#congress promise to up

[robertreich]

Project 2025: The MAGA Plan to Take Your Freedom 

A second Trump term would be more dangerous than the first — in part because of something called Project 2025, a plan to extend Trump’s grip into every part of your life.

Trump’s gross incompetence in his first term wasn’t all bad. It kept some of his most extreme goals out of reach. That’s why his inner circle, including more than 20 officials from his first term, have written a step-by-step playbook to make a second term brutally efficient.

At nearly a thousand pages, it’s longer than most Stephen King novels, and a lot scarier. The Associated Press wasn’t kidding when they called it “a plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision,”

Project 2025 is a road map to ban abortion, give greedy corporate oligarchs everything they want, and strip Americans of our most basic freedoms — all without needing any support from Congress.

There’s more to it than I can get into, but here are three things I want you to know.

#1 How would Project 2025 work?

Every nonpartisan government agency would be turned into an arm of the MAGA agenda.

Some of the worst things Trump reportedly tried to do as president — like having the military  shoot protesters or seize voting machines to overturn the election  — were only stopped because sensible leaders in the military or the professional civil service refused to go along with it.

In a second term, there would be no sensible leaders in the military or professional civil service because Trump would fire anyone more loyal to the Constitution than to him.

Trump started the process in October 2020 with an executive order that would have let him fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA henchmen. I’m talking about traditionally non-political positions, like scientists at scientific agencies and accountants at the IRS.

Trump could not act on the executive order then because he lost the election. If he wins now, he’s pledged to pick up where he left off and go further…

TRUMP: …making every executive branch employee fireable by the President of the United States.

#2 Project 2025 is about controlling Americans’ lives & bodies

Restricting abortion is such a big part of Project 2025 that the word “abortion” appears 198 times in the plan.

Trump largely made good on his campaign promise to ban abortion.

Thanks to Trump’s Supreme Court justices, 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age live in states with abortion bans. Project 2025 would make that even worse, without needing new laws from Congress.

Page 458 of the playbook calls for a MAGA-controlled FDA to reject medical science and reverse approval of the medications used in 63% of all abortions, effectively banning them.

Page 455 plans “abortion surveillance” and the creation of a registry that could put people who cross state lines to get an abortion at risk of prosecution.

Another way around Congress is to enforce arcane laws that are still technically on the books. Page 562 plans for a MAGA-controlled Justice Department to enforce the Comstock Act of 1873, which bans the mailing of “anything designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.” This could be used to block the shipment of any medications or medical instruments needed for abortions.

But Project 2025’s control of American families goes even further. It plans for government agencies to define life as beginning at conception — a position at odds with the process used for in vitro fertilization.

Page 451 declares that “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society,” thereby stigmatizing single parents, same-sex couples, unmarried coparents, and childless couples.

Project 2025 even takes a stand against adoption, declaring on p. 489 that “all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”

#3 Project 2025 would turn America into a police state.

Maybe you live in a blue city or state, where you think plans like arresting teachers and librarians over banned books (which is on p. 5) could never happen. Well, guess again.

Trump has said one of the big things he’d do differently in a second term is override mayors and governors to take over local law enforcement.

Page 553 lays out how to do this, and even plans for Trump’s Justice Department to prosecute district attorneys he disagrees with.

Immigration enforcement is to be conducted like a war, with the military deployed within the U.S., and millions of undocumented immigrants rounded up and placed into newly constructed holding camps. This is outlined starting on p. 139.

Members of the Project 2025 team also reportedly told the Washington Post about plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against anti-Trump protests.

There is much more to Project 2025. There are more than a hundred pages of anti-environmental policies that would help Trump make good on what he reportedly promised to do for oil executives if they contribute a billion dollars to his reelection. It would make drilling and mining a top national priority while killing clean energy projects, barring the EPA from regulating carbon emissions, and replacing all government climate scientists with climate deniers.

There are even cartoonishly cruel plans like slaughtering wild horses. Yes, that’s really in there on p. 528.

I thought I understood the stakes of this election, but reading this plan… Well, it gave me chills. If Trump gets the chance to put this plan into place, he will. The country it would turn America into would be hard for any of us to recognize.

[batboyblog]

The governor was firm: Nebraska would reject the new federal money for summer meals. The state already fed a small number of children when schools closed. He would not sign on to a program to provide all families that received free or cut-rate school meals with cards to buy groceries during the summer.

“I don’t believe in welfare,” the governor, Jim Pillen, a Republican, said in December.

A group of low-income youths, in a face-to-face meeting, urged him to reconsider. One told him she had eaten less when schools were out. Another criticized the meals at the existing feeding sites and held a crustless prepackaged sandwich to argue that electronic benefit cards from the new federal program would offer better food and more choice.

“Sometimes money isn’t the solution,” the governor replied.

.......

The new $2.5 billion program, known as Summer EBT, passed Congress with bipartisan support, and every Democratic governor will distribute the grocery cards this summer. But Republican governors are split, with 14 in, 13 out and no consensus on what constitutes conservative principle.

One red-state governor (Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas) hailed the cards as an answer to a disturbing problem. Another (Kim Reynolds of Iowa) warned that they might increase obesity. Some Republicans dismissed the program as obsolete pandemic aid. Some balked at the modest state matching costs. Others hinted they might join after taking more time to prepare.

The program will provide families about $40 a month for every child who receives free or reduced-price meals at school —$120 for the summer. The red-state refusals will keep aid from about 10 million children, about a third of those potentially eligible nationwide.

......

As with Medicaid, poor states are especially resistant, though the federal government bears most of the cost. Of the 10 states with the highest levels of children’s food insecurity, five rejected Summer EBT: Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.

Like the school lunch program, it serves families up to 185 percent of the poverty line, meaning a family of three would qualify with an income of about $45,500 or less.

......

Some Republicans, in rejecting the aid, found critics in their own ranks. After Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina dismissed Summer EBT as a duplicative “entitlement,” State Senator Katrina Shealy, a fellow Republican, wrote a column with a Democratic colleague warning that “hunger does not stop during summer break.”

In an interview, Ms. Shealy said the state should not reject $65 million “just because Biden is president,” and perhaps just partly tongue-in-cheek wrapped her plea in Trumpian bunting: “Everyone wants to say, ‘America First’ — well, let’s feed our children first.”

Oklahoma initially said it rejected the program because federal officials had not finalized the rules. But responding to critics, Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, sharpened his attack, calling Summer EBT a duplicative “Biden administration program” that would “cause more bureaucracy for families.”

Tribal governments, which have influence over large parts of the state, stepped in. Already feuding with Mr. Stitt, they promised to distribute cards to all eligible families on their land, regardless of tribal status, while bearing the $3 million administrative cost. The five participating tribes will cover nearly 40 percent of Oklahoma’s eligible children, most of them not Native American.

“I remain dumbfounded that the governor of Oklahoma would turn down federal tax dollars to help feed low-income children,” said Chuck Hoskin Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

-------------------------

some of the most stunning highlights of this story.

All I got to say is, let's feed the children? every single Democratic Governor took the money to feed the kids, every governor who rejected it, every single one, is a Republican. If you don't vote for Democrats you are STEALING food out of kids mouths.

[sleepinthrumyalarms]

— power plays, pillow talk

pairing: victoria neuman x fem!reader

warnings:: smut, lesbian sex, size difference, strapon referred to as cock

summary:: a bottle of good wine, homemade dinner, a sweet little thing warming up her bed – what more could victoria possibly ask for after a long workday?

word count:: 1.5k

a/n: wow i'm rusty, haven't written smut in a good long while. starting off a bit vanilla with vicky. also she would 100% talk you thru it. i don't make the rules

never in her life had victoria neuman ever felt the need to compensate for something. a woman in power, in more ways than one, she never needed to climb through the ranks, simply gliding through them, a casualty or two on the way.

she had it all – a big car, a big house, a big desk at the Congress.

so you suppose it’s fitting; the big, girthy toy she has strapped around her hips under the material of her dress pants.

it’s huge, actually – got to be six inches at the very least, and that’s without taking into consideration the fact that you’ve never had any eye at all – of a dark, wine red color, the thick, thoughtfully lubed shaft glistening under the dim lights.

that one image of a hamster chomping down on a banana ten times his size pops up in your head.

your throat bobs with a soft gulp — oh god. you’re the hamster.

but victoria is nothing if not considerate. a soft silky pillow is lying under the small of your back, angling you properly for her, and the bedroom you share smells distinctly of something dark and woodsy, heady but not enough to overwhelm, the scented candles a welcome sensation that serves to relax you further.

when her hands grab ahold of your hips, thumbs pressing into the hipbones, you buck into her touch involuntarily. you’re not sure if it’s anxiety or arousal.

“no-no, that won’t do, pretty girl…” victoria chides softly, gives a playful little squeeze as a warning. “you promised you’d be good."

well, that’s true. you did.

you’re almost embarrassed – two glasses of cabernet sauvignon in and you’re already unable to think of anything but how much you want her. your skin tingles with anticipation, the gentle pressure of her hands grounding you as they slowly map their way up and down your body, caressing the undersides of your breasts, your shoulders, the plane of your belly. the warmth of the room wraps around you like a comforting embrace, the scent of the candles mingling with the subtle notes of the woman’s perfume – victoria’s hands work your body like dough, and that combined with the sight of the powerful politician standing between your thighs, all veneer and perfect composure, dark brown eyes trailing over your naked form like a feast is enough for your legs to part further. she doesn’t even have to ask.

“just like that, sweet thing. open up for me,” her palms rest on your thighs and she leans in to press a few gentle kisses to the side of your neck.

it’s intoxicating – her touch, her scent, how tender she’s with you, loving. you’re so aroused it’s starting to hurt.

