#business entity structuring

[financialadvisorinkolkata]

The Impact of Company Law on Your Business

Company law is an essential component of business operations, influencing everything from inception to day-to-day operations. We at Surana Consultancy are aware of the nuances of these laws and how they affect companies. The following main ideas emphasize the significance of company law and how it affects your business:

Business Formation and Structure

Selecting an appropriate business structure is essential. Company law controls the formation procedure whether you're forming a corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship. It describes the documentation and legal criteria needed to guarantee that your company is protected and acknowledged by the law.

Reporting and Conformance

After your firm is founded, you have to follow company legislation. This include filing financial reports on time, keeping correct records, and abiding by legal requirements. Failure to comply may result in severe penalties and legal issues, which could damage the reputation of your company.

Management of Companies

For a business to succeed, effective corporate governance is necessary. The framework for governance processes is established by company legislation, which also specifies the duties and obligations of officers and directors. Respecting these regulations guarantees accountability, ethics, and openness inside your company.

Agreements and Contracts

The foundation of any commercial transaction is a contract. Contract formation, execution, and enforcement are governed by company law. Comprehending these legal nuances facilitates the creation of unambiguous and binding contracts, reduces conflicts, and protects your rights.

Dispute Resolution

Business disputes are inevitable. Company law provides mechanisms for resolving these conflicts, whether through mediation, arbitration, or litigation. Familiarity with these processes enables you to handle disputes efficiently, preserving business relationships and ensuring continuity.

Protection of Intellectual Property

In the cutthroat economy of today, intellectual property (IP) protection is essential. Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are examples of intellectual property (IP) rights that can be registered and protected under company law. Your competitive edge is safeguarded and innovation is encouraged by this protection.

Purchases and Mergers

Using mergers or acquisitions to grow your company requires intricate legal processes. The regulatory specifications and due diligence procedures required for these kinds of transactions are outlined in company law. Smooth and compliant corporate growth is ensured by appropriate legal counsel.

At Surana Consultancy, we specialize in providing comprehensive corporate legal services for startups in Kolkata. Our expertise in company law helps businesses navigate these regulations seamlessly. Contact us today to speak to our team of experts and ensure your business thrives within the legal framework.

Embrace the legal advantages and protect your business by partnering with leading legal consulting firms. Secure your business’s future with informed legal decisions and proactive compliance.

[raspberrynorthaccounting]

The Impact of Business Structure on Taxes and Liability: A Guide to Making the Right Choice

In today's highly regulated and competitive marketplace, selecting the right business structure is crucial. Among the many decisions you face when starting a business, the choice of legal structure stands out as one of the most significant. This decision will impact your tax liabilities, paperwork requirements, personal liability, and fundraising ability. A well-planned business structure will help you make informed decisions when challenges arise.

Understanding Different Business Entities

Do you fully understand the various types of business entities? Common types include sole proprietorships, partnerships, unit trusts, discretionary trusts, companies, and self-managed super funds. Each entity type affects various factors such as reporting criteria, tax levels, setup and annual costs. Not knowing all the options could lead to unnecessary expenses and complications.

Benefits of Choosing the Right Structure

Selecting the right structure can ensure your assets are protected, you are utilizing the most cost-effective option, you are shielded from personal liability, and you comply with legal requirements.

The Role of Tax Accountants

Tax Accountant provides reliable accounting, tax planning, and structuring advice. Remember, you’re not locked into a single business structure for the life of your business. As your business grows and evolves, you may choose to transition to a different structure. Before making changes, it’s important to understand the differences and responsibilities associated with each type.

Effective Planning and Structuring

With effective planning and structuring, a skilled tax accountant can help minimize your annual tax liabilities. From a personal taxpayer perspective, accounting involves tracking all income and expenses, including those with no tax implications. Tax accounting focuses on income, allowable deductions, investment gains or losses, and other transactions affecting your tax rate. While hiring a tax accountant is not legally required for individuals, their expertise can simplify managing your annual tax return.

[kids-worldfun]

How Does a California LLC Compare to Other Business Structures?

Choosing the right business structure is a crucial decision for any entrepreneur. The structure you select affects many aspects of your business, including your liability, taxes, and ability to raise capital. In California, one popular option is forming a Limited Liability Company (LLC). But how does a California LLC compare to other business structures? Let’s explore the key differences in…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

If you are even slightly plugged into the doings and goings on in this tired old world of ours, then you have heard that Google has lost its antitrust case against the DOJ Antitrust Division, and is now an official, no-foolin', convicted monopolist.

This is huge. Epochal. The DOJ, under the leadership of the fire-breathing trustbuster Jonathan Kanter, has done something that was inconceivable four years ago when he was appointed. On Kanter's first day on the job as head of the Antitrust Division, he addressed his gathered prosecutors and asked them to raise their hands if they'd never lost a case.

It was a canny trap. As the proud, victorious DOJ lawyers thrust their arms into the air, Kanter quoted James Comey, who did the same thing on his first day on the job as DA for the Southern District of New York: "You people are the chickenshit club." A federal prosecutor who never loses a case is a prosecutor who only goes after easy targets, and leave the worst offenders (who can mount a serious defense) unscathed.

Under Kanter, the Antitrust Division has been anything but a Chickenshit Club. They've gone after the biggest game, the hardest targets, and with Google, they bagged the hardest target of all.

Again: this is huge:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-is-a-monopolist

But also: this is just the start.

Now that Google is convicted, the court needs to decide what to do about it. Courts have lots of leeway when it comes to addressing a finding of lawbreaking. They can impose "conduct remedies" ("don't do that anymore"). These are generally considered weaksauce, because they're hard to administer. When you tell a company like Google to stop doing something, you need to expend a lot of energy to make sure they're following orders. Conduct remedies are as much a punishment for the government (which has to spend millions closely observing the company to ensure compliance) as they are for the firms involved.

But the court could also order Google to stop doing certain things. For example, since the ruling finds that Google illegally maintained its monopoly by paying other entities – Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, AT&T, etc – to be the default search, the court could order them to stop doing that. At the very least, that's a lot easier to monitor.

The big guns, though are the structural remedies. The court could order Google to sell off parts of its business, like its ad-tech stack, through which it represents both buyers and sellers in a marketplace it owns, and with whom it competes as a buyer and a seller. There's already proposed, bipartisan legislation to do this (how bipartisan? Its two main co-sponsors are Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act

All of these things, and more, are on the table:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-search-monopoly-judge-amit-mehta-options/

We'll get a better sense of what the judge is likely to order in the fall, but the case could drag out for quite some time, as Google appeals the verdict, then tries for the Supreme Court, then appeals the remedy, and so on and so on. Dragging things out in the hopes of running out the clock is a time-honored tradition in tech antitrust. IBM dragged out its antitrust appeals for 12 years, from 1970 to 1982 (they called it "Antitrust's Vietnam"). This is an expensive gambit: IBM outspent the entire DOJ Antitrust Division for 12 consecutive years, hiring more lawyers to fight the DOJ than the DOJ employed to run all of its antitrust enforcement, nationwide. But it worked. IBM hung in there until Reagan got elected and ordered his AG to drop the case.

This is the same trick Microsoft pulled in the nineties. The case went to trial in 1998, and Microsoft lost in 1999. They appealed, and dragged out the proceedings until GW Bush stole the presidency in 2000 and dropped the case in 2001.

I am 100% certain that there are lawyers at Google thinking about this: "OK, say we put a few hundred million behind Trump-affiliated PACs, wait until he's president, have a little meeting with Attorney General Andrew Tate, and convince him to drop the case. Worked for IBM, worked for Microsoft, it'll work for us. And it'll be a bargain."

That's one way things could go wrong, but it's hardly the only way. In his ruling, Judge Mehta rejected the DOJ's argument that in illegally creating and maintaining its monopoly, Google harmed its users' privacy by foreclosing on the possibility of a rival that didn't rely on commercial surveillance.

The judge repeats some of the most cherished and absurd canards of the marketing industry, like the idea that people actually like advertisements, provided that they're relevant, so spying on people is actually doing them a favor by making it easier to target the right ads to them.

First of all, this is just obvious self-serving rubbish that the advertising industry has been repeating since the days when it was waging a massive campaign against the TV remote on the grounds that people would "steal" TV by changing the channel when the ads came on. If "relevant" advertising was so great, then no one would reach for the remote – or better still, they'd change the channel when the show came back on, looking for more ads. People don't like advertising. And they hate "relevant" advertising that targets their private behaviors and views. They find it creepy.

Remember when Apple offered users a one-click opt-out from Facebook spying, the most sophisticated commercial surveillance system in human history, whose entire purpose was to deliver "relevant" advertising? More than 96% of Apple's customers opted out of surveillance. Even the most Hayek-pilled economist has to admit that this is a a hell of a "revealed preference." People don't want "relevant" advertising. Period.

The judge's credulous repetition of this obvious nonsense is doubly disturbing in light of the nature of the monopoly charge against Google – that the company had monopolized the advertising market.

