gross and exploitative this is – it's also incredibly reckless. Microsoft is creating a two-way conduit into the majority of the world's businesses that insider threats, security services and hackers can exploit to spy on and wreck Microsoft's customers' business. You don't get more "too big to care" than this.

Or at least, not until now. Microsoft recently announced a product called "Recall" that would record every keystroke, click and screen element, nominally in the name of helping you figure out what you've done and either do it again, or go back and fix it. The problem here is that anyone who gains access to your system – your boss, a spy, a cop, a Microsoft insider, a stalker, an abusive partner or a hacker – now has access to everything, on a platter. Naturally, this system – which Microsoft billed as ultra-secure – was wildly insecure and after a series of blockbuster exploits, the company was forced to hit pause on the rollout:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/microsoft-delays-data-scraping-recall-feature-again-commits-to-public-beta-test/

For years, Microsoft waged a war on the single most important security practice in software development: transparency. This is the company that branded the GPL Free Software license a "virus" and called open source "a cancer." The company argued that allowing public scrutiny of code would be a disaster because bad guys would spot and weaponize defects.

This is "security through obscurity" and it's an idea that was discredited nearly 500 years ago with the advent of the scientific method. The crux of that method: we are so good at bullshiting ourselves into thinking that our experiment was successful that the only way to make sure we know anything is to tell our enemies what we think we've proved so they can try to tear us down.

Or, as Bruce Schneier puts it: "Anyone can design a security system that you yourself can't think of a way of breaking. That doesn't mean it works, it just means that it works against people stupider than you."

And yet, Microsoft – whose made more widely and consequentially exploited software than anyone else in the history of the human race – claimed that free and open code was insecure, and spent millions on deceptive PR campaigns intended to discredit the scientific method in favor of a kind of software alchemy, in which every coder toils in secret, assuring themselves that drinking mercury is the secret to eternal life.

Access to source code isn't sufficient to make software secure – nothing about access to code guarantees that anyone will review that code and repair its defects. Indeed, there've been some high profile examples of "supply chain attacks" in the free/open source software world:

https://www.securityweek.com/supply-chain-attack-major-linux-distributions-impacted-by-xz-utils-backdoor/

But there's no good argument that this code would have been more secure if it had been harder for the good guys to spot its bugs. When it comes to secure code, transparency is an essential, but it's not a sufficency.

The architects of that campaign are genuinely awful people, and yet they're revered as heroes by Microsoft's current leadership. There's Steve "Linux Is Cancer" Ballmer, star of Propublica's IRS Files, where he is shown to be the king of "tax loss harvesting":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

And also the most prominent example of the disgusting tax cheats practiced by rich sports-team owners:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Microsoft may give lip service to open source these days (mostly through buying, stripmining and enclosing Github) but Ballmer's legacy lives on within the company, through its wildly illegal tax-evasion tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

But Ballmer is an angel compared to his boss, Bill Gates, last seen some paragraphs above, stealing the credit for MS DOS from Tim Paterson and billions of dollars from his co-founder Paul Allen. Gates is an odious creep who made billions through corrupt tech industry practices, then used them to wield influence over the world's politics and policy. The Gates Foundation (and Gates personally) invented vaccine apartheid, helped kill access to AIDS vaccines in Sub-Saharan Africa, then repeated the trick to keep covid vaccines out of reach of the Global South:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation

The Gates Foundation wants us to think of it as malaria-fighting heroes, but they're also the leaders of the war against public education, and have been key to the replacement of public schools with charter schools, where the poorest kids in America serve as experimental subjects for the failed pet theories of billionaire dilettantes:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/millionaire-driven-education-reform-has-failed-heres-what-works

(On a personal level, Gates is also a serial sexual abuser who harassed multiple subordinates into having sexual affairs with him:)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/technology/microsoft-sexual-harassment-policy-review.html

The management culture of Microsoft started rotten and never improved. It's a company with corruption and monopoly in its blood, a firm that would always rather build market power to insulate itself from the consequences of making defective products than actually make good products. This is true of every division, from cloud computing:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/28/other-peoples-computers/#clouded-over

To gaming:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/27/convicted-monopolist/#microsquish

No one should ever trust Microsoft to do anything that benefits anyone except Microsoft. One of the low points in the otherwise wonderful surge of tech worker labor organizing was when the Communications Workers of America endorsed Microsoft's acquisition of Activision because Microsoft promised not to union-bust Activision employees. They lied:

https://80.lv/articles/qa-workers-contracted-by-microsoft-say-they-were-fired-for-trying-to-unionize/

Repeatedly:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/activision-fired-staff-using-strong-language-about-remote-work-policy-union-2023-03-01/

Why wouldn't they lie? They've never faced any consequences for lying in the past. Remember: the secret to Microsoft's billions is impunity.

Which brings me to Solarwinds. Solarwinds is an enterprise management tool that allows IT managers to see, patch and control the computers they oversee. Foreign spies hacked Solarwinds and accessed a variety of US federal agencies, including National Nuclear Security Administration (who oversee nuclear weapons stockpiles), the NIH, and the Treasury Department.

When the Solarwinds story broke, Microsoft strenuously denied that the Solarwinds hack relied on exploiting defects in Microsoft software. They said this to everyone: the press, the Pentagon, and Congress.

This was a lie. As Renee Dudley and Doris Burke reported for Propublica, the Solarwinds attack relied on defects in the SAML authentication system that Microsoft's own senior security staff had identified and repeatedly warned management about. Microsoft's leadership ignored these warnings, buried the research, prohibited anyone from warning Microsoft customers, and sidelined Andrew Harris, the researcher who discovered the defect:

https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers

The single most consequential cyberattack on the US government was only possible because Microsoft decided not to fix a profound and dangerous bug in its code, and declined to warn anyone who relied on this defective software.

Yesterday, Microsoft president Brad Smith testified about this to Congress, and promised that the company would henceforth prioritize security over gimmicks like AI:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/microsoft-in-damage-control-mode-says-it-will-prioritize-security-over-ai/

Despite all the reasons to mistrust this promise, the company is hoping Congress will believe it. More importantly, it's hoping that the Pentagon will believe it, because the Pentagon is about to award billions in free no-bid military contract profits to Microsoft:

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/17/pentagon-weighs-microsoft-licensing-upgrades

You know what? I bet they'll sell this lie. It won't be the first time they've convinced Serious People in charge of billions of dollars and/or lives to ignore that all-important maxim, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

[emeritusemeritus]

The little one? [Fred Weasley x Reader]

Title: The little one?

Pairing: Fred Weasley x wife!Reader

Timeline: Set during DH (canon has been altered slightly so that Fred and reader were married before Bill and Fleur)

Summary: A wedding brings out all the extended Weasley family, and their incessant questions about when you would start your family.

Warnings: Established relationship, getting married young, mentions of pregnancy and babies, but neither actually feature in the story. Mentions of sex and a few curse words.

The questions had been incessant ever since you had gotten engaged, never once letting up each and every time you attended some sort of Weasley family event.

You'd been dating Fred Weasley ever since your third year at Hogwarts and over time your relationship had just gotten stronger, knowing right from the start that you were endgame for each other, two souls eternally entwined.  You'd gotten engaged not long after the shop had opened in Diagon Alley, with Fred using the profits of his and George's wildly successful shop to buy you a simple but beautiful ring that he'd proposed with not long after.

You were both incredibly young but with everything happening with the war and the general unrest, time felt precious and neither of you had seen any fit reason to wait to start your futures together.

You'd gotten married in a small little ceremony in the woodland behind the burrow in the autumn, the spot you'd claimed as your own ever since the early days of dating, the spot you would both sneak off to in all weather to claim some time alone. Just your closest friends and family had attended, and you'd spent the evening laughing and dancing with the people you loved.

Bill and Fleur had apparently had very similar feelings and had wanted to marry as soon as possible, which meant Weasley family gatherings left, right and center in preparation for the big day.

It had started when Fleur's family arrived from France to meet the Weasley's and great aunt Muriel had took it upon herself to join in on the family gathering, stating herself to be the head of the family. The questions started from then on, with everyone over the age of 40 seemingly fixated on asking you and Fred the same question. Then, when Bill and Fleur's big day came, you'd been accosted by great aunt Tessie to help her to her seat during the reception and had been trapped there for a while as she went into excruciating detail about her own wedding and basically her entire life story. Truthfully, it wasn't entirely unpleasant with Tessie, not like talking with Muriel, but as you looked around the beautifully decorated marquees and saw Fred and George dancing in the crowd, clapping for the happy couple, you couldn't help but think about how much you'd rather be there with them, dancing with your husband. Fred had found you not long after and had attempted to steal you away to dance but Tessie in a rather spectacular fashion had also managed to get Fred to take a seat and had begun to drone on about her wedding once again with her new audience member.

"So when's the baby coming then?" She's asked with a wicked glint in her eyes, looking between you both.

"Do I look pregnant?" You'd asked in alarm, looking down at your stomach in your bridesmaid dress before flicking your gaze worryingly to Fred who looked just as shell shocked.

"Of course not dear!" Tessie laughed, slapping her hands down on her legs as she leaned back, "but you're married now!"

All words seemed to fall from your mind as you stared back in complete astonishment, not knowing how to respond.

"You know," she says, turning her attention to Fred who still looks frozen in place, "your mother was only 20 when she had William."

