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pagesandpothos · 9 months ago

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May Aardvark Book Club Predictions

Last month, I predicted 3 out of the 6 books that Aardvark Book Club chose. That's pretty good but I'd love to do better! Unfortunately, I'm not very confident only my May picks, but we'll have to see how it goes. Here’s my listing of what I think could be Aardvark Book Club’s May picks and why I think these are the most likely choices.

First, here’s what I look for when guessing Aardvark’s picks:

The Most Important Factors are the Imprint & Publishing Date!

Aardvark uses a few publishers more often than others. All books listed here are published by an imprint that Aardvark has worked with before.

Secondly, Aardvark almost always chooses books published in the second half of the previous month (normally 3-4 books) to the first half of the current month (normally 1-2). There have been some exceptions (like an occasional early release) but this fits most of their picks. For this month’s picks, I considered novels published from early April through early May. I’m expecting 3-4 of those to be April releases and 1-2 to be released in early May (probably published on May 7th).

The above two points really help narrow down the list of possibilities. Once I factor in dates and rule out books from Imprints that Aardvark doesn’t work with, I then use all the below factors to make my choices:

Aardvark picks often overlap with Indie Next Picks. Many of the books I have listed here are on the April or May lists. The celebrity book club picks sometimes overlap with Aardvark’s choices too.

Aardvark seems willing to work with more established authors who have never been featured in other book boxes. They’ve also recently grabbed a few authors who are former Book of the Month regulars. On the other hand, they also choose a lot of debuts and lesser-known/upcoming authors.

The cover. This sounds silly but some covers just scream Aardvark. I guessed Rabbit Hole in January and Come And Get It in February by their covers. Aardvark really likes quirky and eye-catching covers. I have a few books on this month’s list that have covers that fit the aesthetic that Aardvark seems to go for.

Aardvark seems to love books that have something to say about important social & political topics: gender equality, racism, religion, climate change, and homophobia are all topics previous Aardvark books have dealt with. Those books have also been really successful for them.

More edgy or racy books are far more likely to be an Aardvark pick than a Book of the Month pick. You can see this, especially in their romance picks: BOTM chooses rom-coms that may or may not be a little spicy. Aardvark sometimes picks romances that are very spicy and include tropes (such as Omegaverse) that BOTM would not.

Aardvark’s monthly picks are often a mix of hidden gems and really buzzy books. I’ve noticed that many of the books that people on social media are most excited about often end up as Aardvark picks.

Genres: Aardvark doesn’t adhere to a strict formula with their book genres every month. They won’t have a historical fiction novel every month, for example. They do almost always have at least one Literary/Contemporary, one Thriller, and one Romance though. Other regularly picked genres include Horror, Gothic, Science Fiction, and Magical Realism. They also pick books that overlap/blend genres a lot. As of yet, they have never picked any Non-Fiction or Young Adult books.

With all that said, here’s my list of books that I think could be potential picks for Aardvark Book Club in May of 2024:

Books marked with a ⭐️indicate that I think are the most likely options of all the books I have listed. These books fit the criteria I listed above the best. ✨ Indicates books that are almost 100% certain to be featured. These are known thanks to hints or spoilers.

Contemporary / Literary Fiction

Real Americans by Rachel Khong. Releases April 30, 2024 by Knopf.

"From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family, and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?"

An Indie Next Pick in May.

Whale Fall: A Novel by Elizabeth O'Connor. Releases May 7, 2024 by Pantheon.

"A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community"

Another Indie Next Pick for May.

The Limits by Nell Freudenberger. Releases April 9, 2024 by Knopf.

"The most thrilling work yet from the best-selling, prize-winning author of The Newlyweds and Lost and Wanted , a stunning new novel set in French Polynesia and New York City about three characters who undergo massive transformations over the course of a single year."

Romance

Christa Comes Out of Her Shell by Abbi Waxman. Releases April 16, 2024 by Berkley.

"Just when she thought she’d gotten far enough away . . . a life-changing phone call throws an antisocial scientist back into her least favorite place—the spotlight. A hilarious and insightful new novel from the USA Today bestselling author of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill."

The Honey Witch by Sydney J. Shields. Releases May 14, 2024 by Redhook.

"The Honey Witch of Innisfree can never find true love. That is her curse to bear. But when a young woman who doesn’t believe in magic arrives on her island, sparks fly in this deliciously sweet debut novel of magic, hope, and love overcoming all."

Funny Story by Emily Henry. Releases April 23, 2024 by Berkley.

"A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common."

This might be a longshot, but Emily Henry would be a big get for Aardvark. They had Ali Hazelwood's latest in February, so we'll see if they get another big-name romance writer's newest release. This is an Indie Next Pick for May.

Historical

The House on Biscayne Bay by Chanel Cleeton. Releases April 2, 2024 by Berkley.

"As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s atmospheric new novel."

A gothic historical novel that sounds like something Aardvark would be interested in carrying.

Thorn Tree by Max Ludington. Releases April 16, 2024 by St. Martin's Press.

"Terrifically vivid…Remarkable." --The New York Times Book Review: A beautifully wrought novel on the aftershocks of the heady but dangerous late 1960s and the relationship between trauma and the creative impulse."

Clear by Carys Davies. Releases April 2, 2024, by Scribner.

“A stunning, exquisite novel from an award-winning writer about a minister dispatched to a remote island off of Scotland to “clear” the last remaining inhabitant, who has no intention of leaving—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.”

This was on my list last month and I think it may also be a possibility for this month. This is an Indie Next Pick for April.

Horror / Gothic

⭐️ Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina. Releases April 16, 2024 by Berkley.

"All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on—just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her—things are finally looking up for her. Until the news of her boyfriend’s apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down. But the facts about Roddy’s death just don’t add up, and Noemi isn’t the only one who suspects something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands."

⭐️ The Garden by Clare Beams. Releases April 9, 2024 by Doubleday.

"The discovery of a secret garden with unknown powers fuels this page-turning and psychologically thrilling tale of women desperate to become mothers and the ways the female body has always been policed and manipulated, from the award-winning author of The Illness Lesson."

The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry. Releases May 14, 2024 by Berkley.

"A single mother working in the gothic mansion of a reclusive horror director stumbles upon terrifying secrets."

Thriller / Mystery

⭐️✨ You Know What You Did by K. T. Nguyen. Releases April 16, 2024 by Dutton.

"In this heart-pounding debut thriller for fans of Lisa Jewell and Celeste Ng, a first-generation Vietnamese American artist must confront nightmares past and present"

Aardvark's monthly Early Spoiler may hint to this one.

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton. Releases May 21, 2024 by Sourcebooks Landmark.

"From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution."

This is probably more likely to be a pick for June, but I'll list it here in case Aardvark gets an early release. I really think this could be possible since it is a blend of several genres and has a lot of buzz surronding it!

Missing White Woman by Kellye Garrett. Releases April 30, 2024 by Mulholland Books.

"A "propulsive page-turner" (Alyssa Cole) and "thriller not to be missed" (Michael Connelly) from the award-winning author of Like a Sister, in which a woman thinks she’s waking up to a romantic vacation—only to find a body in her rental home and her boyfriend gone."

Science Fiction

Loneliness & Company by Charlee Dyroff. Releases May 7, 2024 by Bloomsbury Publishing.

"A timely, beautifully observed debut novel set in near future New York about a young woman who finds herself tangled in a secret government project combating loneliness."

A literary science fiction which Aardvark seems to love.

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger. Releases April 2, 2024, by Grove Press.

“Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea.”

A dystopian science-fiction that is an Indie Next Pick for April (and another that I had on my list last month). This sounds like the exact kind of thought-provoking speculative fiction that Aardvark often picks.

Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes. Releases April 9, 2024 by Tor Nightfire.

"A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence."

Fantasy / Magical Realism

A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall. Releases April 25, 2024 by Orbit.

"Dive into the curious correspondence of Sylvie Cathrall’s delightful debut novel, A Letter to the Luminous Deep. A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other."

An indie next pick for May.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez. Releases April 2, 2024, by Algonquin Books.

“Literary icon Julia Alvarez returns with an inventive and emotional novel about storytelling itself that will be an instant classic.”

This is another that was on my list last month and is also another Indie Next Pick for April.

#aardvark book club #book box predictions #books

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in Skinner boxes

Enshittification is the process by which digital platforms devour themselves: first they dangle goodies in front of end users. Once users are locked in, the goodies are taken away and dangled before business customers who supply goods to the users. Once those business customers are stuck on the platform, the goodies are clawed away and showered on the platform’s shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Enshittification isn’t just another way of saying “fraud” or “price gouging” or “wage theft.” Enshittification is intrinsically digital, because moving all those goodies around requires the flexibility that only comes with a digital businesses. Jeff Bezos, grocer, can’t rapidly change the price of eggs at Whole Foods without an army of kids with pricing guns on roller-skates. Jeff Bezos, grocer, can change the price of eggs on Amazon Fresh just by twiddling a knob on the service’s back-end.