Don't get me wrong: Google has monopolized the advertising market. They operate a "full stack" ad-tech shop. By controlling the tools that sellers and buyers use, and the marketplace where they use them, Google steals billions from advertisers and publishers. And that's before you factor in Jedi Blue, the illegal collusive arrangement the company has with Facebook, by which they carved up the market to increase their profits, gouge advertisers, starve publishers, and keep out smaller rivals:

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

One effect of Google's monopoly power is a global privacy crisis. In regions with strong privacy laws (like the EU), Google uses flags of convenience (looking at you, Ireland) to break the law with impunity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

In the rest of the world, Google works with other members of the surveillance cartel to prevent the passage of privacy laws. That's why the USA hasn't had a new federal privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling newspaper reporters about the VHS cassettes you took home:

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

The lack of privacy law and privacy enforcement means that Google can inflict untold privacy harms on billions of people around the world. Everything we do, everywhere we go online and offline, every relationship we have, everything we buy and say and do – it's all collected and stored and mined and used against us. The immediate harm here is the haunting sense that you are always under observation, a violation of your fundamental human rights that prevents you from ever being your authentic self:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/14/nsa-prism

The harms of surveillance aren't merely spiritual and psychological – they're material and immediate. The commercial surveillance industry provides the raw feedstock for a parade of horribles, from stalkers and bounty hunters turning up on their targets' front doors to cops rounding up demonstrators with location data from their phones to identity thieves tricking their marks by using leaked or purchased private information as convincers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

The problem with Google's monopolization of the surveillance business model is that they're spying on us. But for a certain kind of competition wonk, the problem is that Google is monopolizing the violation of our human rights, and we need to use competition law to "democratize" commercial surveillance.

This is deeply perverse, but it represents a central split in competition theory. Some trustbusters fetishize competition for its own sake, on the theory that it makes companies better and more efficient. But there are some things we don't want companies to be better at, like violating our human rights. We want to ban human rights violations, not improve them.

For other trustbusters – like me – the point of competition enforcement isn't merely to make companies offer better products, it's to make companies small enough to hold account through the enforcement of democratic laws. I want to break – and break up – Google because I want to end its ability to bigfoot privacy law so that we can finally root out the cancer of commercial surveillance. I don't want to make Google smaller so that other surveillance companies can get in on the game.

There is a real danger that this could emerge from this decision, and that's a danger we need to guard against. Last month, Google shocked the technical world by announcing that it would not follow through on its years-long promise to kill third-party cookies, one of the most pernicious and dangerous tools of commercial surveillance. The reason for this volte-face appears to be concern that the EU would view killing third-party cookies as anticompetitive, since Google intended to maintain commercial surveillance using its Orwellian "Privacy Sandbox" technology in Chrome, with the effect that everyone except Google would find it harder to spy on us as we used the internet:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/googles-trail-of-crumbs

It's true! This is anticompetitive. But the answer isn't to preserve the universal power of tech companies large and small to violate our human rights – it's to ban everyone, especially Google, from spying on us!

This current in competition law is still on the fringe, but the Google case – which finds the company illegally dominating surveillance advertising, but rejects the idea that surveillance is itself a harm – offers an opportunity for this bad idea to go from the fringe to the center.

If that happens, look out.

Take "attribution," an obscure bit of ad-tech jargon disguising a jaw-droppingly terrible practice. "Attribution" is when an ad-tech company shows you an ad, and then follows you everywhere you go, monitoring everything you do, to determine whether the ad convinced you to buy something. I mean that literally: they're combining location data generated by your phone and captured by Bluetooth and wifi receivers with data from your credit card to follow you everywhere and log everything, so that they can prove to a merchant that you bought something.

This is unspeakably grotesque. It should be illegal. In many parts of the world, it is illegal, but it is so lucrative that monopolists like Google can buy off the enforcers and get away with it. What's more, only the very largest corporations have the resources to surveil you so closely and invasively that they can perform this "service."

But again, some competition wonks look at this situation and say, "Well, that's not right, we need to make sure that everyone can do attribution." This was a (completely mad) premise in the (otherwise very good) 2020 Competition and Markets Authority market-study on "Online platforms and digital advertising":

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fa557668fa8f5788db46efc/Final_report_Digital_ALT_TEXT.pdf

This (again, otherwise sensible) document veers completely off the rails whenever the subject of attribution comes up. At one point, the authors propose that the law should allow corporations to spy on people who opt out of commercial surveillance, provided that this spying is undertaken for the sole purpose of attribution.

But it gets even worse: by the end of the document, the authors propose a "user ID intervention" to give every Briton a permanent, government-issued advertising identifier to make it easier for smaller companies to do attribution.

Look, I understand why advertisers like attribution and are willing to preferentially take their business to companies that can perform it. But the fact that merchants want to be able to peer into every corner of our lives to figure out how well their ads are performing is no basis for permitting them to do so – much less intervening in the market to make it even easier so more commercial snoops can get their noses in our business!

This is an idea that keeps popping up, like in this editorial by a UK lawyer, where he proposes fixing "Google's dominance of online advertising" by making it possible for everyone to track us using the commercial surveillance identifiers created and monopolized by the ad-tech duopoly and the mobile tech duopoly:

https://www.thesling.org/what-to-do-about-googles-dominance-of-online-advertising/

Those companies are doing something rotten. In dominating ads, they have stolen billions from publishers and advertisers. Then they used those billions to capture our democratic process and ensure that our human rights weren't being defended as they plundered our private data and put us in harm's way.

Advertising will adapt. The marketing bros know this is coming. They're already discussing how to live in a world where you can't measure clicks and you can't attribute actions (e.g. the world from the first advertisements up until the early 2000s):

https://sparktoro.com/blog/attribution-is-dying-clicks-are-dying-marketing-is-going-back-to-the-20th-century/

An equitable solution to Google's monopoly will not run though our right to privacy. We don't solve the Google monopoly by creating competition in surveillance. The reason to get rid of Google's monopoly is to make it easier to end surveillance.

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/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

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

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

[simply-ivanka]

What Did the Biden Family’s Foreign Clients Get for their Money?

Hunter Biden pleads guilty to federal tax charges.

Wall Street Journal

By James Freeman

Hunter Biden has been convicted of federal crimes for not paying all the taxes he owed on his foreign income. But the most important question for Americans remains unanswered: What exactly did his overseas clients get in return for their money? His Thursday guilty plea on tax charges prevented testimony that may have gone some way toward providing an answer. This potential testimony may also explain why Hunter Biden waited until now to acknowledge his guilt.

The Journal’s Sara Randazzo, Ryan Barber and Annie Linskey report from Los Angeles:

Federal prosecutors signaled an aggressive strategy as the trial drew near, previewing an approach that would show how foreign interests paid the younger Biden to influence the U.S. government while his father was vice president during the Obama administration. Prosecutors said they planned to cast a light on a lucrative arrangement with a Romanian real-estate magnate who was facing a corruption investigation in his home country, along with his ties to the oil company CEFC China Energy and his tenure on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. 

In court Thursday, [prosecutor Leo Wise] insisted on reading the entirety of the 56-page indictment into the record—over the objection of Biden’s lawyer—to establish the facts underlying the guilty plea. 

Alanna Durkin Richer reported last month for the Associated Press:

Hunter Biden’s lawyers say prosecutors are inappropriately trying to insert “politically-charged” allegations about his foreign business dealings into the upcoming federal tax trial against the president’s son.

Special counsel David Weiss’ team told the judge last week that they plan to call to the witness stand a business associate of Hunter Biden’s to testify about an arrangement with a Romanian businessman who was trying to “influence U.S. government policy” during Joe Biden’s term as vice president…

The Romanian businessman, Gabriel Popoviciu, wanted U.S. government agencies to probe a bribery investigation he was facing in his home country in the hopes that would end his legal trouble, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors say Hunter Biden agreed with his business associate to help Popoviciu fight the criminal charges against him. But prosecutors say they were concerned that “lobbying work might cause political ramifications” for Joe Biden, so the arrangement was structured in a way that “concealed the true nature of the work” for Popoviciu, prosecutors alleged…

In fact, Popoviciu and Hunter’s business associate agreed that they would be paid for their work to “attempt to influence U.S. government agencies to investigate the Romanian investigation,” prosecutors said. Hunter Biden’s business associate was paid more than $3 million, which was split with Hunter and another business partner, prosecutors say.

Ms. Richer also noted that Hunter Biden’s defense lawyers “slammed prosecutors for showcasing ‘these matters on the eve of Mr. Biden’s trial—when there is no mention of political influence in the 56-page Indictment.’ ” The A.P. story continued:

“The Special Counsel’s unnecessary change of tactic merely echoes the baseless and false allegations of foreign wrongdoing which have been touted by House Republicans to use Mr. Biden’s proper business activities in Romania and elsewhere to attack him and his father,” the defense wrote.

But the defense has now opted not to defend.