Ever since then, it was like the flood gates had opened and suddenly everyone was asking the pair of you about when you were planning on having a child, completely ignoring the fact that a potential war was on the horizon. It was exhausting, deflecting the same question twenty times from both families and towards the end of the night, you could tell that Fred's patience was wearing thin.

"So, have you two thought about trying for a little one?" A deeply unpleasant friend of aunt Muriel's had asked you both as you were making your way out of the marquee for some fresh air.

"Yeah we've just started actually," Fred snaps, making you turn your head quickly to look at him, eyes wide as you hear his words, knowing it would not end well. "Honestly it's exhausting, we've never had so much sex and that's saying something- every single day and sometimes twice a night, it's a miracle she can still walk."

You were horrified and amused in equal measure, not knowing whether to run away to hide your blush or your laughter at Fred's blunt delivery. The old woman looked up at Fred with utter disgust as she barged past him, fleeing from his rude and uncouth behaviour. It took one look between you both before your resolve shattered entirely and you both burst out into infectious laughter, doubling over as you wheezed. Fred dragged you close to him as you laughed and you squealed as he roughly pulled you into his chest, feeling his laughter reverberating through his muscular torso. You slapped his chest to scold him for his outrageous behaviour but he simply chuckled more and pulled you tighter, kissing the top of your head as you both made your way out into the woods, wordlessly falling in step as you sought out your spot.

"You know, I wish it was our wedding we were re-living," Fred says, slipping his hand down from your shoulders and entwining with yours as you walked, your other hand holding up the bottom of the long, satin bridesmaid dress so you could walk the final stretch to your spot without damaging the dress. You looked over at him, seeing the cheekily smile you loved so much and beamed back, nodding your head at the thought.

You approached the little fallen log that signalled the entrance to the little clearing in the woods and Fred suddenly dropped your hand and reached out to grab your waist, hauling you effortlessly over the little stump so that you didn't have to climb over it in your heels. His hands lingered on your waist for a few seconds as you leaned up to kiss him, silently thanking him for the little gesture. He winked at you as you pulled apart before pulling out his wand and casting a charm that created little firefly lights all around the little clearing, just adding a little more light to the moonlit clearing. You smile as you look up at the beautiful little twinkling lights, momentarily mesmerised by the beauty.

"Mrs Weasley," Fred says to your side, making you turn with a wide smile. Your new name and title still made butterflies erupt within you, the same way that Fred calling you his wife did. "Would you do me the honour of dancing with me this evening?" He asks with a smirk, extending his hand to you as he bows formally. His wedding ring glints in the moonlight and it makes your tummy flip once again.

"Why of course kind sir," you said flirtily, placing your hand delicately in his, gasping as he pulls you closer not a moment later, his other hand resting on the curve of your hip, just a little lower than what was deemed appropriate for a waltz as you begin to slow dance in the middle of your spot. "You know, my husband won't like that I'm dancing with such a handsome stranger."

"Husband you say?" He jokes, playing along, "I didn't realise someone had already claimed you, he's a very lucky man."

"I'd say so," you teased, laughing as he suddenly pinches your bum as you joke. "I'm pretty sure I'm the lucky one," you say with complete adoration as he smiles, the hint of a blush appearing on his freckled cheeks. "After all he does fuck me once a day and twice a night."

Your squeal echoes through the woods as he grabs as you, chuckling at your squeal as he spins you recklessly in his arms, both of you perfectly happy with your lives in that moment, without a mini Weasley.

[a34trgv2]

Why It Worked: Inside Out

Introduction: Inside Out is an animated coming-of-age film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed and co-written by Pete Docter, with the screenplay being co written by Meg LaFauve and Josh Cooley, the film stars Amy Poehler, Phyliss Smith, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan and Richard Kind as Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Fear, Riley, her parents Bill and Jill, and Bing Bong respectively. Released on June 19, 2015, the film was a major box office success grossing $858.8 million on a budget of $175 million. It also received critical acclaim from critics and audiences alike. According to Rotten Tomatoes, out of the 384 reviews aggregated, 98% gave a positive review with an average rating of 8.9/10. It also received numerous awards, including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, several Outstanding Achievement Awards at the Annies, a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature, and a Critic's Choice Movie Award for Best Animated Feature. It is often seen as a culturally significant film for mental health and the importance of expressing one's emotions. I saw this film for my birthday back in 2015 and I loved it right out of the gate. After multiple rewatches over the years, I stand by my personal opinion that this is a masterpiece of animation and visual storytelling. I'm overjoyed to talk about this film now that it finally has a sequel out.

The Plot: This film has 2 stories that are interconnected to one another, taking place in the mind of an 11 year old girl. On the outside, it's a bout a kid moving to a new city and being overwhelmed by the sudden changes happening all at once. On the inside, it's about Joy and Sadness trekking through Riley's mind, while along the way understanding each other's importance. Together, they create a very unique and engaging plot about growing up and learning to express yourself. The film brilliantly cuts between Riley, Joy and Sadness' journey, and what's happening at HQ to organically show what Riley's feeling and how her actions have psychological consequences. In addition to having powerful gut punching drama, it's also a very funny film with plenty of slapstick, goofy gags, and impressive word play that always gets me to belly laugh. Michael Giacchino also provides an enchanting, dreamlike score with great use of the piano and brass sections. The true highlight of the story is, of course, Pixar's masterfully crafted and innovative animation. The film makes Riley's mind so vibrant and expansive with Dream Productions and Imagination Land being major highlights. The outside world also looks very well done with the people looking very appealing, San Francisco looking grimy yet lived in, and Riley's old home in Minnesota looking very welcoming and colorful. Speaking of color, the use of colors in this film is nothing short of excellent from the radiant colors of Riley's memories, to Riley's clothes reflecting her current state of mind throughout the film. I also love how they use black and gray to represent faded memories and lack of emotion. If there's one word to describe Inside Out's story and animation, it's colorful.

Cast and Characters: This is an outstanding cast they brought on board for this film. Shout outs to the film's casting directors Natalie Lyon and Kevin Reher for picking out some excellent actors. Amy Poehler was phenomenal as Joy, perfectly capturing her bubbly and eccentric personality while also naturally showing her vulnerability and frustrations. Phyliss Smith sound perfectly dower and soft spoken as Sadness, yet at the same time making her sound so innocent and relatable. Lewis Black was the best match for Anger, making him sound crusty, cynical, and having a short fuse. Mindy Kaling brought in the right amount of sass and pettiness as Disgust and her comradery with the other emotions was brilliant. Bill Hader did a great job making Fear funny and relatable as a character. Kaitlyn Dias also deserve major props for her vocal performance as Riley, making her sound like a soft spoken but fun kid who goes through a great character arc in the film. Lastly, Richard Kind was the absolute surprise standout of the cast as Bing Bong as not only did he do a great job making him funny, but also made him relatable, selfless, a bit of an airhead, but also really resourceful. The cast did such a great job bringing these characters to life, with all of them being iconic and memorable in their own way.

Where It Falters: Outside of maybe adding another scene or 2 with Riley's life in Minnesota, I wouldn't change a thing with this film. It's one of those films where the only nitpick I have is I wanted more. Fortunately, that's remedied with the existence of the 2024 sequel. Coming out a couple years sooner wouldn't have been so bad either, but like I always say, quality>quantity.

Conclusion: There are a select few movies I consider to be a masterpiece. Inside Out is most certainly one of those movies. With outstanding writing, iconic characters, wonderful voice acting, masterfully crafted animation, and an enchanting score, it has more than earned its cultural significance. I cannot recommend this film enough, especially for those who struggle with expressing themselves such as yours truly. I promise this film will speak to you as it has for me after all these years. Thanks so much for reading and I'll see you soon ;)

[billthedrake]

TRAINING THE SALES GUY (PART SIX)

Previous chapters here: https://www.gaydemon.com/stories/Training_the_Sales_Guy_42206.html

I was supposed to be the one training my co-worker Carson, but the next business trip was more the other way around.

"The Dream Team is back," he said when I showed up at the gate area of the airport. Carson always got there early, and I always cut it close. He looked like a million bucks, in his slim-cut suit and neatly trimmed hair cut and beard. I knew things were just a sex-buddy dynamic between us, and that we were coworkers first. And Carson Wells had a bro-ish personality that was good in small doses but got on my nerves sometimes. But if the dude was gay I'd probably be getting more than a little crushed out on him.

"You probably say that to the other account execs," I teased as I took a sip of coffee.

Maybe that was a pissy thing to say and Carson would read some jealousy into it. But he just smiled back and laughed. "I forgot how cranky you are in the morning, Boss."

Those baby blues and that flirty disposition was making me wonder how good I was at maintaining my defenses and boundaries.

"It's why I'm single, Wells." I figured some self-deprecating humor would help.

"I doubt that," he said with surprising sincerity. "You just got off your game, Boss. When was the last time you went on a date?"

Maybe Carson had an ulterior motive for asking. A way of saying that nothing romantic or permanent was going to develop between us. But his tone was natural, on the level. I realized that he probably talks this way to his bro buddies in the office, and this was his way of including me in that work-friend category.

I sat down next to him. "About two months ago. When was your last date, Wells?"

He flashed his pearly white smile. "Had two last week, Boss. Different chicks.... it's a lot of effort, but I enjoy the hunt, you know?"

"I get that," I said. I'd been like that when I was in my 20s. But after the divorce, I'd had fun with more casual sex but found the process of using apps a fucking chore.

