#charge conference
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patience being tested. being forced by a bizarre unfortunate situation to adhere to university requirement technicality by taking this simple basic elementary "introduction to environmental history" class.
this class is from facilitators/program which do, like, "history of the American frontier" or "history of fishing and hunting" and still basically subscribe to that old-school twentieth-century idealization and celebration of characters like Teddy Roosevelt and reverence for a mythical arc-of-history-bent-towards-justice narrative of the often-clumsy but ultimately-benevolent US federal government and its mission to "save nature" through the miracle of "sustained yield," while heroic federal land management agencies and "heritage" institutions lead to way, staffed by exceptional individuals (appeals to nostalgia for the frontier and an imagined landscape of the American West; ego-stroking appeals to flattering self-image that center the environmentalist or academic). where they invoke, y'know, ideas like "ecology is important because don't you enjoy cross-country skiing in The Woods with your niece and nephew? don't you like hunting and fishing?" which makes it feel like a time capsule of appeals and discourses from the 1970s. and it invokes concept of "untouched wilderness" (while eliding scale of historical Indigenous environmental relationships and current ongoing colonial violence/extractivism). but just ever-so-slightly updated with a little bit of chic twenty-first-century flair like a superficial land acknowledgement or a reference to "labor histories" or "history from below," which is extra aggravating when the old ideologies/institutions are still in power but they're muddying the water and diluting the language/frameworks (it's been strange, watching words like "multispecies" and "Anthropocene" over the years slowly but surely show-up on the posters, fliers, course descriptions, by now even appearing adjacent to the agri-business and resource extraction feeder programs, like a recuperation or appropriation.) even from a humanities angle, it's still, they're talking at me like "You probably didn't know this, but environmental history is actually pretty entangled with political and social events. In fact, we can synthesize sources and glean environmental info from wacky places like workers' rolls in factories, ship's logs, and poetry from the era." and i'm nodding like YEP.
the first homework assignment is respond to this: "Define and describe 'the Anthropocene'. Do you think 'the Anthropocene' is a useful concept? Why or why not?" Respond in 300 words.
so for fun, right now in class, going to see how fast i can pull up discussion of Anthropocene-as-concept solely from my old posts on this microblogging site.
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ok, found some
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I think that the danger in any universal narrative or epoch or principle is exactly that it can itself become a colonizing force. [...] I’m suspicious of the Anthropocene as concept for the very reason that it subsumes so many peoples, nations, histories, geographies, political orders. For that reason, I think ideas like the Anthropocene can be a useful short-hand for a cluster of tangible things going on with the Earth at the moment, but we have to be very careful about how fluid and dynamic ideas become concretized into hegemonic principles in the hands of researchers, policymakers, and politicians. There’s so much diversity in histories and experiences and environmental realities even between relatively linked geographies here in Canada [...]. Imagine what happens when we try to do that on a global scale - and a lot of euro-western Anthropocene, climate change and resilience research risks doing that - eliding local specificities and appropriating knowledge to serve a broader euro-western narrative without attending to the inherent colonial and imperial realities of science and policy processes, or even attending to the ways that colonial capitalist expansion has created these environmental crises to begin with. While we, as a collective humanity, are struggling with the realities of the Anthropocene, it is dangerous to erase the specific histories, power-relations, political orders that created the crisis to begin with. So, I’m glad that a robust critique of the Anthropocene as a concept is emerging.
Text by: Words of Zoe Todd, as interviewed and transcribed by Caroline Picard. “The Future is Elastic (But it Depends): An Interview with Zoe Todd.” 23 August 2016.
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The Great Acceleration is the latest in a series of human-driven planetary changes that constitute what a rising chorus of scientists, social scientists, and humanists have labeled the Anthropocene - a new Age of Humans. [...] But what the Anthropocene label masks, and what the litany of graphs documenting the Great Acceleration hide, is a history of racial oppression and violence, along with wealth inequality, that has built and sustained engines of economic growth and consumption over the last four centuries. [...] The plantation, Sidney Mintz long ago observed, was a “synthesis of field and factory,” an agro-industrial system of enterprise [...]. Plantation legacies, along with accompanying strategies of survival and resistance, dwell in the racialized geographies of the United States’ and Brazil’s prison systems. They surface in the inequitable toxic burdens experienced by impoverished communities of color in places like Cancer Alley, an industrial corridor of petrochemical plants running along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, where cotton was once king. And they appear in patterns of foreign direct investment and debt servitude that structure many land deals in the Caribbean, Brazil, and sub-Saharan Africa [...]. [C]limatologists and global change scientists from the University of London, propose instead 1610 as a date for the golden spike of the Anthropocene. The date marked a detectable global dip in carbon dioxide concentrations, precipitated, they argue, by the death of nearly 50 million indigenous human inhabitants [...]. The degradation of soils in the tobacco and cotton-growing regions in the American South, or in the sugarcane growing fields of many Caribbean islands, for example, was a consequence of an economic and social system that inflicted violence upon the land and the people enslaved to work it. Such violent histories are not so readily evident in genealogies that date the Anthropocene’s emergence to the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago, the onset of Europe’s industrial revolution circa 1800, or the Trinity nuclear test of 1945. Sugarcane plantations were already prevalent throughout the Mediterranean basin during the late middle ages. But it was during the early modern era, and specifically in the Caribbean, where the intersection of emerging proto-capitalist economic models based on migratory forced labor (first indentured servitude, and later slavery), intensive land usage, globalized commerce, and colonial regimes sustained on the basis of relentless racialized violence, gave rise to the transformative models of plantations that reshaped the lives and livelihoods of human and non-human beings on a planetary scale. [...] We might, following the lead of science studies scholar Donna Haraway and anthropologist Anna Tsing, more aptly designate this era the Plantationocene. [...] It is also an invitation to see, in the words of geographer Laura Pulido, “the Anthropocene as a racial process,” one that has and will continue to produce “racially uneven vulnerability and death." [...] And how have such material transformations sustained global flows of knowledge and capital that continue to reproduce the plantation in enduring ways?
Text by: Sophie Sapp Moore, Monique Allewaert, Pablo F. Gomez, and Gregg Mitman. "Plantation Legacies." Edge Effects. 22 January 2019. Updated 15 May 2021. [Bold emphasis added by me.]
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Geologists and other scientists will fight over [the definition of the beginning start-date of the Anthropocene] in scientific language, seeking traces of carbon dioxide that index the worst offenses of European empire which rent and violated the flesh, bodies, and governance structures of Indigenous and other sovereign peoples in the name of gold, lumber, trade, land, and power. [...] The stories we tell about the origins of the Anthropocene implicate how we understand the relations we have with our surrounds. In other words, the naming of the Anthropocene epoch and its start date have implications not just for how we understand the world, but this understanding will have material consequences, consequences that affect body and land.
Text by: Heather Davis and Zoe Todd. On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME An International Journal for Critical Geographies. December 2017. [Bold emphasis added by me.]