Of course Romania is not the only foreign jurisdiction that proved fruitful for the Biden family business. The majority staff of several House committees recently reported:

From 2014 to the present… Biden family members and their associates received over $27 million from foreign individuals or entities…

Witnesses acknowledged that Hunter Biden involved Vice President Biden in many of his business dealings with Russian, Romanian, Chinese, Kazakhstani, and Ukrainian individuals and companies.Then-Vice President Biden met or spoke with nearly every one of the Biden family’s foreign business associates, including those from Ukraine, China, Russia, and Kazakhstan.

And of course let’s not forget Hunter Biden’s own deposition on Capitol Hill. This column noted in March that mere minutes after making yet another broad claim of not involving his father in the business, Hunter Biden confirmed the story of travelling with then-Vice President Joe Biden on Air Force Two to China and introducing his father to Jonathan Li in the lobby of the Bidens’ hotel. The following excerpt from the deposition suggests that the timing could not have been better:

[Committee member or staff]: At the time that you did introduce your father to Jonathan Li, did you or any of your business associates have any potential business with Jonathan Li?

[Hunter Biden]: I was working with Jonathan on a potential that he had an idea for creating a private equity fund based in China to do cross-border investments.

Nice. But good luck explaining what value Hunter Biden might be able to add to such an enterprise. Years later, his Chinese associates still hadn’t come up with a story. In 2019 Cissy Zhou and Jun Mai reported in the South China Morning Post:

BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company has grabbed global media attention for its links with Hunter Biden, the son of former United States vice-president Joe Biden, after US President Donald Trump fired a barrage of corruption allegations at him and requested China investigate the Bidens’ financial activities in the country.

The company has repeatedly declined to elaborate on the younger Biden’s role at the firm when contacted by the South China Morning Post via phone, mail and visits to the office. But Jonathan Li Xiangsheng, the firm’s chief executive and Hunter Biden’s partner, has said the company was working on an explanation about the American’s role.

Li refused to comment on the younger Biden when reached by the Post on Monday.

A recent visit to the firm’s registered address in Beijing found a small, plainly decorated office, where a receptionist said she had never seen Hunter Biden.

Is there anything Joe Biden said about the family business in 2020 that has turned out to be true?

Meanwhile as Vice President Kamala Harris seeks a promotion, perhaps she ought to disclose if she ever questioned anyone or learned anything about the Biden family business and its implications for American foreign policy. One would guess she was at least curious. Did she ever talk to anyone about the ethical standards for Hunter Biden’s art sales, which turned out to be a sham while she was serving alongside Joe Biden?

Vice President Harris is not just a lawyer but a former prosecutor and a former state attorney general, for goodness sake. Wasn’t she the least bit concerned?

***

Spokespeople for both the president and the vice president say that they won’t be pardoning Hunter Biden. But then why is Hunter Biden’s lawyer still making what seems like a political argument rather than a legal one?

Jack Morphet and Priscilla DeGregory report for the New York Post on comments from defense lawyer Abbe Lowell:

“Hunter decided to enter his plea to protect those he loves from unnecessary hurt and cruel humiliation,” Lowell said.

“This plea prevents that kind of show trial that would not have provided all the facts or served any real point in justice. He will now move on to the sentencing phase, while keeping open the options to raise the many clear issues with this case on appeal.”

He’s going to appeal a case in which he just pleaded guilty to all the charges? Sounds like an argument built for the White House briefing room, not a courtroom.

***

James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”

[chaoticace2005]

Notice to Stop and Get Some Help

Notice to Cease and Desist

Mr. Vox of VokTek,

Please accept this correspondence as a formal notice to cease and desist all activity related to the Radio Demon.

While the nefarious actions you undertake as a CEO and member of a crime group, which includes but is not limited to mass brainwashing, invasion of privacy, conspiracy, and aiding in abuse, this is Hell so all of that is deemed acceptable by the non-existent law on place.

However, the amount of complaints received involving your continued correspondence, obsession, and harassment of the Radio Demon has made it so we’ve had to adopt a legal system for the sake of this law (so fuck you for making me do all this work.)

Four weeks prior, a Change.org petition with over 18 million signatures arrived on the desk of King Lucifer Morningstar. This, combined with the amount of complaints received involving your continued correspondence, obsession, and harassment of the Radio Demon has made it so we’ve had to adopt a legal system for the sake of this law.

For further specification, because this is Hell and sometimes we need to write this out, here is what you need to know:

1. No fights with the Radio Demon in public spaces or over transmission. (Seriously, this is annoying.)

2. No stealing his hair to make wigs.

3. No forcing your partner to wear aforementioned wigs.

4. No creating or requesting the creation of body pillows with a likeliness to the Radio Demon.

5. No highjacking a broadcast to slander the Radio Demon.

6. Just… no breaking out into song about the Radio Demon. Seriously dude what the fuck.

7. No putting cameras into vicinities of which he resides.

8. No getting other people to do that.

9. No taking over of “the Vees” meetings to complain about the Radio Demon for hours. That time is apparently for bitching about other entities, including an “Angel Dust” (which is a whole separate legal issue that will be further dealt with by Asmodeus, Sin of Lust, as well as Lucifer Morningstar, King of Hell.)

10. No requesting your associates to make porn that has likeliness to the Radio Demon.

11. No following the Radio Demon around in public.

12. No grand declarations of love to the Radio Demon (he’s aroace and it makes him uncomfortable.)

13. No calling your partner “Alastor” or “Al” in bed, regardless of how close their nickname may sound to it.

14. No screaming about how the Radio Demon getting injured is “better than sex” (it makes some demons feel inadequate.)

15. No crying about the Radio Demon having “new rivals.”

16. No placing a hit out on a random, bitchy, cannibalistic old lady named Susan. She bites.

17. No jacking off to videos of the Radio Demon being injured.

We, the people of Real Legal Company (a subsection of the Immediate Murder Professionals), are aware that this particular format may not follow the structure of previous legal notices and codes. And to this we say fuck you. It doesn’t fucking matter. This is Hell. We didn’t have any clients to kill and only know legal stuff from movies. And Stolas was too busy to read this over.

Any and all issues with this document are of the result of Moxxie Knolastname and should be taken up with him. NO DON’T WRITE THAT

Anyways, fuck you and maybe get help?

Document dictated by the people of I.M.P

Written by Fizzarolli (cause Blitzø can’t write for shit.)

Forwarded by Asmodeus, Sin of Lust

Approved by Lucifer with the addition that such restrictions do not apply to the King of Hell (which we doubted it would because he’s literally the king??? But anyways if you see Ol’ Lucy harassing the Radio Demon he wants to remind you it’s because he’s king and allowed to.)

Signed by the people.

[existentialterror]

ARG notes: ZampanioSim

Okay, a work this metafictional and also that (I think) responds to audience interaction is going to need a high-caliber gimmick. Hang on.

...

Alright. Hey guys, catfishAnabasis (Light) here, taking a moment out of my surprisingly busy day tell you about a weird thing on the internet.

ZampanioSim is an intricate and brainbending ARG. It takes direct inspiration from Homestuck, The Magnus Archives, and House of Leaves, as well as the creator (JR, jadedResearcher/justifiedRecursion)'s previous canon of Homestuck fan-work and games. A major theme is "unreality".

HERE IS YOUR TRAILHEAD.

Feel free to ignore the rest of the writeup and check it out now.

I know very little about JR's other work, right now. However, among my many INTERESTS, I am something of a TMA ENJOYER and an AMATEUR INTERNET INVESTIGATOR, and if I were in a HOUSE I like to think I could LEAVE it pretty easily.

So, yeah. I figured I'd just describe my experience of this rabbithole and maybe you'll want to check it out too. I'm sure this will only scratch the surface.

ZampanioSim is structured as a nested labyrinth. In the same way that:

Homestuck is a webcomic framed as an interactive adventure game about an account of kids playing a video game (Sgrub) that doesn't exist, and

House of Leaves is a novel framed as a found scholarly discussion about a documentary (The Navidson Record) that doesn't exist about a house that doesn't exist,

ZampanioSim is a game-based ARG framed as an attempt to simulate a game (Zampanio) that doesn't exist based on a found FAQ of the game (that only sort of exists).

More concretely, ZampanioSim features a lot of nested browser games, as well as audio, narrative, an actual audience-interactive narrative game (the way Homestuck was originally), external websites, and more.

The starting point is, of course, the House:

ZampanioSim takes full advantage of the browser as medium. There is content accessible via the address bar, developer tools, cookies (I think), the developer console, and probably more that I haven't realized.

Like, to give you a sense of the kind of rabbithole we're dealing with: Here's a map I made of the House outset page today:

...And I say today because the House does change over time. Today (a friday) when I clicked on the EastEast route, for instance, I was greeted by this grotesquely distorted version of Rebecca Black's "Friday":

Okay, let's talk about what we have going on in the House map, starting from the doors and working out. (I've given some of these my own names for clarity.)