Twiddling is the key to enshittification: rapidly adjusting prices, conditions and offers. As with any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Tech monopolists aren’t smarter than the Gilded Age sociopaths who monopolized rail or coal — they use the same tricks as those monsters of history, but they do them faster and with computers:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

If Rockefeller wanted to crush a freight company, he couldn’t just click a mouse and lay down a pipeline that ran on the same route, and then click another mouse to make it go away when he was done. When Bezos wants to bankrupt Diapers.com — a company that refused to sell itself to Amazon — he just moved a slider so that diapers on Amazon were being sold below cost. Amazon lost $100m over three months, diapers.com went bankrupt, and every investor learned that competing with Amazon was a losing bet:

https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-bezos-went-thermonuclear-on-diapers-com.html

That’s the power of twiddling — but twiddling cuts both ways. The same flexibility that digital businesses enjoy is hypothetically available to workers and users. The airlines pioneered twiddling ticket prices, and that naturally gave rise to countertwiddling, in the form of comparison shopping sites that scraped the airlines’ sites to predict when tickets would be cheapest:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

The airlines — like all abusive businesses — refused to tolerate this. They were allowed to touch their knobs as much as they wanted — indeed, they couldn’t stop touching those knobs — but when we tried to twiddle back, that was “felony contempt of business model,” and the airlines sued:

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/30/airline-sues-man-for-founding-a-cheap-flights-website.html

And sued:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/business/southwest-airlines-lawsuit-prices.html

Platforms don’t just hate it when end-users twiddle back — if anything they are even more aggressive when their business-users dare to twiddle. Take Para, an app that Doordash drivers used to get a peek at the wages offered for jobs before they accepted them — something that Doordash hid from its workers. Doordash ruthlessly attacked Para, saying that by letting drivers know how much they’d earn before they did the work, Para was violating the law:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition

Which law? Well, take your pick. The modern meaning of “IP” is “any law that lets me use the law to control my competitors, competition or customers.” Platforms use a mix of anticircumvention law, patent, copyright, contract, cybersecurity and other legal systems to weave together a thicket of rules that allow them to shut down rivals for their Felony Contempt of Business Model:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Enshittification relies on unlimited twiddling (by platforms), and a general prohibition on countertwiddling (by platform users). Enshittification is a form of fishing, in which bait is dangled before different groups of users and then nimbly withdrawn when they lunge for it. Twiddling puts the suppleness into the enshittifier’s fishing-rod, and a ban on countertwiddling weighs down platform users so they’re always a bit too slow to catch the bait.

Nowhere do we see twiddling’s impact more than in the “gig economy,” where workers are misclassified as independent contractors and put to work for an app that scripts their every move to the finest degree. When an app is your boss, you work for an employer who docks your pay for violating rules that you aren’t allowed to know — and where your attempts to learn those rules are constantly frustrated by the endless back-end twiddling that changes the rules faster than you can learn them.

As with every question of technology, the issue isn’t twiddling per se — it’s who does the twiddling and who gets twiddled. A worker armed with digital tools can play gig work employers off each other and force them to bid up the price of their labor; they can form co-ops with other workers that auto-refuse jobs that don’t pay enough, and use digital tools to organize to shift power from bosses to workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

Take “reverse centaurs.” In AI research, a “centaur” is a human assisted by a machine that does more than either could do on their own. For example, a chess master and a chess program can play a better game together than either could play separately. A reverse centaur is a machine assisted by a human, where the machine is in charge and the human is a meat-puppet.

Think of Amazon warehouse workers wearing haptic location-aware wristbands that buzz at them continuously dictating where their hands must be; or Amazon drivers whose eye-movements are continuously tracked in order to penalize drivers who look in the “wrong” direction:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/reverse-centaur/#reverse-centaur

The difference between a centaur and a reverse centaur is the difference between a machine that makes your life better and a machine that makes your life worse so that your boss gets richer. Reverse centaurism is the 21st Century’s answer to Taylorism, the pseudoscience that saw white-coated “experts” subject workers to humiliating choreography down to the smallest movement of your fingertip:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

While reverse centaurism was born in warehouses and other company-owned facilities, gig work let it make the leap into workers’ homes and cars. The 21st century has seen a return to the cottage industry — a form of production that once saw workers labor far from their bosses and thus beyond their control — but shriven of the autonomy and dignity that working from home once afforded:

https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d

The rise and rise of bossware — which allows for remote surveillance of workers in their homes and cars — has turned “work from home” into “live at work.” Reverse centaurs can now be chickenized — a term from labor economics that describes how poultry farmers, who sell their birds to one of three vast poultry processors who have divided up the country like the Pope dividing up the “New World,” are uniquely exploited:

https://onezero.medium.com/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs-b2e8d5cda826

A chickenized reverse centaur has it rough: they must pay for the machines they use to make money for their bosses, they must obey the orders of the app that controls their work, and they are denied any of the protections that a traditional worker might enjoy, even as they are prohibited from deploying digital self-help measures that let them twiddle back to bargain for a better wage.

All of this sets the stage for a phenomenon called algorithmic wage discrimination, in which two workers doing the same job under the same conditions will see radically different payouts for that work. These payouts are continuously tweaked in the background by an algorithm that tries to predict the minimum sum a worker will accept to remain available without payment, to ensure sufficient workers to pick up jobs as they arise.

This phenomenon — and proposed policy and labor solutions to it — is expertly analyzed in “On Algorithmic Wage Discrimination,” a superb paper by UC Law San Franciscos Veena Dubal:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4331080

Dubal uses empirical data and enthnographic accounts from Uber drivers and other gig workers to explain how endless, self-directed twiddling allows gig companies pay workers less and pay themselves more. As @[email protected] explains in his LA Times article on Dubal’s research, the goal of the payment algorithm is to guess how often a given driver needs to receive fair compensation in order to keep them driving when the payments are unfair:

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-04-11/algorithmic-wage-discrimination

The algorithm combines nonconsensual dossiers compiled on individual drivers with population-scale data to seek an equilibrium between keeping drivers waiting, unpaid, for a job; and how much a driver needs to be paid for an individual job, in order to keep that driver from clocking out and doing something else. @ Here’s how that works. Sergio Avedian, a writer for The Rideshare Guy, ran an experiment with two brothers who both drove for Uber; one drove a Tesla and drove intermittently, the other brother rented a hybrid sedan and drove frequently. Sitting side-by-side with the brothers, Avedian showed how the brother with the Tesla was offered more for every trip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UADTiL3S67I

Uber wants to lure intermittent drivers into becoming frequent drivers. Uber doesn’t pay for an oversupply of drivers, because it only pays drivers when they have a passenger in the car. Having drivers on call — but idle — is a way for Uber to shift the cost of maintaining a capacity cushion to its workers.

What’s more, what Uber charges customers is not based on how much it pays its workers. As Uber’s head of product explained: Uber uses “machine-learning techniques to estimate how much groups of customers are willing to shell out for a ride. Uber calculates riders’ propensity for paying a higher price for a particular route at a certain time of day. For instance, someone traveling from a wealthy neighborhood to another tony spot might be asked to pay more than another person heading to a poorer part of town, even if demand, traffic and distance are the same.”

https://qz.com/990131/uber-is-practicing-price-discrimination-economists-say-that-might-not-be-a-bad-thing/

Uber has historically described its business a pure supply-and-demand matching system, where a rush of demand for rides triggers surge pricing, which lures out drivers, which takes care of the demand. That’s not how it works today, and it’s unclear if it ever worked that way. Today, a driver who consults the rider version of the Uber app before accepting a job — to compare how much the rider is paying to how much they stand to earn — is booted off the app and denied further journeys.

Surging, instead, has become just another way to twiddle drivers. One of Dubal’s subjects, Derrick, describes how Uber uses fake surges to lure drivers to airports: “You go to the airport, once the lot get kind of full, then the surge go away.” Other drivers describe how they use groupchats to call out fake surges: “I’m in the Marina. It’s dead. Fake surge.”

That’s pure twiddling. Twiddling turns gamification into gamblification, where your labor buys you a spin on a roulette wheel in a rigged casino. As a driver called Melissa, who had doubled down on her availability to earn a $100 bonus awarded for clocking a certain number of rides, told Dubal, “When you get close to the bonus, the rides start trickling in more slowly…. And it makes sense. It’s really the type of shit that they can do when it’s okay to have a surplus labor force that is just sitting there that they don’t have to pay for.”