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From Aime and Suzanne Cesaire, C. L. R. James, Claudia Jones, Eduoard Glissant, through Sylvia Wynter, Christina Sharpe, and so many others, critical anticolonial and race theory has been written from the specific histories that marked the Black Atlantic. [...] Glissant also reminds us, secondly, of how cunning the absorptive powers of [...] liberal capitalism are - how quickly specific relations are remade as relations-erasing universal abstractions. [...] This absorptive, relations-erasing universalism is especially apparent in some contemporary discourses of […] liberalism and climate collapse - what some call the Anthropocene - especially those that anchor the crisis in a general Human calamity which, as Sylvia Wynter has noted, is merely the name of an overdetermined and specific [White] European man. […] [T]he condition of creating this new common European world was the destruction of a multitude of existing black and brown worlds. The tsunami of colonialism was not seen as affecting humanity, but [...] these specific people. They were specific - what happened to them may have been necessary, regrettable, intentional, accidental - but it is always them. It is only when these ancestral histories became present for some, for those who had long benefitted from the dispossession [...], that suddenly the problem is all of us, as human catastrophe.
Text by: Elizabeth Povinelli. “The Ancestral Present of Oceanic Illusions: Connected and Differentiated in Late Toxic Liberalism.” e-flux Journal Issue #112. October 2020.
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The narrative arc [of White "liberal humanism"] [...] is often told as a kind of European coming-of-age story. […] The Anthropocene discourse follows the same coming-of-age [...] script, searching for a material origin story that would explain the newly identified trajectory of the Anthropos […]. Sylvia Wynter, W.E.B. DuBois, and Achille Mbembe all showed how that genealogy of [White subjecthood] was [...] articulated through sixteenth- through nineteenth-century [historiographies and discourses] in the context of colonialism, [...] as well as forming the material praxis of their rearrangement (through mining, ecological rearrangements and extractions, and forms of geologic displacements such as plantations, dams, fertilizers, crops, and introduction of “alien” animals). […] As Wynter (2000) commented, “The degradation of concrete humans, that was/is the price of empire, of the kind of [Eurocentric epistemology] that underlies it” (154).
Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. “The Inhumanities.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Volume 11, Issue 3. November 2020.
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As Yarimar Bonilla suggests in regard to post-Irma-and-Maria Puerto Rico, “vulnerability is not simply a product of natural conditions; it is a political state and a colonial condition.” Many in the Caribbean therefore speak about the coloniality of disaster, and the unnaturalness of these “natural” disasters [...]. Others describe this temporality by shifting [...] toward an idea of the Plantationocene [...]. As Moore and her colleagues write, “Plantation worlds, both past and present, offer a powerful reminder that environmental problems cannot be decoupled from histories of colonialism, capitalism, and racism that have made some human beings more vulnerable [...].” [W]e see that contemporary uneven socioecologies associated with the rise of the industrial world ["the Anthropocene"] are based [...] also on the racialized denial and foreshortening of life for the sacrificial majority of black, brown, and Indigenous people and their relegation to the “sacrifice zones” of extractive industry. [...] [A]ny appropriate response to the contemporary climate emergency must first appreciate its foundations in the past history of the violent, coercive, transatlantic system of plantation slavery; in the present global uneven development, antiblackness, and border regimes that shape human vulnerability [...] that continues to influence who has access to resources, safety, and preferable ecologies [...] and who will be relegated to the “plantation archipelagoes” (as Sylvia Wynter called them) [...].
Text by: Mimi Sheller. “Thinking Beyond Coloniality: Toward Radical Caribbean Futures.” Small Axe (2021), 25 (2 (65)), pages 169-170. Published 1 July 2021. [Bold emphasis added by me.]
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Indigenous genocide and removal from land and enslavement are prerequisites for power becoming operationalized in premodernity [...]; it was/is a means to operationalize extraction (therefore race should be considered as foundational rather than as periphery to the production of those structures and of global space). [...] Wynter suggests that we […] consider 1452 as the beginning of the New World, as African slaves are put to work on the first plantations on the Portuguese island of Madeira, initiating the “sugar-slave” complex - a massive replantation of ecologies and forced relocation of people […]. Wynter argues that the invention of the figure of Man in 1492 as the Portuguese [and Spanish] travel to the Americas instigates at the same time “a refiguring of humanness” in the idea of race. [...] The natal moment of the 1800 Industrial Revolution, […] [apparently] locates Anthropocene origination in […] the "new" metabolisms of technology and matter enabled by the combination of fossil fuels, new engines, and the world as market. […] The racialization of epistemologies of life and nonlife is important to note here […]. While [this industrialization in the nineteenth century] […] undoubtedly transformed the atmosphere with […] coal, the creation of another kind of weather had already established its salient forms in the mine and on the plantation. Paying attention to the prehistory of capital and its bodily labor, both within coal cultures and on plantations that literally put “sugar in the bowl” (as Nina Simone sings) […]. The new modes of material accumulation and production in the Industrial Revolution are relational to and dependent on their preproductive forms in slavery […]. In 1833, Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, and the taxpayer payout of £20 million in “compensation” [paid by the government to slave owners for their lost "property"] built the material, geophysical (railways, mines, factories), and imperial infrastructures of Britain and its colonial enterprises and empire. [...] A significant proportion of funds were invested in the railway system connecting London and Birmingham (home of cotton production and […] manufacturing for plantations), Cambridge and Oxford, and Wales and the Midlands (for coal). Insurance companies flourished [...]. The slave-sugar-coal nexus both substantially enriched Britain and made it possible for it to transition into a colonial industrialized power […]. The slave trade […] fashioned the economic conditions (and institutions, such as the insurance and finance industries) for industrialization.
Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. "White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a Geologic Spike". e-flux Journal Issue #97. February 2019. [Bold emphasis added by me.]
#sorry for being mean#instructor makes podcasts about cowboys HELP ME#and he recently won a New Business award for his startup magazine covering Democrat party politics in local area HELP#so hes constantly performing this like dance between new hip beerfest winebar coolness and oldfashioned masculinity#but hes in charge of the certificate program so i have to just shut up and keep my head down for approximately one year#his email address is almost identical to mine and invokes enviro history terms but i made mine long before when i was ten years old#so i could log in to fieldherpforum dot com to talk about enviro history of distribution range changes in local reptiles and amphibians#sir if you read my blog then i apologize ive had a long year#and i cant do anything to escape i am disabled i am constantly sick im working fulltime i have NO family i have NO resources#i took all of this schools graduate level enviro history courses and seminars years ago and ran the geography and enviro hist club#but then left in final semester because sudden hospitalization and crippled and disabled which led to homelessness#which means that as far as any profession or school is concerned im nobody im a retail employee#i was doing conference paper revisions while sleeping on concrete vomiting walking around on my cane to find outdoor wifi#and im not kidding the MONTH i got back into a house and was like ok going back to finish the semester the school had#put my whole degree program and department in moratorium from lack of funding#and so required starting some stuff from scratch and now feel like a hostage with debt or worsening health that could pounce any moment#to even get back in current program i was working sixteen hours a day to pay old library fines and had to delicately back out of workplace#where manager was straight up violently physically abusive to her vulnerable employees and threatened retaliation#like an emotional torturer the likes of which i thought existed only in cartoons#and the week i filed for student aid a massive storm had knocked out electricity for days and i was clearing fallen tree debris#and then sitting in the dark in my room between job shifts no music no phone no food with my fingers crossed and i consider it a miracle#sorry dont mean to dramatize or draw attention to myself#so actually im happy you and i are alive
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Oh cool. The conference that I'm speaking at on Saturday has added to the schedule for Sunday as well without asking me first. I had to respond with a request that they make sure I'm booked at the conference hotel for two nights because my booking confirmation only had me for Friday since my plan was to drive home after my presentation on Saturday.