North

The Classpect Menu Game:

This, I think, is the main titular "ZampanioSim". It's the part that's intended to recreate the experience of a supposed old computer game, but by and large, you only experience the menu screen, not the rest of the gameplay. You can select attributes (based on Homestuck's Classpecting system + the Magnus Archives fears) gain points and select skills and (depending on your seed) eventually "beat the game". It's glitchy, it's a hellscape, there's an entity or two in the menu system that are trying to talk to you. It's great fun. Contains links to a rabbithole (which you can plug passwords into for more secrets) and + some secrets to you in the credits.

(While mostly the aspects seem to add flavor to the menu options, there's a special class called "Waste". This appears in neither TMA nor Homestuck, but comes from a fan or meta-joke that Andrew Hussie and Toby Fox, the writer and a major composer for Homestuck, are classpected* as the "Waste of Space" and "Waste of Time". By telling it you're a "Waste"you're more likely to get weird glitches and new options in your Classpect Menu game run - there's a fun recurring element in some of these games about the game changing depending on who you tell it is playing. I learned about the Waste trick from JR's youtube channel. Also, setting your birthday as Halloween might also do something.)

I have no idea if the different iterations of games here are substantially different. I haven't checked. There's a lot going on. "There's a lot going on" is a good summary of ZampanioSim overall.

*( Uh, classpecting is this in-Homestuck personality system where game players are a [Role] of [Element].)

Eyedlr: Eyedol Games is the company that supposedly made the original game Zampanio. Eyedlr is their spambot-filled tumblr clone, which also has secrets in it. (Actually, just assume everything has secrets out.)

East

The House Exploration game: It has the same setup screen as the Classpect Menu game, but this one drops you into a game with visuals: An infinite(?) procedural house you navigate with imagery derived from your choices.

Peewee's exploration game: When it's not blasting Rebecca Black's Friday But Weird into your ears, the EastEast route is another procedural infinite(?) maze, except that you type directions to Peewee, a snake guy with goggles who also moves around on his own. This one also introduces named characters we learn more about elsewhere.

Bathroom text: Procredural bathroom maze, unless it's just some text telling you to take a break. ZampanioSim really likes telling you to take breaks and hydrate, so that you can better appreciate and spread Zampanio.

Absolutely not. Also, I'm a busy woman. I have to finish this writing summary first.

South

The Train Game: a game - notably not a maze - where JR walks down a series of train corridors and monologues to you about the game and the "reality" behind it.

The mazecrawler game: You tell a little guy how to navigate an infinite(?) maze - and if you choose right and open up your browser's Console menu, you can learn a great deal more about

West

The only West route is AdventureSimWest, which is an actual text narrative game where readers submit commands that the author incorporates into updates - just like early Homestuck. It's still going. The logs are extensive but it's mostly about the antics of a new employee at Eyedol Games, which is stuck in a time loop.

Other

Then there's some other scattered clickable text -

The truth about alt: An exchange between two shapeshifters.

A transcript: A dialogue between two people who apparently work for Eyedol Games.

The lower left leads you to an apparently rotating selection of other Zampanio-related games. I particularly liked NagaGirlfriend.

None of this is even the stuff you can reach this page exclusively through the Console menu.

And much more

And there's a lot of stuff that's NOT branching directly off of the house. There's other things you find buried in links or by searching - a discord and a wiki that both straddle the line between in-character and -out, Archive of Our Own content, a youtube channel, the Eyedol website...

Is there a "story" to ZampanioSim?

Yes.

Like I said, there's a lot I haven't seen yet. But what's going on is something like this:

JR is attempting to recreate this game, Zampanio, of course, and tap into its fanbase. The game Zampanio is an infectious meme. Eyedol Games is a transdimensional company that is perhaps both trying to spread the meme and contain it, by removing its spores, e.g. the Zampanio FAQ - the thing that inspired JR to make ZampanioSim - from the internet.

Various parts of the game recognize that they are fictional and may identify you the reader/player as "Observers".

There are a few recurring characters who have gotten swept up into the meme, either working for Eyedol or trapped in ZampanioSim or both, and have followed it from variant to transdimensional variant.

(this is an image from homestuck. it's a reference.)

Japes aside, this is a brain-bending, very cool, and completely ludicrous unfiction project which I believe is made mostly by one person with an unparalleled hand for web sorcery, whimsy, and vibes. The vibes are so good.

The host website, Farrago Fiction (which AFAICT is a multi-person project), hosts a number of often-homestuck-inspired weird games and simulators.

I know ZampanioSim is now a few years old and is still actively updating. Consider checking it out.

2024-08-24 edit: Part 2!

[wraithdance]

Fortress [Part 1/2]

Synopsis: Kyle’s self control is tested by the pretty thing that wears Captain Price’s ring. Pairing: Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick X Cougar!Reader; Established Price x Reader Note: AFAB!reader, no pronouns used for reader, No physical description or use of Y/N, reader is older than Kyle by several years. This will have a part two Content warning: NSFW, solo masturbation, mentions of reader having breasts, a man being down bad

The fact is Kyle has always had a thing for milfs/cougars.

It’s information he’ll never admit, but if you see his eyes lingering on the pretty seasoned women that pass him by… you didn’t, mind your fucking business, mate.

He also likes authority and the structure the military gives him. Occasionally, he pushes back on bad calls, but he’ll follow his Captain into the fire in a heartbeat. He’s loyal like that without fail.

So it comes to a surprise to Kyle how badly he fucked up. He didn’t mean for his feelings for Captain John Price’s drop dead gorgeous spouse to turn into anything more than a crush. You’re at least ten years older than him and he would never betray his Captain, he swears it on his life.

He didn’t mean for his hug to last longer than the acceptable amount of time when you pull him in tight. He didn’t mean to inhale the heady scent of your perfume that lingers at the base of your delicate neck. Fuck, he didn’t mean to shudder at the feel of soft, glowing skin as you move to stand beside John. 

You make a picture of strength and fortitude. Kyle feels like he’s out matched.

Kyle and his body are two separate entities when he stands abruptly at dinner. His face is hot with warmth and his hands clench to hide his cock from view. He’s making up some passive excuse about the wine not settling well as he races to the Price’s washroom.

It’s there in the small space that smells like lemon scented potpourri, that he’s barraged with images of the brief glimpse he got of your breasts over the dinner table.  You’d leaned over the serving platters to hear the punchline to Ghost's stupid joke. It was an innocent move on your part but you dipping your finger to gather the white gravy that stained your shirt when you notice it sends the hounds of hell baying at the gates of what was his iron mental control. He’d already ran from the table when you shove your soiled fingers into your mouth.

It still plays over and over and over and over… until he’s coming up with scenarios that never happened with such startling clarity that it frightens him. His mind supplies memories of what your skin felt like to fill in the gaps left from having never touched you in a way less than platonic. 

He’s panting himself into an anxiety attack when thick ropes of cum paint his fist and the decorative hand towels on the sink.

Kyle Garrick has lost control. It shames him to his core. 

He's prided himself on being better, sweeter, much more capable than the dogs playing men in his line of work. You make him feel like something half man. He hates the part of him that wishes to be at your feet.

His own disbelieving eyes in the mirror. He hides the cum stained towels under the bathroom sink with trembling hands (right behind the spare pack of toilet paper seems like a good spot). He’ll come back for them before he leaves, he swears to himself.

He just needs to focus and compartmentalize so he can at least pretend to be the Sgt. Kyle Garrick who has with the ability to withstand enemy torture. The soldier with the mental fortitude that ensured his place in the SAS serving her Majesty. 

That earned him the respect of his Captain who he would die for.

fuck.

When he makes an excuse to leave early he doesn’t mean to make eye contact with you, the demon wearing his Captain’s heirloom ring around your finger.  He’ll be fucking his fist until his cock is raw when he’s alone tonight and he doesn’t want you to see that in his eyes.

But he looks up when your husband calls out his name in concern.

It’s how he sees the small, nearly imperceptible smirk on your painted mouth and the knowing look you casts him under lowered lashes.

Kyle doesn’t go back for the towels.

Nor does he hear the concerned questions from his mates. He honestly can’t hear shit past the dull thrum of his racing heart pounding in his ears.

He doesn’t quite remember slipping a bit on the front steps in his hurry to leave or snagging his pullover on a branch as he ambles unsteadily down the street. He doesn’t know where he’s going, his home is in the other direction, but he doesn’t truly care.

If he’d been in his right mind maybe he would have seen his Captain’s dark gaze search the charged air between you two.

Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick is completely, irrevocably and devastatingly fucked.

[crownedwithstars]

I don't think the story of Beren and Lúthien is somehow out of place in The Silmarillion. Yeah, most of the Silm consists of sad and tragic tales, but I don't think this makes B&L's story somehow inconsistent with the rest of the book. If anything, it serves as a contrast and elevates the Silm. It in some ways like a fairy tale, but at the same time it does break the conventions of fairy tales. It's about death, Tolkien's central theme, in more ways than most other tales of the Silm are.