As we drifted into small talk, and then lined up to board the flight, a deep part of me hoped Carson wasn't so successful at his dating that he'd cut me off entirely. Then another part of me hoped for that very thing.

****

We were all business that day. Carson was particularly focused on our presentation. He was normally in the zone on our sales calls, but that day he was nervous I could tell. It was a huge prospective client, and it would mean a fat commission for Wells. It was getting to him.

I pulled him aside during a quick break an hour and a half in. "Relax, buddy," I said. "We got this."

I could see the tension in his handsome face. "Yeah?" Not believing me but appreciative of my forced confidence.

I shrugged. "It's a like a date. You can't want her too much, or it's all fucked up."

Hell, I didn't know how straight guys dated, but the advice seemed to work. "Yeah," he said.

We did good but not great. It might not matter, depending on what the company wanted. I wasn't going to sweat it. We'd come in and done our part. The rest was out of our hands.

And Carson was back in fine form over the dinner. We'd taken a number of the contacts out to a nice steak restaurant, and Wells was in classic sales guy mode. Chatty but not too chatty, able to engage with everyone at the table, comfortable in mixing business with pleasure.

And he was in a good mood after, as we got back to our hotel.

"Wanna come to my room, Boss?" he asked.

I wasn't expecting this. It had been a long day. And if it had been anyone other than Carson I might have even begged off getting my cock sucked.

"Sounds great, Wells," I said.

We wheeled our luggage to the elevator, and I think we both had smirks on our faces as we rode up.

"I guess we're getting more comfortable with this," Carson said, speaking the very thought I was thinking.

I nodded. "If you ever don't feel comfortable, Carson, please let me know." I'd gone too far in this affair to be safe from HR consequences, but at least I wanted to give Carson an out any time he felt like it.

He laughed. I expected him to make a crack about uptight Bill, but instead he said, "It's crazy. I knew I liked sucking dick, but you got me into the other stuff, Boss... I even watch the videos you sent."

Indeed I'd discovered a new Pornhub guy with a very minimal gag reflex and no inhibitions about working the one he had.

I was getting turned on, surprisingly by Carson's candor as much as anything. "Well it's really hot to experience your skills," I said, my voice almost cracking into a whisper.

The elevator dinged and we wheeled our bags down the hall. Carson tapped his key card and we entered.

"Um, Carson... can I ask you something?" I started. "What makes you like it?" I'd been afraid to ask. Afraid I'd spook this straight guy with a major bi streak.

He'd clearly been asking himself the same question. "I dunno, Boss... it's just... when you use my throat, it's like I'm not the one who needs dick, you're just feeding it to me."

I didn't quite follow. "You afraid of being gay, Carson?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I mean, I'm not gay, thought maybe you don't believe me."

"I believe you," I replied. "But it doesn't matter if I do."

He took that in. "Yeah. I guess having a cock in my mouth always feels like the last thing I should be doing, and the taboo of it gets me off."

"The forbidden fruit thing is hot for me too," I said.

Carson's blue eyes twinkled in amusement. "Fuck yeah it is, Boss." He pulled out his phone and wallet and set them on the table. "I think the fact you're a fag..." he stopped himself. "Sorry boss... but I think that when your cock is in my mouth and it takes me to this fucked up place."

I didn't know what to make of it. But I was getting head from Carson more than I ever dreamed of, so I decided not to get pissed off. "Please don't get therapy, Carson," I joked. "At least not anytime soon."

That made the guy laugh. He's so fucking sexy when he laughs. "Don't worry, Boss."

With that he knelt down in front of me. I was already hard and Carson's touch at my crotch made me harder. He teased and massaged my ridge in my suit pants, then pulled my zipper down.

"OK if we start with some old-fashioned head?" he asked.

"Yeah," I croaked. "More than OK." I'd been enjoying the more extreme throat training lately, but a standard Carson Wells BJ was always gonna get me off big.

He licked my dick up and down, before pulling back. "You mad at me for what I said?" he asked.

I nodded. "A little, yeah." I figured I should be honest. "But I'm not gonna stay mad at you, Carson. Just don't call me that again. You can think it or whatever."

"Yeah," he sighed. He was genuinely contrite. He seemed to be taking in my cock with his hungry eyes, examining my length and girth.

Then, slowly he opened his mouth and descended on me.

"Oh fuck!" I hissed. Carson's mouth felt great. I knew I'd spend the next day wondering if these blowjobs were keeping me from finding a boyfriend, even a casual one. Carson Wells had gone from top 5 in his oral skills to top cocksucker in my life experience, period. The best I'd ever have, I knew.

I looked down as he blew me. His hunky body in his navy suit, head bobbing up and down. I could hear the spit and the suction around my prick and the rhythmic soft moans from this throat. He was working himself deeper on my pole, working up to a deep throat. Not fast but steady, knowing what he was doing. He was getting me to that place, fast, that build up of pleasure, and then it was like his mouth and throat was gonna milk the load out of my balls.

Only he pulled off instantly and gripped the base of my prick, pinching it slightly. "Goddamn, you're worked up tonight, Boss."

"Jesus, Wells," I exclaimed.

My excitement made him smile. "See? Sometimes it's better not to have to go all hardcore and shit." He let go of my dong and started tonguing the bottom half of the shaft. With anyone else, it might look slutty, but I knew Carson was mostly trying to let me enjoy this without blowing too soon. It worked, sort of.

There was a clear excitement for him, too, as he looked up at me, hands on his trousers, gym-toned chest showing between the spread lapels of his coat. Unlike me, he wasn't wearing a tie but instead rocking that more millennial business-bro look. It suited him.

"Thanks for letting me initiate this, Boss," he said softly. "I don't know if I'd like it the other way."

In my head our affair wasn't one-way, but I knew what Carson meant. "You do a lot for me, Wells... I want you comfortable with it."

He nodded. He reached down and fiddled with his zipper and belt. Often he didn't like jerking, and I think he was shy of letting me see his dick. But Carson was pulling it out now and wrapping his fist around it just as he leaned back forward.

"MMMmmh," he moaned around my prick as he swallowed me. He'd gotten warmed up already so now was just a skilled, silky deep throating. Up and down, six, seven inches at a time. Almost bouncing. Carson was driving his blowjob but he was abusing his throat all on his own. Deep throating me, faster and faster, till he was spearing his gullet with rhythmic gutteral sounds.

"God yes," I hissed. Watching him do a sword swallowing thing like a pro.

I heard the gurgle of a gag on one down stroke then that familiar mucusy slickness on my meat, dripping out of Carson's mouth and onto my balls. That did it for me.

"Shit!" I muttered. And I was cumming down Wells' throat.

He slowed his mouth strokes just enough to be able to swallow my semen comfortably. And as he rode out the aftershocks of my orgasm, he stroked himself to completion.

Carson finally pulled back, a flush look of sexual satisfaction on his face, which must have matched mine.

"Thanks you, Wells.... you outdid yourself." I wanted to give him every compliment I could.

He smirked. "Yeah, I've been wanting to try that, Boss." He looked down at his hand. It was covered in his own jizz. Carson shoots a lot. He got up off his knees, holding his hand out to keep the dripping load from getting on his suit. I'd have to get mine cleaned, but it would be worth it.

He wiped off then offered me the Kleenex box. I used a couple to handle the spit and throat slime. There were some cum dribbles too but Carson took care of most of those. I tucked back in and sighed.

"We good, Wells?" I asked.

His green eyes met mine. "Yeah, we're good."

I wanted to kiss him bad. But that wasn't in the cards. So I grabbed my luggage and gave Carson one last nod before walking out of his room and over to mine.

As I got ready for bed, I thought over the evening. Sometimes I had real misgivings about fooling around with my straight-ish coworker. But that night I had none. The sex was hot as hell.

****

"You up?" came the text bright and early the next morning.

I was up, but barely. It was pretty early. "Yes. Still on East Coast time."

"Can I come by?"

My morning wood throbbed. "Sure."

Fuck, this was too easy. Wells was going to make me look forward to business travel all right.

I wasn't decent when he showed up a minute later. But that didn't matter. Carson had on only a pair of gym shorts and athletic shirt. The shorts didn't hide a thick boner.

"Hey," he said, morning voice making him sound deeper.

I ushered him in. "Hey," I laughed. It was a little absurd how carried away we were getting. But Carson's body was looking really fucking good in those clothes.

"I was jerking off and I thought the hair of the dog might be in order."

I smiled. I was now self conscious that Carson noticed the boner in my underwear. "I'm surprised I have anything left in the tanks after last night. You drained me, buddy."

Wells had a slightly nervous look on his face now. "You not up for it?" he asked.

"I'm very up for it," I replied.

I took the initiative and peeled down my briefs. By now Wells had seen my cock a lot but I wasn't sure how often I was completely naked.

The man's eyes were pretty much on my dick though, till he took them away and looked back up at me. "You OK if we try something new, Boss?"

"After last night... you can try out as much as you want," I said.

He grinned and peeled off his shirt. I'd never have a body that could compete with his, but that was OK. "I've been watching some videos. I guess they give me ideas."

My heart was pounding now. I wasn't expecting a two-fer on this trip. So it was a nice surprise. Particularly as Carson slid down his gym shorts. He was hard and I could see his dick still was covered in a lot of lube. I wondered how long the guy had been jerking off that morning.