Not only am I never doing this conference again, I never want to work with the woman who organized this event ever again. The whole thing has been a shit show and, quite frankly, putting me on the schedule for Sunday when I had only agreed to Saturday is not only disrespectful but fucking unprofessional.
#woolly rambles#btw the reason that this conference booked a lot of speakers last minute is because the person they initially had in charge of booking#was arrested for embezzlement#by the fucking FBI#god thank goodness Im not flying to this thing lol#i would not be a happy camper if i was trying to rearrange a flight on fucking NYE#lol or maybe that would have been better because then i really couldnt do sunday#anyways hope they can get me another night at the hotel because im not going to a secondary location
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Good news: after a lot of weeks, my air conditioner is fixed!! Also good news: I caught an error in the software at work that was impacting both contractor pay and customer invoicing! Bad news: going through large amounts of data loosely falls under the purview of the department I am now sort of in charge of, which meant my department (which is me and two other people) had to individually open every single order from [specific subset of customers] since the beginning of the year to manually check if either error had occurred. Hundreds of orders, even with a few different criteria we could use to narrow it down. It's done though! I mean the error is not fixed but previous instances of it causing problems are caught and now that we know it exists we can catch future problems before they are invoiced/paid out I have done zero crafting today and I honestly doubt I will get any done lol
#the person behind the yarn#tj talks about work#I am sort of in charge of a department now?#that department is basically data entry/admin#in that my previous job title used to handle contractors and contractor paperwork#but they were not doing as much scheduling because so much time was spent on paperwork#so as a trial run they had me take over doing all the paperwork for two other [job title] as well as my own#which is not hard for me. I've been processing this exact kind of paperwork at one job or another for over a decade#and that helped a lot so they switched things around gave me less contractors#and hired two more people to handle paperwork and a few other data crunch-y office tasks#and I trained them both? and have the ability to assign them tasks and declare things to be part of my department's job#so I am sort of de facto the head of our little department#which is very funny to me because in my previous job a few years back I was the head of the bookkeeping department#because the entire department was me#it was a difficult department to keep on task but I managed lol#more seriously the two people with me in the paperwork department now are absolutely great#they are super nice and we work really well together#we had a conference call between the three of us with a screenshare while I figured out how to fix one of their IT problems#unrelated to the other problem I caught later in the day
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Good news I guess: they cancelled the live action Loud House show.
#or at least seem to have quietly done so#because on the sixteenth this month this year ritas actress had to be the one to say online yeah uh S2 is last season#which....honestly this show having a short life spam was coming very fast#because unlike animation where you can recast voices live action becomes tricky as hell#aka see when they tried to make a fourth wimpy kid live action with a new cast#cause surprising no one even by third film the kid actors were growing up and by fourth film yeah they too old#so a live action loud house i didnt see lasting long#but two seasons...god damn#thats very short#and i say good news...because i was mixed on this show#some of the episodes were good i liked the teacher parent conference that felt like it could have been in the animated one#but then you get episodes like...the butt pimple one...that literally felt like dan schneider had been in charge of the episode#aka an episode that literally put a real life child in a diaper for humor#like live action loud house was fine with the movies but the show definitely was mixed
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For everyone wondering why Kelley was constantly carrying around toilet paper…she had the shits
#cannot wait for Emma to be in charge of uswnt#because she will announce this at a public press conference#bless her#kelley o'hara#woso
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#what exactly did you expect to happen#putting an OIL MAGNATE in charge of a CLIMATE CONFERENCE#good grief#climate denial#cop28#politics
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What our news looks like right now 😵💫
Maui County says Hawaiian Electric is at fault for starting the fires that destroyed Lahaina
Hawaiian Electric says Maui County is at fault for Lahaina for not acting fast enough
At least one class action lawsuit representing multiple citizens: BOTH you fuckers are at fault
#such a shit show#there’s definitely evidence to blame them both#i personally think the emergency management guy who was in charge#WHO WASNT EVEN ON THE ISLAND AT THE TIME#CAUSE HE WAS AT A CONFERENCE ON OAHU#F O R EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT TRAINING#he needs to be charged with involuntary manslaughter#maui hawaii#maui news#maui fires
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Fucking wild day at work today like what the fuck
#like it wasn’t all that wild until literally the last two minutes of my shift when I walked outside looking for one of the shift managers#because my GM was on a conference call and the other two shift managers that were there plus another one who had just like stopped by were#all nowhere to be seen#any fucking way….. I walked outside because I knew that the one that stopped by was out there talking to the one that opened this morning#and I walk out there like who is in charge right now and they were like idk and then I started to be like oh well I just needed some#questions answered about stuff before I leave (which I ended up saying fuck it and not asking or saying anything about those things)#but then!!!! (also keep in mind these two shift managers are my closest work friends and the one has been working with me since day 1 over 4#years ago and the other has been around for the past like 2.5 years probably?? but like we worked together every day pretty much)#anyway I say that about having questions and start to tell them and they’re like well it doesn’t matter#or it didn’t matter to the one or something like that BECAUSE SHE IUST GOT FUCKING FIRED#AND I SWESR TO GOd I WAS LIKE DID I HUST MISHEAR THAT WHAT THE FUCJ DO YOU MEAN YOU JUST GOT FIRED#FOR WHAT?!? what could she possibly have done?#and it’s some big long bullshit and I just can’t believe it#so I stood out there for another few minutes on the clock not paying any attention to wtf is going on in the store because literally what#the hell but eventually I was like I’m just gonna walk in and clock out#but we still didn’t know who was in charge and then like 3 of us were leaving but no one new had come in yet so I just had to interrupt the#GM on his call (with our district manager sitting beside him) to be like can I leave? and then I just clocked out and went and stood outside#for like 45 minutes with my friends talking about the absolutely bullshittiness of the entire situation#like I can’t believe it#and I’m sure that she can’t believe it either#it was literally out of nowhere#our GM didn’t even know about it until after she’d been fired like it came from higher up in corporate and I just…. I hate this for her#but at the same time and she said this too that she was comfortable here (same) and if she wasn’t fired she probably wouldn’t have quit for#a long long time and like… same here#but if the other shift manager that I’m friends with quits she better tell me first and we’ll put our two weeks in together#I’m not fucking staying when everyone I like working with is Gina#because days they’re not there o fucking hate it#we went from having a good core group of people every day to it just being the three of us and now it’s just the two of us#plus like another 3/4 people that I usually love working with#though one of them irritates me a lot too but she’s been there since the start for me too (and she’s also on the brink of quitting)
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i am. so glad a three day vacation is coming, i need it more than life itself right now :)
#even if ill probs not rest bc shit keeps happening#im past the level of burnt out#a patient got agressive again but like. REALLY agressive#threw everything off of my desk screamed started slamming the door#and thankfully was immobilised before he turned to charge at me and our senior doc#(safe immobilisation of course-i presented at a conference regarding correct procedures dw)
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Origins: the world is ending and you and your one remaining coworker are the only option left to save it.
II: the unavoidable tragedy of a queer friend group/polycule trying and failing to save their fucked up city
Inquisition: you went to a conference and accidentally ended up in charge of saving the entire world (again) with a team of colleagues who are (mostly) professionals and outstanding in their fields.
