#but I'm only human. i don't work for a company. i don't get paid to blog or draw art

[burningembers91]

Freak of Nature - The Salesman x Fem!Reader

Synopsis: The Salesman can't get enough of you, he's drawn to you like a bee to honey. It's just a shame you don't know he's watching you.

A/N: I'm not 100% sure where I want this to go yet, and i've never written for a character like The Salesman before but Gong Yoo's unhinged performance has me hooked!

Warnings: 18+ only!, stalking, The Salesman needs his own warning

He’d always known he was fucked up; had always known he wasn’t “normal”. From a young age, his parents had thrown every penny available at psychologist after psychologist, desperate to find a cure for their little freak of nature. Nothing had worked though; nothing had been able to quell that constant desire deep within his soul.

He’d spent years being forced to subdue whatever demons he housed, fooling his parents into thinking the therapy was working. Nothing could save him though; nothing could rid him of the evil that had taken root. He enjoyed playing with people, relished in seeing how far he could take a person before they completely snapped. Human life was so fragile and fickle; why shouldn’t he be allowed to play with it? People so often wasted their lives; took what little time they had for granted. If anything, he was helping people. He was giving them a chance at a second opportunity for life. The games he played with people, the innocent, childhood games were all completely legal. He never made anyone do anything they didn’t want to, that was beauty of his job. Everyone always had a choice, he just made it hard for them to say no. People were greedy, hungry for fame and fortune. He gave those who sought riches beyond their wildest dreams a chance to make that dream a reality; it wasn’t his fault if they didn’t win the game.

This life he led was a lonely one though. Relationships had never been his forte. He’d always been too much for women, too intense. He had needs, desires that few could meet and those who could only stayed a short time. He wasn’t sure if he was capable of love. He knew he’d never loved his parents, had never loved any of the women he’d fucked. They were merely an object which he used to meet his own needs, all of them too vain and fickle for him. He enjoyed a challenge, wanted someone who could keep him on his toes. But how would he find someone like that when even he didn’t know how far he was wiling to go? How high did his freak flag fly? No one had ever stayed long enough for him to find out. He usually paid for the company of a woman, handing them wads of cash so he could feel a brief moment of ecstasy. He’d never felt anything for these women though; had never felt the burning desire that he felt when he was around you.

He'd watched you every day for three months now, sipping your latte in the same coffee bar, your laptop open as you marked your students work. You always sat in the same spot, right by the window with the view of the park opposite. He’d taken to sitting on a bench in that park, right opposite where you sat. He’d watched as your brow furrowed while you marked essays, he’d smile at the way your perfect pink tongue delicately flicked the frothy coffee foam from your top lip. You were perfect to him, so innocent and excruciatingly delicate. He’d followed you home a few times, keeping enough of a distance that you didn’t notice him in the crowds, but close enough that the floral scent of your perfume wrapped tightly around his senses like a hangman’s noose.

He knew you lived in a small studio apartment, number 235. Your bedroom looked out over a small restaurant, and he’d sit there some nights, watching the shadows of your form through your curtains. He’d never been this enamoured with a person before, never craved a person as much as he did you. He’d listened to you order your coffee a dozen times, your voice more beautiful than any songbird. He wanted to speak to you, but he didn’t want to shatter the perfect vision he’d created for himself. In his head, he broke you over and over again, but you enjoyed it. In his head, you were his, bending to his every will and demand. In his head, you were his perfect girl. But fantasy was always better than reality, and reality never lasted long. He wasn’t quite ready to show himself to you, choosing to lurk in the shadows as you remained blissfully unaware of him.

It was getting harder and harder to stay away from you though. Every day your very presence only fuelled his desires. One day soon he’d have to show himself to you. He just hoped you lived up to his expectations.

[sullina]

genuinely insane that diet culture poisoned people will insists that, if they don't diet, they'll just "eat cake all day" or some other type of sweet candy

because... that's not how it works

like, if you completely give up any sort of dieting and go for intuitive eating (meaning: listening to your own body and giving it what it craves), you're probably gonna be eating "unhealthy" at first, because you've been denying your body something it desperately needs.

For one person, that can be sweets.

For another, that can be fast food.

Just imagine literally anything that could potentially deemed "unhealthy" by diet culture, and someone is gonna crave just that once they start intuitive eating.

But back to my point No one is gonna be eating "only cake" if they don't make a conscious effort to monitor every little thing about their diet, because that's not how the human body (or any living body) works. It's your body's job to keep you alive and well. This includes your diet. Your body knows you can't live entirely off of cake. It's gonna crave salty things, too, not just sweet stuff. And by "salty", i mean, like, an actual meal.

And believe it or not, but vegetables? Can be fucking amazing. On the condition that you focus on making a meal that tastes good instead of being "healthy". Believe it or not, but you're gonna benefit more from a vegetable medley that tastes fucking amazing, than you're gonna get from the same vegetables but raw and unseasoned. I'm not kidding, how much you enjoy your food has a real and measurable effect on how many nutrients of said meal you end up absorbing.

Another benefit of intuitive eating I've personally found is that I'm much more willing to try new things, especially new vegetables. Like, I'm seirous, just listening to your body and trusting yourself to know what you need, like how every single living being, including humans, have been surviving for literal millions of years, is actually really good for you. Cutting out entire food groups, because some """health official""" being paid billions of dollars to say that it's unhealthy and what you REALLY need is their company's product, is NOT good for you. At all.

[itgirl-111]

THE BEST MONEY AFFIRMATIONS (aka facts)

(this is gonna be the only money Affirmations you'll never need lol)

I am rich

I am financially stable

I'm secure in my financial state

Money is safe

Money is good

Money is here to stay

I'm a money magnet

I have the perfect money mindset

I have the perfect self concept on money

I love money and money loves me

Money is the easiest thing to make

I have multiple sources of income

I am wealthy

I genuinely believe I deserve a lot of money

I deserve a luxurious, comfort, fun filled, lifestyle

I am worthy and deserving of having lots of money because I exist

I get money everyday

I get paid to exist

I am worth every cent I get

I get money quickly and easily

People always have enough money to give me

People bend over backwards to make sure I'm getting paid enough

Nobody goes to sleep unless and untill they make sure I'm getting paid enough

Everyday I just make more and more money

Me and the people i love are rich af

My bank account never stops getting fatter

I am so rich i make Elon Musk look poor

I am so rich my hands are starting to smell like money

I wake up every day and go to sleep stress free knowing that I don't have to worry about money in my life

I am living wealthy and abundant life

I keep finding money everywhere

No matter where I go money always keeps chasing me like a lost puppy

If I were to count the amount of times I got a huge amount of money out of blue, I wouldn't be able to count it cuz it's too much

My fingers are starting to hurt because of the amount of times I counted my stacks and stacks worth of billions of cash ugh ����

I have so much money in my bank account that the value of pi π looks small

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 7 OUT OF 7 days I get money.

12 OUT OF 12 months I get money

there's not a single day that goes by without me getting money

Any amount of money i spend comes back to me tenfold

I walk into a shop knowing damn well I could buy the entire shop if I wanted to

I have so much money I can use it instead of a toilet paper (jk i don't do that)

I have so much money I can make origami out of it

I have so much money I'd buy the biggest companies and still remain rich as fuck like?

I am the definition of LOADED 💵

I am independent, successful, wealthy, rich, self sufficient, financially secure, debt free, stress free, yep I identify with those things.

My notifications are flooded with me receiving payments constantly

If anyone is a FATASS it is my wallet

Money is so desperate to stay in my life

Every where I go even to the damn toilet I still can never escape from lots of money😔

Money keeps flowing to me like a river

My bank account digits are the most groundbreaking, immense, tremendous, huge, back arching, toe curling, digits ever known to human kind😞

If i spent a whole day counting my stacks of cash, i wouldn't be able to cause that will take atleast a million years...oops...😳

Whether it's expected or unexpected, whether  I'm happy or sad, sleeping or awake, working or not, money comes to me all the time and In all the ways.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

One of America’s most corporate-crime-friendly bankruptcy judges forced to recuse himself

Today (Oct 16) I'm in Minneapolis, keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. Thursday (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Friday (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

"I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." The now-famous quip from Robert Reich cuts to the bone of corporate personhood. Corporations are people with speech rights. They are heat-shields that absorb liability on behalf of their owners and managers.