My own bone twitched as I watched my coworker lie down on his back, settling in on the unmade bed, till his head lay just past the edge. I didn't need a diagram to know what he had in mind. I stepped up, hands on my hips and positioned my cock above his face.

Wasting no time, Carson leaned up, attacking my nuts with his tongue before I angled my prick to let him lick that. As he did, he jerked his cock, not fast, just enough to prime the pump during this foreplay ritual.

"Fuck, Boss, you have a great cock," he hissed. Hearing that was enough to make me spurt some precum on his chin and neck. Carson could tasted it was he licked his way to the head.

I swiveled my hips back to give him access. That tongue laved all around my head, slobbering it down. Carson wasn't shy about extra spit with me now and excess saliva dripped down his face.

"God fucking damn, Wells," I hissed as I watched the lewd sight.

He muttered something then more spit ran out just before he swallowed me.

The trick of being an oral top, particularly for the more extreme sucking, is knowing when you can take charge. Carson was ready. I reached down and pressed against his shoulder. To steady him but also to let him know I was coming in.

Wells grunted along my cock but was ready. I steadily speared his throat, from the inner part to the deeper reaches. He quickly stopped jerking and I realized it was to keep from coming. Wells was loving this shit.

I pulled back and thrust in again. And again. Wells' throat was snug and wet and alive. I don't know why we hadn't done this before, but we were doing it now.

I heard his soft grunts and felt his excitement as I steadily fucked his throat. Taking my hands off his shoulder, I leaned forward. That meant I couldn't watch his face and throat as easily, but the better thrusting angle made it worth while.

I just went for it. Not super rough, but steady firm thrusts deep into Carson's gullet in rapid succession. Figured I could stir the pot and see if I could get some nice slime.

It took a half minute, a half minute of watching Carson's dick jerk in excitement before I heard and felt it.

I stopped and withdrew. To give Wells a break and check in on him, but also to see that trophy. That milky mucus was thick around my bone but I didn't realize just how much there was until I pulled out completely and watched thick river of slime run down his handsome face.

"Fuck!" he gasped, chest rising and falling as he caught his breath.

"You OK, Wells?" I asked.

He was beet red and not opening his eyes but he grunted a yes. "Go for it, Boss."

I got back in place. Entry was easier this time. And as I fucked his face I heard the sloppy wet sloshing.

"Gonna cum..." I said.

That was the cue. He grabbed his own dick and jerked in rapid strokes.

We came together. My dick pumping its morning load straight into his guts as his own fired out. Like I say, Carson's a gusher, and I enjoyed watching several streaks of thick cum land on his muscular body.

I knew I had to give him a break now, and fast. I wasn't rough, but quickly I pulled out.

He sucked in some air while I went to get a washcloth for him. He seemed grateful for it and as he sat up he wiped his face down.

"Damn, Boss, you're hardcore."

I nodded. "I got news for you Wells, you're pretty hardcore yourself."

He finished wiping off and I took the cloth from him. It was only then that we felt self conscious being fully naked with one another.

Carson looked at the clock. "Well, I'm not getting my morning workout in, I guess," he said, acknowledging the time. We had about a half hour before we had to leave to the airport. "But fuck I was horny."

I gave a nod and watched Carson find his clothes.

"You're getting really good at this, Carson," I said. Not just complimenting him, but acknowledging that he was taking the throat abuse like a pro.

He pulled on his T shirt and flashed a grin. "I am, aren't I?"

"You doing anyone else?" I asked. I don't know why I did, but curiosity got the best of me.

He seemed offended though. "Would it bother you if I did?" he asked.

I shook my head and gave the best contrite expression I could. "Not at all. You're your own man, Wells. Just curious was all."

That seemed to put him at ease, but his voice was still quiet. "You're the only dude I suck, Boss."

"Cool," I said. I gave a pause. "I know this arrangement is weird as fuck, Wells. But anytime you offer head, I'm not gonna turn you down."

He liked that. "You'll find a boyfriend to focus on, Boss," he said. He'd bene thinking about that. "In the meantime, let's just have fun, OK?"

Dude actually fist bumped me on the way out of my hotel room.

***

Carson upgraded on the flight back, while I stayed in coach. I was glad not to have to make small talk. Still, I felt a strange elation when I got the news on my work phone as we landed. The decision was fast. We'd won the prospect as a client.

Carson was waiting for me at the gate in the terminal. "The Dream Team did it!" he growled, pulling me into a bear hug.

I hugged him back. "You're buying me drinks with that commission money, Wells."

[harry-sussex]

The media has branded Harry and Meghan a “flop” - there’s no coming back from that reputation.

That WSJ article just made my stomach drop. I have no idea how it’s possible that things have gotten this bad. The worst part is that there’s no way up from here - only further down. Rock bottom is a challenge at this point, and it feels like they’re shooting for it every single day.

This is what they wanted? This is better? They’re happy? No fucking way, man. No fucking way. If I know anything about Harry at all - and at this point, we all know Harry a bit too well - he must be outright miserable. There’s no way this whole thing has been worth it. None whatsoever. To someone like me, this is nauseating. I hate it. I hate this. I have always hated this, I always knew that they weren’t going to live the life they thought they would after they left, I’ve been saying for three years until I’m blue in the face - and the reception I’ve gotten from Sussex fans around the world has been horrific (you guys should see some of the shit that’s come through my inbox courtesy of the squad - so much for mental health, Harry and Meghan would be ashamed of them, but I digress).

If you give even a sliver of a shit about Harry, you’ll be able to get your head out of the sand and recognize that leaving was the absolute worst thing he could have done for himself. Look at him! Directionless! Lost! Misguided! Unproductive! Not to mention paranoid, tired, isolated, and he fact that he always looks miserable.

I will say it again and again and again - it. did. not. have. to. be. this. way. 3 years in - what do they have to show for it?:

A successful commercial venture? Nope - almost nothing has come out of Archetypes or anything else, as in the article. Bill Simmons called them “fucking grifters!” If he’s willing to say it loud and proud for the media to pounce on, how many are saying it behind closed doors?

More money? Their income hinges upon content they haven’t created yet. Clearly, these companies have no trouble pulling the plug on their deals and therefore cutting off the income. (Not for nothing - the more this happens, the less money they’ll be able to say they grossed by leaving the royal family. Since this looks like a trend, at what point do they stop and say ‘I probably would have more money at my disposal if I just stuck with the Duchy of Cornwall?’)

More exposure? Yeah, I guess, but look how shitty it is all the time. This is not the kind of exposure they were looking for.

More privacy? Totally goes against everything above, but they’ve never been more vulnerable to intrusive speculation. They invite it! Encourage it! Hand their personal lives over to the media and the public on a silver platter! The only thing keeping them ‘private’ is living in a gated community - imagine how private their personal life would be if they were in a palace instead?

Better treatment from the press? The American media are vultures too. The world media has made a fortune off of their bullshit. Even the gently critical ones that tell the hard truth - like the WSJ - show that the media does not care who you are if you deserve the criticism or if your bullshit is so completely out of this world that the story writes itself. Nothing is sacred, and it’s even worse now that there’s nothing standing in between them and the press.

The opportunity to provide universal service? What the hell have they done? One single Invictus Games? The occasional event? The occasional donation? They spend more time accepting awards for doing something rather than actually doing something!

Being happier? Bullshit, man. Look at Prince Harry. He hasn’t had a genuine smile on his face in public since 2021. I could go down a rabbit hole here, but you’re blinded by adoration if you can’t recognize he’s outright miserable and a complete shell of the person he used to be. That spark is completely gone.

I could go on, but these articles are starting to pop up in legitimate news sources. We’re not talking about the National Enquirer here - this is the Wall Street Journal. A legitimate news source is reporting on the way they’re failing to meet their own standards and the standards of those who control the purse strings - and how they’re nothing without their titles. If the money is the bottom line, then they need the star power behind their HRHs to make it. They don’t have anything else worth marketing. That star power is dwindling more and more as they get closer and closer to rock bottom and as they continue to bite the hand that has always fed them. Look at this from Vanity Fair:

So much for “service is universal.” They don’t get traction for any of their charity work because they spend so much time BITCHING. The world can’t focus on their service and help support those causes because they spend so much FUCKING TIME milking their only cash cow that nobody has any idea what kinds of causes they support! In fact - I’d bet that the only causes recognized by the general public are those they SUPPORTED BY WORKING FOR THE FAMILY. This isn’t about service - it’s about clout, star power, mystique, and the aura associated with the blurred lines between royal and celebrity. The service hasn’t been part of it for a long time. They’ve wronged their ship and there’s no way to right it anymore. That ship, for lack of better term, has sailed. The world doesn’t see them as charitable - the way they were seen when they were working for the family. The world sees them as washed up crybabies who don’t have anything to offer. It’s not just a “hater” thing anymore. They’ve lost their allure and that was the only thing they had going for them. Without that allure, they’re nothing compared to the Hollywood lights.

They’ve completely fucked up. I know it, you know it, Hollywood knows it, the Royal Family knows it. Harry and Meghan are the only people on earth who haven’t figured it out. They haven’t done a single thing they planned since leaving. They’re not happier, they don’t live a more private life, they don’t have more bandwidth to do charity work, they’re not making money hand over fist, they’re not successful in their new endeavors… they’ve completely fucked up.

Harry, in particular, has completely fucked up. He gave up a life of structure, service, wealth, luxury, success, protection, guidance, family, friendship for… this? And he’s pretending that it was the best decision he ever made? Please. He fucked up, and it will continue to come back to bite him day in and day out until he learns to sit down, shut up, get some help, and hire some competent people to make shit happen for him, because clearly he cannot direct the ship on his own.