**
Veilguard:
Rook: hey, I suffered from “sudden field promotion” after “fucking everything up worse than it already was.” I’m putting a team together to kill at least one, maybe three, Gods
Seven of the most unwell people in Thedas: say no more, I’m in
#dragon age#I have to just live here for the next [checks notes] four years so#they did a really good job giving Rook my favourite aspects of the HoF and Hawke’s set ups#I mean. it is probably too soon to state this officially#but it miiiiiiiiiiight be my favourite da game???????
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“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”
20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:
https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html
I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:
https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/
I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:
WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.
Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.
But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer
Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.
This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war
Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:
https://mamot.fr/@[email protected]/111528162905209453
Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/
20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.
But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification
But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process
Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.
These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.
This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).
Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:
https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership
Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!
But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.
The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.
Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.
Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":
https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n
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/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill
Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986
CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
#pluralistic#playstation#sony#copyright#copyfight#drm#monopoly#enshittification#batgirl#road runner#financiazation#the end of ownership#ip
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` Transactional Tantrum
` pairing: Sylus x fem!reader
` tags: fluff. romcom. silly shenanigans. filthy rich Sylus. chaotic!reader cuz we all want to be spoiled and provided by him don't lie 🫵🏻
` teaa's note: where can i get a husband like Sylus ( ⚈̥̥̥̥̥́⌢⚈̥̥̥̥̥̀)
People hail him as a powerful man amongst all existing factions in the N109 Zone, yet even someone like Sylus isn't immune to the dread of a tedious business dealings.
Don't get him wrong, it is practically his job for a lack of better words but you can't blame the man for nearly dying out of boredom at the moment.
Ping!
A sudden notification from his phone tore his attention away from his yammering business partners. Sylus briefly glanced down at his phone, brows furrowed in confusion when he read the transaction alert message on his screen.
'Ten million was charged to your Credit Card at Summers Jewelry'
Sylus didn't even have the chance to ponder over the sudden message further when he was suddenly startled by another barrage of notifications - yes, plural notifications.
'Four million was charged to your Credit Card at M&Hs'
'Six million was charged to your Credit Card at Nebulas'
'Eight million was charged to your Credit Card at Zapple'
Despite the deadpan expression on his face and his usual nonchalance silence, the slightest quirk of his brows were enough to give away his bewildered reaction to seeing such random transaction alerts on his card.
He doesn't recall making any on-hold purchases and certainly didn't give the twins any permission to spend any after the last time they went all out using his card in the past.
Which means only one person would be bold enough to overspend his money on a whim like this and his eyes instantly flickered in amusement when another transaction message came through his phone.
'Thirteen million was charged to your Credit Card at Abyssal Attire'
Seems like a certain kitten is on a wild spending spree.
Observing the transaction alerts, Sylus let out a low chuckle, ignoring the strange looks from his business partners who continued on with their discussion.
His sole attention now was you - his lovely kitten spending all his money with reckless abandon.
As his thumb hovered over the icon of your picture on his phone, he couldn't help but grin at the large purchases you made - given the fact you had always been reluctant to spend on his card before despite the countless times he had reassured you that he wants you to use his money to your heart's content.
Sylus, without a doubt, always wants the best for you. Even when you nagged him on buying such expensive gifts before, yet that will never stop him from spoiling you rotten.
Though.. he wondered what sparked this sudden influx of random purchases this first time around?
With his interest now piqued towards you, Sylus strode out of the conference room without a care in the world, especially when said discussion had led to no satisfying result on his end, thus he neither bothered about the frustrated and flabbergasted looks of the businessmen as he made his way along the hallways of the building.
Luke and Kieran, who's been by his side the entire meeting, automatically followed their boss out. Both brothers exchange curious looks from behind their masks with a shrug. Though they had great knowledge that only two things could spring their boss out of his usual routine - an unexpected ambush or well, you.
And it seemed like they were right on the nose as they watched Sylus’s thumb pressed onto the screen of his phone before bringing the device close to his ear, an amused yet genuine smile curled on their fierce leader's lips as he called out your name.
"Is it just me or a certain kitten is behaving quite impulsively with her spending today?” His voice held a steady yet teasing affection tone, his mind already picturing your smug expression at overspending his money. “This is a first, sweetie.”
"Oh look who finally remembered me!" Your voice snapped, the snarky and sarcastic response made Sylus pause in his track in surprise.
Before he could say anything, you cut him off, your voice faux innocent under a thinly veiled anger from the other line. "To think it took blowing your credit card to call me after making me wait for you the past THREE hours, you better have some explaining to do mister!”
To say you had left Sylus utterly speechless would be an understatement of the century, but it quite frankly did as your unexpected anger left his mind reeling in both confusion and worry.
Even his brief frozen state wasn't left unnoticed by Luke and Kieran, both could heard your snappy voice from the other line and they know an unhappy Miss Hunter equals to a agitated Onychinus leader, so they quietly watched in as Sylus slowly recover from his initial surprise before turning his attention back to the phone call.
“Kitten.” Sylus blinked, a frown forming on his lips, "I don't recall us having plans today? And I'm out of town for the time being as well.”
There was a sudden silence from your side, and for a second there Sylus thought you had hung up on him but your next words made him even more confused.
"Wait, what, I thought Luke and Kieran said you'd be free for the weekend and they'd told you about our date for today?"
At the mention of the twins, Sylus's head immediately snapped towards his henchmen who visibly tensed up. It didn't take long for Sylus to put two and two together that Luke and Kieran had pulled another of their mischievous pranks on you.
Oh but this one is definitely going to cost them their four months worth of paycheck for making his kitten angry at him.
"It seems like the twins have made a mistake. I wasn't aware of such plans today." Sylus's voice dropped low and dangerous, a flicker of annoyance as he shot the tensed twins a hard glare.
Though, knowing it would be no use to him to be mad at them at that moment, Sylus paused briefly once more before taking a deep breath, calming himself down. "I assure you, sweetie, I would never intentionally forget anything, especially when it's about you.”
There was another stretch of silence before you spoke up again, your voice softer and apologetic, wincing in guilt for assuming he'd purposely ditched you when that wasn't the case. "I'm sorry.." You sighed quietly. "I just.. I was looking forward to seeing you today and I.. I missed you, Sy.."
His annoyance instantly melted away at your confession. He understood that his work often kept him away, leaving you feeling neglected at times and he wanted nothing more than to rush to your side and hold you dearly in his arms. You always had a way to tug at his heartstrings and even then he relishes at the admission of you needing him as much as he needed you.
"I'll make it up to you, right now. Anything you want, name it." Sylus emphasized seriously, already giving Luke and Kieran a look of command. Not needing any further words as the twins bolted off to prepare his private jet to head back to Linkon.
"Well, you could start by allowing me to strangle those twins." You chirped, your voice brighter now yet held intentional malice mostly directed towards his loyal henchmen for tricking you with false information regarding Sylus's work schedule.
"And cuddles. I expect to see you at my place later tonight for cuddles or else I'll empty your entire bank account." You demanded sweetly, with a clearly joking threat but given you had waited three whole hours like a fool in public, you were tempted to do it again if Sylus bails on you twice in a day.
Your laughter tinkled over the phone, a lovely sound that never ceases to make Sylus's heart swell with blissful affection. The business deal be damned and he'll handle the twins' antics another time, for now, all he wanted was to go back to you.