But the membrane separating corporations from people is selectively permeable. A corporation is separate from its owners, who are not liable for its deeds – but it can also be "closely held," and so inseparable from those owners that their religious beliefs can excuse their companies from obeying laws they don't like:

https://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2014/10/13/hobby-lobby-and-closely-held-corporations/

Corporations – not their owners – are liable for their misdeeds (that's the "limited liability" in "limited liablity corporation"). But owners of a murderous company can hold their victims' families hostage and secure bankruptcies for their companies that wipe out their owners' culpability – without any requirement for the owners to surrender their billions to the people they killed and maimed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Corporations are, in other words, a kind of Schroedinger's Cat for impunity: when it helps the ruling class, corporations are inseparable from their owners; when that would hinder the rich and powerful, corporations are wholly distinct entities. They exist in a state of convenient superposition that collapses only when a plutocrat opens the box and decides what is inside it. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Key to corporate impunity is the rigged bankruptcy system. "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," so every successful civilization has some system for discharging debt, or it risks collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/bankruptcy-protects-fake-people-brutalizes-real-ones/

When you or I declare bankruptcy, we have to give up virtually everything and endure years (or a lifetime) of punitive retaliation based on our stained credit records, and even then, our student debts continue to haunt us, as do lawless scumbag debt-collectors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

When a giant corporation declares bankruptcy, by contrast, it emerges shorn of its union pension obligations and liabilities owed to workers and customers it abused or killed, and continues merrily on its way, re-offending at will. Big companies have mastered the Texas Two-Step, whereby a company creates a subsidiary that inherits all its liabilities, but not its assets. The liability-burdened company is declared bankrupt, and the company's sins are shriven at the bang of a judge's gavel:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit

Three US judges oversee the majority of large corporate bankruptcies, and they are so reliable in their deference to this scheme that an entire industry of high-priced lawyers exists solely to game the system to ensure that their clients end up before one of these judges. When the Sacklers were seeking to abscond with their billions in opioid blood-money and stiff their victims' families, they set their sights on Judge Robert Drain in the Southern District of New York:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/23/a-bankrupt-process/#sacklers

To get in front of Drain, the Sacklers opened an office in White Plains, NY, then waited 192 days to file bankruptcy papers there (it takes six months to establish jurisdiction). Their papers including invisible metadata that identified the case as destined for Judge Drain's court, in a bid to trick the court's Case Management/Electronic Case Files system to assign the case to him.

The case was even pre-captioned "RDD" ("Robert D Drain"), to nudge clerks into getting their case into a friendly forum.

If the Sacklers hadn't opted for Judge Drain, they might have set their sights on the Houston courthouse presided over by Judge David Jones, the second of of the three most corporate-friendly large bankruptcy judges. Judge Jones is a Texas judge – as in "Texas Two-Step" – and he has a long history of allowing corporate murderers and thieves to escape with their fortunes intact and their victims penniless:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#shoppers-choice

But David Jones's reign of error is now in limbo. It turns out that he was secretly romantically involved with Elizabeth Freeman, a leading Texas corporate bankruptcy lawyer who argues Texas Two-Step cases in front of her boyfriend, Judge David Jones.

Judge Jones doesn't deny that he and Freeman are romantically involved, but said that he didn't think this fact warranted disclosure – let alone recusal – because they aren't married and "he didn't benefit economically from her legal work." He said that he'd only have to disclose if the two owned communal property, but the deed for their house lists them as co-owners:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24032507-general-warranty-deed

(Jones claims they don't live together – rather, he owns the house and pays the utility bills but lets Freeman live there.)

Even if they didn't own communal property, judges should not hear cases where one of the parties is represented by their long term romantic partner. I mean, that is a weird sentence to have to type, but I stand by it.

The case that led to the revelation and Jones's stepping away from his cases while the Fifth Circuit investigates is a ghastly – but typical – corporate murder trial. Corizon is a prison healthcare provider that killed prisoners with neglect, in the most cruel and awful ways imaginable. Their families sued, so Corizon budded off two new companies: YesCare got all the contracts and other assets, while Tehum Care Services got all the liabilities:

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/prominent-bankruptcy-judge-david-jones-033801325.html

Then, Tehum paid Freeman to tell her boyfriend, Judge Jones, to let it declare bankruptcy, leaving $173m for YesCare and allocating $37m for the victims suing Tehum. Corizon owes more than $1.2b, "including tens of millions of dollars in unpaid invoices and hundreds of malpractice suits filed by prisoners and their families who have alleged negligent care":

https://www.kccllc.net/tehum/document/2390086230522000000000041

Under the deal, if Corizon murdered your family member, you would get $5,000 in compensation. Corizon gets to continue operating, using that $173m to prolong its yearslong murder spree.

The revelation that Jones and Freeman are lovers has derailed this deal. Jones is under investigation and has recused himself from his cases. The US Trustee – who represents creditors in bankruptcy cases – has intervened to block the deal, calling Tehum "a barren estate, one that was stripped of all of its valuable assets as a result of the combination and divisional mergers that occurred prior to the bankruptcy filing."

This is the third high-profile sleazy corporate bankruptcy that had victory snatched from the jaws of defeat this year: there was Johnson and Johnson's attempt to escape from liability from tricking women into powder their vulvas with asbestos (no, really), the Sacklers' attempt to abscond with billions after kicking off the opioid epidemic that's killed 800,000+ Americans and counting, and now this one.

This one might be the most consequential, though – it has the potential to eliminate one third of the major crime-enabling bankruptcy judges serving today.

One down.

Two to go.

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/2023/10/16/texas-two-step/#david-jones

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[hortusmossii]

On Piracy

So. It's time to try and structure my thoughts about piracy, its morality and its role in media preservation. In a nutshell, the Path of the Hook is one I recommend you follow, for your own good and, most importantly, for the health of human spirit altogether. Here's a couple things to keep in mind and a few limits you need to ponder. This is how I think of it, you might disagree with me at some point, but it will nonetheless serve as a good starting point for reflection.

First of all, I think there are differences between pirating different kinds of media. Starting with audiovisual media: it is almost always morally correct to pirate it, and in many cases it is critically necessary for you to do so if you want it to survive. Nowadays (and I'm not saying nothing revolutionary here), most of the films and shows are released exclusively (or primarily) on streaming platforms, and never get to exist in a physical format. That implies that a) you do not own what you're paying for, you're renting it, and b) the company can easily erase any work from existence at any time. The latter alone is enough to justify piracy, because if they remove something and no one pirated it, that piece of media is lost. Forever. The decision to nuke media is one taken by the company, not by the creators, and this has resulted in artists having to pirate their own work to save it from oblivion. From this perspective, therefore, I would urge you to assume that any audiovisual work that you haven't stored offline in a physical device is sentenced to death. If enough people assume the same and act accordingly to prevent it, then archival redundancy might be strong enough and that piece of art might survive extinction. But we need to do our share in order for it to work, it is a collective endeavour.

Perhaps you are thinking, "but what about all the people that work to create a piece of media, aren't you stealing their wages?" Well, the workers involved in producing a show or a film usually get paid a fixed amount for their work, regardless of how much the final product makes. They might get to keep a fraction of the revenue in the form of residuals, but between Hollywood's "creative accounting" and the impact of streaming on residual payments, many times they don't get to cash in anything, so I'd say the works' preservation highly outweights these hypotetical revenue losses.

"And what about the company who holds the rights, aren't you stealing their property?" Yes, I am. But a multi-million dollar company is not a human being. We shouldn't see them as subjects deserving of moral consideration. They are ungodly amalgamations of power and greed that are actively destroying society and the planet. Their losses don't harm anyone but those who profit off workers' precariousness, and I don't think we should consider those people as valid participants in society. Therefore, if I somehow harm Michael Mouse by downloading The Owl House, then so be it!

At the beginning I said that audiovisual media is almost always morally correct. That almost takes care of individual productions or small teams working to create their art. In this case, revenues are much more directly linked to actual people's wages and livelyhood. Here, putting "media preservation" over fairly compensating creators' time and effort is not something we should do, in my opinion. Piracy is a tool to be used against the capital, not against the workers. So, if your favorite artists sells cool videos, buy them whenever you can afford it, go watch indie film screenings, support small artistitic creation, because it is the only way art and culture can keep existing away from the claws of capitalism. However, if you are supporting artists via a subscription service and you are not getting the actual file of what you're paying for... I would still suggest finding a way to download it after you've paid for it. Remeber, anything that isn't stored on multiple places, will eventually disappear.

Moving away from films and shows, let's consider books. There is a critical difference between them and digital media, because books are still mainly a physical thing. Of course, e-books are more prevalent than ever, but they usually have a paper counterpart. And if they don't, you can easily create one. You can print a book, you cannot print an episode of Supernatural. And although adecquately backed up digital files are more resilient than a single physical copy of a book, they rely on our current digital infrastructure to survive. In two hundred years, when the Internet and computers are but distant memories, books will keep existing, if we manage to keep them away from the fire. With books, piracy is not the only tool for preservation.

This is why pirating books is mainly an economic issue, one that should follow the considerations I have outlined for digital media. Is the book from a giant publishing house or a millionaire writer who won't even notice it if you download their book? Pirate away! Are you interested in downloading an academic text behind a pay-wall? PLEASE, DO IT, SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING IS A SCAM THAT STEALS FROM BOTH THE AUTHORS AND THE READERS, PIRATE ALL YOUR PAPERS EVEN IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO PAY THEM. Is the book published by a small author to whom every sale matters? Maybe don't pirate it. Maybe buy the book when you can afford it, because again, supporting small creators is the only way to keep culture alive, to keep it bound to the people, to make artists, and therefore art, able to exist.