Wherever you find reverse-centaurs, you get this kind of gamblification, where the rules are twiddled continuously to make sure that the house always wins. As a contract driver Amazon reverse centaur told Lauren Gurley for Motherboard, “Amazon uses these cameras allegedly to make sure they have a safer driving workforce, but they’re actually using them not to pay delivery companies”:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88npjv/amazons-ai-cameras-are-punishing-drivers-for-mistakes-they-didnt-make

Algorithmic wage discrimination is the robot overlord of our nightmares: its job is to relentlessly quest for vulnerabilities and exploit them. Drivers divide themselves into “ants” (drivers who take every job) and “pickers” (drivers who cherry-pick high-paying jobs). The algorithm’s job is ensuring that pickers get the plum assignments, not the ants, in the hopes of converting those pickers to app-dependent ants.

In my work on enshittification, I call this the “giant teddy bear” gambit. At every county fair, you’ll always spot some poor jerk carrying around a giant teddy-bear they “won” on the midway. But they didn’t win it — not by getting three balls in the peach-basket. Rather, the carny running the rigged game either chose not to operate the “scissor” that kicks balls out of the basket. Or, if the game is “honest” (that is, merely impossible to win, rather than gimmicked), the operator will make a too-good-to-refuse offer: “Get one ball in and I’ll give you this keychain. Win two keychains and I’ll let you trade them for this giant teddy bear.”

Carnies aren’t in the business of giving away giant teddy bears — rather, the gambit is an investment. Giving a mark a giant teddy bear to carry around the midway all day acts as a convincer, luring other marks to try to land three balls in the basket and win their own teddy bear.

In the same way, platforms like Uber distribute giant teddy bears to pickers, as a way of keeping the ants scurrying from job to job, and as a way of convincing the pickers to give up whatever work allows them to discriminate among Uber’s offers and hold out for the plum deals, whereupon then can be transmogrified into ants themselves.

Dubal describes the experience of Adil, a Syrian refugee who drives for Uber in the Bay Area. His colleagues are pickers, and showed him screenshots of how much they earned. Determined to get a share of that money, Adil became a model ant, driving two hours to San Francisco, driving three days straight, napping in his car, spending only one day per week with his family. The algorithm noticed that Adil needed the work, so it paid him less.

Adil responded the way the system predicted he would, by driving even more: “My friends they make it, so I keep going, maybe I can figure it out. It’s unsecure, and I don’t know how people they do it. I don’t know how I am doing it, but I have to. I mean, I don’t find another option. In a minute, if I find something else, oh man, I will be out immediately. I am a very patient person, that’s why I can continue.”

Another driver, Diego, told Dubal about how the winners of the giant teddy bears fell into the trap of thinking that they were “good at the app”: “Any time there’s some big shot getting high pay outs, they always shame everyone else and say you don’t know how to use the app. I think there’s secret PR campaigns going on that gives targeted payouts to select workers, and they just think it’s all them.”

That’s the power of twiddling: by hoarding all the flexibility offered by digital tools, the management at platforms can become centaurs, able to string along thousands of workers, while the workers are reverse-centaurs, puppeteered by the apps.

As the example of Adil shows, the algorithm doesn’t need to be very sophisticated in order to figure out which workers it can underpay. The system automates the kind of racial and gender discrimination that is formally illegal, but which is masked by the smokescreen of digitization. An employer who systematically paid women less than men, or Black people less than white people, would be liable to criminal and civil sanctions. But if an algorithm simply notices that people who have fewer job prospects drive more and will thus accept lower wages, that’s just “optimization,” not racism or sexism.

This is the key to understanding the AI hype bubble: when ghouls from multinational banks predict 13 trillion dollar markets for “AI,” what they mean is that digital tools will speed up the twiddling and other wage-suppression techniques to transfer $13T in value from workers and consumers to shareholders.

The American business lobby is relentlessly focused on the goal of reducing wages. That’s the force behind “free trade,” “right to work,” and other codewords for “paying workers less,” including “gig work.” Tech workers long saw themselves as above this fray, immune to labor exploitation because they worked for a noble profession that took care of its own.

But the epidemic of mass tech-worker layoffs, following on the heels of massive stock buybacks, has demonstrated that tech bosses are just like any other boss: willing to pay as little as they can get away with, and no more. Tech bosses are so comfortable with their market dominance and the lock-in of their customers that they are happy to turn out hundreds of thousands of skilled workers, convinced that the twiddling systems they’ve built are the kinds of self-licking ice-cream cones that are so simple even a manager can use them — no morlocks required.

The tech worker layoffs are best understood as an all-out war on tech worker morale, because that morale is the source of tech workers’ confidence and thus their demands for a larger share of the value generated by their labor. The current tech layoff template is very different from previous tech layoffs: today’s layoffs are taking place over a period of months, long after they are announced, and laid off tech worker is likely to be offered a months of paid post-layoff work, rather than severance. This means that tech workplaces are now haunted by the walking dead, workers who have been laid off but need to come into the office for months, even as the threat of layoffs looms over the heads of the workers who remain. As an old friend, recently laid off from Microsoft after decades of service, wrote to me, this is “a new arrow in the quiver of bringing tech workers to heel and ensuring that we’re properly thankful for the jobs we have (had?).”

Dubal is interested in more than analysis, she’s interested in action. She looks at the tactics already deployed by gig workers, who have not taken all this abuse lying down. Workers in the UK and EU organized through Worker Info Exchange and the App Drivers and Couriers Union have used the GDPR (the EU’s privacy law) to demand “algorithmic transparency,” as well as access to their data. In California, drivers hope to use similar provisions in the CCPA (a state privacy law) to do the same.

These efforts have borne fruit. When Cornell economists, led by Louis Hyman, published research (paid for by Uber) claiming that Uber drivers earned an average of $23/hour, it was data from these efforts that revealed the true average Uber driver’s wage was $9.74. Subsequent research in California found that Uber drivers’ wage fell to $6.22/hour after the passage of Prop 22, a worker misclassification law that gig companies spent $225m to pass, only to have the law struck down because of a careless drafting error:

https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2021-08-23/proposition-22-lyft-uber-decision-essential-california

But Dubal is skeptical that data-coops and transparency will achieve transformative change and build real worker power. Knowing how the algorithm works is useful, but it doesn’t mean you can do anything about it, not least because the platform owners can keep touching their knobs, twiddling the payout schedule on their rigged slot-machines.

Data co-ops start from the proposition that “data extraction is an inevitable form of labor for which workers should be remunerated.” It makes on-the-job surveillance acceptable, provided that workers are compensated for the spying. But co-ops aren’t unions, and they don’t have the power to bargain for a fair price for that data, and coops themselves lack the vast resources — “to store, clean, and understand” — data.

Co-ops are also badly situated to understand the true value of the data that is extracted from their members: “Workers cannot know whether the data collected will, at the population level, violate the civil rights of others or amplifies their own social oppression.”

Instead, Dubal wants an outright, nonwaivable prohibition on algorithmic wage discrimination. Just make it illegal. If firms cannot use gambling mechanisms to control worker behavior through variable pay systems, they will have to find ways to maintain flexible workforces while paying their workforce predictable wages under an employment model. If a firm cannot manage wages through digitally-determined variable pay systems, then the firm is less likely to employ algorithmic management.”

In other words, rather than using market mechanisms too constrain platform twiddling, Dubal just wants to make certain kinds of twiddling illegal. This is a growing trend in legal scholarship. For example, the economist Ramsi Woodcock has proposed a ban on surge pricing as a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act:

https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-105-issue-4/the-efficient-queue-and-the-case-against-dynamic-pricing

Similarly, Dubal proposes that algorithmic wage discrimination violates another antitrust law: the Robinson-Patman Act, which “bans sellers from charging competing buyers different prices for the same commodity. Robinson-Patman enforcement was effectively halted under Reagan, kicking off a host of pathologies, like the rise of Walmart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

I really liked Dubal’s legal reasoning and argument, and to it I would add a call to reinvigorate countertwiddling: reforming laws that get in the way of workers who want to reverse-engineer, spoof, and control the apps that currently control them. Adversarial interoperability (AKA competitive compatibility or comcom) is key tool for building worker power in an era of digital Taylorism:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

To see how that works, look to other jursidictions where workers have leapfrogged their European and American cousins, such as Indonesia, where gig workers and toolsmiths collaborate to make a whole suite of “tuyul apps,” which let them override the apps that gig companies expect them to use.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

For example, ride-hailing companies won’t assign a train-station pickup to a driver unless they’re circling the station — which is incredibly dangerous during the congested moments after a train arrives. A tuyul app lets a driver park nearby and then spoof their phone’s GPS fix to the ridehailing company so that they appear to be right out front of the station.