This is not how it was supposed to be - not for us as fans, nor for them after leaving. It did not have to be this way. I’d bet anything that the part of Harry who wanted this is dwindling more and more each day. Someday, he’s going to regret the whole thing. The more I see him and hear him, the more I think he’s already there. He fucked up, and I think he’s finally on his way to realizing that they have to do something to make the world interested in them beyond their association with the family. That will diminish, and then they’ll really be shit out of luck.

What a complete and utter disaster, Henry. What a mess. With all due respect, Your Royal Highness - you fucked up.

[darkmaga-retard]

The mainstream media has been ordered to continue demonizing Ivermectin and urging people not to take it even though major studies have proven that the Nobel prize winning wonder drug cures 28 forms of cancer.

According to a Gates Foundation insider, Ivermectin posed a threat to the massive financial success of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, and now it’s challenging the trillion dollar profits the elite stand to gain from the surge in turbo cancers due to the vaccines.

This is crucial information, and it’s vital that everyone understands the game the elite are playing so they can’t cause any more harm to our health.

Before we dive in, subscribe to the channel on Rumble, join the People’s Voice Locals Community for uncensored and exclusive news and views.

The People’s Voice invited whistleblowers from inside the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to come forward with their stories of abuse and corruption, and they have not disappointed.

Former and current employees of Gates have revealed troubling evidence of widespread misconduct and cronyism within the Foundation. They also shared how Gates uses his influence as a major supporter of media organizations and scientific research to control the mainstream agenda for his own benefit.

[blowflyfag]

WRESTLING EYE: APRIL 1993

Sting: CATCH HIS RISING STAR!!

By Steve Mueller

It seemed that when Sting lost his WCW world title to Big Van Vader, he lost more than just a championship belt. He lost his reputation and his status. In that match’s conclusion, the Stinger was literally destroyed by Van Vader’s power bomb. The face painted gladiator was so completely beaten by Vader that it seemed his run as a major star in American wrestling rings was definitely finished. It was the kind of loss that forces wrestlers to leave a promotion.

And then when Ron Simmons defeated Vader for the gold, convincingly, it seemed that there was no question. Even among his most devoted fans, that Sting’s time in the spotlight had definitely passed. Wrestling journalists wrote stories about Sting’s coming fade into oblivion. His almost story book career was discussed and then written off as just another example of a guy who electrifies the wrestling world for a time, and then passes, sometimes for inexplicable reasons, into obscurity.

Then the situation worsened. Sting’s lackluster performance against Jake Roberts at Halloween Havoc in a match that has come to be universally labeled as a travesty only seemed to cement the speculation that Sting’s star had crashed. After all, the face painted gladiator had had two runs as world champion and neither had been successful draws at the gate. And drawing fans into an arena is the only true measure of success in the modern wrestling world. 

Rumors began to circulate that Sting was headed to the World Wrestling Federation. In the “Pro Wrestling Today” television talk show in New York, it seemed every other question asked by a fan was “When is Sting going to the WWF?” Insiders, however, knew there was no chance that Sting would suddenly appear on “Superstars”, brandishing a tube of makeup, and proclaiming himself to be “Real Grease-painted Hero.” Sting’s contract with WCW is both ironiclad and Watts-proof, and, with Hulk Hogan on the sidelines, it is the richest in the mat sport. 

Then other rumors began to circulate that Sting would become the highest paid tag team wrestler in the history of the sport. When the Ultimate Warrior quit/was fired from the WWF in November, respected experts such as Professor Victor Chirel, noted academician and wrestling historian, predicted that the Warrior would eventually sign a contract with WCW and reform the Blade Runners tag team with his one-time partner Sting. 

“The Ultimate Warrior was never that successful as a singles draw,” said Professor Chirel. “Even when he was WWF world champ, he had very little drawing power. And now that any potential Sting had to become a major draw is definitely finished, I predict Sting and the Warrior will become a team again in the hope of salvaging their careers. Together, Sting and the Ultimate Warrior have the chance to become the Road Warriors of the nineties. Individually, at least in the majors, their careers are over.”

[Sting battles Rick Rude in a classic confrontation.]

For a time, most insiders and experts agreed with Professor Chirel. Rumors surfaced weekly that, after he appeared on a few independent shows as “the Man Who Used to be Called the Ultimate Warrior” because of WWF contractual restrictions, the Warrior was about to join WCW. Like Professor Chirel, longtime fans remembered the Blade Runners, the vehicle through which Sting and the Warrior first came if not to national prominence, then at least to national attention. 

In the mid-eighties, Cowboy Bill Watts brought the face- painted duo to his legendary Mid-South promotion and the rest is history. Since Watts is now head honcho at WCW, it is easy to see how speculation arose that the Blade Runners team would be reformed, perhaps under another name. 

And many experts thought the reformation of the Blade Runners was a good idea. “Frankly, I’m tired of Sting,” said veteran ringside physician Dr. Gary Dunn. “As far as I’m concerned, and I’ve been studying the mat sport for over thirty years, Sting no longer has a future as a singles star. As for the Ultimate Warrior, I’m not sure he ever had a future as a real star in singles competition. However, put Sting and the Warrior together and you have some real possibilities. The whole, in this case, would surely be greater than the sum of its parts.”

[Sting is always a crowd pleaser.]

“I agree with Doctor Dunn,” says Kim Hostetler, screen actress and wrestling fan. “I always thought Sting’s talents were more suited to tag team competition. When you think about it, Sting and that Ultimate Fellow have basically the same blend of as the legendary Road Warriors. Sting has the high flying aerial skills like Hawk. The Warrior would be the power guy on the team just like Animal. Hey, Cowboy Bill Watts should get this going right away.”

But as Christmas 1992 came and went, and speculation began to grow that Bill Watts might not be around WCW much longer because the promotion was sinking deeper and deeper into red ink. It became obvious that the Warrior was not going to join WCW. The inside story was that WCW could not give the Warrior the kind of contract he demanded–one that paid big bucks. Billy Watts’ austerity program had eliminated large guaranteed contracts. The Warrior just laughed at WCW’s offers. 

[Sting is used to doing battle outside the ring.]

It seemed that a reunion with the Warrior was not going to save Sting’s career. The second most famous wrestler from Venice Beach seemed doomed to fade into the shadowy world of oblivion. Then a strange thing began to happen. 

Sting, though it happened very slowly at first, began to recapture some of the magic that had electrified fans earlier in his career. His matches became more focused and he began using more of the aerial style that had been his trademark before a serious knee injury had almost ended his career. 

Amazingly, suddenly it wasn’t just kids and young women who were chanting Sting’s name at ringside. Hardcores joined the chorus. Somehow, being cast in the role of the underdog had done wonders for Sting’s charisma. Facing adversity and not giving up had made him kind of a “People’s Champion.”

[The Stinger knows how to hurt his opponents.]

A series of glitzy wins, and like unexpected lightning, Sting was back near the top of his profession. 

In December and January, TV ratings of WCW programs began a return to respectability. Silent hope is growing in the executive offices of Turner Broadcasting that WCW may indeed still have a future on TBS. And it is no accident that this rise in the ratings coincides with Sting’s own return to prominence. The coming months will tell the story not only of Sting’s future, but of the future of WCW itself. Stay tuned, this one is going to get interesting. 

[crystaltsoi]

They Called Us Idiots (Matsuda/OC) {2}

Bruh L was a fanum taxer, here's proof.

6 July 1994

(I was 8 at the time of writing)

Dear Diary,

It's been many Sundays and Mommy has not come back.

I should give up.

Every lunchtime (usually at noon) I stand outside by the gate with an umbrella and wait for her.

But anyway, if you ask me about my social life, it's failing horribly.

None of the girls or boys want to be my friend, except Lawliet.

Because Watari assigned him to me for being friendless. Also, I have the most snacks among the others.

I know where ALL the hiding places for food are.

I know EXACTLY where Watari hides the prawn cocktail potato chips to satisfy his midnight cravings. It's under his bed, by the way. So here's how I get them- I grab the ladder from the garden when he's working, sneak into his room through the window he opens "for ventilation", and then grab ONE bag from under his bed. (If I take more than one he'll get suspicious) Then I climb out the window and bring it to my room to eat.

Usually, Lawliet would catch me, run to me, and hold out his hand expecting to get some.

The last time I let him have some, he downed TWO THIRDS of the bag. Lawliet is so WEIRD, bro. Most of the day, he locks himself in his huge white room with piles of books everywhere and sits in front of this big high-tech computer.

He only allows Watari and me to come in so I know what his room looks like. It's pretty messy, not gonna lie.

Our interests do NOT match at all.

The last time I dumped My Little Pony lore on him, he ignored me.

He just mumbled, "When is the cake coming?"

And ALSO, he plays the most boring game in the world, TETRIS.

He likes boring computer games, mostly.

I'm not gonna survive, am I?

Love,

Crystal Tsoi (Meanwhile, this is Matsuda's entry on the same day, he's now 12) 6/7

Today's a better day.

So I entered junior high school. Also, I've started going to karate classes and learning self-defence.

My parents want me to be a lawyer, and work for my older cousin's successful firm.

I'm not so sure about that. Actually, I want to be a policeman.

Policemen are really cool. They catch the bad guys and fight for justice. I really want to be one of them.