Lastly, an issue about which I don't have a clear answer. What if I cannot afford to buy a book or a film? Am I supposed to miss out on all the amazing independent art out there? Well, I think in these cases we should try other options first. Libraries are an amazing invention that offers a critically important service to society, and they need to be used in order to keep existing. So ask for it on your local library! You can also borrow it from a friend, or pool resources with a couple of friends and buy a copy together! Ideally, all culture should be free and available to everyone, but I think that shouldn't involve stealing other people's work (again, I'm talking about people, companies are not people). In practice, this would mean abolishing capitalism and the concept of money, but that's another story for another day...

Thanks for reading! What's your take on all this?? I would love to hear it!!

[jmdbjk]

Not the usual ...

Hate'll paralyze your mind Gotta see the other side It costs you nothing to be kind Not so different you and I Looking for love in a different light Until we find that equal sign ~~ j-hope

I am not sure how to start or if I can even touch on everything that's going on in my mind and what follows will probably be disjointed, messy and all over the place.

When the concept of "fandom implosion" was set in front of me, I was skeptical (my middle name), "no, that most likely won't happen."

Me: "Army are pretty cohesive, we are mostly smart, critical thinking humans who can spot the bullshit a mile away and we are resilient enough to carry on."

Remarks such as: "you don't need to announce your departure from the fandom, just go!" accompanied by "the fandom needs a cleansing" and "slough off the ones who are not here to support BTS" and each time, we move on believing we are stronger, better and will persevere.

Yet, every week that goes by since that concept entered my BTS mind, it seems that there is something else that furthers the process of this *now obvious* fandom implosion that is occurring before our eyes.

This stuff going on today in Korea, the wreaths in front of the Hybe building, the trucks, the relentless negativity supposedly FROM K-ARMY is downright disappointing and disheartening. They said for I-Army to let them handle it.

But this is not it y'all.

You have played right into MHJ's hands in sowing negativity in the general public and korean news media. Most concerning to me now: my trust in K-Army has faltered. I know K-Army is not a monolith, just as no faction of the fandom holds more weight than any other, but damn, these people have the attention of their general news media and now they have to deal with the consequences.

Hybe put out a statement about the status of legal proceedings and the statement included an apology to Army. THEY APOLOGIZED TO US, THE FANDOM!

But obviously, that wasn't enough.

I am Army and know all the details of what has happened and is happening and I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE LOGIC OF RELENTLESSLY BEATING UP HYBE, I am confused as to what's happening. What makes anyone think the general public and news media will dive deep enough to understand all the details and nuances?????

Can this also be the work of the organized, paid antis? Yes, it could, but some of my trusted K-Army accounts on X are also supporting this mess. WHAT THE FUCK ARE Y'ALL THINKING???

Maybe I'm too American to understand the logic behind what's happening over there. Or maybe its just my nature to always think beyond the action happening to what the aftermath might look like.

But tell me, exactly WHO and exactly WHAT company are we to have faith in for BTS if not Hybe and BigHit? Tell me who? Just cut the group loose and then what? Let them get eaten alive by the media, the general public, every other fandom and hater? Force them to focus on rebuilding their own careers? Force them to have to rebuild another company? How does that support them? How does that protect them? Do you think another company will instantly materialize to pick up the pieces? If you do, you are truly living on another planet.

They should be focusing on their art, not on any of this.

It is usually easy for me to reassure myself that "this is only happening on X/social media," and mostly removed from the real world. But not this time.

The most heartbreaking thing about it all is NONE OF THE MEMBERS can refute, debunk, rebut or speak on this on their own behalf. They are being raked over and over again and there is nothing they can do except carry on. RM doing his best at promoting. Jimin and Jungkook just serving their country the best they can. Jin coming back not into loving arms of his fandom but the ashes of what we once were. Yoongi... my god... I can imagine the cyphers pouring out of him this very second... but he must be silent now.

I am here to support BTS, all seven members. As soon as Namjoon's single was available again on the BTS store website, I bought it. I will buy the song on Apple Music and Amazon. I plan to march over to Target on the day of the album's release to buy it. I can't wait for shipping, I must have it immediately. I have done this with every member's release.

I want to wake up and this be a bad dream. I am certain all the members do too.

My apologies for this very negative post but damn, I had to get it out of my head. Individually, we each have a limit. I am going to recharge my BTS batteries so I can fight another day in what's left of this crazy fandom.

No truer words spoken: Being a fan of BTS, being ARMY, is not for the faint of heart.

[chalkrevelations]

if you don't want to talk about this further, just ignore this of course, but have you seen pond's fucking instagram post about build? (without saying his name of course) i know automatic translations can be wonky, but overall, he is making it all about himself and his feelings, STILL "both sides" the whole thing, and throws in a "watch the new ep of our show" (you know... the one they took away from build) at the end. the audacity that man has is just beyond comprehension. i truly hope karma will do its thing and ruin the company and that man's life.

Hi, Anon. I. Hm.

I went back and forth a couple of times on whether I actually did want to respond to this. I have a lot of feelings and opinions about Pond and about BOC under his direction that I’ve rarely spoken about so publicly (although I have some suspicions, for Reasons, that some things I’ve said in semi-private spaces have been spread further than those spaces). I'm very aware that I'm at a cultural and linguistic disadvantage when I try to evaluate anything about Pond or BOC and that I'm therefore working with limited information. But I don’t think it’s a big secret I’m not a fan of Pond’s. From what I’ve seen, I think his behavior has been deeply problematic and unethical, and not just in relationship to Build’s situation - although the way he’s tried to portray himself as peacemaker during this whole debacle with Poi has certainly only exacerbated my negative impression. The best I can give him is that maybe he’s unaware of his own unctuous self-centeredness? So, while it would be gross and skeevy that he would 1) make something as serious as this all about himself and his own feelings, and 2) use it as a mercenary chance to flog his latest BOC property despite the fact that property no longer has anything to do with Build, I wouldn't be surprised by it.

Personally, I'm sorry that I gave him and his company the benefit of the doubt for as long as I did. Like many other people, I bought into the “big happy family” fan service for a while, before eventually accepting that it was just as much fan service as any branded pair, so, mea culpa on that front, right? But I think too many people didn’t and haven’t realized or accepted that, and that Build in particular has paid an out-sized price for it - including when people have put the blame on him for the cracks in the facade, especially in misplaced anger and outrage over the “leaked” DMs that threatened the happy found-family narrative BOC was selling and that fans want(ed) to believe.

I think Pond and BOC have been very good at manipulating fan sentiment into believing their self-imposed Hero Edit and self-promotion as industry disrupter, despite evidence to the contrary that goes back as far as the filming of KPTS, when Poi and Yok got away with sexually and otherwise harassing multiple cast members, including a teenaged Barcode. It extends through leveraging Barcode’s and other cast members' emotional response to Jeff’s departure to provide a show for a live concert audience, and forward to a reality show in which a bunch of young wannabe actors were pressured into exposing their worst moments, on television, for prurient viewer interest. Setting up Apo, of all people, to hawk skin lightener was a terrible thing to do and makes everyone involved a worse human being.

So, no, I wouldn't find this latest skeevy behavior surprising. I don’t know what Build’s hopes and plans are, as far as regaining a domestic career, and he's always seemed, publicly at least, to be far more forgiving of Pond than I would be in his position. I don't know if that's personal, cultural, or professionally rooted. But I personally hope Build has enough resources to allow him to avoid getting involved with Pond again, given the way Pond and BOC have treated him – from folding to a ginned-up harassment campaign so that Build was kept out of the public eye precisely when VP was airing/trending (funny, that), through leaving him to twist in the wind from the time of Poi’s first salvo of plagiarism accusations - which BOC apparently couldn’t be bothered to respond to, even though it was one of their properties at issue - to Pond standing around for a year and a half with his hands in the air like a bystander while Nong Poi publicly curbstomped someone who Pond claimed was a friend and part of his work "family," before sad-facing for the press about how hurtful it was that Build decided to leave the “family” that had publicly damnatio memoriae’d him.

Anyway, that's really more time and emotional spoons than I want to spend on Pond or his company - tbqh, they're one reason I'm semi-hiatusing at this point - so I'm likely done talking about them after this. But as usual, once I start, I talk forever, so here this is.

[mysticdreamcafe]

The blame game and (not limited too...)Veganism.

Wonder how long before this is taken down by force...

I'm not for or against anyone's dietary choices. I am against playing the blame game to further agendas. Yes, it may not be politically correct but I think everyone has a right to make their own choices without being guilted because they only eat veg or meat or both.

You can't believe everything in documentaries or books or online chats. Hell, even research is biased depending on how it is done, who financed it, what information is released, and who reviews it.

I don't believe there is a perfect way to eat or live for everyone. We are all different due to upbringing, culture, peer pressure, false and true information being mixed, propaganda, money, etc.

But, I've noticed a couple things on my home page feed that pique my intellectual interest and moral code...