In an ideal world, those workers would have a union, and be able to dictate the app’s functionality to their bosses. But workers shouldn’t have to wait for an ideal world: they don’t just need jam tomorrow — they need jam today. Tuyul apps, and apps like Para, which allow workers to extract more money under better working conditions, are a prelude to unionization and employer regulation, not a substitute for it.

Employers will not give workers one iota more power than they have to. Just look at the asymmetry between the regulation of union employees versus union busters. Under US law, employees of a union need to account for every single hour they work, every mile they drive, every location they visit, in public filings. Meanwhile, the union-busting industry — far larger and richer than unions — operate under a cloak of total secrecy, Workers aren’t even told which union busters their employers have hired — let alone get an accounting of how those union busters spend money, or how many of them are working undercover, pretending to be workers in order to sabotage the union.

Twiddling will only get an employer so far. Twiddling — like all “AI” — is based on analyzing the past to predict the future. The heuristics an algorithm creates to lure workers into their cars can’t account for rapid changes in the wider world, which is why companies who relied on “AI” scheduling apps (for example, to prevent their employees from logging enough hours to be entitled to benefits) were caught flatfooted by the Great Resignation.

Workers suddenly found themselves with bargaining power thanks to the departure of millions of workers — a mix of early retirees and workers who were killed or permanently disabled by covid — and they used that shortage to demand a larger share of the fruits of their labor. The outraged howls of the capital class at this development were telling: these companies are operated by the kinds of “capitalists” that MLK once identified, who want “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.”

https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes/status/821836823022354432/

There's only 5 days left in the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon's Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they're DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

Image: Stephen Drake (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Analog_Test_Array_modular_synth_by_sduck409.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

—

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

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

—

Louis (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chestnut_horse_head,_all_excited.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A complex mandala of knobs from a modular synth. In the foreground, limned in a blue electric halo, is a man in a hi-viz vest with the head of a horse. The horse's eyes have been replaced with the sinister red eyes of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.'"]

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fratttymatty · 2 months ago

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You're Smoked

(All characters are 18+)

It was just another quiet Tuesday evening when everything changed for Quinn, Eric, and Alex. The three 29-year-old nerdy best friends had always been inseparable. They spent their nights playing video games, debating superheroes, and diving into comic book lore. Life was predictable, comfortable, and easy.

That was, of course, until Quinn discovered a peculiar game at the local thrift store. "The Alteration," the box proclaimed, adorned with strange glowing symbols that beckoned them like some irresistible mystery. The trio wasn't into supernatural gimmicks or odd fads, but it was a game, and that was all the convincing they needed.

They gathered at Quinn's apartment, excitement buzzing in the air as they set up the game on his coffee table. It was more complex than they expected—dice with too many sides to count, cards, and tokens scattered across the table. But there was something captivating about it. The kind of feeling that made you ignore any misgivings and dive in.

Each took a turn, rolling the dice, drawing cards, and following instructions. The game progressed—strange, but harmless enough. That is, until they each drew the same card: "Transformation."

In an instant, the room seemed to warp, and a tingling sensation spread through their bodies. It wasn’t painful, just dizzying, like waking from a dream where everything felt off. And then—poof—it was done.

The trio looked at each other in confusion, but the first thing they noticed was how completely different they looked.

Zane—formerly Quinn—was the first to speak, his voice a low, cool drawl that didn’t even sound like him anymore. His once-thin frame had morphed into a broad, muscular build, and his hair was now a wild, tousled mess of brown waves that looked like they hadn’t been touched by a comb in years. His sharp jawline was prominent, and his once-framed glasses had disappeared, replaced by a pair of dark sunglasses that now sat comfortably on his nose.

He was wearing a white t-shirt, but it was simple—just a plain, snug fit that clung to his chest and shoulders. His jeans, baggy and worn-in, hung loosely from his hips as if they were the most natural thing in the world. Everything about his new body felt strong, confident, and unmistakably cocky.

Zane didn’t even think twice before he reached into his pocket and pulled out a vape. Without hesitation, he took a deep drag, the cool mint flavor swirling in his lungs before he blew out a thick cloud. He smirked at the feeling of the nicotine buzz. It felt right. Too right.

Brad—formerly Eric—looked down at his body, which had transformed in ways he could barely comprehend. His hair, once neatly styled and short, was now a tousled brown mess, still kind of messy but somehow perfectly styled in that carefree, too-cool-for-school way. His chest was now broad, and the sleeveless hoodie he wore was so tight on his biceps, it looked like it might rip at any moment. The rest of his body was covered by black sweatpants that hung low on his waist, his legs thick and athletic. His confident grin was now permanent, like he was daring someone to challenge him.

Brad's hands automatically went to his pocket and pulled out a vape of his own, the smooth, sleek device fitting perfectly in his grip. He took a puff, exhaling the smoke slowly, and felt a rush of satisfaction flood through his body. He looked at Zane, nodding in approval. "This is living, man."

Jared—formerly Alex—felt the change as well, looking at his reflection with a stunned grin. His hair had transformed into a messy, tousled dirty blonde wave, perfect for someone who spent their days outside and had no care for combing it. His physique was now long, lean, and athletic, with strong shoulders and toned legs. He wore a white t-shirt, but this one had a yellow and purple design on the front—loud and attention-grabbing, exactly the opposite of his old style.

His jeans were baggy, the kind that hung low on his hips, and they felt more comfortable than anything he’d ever worn. He wasn’t used to the carefree, devil-may-care attitude, but right now, he didn’t care. It was like he had been reborn, and he liked it. A lot.

He pulled out his vape, taking a smooth drag as the buzz filled him. "Dude, this is awesome," he said, watching as the vapor swirled in the air before dissipating. "We’re unstoppable."

The three of them looked at each other for a long moment. The lives they had known—playing board games, chatting about nerdy topics, debating superheroes—felt so distant now, like they were from someone else. Instead, their new reality—their new selves—felt exciting and irresistible. They felt alive, like the world was theirs for the taking.

"Let’s hit the gym, grab some food, and maybe hit up the beach later," Zane said, already starting to walk toward the door, his voice confident and smooth.

Brad nodded. "Hell yeah. I feel like I could bench press a car right now."

Jared laughed, taking another long drag of his vape. "Yeah, let’s go mess around. I’m down for anything."

And just like that, the three of them—Zane, Brad, and Jared—walked out into the night, completely unconcerned with who they used to be. Their new lives were everything they had dreamed of, and they were ready to embrace it all.

But as they made their way toward the local gym, they didn’t expect what happened next: the moment they stepped onto the sidewalk, a group of girls appeared out of nowhere.

They were tall, blonde, and bubbly, their smiles wide and bright. They giggled as they approached, their eyes locking onto the trio with obvious interest.

The first girl, a bubbly blonde with a ponytail, nudged her friend and giggled. "Hey, guys! You’re looking cute tonight," she said to Zane, her voice sweet and airy.

Zane grinned, the cocky smirk never leaving his face. "Thanks, babe," he said, flipping his sunglasses down and taking another puff from his vape.

Brad raised an eyebrow at the girls and winked, adjusting his sweatpants. "What’s up, ladies? You want to hang out?" His voice oozed confidence as he looked them over.

Jared chuckled, his hand moving to the back of his head as he rocked on his heels. "Yeah, you girls look fun. Wanna come grab some smoothies or something?" he offered with a mischievous grin, his tone laid-back.

The girls giggled in response, looking like they’d hit the jackpot. "Totally," the blonde with the ponytail agreed. "You guys are so cute. We should hang out!"

It was a perfect moment—everything was exactly how they’d imagined their new lives would be. And as they all walked off together, Zane, Brad, and Jared realized that the changes weren’t just physical. They were free—free to be the people they had always wanted to be, no regrets, no looking back.

There was no turning back now. The past was nothing but a distant memory. And with their new, ditzy valley girlfriends in tow, life had never felt so thrilling.

(from left to right: Brad, Jared, Zane)

#male tf #male tf story #gay to straight #nerd to jock #smart to dumb #gym bro tf #scally tf

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willowsnook · 3 months ago

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When Love is Left Unspoken pt. 3 (MV)

max verstappen x reader

tags: @shelbyteller @formulaal @maluzets55 @dying-inside-but-its-classy @what-a-curated-mess @anilovessadbooks @how-what-why-huh @abbyandersonstargirl

pt. 1, pt. 2

After Brazil, you flew back to New York to catch up on brand content and the stack of books waiting for you. It was a rainy afternoon when just after filming your October reads, your phone pinged. Max was streaming. You'd turned the notifications back on after Austin but hadn’t actually tuned in.