It feels like this reading of Beren and Lúthien as a strange outlier comes out of treating and reading the Silm as a self-contained entity. But it is not. The Silm is still very much a part of Tolkien's legendarium, and despite the difficulties he had in writing and editing it, you can't really deny the ways it's connected and essential to Lord of the Rings.

And if you look at LOTR, the story of Beren and Lúthien appears very early in the Fellowship of the Ring. Aragorn sings their tale to the hobbits as they are spending the night by Weathertop, afraid of the Ringwraiths. Aragorn speaks of it as a sad tale that may nevertheless lift up the hobbits' hearts.

This, I think, is an important clue as to where the story will go. In many ways, Sam and Frodo's quest to destroy the Ring mirrors the quest of Beren and Lúthien to steal a Silmaril - and the two quests are interlocked because B&L's success enables the Silmaril to become the star of Eärendil, which in the form of Galadriel's star-glass will aid Sam and Frodo in some of the darkest moments of their journey. B&L's union also provides Middle-earth with a line of Men who will engage and keep Sauron busy long enough to be defeated, but that's beside the point of this post. The structure and nature of the two quests is similar: here are people who were underestimated by the powerful, going where the great cannot go, and doing things that even the mightiest could not have done. Before Sam and Frodo enter Shelob's lair, they even talk about Beren and Lúthien's quest, and note how they are in the same story still, as if to set the following scenes and the fight against Shelob in the very tone and memory of B&L's quest.

Beren and Lúthien's tale may on the surface seem different from the rest of the stories of the Silm. But if you look at the whole of the legendarium, it is more essential than many other tales of the Silm. The problem is that Tolkien himself had trouble constructing the myths and the early history of Arda in a way that would indeed fit the works he had already published at that point, and the uneasiness we may feel about B&L or whichever part of the story is because it was very intricate and Tolkien was not able to finish the story or find a satisfactory way to compile the many versions. Christopher Tolkien's editions of the Silm and HoMe are undoubtedly the result of a Herculean effort but even he knew and admitted there are other ways the fragments of his father's works could have been organised. Even so, there is no doubt of the fact that the tale of Beren and Lúthien is one of the core threads of the legendarium, and without it, the Silm and the story of Middle-earth would be much lesser.

[transmutationisms]

lotta academics have bought into the idea that predatory journals only exist because people don't know better, rather than because there are structural pressures encouraging publishing at any cost (incl. a literal monetary cost) in order to generate a line on a CV. one danger in believing that these journals publish only the ignorant or uninformed is that people come to believe that they and their respected colleagues are above all that, because they're considering publication to be an unbiased referendum on the quality of the work and not analysing the material conditions at play (the academic's career and professional interests, the university's financial and cultural capital, the journal as a business entity, &c).

the difference between a 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' academic is not that the former was inherently more deserving or smarter or harder-working... much more to do with luck, demographic privileges (which is to say also luck), and ability and willingness to work the system, including by generating publishable and published results. you can't get rid of predatory publishing so long as publication is a structural barrier to raises, job security, & reputation, & thinking that you personally are better than or smarter than some mythical category of Lesser Intellectuals based on what journal you publish in is just self-serving and naïve

[hypnogold]

The Golden Shift

Goldmarkt wasn’t always the sleek, upscale supermarket it was today. Years ago, it had been an ordinary grocery store, known for its fair prices and friendly atmosphere. Families came for their weekly shopping, greeted by employees in simple uniforms. The store had a mix of men and women, and everyone worked well together.

But things changed when GoldCorp, a mysterious corporate entity, bought the chain. The original owners were quietly replaced, and whispers spread among the staff about a new direction for the store. That’s when Richard arrived.

Richard was sent to oversee the transformation of Goldmarkt. His methods were subtle at first—just small changes, like improving efficiency and updating technology. But beneath the surface, there was a more sinister plan in motion. GoldCorp had discovered something powerful: the allure of gold. Not just as a symbol of wealth, but as a tool for control. The gold in the uniforms and décor was imbued with subliminal cues, designed to break down resistance and foster total loyalty.

When Richard arrived, he immediately began making sweeping changes. The employees noticed how sharply dressed he was—his uniform was nothing like theirs. Richard wore a shiny metallic golden AC Milan soccer jersey over a crisp white button-up shirt, with a bold red-and-black striped tie. The golden jersey caught the light, making him seem larger than life. Every detail of his appearance was perfect, from the way his tie was knotted to the way the gold on his sleeves shimmered under the store’s fluorescent lights.

Richard’s first order of business was to introduce a new system for organizing the store. “We need to make Goldmarkt a symbol of excellence,” he said in a meeting. “Efficiency, order, and discipline are key. We’ll begin by assigning each of you to the departments that suit you best.”

It all seemed reasonable enough, but the employees soon found out that Richard’s “assignments” were anything but ordinary.

The test was mandatory. Each employee, from cashiers to stock clerks, was called into Richard’s office to take it. The questions seemed harmless at first, but as they went on, they became more personal.

“How do you feel about wearing uniforms?”

“How much do you value structure and hierarchy in the workplace?”

“How proud would you feel representing Goldmarkt in gold?”

The answers didn’t matter. The test was designed to assess obedience, to see who would willingly embrace the new system and who might resist.

Once the test was completed, each employee received their new uniform. It wasn’t just any uniform—it was a shiny metallic golden AC Milan soccer jersey with a white button-up shirt underneath and a red-and-black striped tie.

The gold shimmered with a hypnotic quality, and each department had its own unique touch:

Bakery staff were given small golden bakery caps to wear with their uniforms, adding a touch of elegance to their roles.

Stock clerks wore golden aprons tied around their waists, the gleam of gold marking them as part of the new order.

Cashiers received golden blazers with their name and department embroidered in bold lettering.

The once colorful and varied staff now glimmered in gold, their names and numbers embroidered on the backs of their jerseys. It wasn’t just a uniform—it was a symbol of submission to the new Goldmarkt order.

Almost overnight, the female employees began disappearing. One day, Sarah didn’t show up for her shift. Then Lily, a cashier, was suddenly gone. No one questioned it at first. Richard had mentioned in passing that some employees had moved on to other opportunities, but soon, it became clear that all of the women had been quietly removed.

Alex noticed it one morning when he arrived for his shift. The store felt different—emptier, quieter. He glanced around at the rows of employees now filling the aisles, all men, all wearing their new golden uniforms.

“Where did everyone go?” Alex asked Ryan as they stood in the breakroom.

Ryan, now wearing the golden Assistant Manager’s uniform—a shiny AC Milan jersey with a special golden stripe down his sleeves—didn’t seem concerned. “Who cares? This new system’s working. Just look at us. We’re more organized than ever.”

But Alex couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong.

For the employees who didn’t adapt quickly enough to the new system, Richard had another tool: subtle hypnosis. The test wasn’t just about assigning departments; it was also a way to gauge resistance. Those who showed reluctance to embrace the golden uniform or questioned the new rules were quietly called into Richard’s office for “one-on-one discussions.” Everyone obeys...

Tom, a stock clerk, had been vocal about his discomfort with the new uniforms. “I don’t get why we need to wear all this gold. It’s just a supermarket, right?”

Richard smiled, his golden tie gleaming as he gestured for Tom to sit. “It’s about pride, Tom. Don’t you want to feel proud of the work you do here?”

Tom hesitated but sat down, thinking it was just another conversation about job performance. But as the discussion went on, Tom felt his mind start to drift. Richard’s voice was calm, soothing, and the golden light reflecting off the walls seemed to dance in his vision. Before he knew it, Tom was nodding along, his resistance fading.

When Tom left Richard’s office, he was different. His eyes were glazed, and his movements were slow and deliberate. He no longer questioned the uniform. He wore his golden apron with pride, and his mind seemed entirely focused on his duties.

“I get it now,” Tom said later to Alex, his voice distant. “The gold... it’s what we need. It’s who we are.”

Tom and Richard made new promotion pictures for recruits, who would not fall for it? Ready to embrace the Gold?

As time passed, it became clear that those who embraced the gold the quickest were rewarded. Ryan, who had accepted the changes immediately, rose to Assistant Manager within weeks. His shiny golden jersey had additional golden details, marking him as part of the store’s leadership team.

Other employees who showed enthusiasm for their uniforms were promoted as well. Stock clerks like Ben were given special roles as inventory managers, their golden aprons bearing embroidered titles. Bakery staff who worked without question were allowed to wear special golden caps, a symbol of their higher rank.

The more obedient the employees were, the more gold they were given. It wasn’t long before the entire store was run by men in gleaming golden uniforms, each of them eager to serve.

Not everyone fell in line as easily as Ryan. Alex had noticed the changes in the store—the disappearance of the women, the sudden rise of employees who once resisted but now worked with eerie devotion. He knew something was wrong, and the gold wasn’t just a uniform anymore—it was a symbol of something darker.