I follow vegan-girl-69 and she re-blogs things that I understand are close to her. She's free to have this way of thinking and lifestyle, but why not simply educate people vs guilting them into the same mind frame?

What are the carbon emissions caused by the production of a purely plant based diet vs one with animal proteins?

Can you get ALL the vitamins and minerals in eating only plants that the human body requires to be healthy and function properly? Do you need supplements to offset the imbalance?

Why do many people who advocate plant only diets eat things with meat shapes and textures or non-dairy cheeses? Don't these go against vegan principles?

How has increased agricultural farming affected the water system and soil quality?

Is it healthier? Are vegans sick less? Why are there over-weight unhealthy vegans?

What are the statics, peer reviewed and studies not paid for by people or companies with agendas, showing that plant based only diets improve the health of humans and the planet we live on?

Where do GMO products, chemically laden products, overly processed products come into all this? Accepted as the standard vegan practice? If not then why are the previously mentioned molded, chemically treated, dyed items in such high demand?

Is there a 'clean vegan' like with Keto diets? How does it work?

Does the evolution of humans show we were healthier with a plant only diet?

This next bit will probably finish off this post and get it trashed, as if the topic and first 2 questions haven't had people reporting it already, but here I go...

Diet is like sexuality, politics, religion, etc. It's personal. We tried to guilt people with alternative life choices to conform to the norm for centuries as humans and look how that turned out. Like it. Don't like it. It shouldn't matter and they shouldn't be guilted or blamed for having a different outlook or lifestyle.

[moonlitscales]

Do you have any Oc’s?

OMGOMGOMG!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

I'll start this w/ I have a blog just for my OCs/art!!! (I promise I'm not self promoting 💀)

Okay this will now be a mini rant on my OCs bc I've been WAAAITING to answer this!!!!1!!1!1!!!! (tweaking while writing this)

My current biggest OCs with a story are Sia, Nova, Diana, and Annie. Their story centers around a cult (motivation currently unknown), that is following Sia and Nova every town they move. Nova is Sia's older sister and raised her from a baby when Nova was only around 7-8 years old. The sister move towns almost every year, yet Diana appears in almost every one.

Diana is Sia's closest friend and secret stalker. Annie doesn't come up much, but has a history with Nova that isn't the best. Sia is unaware but suspicious of the cult, Nova does her best to stay as far away from any signs of it, and Diana and Annie and members said cult.

These are all their designs and a few things about them!!!

Sia Kitlen:

-She is a Siamese cat (surprise) with a liking more towards the scene style and listens to music a lot. She's pretty sociable and loves making friends even if she wont see them for long. She is a demigirl (she/they) and a Omnisexual with a preference for women.

I have a whole post just for her!!

Tid-bits about her I was asked!

Nova Kitlen:

-A black cat and Sias older sister with a TOUGH backstory. She's cold and barely talks to anyone besides her sister. She strives to be a fashion designed since it was what her papa wanted to be before he passed. She is aroace, but has had a romantic history. (not too open to relationships now though) She's almost missing her ring finger on her left hand and has the sigil of the cult branded on her back bc why not 😋

Diana:

-A soft/cutecore bunny who seems to follow the sisters at every town they move to; whether she shows herself or not. She's more soft spoken and gentle with a passion for photography, but is actually a HEAVY stalker and border line yandere. She's apart of the cult (I just don't have a name for them yet 💀) and her purpose is to follow Nova and give updates but really only pays attention to Sia. She's a raging lesbian btw, she thinks everyone's super icky but especially men

Annie:

(okay so I don't actually have a full working design for her yet but shes going be a "scary" or tough dog breed like a pitbull I just need to finish designing it bc she was originally 'human' 💀)

-Annie is a mechanic/inventor who works in her mothers/family business: "Annie and Bells" (her mother). Her family comes first, which was unfortunate when she fell for Nova only to have her pushed away because of the cult. She was originally supposed to only get close to her to get her back into the cults hands but fell for her instead. She a bisexual who really REALLY misses her ex.

Also if you've gotten down to this part that means you've paid enough attention to care and you deserve to know: Sia and Annie were old Welcome home Ocs 😓 I eventually separated them from it, but deAR GOD do I have a scary amount of art shipping Sia and a Wally AU T-T (also here's the cult sigil or something)

(spider :3)

But yeah! Those are my current biggest and most important ocs!!! I do have a few others but those are the ones I'm currently hyperfixating on :333

Here's a few extra just because and i'm bored

Clara is an old Hazbin hotel oc overlord own owns a makeup company and shipped with Velvette bc why not

Kai is literally just a chill beach girl. Made her from an OC challenge w/ my bestie lol

[hyenahunt]

Obbligato: The Devotion to Tatsumi Kazehaya - 13

Writer: Akira

Season: Spring, three years ago

Characters: Kaname, Tatsumi, Jun

Proofreading: Remi + 310mc (JP) & honeyspades (ENG)

Translation: Peace & hyenahunt

Tatsumi: The root of all misfortune lies in inequality and injustice. They are the root of all unhappiness. That is why they must be corrected.

[Read on my blog for the best viewing experience with Oi~ssu ♪]

Kaname: ... I feel the same as Sazanami. If the fame and shine doesn't belong to my own name, then there's no point to it.

But... Still, it seems as if "Tatsumi Kazehaya" is doing well for itself.

Maybe I should learn from it. Throw away this pride of mine and ensure success through that.

All so I can become the sparkling idol I've always dreamed of being.

Tatsumi: Haha. If you so wish, then we are able to help you in a number of ways. We offer idol practices, studies, and can even help you find work — all free of charge.

In fact, I pay everyone who comes to one of my gatherings an equal part of my own wages.

Kaname: What do you mean...?

Tatsumi: You see, I have no interest in money. All of the money that "Tatsumi Kazehaya" accumulates is thus given out in equal shares to those gathered here.

No matter how much you've done, or what you've helped with, you're given the same amount of pay as the person next to you.

Hence, I've asked them to help me with the work I've received as much as possible.

Kaname: Are you for real? You're the one paying them?

It isn't the other way around? They're only managing to catch rays of the limelight because of you, aren't they? And yet... you're paying them?

Tatsumi: That's right. I likened it to a company, didn't I? Anyone who becomes a part of "Tatsumi Kazehaya" is offered the same regular pay as everyone else within it.

It's only natural to reward those who work a reasonable sum, isn't it? I would never ask someone to do my work for free.

Such a thing would be against our doctrine— nay, against human decency itself.

Jun: Ohhh, I get it now... I see just why these guys don't care for working on their own and are perfectly content just being "Tatsumi Kazehaya's assistants.”

They can just kick back and let their earnings pour in that way. Why wouldn't they? The cash they earn through this kinda fixed income is definitely gonna be way more than whatever an idol with no accomplishments could get through independent work.

And on top of that, Kazehaya-senpai's so brilliant at what he does that his work's a huge success every single time. Thanks to that, these guys get the chance to shine while avoiding any risk of failure or injury, or of being thought of as useless.

Sure is a dream job — one fit for morons.

Kaname: And on top of that, if I'm understanding correctly, you pay those a fair wage even if they haven't worked at all?

Tatsumi: I do. We don't discriminate here, you see. All are equal.

Jun: Mmm, well, I’m not that educated so I might be wrong, but this whole arrangement'spretty much that thing, isn't it? Starts with a c and ends with ism....

Our country's a capitalist nation, so y'know, the opposite of that —

Tatsumi: There's truly no need to go that far. I only wish to treat everyone as equally and fairly as possible.

Such a world would be ideal, wouldn't you agree? I want to make it a reality.

Tatsumi: Everyone is treated equally, given the same opportunities, and is paid fairly for their work. That way, everyone is able to live a happy, fulfilling life.

The root of all misfortune lies in inequality and injustice. They are the root of all unhappiness.

That is why they must be corrected.

There is a distinct disparity between the Special and Non-Special Students here at Reimei Academy. I'm doing what I can to close it.

It doesn't matter who you are, what you are, or even where you came from: you will be treated equally. Everyone will carry the same weight, walk the same amount of steps, and reach the same destination.

Everyone finishes at the same time. Everyone will be granted the same first place result, fairly and ideally.

And that is how we'll stop needless fighting over who's won and lost, we'll cease begrudging others for what they have, and we'll share the same happiness with one another.

That is the ideal world I dream of.

To bring it even slightly closer to reality, I'm doing what I can— though at the moment, this small sphere is all I'm able to influence in such a way.

Tatsumi: One day, I will take all those who inhabit Reimei Academy, the teachers and Special Students alike, as well as those in the idol industry, in this country, in this world...

And change their ways so we may live in such an Eden.

No, it's more than that. That is my mission in life as the Voice of God, as someone born within a family who teaches His words.

I truly believe that, and so I will live by that faith.

Tatsumi: May all of God's creations be blessed. Amen.