Also, in school, I don't have many friends. But we like goofing around a lot.

We went to the arcade last Saturday, and I have this new cool friend from America in my school named Jone who absolutely KILLED IT in Dance Dance Revolution.

Jone also wants to be a police officer, so that's cool.

And he spent SO MUCH MONEY at the Gacha machines. He randomly flashed a 1000 yen bill and cashed it in.

I asked him, "How the HELL did you get so much money?" He told me, "I just saved it." I should really start using that piggy bank in the attic. I'll get it tomorrow because I'm lazy. I also really like Tokyo Love Story now. Kenichi Mikami is so cool.

Okay, I gotta go, my mom is yelling again.

~ Matsuda

[protoslacker]

[P]owerful figures in international development argued that the best way to catalyze economic growth and foster climate change resilience across Africa was to teach millions of smallholder farmers to approach agriculture “as a business.” As I read more about these efforts, I was struck by how the most influential voices—President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Bill Gates, and others—used history in their calls for a “Green Revolution in Africa.” Collectively, they drew on accounts about an earlier “Green Revolution,” in which American scientific ingenuity had “fed the world” and staved off predicted famine in Asia in the 1960s. Yet, the stories they told left out crucial details. The scholarship that I build on in the book convincingly shows that the prevailing Green Revolution success narrative obscures a much more complicated history of how American-led development efforts in Asia and Latin America were fundamentally tied to U.S. foreign policy. The prevailing story also overlooks how the Green Revolution drove unequal development in the rural countryside and led to lasting ecological effects from massive fertilizer and pesticide use. This disconnect prompted me to ask how the Green Revolution’s success narrative has remained compelling for so many even in the face of sustained critique from historians and social scientists.

Aaron Eddens in an interview at UC Press Blog. Q&A with Aaron Eddens, author of Seeding Empire

Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa by Aaron Eddens

[gothicprep]

when I was 10, I heard this about bill gates or someone, so I decided to count to a million so I’d have the same sort of story. one month of perpetual muttering later, I made it. I attribute all my success, past and future, to self-conscious pursuit of ostentatious intellectualism.

anyway. as with counting to a million, the core reason to read an entire encyclopedia is to tell people you read an entire encyclopedia. alternately, if you have a real sigma grindset, you can skip the reading and go straight to the telling. who’s gonna contradict you, your mom?

[crecimiento-espiritual]

PROVERBIOS 13:6-10

Las claves del éxito

De acuerdo a la Escritura, el factor determinante para volverse sabio consiste en buscar el consejo y la orientación de los demás. Precisamente, el pasaje de hoy nos enseña que “la sabiduría está con quienes oyen consejos”. Y más adelante, en el capítulo 19 de Proverbios, también nos encontramos con una instrucción similar: “Escucha el consejo y acepta la corrección, y llegarás a ser sabio”.

En el bestseller "Outliers: The Story of Success", el escritor Malcolm Gladwell analiza cuáles fueron los factores que llevaron al éxito a líderes de la industria como Steve Jobs y Bill Gates. Aunque es verdad que el talento innato y el trabajo duro son herramientas importantes, Gladwell concluye que el éxito individual se debe en gran medida al apoyo externo. Para lograr la grandeza, la mayoría de los personajes que estudió el escritor de este libro, contaron con mucha ayuda, y sobre todo, estaban dispuestos a pedirla.

Malcolm Gladwell dice en su libro: “Nadie—ni las estrellas de rock, ni los atletas profesionales, ni los multimillonarios del software, ni siquiera los genios—alcanzan el éxito solos.”

Esto es tan cierto como lo ha sido desde la creación. Fuimos diseñados a imagen de Dios, y desde el principio de los tiempos, nuestro destino fue estar acompañados. El Señor estableció nuestra capacidad para relacionarnos con otros como el pilar de su creación, reflejando en este hecho su propia naturaleza relacional. La Biblia, por tanto, sostiene que la creación de comunidades y de relaciones entre las personas y los pueblos es fundamental en el desarrollo de la historia humana; desde los hijos de Israel hasta el nacimiento de la iglesia, percibimos que la vida que Dios pensó para nosotros no debe ser vivida en solitario, sino en comunidad.

Los tiempos han cambiado mucho desde entonces, y hoy en día nos encontramos en una era tecnológica que nos ha vuelto personas aisladas e individualistas, sin embargo, es justo en este momento, cuando el concepto de comunidad se vuelve más importante que nunca.

Al tomar decisiones, debemos resistir la tentación de actuar solos y en su lugar, pedir ayuda. La Biblia dice que la sabiduría consiste en buscar consejo de diversas fuentes y que hacerlo, nos asegurará el bien en todo lo que hagamos. Como dice Proverbios 11:14: “el éxito depende de los muchos consejeros”.

Es interesante que la Escritura recomiende buscar específicamente “muchos” consejeros. No nos está diciendo que simplemente busquemos una segunda opinión. Esta, más que una recomendación, es una advertencia: si no escuchamos el consejo de varias personas, que obviamente tengan sabiduría, corremos el riesgo de vivir en una cámara de eco de nuestros propios pensamientos y opiniones. En cambio, cuando nos disponemos a escuchar y pedir ayuda a otros, obtendremos una perspectiva mucho más amplia sobre cualquier decisión o circunstancia a la que nos enfrentemos.

El autor Tim Keller sugiere los siguientes pasos a seguir para tomar decisiones sabias:

* Busca cuidadosamente el consejo de los demás

* Escudriña la Escritura para encontrar luz en la oscuridad

* Examina tu conciencia

* Piensa cuáles son los motivos que te impulsan

* Usa sabiamente tus dones y habilidades

Y finalmente:

* Evalúa el impacto de tu decisión en los demás

Tal vez estés enfrentando alguna circunstancia importante en este momento y no sabes por dónde comenzar. Si es tu caso, haz una pausa y dedica un momento para pensar en los pasos sugeridos por el escritor Tim Keller. ¿Hay alguno que puedas haber pasado por alto antes de tomar una decisión?

El autor Daniel Grothe dijo: “La sabiduría se encuentra al buscar a Dios; la sabiduría se adquiere en encuentros cara a cara con los sabios.” Piensa ahora en aquellas personas sabias en tu vida y recurre a ellas en busca de consejo. Ten la certeza de que te ayudarán a ampliar tu perspectiva y a traer luz en medio de la oscuridad. Recuerda las palabras de Dios: “La sabiduría está con quienes oyen consejos”.

[technotalksnimien]

Tech Revolution: Reflection on the Pirates of the Silicon Valley

Hi, it’s me again. I decided to drop double or triple updates on my blog today. I just feel like it. I wrote this blog on a rainy evening. I hope you are all doing fine.

Just like the three Idiots, I was also wondering why this movie is called, “Pirates of the Silicon Valley”. Did you wonder too? Spoiler alert! Honestly, at first I thought this movie is like the famous Pirates of the Caribbean or typical Pirate story, hunting for treasures. It is actually way more than that. Waaaaaaay more. I wondered why this movie weren’t introduced to me back in my elementary or high school days. Man, this talks about how the world changed. So great, so worth it.

The film is titled as it is because it is about fraud and piracy in computer technology. In which the term Silicon Valley is actually a region in the state of California that is known for its prominence in the computer industry. The term pirate is actually the typical word we can associate it with, piracy.

So, what did I learn? I don’t know where to start because I honestly learned so much from this. The film is actually about the men behind the birth of two famous technology company we have today, Apple and Microsoft. You see, I’m using Microsoft right now, I also use it in doing my paper works, and everything. And I’m looking forward to have an Apple someday. XD

1. “Good artists copy; great artists steal” – Steve Jobs

This line means so much. I suddenly remembered, my techno professor told us something like, even if you’re not the first one to create or invent it, only the first one to implement it matters. Like people won’t even care if it’s not your idea, they care about who made it happen for real, not the one who only imagined it to be. Put yourself in a situation wherein you stole something, could be an idea or whatsoever. But then you did something to improve that idea and made it even better. When you become great for something that is not originally from you, you will be seen as great and people will assume that it’s from you.

What does this tells us? As a future IT professional, we are already taught about the ten commandments of computer ethics. Though shall not appropriate other people’s intellectual output, though shall not use a computer to steal. Yes, I know how much glory we can gain by merely copying the works of other people. But what about the conscience? What about the things that we learned in our school? What about morality? Is fame and glory more worth it than your morality as a person? If you are reading this, I want you to think thoroughly about the decisions you make in your life. As future IT professional, let us be the beacon of integrity and principles. Being evil is easy, but choosing to do the right thing requires courage. I’m not saying that do not do what Steve Jobs or Bill Gates did. I’m saying that do the thing you think is right, do the thing that you think the world needs.

2. Information is power

This is one of the lines in the movie that really caught my attention. Information is power, as long as you can transform it into action. Just like what Steve and Bill did, they used their expertise well which eventually led them to success. Knowledge is very powerful. It has the ability to change and conquer the world. However, knowledge itself can’t bring you to success, you have to make an action, use it efficiently to help the society. Knowledge also have the ability to influence and empower people.

3. “When I was still in Berkeley, I kept making some weird electronic gadgets that were basically just jokes, but hey, you know jokes are important” - Woz

I think Woz was the one who said this in the movie, it showed an old man trying to fix his television because Woz at the back is trying to interrupt the signal. Hence, the line is so true. We may think sometimes that an idea is too absurd or ridiculous to be even given a thought. But great things come off from silly ideas. Don’t worry if it doesn’t sound as good as others, think of what could be the impact of this tiny idea to the world.