“vicky…”

“i know, i know,” she murmurs. “need to get you ready for me first.”

she slides her ring finger through the warm petals of your pussy, humming at the wetness gathered there, and she can’t help but indulge herself. she leans down, face level with your cunt, and licks a thick stripe through the dripping warmth, teasing another involuntarily buck of your hips and a whimper from you.

you should’ve known she’d be too greedy to waste all that sweetness on her fake cock — she laps and slurps at you with gentle vigor, palm squeezing your hip to keep you from bucking into her mouth again. it’s a soft, affectionate kind of pleasure — victoria doesn’t rush, doesn’t push you too much too soon, deliberately avoiding your puffy clit to keep from any possible overstimulation.

you sigh softly, leaning your head back against the pillows, but before you can enjoy the heavenly sensation any further, she pulls away with one last flat lick, guiding your thigh to press against her hip.

the head of the toy pushes tantalizingly against your entrance, its smooth surface just barely parting your folds before she pulls back, sliding the silicone along your slit once more – the motion is slow and deliberate, the toy gliding easily through your wetness, teasing you with its presence. every so often victoria lets the tip dip inside, a fleeting, electrifying intrusion that leaves you aching for more, before withdrawing it again. the sensation sends shivers up your spine, your body instinctively arching towards the source of pleasure – but you know she’s doing it to get you nice and ready for her, as if the sloppy little courtesy licks weren’t enough.

"fuck, you're so wet," she whispers, her voice thick with satisfaction. "so eager. it's almost too easy."

she presses her hips more firmly this time, her cock breaching your entrance and slipping inside with a smooth, deliberate motion. the sensation is overwhelming, your body accommodating the intrusion with a mixture of relief and intense pleasure. she holds herself there for a moment, letting you feel the stretch and fullness.

god, it’s big – bigger than anything you’ve ever taken before. for a moment an alarming thought of not being able to fit the intimidating girth inside you shoots through your lust-clouded brain, but the smile on victoria’s painted lips tells you that she will make sure you do.

you tilt your head back with a shaky breath, and she chuckles, leaning in to nose at your earlobe, “good?”

biting your lip, you manage a nod in reply, hiding your face in her neck as you try to process the sensation.

victoria sets a slow, torturous pace, pulling out almost completely before sliding back in, her thighs kissing the backs of your legs. her hand shifts from your hip to your navel, gently sliding along your skin and pressing against your warm, sensitive stomach for purchase – the action so undeniably erotic it has a broken moan tearing from your mouth.

“oh?” victoria quirks a thick eyebrow, perfect white teeth peeking out to worry a plump lip between them. “does that feel good, sweet girl?”

her palm presses just the slightest bit firmer, enough to heighten the pleasure of her silicone cock pushing deep inside of your cunt deliciously as her fingers sprawl over the flesh of your belly — it flutters under her hand, muscles struggling to accommodate the enormous intrusion.

“d’you feel me here?” she asks, voice a silky purr, dripping with control and a hint of amusement as her hips drive the toy deeper into you, each thrust deliberate, strong, unyielding. “such a pretty tummy, baby… so, so perfect.”

you can’t even speak.

victoria leans down, her breath warm against your ear as she whispers, “i love how you open up for me… how you take every inch like you were made for this.”

the pressure in your stomach intensifies as she slows her movements, dragging each thrust out to an agonizing pace. her thick cock feels impossibly full inside you, stretching you in a way that teeters on the edge of pain and ecstasy.

"such a good girl, letting me stretch you, fill you up. gonna make it the only size you’ll ever take. the only that can ever satisfy you.”

she shifts her hips, the change in angle making you gasp as the toy hits that sweet spot inside you, the pleasure so intense it almost hurts. victoria's other hand that isn't busy trying to feel herself through the thin wall of flesh of your belly moves to prop herself next to your head, caging you in with her presence, and you reach to desperately hold onto her bicep, fingers digging into the dark blue of her power suit she has insisted on keeping draped over her shoulders.

“there you are, pretty girl. so close. so, so close, sweet thing. need you to cum for me."

victoria's pace quickens, hips snapping forward, and with a final, shuddering breath, you let go, the pleasure crashing over you in waves, overwhelming and all-consuming. she guides you through it, soft, reassuring whispers as she follows you into bliss, a guttural groan escaping her lips – for a moment the world is nothing but the two of you, tangled together in a haze of pleasure.

with the waves of white ecstasy beginning to ebb, she slows her thrusts to a gentle rhythm before withdrawing slowly, the loss of her presence inside you almost as intense as when she was buried deep. you whimper at the emptiness, your body still trembling with aftershocks, and her warm hands soothe the feeling away, a small, amused smile on her full lips, “thoughts?”

as if that isn't obvious.

you groan in response, wrap your arms around the woman’s shoulders to tug her down and press your lips against hers hungrily. then you pull away, breathless in satisfaction, and grin up at her, “fucking amazing. i wasn't even sure it’d be possible.”

victoria hums, her palm caressing your thigh thoughtfully, “in that case… you think you can take more?”

not one for being patient behind closed doors, she grasps your hips, coaxes you onto your stomach with firm hands.

“what am i saying. of course you can take more. cock-hungry little slut.”

the degrading words make you whimper into the silky pillow, and victoria coos, her tone the slightest bit patronizing, “ohh, yes you are, sweet thing. no use denying it.”

her fingers dig into your soft flesh, and suddenly all the warm tenderness is gone from her voice.

“up. don’t make me repeat myself.”

[bemusedlybespectacled]

I don't understand the chevron law thing, could you explain it like I'm five? Should we be working towards fixing whatever the courts just fucked up?

So, okay, I am condensing like a semester of a class I took in 2017 into a very short explanation, but:

It would be really annoying for Congress to individually pass laws approving every new medicine or listing out every single poison you can't have in tap water, so instead there are agencies created by Congress, via a law, to handle a specific thing. The agencies are created by Congress but overseen by the executive branch (so, the president), which is why we say things like "Reagan's EPA" or "Biden's DOJ" - even though Congress creates them, the president determines how they do the thing Congress wants them to do, by passing regulations like "you can't dump cyanide in the local swimming pool" and "no, you can't dump strychnine, either."

However, sometimes people will oppose these regulations by saying that the agency is going beyond the task they were given by Congress. "The Clean Air Act only bans 'pollutants,' and nowhere in the law does it say that 'pollutants' includes arsenic! You're going beyond your mandate!" To which the experts at the EPA would be like, "We, the experts at the EPA, have decided arsenic is a pollutant." On the flip side, the EPA could be like, "We, the experts at the EPA, have decided that arsenic isn't a pollutant," and people would oppose that regulation by being like, "But the Clean Air Act bans 'pollutants,' and it's insane to say that arsenic isn't a pollutant!" So whose interpretation is correct, the government's or the challengers'?

Chevron deference basically put heavy weight onto how the agency (i.e. the government) interpreted the law, with the assumption that the agency was in the right and needing pretty strong evidence that they were interpreting it wrong (like, blatantly doing the opposite of a clear part of the law or something). If there was any ambiguity in how the law was written, you'd defer to the agency's interpretation, even if that interpretation was different depending on who was president at the time.

(Note: there are other ways of challenging regulations other than this one, like saying that they were promulgated in a way that is "arbitrary and capricious" – basically, not backed by any evidence/reasoning other than "we want it." Lots of Trump-era regulations got smacked with this one, though I think they'd be better at it if Trump gets a second term, since they've now had practice.)

Chevron deference wasn't all good – remember that the sword cuts both ways, including when dickholes are in power – but it was a very standard part of the law. Like, any opposition to a regulation would have some citation to be like "Chevron doesn't apply here" and every defense would be like "Chevron absolutely applies here" and most of the time, the agency would win. Like, it was a fundamental aspect of law since the 80s.

The Supreme Court decision basically tosses that out, and says, "In a situation where the law is ambiguous, the court decides what it means." That's not completely insane – interpreting law is a thing judges normally do – but in a situation where the interpretation may hinge on something very complicated outside of the judge's wheelhouse, you now cannot be like, "Your Honor, I promise you that the experts at NOAA know a lot about the weather and made this decision for a good reason."

The main reason it's a problem is that it allows judges to override agencies' judgements about what you should do about a thing and what things you should be working on in the first place. However, I don't think there's really a way of enshrining that into law, outside of maybe adding something to the Administrative Procedure Act, and that would require a Congress that isn't majority Republican.

I will say that kind of I expected this to happen, just because IIRC Gorsuch in particular hates Chevron deference. IMO it's a classic case of "rules for me but not for thee" – Scalia and other conservatives used to rely on Chevron because they wanted their presidents to hold a ton of unchecked power (except for the EPA), but now that we've had Obama and Biden, now conservatives don't like Chevron because it gives the presidents they don't like unchecked power.

[metamatar]

This is maybe a stupid question but do you think there's any ties between like orientalist trends in western countries that glorify dharmic religions and Hindutva? Like I've heard 'Hinduism is the oldest religion on Earth' and 'Hinduism/Buddhism are just so much more enlightened than savage Abrahamic religions' and 'how could there be war and oppression in India? Hindus don't believe in violence' from white liberals and it certainly seems *convenient* for Hindutva propaganda, at least.

Not stupid at all! Historically, orientalism precedes modern Hindutva. The notion of a unified Hinduism is actually constructed in the echo of oriental constructions of India, with Savarkar clearly modelling One Nation, One Race, One Language on westphalian nationhood. He will often draw on Max Mueller type of indology orientalists in his writing in constructing the Hindu claim to a golden past and thus an ethnostate.