Setting up your phone in the kitchen, you half-listened to him playing Minecraft as you started dinner. Then you heard him say your name, and you froze.

“Lots and lots of questions about y/n, I see. I’m trying to win her back, guys, so I need your help. Any suggestions?”

You smiled as you scanned the chat comments.

Move to NYC

Let her drive your F1 car

Fly her out to all your races

Propose

With a grin, you couldn’t resist joining the fun. Typing quickly, you sent a comment that lit up the chat.

Y/N: $500 worth of books is a good first step, I think.

The next morning, your doorman called. “I need you to come down and get these packages. There are way too many.”

Confused, you walked downstairs—only to be met with a pile of Barnes & Noble boxes and realization hit. Back in your apartment, you opened them to find 25 books from your Goodreads “want to read” list. Your heart swelled.

Y/N: Max! This was too much!

MV: Nothing is too much when it comes to you.

Later that day, you went live on Instagram, answering questions. Predictably, most were about Max. Your fans were torn, with some excited at the idea of you two rekindling and others still wary.

“Look, I get it. He did me dirty, but it’s complicated. It’s easy to say I shouldn’t even consider this, but we have 15 years of history. He’s… still my Max.”

A comment caught your eye.

Maxverstappen1: Glad to know I still have a chance.

The chat erupted, and before long, gossip accounts were tagging you in posts speculating on your relationship.

That evening, you were winding down with a glass of wine, just about to turn on the Thursday Night Football game, when there was a knock at your door. With a sigh, you shuffled to answer it, already irritated by the interruption—until you opened the door to find Max standing there.

“What are you doing here?” you asked, surprised.

“Oh, I was just in the area,” he said casually, his eyes gleaming, though you spotted a duffel bag at his feet.

“In the area? With your luggage?”

“Mmmhmm.” He grinned as you laughed, letting him in. He set his bag on the counter and pulled you into a warm hug, resting his head on top of yours.

“We’re supposed to be taking it slow, Max,” you reminded him, your voice muffled against his chest.

“Whatever, schatje.” He rolled his eyes as you led him to the couch. He plopped down beside you, lifting your legs onto his lap, and you couldn’t help but relax into the moment.

“How long are you staying?” you asked as he pretended to watch the game.

“Until Monday, if that’s okay.”

“And you just assumed I’d drop everything to host you?” you teased.

“Yeah,” he replied, turning back to the screen.

“Ugh, you’re impossible.”

He smirked. “Cheer up, schatje. I got us tickets to the Bills game on Sunday so you can see your team. And I get to see Daniel.”

Your face lit up. “Daniel’s going to be there?”

He narrowed his eyes, a hint of jealousy flickering. “Yeah. Don’t act too excited.”

You laughed, entwining your fingers with his, grateful for these small, familiar moments.

The next two days were spent showing Max around NYC, and you started to fall back into your old habits with him. He refused to let go of your hand anytime you were walking somewhere, and you felt his eyes on you everywhere you went.

It was Saturday night, and you were waiting for a table outside of a restaurant, watching as Max took a selfie with a younger fan.

“Is that your girlfriend? She’s pretty,” the young girl said, and you blushed. Max shot you a big smile.

“She is pretty, but not my girlfriend. She will be soon,” he replied, and the girl giggled.

Max led you to your table with one hand resting on your lower back. You’d chosen one of your favorite Italian restaurants, and you're eager to put a nice bottle of wine on his tab, of course.

Sitting across from him, you felt nervous at the intimacy of the setting. His eyes were swimming with emotions of the past and where you were now.

“I want to hear everything that has happened to you since I last saw you in Australia,” he said inquisitively. You took a sip of your wine before diving in.

You told him about your channel growing and getting famous guests on the podcast. How you’d moved to New York a year ago for a change of scenery but still visited back home often. You told him about your friends who had started getting married and having kids, but you weren’t jealous of them; you were very content in your life. You described NYC at Christmas and how the first time you experienced it, you felt like you were in a different world. He listened as you mentioned a few guys you had briefly dated, and he was pleased to hear that none of them had worked out.

Finishing up your monologue, you meet Max’s gaze and notice the lingering sadness in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” You asked concerned.

“I’m just thinking about all the stuff I missed,” he admitted, looking down. “All the stuff I should have been there for. How could you ever forgive me?”

His eyes glistened, and you thought for a moment before replying.

“Because I want to believe that the Max of the past is still there,” you said softly. “You broke me down, but I survived and kept going. As much as it hurt, good came out of it. Maybe we needed time to be away from each other to grow up. I don’t know if I can ever forget what happened, Max, but I can try and forgive.”

He reached across the table to grab your hand, “I don’t deserve you.”

“You definitely don’t,” you teased, trying to lighten the mood.

—------------------------------------------------------

The next day, you bundled up in your Bills gear and headed off to meet up with Daniel before the game. He was supposedly at some random person’s tailgate, so you and Max wove through the hoards of people to get to him. Watching Max in this environment was very amusing as it was just another world of people; not a single person had stopped him to ask for a picture.

“Hey man,” Max greeted Daniel, pulling him into a hug. “Enjoying retirement?”

“I get to do this now, so of course,” Daniel joked before turning to you.

“What’s up y/n? It’s been a while,” he said, eyebrows raised, and you knew a million questions were running through his mind. He had been Max’s teammate for a little while back then, so you knew him well.

“It has,” you agreed. More and more people joined the tailgate, and you could tell Max was getting on edge.

You were conversing with Scotty and Daniel when you grabbed Max’s hand, pulling him closer to you to ease his discomfort. He took your invitation, sliding behind you with his arms wrapped around your chest, his head resting on the top of yours. Daniel gave him a big smirk, and you rolled your eyes, moving your hands up to hold on to Max’s.

Max had no idea what was happening during the whole game but he still enjoyed watching you get so excited. The way your face lit up in excitement was something he was committing to memory, hoping he would get that same look from you soon enough.

After the game, you walked back to your apartment, the city lights twinkling as you strolled through the crisp November air. Max kept your hand firmly in his, his thumb brushing against your knuckles in a way that made your heart race.

Inside, you set your things down, still buzzing from the excitement of the game. Max shrugged off his jacket, glancing around the apartment as though trying to memorize every detail.

He looked over at you, his expression softening. "You know, this place really suits you."

You smiled. "Thanks. It finally feels like home."

There was a pause, a comfortable silence settling between you. Then, he spoke again, his voice laced with a vulnerability you rarely heard from him. "I want you to come to the Netherlands with me for the holidays. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’d love for you to see my family again and… just, maybe, have you close."

You looked at him, surprised. His gaze was steady, unwavering, but there was a hint of nervousness in his eyes. You could see he was waiting for an answer, for you to trust him again enough to take this step.

“Max…” You hesitated, your mind racing. A part of you was scared of what it would mean to spend Christmas with him and his family—to be a part of his life again. But then you looked at him, really looked at him, and saw the man who had always been there, in some way, over the years.

A smile crept onto your face. “Alright. I’ll come.”

His face lit up in a way you hadn’t seen in a long time. He pulled you into his arms, kissing your forehead softly. "You have no idea how happy that makes me."

You laughed, suddenly feeling warm and at ease. "I guess we’ll see how much Dutch I remember."

As he held you close, you knew that whatever lay ahead, you were ready to see where this new chapter with him would lead.

#f1 imagine #f1 x reader #max verstappen x reader #max verstappen

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djarshaddj · 1 year ago

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Jawan Box Office Preview: Shah Rukh Khan fronted film to Release over 10,000 Screens Globally, with over Rs. 100 Cr Collection on opening day!

Jawan Box Office Preview: Shah Rukh Khan’s much-awaited film “Jawan” will debut in worldwide theatres on September 7. Film enthusiasts are eagerly waiting for the much-awaited venture of SRK; this will be his second time arriving after the famed success of “Pathaan.” The film already got a green sign from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), was censored by the U/A Certificate, and had…

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#Jawan Box Office prediction #Jawan First Day Advance Booking #Jawan Screen count #shah rukh khan

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theburialofstrawberries · 1 month ago

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"In the past, whenever the movies in Hollywood went stale and executives exerted too much control over artists, the industry had an important hand brake: the audience. If a movie bombed with audiences and box office numbers plummeted, then studios would have to change course. After all, the box office has always been viewed as the gold standard of metrics in Hollywood for a reason: it’s the most distilled and straightforward measurement of audience interest. Moviegoers must choose to buy tickets. They cannot skip around, fast-forward, or order groceries through the Prime app on their phone. No moviegoer enters a theater expecting to leave after two minutes. Until Netflix, one of cinema’s essential qualities, the thing that distinguished it from television, was the way it commanded an audience’s attention. Whether a movie grossed big numbers or bombed, a box office report carried an inadmissible truth: the vast majority of the audience experienced the movie in full, and its taste couldn’t be ignored.