[ ☆ ]

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← prev ✦ all ✦ next →

[jonathan-samuel-smith]

BoSS Dami is like the same character but rather than serious and grumpy they play up his arrogance into him being boastful and cocky and I love it. He's having so much fun in the film, he loves fighting. He's bloodthirsty in a way that makes the audience happy for him which is pretty funny. I love the way they animate his facial expressions it's so good, and I love his voice. It's a little bit serious and broody while still being arrogant and youthful it's great. Jon sounds a little too old to be ten but I like his voice other than that. I love how Jon thinks he's cool and how quickly they bond despite clashing early on. And they're so cute. So. Cute.

The colorism thing is a big problem and it's par the course for Damian, when given the full range of color options for a character of his heritage they will always choose the lightest unless they're actively fighting their subconscious racism and colorism.

I went off on a rant on DC colorists colorism under the cut this post really got away from me, but READ THIS IF YOU DRAW DAMIAN!!↓

I get that you draw what you see and if you see a lot of white and lightskinned people you end up getting good at only drawing white people, and light skin has been purposely highlighted in visual media for centuries in this country, but USE GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH GOD DAMNIT, FOLLOW POC ON SOCIAL MEDIA, HIRE POC. Go out of your damn way to learn this shit. If you can't do it good now, learn!

I went through this with homestuck, all the human characters have #00000 skin so you're free to have whatever race headcanons you want of them, but that's not actually representation. I was influenced by this style because coloring skin is hard so I just shaded it with my pencil and left it uncolored but then I realized by refusing to color the melanin in someone's skin, that's colorism. Fuck that. So I decided to learn, and mess up a lot of otherwise pretty works, because it would be worth it in the end. I'm still learning but I've learned so much already.

For example a lot of colorist societies draw pale skin far too desaturated. If you compare actual skin to the skin in anime, nearly all Asians that aren't photoshopped or wearing make up/bleaching look so much darker. Bleached paper being what we draw on and light skin being the presumed default in our culture has made white people (and others) way too comfortable doing the bare minimum in coloring skin. You don't still use the yellow crayon for blonde hair so why do you still use the very light peach/tan as the default skin tone? You're not even coloring light skin right let alone approaching properly drawing dark skin right.

I'm so fucking tired of every company doing this when I learned how to do better in middle school. Get out of your fucking comfort zone and draw diversely, or you're a coward and you're not doing anything to combat your culturally inherited racism.

Most DC artists are good at drawing 1 or 2 skin tones, maybe 3. There are so many more undertones and shades than that. I'm not counting rainbow colors. If you want Damian to be paler than his mother to reflect his mixed heritage that's totally fine! But it should be darker than Bruce's and Jon's. I've compared them and paid attention to the shadows being cast and he's really not darker than Jon and only rarely darker than Bruce because they drew Bruce especially pale.

I want you to understand that removing melanin from a character is erasure of their identity and actively harmful. There's a broad range of skin tones that the son of Talia and Bruce might have but choosing the lightest possible option is favoring white skin over dark skin, not realism. Just because you've seen more light skinned mixed kids doesn't mean there aren't darker skinned ones. The light skinned ones get more attention on social media and commercially because of social bias + algorithms + intentional racism. Most people who are colorist think that they're not racist because they're representing nonwhite people not bothering to notice that the people they represent have the most european features and light skin in their group. Yes those people are oppressed too but you're not fixing anything by only showing racially ambiguous people.

Mariner on star trek is a relevant example from animation. Both her parents have dark skin but she has much lighter skin because she's a main character. Stop it. Stop it. Don't think just because you see something highlighted a lot that it's the most common thing that's so dumb. How many mixed people do you think you see that you assume aren't mixed? There's confirmation bias at play.

I just wish I could beam this message into everyone's thick fucking skulls. Dark skin is beautiful. My number one coloring tip for any artist is this: don't be afraid to go too dark. You'll ruin the contrast and legibility and dynamic if you keep everything light and mid tones.

If you go too dark, you can filter it later.

I hate the argument "there are plenty of mixed people who dadadadada" stop. there are such a variety of people in numbers you literally cannot fathom with your human brain. You cannot picture all of the people that look exactly like whatever it is you're saying is more uncommon. Race is made the fuck up but its impact and cultural significance is real as hell. Genetics are so fucking diverse. I know a biologically related pair of siblings, one super tall dark skinned black dude and one super short freckled white girl, they have the same parents you cannot tell that they are related if you're thinking that mixed race children are like taking the skin tones and mixing them like paint.

Colorism is physically dangerous. People will assume that a mixed race child is being kidnapped by their parent because they so look different to them.

Damian could look the spitting image of Talia, I can tell you that with 100% certainty. He also could look the spitting image of Bruce, or Thomas Wayne, or Martha, or Ra's. All we know is that he's Arab, Chinese and white, he has black hair and green eyes, and he's short and good looking. Taking that and making the most european looking version of that guy as possible is fucking racist. I'm so serious.

If you want to do your part to combat racism and make a society where everyone can get attention and be seen as beautiful regardless of skin tone, then draw Damian with dark skin.

If you don't want to do that.... I don't understand you. Learn empathy, it will be useful to you.

[hillbillyoracle]

The Algorithm is AI Art

Last year, I used DALL-E to create a series of images for a digital tarot card deck I was making for my personal use. When I shared some of those images here on my blog, I got a massive amount of push back and even threats in my inbox. I'm still putting my thoughts together on that experience but it did make me realize that most people don't seem to realize they're supporting the AI art they hate so much - to the tune of millions and even billions of dollars per year depending on the platform - almost everyday through the algorithms they use.

So if you genuinely hate AI art, I'm here to tell you that you've got to do what you can to get rid of and not use the algorithms in your life. That kind of support is more materially complicit with AI's intrusion on art than someone making a few images for themself ever could be.

Yes It's Possible

For many platforms, especially when they're accessed on desktop, it is possible to greatly reduce your contact with the algorithm. I use browser extensions to cut out the AI curated feeds on YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit. I mostly use Instagram on desktop to answer messages.

I generally do not use Instagram, Facebook, and other apps that do not allow users to control their feed on mobile. I know Instagram is mobile only - when I use it on mobile, I download it, upload what I want, then delete the app again.

I am considering cutting these out entirely again once this phase of my experiment for a zine I'm writing is over because honestly, they're not worth it, but that's a different post...

I also really recommend either making a separate email account or getting ruthlessly organized in your current one, so that you can sign up for artist's newsletters and other forms of human centered curation. RSS readers like Feedly can also be a good alternative.

The point here isn't perfection - the point is doing what you can. Not because it will change companies - but because it's better for you and the artists you care about.

Why?

Algorithms in these spaces determine who's work gets shown and more importantly - who gets paid enough to continue making their art.

AI has consistently been shown to reproduce and even exaggerate biases already present in society. This video by Ann Reardon of How to Cook That talks about YouTube's lack of transparency about the potential for a sexist bias in YouTube's algorithm and shows that in the top views at least, there's a clear slant toward male creators. The only woman in the top 10 does not show her face in her videos - unlike most of the men in the top 10. This discrepancy is even larger the further down the list you go.

Who gets shown is who gets paid enough to keep making their content/art. Less pay means people can afford to put out less content/art and can't scale - meaning less diversity in content/art.

What art gets shown influences what inspires new art and content to be made. You are seeing art directly shaped by AI everyday - and more than that - by continuing to click on what it serves up to you, you support it.

This AI influence on real world art has become so normalized that people consider it as natural a force of nature as wind. It's not. This was designed - and it can be redesigned.

I want to be careful not to overstate the influence of a click either - your clicking on something you choose is not a form of activism. Your clicks cannot retrain the algorithm at scale. A lot of people have the misconception that you can train "your" algorithm but what the algorithm on your feeds is doing is actually comparing your clicks to it's database of similar user profiles and their behaviors to decide what to suggest to you. Your clicks don't retrain the AI as a whole, they just match you with a different user type.

The real reason I think those concerned about AI in art need to find ways to take control of their feeds is because it ensures you're able to support a diverse array of creators through your views and it ensures that what you're taking your inspiration from isn't what the AI decides is worthy of attention.

I realize there are those who are reading this who either might not have been old enough to remember or even weren't born when YouTube basically took your Subscriptions off the front page. It used to be they would pop up at the top of the front page. Then it got knocked down on the front page. When it got shoved into it's own sidebar link and then that link progressively minimized through redesigns - there was actually an outcry about it.

People warned that this would lead to a watering down effect, where smaller channels didn't get the chance to grow like already established ones would. Creators of marginalized identities saw their views drop dramatically. Similar things happened when Facebook and Instagram fully took away a user's ability to have a chronological feed (this was possible in the early days). I know of more than a few creators who fully had to step away from their work because of the change over. I miss their art.

And then the outcry petered out. The companies didn't lose users over it so nothing changed. Eventually people got used to it and the protests went away. These companies now know they're "too big to fail" and can ignore user outcry until people acclimate the new normal that serves them. This normal serves them because it does actually increase engagement and keeps you on the platform for longer - which means less time spent on your own creative activities, yet another way they impact what art gets made.