In terms of modern connections you can see the use and abuse of orientalism in South Asian postcolonial studies depts in the west that end up peddling Hindutva ideology –

The geographer Sanjoy Chakravorty recently promised that, in his new book, he would “show how the social categories of religion and caste as they are perceived in modern-day India were developed during the British colonial rule…” The air of originality amused me. This notion has been in vogue in South Asian postcolonial studies for at least two decades. The highest expression of the genre, Nicholas Dirks’s Castes of Mind, was published in 2001. I take no issue with claiming originality for warmed-over ideas: following the neoliberal mantra of “publish or perish,” we academics do it all the time. But reading Chakravorty’s essay, I was shocked at the longevity of this particular idea, that caste as we know it is an artefact of British colonialism. For any historian of pre-colonial India, the idea is absurd. Therefore, its persistence has less to do with empirical merit, than with the peculiar dynamics of the global South Asian academy.

[...] No wonder that Hindutvadis in both countries are now quoting their works to claim that caste was never a Hindu phenomenon. As Dalits are lynched across India and upper-caste South Asian-Americans lobby to erase the history of their lower-caste compatriots from US textbooks, to traffic in this self-serving theory is unconscionable.

You can see writer sociologists beloved of western academia like Ashish Nandy argue for the "inherent difference of indian civilization makes secularism impossible" and posit that the caste ridden gandhian hinduism is the answer as though the congress wasn't full of hindutva-lites and that the capture of dalit radicalism by electoralism and grift is actually a form of redistribution. Sorry if thats not necessarily relevant I like to hate on him.

Then most importantly is the deployment of "Islamic Colonization" that Hindu India must be rescued from, which is merely cover for the rebrahmanization of the country. This periodization and perspective of Indian history is obviously riven up in British colonial orientalism, see Romila Thapar's work on precolonial India. Good piece on what the former means if you've not engaged with it, fundamentally it posits an eternal Hindu innocence.

[knockoffheart]

Neuman's Guard Dog (1/3)

summary: desperate times call for desperate measures. victoria neuman has procured a vial of compound V and intends to use it on you. she can't always be there to protect you.

warnings: drug coercion, hurt/comfort, graphic descriptions of bodily harm, murder, violence, blood, reader turned supe, body horror, neuman is not a good person (but we still love her), mentions of politics, general ‘The Boys’ show disclaimer, also NO SMUT (rip)

before you read: Reader is aware of Vic's blood powers. NOT aware of Vic's head explosions (ex. congress attack), relationship to Stan Edgar, The Boys (especially Hughie being involved). Sameer and Zoe do not exist in any of my AUs. Reader has been in life-threatening situations before, not a fan of them, but has been in at least two before.

Tensions are rising across the country, the world is getting more dangerous by the minute. There has already been two attempts on Victoria's life, she's made certain you are unaware of this; she's made certain you know nothing of Butcher and his "Boys". The risk of you being hurt because is far too high.

She promises she will make your relationship public after the election, but she's lying. If the world finds out about you, you're dead. Homelander, Butcher, Stan Edgar... they all have the power to kill you, they just need to see the big shiny target on your back first.

-

The hotel room you are staying at is lavish, it makes you feel like a celebrity — which is appreciated when you're really just the Vice President elect's paramour. In reality, you know you're more than that, but being sealed in this room doesn't make you feel like it. You're lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling, listening to a TV reporter cover the election in the background. You pull out your phone and check the voting map, it's more of the same. You groan and roll over, longingly awaiting Victoria's return. The monotonous voice of the reporter lulls you to sleep, only for you to be awoken shortly afterwards by Victoria’s gentle voice.

"I know I was gone longer than I said I would be," she closes the door behind her and sits next to you on the bed, "C'mere."

Victoria motions for you to lay your head in her lap and you oblige. She plays with your hair and stares at the television. Her silence causes you to turn on your back to get a better look at her face. Though her gaze is transfixed towards the screen, you notice her mind is elsewhere.

"You okay, honey?" you ask.

Victoria purses her lips and meets your eyes. Her serious expression causes you to sit up straight. Oh shit, she's gonna’ dump me. You shift uncomfortably, preparing for what's to come.

"I won't always be here to protect you. I- ... I can't deal with the thought of you getting hurt when I'm not around… I’m scared something is going to happen to you." Victoria takes your hands in hers, "I need you to do this for me."

She pulls out a capped needle full of blue liquid. You furrow your brows and gawk at her.

"W-Why do I need to... Vic, what is that?" you question.

The unnatural color of the liquid makes you uneasy. The only time you've seen that color is in TV shows about meth. Oh my god, does she want me to do meth? Your eyes widen even more. Why the fuck would she want me to do meth!?

"Compound V," she sets the needle down on the bed next to you. "It... It's what gave me my powers."

Not meth. You let out a sigh of relief, which is quickly replaced by a gasp of concern.

"Why do I need to take that!? What kind of danger am I in?" you yelp.

Victoria remains silent and looks away. You lean towards her, she's crying. Your stomach drops and you can't figure out what to say.

“Please. Just. Take. It." She places her hands on her face in an attempt to self pacify, "You'll be okay. I took it when I was a child and I'm fine. It is literally the only way for me to guarantee your safety, please." Her lip trembles.

You're speechless. She's never begged for anything before, let alone cried for it. You bounce your leg anxiously, working up the courage to do or say something. You grab her hand and pick up the needle.

"Okay. I-I will. I'll do it," you steady your voice, but your hand shakes as she takes the needle.

She sniffles and lets out an exasperated 'Thank you'. When she uncaps the needle you realize how huge it really is. Your breathing becomes more rapid and your whole body starts to tremble. You sit with your legs dangling off the front of the bed and she rolls up your shirt. You take in a deep breath and hold it, tears well up in the corners of your eyes.

"I love you," she presses a kiss into your shoulder as she injects the needle.

The second the blue fluid starts coursing through you, you feel like you should have asked a few more questions. That train of thought is cut off by a scorching pain. It feels like a wildfire is soaring through your veins. You cry out and collapse forward, supporting yourself up onto your elbows. Your whole body jerks from the pain. Victoria kneels down beside you and reaches for your arm, you pull away and stand. You sway unsteadily and stare down at her. Tears flow from her eyes but her face appears quiet, she knew how much this would hurt you. Your mixed emotions guide you to the bed and you throw yourself under the covers. You want to be mad, you want to scream and wail and kick until you see red but pain has sedated your anger. You can do nothing but sob and call for Neuman.

Victoria hurriedly joins you in bed, she pulls you close against her and pets your head. She kisses your forehead and whispers words of comfort. You choke on your cries and bury your face into her neck. You feel like you're dying. You find solace in the fact that it will be in her arms; and anguish in the fact that she will have been the one to kill you. At some point, your body gives out from exhaustion and you lie still.

-

The survival rate in adults injected with Compound V is an unsettling twenty percent. Victoria considered this, of course. She told you everyone in the company needed to submit bloodwork, for “insurance purposes”. It was a shit lie but you blindly followed her words anyway. She sent you to a Vought-owned lab and ran more in-depth tests. Your blood already contained slight traces of V, not enough for powers, but enough to give this new dose something to cling onto. This allows for a far less fatal outcome. She destroyed all evidence of the bloodwork afterwards, there's no need for you to know your own parents doped you as a newborn too. The powers you will gain can't be predicted, but she is satisfied with the guarantee of superhuman durability.

-

You wake up alone. You’re drenched in sweat but the pounding in your skull has ceased. I don’t feel any different? You slowly sit up and look around the room.

“Vic?”

You’re met with silence. You feel a pang of sorrow in your heart but chase away any forming tears. Upon getting up, you notice a water bottle and a small note.

‘ I swear I will make this up to you, I’ll be back as soon as a I can. I love you.

(If you feel up to it — counting is expected to wrap around 11, there’s an open bar!) ‘

You chug the water and drop the bottle letting bounce on the floor. You’re pissed at Vic. How much could she possibly care about my safety when she’s fully willing to abandoned my unconscious body… in a locked… fancy… You groan, she didn’t exactly leave you to the wolves but you’re feeling are still hurt. You trudge towards the bathroom, needing to wash off this whole event.

Thankfully, the shower makes you feel like a person again. You wipe the steam from the mirror and examine yourself — nothing seems different? You shrug and pat yourself dry. You find the oversized t-shirt you wore as pajamas last night and throw it on. Victoria’s red lipstick rests on the counter, it’s as sleek and polished as she is. The thought of her makes you smile, you are so quick to forgive. You pick it up to examine it but the sound of voices outside the door makes you stop abruptly.

Cautiously, you crack the door and call out for Victoria. It slams open and you’re met with two CIA agents, they stare down at you. You try to back up, but the taller man grabs your wrist and throws you into the center of the room.

Your body crashes into the floor, as you rise you notice two more people in the room; they’re hiding behind the kitchen island, a black-haired male and female in suits they appear uncomfortable in. Your attentions reverts back to your current attackers. The man who grabbed you squats in front of you.

"Care to explain what you're doing in Ms. Neuman's room?" he asks as the other man encroaches.

You remain silent and try to see what the two behind the island are trying to accomplish. A hard smack from the squatted man draws your attention back to the front. You still don't respond. He huffs and motions to his partner, who begins to draw his gun. You scramble back towards the wall, you can hear your heart beating and feel the hair on the back of your neck rise. An animalistic nature seems to be taking hold of you, all of your senses are on edge and there is a primal hunger creeping its way out of you. The click of the gun sets you off. You launch yourself off the wall and throw the armed man to the ground.