Sylus chuckled, a warm smile tugging at his lips despite himself as he made his way up the building's rooftop. He knew his kitten was quite a force to be reckoned with, and yet such side of you made him drawn to you even more than ever - oh, he couldn't wait to see you again soon. "Deal. Cuddles it is, and you have my word, sweetie, I'll be at your doorstep by tonight. As for the twins, well, I'm sure they'll be begging for mercy by the time you're done with them.”
Back to your awaiting loving embrace.
#get a man who spoils you rotten like Sy-Sy 🥹#why is he not real ORZ#sylus x you#sylus x reader#sylus x y/n#sylus x mc#lads fluff#lads sylus#lnds sylus#love and deepspace sylus#love and deepspace scenarios#love and deepspace#lads fanfic#also wrote this on a whim due to stress work so it's not my best but at least got it outta my system :')
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Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people. [...] By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added—up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly. The results were immediate, starting with that horrific holiday body count in the closing days of 1926. Public health officials responded with shock. “The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol,” New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference. “[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible.” His department issued warnings to citizens, detailing the dangers in whiskey circulating in the city: “[P]ractically all the liquor that is sold in New York today is toxic,” read one 1928 alert. He publicized every death by alcohol poisoning. He assigned his toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, to analyze confiscated whiskey for poisons—that long list of toxic materials I cited came in part from studies done by the New York City medical examiner’s office. Norris also condemned the federal program for its disproportionate effect on the country’s poorest residents. Wealthy people, he pointed out, could afford the best whiskey available. Most of those sickened and dying were those “who cannot afford expensive protection and deal in low grade stuff.” And the numbers were not trivial. In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry. “Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating the Prohibition statutes,” proclaimed Sen. James Reed of Missouri.
This isn't particularly relevant to anything specific. I just wanted to remind everyone this is something the US government did.
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LONDON -- South Korean prosecutors formally indicted President Yoon Suk Yeol on Sunday, charging him with insurrection over his brief imposition of martial law in December, according to opposition lawmakers and South Korean media.
"The prosecution has decided to indict Yoon Suk Yeol, who is facing charges of being a ringleader of insurrection," Democratic Party spokesman Han Min-soo told a press conference, Reuters reported. "The punishment of the ringleader of insurrection now begins finally."
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Hard Launching ∘°∘♡∘°∘
Summary: lando and y/n wanted to hard launch their relationship after dating secretly for a while. lando finds the perfect way to do so.
☘ ln x reader ✧˖*°࿐
☘ fluff + humour ✧˖*°࿐
masterlist ☾☼
lando and y/n had been discussing for a while about hard launching their relationship. they had managed to keep it out of the media for an entire season, but the media liked to paint lando as a villain, in more ways than one. not only were they attacking his skills on track, they began collecting pictures of lando with women, no matter how many years ago, and publishing them with articles about him being a womanizer.
the funniest ones were the pictures of lando and her sister out on some bonding time. reading those articles always made y/n laughed, and she would be lying if she said that she didn’t have them bookmarked in her browser for a pick me up when she was having a bad day.
at first, they had thought of doing a simple post with a cheesy caption. enough to let the fans knows that he was off the market again. but, it also felt kind of boring, and that was not lando or y/n’s style.
they discussed it for weeks, looking at different social media websites for inspiration, until it struck lando. scrolling through instagram, he’d found the perfect way to hard launch his relationship with his girlfriend.
when y/n asked him, he said, “you’ll just have to wait like the rest of the world, my love. but, i know you’re going to love it.”
y/n waited, just like he had told her to. she waited for two months, until one day, in the middle of her work, she received the instagram notification of lando posting and tagging her. this was the moment, y/n thought.
opening instagram, she found a reel, instead of a post or a story like she assumed. quickly, wearing her airpods, y/n clicked on the reel, increasing the volume in the background.
the reel opened with someone recording lando as he walked, head down and concentrated. the person recording said, “excuse me, what are you listening to right now?”
lando took out one of his airpods, and said, “my girlfriend yapping,” and then walked away.
the reel immediately cut to different instances of y/n talking and lando patiently listening. they were all sped up videos, and y/n watched her animated hands as she ranted, and lando listening, changing his position every so often. the music in the background was a lively, jaunty sound, and it fit so well with the reel.
there were a series of videos, from their home, from the paddock, from conference rooms where they were waiting for zak, or even from the gym where lando worked out, and y/n basically followed him, still talking his ear off. there were multiple videos of them on facetime as well, or screenshots of their hour - hour and half long conversations.
y/n laughed. it truly was the perfect way for lando to hard launch their relationship. it described them perfectly, if she did say so herself.
scrolling through the comments, she saw a lot of fans crying that he was a taken man now. she saw some saying things like, “this is the realest representation of a relationship.” there were some hate comments too, but they were stupid, so she ignored them.
she commented on the post as well, typing, “wait till i send you a 20 minute voice note on my lunch break” to which lando immediately responded with, “can’t wait, i got my airpods and my phone fully charged”
y/n laughed again, opening her text messaging app, and sending a quick “i love you this was perfect” to her boyfriend.
·̩̩̥͙*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙˚˚•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙˚*·̩̩̥͙
hi! i hope you guys enjoyed this! it came to me while i was driving to college! this is my prompt list, so y'all can select a number, give me a driver and i will write it as soon as possible! i also have a google form for a taglist if anyone's interested! you can sent in your requests here :)
taglist: @maketheshadowsfearyou ; @anamiad00msday
#f1#formula 1#lando norris#formula one#ln4#f1 imagine#lando norris imagine#lando norris x you#lando norris x reader#lando norris fanfic#lando x reader#lando imagine#ln4 fluff#ln4 imagine#ln4 fic#ln x reader#ln
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Caught in the Act: Stepdad!Joel Miller X F!Reader
Summary: Joel catches his stepdaughter with her boyfriend and decides to show her who’s really in charge.
Warnings: Unhappy marriage, mommy and daddy issues, drinking. Smut Containing: Age Gap (Reader is 18+ with undisclosed age, Joel in late 30s), Joel is your stepdad (don't read if your not into that), Daddy Kink, Breeding Kink, Caught in the Act (Reader with secret boyfriend), Jealousy, Cheating, Spanking, Fingering, Kissing, Oral (F!Receiving), Unprotected P in V, Creampie, Pet Names: Darling, Baby girl, Little girl, Daddy.
Word Count: 4.5K
MINORS DO NOT INTERACT
Please feel free to like and repost. Click here if you’d like more stories from me. Text divider from @cafekitsune. Free color text generator. If you'd like more Joel Miller stories, please go check out @pearlessance.
In the beginning, Joel Miller had hoped he would make a great stepfather. He hoped he would get along with you, find ways to make you laugh, get to know all your interests, and maybe help with schoolwork. He had been a father before, after all. He was sure he could do it again, even if you were already a teenager with your own life. He could guarantee you were safe, loved, and had a warm bed to come home to.
But, it turned out, you were completely different than what he had experienced with his daughter, Sarah. She was grown now, off to a big city hours away from him. Joel always thought she was easy to raise, but after living with you for the past two years, he was one hundred percent sure being a stepdad was nearly impossible. Now, he would settle to know he was a ‘kinda okay’ stepfather.