How to predict the audience’s taste — what will make money and what won’t — is a question that’s plagued Hollywood since its inception. The problem was captured by the screenwriter William Goldman in 1983. “Nobody knows anything,” he wrote in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work.” Netflix’s greatest innovation was that it found a way around this uncertainty: it provided a platform on which there are no failures, where everything works.

This is an important milestone for the largest Hollywood studios as they all set their sights on integrating artificial intelligence into their productions. In March, news outlets reported that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had held meetings with top studios to showcase his company’s text-to-video generator, Sora. Clips generated by Sora that circulated online alternated between drone shots of cityscapes that look ripped from video-game cut scenes and animals rendered in the 3D animated style common to Hollywood productions today. Streaming platforms are the only place where this garbage makes any sense — a place where it would never be watched at all.

But by insulating their films from failure, the streamers have destroyed the meaning of success. Thierry Frémaux, head of the Cannes Film Festival and a vocal critic of streamers, understood this well when he presented the dilemma at a Cannes press conference in 2021. “What directors have been discovered by [streaming] platforms?” he asked. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Frémaux began calling on journalists to name an auteur whose career had been launched by a streamer. By this point, Netflix had released more than seven hundred films in the US alone, with hundreds of directors attached. Yet as the Guardian later reported of the scene, “nobody could name any at all, in fact.”

Here, streaming platforms have achieved a strange paradox. Never has a group of studios gained so much control over the production, distribution, exhibition, and reception of movies by making movies no one cares about or remembers. Having not only failed to discover a new generation of auteurs, the streamers have also ensured that their filmmakers are little more than precarious content creators, ineligible to share the profits of any hit. It’s a shift that has induced a profound sense of confusion."

Casual Viewing by Will Tavlin, for n+1 mag

#great investigation. this will make you so so mad about netflix

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xzaddyzanakinx · 11 months ago

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Not That Kind of Guy

Part Four: Stalker!Anakin Skywalker × femme reader series

Warnings: stalking, weirdo behavior, psychotic/delusional behavior, possessive/protective, sexism/misogyny, one-sided relationship, sexual content, pervy behavior, male masturbation, panty kink, sex daydreams [eventual warning for smut; be sure to pay attention to future warnings in the series]

Info: Anakin is doing his very best, he just loves you and wants you to be comfy around him. Just let him worm his way into your heart babe [diary entries from Ani] extremely not proofread. I’m illiterate so apologies in advance MDNI 18+

Diary Entry: July 8th

Mr. Nelson’s funeral was today, it really was a beautiful ceremony as I look back on it. Even more so when my inner self smears the background enough to bring you to the front of the mental image.

You’d spoken to the man a handful of times, but I didn’t expect you to come. When I saw you accept the invite to the event on Facebook I thought surely it was a mistake. That was until you messaged Luke and asked him to accompany you, funerals make you nervous, but feeling obligated to do something and avoiding it makes you more nervous.

So your moral support was happy to attend and fight off dear old Alan’s corpse should he rise from the casket and set his sights on you.

And I though I had irrational fears, geez babydoll, how old were you when you watched Night of The Living Dead for the first time? If I had to guess it was too young. It’s alright though I get it, you know what movie traumatized me? The Mummy. Heebied my fucking Jeebies so bad I avoided the beach on family vacations.

You’re telling me there’s not a sarcophagus under all that sand? There’s at least one under there and you can’t convince me otherwise.

Solid ground for me only, please and thank you.

🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

I had a thought that I initially considered to be a sweet reminder of my dear friend Alan. His obituary was in the newspaper and I happened to swipe one from the guest book table at the viewing as well. Have you ever scrapbooked before? I bet you’ve at least tried it.

Well I thought it would be nice to make him a page in my journal. A little celebration of life for the man who gave me an opportunity to grow and nurture my love for you.

Then I realized mid-glue stick on the newspaper clipping that the idea was something that a clinically insane person would do.

I’m not that guy. That guy’s not me.

But the glue was already on there and it felt wrong to toss Alan’s wrinkly old face into the trash so I pasted him into my journal anyway.

Crazy people don’t know that they’re crazy. I’m well aware that little idea was less than tasteful, just felt like I should mention that.

Date:

July 28th

Anakin Skywalker hadn’t been this happy since… ever. The previous record being his discovery of you, was now toppled into second place and overshadowed by ‘Move In Day’.

He could hardly contain himself. It was a dopamine high that he would ride out until he’d drained every last drop.

The movers lugged in box after box, furniture and books, until finally they dropped off the last load and thanked Anakin for the business. He eagerly shook their hand and shoved them out. He had preparations to make.

He set up his Tv, screen mirroring the live feed of the apartment building entrance to the big screen so that he could easily keep an eye out for you while he unpacked his kitchen.

He’d planned your ‘meet-cute’ meticulously, looking to your bookshelf and streaming services to gather intel on your ideal scenario. You were an odd bird, but he liked that about you. It’s part of your charm, it’s part of the challenge. You’re not as predictable in your tastes and interests as others can be.

Anakin formulated the interaction step by step, frame by frame in the storyboard of his imagination until he had the perfect scene. His box office hit that he’d replay over and over again until the next time he stood face to face with you.

It took quite some time and a load of practice. Discarded dialogue, awkward movements that made him feel stiff and less than human when he practiced them in the mirror. Endless options of clothes, shoes, and hair.

Should he get a new piercing? He wanted to. So he did, he knew you’d like it.

It’d match the one he already had on the opposite nostril. It made him feel more complete to add something so permanent to his body, he wished he could do something similar with you. He wanted you to be permanent, so maybe it’s his subconscious’s way of telling him that this was going in the right direction.

He was on the right path. His journey of life alone was coming to a close and a new trail would reveal itself. No more rocky, unsteady tread. No more sharp turns and blind spots, no more impossible inclines.

Scraped knees and bloodied hands would be distant memories. Maybe even distant enough that he could toss them into The Pit.

He would have no need for anger or sorrow anymore.

How could he feel anything but the warm embrace of love as he strolled down the flowered path ahead with you?

Who knew that you could position one box in 83 different ways and hate every single one of them? Anakin was so thankful there weren’t any actual surveillance cameras in the apartment building. It’d be really difficult to explain why he was in the hallway for an hour with his hands on his hips, scooting a box of books a centimeter or two at a time. Turning it sideways and then making sure the book on top was perfectly positioned and would effectively fall to the ground to catch your attention.

He checked his watch nonstop, stared at his Tv screen, willing you to just hurry the fuck up before he vomited from anxiety. He’d waited months for this. If he fucked it up now he’d… well he’d probably keel over on the spot.

Which would promptly traumatize you and not even his ghost would be able to peacefully haunt you. It’s hard to peacefully haunt someone if they watched you die, or at least Anakin assumed it would be difficult. He wasn’t willing to test that theory though.

So, he puffed up his chest and walked back into his apartment and rehearsed the upcoming conversation a few more times. He needed, desperately needed to ensure his facial expressions conveyed what he wanted.

Soft, trustworthy, dependable, safe, caring.

He practiced softening his eyes, knowing sometimes he stared alittle too hard. He worked on his facial fidget; chewing on the inside of his cheek was a quick tell of his nervousness. He didn’t want to be perceived as nervous, he wanted to be confident and sure of himself so that you would be confident in your soon to blossom affection for him.

His eyebrows, that’s a hard one, but he’d meticulously watched bar goers trying to flirt. The successful ones he learned, sometimes use their eyebrows in place of questions or words. A difficult concept, but one he studied until he mastered it.

Now, the other facial expressions and mannerisms… he gathered that information from your watch lists on your streaming services. For the visible examples at least, but your books were just as helpful in describing how he should approach you, speak to you, and simply exist near you.

He hadn’t realized these things were this important until now. Standing and posture was surprisingly very, very important to women. As well as hand movements and subtle glances and minuscule changes of expression.

You were worth the time and effort it took to learn all of it. He’d read and research and practice until he couldn’t stand to look at himself in the mirror any longer. He was determined to make sure you were happy with the results.

He was startled by a loud ping, someone had entered to building and holy shit it was you.

Anakin shook out his hands frantically, remembering the breathing techniques he’d learned as a child, he grounded himself quickly.

It’s okay.

‘She’s gonna love you. She’ll warm up to you quickly, you know everything you need to know about her to make her comfortable and loved.’

‘There’s no way she won’t fall head over heels.’