One night, after closing, Alex snuck into Richard’s office. He had to find out what was going on. Inside, he found a folder labeled “Gold Implementation Plan.” As he flipped through the pages, his heart raced. The documents outlined the entire process: the tests, the hypnosis, and the gold’s power over the mind.

The gold uniforms weren’t just for show. They were part of a larger plan to control the workforce, breaking down resistance and fostering total obedience. Those who questioned the system were slowly reprogrammed through subtle hypnosis until they wore the gold with pride.

Alex slammed the folder shut, his heart pounding. He had to leave. He had to escape before the gold claimed him too.

But as he turned to leave, the door creaked open. Richard stood in the doorway, his eyes gleaming.

“You should have accepted the gold, Alex,” Richard said softly. “But don’t worry. We’ll take care of that.”

The next morning, Alex returned to work, but he was different. His shiny metallic golden AC Milan jersey hung neatly in his locker, waiting for him. Without hesitation, he put it on. The golden fabric clung to him, and as it did, he felt a wave of calm wash over him.

The doubts, the questions, the fear—they all melted away. The uniform wasn’t just clothing; it was part of him now. The gold was his identity.

Richard greeted him as he stepped onto the floor. “Looking good, Alex 13,” he said with a grin. “You’re one of us now.”

Alex smiled back, feeling the warmth of the gold coursing through him. He was part of Goldmarkt now, and he wore his shiny golden uniform with pride.

"We Obey Gold, We Obey Cap"

[spacedustpan]

Hey Tennessee fandom people: the ELVIS Act getting ready to go through. It prevents you from using likenesses of Public Figures and their voices. It's Supposed to target AI of musicians and actors but it's written So Broadly that it can effect things like Political News Reporting, Political Parody, AMVs, Fan Edits, and of course Fan Art. It's not limited to Tennessee households either so a Hollywood company can relocate a headquarters or branch to Tennessee and use Tennessee law to sue people outside the state.

If you care about any of that, then look up your county's/district's representatives in the Tennessee Senate and House and start calling. It's headed to General Assembly.

Specifically the bill says - no one can use a famous person's likeness or voice without that actor's permission for the actors life plus 10 years - .

You can see how likeness and voice can be broadly applied and of course fans would never be able to get permission for fan content.

Surely you can see how this would affect amvs and fan edits on places like Instagram.

It would also affect things like Fan Art for Live Action Series.

This would limit free use for things like parody which would effect comedy too.

It's named after Elvis and claims to be for the entertainment industry but it's written so broadly so that it can be used by public figures in general. So Politicians would be covered under it.

Honestly politicians are trying to get this passed in Tennessee to limit the use of their own likenesses for things like memes because it's a fairly easy state to get ultra conservative bullshit passed.

Here's some more info from Real Clear Policy writer Hannah Cox:

"

Right of publicity laws typically include stringent, clear exceptions and only apply to advertising, merchandise, and fundraising purposes. Those exceptions are for “newsworthy” images in content that provides a “public interest,” which encompasses everything from hard news to documentaries, to satire, to celebrity gossip.

This is a fantastic structure that ensures an individual has a right to their own personhood while also upholding the First Amendment, its protections for free expression and freedom of the press, and ensuring the public has easy, fast access to information.

The ELVIS Act doesn’t include these provisions. As currently written, filmmakers would have to obtain permission from nefarious actors like Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in order to make a documentary about him. The producers of Forrest Gump wouldn’t be able to include all those scenes with historic figures. 

That’s a really good way to protect powerful people from scrutiny. And it would severely stagnate the flow of information online as even obtaining such permissions could take weeks. Additionally, out of fear, many content creators would simply play it safe out of fear of litigation.

The ELVIS Act also does not limit its reach to those living or dead, nor does it restrict its parameters to those with a Tennessee domicile. This seems like an open plea for people to infiltrate the state with ridiculous lawsuits that wouldn’t make it past the first gate elsewhere. It’s almost like the trial lawyers associations wrote this bill instead of Hollywood unions.

But to be clear, this was brought to the Republican legislature by the music industry associations and Hollywood unions - a peculiar entity for conservative lawmakers to be carrying water for to say the least. What these entities really want is an end to Fair Use practices because they’re bleeding money, and instead of making better products or creating new revenue sources, they’re simply being lazy and attempting to restrict the market.

"

--

When you call: You're a concerned republican worried about how limiting AI can hurt small business and how the law should be written more specifically and Exceptions Should be included To Protect Fair Use for Non-Commercial, News, and Parody use, because all are integral to Free Speech.

The Law is Simply Too Broad the way that it's written now and it limits Facebook campaign support for Republicans if they have to get permission from Liberals to use their likenesses. It limits free speech which is integral to preaching God's good word against his disbelievers in a political setting and you won't stand by a politician that limits your freedoms like that. This is America Land of the Free and you'll be damned if you let someone step on you like that. That its Big Government infringing on your rights as an American instead of sensible small government.

--

If you dont live in Tennesse this will still affect you with the ways it's written. It doesn't take much for companies to set up "official" shop in a new state.

It will also ABSOLUTELY be used as the model for a much worse NATIONAL bill if it gets passed in Tennessee. Because Politicians will see that it already succeeded once and HollyWood and the Music Industry are two lobbies FLUSH with cash for bribes and campaign donations.

Mark my words this will absolutely bleed over into national politics which will be devastating for News Reporting and informing the populace which is ALREADY in awful shape.

[fatkish]

Monster Gyomei x Depressed Reader

Part 1 of 2

(I got the idea for this from raysrays Fatal Attraction series. They got the idea from @PammyJammy117)

It was a beautiful spring day. The birds were chirping, butterflies and bees were fluttering about, small animals were starting to come out of their burrows. The flowers were blooming in all kinds of pretty colors, too bad, it’d be the last time you’d see such a pretty season.

You see, you had been deeply depressed lately due to business being slow among other things and had come out into the forest to end things. You left your village that morning and walked out deep into the mountain’s forest. Deep and far from the village. You carried a rope with you, you were going to tie it to a branch and hang yourself.

You knew that people had said that there were stories of a beast that lived in these woods. You knew people feared coming into these woods. They feared meeting or possibly encoring the wrath of such a being. You had heard old tales of the being that lived in these woods all your life.

You had heard stories of the being’s great strength but also tales of his supposed good nature. Long ago, your village prayed to and left offerings at a shrine they built deep in the mountain. They prayed to the supernatural being, the supposed ‘god’ of the mountain. There were stories of his great kindness and how he protected the village. He was supposedly fond of children as there were stories of him taking in orphans and caring for them.

You decided that if this being truly existed, and deemed your life of any worth, then they would stop you, and you would choose to live on if they saved you.

You had found a tall tree and decided to climb up the branches, unaware of the being that had already sensed your approach and was silently listening to you. You climbed up the tree and sat on a thick branch, to which you tied the rope tightly around the branch and then fastened a slip knot.

You picked up the rope and put it around your neck, you took a deep breath, and jumped from the branch. You struggled for a bit as your airways were constricted. As you slowly lost your vision, you must have imagined seeing the large man like being that seemingly appeared in front of you. You closed your eyes as you lost consciousness.

When you awoke, you were nestled in warmth. You heard slight sobs. You figured it was your imagination and that you were in heaven. You snuggled closer to whatever this warmth was. You felt a large hand caress your head and a soft yet deep voice tell you you were going to be okay.

You opened your eyes to see a large man like entity. He had white pupil-less eyes, a large scar going across his forehead, large deer like horns coming from his head, short dark hair and pointy ears. He must’ve been well over 8 feet tall, possibly 9 feet tall.

He was carrying you bridal style in a single large arm. He wore what seemed to be a toga like clothing made of a natural fiber woven cloth. He had a long tail that resembled a bull’s.

After looking up at him he looked down at you. He had tears in his eyes. You couldn’t help but feel compelled to wipe away the tears he shed for some reason. He brought you to a shrine like structure. He brought you over to a nest of animal skins and set you down in them.

“You’re the one who saved me?” You asked.

The large being smiled gently at you and pet your head. “Why yes little one, I did”

“Why” you couldn’t help but ask the man, beast, whatever he was.

“Because I believe all life is precious, and it would sadden me greatly to have left you there” he replied as he held his hands together as if he was praying. You noticed he had some ceramic beads that he constantly rubbed between his palms.

“You think my life is precious?” You asked as you curled up and wrapped your arms around yourself. He smiled gently at you and proceeded to rub your head. “Yes, yes I do.”

“Thank you. Thank you for saving me Mr?”

“Gyomei, and you are most welcome little one”

“My name is Y/n L/n, it’s nice to meet you Gyomei”

“May I ask why you felt it necessary to end your life little Y/n?” Gyomei asked as he sat down in front of you.

You crawled over and sat next to him and began to tell him about how you’ve been feeling, how your craftsman business had been practically nonexistent and how you’ve started to become hopeless that things would ever change. During the entire time you talked, Gyomei listen intently.

You talked about things that you had never told anyone, in fear you would be seen as ungrateful or a wimp. You feared the other villagers would judge you for how you’ve been feeling, but Gyomei merely sat there and wept for you.