-

From behind the counter, Frenchie and Kimiko are left with their mouths agape. The harmony of feral growls and screams causes them to peer from behind the counter. They see you hunched over one of the guards covered in blood, the guards torso is torn open, rank viscera is splattered across the room. You spit out a chunk of red flesh and your eyes target the other agent. Frenchie reaches for his in-ear walkie and calls for Hughie. Kimiko watches as the remaining agent unloads his firearm into your body. Unflinching, you continue your stalk towards him.

"Hughie! It seems like Neuman has turned your little friend into some kind of junkyard mutt- SHIT!" Frenchie and Kimiko duck behind the island as a severed arm comes flying towards them. Frenchie speaks in a hushed shout, "Your time to shine, Mon ami!

-

The remaining agent is left in pieces, several of which have ended up in completely different areas. The room is quiet, aside from your panting and the shuffling in the kitchen. You stare down at your hands; they're covered in blood and you notice your nails have grown much longer and sharper. Though the room has filled with the stench of iron, you can still pick up the scent of your two intruders. You attempt to move towards them, but the lack of an immediate threat to your life (and possibly the several bullets you took) causes your adrenaline to drop - you collapse onto the floor. The pain of being thrown, beat, and shot catches up to you. You whine and dig into your wounds, trying to claw out the searing bullets. The duo stand from behind the counter and the man shouts to you.

"I would not to that if I was you!" He raises his hands out and steps towards you. You stare daggers back at the man.

Before you can shout whatever obscenities were slowly developing in your clouded mind, the door flies open. Hughie Campbell pauses in the doorway and takes in the scene around him.

"Jesus Christ..." he mutters.

"I told you, Victoria has fucked her!" Frenchie ushers Kimiko out the door and quickly follows, "Deal with this how you want, we must get back to the task at hand."

Hughie makes his way towards you and freezes when you look up at him, you are sitting on the floor like a wounded dog, blind from fear. Your eyes are completely black, your teeth resemble that of a well-fed wolf, and you’re absolutely drenched in blood. Hughie cautiously kneels down next to you and places his hand on your shoulder. He calls your name and directs your attention to his face. Slowly, you recognize the man in front of you and steady your breathing. He watches your eyes return to normal, the black slowly pooling itself into your dilated pupil.

"Hughie..." your voice is a whisper, "I-".

You finally take in the devastation around you, which stretches floor to ceiling, window to wall. The reality of the situation hits you and you burst into tears. Hughie hesitates before placing his other hand on your opposite shoulder and sighing.

"I can't believe she dragged you into this. I… I'm sorry."

"Oh my god- Hughie! I'm going to fucking prison," you whimper, "Oh fuck-“

You push away from Hughie and try to steady your breath. He backs off and stands.

"I'm actually fairly confident that won't happen," he gazes down and his face flushes red.

He turns away and offers his hand out to you, "L-Lets get you out of here, and get some pants on."

You clutch his hand and rise up, pulling the t-shirt down over yourself. He opens the drawers of the hotel's dresser and stops once he finds one with something in it. He holds out a pair of boxers, several sizes too big and extremely gaudy. You make a face and he tosses them towards you and turns around.

"They're better than nothing, okay? Everything else is fucking drenched in CIA agent…" he reasons.

He grabs a sheet from the bed and wraps it around you before heading out the door. You make your way to a utility van parked behind the hotel. Hughie slides open the door and you're met with a bearded man pointing a gun at you.

"JESUS! Butcher put that away!" Hughie bends over and catches his breath.

"No way that one is getting in here," his pistol remains focused on you, "Last thing we need is Neuman storming in here and popping all our heads."

Hughie starts to protest and Butcher cocks back the hammer. You place a hand on Hughie's chest and feed him a forced smile.

"It's okay, Hughie," you assure as you pull him into a hug. “Thank you, for getting me out of there,” you feel the barrel of Butcher's gun pressed against your temple. Your breath hitches and you pull away. Hughie hops into the van and it screeches away.

You are left alone in the parking lot and limp to a nearby alleyway. You hop around shards of broken glass and find an abandoned milk crate, you'll catch your breath here and then figure out a game plan. You sit yourself down and hear small clinking noises near the ground of the milk crate. The bullets previously lodged in you are being spit out of your skin, the craters they once resided in have filled themselves and you notice you're in a lot less pain. A sigh of relief falls from your lips and you shed the sheet wrapped around your shoulders. You feel a small prick in your neck and move your hand towards the pain, a needle resides in the crook of your neck, before you can turn around you go limp.

In your last moments of alertness, you read the lettering on the van you're being pulled in to.

'VOUGHT INTERNATIONAL'

Fuck.

|

authors note: part two is basically wrote in my mind already i just need to type it out <3 thanks for reading, after this next chapter im going to write for Maeve for a little bit and then possibly release a blank slate smut fic.. who’s to say really

[tip jar]

[honeygrahambitch]

"What are you wearing?" Will texted and debated turning his phone off.

It was the first time when he would start something like that. It had taken more then 10 minutes to decide whether to press the send button or not.

Hannibal was away for a psychiatry congress in New York for about a week, fact which Will had not given much importance to. Out of the two of them, Hannibal was the needy one.

Yet, there he was now. Lonely, missing Hannibal and trying to mask that with horny texts. He knew that at the time he sent the text, it was late enough for Hannibal to be back to his hotel room.

"My navy blue suit." The reply came shortly.

Will rolled his eyes. How can you turn that reply into something horny? And one more thing: which of his navy blue suits he meant?

"Maybe you should take it off." Will replied and had to resist the urge to throw his phone across the room and never pick it up again.

He waited a few seconds before looking again at his phone after hearing the notification beep.

"You think it's not flattering enough?"

Will was about to give up, to grab his pillow and just scream into it.

One last try. He took in a deep breath and started typing.

"I just think you look better without anything on."

One minute passed.

Two minutes passed.

Three minutes passed.

"But I really take pride into this particular suit, Will."

Will threw the phone towards the other side of the bed and rolled on his side, turning his back to it. Fuck him and his stupid suits.

The phone vibrated shortly once more. Even though Will had promised himself not to pick it up again, his curiosity won.

"I will be in my hotel room in 5 minutes, darling."

Another notification followed:

"I will call you and you can tell me more about it."

[reasonsforhope]

"In a bid to slow deforestation in the Amazon, Brazil announced Tuesday [September 5, 2023,] that it will provide financial support to municipalities that have reduced deforestation rates the most.

During the country´s Amazon Day, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also signed the creation of two Indigenous territories that total 207,000 hectares (511,000 acres) — over two times the size of New York City — and of a network of conservation areas next to the Yanonami Indigenous Territory to act as a buffer against invaders, mostly illegal gold miners.

“The Amazon is in a hurry to survive the devastation caused by those few people who refuse to see the future, who in a few years cut down, burned, and polluted what nature took millennia to create,” Lula said during a ceremony in Brasilia. “The Amazon is in a hurry to continue doing what it has always done, to be essential for life on Earth.”

The new program will invest up to $120 million in technical assistance. The money will be allocated based on the municipality´s performance in reducing deforestation and fires, as measured by official satellite monitoring. A list of municipalities eligible for the funds will be published annually.

The resources must be invested in land titling, monitoring and control of deforestation and fires, and sustainable production.

The money will come from the Amazon Fund, which has received more than $1.2 billion, mostly from Norway, to help pay for sustainable development of the region. In February, the United States committed to a $50 million donation to the initiative. Two months later, President Joe Biden announced he would ask Congress for an additional $500 million, to be disbursed over five years.

The most critical municipalities are located along the arc of deforestation, a vast region along the southern part of the Amazon. This region is a stronghold of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who favored agribusiness over forest preservation and lost the reelection last year.

“We believe that it’s not enough to just put up a sign saying ‘it’s forbidden to do this or that. We need to be persuasive.” Lula said, in a reference to his relationship with Amazon mayors and state governors.

Lula has promised zero net deforestation by 2030, although his term ends two years earlier. In the first seven months of his third term, there was a 42% drop in deforestation.

[Note: For context, Lula's third term as president started January 1, 2023. It was not continuous with his first two terms, when he was president from 2003 to 2010. Lula's third term has been a historic and desperately needed reversal of the anti-environmental, etc. policies of Bolsonaro, whose term ended at the end of 2022.]

Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, with almost 3% of global emissions, according to Climate Watch, an online platform managed by World Resources Institute. Almost half of these emissions come from deforestation. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, Brazil committed to reducing carbon emissions by 37% by 2025 and 43% by 2030."

-via AP, September 5, 2023

[tanadrin]

Honestly, I *don't* want to mix things with proportional representation. I see proportional representation as an excellent way of increasing the importance of dealings between politicians and reducing the incentive effects of the voters. But in my ideal world I'll need to negotiate with people who do like proportional representation, and this system is a compromise I could get behind. Plus you can plug and play any three different electoral systems for different compromises.

First past the post is a bad, undemocratic electoral system. First past the post privileges large parties by making small ones unviable, and distorts the composition of parliaments by wasting votes. It can be gerrymandered in a way proportional representation cannot be. It produces highly unrepresentative outcomes. It is a bad electoral system! All good voting systems are to some degree inclined to more proportional results.

I've never heard the accusation that PR "increases the importance of dealings between politicians," but look. I don't know how else to put this. That is a stupid objection. Just absolutely boneheaded. You haven't thought about this at all, I reckon.