He smoothed out his band-tee and ran his hands through his hair quickly and headed to his door that was propped open slightly. A few boxes sat in the hall, including the most important one, the one instrumental to his plan.

The apartment hallway was ridiculously tiny, which worked in his favor in this situation.

He heard you come up the stairs, counted your steps until he knew you were almost at the door, 17 and a half steps. Then he swung open the door and bent down to grab one of the boxes.

As expected, he startled you and you dropped your keys. You always wore your backpack on one shoulder, one strap. So when you quickly went to scoop up your keys, your bag swung out of place and toppled a few books from one of the boxes.

Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Anakin could gloat to himself about his magnificent setup later, right now he needed to woo you with his sweet words.

“Oh, sweetheart I’m sorry.” He said softly, coming over to offer you a hand up.

“It’s okay, my bad.” You laughed, taking his hand.

He managed to keep calm and collected despite his insides boiling him alive at the willing skin contact.

“No, not at all. It’s my fault for startling you like that.” He chuckled, squeezing your upper arm and using his hand already in yours to give you a small handshake. Smooth.

“I’m Anakin.” He said with a bashful smile, dropping your hand and reveling in the lingering warmth your palm left on his.

You introduced yourself in return, gesturing to his apartment door.

“So I take it that you’re my new neighbor huh?” You said, making small talk as you crouched down to pick up the books you’d knocked over.

“No I’m just a one man moving crew.” He grinned.

“Very funny.” You laughed, standing up as you looked through the titles. “Hmm, you’ve got good taste.”

“You think so?” He asked, remembering to make his eyebrows swoop up toward the middle of his forehead to give a quizzical look.

“Oh yeah, this is one of my favorites.” You said, showing him the cover of The Silmarillion by Tolkien.

“Not many people actually read that one, I’m impressed.” He smiled.

“Impressed? Yeah well I’m jealous.” You laughed.

“What?” He chuckled, holding his hands out to take the other books from you.

“This is a really nice edition, it’s similar to mine. I recently lost it.” You sighed. “I think I must’ve left it the park or maybe it fell out of my bag or something.”

“Ah, that sucks… well, I mean I’ve read that one a few times now. It’s been well loved.” He said tipping the books in his arms toward the one you were holding. “Why don’t you keep it?”

He shrugged, acting nonchalant as though this didn’t mean the entire world to him and if you said no he’d sob about it later.

“You’re serious?” You asked in surprise, he was offering you a 50$ special edition book and you’d barely known him for a minute.

“Yeah, ‘course sweetheart.” He said with a cute, crooked smile. “Think of it as a… reverse house warming gift.” He chuckled.

“Thank you, I- this means a lot to me.” You said, grinning widely. “That’s real sweet of you Anakin. I owe you one.”

“No worries.” He chuckled, “I’m sure we’ll find a way to make it even sweetheart.” His gaze flickered quickly from your eyes to your lips, and he turned to go back into his apartment after giving you an almost-missed wink.

You stepped inside your home, and went straight to the bookshelf to put your new-to-you book where it belonged. After the fact you stood there and buffered, just staring at it.

‘There’s no way, this guy has to be too good to be true.’

But he seemed… so genuine. He didn’t ogle you, he didn’t make you feel weird or like he just felt obligated to speak to you.

He seemed to actually, really be a good guy.

Rare. Few and far of those exist in this day and age. It’s uncommon to meet someone who would do something, even as simple as giving you a used book, without expecting anything in return.

But he didn’t seem to expect anything. He didn’t seem to even expect a thank you, it was like he’d already decided he would give it to you before he even offered.

What are the odds that a hot, tattooed and pierced man moves in next door and gifts you an expensive book that just so happens to be an even better replacement for the one that you just lost? That couldn’t happen twice even if you tried to make it happen again.

What kind of second dimension did you step into? The land of dreamy men?

Diary Entry: July 28th

It’s late. But I have to write to you, it can’t wait til tomorrow.

Everything went more perfectly than I could’ve imagined. Thank you so much for being you sweet girl. It made my job of curating the scenery so much easier, you clumsy little thing. I am sorry for having to spook you though, but it worked didn’t it?

Research pays off. Always.

And of course there’s the issue of your book, I hated to see your frustration and your mad scowl when you realized it was missing from your backpack. I really did.

But I’d do it every goddamn day if I knew I’d get the same reaction out of you from giving you that new copy.

Oh god you’re… you’re beautiful. You’re so beautiful. You look angelic when you sleep but you look like competition for Aphrodite when you smile at me.

You smiled, grinned. You smiled all the way up to the corners of your bright and beautiful eyes. For me.

You even laughed for me.

It was so sweet I could taste it. The honey of your voice, I could fucking bathe in it. Just the sound of you speaking, knowing you were speaking to me. Really speaking to me.

In the flesh.

It’s intoxicating. It’s emboldening, it’s dangerous. I’ve never been more worked up in my life. I’m torn all to pieces from at two minute and 6 second conversation.

I think I’ll have to fucking recover from this like a damn hangover.

But what has me so drunk you might ask? Was it your laugh at my stupid jokes? Was it your perfect smile, your radiant glow, your soulful eyes? The softness of your skin or you willingness to let me touch you?

No baby. It’s how you said my name.

I wish I could’ve stayed longer, I wish I could’ve spoken to you more. But it’s so hard to concentrate when my dick is leaking precum down my leg at a rate that should probably be concerning.

The minute you closed that door I shoved those boxes into my apartment and locked the door. Took my elated ass straight to the couch and watched you in your living room, admiring your gift from me while I fucked my fist with a pair of your dirty panties in my mouth.

I couldn’t have your honeyed lips soothing my angry red cock just yet, but I sure as hell could imagine licking your gorgeous little cunt while I tasted you.

I tugged my balls and pumped my cock for over half an hour until I was a fucking mess for you in my new living room’s floor. The cool hardwood letting the heat from my flushed skin seep away from me as I came back down to earth.

I made myself dizzy. Didn’t give myself a break, didn’t slow down, just stroked my cock like the desperate little manwhore that I am for you. The only thing missing was you being there to watch me fall apart.

I think you’d like that wouldn’t you? Watching a man like me get on his knees and beg for you?

Diary Entry: July 29th

I’ve replayed that moment in my head for hours on end. The beginning always stays the same, but the ending… that’s been subject to many changes. It started off simple, we’d chat alittle longer, I’d ask you how your day was; you’d tell me it was ‘fine, thank you’.

Or you’d ask me why I decided to move in, why I chose this side of town, this side of town, this apartment building, across from you. That one always ended questionably and I’d rather not explore that one on paper.

My favorites however were the ones where you’d laugh at a stupid pick-up line and somehow we’d end up in your bed. The bed I’ve sat and watched you sleep in. Those were the best additions.

Now, I’ve been fortunate enough that you’ve been loyal, faithful and devoted to only me since the very beginning. So I don’t really have a clue what you’d actually be like in bed.

But god it’s so fun to imagine it.

You’ve got such pretty, soft skin. You let me mar it up with my teeth and soothe it with my tongue. You let me grip the pillowy flesh of your thighs to spread you open for me. You let me pinch and roll and pull your nipples until they were raw and begging for a break. You let me caress the sensitive slick covered folds between those beautiful pussy lips, plunge my fingers in as far as they’d go.

I took you from behind, watching your perky little ass bounce off my cock while I plowed into you. Your face smushed against the couch cushions and your body folded over the arm rest for me to fuck you like the good little girl that you are.

Against the wall with your arms around my neck while I’ve got my hands holding you spread open and in place by the crook of your knees. You promised you stay real still so that I could drill up into you like you deserved.

God damn. Do you know how good you look like that? Back arched against the wall, tits jiggling in my face with every thrust. Your legs pushed up and back to the sides of your torso, to pin you in place?

It was like a pretty pink flower had bloomed and spread its buttery smooth petals just for me.

Don’t even get me started on how good you suck cock. Have you ever been told you could be mistaken for a warm, wet Hoover? No? Didn’t think so cause that would be rude as hell, but I bet someone’s thought it before.

(Me. It’s me, I thought that.)

Fuck those soft lips. Fuck that smooth snake of a tongue. Fuck that tight, hot throat that just loves to take a beating from my dick.

Can’t wait to prove my imagination right.

Speaking of, my dick has been beat. Like actually. If one didn’t know any better they’d assume it’s on life support, but I’m a freak of nature. Cumming upwards of 16 times in the span of 40ish hours would probably put a weaker man in a hospital bed. Or maybe a psych ward.

But I am not a weak man even if my dick feels raw. I’d still fuck you if you asked.

I’d be curious to know if I’d be able to stave off cumming longer from all the abuse or if I’d be so fucking sensitive that I wouldn’t make it in half an inch.

Probably the latter.