TL;DR: if you hate AI's impact on artists and their employment opportunities, take control of your feeds. Make your own. Choose what you click. Take back your time and make more art.

[ominous-faechild]

✦ OC Questionnaire Tag ✦

Following open tags from @yourpenpaldee (post), @honeybewrites (post), and @pixies-love-envy (post)!

I liked a lot of your guys' questions and really wanted to try them out! Hopefully that's okay, I'm really new to this kind of stuff so please be patient with me if I do any of this wrong! 😅😊

Characters from Sun and Shadow: Crow, Freya, and Daleira.

Crow (the detective's progeny)

Would you do something illegal if you were getting paid a large sum of money? (You can choose the illegal thing) I mean, aren't I already being paid to do illegal things for lots of money? Breaking and entering, very consensual information-gathering, theft of evidence, falsification of identity, planting of evidence when and where necessary... wait, who's asking again? Change of answer: I would never. 😘

What is your favorite non-human creature in the world and why? (Gods count) That's easy! My familiar, Aria! I don't care if she's connected to me, she's not human--and don't you dare make a joke about me not being human either! I am cursed, not something else! And why do I love her? I mean--is she my favorite non-human creature? Well... there's a lot of reasons. For one, she's my familiar. Like, she chose me. Even if she's a crow, too, because she's taken on a bit of my curse... I mean, that's my fault isn't it? Ha... no, I think she's fine. She's still able to sing, and that seems to be enough for her. I guess I like that about her, too. Eh, this is all too gushy. Next question!

If you were forced to kill one person you have met, who would it be? (Not yourself) *looks at the people they've gotten thrown into prison* Yeeeeaaaaah, there's a lot of options there. You really want me to pick one? Look, I already only spared them because it was against the law and my father would've been upset about it. If I'm going to go against their wishes... I'm going to pick a lot more than just one. 😉

Frey (ex-fisherwoman and heiress to the Ula company)

Are you spiritual at all? Are you not? There's so much magic in the air that most people are fae-touched one way or another, and you'd never know if you're speaking to a spirit in disguise or an avatar of the gods. Plus, my dad is an avatar--so it's kinda hard to not worship the gods or whatever other spirits out there that demand your respect. I mean, you want to get on their bad side? *scoff* Good luck with that.

Do you want children? If so how many? Uh, I've never thought about that before actually. Probably not? Maybe? I don't know, honestly. Maybe eventually? *sigh* Give me some years and maybe someone I could actually see myself settling down with and we'll see.

What’s your favorite memory? Oh... this is probably kind of depressing, heh... but it would probably be the day my dad came back from his year-long trip around the world. It'd been storming horribly, he was supposed to be in the area, and I was ten so I thought that him not responding to his transceiver had to mean something happened to him! Turns out, he'd come back early and wanted to surprise me with some gravlax he bought from a specialty place in town. He apologized when he saw how terrified I was, ha, and we spent the night together playing stupid board games. Oh, and he taught me how to make skink! ... I miss him. Dammit...

Daleira (magitech inventor and faerie)

What does your rest day look like? Ha! What rest day? Okay, okay--I actually do rest, but just maybe not in the way you usually would. I enjoy working with all these little magical devices, tinkering with them, figuring out how they work and how we can recreate them... wait, what was I saying? OH RIGHT! So my "rest days" usually just have me working in my workshop with Faer if he's there, haha. That, or maybe taking a stroll around the city! (*mischievous smile*) Anyone who thinks they're going to mess with a lone, helpless girl... well, that's their mistake.

What would be your last meal? I mean, technically--okay, no, sorry, this is supposed to be a game where I take everything literally. No ifs, ands, or buts. Alright. In the situation where I had to choose a last meal... what would I choose? Oooo, I know! I'd love a feast with as much sweets as possible! 🥰 What? Can't a girl love sweets?

If you were a hybrid, what would you want to be morphed with? Ho-kayyy, so! Ignoring technicalities and all of that stuff again. We're going to assume here that I can't choose anything that I already use and that I can't switch my appearance anymore after? Alright. So... I think I would probably pick some kind of bird? 😅 Ha... it's kind-of nerve-wracking to think I'd never be able to shapeshift again, but I like birds! Their wings, and they're pretty, and... yeah, it would be nice to fly.

Your questions!

If you could commit any crime for free and completely get away with it, which crime would you commit? (Saying "I would never commit a crime!!!" is a goody-two-shoes acceptable answer)

What would be your dream ending? Like, if everything in your life went exactly how you wanted, how would it turn out?

What is your greatest fear? And, if you were asked your greatest fear by a creature you thought might use it against you, what would you tell it?

Tagging (with no pressure): @darkandstormydolls @fantasy-things-and-such @yourpenpaldee @themboty and whoever else wants to join!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Brinkwhump Linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

Once again, I find myself arriving at the weekend with a giant backlog of links, triggering a linkump, the 15th such dumpage, a variety-pack of miscellany for your weekend. Here's the previous editions:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Let's start with the latest incredible news from KPMG, the accounting and auditing giant that is relied upon as a source of ground truth for a truly terrifying share of the world's economy. KPMG has a well-deserved reputation for incompetence and corruption. They first came on my radar in 2001 when they sent a legal threat to a blogger for linking to their website without permission:

https://memex.craphound.com/2001/12/05/reason-4332442-not-to-ask/

The actual link was to KPMG's corporate anthem, which remains, to this day, a banger:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040428063826/http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/uknewsita/http://anthems.zdnet.co.uk/anthems/kpmg.mp3

Don't miss the DJ remixes (and the Nokia ringtone!) that the internet thoughtfully provided when KPMG decided that it didn't want the world to know about "Our Vision of Global Strategy":

https://web.archive.org/web/20011128153057/http://corporateanthems.raettig.org/

Now all this is objectively very funny, a relic of the old, good internet from one of its moments of glory, but KPMG? They were already enshittifying, even in 2001, and the enshittification only intensified thereafter. Nearly every accounting scandal of the past quarter-century has KPMG in it somewhere, from con-artists selling exhausted oil fields to rubes:

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/03/miller-energy-kpmg-auditors-oil-fraud/

To killer nursing homes that hire KPMG to audit its books – and to advise it on how to defeat safety audits and murder your grandma:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

They're the architects of Microsoft's tax-evasion plot:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

And they were behind Canada's dysfunctional covid contact-tracing app, which never worked, but generated tens of millions in billings to the government of Canada, who used KPMG to hire programmers at $1,500/day, plus KPMG's 30% commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

KPMG's most bizarre scandal is literally stranger than fiction. The company bribed SEC personnel help its own accountants cheat on ethics exams. The corrupt officials were then given high-paid jobs at KPMG:

https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-professional/article/sec-probe-finds-kpmg-auditors-cheating-on-training-exams-061819

I mean it when I say this is stranger than fiction. I included it as a plot-point in my new finance crime novel The Bezzle (now a national bestseller!), and multiple readers have written to me since the book came out a couple weeks ago to say that they thought I was straining their credulity by making up such an outrageous scandal:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

But all of that is just scene-setting (and a gratuitous plug for my book) for the latest KPMG scandal, which is, possibly, the most KPMG scandal of all KPMG scandals. The Australian government hired KPMG to audit Paladin, a security contractor that oversees the asylum seekers the country locks up on one of its island gulags (yes, gulags, plural).

Ever since, Paladin has been the subject of a string of ghastly human rights scandals – the worst stuff imaginable, rape and torture and murder of adults and children. Paladin made AU423 million on this contract.

And here's the scandal: KPMG audited the wrong company. The Paladin that the Australia government paid KPMG to audit was based in Singapore. The Paladin that KPMG audited was a totally different company, based in Papua New Guinea, who already had a commercial relationship with KPMG. It was this colossal fuckup that led to the manifestly unfit Singaporean company getting nearly half a billion dollars in public funds:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/24/incredible-failure-kpmg-rejects-claims-it-assessed-the-wrong-company-before-423m-payment-to-paladin

KPMG denies this. KPMG denies everything, always. Like, they denied creating "power maps" of decision-makers in the Australian government to target with influence campaigns in order to win contracts like this one. Who knows, maybe, this one time, they're telling the truth? After all, the company whose employees gather to sing lyrics like these can't be all bad, right?

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

https://everything2.com/title/KPMG+corporate+anthem

You may find it strange that I'm still carrying around the factoid that KPMG once threatened to crush a blogger for linking to its terrible corporate anthem, but that's just my "Memex Method," which helps me keep track of literally everything that seemed important to me through most of my adult life:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

One of my favorite quips from the very quotable Riley Quinn is that "leftists are cursed with object-permanence" – that is, we actually remember what just happened and use it to think about what's happening now. The Memex Method is object permanence for 20+ years worth of stuff. A lot of those deep archives never see use, but there's a surprising number of leading indicators buried in the stuff that happened in years gone by.