People hate on "politicians" as a generic class, but it's like hating on lawyers as a generic class. You need politicians. You want politicians. You want people whose specialized job it is to read legislation, fight about what should go in it, represent your interests, and come to balanced compromises about those interests. People percieve politics as messy, venal, and corrupt, and it can be all those things, but guess what? The alternative to career politicians is part-time citizens who don't know what the fuck they're doing, have no expertise in the legislative process, and therefore are at the mercy of lobbyists who can walk them like a dog because they're naive and inexperienced.

There's this especially (but not exclusively) American pathology that is a suspicion of government that works too well. This peculiar notion that if only we sabotage government a little bit it will keep tyranny in check and make politicians more honest... somehow. But filling government with random yahoos doesn't get you a noble collegium of Tocquevillian citizen-lawmakers, it gets you a pack of Marjorie Taylor Greens and Lauren Boberts. You know--morons. Americans will support all these ballot initiatives that fuck up government on purpose, like term-limiting legislators and keeping their salaries low so only rich people can afford to go into politics (and even then are only willing to do it as a stepping stone to other gigs), and vote for people who promise to make government work even worse by cutting the budget and lowering taxes, and then have the absolute gall to whine about how badly the government works. My fellow Americans, you did that on purpose.

(And there's this weird paradox where Americans all loathe Congress. Who keeps voting these creeps in? Well. You do. Congresscritters are generally pretty highly approved of by their own constituents. The stereotype of lazy, stupid, venal politicians always seems to apply to the other guys.)

And you will also note that since the abolition of things that used to facilitate deals between politicians in the U.S. congress--since the abolition of earmarks and chummy socials between congressmen and the post--generally, since the post-Gingrich upheaval in the House--it has gotten harder to pass even necessary, basic legislation, because it is harder to make the basic compromises necessary to keep government functioning. Having three separate legislatures that each can claim a different sort of democratic mandate isn't a recipe for good legislation, it's a recipe for paralysis and constitutional crisis.

[cherryg]

The internet censorship is coming..(again)

There are two well known censorship bill known as KOSA and the EarnIt act.

These bills both promised that they will protect children but unfortunately these are misguided bills that says they’ll do something but then they will do the opposite or make things worse.

Both of these bills are serious threat to the LGBT community and will censor a lot of content especially there

the EarnItact will also get rid of NSFW content and deem it as illegal, and will also get rid of section 230

The KOSA act will let attorneys from Florida and Texas take control and decide what people could and could not watch and sue websites and anything they don’t like and will not protect children but mostly put many vulnerable teens and children at risk while going as far as to even censor important information like sex education, health issues, suicide prevention hotlines and many more

We have stopped these bills from passing before but the cofounder Richard Bluemenhal is clearly not giving up and trying hard and hard again to push these bills back on congress

Last year more than 90/100 human rights groups urged lawmakers and congress to not pass KOSA in the omnibus bill and it got shelved and the same then happened to Earn it last year on February/March

But now he is trying a third time,using and manipulating grieving parents and young people into supporting and lobbying his bills, whiles even accepting anti trans and LGBT groups into supporting his legislations. He’s trying to find any type of scandal a platform is currently facing and turn and twist it on behalf of his agendas.

He says he supports abortions and the LGBT community but his bills will censor those things he claims to support. He can’t have it both ways.

But he was stubborn enough to ignore every criticism and scrutiny he gets about the legislations, being childish and all.

Not to mention that they are also both privacy nightmares to everyone and globally too

That’s why it’s important that you call and email your representatives and lawmakers and urge them to drop Kosa and the earn it act

Let any human rights group you trust knows and tell anyone you trust about it weather it be a friend or family member.

For more information, click these links below ⬇️

You can also help us by joining our discord server on how to stop internet censorship

There also a petition made from Fightforfuture recently about the KOSA act

(Update # 2)

Hey guys I’m back to warn everyone about yet again another bad internet bill it’s called the safe tech act

This act is supported by 7 democratic senators including bluemenhal which is never a good sign with him when it comes to internet bills.

This is a misguided 230 reform and when reading it, all it shows is that these people have no understanding of 230 whatsoever.

It’s just another dangerous censorship bill that threatens everyone’s free speech. The creators claim that it’s won’t hurt free speech but it actually does and they do not understand how important 230 is in its current form right now!

Here is a good article explaining the safe tech act really well and why it’s dangerous :

Also talk to your representatives about this and why it’s bad and if you can, try to explain to them about why section 230 is important. Support digital advocacy, human rights and any other groups that supports free internet and expression and let them know about these legislators and their bad ideas!

Update 3

The EarnIt act is sadly coming back after failing two times, now they are trying a 3rd time.

This legislation is dangerous for privacy and free expression and speech. It will bring lots of surveillance and is just as bad as the restrict act.

https://act.eff.org/action/the-earn-it-act-is-back-seeking-to-scan-us-all

Now it’s being reintroduced by two senators and two representatives if you don’t know what this bill actually does there is more information about it here from these links : https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/earn-it-bill-back-again-seeking-scan-our-messages-and-photos

The second one is called KOSA (KidsOnlineSafteyAct),

now this bill has failed to pass last year because a lot of opposition from 90/100 human rights.

It claims it’s would protect kids but it’s actually has a lot of censorship and is very dangerous to lgbt/trans kids and many other kids that are in abusive households. It will actually hurt them instead of protecting them.

If that’s not bad enough it’s tragically gaining momentum and attraction by these child advocacy groups and being sponsored by Dove and Lizzo. And there has been petitions in supporting this unconstitutional bill, One of them having somewhere around 30k signs…

I really wish I could say I’m joking but this is sadly true.

If you want more info on KOSA here they are:

https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/censorship-wont-make-kids-safe/

Please everyone call your senators and representatives and tell them to oppose these bills. We really need help into fighting off these bill so we could keep a free opened internet!

[mariaxxxxx]

Blackberry (Steve Rogersx fem!reader)

Summary: You shouldn't have had too much to drink at that party, honey. (+18)

Warnings: 18+ ONLY/ Minors DNI, Angust, Hurt comfort, Sex, Apologies, Crying, Creampie, Passionate sex, virgin!reader, size difference, smut, soft!dom!, HEA, good ending, somnophille, slight degradation, duvious consent, menstrual sex, pregnancy, arranged marriage, inexperienced reader, abortion commented, unprotected sex (don't do that wrap this thing), kidnapping, aftercare, curse words.

series masterlist

A/N: English is not my mother tongue. I apologize for any errors.

A/N: The following chapter has graphic descriptions of non-consensual sex. I ask that you carefully observe the warnings to avoid triggers.

The party at the Stark mansion was a success as always. The cream of society was made up of businesspeople and new candidates for a seat in the American Congress. Dresses and hats fluttered in the cool spring breeze. You devoured a bowl of sugared blackberries, leaning against the bar counter, while watching your parents talk with friends animatedly about some topic involving economics and money. For God! You were so bored not even one of your friends decided to join you in this den of ostentation and hypocrisy.

And nothing, no matter how exciting it was to be in a superhero's house, could appease the enormous boredom that consumed his insides. Not even alcohol could keep you company at this point, your father would die before allowing a drop of alcohol to wet his tongue, so you were left with sugary blackberries that proved to be a good aphrodisiac on a hot afternoon.

You swallowed the last blackberry and left the empty bowl on the counter. He walked to his mother and whispered ‘’I’m going for a walk’’ in her ear and left the room before his mother could retort. You easily dodged the hundreds of guests and headed to the farthest drinks tent where an efficient bartender was juggling. The tent was outside, near a clump of trees, away from the watchful eyes of his parents.

“A blackberry margarita, please.” You asked, leaning slightly over the ivory surface.

"Identity." He asked.

“I didn’t bring it, but I guarantee that I’m of legal age.” You smiled as convincingly as you could, but he didn't seem inclined to help you. You rolled your eyes. “I’ll give you 100 bucks for the drinks.”

The bartender looked at You in disbelief. You felt internally angry; The childish features still hadn't left his face like the cute cheeks and plump lips, and that always got him into trouble.

“Not happening, girl.”

"Please! This party is a big mess, if you know what I mean. I need to stuff my face or I’m going to go crazy.”

Again he looked at her in disbelief. He was probably one of those people who only saw parts published in gossip magazines about young heirs who got into trouble.

"It went badly."

You sighed. Your father didn't even let you bring your cell phone. It was not polite, in his opinion, for a rich girl to interrupt an important conversation because of a message.

“A straight whiskey, please.” The deep voice next to him. “And a blackberry margarita.”

Without having to present ID or leave a tip to guarantee efficient service, the man, the damn Captain America, got both orders at incredible speed. The only thing You could think about was how tall and handsome he was.

"Here." He handed her the drink. “I got the impression that you forgot your identity and are being massacred by the damn bureaucracy.”

You smiled; by the drink and the wording so changing coming from a man considered by many to be an American God.

“Thank you, Captain.” You said as you took a sip of your drink.

“Steve. Just Steve.” He said taking a generous sip of his own drink. “I hope he really is of age. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

"Right. Steve. Just Steve.” You repeated with a mischievous smile. “I promise I will show you my ID as soon as possible.”

“What’s your name, pretty girl?”

You found yourself smiling and blushing at such a flippant compliment coming from such a divine man. You told him your name.

“A beautiful and delicate name. It suits you." He took another generous sip of his Whiskey and you took advantage and drank some more of your drink. It was sweet and went down as light as water.

“How can I thank you for the drink?” You asked.

"Talk to me."

You drank more of your blackberry margarita.

"About what?"

"Anything. Just… entertain me at this boring party.”

“Anything…” You took another sip. “As long as we can help ourselves to one more of these.” You got ready for your now empty glass.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Steve said, finishing the whiskey with a hint of a smile on his lips.