Joel knew that you hadn’t really done anything wrong. You were a good girl, always coming home before curfew, making all A’s in your senior year, and never bringing around any shitty dudes. But fuck, if you weren’t slowly ruining his life with your little outfits and teasing glares. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, the way your eyes lingered on him, but he could feel you in the back of his mind all the time.
Maybe it would have been easier for him to manage if it happened slowly, the gutted feeling he got when looking at you. But it came on fast, like a truck traveling ninety miles per hour into a brick wall the day you moved in. He hated to admit it, but a part of him deep down in the darkest pits of his decaying soul, loved it. A kind of unimaginable pain he craved constantly, like when you get a small bruise and can’t help but press into the discolored skin. You know that icky, repulsive feeling you get when you touch wet food in the sink? That was how he felt every time he looked at you, his skin recoiling into itself as you hugged him goodbye, your arms wrapped loosely around his waist.
The fantasies were the absolute worst, haunting him like an uninvited spirit watching in a dark corner of every room. He would imagine the most ghastly, devilish images when he was alone. Ones where you would be all spread open for him, letting him devour your swollen pussy while he pumped his fingers in and out of you. Ones where you were waiting on your knees at the front door, a perfect set of lingerie displaying your tits as you sat with your mouth open, waiting for him to come home from work and fuck your little throat. Ones where you were screaming into your pillow as he stretched you open with his thick cock, pounding you into the mattress until you were begging him to stop. It was driving him insane. Insane like he couldn’t control himself. Insane like he wondered if he might have needed to get some serious professional help.
There was a time when he had truly loved his wife. At least he thought he did, hoped it. But she was always so busy, traveling out of town for some important work conference or meetings. He hated being lonely in his own home, hated that he fell asleep knowing you were right down the hall, no one stopping him from sneaking into your room and taking you like a dirty little whore. You didn't deserve it. He knew you were a good girl, an intoxicating innocent clouding his mind. It was exhilarating but left a bad, sour taste in his mouth, sort of like biting into a rotten piece of fruit. His wife was becoming more of an annoyance, her body never helping ease the pain of you. He would try, truly he would. But every time her hands landed on his skin, he thought of you, sleeping alone down the hall.
“Joel?” Tommy waved his hand in front of his face, “Joel?”
Joel shook his head, eyes darting to his brother and thoughts snapping back to reality. “Huh?” Joel pitched the bridge of his nose before running his hand through his hair. “Sorry. Uh, what were you sayin?” He sat quietly across from Tommy, his broad shoulders pressed lazily into the small booth, red vinyl sticking to his back.
“You okay? You haven't listened to a word I’ve said.” Tommy laughed, taking a swig of his beer and eating stale french fries.
“Actually, I ain't feeling very good. Think I might be sick,” Joel muttered his words, hoping he was putting on a believable show. He felt fine. He just wanted to be back home. Back with his girl. As much as he loved his brother, he was begging to be close to you, not in some shitty dive bar avoiding the flirty glare from the bartender.
“You should get home, rest.” Tommy stood, throwing down a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket.
“Yeah, it's getting late anyway”. Joel dragged his body from the booth, slamming down the rest of his drink and grabbing his keys.
It took everything in Joel’s body not to sprint to his truck, his boots stomping across the gravel parking lot. He jumped into the truck, the engine rowing to life. His jaw was clenched, music vibrating through the speakers as he gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white and tight against the worn out leather.
He stumbled into the house, shoulders dropping and his eyes falling to the cold hardwood floor as he walked inside. The house was eerily quiet, the living room dark and empty. He had expected you to be in your usual place, sitting on the couch, wearing a tiny pair of shorts and a crop top that somehow showed way too much and nothing at the same time. His hands rested at his sides, eyes darting to your bedroom with a slight frown.
You knew it was wrong, the way your panties instantly soaked in a pool of arousal anytime you were alone with Joel Miller. It was happening at an alarming rate lately, your mother always gone on work trips or fancy dinners. It was agonizing, your skin constantly on fire for a man you could never touch. You couldn’t pinpoint the exact day or even moment when you started pinning for the man. He was just always around, messy hair always falling in his eyes in the morning, eyes sparkling in the sun as he mowed the grass, and the way he rolled his sleeves up, the material hugging his toned shoulders as he washed the dishes. He was a goddamn masterpiece waiting for you to fall apart and end up in arms. It was wrong on every account. He was rough, older than you by a good fifteen years. Not to mention, he was married to your mother.
You relished in the fact you were finally home alone, the perfect opportunity to get yourself some type of release from the constant yearning. Joel didn't like leaving you alone. Your mother was already gone all the time and he wasn’t going to be another person in your life too busy to show up when you needed him. As much as you loved being around him, feeling his gaze from across the room, you needed a night to yourself. You knew you shouldn’t. You wanted to respect Joel and his house, but it wasn’t nearly enough to stop you.
You laid on your bed, a loose t-shirt hanging off your shoulders, goosebumps rising over your body. You had been seeing a guy for a few months, keeping him a tightly wrapped secret. He was sweet, tall, and smart. The boy hovered over you, his hands falling to your hips as you grind into him, lips lightly parting and panting breaths flowing from you. His fingers grazed the hem of your red panties, the material hugging your waist. He brushed his lips over ours, pulling you into a gentle kiss. Not enough to send any sparks but enough to leave you whining and body raving. His hands traveled lower, dipping just inside your panties. You gasp, bucking your hips into his hand for any type of friction. You were so close to a release, hoping it would help settle the growing need for Joel. You had to stop yourself from imagining him, stop yourself from moaning his name as the boy dipped a finger inside you.
Joel stood in the living room, debating on whether to knock on your door. Maybe you were hungry? Maybe you needed help with that new anatomy project? He lingered towards the door, hand hovering over the handle when he heard a quiet whimper. He listened for a moment longer, the sound of small moans reverberating on the other side. He should knock, he knows that. But in a second of impulse, he was swiftly throwing the door open.
“What the fuck?” Disdain dripped off his tongue, his broad shoulders standing in your doorframe as you lay on the bed, legs spread open. The boy’s hands roamed over your body, kissing your neck and palming at your panties.
“Joel, oh my god! Get out,” you yelped, quickly pushing the boy off of you. You watched as the muscles in Joel’s jaw tightened, the veins in his throat contracting as he swallowed a huff of air.
The boy stood in front of you, helpless fear written all over his face. “I’m uh...I-I’m gonna go,” he muttered, quickly throwing on a pair of Nike Sneakers. God, he looked pathetic. Weak and small next to the man you had really been longing for.
“Yeah. You do that.” Joel cut his eyes at the boy, begging him to give Joel a reason. Joel wanted nothing more than to throw that kid against the wall and fuck him up so bad the cops would have to drag him out. But, he held back, hands crossed around his chest, the muscles in his shoulders flexing against his body. The boy awkwardly slipped through Joel, his eyes on the floor and shoulder shrugging. He squeezed himself between Joel’s large frame and the doorway, quickly leaving with a slight slam of the front door.
You felt your body trembling, the edge of euphoria quickly fading and leaving you feeling empty. You felt your throat go dry, fingers shaky as you looked at Joel, your eyes darting between him, the floor, and your quivering fingers.