You felt so much better after telling Gyomei how you felt. You thanked him profusely to which he just smiled and pet your head.

You realized how late it must be and told Gyomei that you should probably return to the village. Seeing as it was late and you’d surely arrive at the village by nightfall, Gyomei smiled and got up, walking with you to the edge of the forest. He helped you down the mountain, down an old path that led straight to your village.

Before you left to enter the village, you turned and ran back to Gyomei.

“Can I please come and see you again. I don’t really want to say goodbye yet” you confessed.

Gyomei smiled down at you and rubbed your head with his large hand, ruffling your hair a bit. “Nothing would make me happier Y/n”

You smiled and returned to the village, you looked back towards the forest and saw that Gyomei had seemingly disappeared. That night you got home and slept in your bed, remembering the warmth that you felt when you were in Gyomei’s arms. That night you had the most restful and peaceful nights sleep you’ve had in awhile.

The next day you prepared some tea leaves in a small ceramic container and packed it into a bag along with a teapot and cups. You also made some onigiri and packed that as well before you set out and climbed the mountain trail leading to the shrine.

When you got there you saw Gyomei and greeted him. You took off your bag and brought out the tea container and other things.

Gyomei walked over to you and asked. “What’s all this?”

“My offerings to you.. or well… I just wanted to repay you for your kindness towards me.” You sheepishly replied as you twiddled your hands. You heard a sob and looked up to see Gyomei crying.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to upset you” you panicked and got up to wipe away Gyomei’s tears.

“Nonsense little one, you did not upset me, quite the contrary in fact. I’m actually happy but you need not repay me” the gentle giant replied as you tried to wipe away his tears.

“So, you’re not sad?” You questioned.

“No I’m not sad” Gyomei replied.

“Oh okay, we’ll would you like to have tea and Onigiri with me?”

“I’d be delighted to”

Gyomei sat down next to you as you got a small fire going in the wood stove inside the shrine. You got the water hot and got the Onigiri out before serving it with the tea. You and Gyomei sat in comfortable silence together as you both enjoyed your meal.

As time went on, you continued to bring him food and would constantly hang out with him. You’d started a garden near his shrine since you saw how fertile the dirt was. You would visit and tend to the garden whilst Gyomei did his things.

Eventually early spring turned to late spring and late spring to early summer. You would visit when you could and helped fix up the shrine. You’d bring new clothes for Gyomei that you had made for him, to which he cried in appreciation.

Your craftsman business seemed to have picked up. Being one of the few craftsmen in the small village, people would bring things to you for you to fix such as ceramics or metal objects and you would fix them. Some of the older people would ask for you to fix up some things around their houses such as doors, roofs etc.

You had made some ceramic pots that you brought and gave to Gyomei for him to store food in for the winter. You continued to care for the garden you started near his shrine and Gyomei would help you occasionally.

Life had been good with Gyomei and you started to develop feelings for the man/creature/whatever he was.

As the garden grew, you helped Gyomei prep and made sure that he would have plenty of food during the winter to which he constantly told you was unnecessary. You would just smile at him as he cried at your kindness.

You eventually brought him a handkerchief for him to wipe his eyes with since he cries so often. As the days got hotter, Gyomei showed you a small waterfall where he meditates and you would occasionally join him underneath the waterfall. He would teach you things like how to forage and hunt to which you greatly appreciated.

What you didn’t know, was that your life would change immensely that coming fall.

[natalyarose]

𝐸𝓂𝒷𝑜𝒹𝓎𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒮𝑜𝓁𝒶𝓇 𝐸𝓃𝑒𝓇𝑔𝓎 𝒾𝓃 𝒩𝑜𝒹𝒶𝓁 𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒𝓈 🌼🌞✨🍯

In the world of Vedic astrologers, there is a lot of remark about how in the age of the internet, rapid technological advancements, idols, overstimulation, 'fake news', and trend cycles as fast as lightning, we are living in times very influenced by nodal energy. Or at least, nodal (particularly Rahuvian) aspects of reality are increasingly 'in your face', accessible... If we take the concept of trends to be a very nodal phenomena for instance: throughout most of history, trends were not something you could observe so blatantly the way we do now.

A 'trend' was more likely to last an entire generation, and without the constant access to the past, present and future of the entire world that the internet now provides, you wouldn't even realise it's a trend. One would simply consider it 'normal'. People were not as aware of what the 'elites' are up to, what happens in other countries, mass information leakage etc. you are busy carrying your own burdens, and reaping your own joys, in your own bubble.

In older times, it's as simple as- the life you're born into is the life you focus on & work on UNLESS you are in a position of power (Solar energy) & therefore dealing more with the people at large & distant lands. Even still, your main focus is on your own kingdom/village/tribe. The average person is not going to really know what's going on in faraway places the way we now do. Sure, this nodal, constant consumption element of reality still existed, but it was less 'in your face'.

These days we have our 'black mirrors' (phones, laptops, etc) and they exist as a portal into- anywhere we desire. Lives & realities that don't even necessarily relate to our own. The need to be consciously aware of this is crucial in order to find the balance necessary.

Currently, everything is moving so fast, and there are constant forms of stimulation, movement, illusions and streams of consciousness to get lost in. So many rabbit holes to fall down without you even realising it that will drain & alienate you from your Solar energy.

Getting lost in trends and the lives of other people that in the physical realm, do not directly touch your own life, can be extremely draining to us. In an abstract way, this gives us insight into why it is that so many people feel depressed- lost, like the world is grey... there is constant fog, smoke & mirrors attempting to block our internal Sun, our personal unique destiny & divinity.

Ironically, I tend to think that the reason we're collectively so divided & lonely lately (there's many reasons, but in the way of esoteric takes), is the lack of Solar energy. People talk about how this society is missing the honouring of feminine (Lunar) energy, which is true- but only because of the lack of healthy Solar energy to support it.

I mean, a material manifestation of this is the.. beyond concerning (and somehow, rarely talked about?) statistics on the sperm count dropping. According to various scientific studies, we're looking at roughly a 50% decrease over 50 years... that's just- wow.

Another of many material manifestations of the way true Solar energy is becoming rarer/obscured: lately, the average suburban city is removing structures (Solar) & facilities people usually go to socialise and have fun- bars, clubs, cinemas, skate parks, venues hosting of events & festivals. Yes, the actual social aspect is more of a Lunar energy, but the Solar aspects (ie. the structures, the organised events, the provided food, etc) are the container for that Lunar energy to fall upon. For socialisation, intimacy, raw emotion & connection to exist healthily, we need some kind of structure, some Solar goodness to go off of so we're not just- floating entities in space talking to other floating entities in space about nothing in particular.

Yes, Solar energy speaks of individuality, paving your own path, ego, sense of self- but here's the thing. If we lack sense of self, how can we connect with people? How can we feel unity if there's no 'self' in the first place? How can we connect and share with people if we feel we have nothing to offer and we're all regurgitating the same stuff- there's no reason to talk or connect if everybody seems to be just.. lacking substance, robotic, or a void

Solar energy is our ego, our happiness, our light. It represents that substance. Someone speaking from a place of Solar light is tapping into a place of authenticity & experience, whereas when we are lost in nodal energies; we are moreso becoming a conduit for other people's ideas and thoughts we've heard about, forgetting our own footing in reality.

I feel like- no, I've seen- time and time again how this current society can delude us into believing that the way to leave your mark on the world & make the world a better place, is to get lost in others. To always be in the know, informed and on trend when it comes to everything outside of yourself. It feels like we are being taught that if we aren't carrying the weight of the whooole world on our shoulders, we are selfish or living under a rock.

On the one hand, it is definitely important that we have some sort of a spiritual awareness of what's going on in the lives of others (be it friends, relatives, or people in other countries) but on the other hand, this constant focus on other people takes away from you having the chance to make a true difference and BE a beacon of light.

Sometimes I see something dark on the news, very dark.. I'm in tears, I'm anxious, I'm asking the heavens why these things happen... how is it fair? I'm praying, I'm sucked in and can't look away from what I'm seeing because it feels like I have a duty to at least witness the suffering if others have to go through it. There have been times it's just debilitated me; until I realised something-

I am worth more to the world, the people suffering included, by focusing on fostering beauty, joy & goodness in my own life. I'm not helping the world by crying in my bed unable to feed or take care of myself because I'm distraught about something I saw on my phone. It's only impairing my ability to remain in a high vibrational state that I can create & share with the world from. People who truly make a difference are often the ones who either innately embody or have cultivated a very Solar nature- 'water off a ducks back'. It shouldn't be about ignoring or suppressing emotions, so much as using emotion wisely.

This doesn't mean it is best to completely ignore the world or be cold or 'heartless', but moreso that you need to be holding a torch for yourself in order to even begin to light the way for others. Those who are suffering generally do not want others to suffer for them (especially if they can't physically do anything to help)- that only creates... more suffering. I know in times of my own suffering, not once did I think 'damn, I wish someone was as sad and destitute as me' lol

I thought 'man, I really would love to be around people & circumstances that are positive, uplifting & nourishing so that I can feel that warmth again'.