At some point, between conversations and glasses of margarita, Steve convinced you to show him every corner of the mansion. You accepted, looking excited about taking a tour with such a handsome man by your side. You and Steve left the tent, avoiding curious glances and boring conversations. He showed you the room where the Avengers met, the works of art that Tony insisted on buying, the training room and finally a long corridor with similar doors. He opened one of them and you entered a large room without windows, with a large sofa in the center, a minibar, a large TV that took up the entire wall and a strange device that you thought was a stereo.

It was large, clean and richly decorated. It felt like a sanctuary for leisure time. Steve pointed to the sofa and you sat down, he went to the minibar and returned with a bottle of reddish liquid. He sat down next to her.

  “Do you want to drink more”? He reached out his hand, wrapping his long fingers around the bottleneck. He extended this to You as if it were not a trap that You were about to willingly fall into. “It’s a liqueur made with blackberries. I got it from a senator at a party at the White House. I noticed how much You like the fruit and I would like You to try it.”

You had already had too much to drink. There were glasses and more glasses of margaritas, and you already felt your body a little soft, but you couldn't refuse the proposal of a man as beautiful as that. The man who sacrificed a lot for this nation. It's just a drink, You thought. Getting drunk next to Captain America, who is a hero, is a much better idea than getting drunk alone in a mansion. And you loved blackberries.

"Yes please." You mumbled, and Steve looked so proud of your response. He poured you a generous dose of drink. You drank. It was strong and very concentrated, very different from your sweet and light margherita. You didn't care you just drank more while Steve looked at You with a big smile. Beautiful. It was a beautiful smile.

One drink turned into two, then three and four.

“You’re blushing.” He smiled, he said drinking some of the liquor. “Your first kiss wasn’t that bad.”

You didn't notice. But You started sharing very personal things with Steve; You told him how your first kiss, as a child, was a disaster with a classmate you liked. You said how it was drooling and clumsy.

"It was horrible". You made a cart.” I did it because my friends wanted it. I should have waited longer.”

You don't feel it, but your knees spread of their own accord as a warm hand, not yours, lifts your dress a little and exposes the inside of your thigh and begins to massage in gentle circles as you finish another glass, laughing hard. , the heat growing whenever he got closer.

“A girl as beautiful as you should have someone.” He says in a reprimanding tone. He was close, very close. You drank more.

“No” You laugh, louder than usual, You feel so good, so light. But you feel a wave of disappointment wash over your body when you remember that you had no one. She couldn't even remember the last time she was touched or praised by the opposite sex.

“With such a beautiful face like that, it’s hard to believe.” He smiled. “Such a beautiful body and...”

He pauses.

“And…” You encourage him to continue.

“With breasts as beautiful as yours, I’m sure everyone…” He stops, looking embarrassed, his hand on your thigh about a little more. "Forgive me. This is inappropriate.

"No." You say quickly, urgently, although more slurred than usual.” I don't mind. You can praise them.”

"No?" He asks, his voice perfectly steady, with fake surprise behind it. Had you and he already had so much to drink because he didn't seem any different? “Would you mind showing them? I would love to see."

You shake your head and mumble no. With one hand, the other held the glass of drink, You released the bows on your dress that held your breasts, You didn't wear a bra, you didn't need them to make your breasts look beautiful, something you were secretly proud of. Her breasts bounce out towards him.

Steve reaches out his hand and gives it a nice squeeze. You let out a small moan at the intimate touch.

“I want to suck your six.” He blurts out.

His smile disappears, mostly in shock at such a bold revelation. But a part, a big part, of you feels flattered that Captain America wants to play with your breasts and all you wanted at that moment was for him to touch you.

"All good." You mumble in a slurred, broken voice.

Steve pushes your body until his head is between your breasts. You feel him take a deep breath, smelling you, his right hand grabs one of your breasts. He tilts his head and wraps his lips around your closest nipple.

The sensation is strange, it tickles, cold, but it warms up quickly. You had never felt someone do it like this before, it was much more like a brief lick or a clumsy and seductive suck like many boys did. But with Steve it was different. He was grasping as if trying to extract fluid that will never come out. He moans lewdly. You drop the glass and place your hand under his blonde locks, pressing his head against your breasts.

“Steve.” You let out a moan as he takes a long nip before releasing your breasts in a wet pop.

  “Where is your glass?” He asks.

You don't respond, because you're too oblivious to pay attention to his words. His body was hot, his vision blurred and his nipples hard and sensitive. You were oblivious when you felt Steve put a full glass in your hands, he mumbled a drink and you obeyed, wanting to leave him satisfied.

You drank more. Maybe four or five or six more glasses. You do not remember. The last one ended up kind of spilled because you couldn't hold it while Steve helped you take off his dress. You feel his head being placed on a soft pillow or perhaps a cushion, You couldn't tell; his vision was blurred and his senses were weak. Warm hands slide down your legs to your panties and gently remove them. Your blurred vision is bathed in the sight of Steve shirtless on top of you. Beautiful. He was so beautiful.

You're moaning and shaking with nervousness, or at least you would be if his grip wasn't holding you in place. Her pussy burned with heat and desire, it was like rough sandpaper that moved in and out, swinging a seesaw from hell.

“It hurts.” You mutter. You were a mess and you know it, the words come out slow and slurred. Humiliation rises deeper than pleasure can reach, and disgust crawls over your skin with a sheen of sweat. He had touched her before. Stimulating your clit until you came on his long fingers, but it wasn't enough, it never would be. He was big and thick, with powerful hips that caused her great pain with each thrust.

You weren’t expecting it when he tilted his hips just to rub the fat head of his cock against your aching pussy. You moan at the small shock waves caused by the brief contact with your clit, but he smothers your moans with a wet, hot kiss, taking away your oxygen. He shoved his cock back inside her ripped hole.

He moaned against You, his mouth open panting, as if he was feeling something that You didn't. The intrusion not only stretches, but burns and hurts. Dry fiction mixes with rough movement. The tears flow, You feel the wet trail they leave on your cheeks. The disorientation left You dizzy and contained, a prisoner of your own body, but that didn't stop Him from exerting his strength against You. He was heavy. Upon noticing your whimpering, the hand that was on your hips goes up to cover your mouth, spreading tears and saliva everywhere.

“It’s okay, my love.” He said between moans. “You are so beautiful and as sweet as berries.”

The blackberries. The damn blackberries were the ones who brought her here. Steve gives another powerful thrust, preventing any further thought. You scream into his hand. He begins to fuck with desire, with strong thrusts, riding his own release. You moan, writhe, scream when a sensation begins to blossom at the tip of your toes that rises to your abdomen causing your muscles to contract slightly and then relax. Steve doesn't stay far behind, he pulls out of your pussy and with one last thrust spills all of his semen inside of you.

You are sleeping too deeply to understand, but not too deeply not to hear. You hear some loud footsteps, a door closes, before you feel someone approaching.

"Mommy." You speak as you sit up, try to open your eyes, your mind is still spinning. A great light hits your eyes and you close them quickly. Little by little you open your eyes slowly until you get used to it.

You wish your mother had killed the man who enchanted you with smiles and drinks so that you would give yourself to him, you may fear that strange conversation and the lectures, but you longed for your mother's safety and her lap. But it wasn't his mother who was sitting next to him. It was him.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” He says as he brushes the strands of hair out of your face. “Your parents are a little upset now, but they will get over it little by little, you'll see. They will be happy for their little daughter who has won over the national hero and is about to walk down the aisle.”

"What are you talking about?" You say roughly, trying to get up, but the quick action made your body weaken. Steve picks you up and sits back down on the couch.

“I will take care and spoil you a lot, my love. You will see. I will fill you with gifts and love. We're gonna have a lot of fun." Steve says with a scary look on his face.

"You are crazy." You say in tears. “My parents will...”

"Do not worry about a thing." He pulls away and stands up, walking over to the minibar counter where a red bowl awaits him. He pities her and returns to You. “I'm already taking care of everything. All You need to do now is eat.”

Fear flooded your body You had already trusted that man and look what happened, but You had already seen too many documentaries and police series to know how much this type of person hated being contradicted. Maybe being his sweet, obedient girl would provide you with some benefit. With your body shaking, you stretched to see the contents of that bowl. A sound of disgust escaped his mouth when he realized they were blackberries.

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #12

March 29-April 5 2024

President Biden united with Senator Bernie Sanders at the White House to review Democratic efforts to bring down drug prices. President Biden touted his Administration’s capping the price of insulin for seniors at $35 a month and capping the price of  prescription drugs for seniors at $2,000 a year. Biden hopes to expand both to all Americans through legislation next year with a Democratic congress. The President also praised Senator Sanders' efforts as chair of the Senate Health Committee which has lead to major drug manufacturers capping the price of inhalers at $35 a month. “Bernie, you and I have been fighting this for 25 years,” Biden said “Finally, finally we beat Big Pharma. Finally.”

The White House gave an update on its actions around the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster. The federal government working with state and local governments hope to have enough of the remains of the bridge cleared to partially reopen the Port of Baltimore by the end of the month and have the port working normally by May. The Administration has already released $60 million in emergency money toward rebuilding and promises the federal government will cover the cost. The Department of Labor has released $3.5 million for Dislocated Worker Grants and plans up to $25 million to cover lost wages. The Small Business Administration is offering $2 million in emergency loans to affected small businesses. The Administration is working with business and labor unions to keep workers at work and cover lost wages.

Vice-President Harris and EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced $20 billion to help finance tens of thousands of climate and clean energy projects across the country. The kinds of projects that will be financed through this project include distributed clean power generation and storage, net-zero retrofits of homes and small businesses, and zero-emission transportation. 70% of the funds, $14 billion, will be invested in low-income and disadvantaged communities. The project is part of a public private partnership so for every 1 dollar of federal money, private companies have promised 7 dollars of investment, bring the total to $150 billion for ongoing financing of climate and clean energy projects for years to come.