Take James Boyle's 2014, XKCD-style comic about the experience of driving a notional Apple car:

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/11/07/apple-updates-a-comic/

Apple, it turns out, spent the next decade working on just such a car, and while that car has now been canceled, Boyle's comic correctly anticipates so much about the trajectory Apple's products took. It's uncannily accurate – real "don't invent the torment nexus"/"cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion" stuff:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

But no matter how many times we insist that the torment nexus shouldn't be created, the boardrooms of end-stage capitalism continue to invent them. Take HP, the poster-child for enshittification, edging out even KPMG in the race to turn everything into a pile of shit. After years of tormenting people to punish them for wanting to print things, HP has announced a new service that so mustache-twirlingly evil that it lacks verisimilitude:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

Here's the pitch: HP will sell you a printer that you don't own. In addition to paying a monthly fee for your ink – which you pay no matter whether you print or not – you will also pay a monthly fee just for having HP's printer on your premises. You are absolutely, positively forbidden from using third-party ink in this printer, and must use HP's own ink, which sells for about $10,000/gallon.

But while you aren't allowed to use this printer in ways that are bad for HP's shareholders, HP is absolutely free to use the printer in ways that are bad for you. When you click through the signup agreement, you grand HP permission to surveil every document you print – and your home wifi network more generally – and to sell that data to anyone and everyone.

What's more, HP reserves the right to discipline you with punitive credit-card charges if you disconnect this printer from the internet, on the basis that doing so makes it harder for them to spy on your printer.

I'm sorry, this is just more torment nexus shit, the kind of thing you'd expect to drop on Apr 1, not Feb 29, but I guess this is where we are. I can only conjecture as to whether HP's businesses strategists are directly taking direction from my novella "Unauthorized Bread," or whether they're learning about it second-hand from a KPMG consultant who converted it to Powerpoint form and charged $1,500/day for the work:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

All of this cartoonish villainry is the totally foreseeable consequence of a culture of impunity, in which companies like HP and KPMG can rob, cheat, steal (and sometimes even kill) without consequence. This impunity is so pervasive that the exceptions – where a rich criminal faces real consequences – become touchstones: Enron, Arthur Anderson, Theranos, and, of course, FTX.

FTX was arguably the largest-scale corporate crime in world history, stealing more than $10 billion dollars, mostly from rubes sucked in by hype and Superbowl ads. When news that FTX founder and owner Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and was in for a lengthy prison sentence made a huge stir, because criminals like SBF usually walk away from the wreckage with their hands in their pockets, whistling a jaunty tune.

One of the very best commentators on cryptocurrency scams generally and FTX/SBF in particular is Molly White, whose Web3 is Going Just Great feed is utterly indispensable. White's newsletter, "Citation Needed," dives deep into the wrangle of SBF's sentencing:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-52/

Bankman-Fried's parents – prominent law professors at top law schools – helped brief the court this week on their son's punishment. According to them, SBF faces 100 years in prison, but should be sentenced to 5.5-6.5 years at the most. Why? Because he is a vegan, who is not greedy, and feels remorse, and cares for individuals (recall that SBF presented himself as the avatar of the batshit "effective altruism" philosophy while privately admitting that he used this as a smokescreen).

The most bizarre note in the 100-page filing is SBF's mother declaring that her son is an "angel of mercy," apparently unaware of the grisly meaning of that term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_mercy_(criminology)

America's prisons are a travesty and I wouldn't wish them on anyone, but that's not the argument SBF's parents are making; rather, they're arguing that their special boy doesn't deserve the treatment America metes out to poorer, less white people who merely steal hundreds or thousands of dollars. A crook who steals ten billion should be handled the way a casino handles a whale – with concierge service.

The problem is, there are so many of these remorseless, relentless crooks that there's no way we could scale up that white-glove treatment when we finally round 'em all up and make them pay. Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tkacik tells us about the ransomware attack that shut down America's pharmacy system last month:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-03-01-zoomer-hackers-shut-down-unitedhealthcare/

The attack brought down Change Healthcare, part of the monopolist Unitedhealth, which serves as the "pharmacy benefit manager" to a vast swathe of American pharmacies. PBM is one of those all-American finance scams, a middleman garlanded with performative complexity put there to make you feel stupid for asking why independent pharmacies all have to pay rent to this malicious, unaccountable – and now, manifestly incompetent – gang of crooks.

Tkacik's breakdown of this scam – and how it rendered Americans' ability to get the drugs they depend on to go on breathing – is characteristically brilliant. Tcacik is fast emerging as my favorite Explainer of Scams, a print version of John Oliver or Adam Conover. You may recall her work from my post last week on how private equity has taken a wrecking ball to America's hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

I always try to finish these linkdumps with some upbeat news to carry you through the weekend, and this week brought two genuinely wonderful – and totally underreported – pieces of amazing news.

The first is that Starbucks has sued for peace in the war against its workers' unions. Hundreds of Starbucks stores have unionized in recent years, but not one of them had a contract. Instead, Starbucks had waged dirty war on their own workers, from denying gender-affirming care to unionized employees to simply shutting down whole stores after they voted to unionize:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/14/starbucks-union-company-threatens-that-unionizing-could-jeopardize-gender-affirming-health-care.html

But the workers held fast and after years of this, Starbucks has caved, promising contracts for all unionized stores and an end to its campaign of terror against workers seeking to unionize more of its stores. In a postmortem for Jacobin, Eric Blanc rounds up "seven lessons from Starbucks workers' historic victory":

https://jacobin.com/2024/02/starbucks-sbwu-contract-bargaining/

This is the kind of listicle I can get behind. According to Blanc, the Starbucks unions won by deploying worker-to-worker organizing, a tactic that many of the new unions that are shaking up formerly impossible-to-organize jobsites are using (Blanc has a book about this coming from UC Press called "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Unionism Can Transform America," so he should know).

Other tactics that made the difference for Starbucks unions: new digital training and support tools and partnering with established unions for support and infrastructure. Blanc also calls out the success of "salting" – the venerable but largely disused tactic of union organizers applying for a job at a non-union shop in order to organize it.

Blanc also mentions government policy, including the outstanding work of NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a shrewd and committed tactician whose understanding of the technicalities of labor law have let her push for bold measures. For example, in Thrive Pet Care, Abruzzo is arguing that when a company refuses to bargain in good faith for a contract with its union, she can step in and order them to honor the terms of a contract at comparable unionized competitors until they produce a contract of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Abruzzo is one of several smart, competent tacticians in the Biden administration who are working to kneecap corporate power. Another is Rohit Chopra, chair of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, who just announced another bold, important initiative that will help Americans fight corporate corruption and get a fair deal:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-03-01-public-option-credit-card-shopping/

Chopra is taking aim at credit-card comparison sites that purport to show you where you can get the best deal. If you're an affluent person who doesn't carry a balance, this might not matter to you, but if you're an average working stiff, high interest rates can gobble up a massive share of your paycheck. What's more, credit card margins are higher than they have ever been:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/credit-card-interest-rate-margins-at-all-time-high/

The most expensive credit cards come from the big, monopolistic banks, but you wouldn't know it from the leaderboards produced by Credit Karma, NerdWallet, LendingTree, and Bankrate. All of these sites take bribes from the big banks to list their credit cards above those offered by credit unions – who are typically 10% cheaper than the big banks' cards.

The new CFPB rule prohibits this fraudulent ranking, but the Bureau is going even further. They're using their administrative powers to force banks to report their rates to the Bureau, which will publish them on a publicly funded, neutral website – what David Dayen calls "a public option" for shopping for credit cards.

This policy makes a perfect bookend to the last CFPB initiative I wrote about here: a rule that forces banks to allow you to transfer your account to a rival with a couple of simple clicks, importing all your history, payees, and everything else you need to switch to a better bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

Combine that ease of switching with reliable information on which banks will give you the best deal and you get something that will directly transfer millions and millions of dollars from giant, wildly profitable banks to low-income people who've been tricked into paying them punitive interest rates.

So that's it, this week's linkdump. I promised you I'd end on a high note, and I did it. The world may be full of all kinds of terrible things, but workers and regulators are scoring big, muscular victories in battles where the stakes are real and important. Have a great weekend – we've earned it.

And remember!

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

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/2024/03/02/macedoine/#the-public-option

Image: Stacy (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/notahipster/4402860361/

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

[thessalian]

Thess vs Insurance

So there's an unsubstantiated but unfortunately believable thing going around that's talking about the US government "monitoring any negative commentary about health insurance CEOs". Given that they're currently trying to put threatening violence to an insurance company CEO in the "terrorism" category ... yeah, I can't prove it, but I can see it.

Now, look. I only spent four years in the US, and I was lucky enough to be healthy (and on my mother's health insurance) during that time. The other ... very large number of years of my life were spent in ... I'm sorry, civilised countries with national healthcare. Yes, the NHS has its problems, and Canadian Medicare probably did too, but at the end of the day, it's free at point of use and overall, it does its best. But I'm honestly not here to talk about the difference between national healthcare and the system in the US - we all know how bad the US system is. I am here to talk about insurance in general. Which I suppose is the underlying reason for how bad the US system is, so y'know, it is what it is.