Diary Entry: August 2nd

Being so close to you is killing me. Truly it is.

You’ve sunken your claws so deeply into my very soul and you don’t even realize it. It’s torture. To you, I’m just the new guy, nice dude who gave you a book. But to me? You’re my entire world.

I’ve been told I have the personality of a guard dog. Soft and squishy on the inside, dangerous and fierce on the outside. Which I suppose could be true, but really I think it’s for a different reason. For a human, a dog is one small but very impactful blip in your life. But for the dog? You are it’s life.

Am I comparing myself to a dog right now? Yes I am.

I’ll beg for you to throw me the scraps of your affections until you finally toss me a bone.

Bark.

🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

I’ve been trying my best to give you space. To plan accordingly and in advance. I have our next two interactions simmering on the back burner.

I know that if I go too hard, too fast, you’ll be overwhelmed. That’s the last thing I want. I never want to be the thing that causes you stress, I want to siphon it from you. So, in one week I will set out to help you with a few of your errands and plant a few seeds.

But until then, we have late night snacks and couch chats with Boogie.

I’ve also been doing- you guessed it- more research to do with helpful vitamins and medicines. You’ve responded so well to your SleepyTime tea and since I’ve started making sure your birth control packet is plainly visible in the countertop basket directly beneath that cabinet, you’ve been taking it so well.

I’m so proud of you sweetheart, that’s my girl, look at you taking care of yourself. You’ve done so well in fact, that it’s in my personal opinion that you have earned a very special reward.

Anakin sat on his couch, the live feed of your living room screen mirrored to his Tv. He was watching you cook dinner, he knew you’d be making a stir fry. He’d seen it in your planner, so he’d taken the liberty of ordering himself the same, it’d be here any minute. As would your good friend Sam.

Anakin had originally burned red hot with jealousy at the thought of you inviting a man over to your apartment, that he hadn’t vetted via social media and a quick drop-in. But he was relieved to discover that Sam was just a girl from your book club.

This wasn’t one of his well thought out plans, this was decided upon this morning after you’d returned from book club. So, he was anxious to see if his hunches served him well. Sam seemed like a punctual gal, at least from what he’d seen on social media and the text messages between the two of you from weeks/months before.

Anakin had the wonderful idea to log into your cell service providers website to pull your deleted messages from their data bank. You really should have better passwords.

The thing he was most worried about was his door dasher arriving on time. It was rare that one was too far off on arrival time, but it would be his shit luck and lack of planning that could ruin this little glimpse of you.

The minutes ticked by and he was alerted to the new motion sensors he’d placed near the LED pathway lights on the paved entrance to the apartment building. He quickly switched over to the hallway feed at the front door, seeing that it was his door dasher.

Damn you Trevor. How dare you get there before Sam.

Not to worry, he’d call for the door code and Anakin wouldn’t answer the first time. It wasn’t much but it would buy him a few seconds.

Though it seemed to be that luck was on his side as it often was when it came to you. Sam was so kind, kind enough to let the delivery guy into the building. Which is technically a security concern but Trevor didn’t seem like the type of guy who’d be able to remember a 6 digit door code.

He was too busy staring at your friends ass to pay attention to the numbers she entered anyway.

The footsteps approached your door and his, Anakin waited until he heard Sam knock on your door before he opened his. Trevor stood patiently as Anakin slowly counted out his tip in cash and thankfully you were quick to let your friend inside. After the exchange was complete Anakin gave you a smile and wave.

He could’ve had a heart attack at the response you gave him.

A flirty little finger waggle and smile.

He had to remind himself to breathe and keep his expression a happy-neutral. He’d hate for you to see his blushing cheeks this early on.

“Have a good night girls.” He said as he closed his door and to his surprise you actually answered.

“You too!”

If he weren’t confident that you were a sweet and loving soul, he’d think you were trying to kill him with the siren song of your voice.

Stir fry had never tasted so fucking good.

Diary Entry: July 8th

Grocery day baby, here I come.

I love that you’re so predictable. I love that you’re so fucking cute and always try to strong arm your groceries in one trip. I love that it takes at least two good whacks to the trunk of your shitty old Nissan to properly close it.

It’s cute to watch you struggle with it, the annoyed huffs and angry scowl.

I thought you’d combust on the spot once when your paper grocery bag of flour and sugar ripped open and sent a plume of flour up on your black jeans. The parking lot was very empty and I was very glad because I’d hate for someone to have seen the cursing contest you had with yourself as you picked up your spilled items. Very unladylike you know. But it’s you so I don’t mind, I just like to hear you talk.

It’s almost time. I’ve been sitting in my car for about 10 minutes. Gotta account for the traffic on highway 76. Do you really have to shop all the way out there just because of the Whole Foods? C’mon baby they have the same shit at Kroger.

I’ve been watching your little blue dot on my phone and you’re rounding the corner so I’ll write you later doll.

I love you.

You pulled into the parking lot and sat in your car for a moment. Giving yourself the much need quiet to decompress from your work day and the grocery trip. After you’d checked your messages and scrolled for a moment you decided it was time to head inside before your frozen foods got… not so frozen.

You popped the trunk and fumbled with the faulty latch, your fingers feeling blindly under the metal lip until it finally detached and you were able to open the trunk.

You took a deep breath and scolded yourself for buying the extra few things that could’ve waited till next time. Second trips are for wimps and you weren’t one. So you loaded up your left arm bag by bag until you heard a humored puff of air and the beep of a car locking behind you.

“Need a hand sweetheart?” Anakin grinned, shoving his keys into his front pocket.

He waltzed over and took a few bags off your hands without waiting for a response. It took you aback, not because he hadn’t waited for permission, but because of the way he exuded an odd charm that made you falter.

“Anakin, really it’s alright I can get it.” You said, eyebrows furrowed together in confusion by his kind gesture.

“Mmm no, this seems like a two man mission sweet girl.” He smiled, gathering up a few the last few bags from the trunk and shutting it with one solid push.

“You really don’t have to-“

“I know I don’t have to.” He said tilting his head toward the apartment building to encourage you to walk with him. “I want to.”

“Thank you, that’s… thanks.” You smiled, a light blush creeping across your cheeks.

“Atta girl.” He chuckled, tapping in the door code and holding it open for you despite holding many more bags than you.

Something about the low tone of voice or maybe just the way he looked at you with his icey blue eyes… just sent a chill down your spine. A quick one that was gone in an instant, replaced by a warm glow in the center of your chest.

“Guess chivalry’s not dead.” You joked.

“I’m no knight.” He laughed, “but you’re sure as hell a princess.”

‘Oh that was smooth.’ You thought, trying to ignore the heat at the bottom of your stomach.

What is happening? How on earth can one man be so… everything? Kind, caring, chivalrous and gorgeous to boot.

You felt a wave of embarrassment at the squeaky giggle you let out. He had you tore up from one little comment.

True to the gentleman he seemed to be, he chose not to push it and tease you about your beet red cheeks. He just waited patiently for you as you unlocked your door.

“Do you want me to bring these in for you?” He asked, watching your movements closely.

“Oh that would be great.” You said in relief, leading him into your kitchen.

“Cute little place.” He said, looking around the kitchenette and over to the living room.

He sat down your bags on the counter and started unloading them neatly into rows.

“Oh, you-“

“Mmm mmm.” He shook his head with a smirk, “Just let me help, it’s no big deal.”

You let out a puff of air in an amused sort of amazement and pulled out your little step stool to open up the cabinets. Anakin snickered from behind you as you stepped up and started putting things away.

You shot him a glare over your shoulder and almost said something snarky until you realized he was folding your paper grocery bags in the same way that you always do.

“Huh.” You laughed. “I thought I was the only one who did that.”

“Did what?” He asked, his head cocked to the side.

“Fold the bags.” You said, turning back around to continue placing your things where they belonged.

“Oh,” he chuckled, “I dunno it’s just a habit I guess. Fits better in that stupid slot on the recycling bin this way.”

“Yeah I never really understood why they made them that way? I guess so people don’t just shove other trash in there.” You mused.

“Mmhm probably.” He agreed, stacking them neatly and gathering it in his hands. “Do you want me to take these out back for you?”

“I can do-“ You stopped yourself when Anakin raised his eyebrow and cocked his head to the side with a crooked smirk.

You sighed and gave him a downturned smile. “Yes, I would love for you to take them out back for me.”

“Good girl.” He nodded, clicking his tongue and heading for the door. “See ya princess.”

After he shut the door you let yourself breathe alittle easier, blowing out the air in a short puff through your nose. Maybe even letting a little smile cross your lips before you finished up your task.

You’d be thinking about that low rumble of his voice later. Good girl? Shit.

PART FIVE

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