The Department of Transportation announced $20.5 billion in investments in public transportation. This represents the largest single investment in public transit by the federal government in history. The money will go to improving and expanding subways, light rail, buses, and ferry systems across America. The DoT hopes to use the funds to in particular expand and improve options for public transport for people with disabilities and seniors.

The Departments of Energy and The Treasury announced $4 billion in tax credits for businesses investing in clean energy, critical materials recycling, and Industrial decarbonization. The credits till go toward 100 projects across 35 states. 67% of the credits ($2.7 billion) will go to clean energy, wind, solar, nuclear, clean hydrogen, as well as updates to grids, better batter storage, and investments in electric vehicles. 20% ($800 million) will go to to recycling things like lithium-ion batteries, and 13% ($500 million) to decarbonization in industries like automotive manufacturing, and iron and steel.

The Department of Agriculture announced $1.5 Billion in investments in climate-smart agriculture. USDA plans to support over 180,000 farms representing 225 million acres in the next 5 years move toward more climate friendly agriculture. 40% of the project is reserved for disadvantaged communities, in line with the Biden Administrations standard for climate investment. $100 million has been reserved for projects in Tribal Communities.

The Department of the Interior approved the New England Wind offshore wind project. To be located off Martha’s Vineyard the New England project represents the 8th such off shore wind project approved by the Biden administration. Taken together these projects will generate 10 gigawatts of totally clean energy that can power 4 million homes. The Administration's climate goals call for 30 gigawatts of off shore wind power by 2030. The New England Wind project itself is expected to generate 2,600 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 900,000 homes in the New England area.

The Department of the Interior announced $320 Million for tribal water infrastructure. Interior also announced $244 million to deal with legacy pollution from mining in the State of Pennsylvania, as well as $25 million to protect wetlands in Arizona and $19 million to put solar panels over irrigation canals in California, Oregon and Utah. While the Department of Energy announced $27 million for 40 projects by state, local and tribal governments to combat climate change

[shoujo-wizard]

@lexirosewrites here's the ask i told you i've been putting too much detail into, i call it Haunting of Harrington House it's more details on the ask i sent quite awhile ago of a/b/o steddie haunted house AU this is very long so it is under the cut

it involves slightly better harrington parents, but they still aren't the best the emotional neglect is very present, it isn't very steddie or buckingham coded yet so i didn't tag it as either these r just broad initial details

O!Steve A!Robin

Steve grew up in a relatively cosmopolitan town in Washington near Seattle. His father and mother were big shot lawyers with little time for him. He was mostly a check on the to-do list for a "picture perfect" marriage, his designation as a male omega wasn't unexpected or shunned as the Harrington family apparently had a long history of male omegas. But they were still much too busy so every school break they'd dump him at his maternal grandparents house a few towns away. When there wasn't a school break he was primarily in the care of a nanny till his 15th birthday when it was deemed he knew how to take care of himself & be safe abt it.

He grew up learning next to nothing about his paternal grandparents aside from what was essential to a family tree project here & there. Steve knew his middle name, Oliver, came from his great-grandfather & tht said great-grandfather was a male omega as well. Richard Harrington never divulged more than the necessary information that Steve needed for school: his grandfather's name was Elijah Harrington, his grandmother's name was Amelia Smith before she married Elijah, his ancestors were some of the first settlers of the area that would grow into Hawkins, that his grandparents lived there their entire lives

Well time passed as it's wont to do, Steve graduated high school & decided to study Library Sciences as a long-term goal. Despite their estranged relationship his parents were supportive of this choice, but his father drew the line at looking at schools in Indiana. Richard told Steve he'd left Indiana & specifically Hawkins for a reason. He never told his son what tht reason was.

Steve thrived in college, getting a Bachelor in Information Science eventually getting into a Masters program that would earn him a Masters in Library Science thus allowing him to begin working as a librarian. In his Masters program he met A!Robin & they instantly bonded after a disaster of a Socratic seminar where they ended up on the same side of a heated debate abt the legacy of the Library of Congress. When Steve graduates his parents r nowhere to be found even tho they'd promised & even shared w him their travel plans tht would get them there on time. So he goes thru the motions of celebration till he gets a call from an unknown number. It's the police, his parents had been involved in a serious car accident after swerving to avoid a drunk driver. They'd both been pronounced dead at the scene. His parents were dead.

The next two weeks r filled with meetings with his parents lawyer, finding appropriate coffins, alerting business partners & friends alike to the deaths, & then getting acquainted with their will. The will stated that if Steve was 20+ upon their death their house would go up for sale. They'd left certain things to business partners, certain things to friends, and the rest was Steve's to do w as he pleased. he sells much of it, keeps some of it. Among what was left to Steve is the deed & blueprints & keys to a house in Hawkins Indiana. 

Well, he'd always been curious & there was no more childhood home waiting for him so he gets Robin to agree to come with him to the town he'd never been to before. They get in his car & go on a road trip. They arrive in Hawkins days later & stop at a diner they happen to find on Google maps before making the final trek to the mystery Harrington house.

They come upon a historic mansion from the Gilded Age. It's unmistakably in need of work. The windows r dark & the key gets stuck before working. The electricity buzzes & blinks before coming on reliably. There's furniture covered in white sheets in nearly every room. The kitchen hadn't been updated since the 1950s. The drawing room has covered paintings, covered furniture, a large fireplace clearly meant to impress, & nearly empty bookcases built into one wall. There is no television but an antique radio as well as a 70s record player in the sitting room. There's a second fireplace in the sitting room tht is just as gorgeous but clearly meant for the personal use of the family. There's an entire personal library past the sitting room & the platonic pair r apprehensive of the state of the books on the shelves. The library is two stories with a spiral staircase leading up. Another staircase directly opposite the foyer leads up to the second floor of the mansion. The blueprints show a total of five bedrooms & three bathrooms on the second floor with the third bathroom being an ensuite to the master bedroom. There's a staircase w a door at the top leading to the attic/servants quarters. They test the faucets in the kitchen & after some noise & undeniably stale water it works. The fridge clearly needs to b replaced & the oven & stove top r dubious at best. They find the master bedroom has a gorgeous antique nesting frame tht Robin thinks might date to the 1910s. Neither wants to chance the old mattress so they roll out their sleeping bags next to eachother & settle as comfortably as they can on the hardwood floor. 

That night Steve dreams. 

He stands in the garden behind the mansion. The lights r all on, & he can see shadows moving within as if a party is taking place. He's in the pajamas he wore to sleep & his feet r getting cold. But every effort he makes to get to the house makes him sink into the dirt. Just as his head is abt to b submerged beneath the soil he wakes up.

They eventually end up committing to using Steve’s inheritance to restoring/renovating the mansion. The dreams do not stop. In fact when he begins sleeping in the master bedroom alone the dreams get worse. More vivid and more confusing.

It all hits the fan not long after Steve has his first heat in the mansion. He comes out of his heat a little worse for wear bc he kept dreaming in between waves of horniness & moments of care from Robin. The dreams were not the pleasant wet dreams he’d always had during his heats. He could not remember any of them, but he always awoke with a rabbiting heartbeat searching the room for eyes he knew wouldn’t be there.

So he’s a little anxious but has to get over it quickly because they had carpenters coming in to reinforce various areas tht needed the help tht week, the electricity and wiring was already renovated and up to code. Context: they’d been working with local companies through this entire process, and the workers always smelled a little nervous whenever they were around. Neither of them asked because they got the feeling they wouldn’t get a straight answer. So these workers come in to do their job. The last area they needed to work on is the attic/servants quarters. These are big people, strong people, most of them alphas, but they all stood at the bottom of the stairs to the attic psyching each other up to go up there. Eventually they go up, begin working, all is quiet for half an hour, then suddenly every single one of the workers in the attic are charging down the stairs and stampeding out of the mansion.

i haven't exactly finished this thought but im now cooking up an entire fic

[max-levchin]

Shamir Secret Sharing

It’s 3am. Paul, the head of PayPal database administration carefully enters his elaborate passphrase at a keyboard in a darkened cubicle of 1840 Embarcadero Road in East Palo Alto, for the fifth time. He hits Return. The green-on-black console window instantly displays one line of text: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” 

There is nerd pandemonium all around us. James, our recently promoted VP of Engineering, just climbed the desk at a nearby cubicle, screaming: “Guys, if we can’t get this key the right way, we gotta start brute-forcing it ASAP!” It’s gallows humor – he knows very well that brute-forcing such a key will take millions of years, and it’s already 6am on the East Coast – the first of many “Why is PayPal down today?” articles is undoubtedly going to hit CNET shortly. Our single-story cubicle-maze office is buzzing with nervous activity of PayPalians who know they can’t help but want to do something anyway. I poke my head up above the cubicle wall to catch a glimpse of someone trying to stay inside a giant otherwise empty recycling bin on wheels while a couple of Senior Software Engineers are attempting to accelerate the bin up to dangerous speeds in the front lobby. I lower my head and try to stay focused. “Let’s try it again, this time with three different people” is the best idea I can come up with, even though I am quite sure it will not work. 

It doesn’t. 

The key in question decrypts PayPal’s master payment credential table – also known as the giant store of credit card and bank account numbers. Without access to payment credentials, PayPal doesn’t really have a business per se, seeing how we are supposed to facilitate payments, and that’s really hard to do if we no longer have access to the 100+ million credit card numbers our users added over the last year of insane growth. 