“Who the hell was that?” Joel stepped into the room, scanning the way your bottom lip pouted, eyes full of regret and fear. It was cute, the way you were avoiding looking at him, but he needed to see the look in your eyes when he was talking to you.
“No one,” you whispered, voice barely audible over the sound of Joel’s hitched breaths.
“No one? You let…no one touch you like…that?” Anger rose higher, Joel’s voice thick with venom and a hint of disgust.
“N-No. I-I.” You shifted in your bed, sitting on the mattress with a ‘thud’. “He’s just some guy I’ve been talking to”.
“Does this ‘guy’ have a name?” Joel stood at the foot of your bed, his feet planted in the carpet. His eyes filled with darkness.
“R-Ryan.” You spoke matter-of-fact, skin growing hot with embarrassment.
“Ryan?” Joel sucked his teeth, his tongue pressed against his lips as he repeated the boy's name. Stupid and plain, he thought. He wasn’t even hot. He looked like a fucking nerd. Were these the kind of guys you actually liked? He definitely wasn't good enough for you and Joel could guarantee whatever he was about to do with you would have been over in five minutes. You deserved so much more than that. Deserved a real man. A man who could give you everything you needed, leave your body exhausted and voice raspy from screaming. “And what were you and ‘Ryan’ doin’?”
You somehow mustered up the courage to look up at Joel, your cheeks flustered and on the verge of tears. “Nothing,” you mumbled again, eyes quickly falling down Joel’s body.
“Didn’t look like nothin’. Looked like you were about to spread those little legs for him. Were you gonna let that kid fuck you?” Joel stalked towards you, his large frame lingering over you like a lion stalked its prey.
You cringed at his words hating the way it made your body all hot. “N-No! I swear. I wasn’t. I just…” You shifted again, pulling your shirt down in hopes of hiding the wetness formed in between your thighs.
“Just what? You were just under him, lettin’ him rub your pussy and you weren’t gonna fuck ‘em?” Joel grabbed your chin, his calloused fingers pulled at the soft skin, forcing you to look up and meet his gaze as his thumb stroked your cheek softly.
“I-” You tried to speak, words harshly cut off.
“Were you gonna suck his dick?” Joel dragged his thumb across your bottom lip, pressing into the soft skin. “Think that kid could actually give you what you need?”Joel chuckled, a sinister vibration shuddering through you. “You need to learn some goddamn respect, sweetheart. Bringin’ a boy like that into my house”.
“I-I’m sorry, Joel. Please, I-I thought you would be gone longer.” Every nerve on your body is electrified with the soft touch of Joel's callous hands, a heavy contrast between his words. He was so close, the smell of whisky on his breath wafting between you.
“You’re sorry?” Joel huffed, “I don’t think you’re sorry, darlin’. Think ya’ liked it. Think ya’ wanted more, huh?”
You stared up at Joel. You hesitated but voiclessly shook your head yes. There was no point in trying to hide it, not with your flustered cheeks and glossed-over eyes.
“Think I need to teach a lesson about what happens to little girls like you.” Joel sat next to you, his chest expanding with each breath as he pulled your arms, directing your body until you were all sprawled out, ass in his lap and face in the blankets. He tugged at the bottom of your shirt, bunching the material at your waist to finally reveal those tiny red panties, your cunt swollen and outlined under the lace.
“Look at these fucking panties. Got all dressed up for him, huh?” Joel’s fingers travel to the thin material between your legs, hooking at the fabric before letting it go with a loud ‘pop’. He caressed your skin, calloused hands squeezing at the fat of your thighs.
You flinched, your skin begging for more of him. Goosebumps rose across your body and your breath hitched in your throat, waiting as Joel’s hands lingered on your ass.
“Joel, What are you-,” A loud slap echoed across the room, Joel’s strong hands striking the curvy fat of your ass cheek hard. Your body rejected the sensation, causing you to stur against him, hips writhing in a stinging pain.
“Stay still,” Joel demanded, his words rushing through you like lightning strikes a metal pole. He struck you hard again, hand lingering on your skin a moment too long, caressing you before he spanked you again.
“Ow!” You immediately cried out at the unexpected impact. Your skin stung, and a red handprint started to form.
Joel ignored your plea, slapping you again. This time, harder, enough to almost make you cry.
“Joel, ow!” A tear formed in your eye and your back arched with each impact. “I’m sorry, Joel. Please, I’ll be a good girl”.
“Don’t think you’ve learned your lesson yet, darlin’,” Joel hit you again, fingers traveling down to your panties for the second time.
“Look at how fucking wet you are. You're dripping all over my lap, sweetheart.” You moaned at his words, his hands palming at the sensitive skin, panties adding a rough sensation as he rubbed small circles on your clit. “This all for me or did that dumb boy do this?”
“Fuck, Joel. P-please,” You bucked your hips, ass on fire but begging for more.
“Answer me,” Joel growled, striking you again. His fingers moved just slow enough to work you up, but leave you whining for more.
“Ahh! J-just y-you. I don’t e-even like h-him,” you yelped, cold air hitting your body as Joel reached for your top, swiftly pulling it over your arms and past your head.
“Ya’ don’t even like him? Then why was he in my house? Why were you lettin’ him touch what’s mine?” His fingers returned to your cunt, settling on your soft skin and tugging on the lace. Finally, he was pulling the fabric down your legs, exposing that glistening pussy he had been craving for an eternity.
“I’m sorry, daddy.” You swallowed hard, mouth going dry as you laid completely naked over him. Your ass stung and your pussy was crying.
Joel spread your swollen lips, using two fingers to expose the arousal leaking from your tight hole. “Look at that,” Joel whispered, his fingers softly rubbing the outside of your soft lips, gathering your arousal thick on his fingers. He moved slowly, expertly rubbing your clit in a figure eight motion. You shuddered, the feeling just enough to add a sense of pleasure under the pain of your abused skin. You bucked your hips back into his hand, little moans falling out of you.
His free hand traveled lower, lightly circling the soaking skin of your cunt, tight and swollen as he pressed his finger gently inside.
“Oh god,” you squealed, Joel’s finger pressing right against that sweet spot.
“So responsive. This is what ya’ like, huh?” He curled his finger up, his other hand still massaging your clit. “Like makin’ a mess on your stepdaddy's fingers?” He whispered, quickly adding a second finger to pump into you. “I know you do. You’re fuckin’ drippin’, baby girl”.
Every muscle in Joel’s body was flexing, his toned arms stiff as he hits that sweet spot over and over again. The sensation is almost too much, your stomach tightening as he stretches you out.
“Fuck, daddy. Please”, you cry, your mouth falling open as Joel ignores all your pleas for mercy. That tight feeling in your stomach grows, and shaky legs cause your hips to falter.
“I know you're close, baby girl. Cum on your daddy’s fingers. It’s okay.” Joel struggled to keep you from sliding off his fingers, your walls tightening around him as his fingers press into your velvet skin.
“Joel!” You’re practically crying, eyes gripped close as a rush of euphoria flows through you. Everything in you relaxes, that sweet sensation leaving you vibrating with pleasure.
“Good girl,” Joel mutters, eyes locked on the way your body is sucking his fingers in, your juices running down his hand. Joel hesitates for a moment. He thinks about fucking you with his fingers until you're a burning pile of ash under him. Reluctantly, he decides to show some type mercy, gently helping you lay back on the bed.