If every single person in the world was utterly debilitated and absorbed in other realities, other people's lives, neglecting their own 'karma' & their own blessings, who would be there for people to look to for hope? Who would be the blueprint for what happiness actually looks like? In a world without strong, solar entities, who can those who are suffering look up to to imagine a better life?

Fill your own cup first!

Sometimes the best thing you can do for the world, is to manifest your own beautiful, magical, pure life- whatever that means for YOU. Build your own foundation so that you can be an inspiration & comfort for those who need it, while being stable and strong within your own being.

A lighthouse doesn't go out to sea and get into the storm with the ships. It doesn't go chasing the ships down to save them. It simply stays where it is, strong, radiating light and indiscriminate- unconcerned with who 'gets' the light. Trusting that the universe is working its magic and the right people are benefiting from your radiance. That is what staying true to yourself & your own unique destiny looks like.

I see too many people (myself included, but working on it..) with bleeding hearts. Completely lost and overwhelmed by the struggles, thoughts, opinions, beliefs & chaos of others, feeling as though they can't just sit and watch, they have to do something about it. Or if they can't do something about it, they have to at least feel it, delve into all that emotion. Instead of being the lighthouse and realising that nurturing yourself = raising the vibration of the world, which = one more person living in truth & happiness for others to look up to- they are missing that opportunity and becoming drained/psychologically in pain.

Do what makes you happy. It's so simple, yet so.. not! It's a skill, and it takes discipline & sometimes what feels like active rebellion in order to refrain from abandoning yourself and getting lost in something or someone else; whether that thing is positive or negative... 🌸

Very long story short - the most helpful gift you can give to the world, is your joy & faith in your own destiny.

To anyone who read all this, have a beautiful day and if you can, go do something fun lol, or create something ♡

note: I just want to make sure it's clear that I'm not saying nodes = bad & Sun = good or anything like that! Every planet, every celestial force plays an important role in life on Earth and the nodes have their own magic too. This post is just talking about the importance of staying in touch with your Solar light rather than getting completely and utterly lost in the pull of the nodes. I also want to add that of course sometimes there are unique occasions, where plunging into the darkness with somebody else is exactly what you need to do- but if that's the case, that'll be a part of your 'destiny', so even still you will be embodying your light if that makes sense. Never abandon your light.

[lipstickchainsaw]

Anyway, that's enough talk about thematic parallels, and psychological profiles, and sociological roles, and imagery, and let's instead talk about the cold hard politics of the current moment within Arcane.

Now, the Arcane has taken Ekko, Heimerdinger and Jayce out of the game, and the Black Rose has kidnapped Mel besides, which we'll soon see has a massive impact on how things unfold.

Piltover

In Piltover, Ambessa just made her move to install a puppet dictator, whose martial dominance is very dependent on Noxian troops at the moment. She made a quick switch from Salo, who she was obviously grooming as a patsy, to Caitlyn. Caitlyn will be much more capable in the role, given that she actually has something resembling military experience, and harder to dislodge than Salo would've been, but this is a double-edged sword.

After all, Caitlyn being competent means she has opinions on how to wage the war Ambessa wants her to wage, and it also means that Caitlyn will buck against Ambessa's control if she ever were to find out Ambessa was behind Renni's attack on the memorial. She'll need a lot more careful and skilled handling, and with Mel kidnapped, Ambessa's likely to be distracted...

Here we see the impact of the missing players, because Jayce was on Caitlyn's path (although Mel won the battle for his soul against Ambessa), and a close friend to counsel her against this course of action; Mel would be able to push back against this entire thing politically, even if it wouldn't be as straight-forward as ousting Salo, and Heimerdinger, for all that he was retired, probably has the clout up here to make his resistance to this Noxian coup enough to cause a lot of doubt.

Now, we have no idea how sentient the Arcane is, but the Black Rose definitely took Mel off the board for a reason, given the timing. Now, does that mean they knew about the Caitlyn switch and want this to happen, or were they also of the opinion Ambessa was putting Salo in, and took Mel out so that would happen? How caught off guard by this were they?

Regardless, with the fake 'assassination attempt', and Jinx' last stunt, Ambessa and Caitlyn have enough of a casus belli to start a full-scale invasion. Without Jayce, though, Ambessa won't be getting her Hextech weapons anytime soon, so she's going to have to be managing Caitlyn for a while. How long is it going to take for her to realise what's going on?

Zaun

Yeah, they're two wholly separate political entities at this point. Silco got his nation of Zaun, it just wasn't as clean and peaceful a break as he would've liked. That and Zaun is, uh, kind of a mess. Leaderless, the place is tearing itself apart, and that's not a situation you want to be in when there's an army about to march through your streets.

On top of that, the fragile situation leaves various agents very vulnerable to manipulation from outside forces, like Renni marching to her death on Ambessa's invitation, and Smeech eager to sell Jinx out.

So what options for unification does Zaun have right now?

Chross and Margot, the remaining Chem Barons, have made it pretty clear they're not going to be banding together to form a unified front against Piltover, too busy battling over the scraps Silco left behind, although they are causing enough low-level chaos to be a problem for everyone else. If either of them wins, they'll likely have a lot of the criminal element of Zaun consolidate behind them, and that's an element that's enjoyed a lot of power traditionally.

The Firelights, essentially the main resistance against Silco in the Undercity, might be able to step in and become a more dominant faction. Unfortunately, they're not set up to take on that kind of role, ideologically or structurally, and with Ekko gone, it's unlikely they'll be able to change that in a reasonable timeframe.

Viktor certainly has the potential to build up a power base that could become politically relevant, if he organises the poor and downtrodden into one coherent political block. Yes, his narrative is mostly a prophecy narrative, but religious structures don't exist separate from political ones (unless you make the political choice to enforce that separation). Unfortunately, he's only just starting out, and Zaun needs to get its shit together pronto.

So that leaves the actual inheritors of Silco's legacy: Jinx and Sevika. Sevika is a born second in command, and has essentially played kingmaker in previous shifts of power, so by getting her on board, Jinx has secured an important key to power over Zaun, but she hasn't exactly been thinking of herself as a political actor. So let's do some of that thinking for her.

She's Piltover's most wanted, of course, but what has she really done, from the perspective of the average Zaunite? Killed a number of Enforcers during the Progress Day thing, which isn't great, but Zaunites aren't necessarily sympathetic to Enforcers.

She then blew up Marcus and some additional Enforcers on the bridge. Yes, Marcus had just shot Ekko and was about to shoot Caitlyn, but any 'saviour' spin on that would run into the fact that Jinx tried to kill them both after. Still, the fight over the bridge was a big deal in Vander's day, and the people of Zaun weren't exactly happy with the blockade, so she might even come out ahead in this.

She kidnapped Caitlyn, but Zaunites aren't going to be very sympathetic towards her after her Strike Team, let alone the dictator thing. Yes, this is very much a result of Jinx' actions, but I don't think the people of Zaun are going to see it that way.

She blows up three councilors, and this is obviously a massive escalation, but how many Zaunites have died since? Why do these guys get to be this big of a deal? I feel like the ceremony surrounding this caused more resentment than anything.

Then she saved Isha from Chross' goons, and took out Smeech, one of the chem barons causing so much chaos on the streets of Zaun, both of which will boost her public standing, even before she takes on the Strike Team poisoning everyone.

And then she does her stunt with the paint bombs, mixed with the very toxic fumes Caitlyn's Strike Team was using on the people of Zaun, which we see a lot of people watch with excitement. You put all this together, and you can see why she ends up getting popular support.

There's two problems here. For one thing, she is strongly tied to Silco's regime. People who hated Silco's rule and knew it well enough to know her ties to it will not be happy with her. She can't even frame herself as a rebel against him (even if taking out Marcus would fit that narrative well), because the fact that she killed Silco would threaten her coalition with Sevika, and betray the image of her day, which wouldn't be good for her mental health.

So she could reframe him as a bastion of stability. When he disappeared, things went to shit, so making people think back to him more fondly could work. After all, Silco got a statue for Vander, despite it all.

Her second problem is that the most reasonable faction here will have a serious problem with her, because she killed a whole bunch of them. The Firelights are not going to be happy about Jinx becoming a popular figure, and without Ekko present, they're going to have trouble negotiating that relationship as well. Then again, it might also mean they won't be able to hold back the tide of public opinion.

Then there's Vi, who isn't currently in any mental state to be doing any politics, but could be a dark horse source of legitimacy as Vander's kid, should she be able to find herself again.

Of course, there's also Singed, who has Warwick as, uh, actual Vander for his kids to face. Singed attached himself to Silco for his resources, and now Silco's dead. Is Singed still looking for someone amoral to give him those resources? If so, he might attach himself to one of the chem barons. The creation of Warwick could, however, give him enough of a power base to pursue his own goals, whatever those may be...