I've never worked in health insurance, but I did work for a home and contents insurance company once. It was actually my first office job. I started with just data entry, but it wasn't long before they had me handling calls. And ... y'know Robert Parr in The Incredibles? ...Yeaaaaaah... Because it was fucking awful. People had their houses wrecked by inclement weather or had all their shit stolen by criminal shitheads, and had paid out the arse for their insurance premiums every year, and we were being ordered to use every loophole in the book to deny their claims. And I'm sitting there going, "But ... that's the service they paid us to provide..." Doesn't matter. Letting go of one red penny was an affront to management. And if by some circumstance we couldn't find a loophole and we did have to pay out, we'd be penny-pinching the whole way so that the customer got the bare minimum of coverage ... and the company kept as much of the profits as humanly possible.

The point is ... that's bad enough if it's your home contents. It's worse if it's your actual home. But worst of all is when it's lives on the line. And yet these people are treating human lives like a stolen television. And I think people just don't get how bad this is, especially with the rescinding of Biden's reduction of drugs costs. Like, I saw someone on Facebook saying, "You lefties will whine about anything! So what if insulin's expensive? Cope!" and ... it seems incredible to me, but I don't think that person knows what insulin does. Or ... you know, is. It's like they think it's a kind of antidepressant (which would be bad enough, by the way, but you know how the folks on that side of the political fence talk about how needing antidepressants and the like is 'weak').

I think I only say that because I don't want to believe that there's a human being who knows what insulin is, and how deadly the lack of it is, and how some people need store-bought through no fault of their own, and would still say that. I cannot be that depressed right now.

Health insurance CEOs are plain evil. I mean, it's a fact. They are not there to serve their clients; they are there to fleece them. It is literally in the employee handbook - every way to weasel out of having to save someone's life is codified and forced on every single one of its employees. I wonder how many of those employees have their souls die a little every day as they do this.

Thinking of that makes me think of the mess Theresa May made of the benefits system over here, when so many people were having their benefits taken away under her new system... Gods, it was awful and probably still is, with people being deemed fit for work while they were undergoing aggressive chemotherapy and worse. At the time, there was a blip on the news that the situation was so bad that the people manning the phones at the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) were given these little pink cards to put by their phones - a script for what to do when their callers started talking about suicide. It happened that often.

I wonder if they still have those little pink cards. I would bet they do. We just don't talk about it anymore because, among other things, too many people are trying to put on their own oxygen mask first and praying they don't become disabled.

To summarise ... okay, look. The dictionary definition of terrorism is "the unlawful use of violence or intimidation, especially against civilians, in pursuit of political aims". I suppose that's fair, in its way - capitalism is a political system as well as an economic one, although I personally don't believe that money should talk as much as it does in the political sphere (which I guess makes violence and intimidation against CEOs doubly political, really). However, there's a word whose legal definition is "when a person is of sound mind and discretion and unlawfully kills another, in an act that is not self-defence". That word is "murder".

I know insurance companies. I worked in one. My mother was a broker in one for years (professional liability, in her case, for lawyers no less). I know how carefully insurance companies choose their words, and why. They want careful with words? I can give them careful with words. By the legal definition, every health insurance CEO is a murderer. And the legal definition of "self-defence" is "a defence permitting reasonable force to be used to defend one's self or another". So one could argue that this particular shooter was acting in self-defence, because someone was going to die - and statistically, several people probably already had died - by that man's actions.

That's the theory, anyway. But because money talks so loud in politics now, insurance companies are seen as vital institutions and we're just expendable. But I still think that they might want to be careful about throwing legal definitions of terrorism at people. I'm sure if we checked a few legal definitions, we could find a couple of good ones for the actions of health insurance CEOs, and "murder" is the least of them.

[momo-de-avis]

I'm going to try and explain my head, which is about to explode, as best I can. I have a friend who is a very good friend and has helped me immensely with my work, getting me to join numerous other companies and widen my experience. But he's intense. He has a way of seeing the world that is divided in absolutes, in extremes, and unwittingly (I don't doubt it's all out of good intentions) he puts so much pressure on a person more than once someone had to tell him to back off.

To summarise, he got me into a company. It didn't work out (this was the woman who did a million different trainings and I got pissed at her and left). He got me into another company, it also didn't work out (this was the company whose sales tanked and they cancelled all my bookings. They're also extremely disorganised and I hate working with disorganised people). I expressed my frustration to him, cause right now I'm only with Blue and Purple companies, and they don't pay well. Well, blue company actually pays miserally bad.

I've been feeling frustration out of this for a month now. A couple days ago a free tour guide approached me and we had a chat. He said he was interested in working for Blue Company but they were rude to him. When he asked me what they paid us, I told him. He was quite shocked. He said he did food tours for another company and they paid substantially better. Later that day I'm doing a food tour and I'm at this restaurant talking to the waiter. He says he has another guide that shows up once in a while, and she'd paid X amount disregarding the number of people. Then he says 'you must be paid the same, right?' he was shocked when I said we are paid half, and that's for a full gorup. Less people means less money. He was even more shocked when he learnt that yes, we are paid less if clients simply don't show up.

That stacked up on my frustration. But then friend came along and made ir worse.

The thing he does is that he tries to offer solutions, which I'm appreciative of. But they're intense and he lacks perspective on how other people live their life and their constraints. He says to me my best chance at life, at a career, is doing a post-grad in tour guiding, a well know post grad course that is privileged by many companies. Then he says 'do you have 3000€?' and insists what I should do is sign up for it now. 'You're still in time for entering this school year,' he says. I have to explain to him that yeah, I have 3000€ but it's not like I can just squander it like that. 'Oh but it's okay,' he explains, 'because it's not 3000€ in one go, it's in installments!' Like that solves anything. Brother I have a mortgage to pay. I have pets and a life together with another human being. One just doesn't turn and say 'mommy I'm back in school, please pay' a bitch has to discuss these things.

I tell him my future intentions is to take the exam to become a certified tour guide. But like, future future. He asks me 'when? this year?' I'm like, are you fucking nuts, the exams are in January. He groans like I'm making the wrong decision. I have to hurry, he insists. I have to sign up as soon as possible.

And my question is, fucking why, my brother? I know I'm 35, but I'm not dead, jesus. Who fucking cares if I take the exam when I'm 40?

And he talks with such an intensity, just shooting words like a machine gun, pow pow pow, going at it, 'you gotta', 'you must', and with eloquently stringed sentences like 'this is the turning point of your career' that I feel completely pushed against the wall. This mf really makes me think that I know nothing about my life and that I'm squandering every second I'm alive and not thinking of work. It's enough to be self-conscious of the fact that I'm 35 and starting a career, but he talks, he persists, he insists, like I'm going to be dead by 40, or that there's a time-limit on being a tour guide, a certified tour guide, or whatever fucking propsect at a career in this area he has conceived.

So then we get to the problem. After weeks of this, my brain is malting through my ears. I'm dissatisfied with my situations, I'm resentful of Blue Company because I've been trying to not rely on it completely and yet everything went so wrong I feel I'm being held hostage by them. And he keeps pressuring me with these things, like this genuinely the most intense career advisor you can imagine

But then

He calls me and tells me he has another gig for me. It's a circuit. A circuit means I'll be away from home for 7 days and I'll be solely responsible for a group of fuck knows how many americans. It starts in Porto, it involves some shit in the douro valley, wine tastings, visit to a cellar, and then a day in Aveiro, a city I've been to ONCE and now I should be able to do a walk tour, and then proceeds to Lisbon and Sintra, which is easy peasy.

I've always wanted to do circuits. This one pays extremelly well. But I feel unprepared. I don't know Aveiro, I don't know if I have time to study, and I feel insecure.

But here he comes. He uses absolute statements that completely shake me. 'This will be a hallmark of change for your career' or 'you will have to rescind a week of availability to Blue Company, and things might take a turn' or 'you will become a promoter of Portuguese Heritage'

And I'm sitting there like. Bro I'mm be the queen of England if you keep going. It's not enough that he's been pressuring me to continue, to strive, to think of work at every waking hour, to drop 3000€ for yet another year in my life, to jump into the chance of getting my certification as soon as possible lest I burst into flames at menopause or some shit, and now he offers me a chance of going from 'easy peasy work' to 'completely unfamiliar territory for the first time and utter responsibility' overfuckingnight. And to top it all off, he goes 'you must give me an answer in 48h'.

I'm in such a state, I have a Jewish Heritage tour tomorrow, which I have done before, with a company that is really one of those the clients pay good fucking money and I've been feeling for two weeks like I can't do it. I feel small as shit and I just want to scream at this guy 'SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, NOT ALL OF US GO AT IT AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT MY GUY'

I have to give him an answer tomorrow about the circuit and I don't know what to do. I feel hesitant but my earthbound, grounded acquaintances and friends (including bf) had expressed in more humane terms how this would be a fantastic opportunity for me, and they've offered me info on Aveiro and tricks to learn to get around on a walking tour. Seriously I only remember one canal in Aveiro.

I need a vacation