4. Sometimes, not knowing how crazy something is, is a good thing

I think we can all relate. Because based on my experience, the more I worry about something, the more situation gets worse. Like I realized that I’m worrying too much over a thing that doesn’t need my worry. Sometimes, we just have to put the trust in the things that we do, and surely, something good will follow. Thinking of something that is like, “Can I really do this?” soon enough, it’ll be “I’m so glad I did it, it turned out pretty cool”. In the movie, we can recall that during the computer faire, Woz asked Steve if people will show up. I feel like he has doubts if people will come to their booth. Then Steve replied like “How would I know?” or something like that and he added, “Of course, they’re going to show up” which pretty much sounded like a joke but with confidence. Then it just happened, they didn’t know. Hoardes of people running towards their booth just to see the amazing little machine with 63 chips that makes all these colors. And then boom.

5. Good things won’t chase you, it needs to be chased

Knowing how Steve Jobs and his friends started, in his parent’s garage. And Bill too. They kept on looking for possible investors or persons who can provide them the fund that they need in order to turn their ideas into reality. The movie showed that Steve tried to get a loan from the bank, bringing with him is invention. Unfortunately, the bank according to Steve, “doesn’t like beards”. The bank declined his loan request, just because he has beard, or he didn’t wear business attire or maybe because the bank don’t trust his idea enough. But did Steve stop? No. And now we have Apple. What brought Steve and his team success is their perseverance, intelligence. And Bill Gates? One of the richest man in the world. Remember, life doesn’t stop when one opportunity closes.

6. Respect your coworkers, your employees, respect everyone.

 A culture of respect in the workplace encourages innovation and idea sharing, as well as staff wellbeing, satisfaction, performance, and productivity. When employees know they are valued by their managers and team members, they are less stressed and more committed to their work. In the movie, we can see how Steve disrespected some of his employees at work, shouting and insulting them and even putting his feet on the table. Even we become the boss, we must not forget where we came from and always be humble.

I think that is all guys, that you so much. Next update will be very soon

[booksandchainmail]

Hugo Award Nominees Thoughts

Best Novel:

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

Translation State by Ann Leckie

Witch King by Martha Wells

Largely makes sense to me: Saint and Glory were my nominees as well, and probably the strongest on my short list. Witch and Translation were on my longlist, both good and unsurprising nominees. Adventures I haven't read but have heard good things about, I wasn't a fan of the author's early work so I hadn't picked it up but it sounds fun. Villain I don't know about but I'm willing to try.

I'm not surprised that my other nominees didn't make it: Chain-Gang All-Stars I think was billed more as literary fiction than sci-fi, He Who Drowned the World I thought might be on the list but I imagine missed the cut, and Furious Heaven was never going to make it (second book in a series, less-known author, lengthy military sci-fi)

Best Novella:

“Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet”, He Xi / 人生不相见, 何夕, translated by Alex Woodend

Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

Rose/House by Arkady Martine

“Seeds of Mercury”, Wang Jinkang / 水星播种, 王晋康, translated by Alex Woodend

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Thornhedge, Mammoths, and Mimicking were all on my longlist. Rose/House has been on my "want to read" list for a while, but is bafflingly unavailable at the library. Seeds and Life I don't know, but am excited for.

None of my nominees made it in, which I'm sad about. Keeper's Six, The Twice-Drowned Saint, The Narrow Road Between Desires, and Lost in a Moment and Found were all excellent. I nominated less than my total number of slots in an effort to avoid just filling my ballot with everything good that was eligible in a category I don't read much in.

Best Novelette, Best Short Story: I have read none of these, though many of the authors are familiar

Best Series:

The Final Architecture by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie

The Last Binding by Freya Marske

The Laundry Files by Charles Stross

October Daye by Seanan McGuire

The Universe of Xuya by Aliette de Bodard

Last Binding was one of my nominees, glad to see it made it. I'd completely forgotten that Imperial Radch would be eligible again, happy that others remembered. October Daye is a perennial favorite, though not a nominee of mine this year. Xuya is a personal pet-peeve: every book of it sounds amazing, and they never work for me, and I keep reading them and being frustrated. Architecture I haven't read, but I've loved everything of Tchaikovsky's I've read. Laundry I'm dubious about, given how hard I bounced of his other series.

My other nominees were the Craft series, which I'd love to see get more attention, Unconquerable Sun, which is my personal darling blorbo books that I desperately want people read and love, and Kushiel's Legacy, which was newly re-eligible thanks to the publication of a companion novel, and never got the critical sff attention it deserved.

Best Graphic Story, Best Related Work: haven't read any of these, but it looks like interesting nominees

Best Dramatic Presentations: I don't really care about these

Best Game or Interactive Work:

Alan Wake 2

Baldur’s Gate 3

Chants of Sennaar

DREDGE

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

New category! I don't know enough about games of 2023 to speak on these nominees, but it looks good at a glance? and it's clearly better than the steam awards at least

Best Editors, Zines, Artists, Writers, and Casts: I don't follow these fields enough to have opinions

Lodestar (not a Hugo):

Abeni’s Song by P. Djèlí Clark

Liberty’s Daughter by Naomi Kritzer

Promises Stronger than Darkness by Charlie Jane Anders

The Sinister Booksellers of Bath by Garth Nix

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

Unraveller by Frances Hardinge

Shape was one of my nominees, one of my favorite books of the year all over. Very glad to see it here. Since it was published and marketed aimed at adults, even though it's about teenagers at magic school, I imagine we'll see a repeat of the Scholomance eligibility discourse. Booksellers was... fine? But nothing particularly noteworthy to me. Abeni and Liberty I don't know, but like the authors. Unraveller I don't know, but have heard good things about the author. Promises I am going to preemptively not read given how much I disliked (and DNFed) the first two.

I'm sad to see my other two nominees, The Shape of Drowning and The Spirit Bares Its Teeth not on here. Drowning reminded me very sharply of Diana Wynne Jones, and Spirit was one of my best books of the year, with an excellent narrative voice. Maybe teen horror isn't doing that strongly now?

Astounding (not a Hugo):

Moniquill Blackgoose (1st year of eligibility)

Sunyi Dean (2nd year of eligibility)

Ai Jiang (2nd year of eligibility)

Hannah Kaner (1st year of eligibility)

Em X. Liu (1st year of eligibility)

Xiran Jay Zhao (eligibility extended at request of Dell Magazines)

So can we just go ahead and call this one for Xiran Jay Zhao already? Even leaving aside that they are a strong nominee, I can't imagine voters not using this as a protest against last year's scandal. Of those I've read, Blackgoose is my favorite, and was one of my nominees. Kaner and Liu both had good first novels/ellas and are solid nominees, though not my picks. Dean and Jiang I don't know.

My other nominees were Isabel J. Kim, Maya Deane, Vajra Chandrasekera, and C. E. McGill.

Overall:

This is a very reassuring ballot, after last year. Nothing here is deeply surprising, nothing is deeply surprising to be missing. The announcement also included an explanation of nominees that declined (Martha Wells continues to be classy in declining further nominations for Murderbot) or were ineligible, and why.

I have ~15 fiction books to read for voting, which is very manageable. In particular, already having read 4/6 of the series is a major help.

[primeblogs]

Living Like a Billionaire - The Ultimate Luxury Motivation Experience

Billionaires enjoy showing off their wealth by sporting extravagant clothes and high-end accessories. They're expensive however, they're an integral part of the life of billionaires. These people live in estates worth millions of dollars. These estates often include an helipad, beach and other amenities. 1. Create a Billionaire Mindset Millionaires are always learning new things in order to stay on top of their competitors. They read extensively to keep up with the most current trends and information. Exercise is also a major passion for them and provides many health benefits. They organize their time to be able to enjoy everything they love. They're not traditionalists, and are always pushing for change - think Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. 2. Create a Billionaire Vision Billionaires are extremely creative. They transform mundane products into something unique. They also have interesting hobbies. For instance, Elon Musk collects James Bond souvenirs. Bill Gates collects manuscripts and books. Self-made billionaires think that life is a meritocracy and they're superior to the rest of us. Also, they have an innate belief in entitlement. Their actions and attitudes toward charity reflect this mindset. 3. Develop a Billionaire Mindset Billionaires are curious, open-minded and constantly learning. They see opportunities that others cannot recognize obstacles. They follow their guts, and they take advantage of opportunities. Motivation is the key to the success of billionaires. Motivation is what drives them to overcome their obstacles and propel them forward. They establish goals and routinely review them to make sure they're in line with their vision. 4. Create a Billionaire Action Plan It requires hard work and commitment to become a billionaire. It can be very rewarding. Get yourself set for success by beginning your day with this billionaire's morning routine. This routine includes meditation, exercise and reading. Billionaires are avid readers of books about business as well as science, history, and technology. They also read books on fiction and self-help. Reading is crucial for development as well as learning new things. 5. Create a Billionaire budget Even a good annual income such as the $20 million that Tom Brady's new deal with ESPN nets him, won't make you a millionaire. Billionaires make billions by investing in businesses worth billions of dollars or purchasing shares. They also avoid investments like vehicles that decrease in value. However, they will make payments for things like security and a personal assistant. 6. Create a Billionaire Schedule Morning routines are a hallmark of billionaires. They are designed to promote health for body as well as mind and spirit. Their schedules are meticulously set and are in line with their long-term objectives to gain financial success, prosperity as well as personal growth. Bill Gates, for example has a habit of reading to stay updated about current events and expand his knowledge. Exercise in the morning is also a habit of billionaires, and improves their mental health and focus. 7. Make an Billionaire Goals List Billionaires make sure that every target they set is accompanied by plans. They also recognize that they must measure their progress and stay on track to reach their goals. They also make time to go through news stories every morning to stay informed. This helps them remain focused and productive throughout the day. Instead of investing in the 401 (k) They should avoid buying things that appreciate in value, such as cars. 8. Create a Billionaire Action Plan Millionaires concentrate on the things that matter. Millionaires aren't wasting time on Facebook, YouTube or the latest infomercial. They read articles in the morning to stay up-to-date. To ensure they are productive, they plan their day and establish goals. They're philanthropic. They contribute to non-profit organizations and contribute in other ways that do not involve money, like giving people with the resources they need. 9. Create a Billionaire Dream Billionaires often achieve success by creating and expanding their businesses. They put in a lot of effort to create and implement a brilliant idea. They also have a good understanding of the business and its latest developments. While billionaires can indulge in their wealth, such as through private jets and living in multiple mansions, others are surprisingly cheap. A lot of them still live in the home they bought several decades ago. 10. Create a Billionaire Vision Millionaires have a clear idea of what having a lot of money can accomplish for their lives. Their lavish lifestyle is a reflection of their vision.