He positions you on your back, your knees bent so your feet lay flat against the blanket. Before he can think, before he can force himself to get up and walk out the door, he is sinking to his knees and wrapping his arms around your thighs.
“Let me clean you up, darlin’,” Joel mutters, placing gentle kisses down your stomach.
He settles on your thighs, lightly biting at the skin and sucking harsh red marks. He spreads your legs wider, hovering his face above your core. He can guarantee your little boyfriend was not planning on doing this.
Jole’s breath lands on your pussy, hot and slow as he licks a long stripe through your folds. Fuck, that’s the taste he had been dreaming of, like heaven oozing out of you and onto his tastebuds. He uses the tip of his tongue to tease your clit, flicking it up and down against you. Your hands fall to his thick hair, tugging at the loose strands that fall down his forehead. Joel hums, sending a vibration through you as his spit mixes with your wetness.
His tongue traces every part of your core, settling back on your clit. This time harsher, like he's on a mission. His teeth graze the gentle skin, fingers digging into your thighs as you fuck his mouth. You're a mess under him, bucking your hips into his mouth as he sucks at the plump skin.
“That’s it. Just like that. Cum on your daddy’s mouth, little girl”. Joel’s words echo through you, his tongue ripping another orgasm through you like a hot blade cuts through rubber. It's gentler but just powerful, leaving your mind foggy and breathless.
“Such a good girl,” Joel growls, quickly forcing himself to stand. Finally, he gets a real look at your body. Your hair is already messy, red strands falling down your shoulders. Your nipples are swollen, the dark pink buds standing on edge. Fuck, you were breathtaking.
Joel knew this was the moment that he truly couldn’t come back from. Maybe there was nothing wrong with just helping his girl get off. It was safer with him, he thought. But actually, fucking you? It would be too much. He should leave. He taught you a lesson. Taught you who you really belong to, right? He thought it would be easier. Thought he could stop whenever he was getting too close to crossing that line of no return, but his feet were planted in the ground and his cock was throbbing against the zipper of his jeans.
Your eyes pleaded up at him, pupils dilated as you watched in silence. You didn't look scared and he found no hint of regret in your eyes. You looked happy even, a slight smile on your face.
“Think you can take your daddy’s dick?” He stood above you, watching your pussy dripping with his saliva.
You nodded your head, arms grazing the soft skin of your stomach. He shouldn’t fold this easily. He should’ve made you say it, how much you wanted him. But that little nod was all he needed to kick off his boots and pull the zipper of his blue jeans down.
“Just, fuck…Your mom can never know”. Joel pulled at his shirt, swiftly throwing it up over his head. His broad shoulders were finally on display, the muscles in his arms all toned. You had never seen him like this, his chest sprinkled with greying hair. He was like a Roman painting, his stomach firm but with a little bit of extra fat to grab onto. A true dad bod, you thought.
“I know. J-Just want you. All of you,” you muttered, sitting up on your forearms as you watched him pull his jeans down his legs, leaving him in a pair of dark briefs. You could tell from here just how hard his cock was, the fabric strained and tight against him.
“I know, baby girl. Think I don’t see it? The way you're always watchin’ me? Or the way you grab my arms when ya’ laugh? Fuckin’ drives me crazy, ya know.” Joel stepped closer, his heart pounding in his chest. God, he really was about to fuck the little girl he was supposed to be helping raise. I mean, it’s not like you shared blood or anything. He wasn’t actually your dad. He was just a guy…married to your mom.
“Just let me know…if gets to be too much,” Joel groaned, closing his eyes as he swallowed. He cursed himself for this, pulling his boxers off his hips. As much as he hated it, his cock sprang free, dripping with precum as he dragged his body to hover over you. It was a sweet relief, the air hitting him as he pumped his hand up and down his dick.
Joel spread your legs wider, his hips falling over yours as pulled you into a hungry kiss. His lips meet yours with a subtle taste of whiskey and you. His tongue slowly licks at your lips, his hands gripping your hips as he lines himself up to your entrance. You open your mouth a bit, letting him trace his tongue against yours, exploring every crevice of your mouth. The tip of his cock brushes against your clit, his large member teasing you and gathering your wetness.
“Please,” you whine. Your arms fall down Joel’s shoulders, meeting his eyes as he gently presses his tip past your folds.
“Fuck, baby. So fuckin’ tight.” Joel growled, pushing himself inside you with a sweet burning stretch.
“Oh, Joel!” You moan, your throat tightening around your words as he sinks deeper inside you. You're taking half his cock now, so much bigger than the boy you had been seeing.
“I got you, baby. Doing so good.” Joel’s head fell into the crease of your neck, placing hot kisses as he hit the back of your pussy. He stayed like this for a moment, letting you get used to the feeling of him before he pulled back. “That’s a good girl. Takin’ her daddy so well.” Joel dragged himself out, leaving the tip inside before falling completely back into you, brushing against your g-spot like a pro.
“Feel so good,” you whine, your nails dragging down his back as he picks up speed.
“God, baby girl. Fuckin’ doing so good.” He tries to hold back, hips growing just slightly rough as he fucks deep into you.
Your body is trembling again, your heart sinking with every thrust and a single tear runs down your cheek. He was so big, hitting your cervix over and over again.
That feeling was quick to creep back, your chest tightening as he pounded into you, cock pumping in and out faster and rougher.
“Daddy, please,” You cried, your body fighting off the euphoria as Joel pressed his weight against you.
“It’s okay. Cum on Daddy’s big dick,” Joel growled, no longer stopping himself from making a complete mess of you. He watched your eyes flutter close, your back arching off the bed and your hands digging into the blankets. He snapped his hips, a loud echo ringing out across the room and you clenched around him, thick white cream coating the base of his cock.
Just like that, you were crying out his name and shaking uncontrollably. Your orgasm ripped through you, hard and undeniable.
“Daddy! Fuck yes!” You screamed, your hips bucking into him as you bit into his shoulder.
“Fuck, that’s it.” Joel ground against you, hips never faulting as you withered under him. “Like Daddy’s cock, huh?” He growled, his own high building as he watched you shudder at his touch.
“I love it, daddy. Love your dick so much,” You whined, forcing your walls to open up for him.
“Yeah? Wish I was fucking you a long time ago baby. Wanted to since I met ya’.” Joel’s rhythm grew messy, hips slapping into you at an unprecedented pace. “Gonna let your daddy cum inside your little pussy?”
“Yes, please Daddy. Want your cum,” You stuttered, your voice all raspy and barely audible.
Fuck. Joel couldn't stop himself and he was thrusting as deep as he could, sinking all the way inside you until his balls landed on your clit. You were so beautiful, so tight around him that his mind was all clouded and drunk.
“Goddamn. That’s my good girl. Lettin’ her daddy get her pregnant. Want to carry my baby huh? Get all swollen while your mom’s out of town. Bet she wouldn’t even notice.” Before he could stop himself, he was painting your walls white, fucking every drop of his cum deep inside you with a painful need.
“Yes, Daddy!” You whined, watching as Joel slowly pulled out, his cum dripping down your leg. He dragged himself off of you, hitting the mattress with deep panting breaths.
“Love ya’, sweetheart. Always have.” Joel muttered, his words spread out and uneven as he pulled your back against his chest. His mind was racing, the reality of what he had just done weighing on him like a ton of bricks.
He should have knocked.
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