They have expensive cars and engage in exclusive leisure pursuits. They express their intrinsic motivations. A few billionaires are known for having odd interests for example, like collecting James Bond memorabilia and old rocket parts. Hobbies allow them to maintain their sanity and provide them with enjoyment. Go to YouTube

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

Rebecca Ferguson: The first to ask questions in the intview

Ferguson calls via videocall from London and takes the interview in her own hands.

Rebecca Ferguson: Before we start I'd like to ask whats there behind you on the table. Sorry, I like to see through zoom-interviews the rooms of my intviewers.

ICONIST: What particular are you interested in?

Ferguson: The first book in the pile, for example.

ICONIST: I have to take a look for myself now. Here, "Bill Gates. How the prevent the next pandemic."

Ferguson: Oh. Does Bill have some good advice in it?

ICONIST: It's complicated. Gates had already warned of the dangers of such pandemics before the Covid outbreak. He later received death threats because one of his quotes, taken out of context, was used to create the grotesque fake news that he wanted to use the corona virus to microchip all of humanity. With that, we could now seamlessly move on to the conspiracies in your new series, Silo, in which no one knows which stories about human threats are true and which are fabricated.

Ferguson: *laughs* You are right.

ICONIST: The world has been destroyed, 10,000 people have survived in an underground silo, locked up there, isolated from the outside world. Nobody knows what really happened outside. You're not entirely wrong to take this as a depressing parable of the pandemic, are you?

Ferguson: There are certainly many parallels to events that happened not so long ago - the horror of the Covid lockdowns, governments wanting to control their environment, scarcity of resources and the need to recycle in order to survive. Only the novels on which the series is based have been published since 2011. And as an actress, what interests me most is the quality of the storytelling and the characters. When I was working on this role, I didn't think too much about whether the future society in the film had anything to do with today's society. To be honest, I don't want to think about the future of the world because sometimes it gets me pretty depressed. I am aware that I lead a very privileged life and that I am very fortunate. Don't get me wrong: it's important to me to speak my mind, for example I'm fighting for equality at every level. I accept those battles that I am convinced I must fight. Other than that, I just try to be friendly to others.

ICONIST: Your series about the silo society offers less action-packed science fiction escapism, instead it relies more on dialogue. It is reminiscent of Samuel Beckett's end-time visions in his play "Happy Days" - with two actors who are stuck in a mound of earth after an apocalypse, sink into it and console themselves with purposeful optimism about their hopeless situation.

Ferguson: I love your reference to Samuel Beckett *laughs* Makes perfect sense. I've done a lot of research on depression and trauma to better understand the loneliness, grief, and loss that weighs on my character. And I like philosophy. The theses of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes, for example, both of which assume the natural equality of human beings, i.e. that humans are good by nature and only become evil through society. It was interesting to transfer such thoughts to the film, to ask oneself: What happens when you condense this thesis and show what happens when many people are isolated in a room closed off from the outside world? And when down there one lie about the alleged causes of the catastrophe is followed by another. Do people rebel against lies? Regardless of the penalties they face? Those were the basic questions that fascinated me about this series.

ICONIST: The series is based on Hugh Howey's internationally successful best-selling trilogy "Wool", which is adored by fans. Did you feel pressure to live up to expectations? There are enough examples of film adaptations of fantasy and science fiction novels that have been torn apart by fans.

Ferguson: No, I didn't feel any pressure. It's great that this book series was so successful and has so many fans. I can only do my best. If people don't like it, that's unfortunate, but then there's nothing you can do about it. However, before I engage more intensely with such a role, I always do a lot of research on fan sites. I spend hours reading all sorts of things there.

ICONIST: Why are you doing that?

Ferguson: Because I often discover interesting details on these sites. For example, if a fan writes, "I love how the author describes how Juliette keeps her hand in a pocket the whole time." That's a small but significant detail. I said to myself, "Great, I'm going to do this the whole time through the shoot."

ICONIST: You say you don't like to think about the future too often. In a podcast "Spark Hunter" published in 2022, you dealt with the currently much discussed topic of the future of artificial intelligence. Actress Trudie Styler, wife of Sting, directed. What appealed to you about recording a podcast – actually more of a radio play – in addition to all your film commitments?

Ferguson: I like Trudie very much. When she called me one day and asked, "Do you want to do a radio play with actor Mark Rylance?" I immediately said, "If Mark Rylance is in, I'll be in, no matter what it is." Then sent me the scripts and I got scared at first.

ICONIST: Why?

Ferguson: Because it was pretty complicated stuff, with a lot of details about AI. It was just hard to understand at first. Mark Rylance voicing the inventor of a female artificial intelligence robot whom I speak. And then suddenly this robot starts to develop feelings, it takes pleasure in provocation and in questioning society. And reveals morbid feelings about human life - it's brilliant.

ICONIST: Sting also has a small speaking role in the podcast. In 1984 he had an unforgettable scene as an actor in David Lynch's film adaptation of "Dune - the desert planet" as the villain Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. There he stands with an oiled naked body, only wearing a futuristic loincloth, which he himself once described as the "first example of flying underpants".

(Rebecca Ferguson is laughing)

You can be seen as Lady Jessica in Dennis Villeneuve's remake of Dune. While working on the podcast, did you and Sting talk a bit about how sci-fi staging has changed over the past 40 years?

Ferguson: We actually did. I remember sitting with him and his wife at a table in their beautiful home at their winery in Tuscany. At one of our long dinners, I asked him, "Do you know what I'm filming?" "No," he said, "what?" Then I revealed to him that we were remaking Dune. And then his eyes suddenly lit up and we went on a long journey in our conversation, talking about what it was like shooting the first film back then, compared to the new one.

ICONIST: And the flying underpants?

Ferguson: (laughs) I won't give you any details, that's between Sting and me.

ICONIST: In winter comes the second part of the Dune film adaptation, in which you again play Lady Jessica, the mother of the young hero Paul Atreides. In the summer you can also be seen again as MI6 agent Ilsa Faust alongside Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning" - and already in the ten parts of the Apple TV series "Silo". it doesn't get any better. Aren't you afraid of overexposure?

Ferguson: No. This is going to be a big year for me, with three very different film productions that I'm very proud of. Things like that don't happen all the time. I don't worry too much about it. I'm damn happy it turned out that way. You never know if something like this will happen again. Actors often come into the limelight very quickly, but then just as quickly go out of fashion. Age is often not helpful either. In that sense, I feel like I'm in a good place right now. I've been very lucky.

ICONIST: It is your third appearance in the Mission: Impossible series and your second in Dune. Is it also important for you to have something like consistency in big blockbusters, in times of intensifying competition between film studios and streaming providers with an unprecedented oversupply of films, in which there are also rows and rows of flops?

Ferguson: It's actually nice that I now know my role in "Mission: Impossible" well, because working on the set is complicated because we often don't have finished scripts. Working on the Mission: Impossible movies is so different from other movies. But that's what makes it so exciting. I know my role, but I'm always getting to know new actors who are in for the first time. In their eyes, I can immediately see what they're thinking when they're on set for the first time: "What the hell…?" Then I just think to myself: "I know that, I felt the same way at first." Then it's nice, when you are already familiar with your role. Lady Jessica in "Dune" is also a cool woman. In the second part, however, she is changed. I won't reveal any details now. Just this much: Your performances in the second part are so different from those in the first that it felt like I was playing a new person.

ICONIST: What does it do to you when you switch from one large-scale production to the next?

Ferguson: Well, while I was shooting Silo, I got a message that I had to do some reshoots on the Mission: Impossible movie. I love that kind of thing yeah You always think you need breaks. Until it suddenly: "We need you for four days in June to reshoot scenes for 'Mission: Impossible'." Then you're suddenly sucked in again. I love that because I love the roles too. It sure would be bad if I had to work on set in a terrible environment. That's not the case. It is great.

translated from German by @edwardslovelyelizabeth exclusively for @rebeccalouisaferguson