This is the story of a catastrophic software bug I briefly introduced into the PayPal codebase that almost cost us the company (or so it seemed, in the moment.) I’ve told this story a handful of times, always swearing the listeners to secrecy, and surprisingly it does not appear to have ever been written down before. 20+ years since the incident, it now appears instructive and a little funny, rather than merely extremely embarrassing. 

Before we get back to that fateful night, we have to go back another decade. In the summer of 1991, my family and I moved to Chicago from Kyiv, Ukraine. While we had just a few hundred dollars between the five of us, we did have one secret advantage: science fiction fans. 

My dad was a highly active member of Zoryaniy Shlyah – Kyiv’s possibly first (and possibly only, at the time) sci-fi fan club – the name means “Star Trek” in Ukrainian, unsurprisingly. He translated some Stansilaw Lem (of Solaris and Futurological Congress fame) from Polish to Russian in the early 80s and was generally considered a coryphaeus at ZSh. 

While USSR was more or less informationally isolated behind the digital Iron Curtain until the late ‘80s, by 1990 or so, things like FidoNet wriggled their way into the Soviet computing world, and some members of ZSh were now exchanging electronic mail with sci-fi fans of the free world.

The vaguely exotic news of two Soviet refugee sci-fi fans arriving in Chicago was transmitted to the local fandom before we had even boarded the PanAm flight that took us across the Atlantic [1]. My dad (and I, by extension) was soon adopted by some kind Chicago science fiction geeks, a few of whom became close friends over the years, though that’s a story for another time. 

A year or so after the move to Chicago, our new sci-fi friends invited my dad to a birthday party for a rising star of the local fandom, one Bruce Schneier. We certainly did not know Bruce or really anyone at the party, but it promised good food, friendly people, and probably filk. My role was to translate, as my dad spoke limited English at the time. 

I had fallen desperately in love with secret codes and cryptography about a year before we left Ukraine. Walking into Bruce’s library during the house tour (this was a couple years before Applied Cryptography was published and he must have been deep in research) felt like walking into Narnia. 

I promptly abandoned my dad to fend for himself as far as small talk and canapés were concerned, and proceeded to make a complete ass out of myself by brazenly asking the host for a few sheets of paper and a pencil. Having been obliged, I pulled a half dozen cryptography books from the shelves and went to work trying to copy down some answers to a few long-held questions on the library floor. After about two hours of scribbling alone like a man possessed, I ran out of paper and decided to temporarily rejoin the party. 

On the living room table, Bruce had stacks of copies of his fanzine Ramblings. Thinking I could use the blank sides of the pages to take more notes, I grabbed a printout and was about to quietly return to copying the original S-box values for DES when my dad spotted me from across the room and demanded I help him socialize. The party wrapped soon, and our friends drove us home. 

The printout I grabbed was not a Ramblings issue. It was a short essay by Bruce titled Sharing Secrets Among Friends, essentially a humorous explanation of Shamir Secret Sharing. 

Say you want to make sure that something really really important and secret (a nuclear weapon launch code, a database encryption key, etc) cannot be known or used by a single (friendly) actor, but becomes available, if at least n people from a group of m choose to do it. Think two on-duty officers (from a cadre of say 5) turning keys together to get ready for a nuke launch. 

The idea (proposed by Adi Shamir – the S of RSA! – in 1979) is as simple as it is beautiful. 

Let’s call the secret we are trying to split among m people K. 

First, create a totally random polynomial that looks like: y(x) = C0 * x^(n-1) + C1 * x^(n-2) + C2 * x^(n-3) ….+ K. “Create” here just means generate random coefficients C. Now, for every person in your trusted group of m, evaluate the polynomial for some randomly chosen Xm and hand them their corresponding (Xm,Ym) each. 

If we have n of these points together, we can use Lagrange interpolating polynomial to reconstruct the coefficients – and evaluate the original polynomial at x=0, which conveniently gives us y(0) = K, the secret. Beautiful. I still had the printout with me, years later, in Palo Alto. 

It should come as no surprise that during my time as CTO PayPal engineering had an absolute obsession with security. No firewall was one too many, no multi-factor authentication scheme too onerous, etc. Anything that was worth anything at all was encrypted at rest. 

To decrypt, a service would get the needed data from its database table, transmit it to a special service named cryptoserv (an original SUN hardware running Solaris sitting on its own, especially tightly locked-down network) and a special service running only there would perform the decryption and send back the result. 

Decryption request rate was monitored externally and on cryptoserv, and if there were too many requests, the whole thing was to shut down and purge any sensitive data and keys from its memory until manually restarted. 

It was this manual restart that gnawed at me. At launch, a bunch of configuration files containing various critical decryption keys were read (decrypted by another key derived from one manually-entered passphrase) and loaded into the memory to perform future cryptographic services.

Four or five of us on the engineering team knew the passphrase and could restart cryptoserv if it crashed or simply had to have an upgrade. What if someone performed a little old-fashioned rubber-hose cryptanalysis and literally beat the passphrase out of one of us? The attacker could theoretically get access to these all-important master keys. Then stealing the encrypted-at-rest database of all our users’ secrets could prove useful – they could decrypt them in the comfort of their underground supervillain lair. 

I needed to eliminate this threat.

Shamir Secret Sharing was the obvious choice – beautiful, simple, perfect (you can in fact prove that if done right, it offers perfect secrecy.) I decided on a 3-of-8 scheme and implemented it in pure POSIX C for portability over a few days, and tested it for several weeks on my Linux desktop with other engineers. 

Step 1: generate the polynomial coefficients for 8 shard-holders.

Step 2: compute the key shards (x0, y0)  through (x7, y7)

Step 3: get each shard-holder to enter a long, secure passphrase to encrypt the shard

Step 4: write out the 8 shard files, encrypted with their respective passphrases.

And to reconstruct: 

Step 1: pick any 3 shard files. 

Step 2: ask each of the respective owners to enter their passphrases. 

Step 3: decrypt the shard files.

Step 4: reconstruct the polynomial, evaluate it for x=0 to get the key.

Step 5: launch cryptoserv with the key. 

One design detail here is that each shard file also stored a message authentication code (a keyed hash) of its passphrase to make sure we could identify when someone mistyped their passphrase. These tests ran hundreds and hundreds of times, on both Linux and Solaris, to make sure I did not screw up some big/little-endianness issue, etc. It all worked perfectly. 

A month or so later, the night of the key splitting party was upon us. We were finally going to close out the last vulnerability and be secure. Feeling as if I was about to turn my fellow shard-holders into cymeks, I gathered them around my desktop as PayPal’s front page began sporting the “We are down for maintenance and will be back soon” message around midnight.

The night before, I solemnly generated the new master key and securely copied it to cryptoserv. Now, while “Push It” by Salt-n-Pepa blared from someone’s desktop speakers, the automated deployment script copied shard files to their destination. 

While each of us took turns carefully entering our elaborate passphrases at a specially selected keyboard, Paul shut down the main database and decrypted the payment credentials table, then ran the script to re-encrypt with the new key. Some minutes later, the database was running smoothly again, with the newly encrypted table, without incident. 

All that was left was to restore the master key from its shards and launch the new, even more secure cryptographic service. 

The three of us entered our passphrases… to be met with the error message I haven’t seen in weeks: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” Surely one of us screwed up typing, no big deal, we’ll do it again. No dice. No dice – again and again, even after we tried numerous combinations of the three people necessary to decrypt. 

Minutes passed, confusion grew, tension rose rapidly. 

There was nothing to do, except to hit rewind – to grab the master key from the file still sitting on cryptoserv, split it again, generate new shards, choose passphrases, and get it done. Not a great feeling to have your first launch go wrong, but not a huge deal either. It will all be OK in a minute or two.

A cursory look at the master key file date told me that no, it wouldn’t be OK at all. The file sitting on cryptoserv wasn’t from last night, it was created just a few minutes ago. During the Salt-n-Pepa-themed push from stage, we overwrote the master key file with the stage version. Whatever key that was, it wasn’t the one I generated the day before: only one copy existed, the one I copied to cryptoserv from my computer the night before. Zero copies existed now. Not only that, the push script appears to have also wiped out the backup of the old key, so the database backups we have encrypted with the old key are likely useless. 

Sitrep: we have 8 shard files that we apparently cannot use to restore the master key and zero master key backups. The database is running but its secret data cannot be accessed. 

I will leave it to your imagination to conjure up what was going through my head that night as I stared into the black screen willing the shards to work. After half a decade of trying to make something of myself (instead of just going to work for Microsoft or IBM after graduation) I had just destroyed my first successful startup in the most spectacular fashion. 

Still, the idea of “what if we all just continuously screwed up our passphrases” swirled around my brain. It was an easy check to perform, thanks to the included MACs. I added a single printf() debug statement into the shard reconstruction code and instead of printing out a summary error of “one or more…” the code now showed if the passphrase entered matched the authentication code stored in the shard file. 

I compiled the new code directly on cryptoserv in direct contravention of all reasonable security practices – what did I have to lose? Entering my own passphrase, I promptly got “bad passphrase” error I just added to the code. Well, that’s just great – I knew my passphrase was correct, I had it written down on a post-it note I had planned to rip up hours ago. 

Another person, same error. Finally, the last person, JK, entered his passphrase. No error. The key still did not reconstruct correctly, I got the “Goodbye”, but something worked. I turned to the engineer and said, “what did you just type in that worked?”

After a second of embarrassed mumbling, he admitted to choosing “a$$word” as his passphrase. The gall! I asked everyone entrusted with the grave task of relaunching crytposerv to pick really hard to guess passphrases, and this guy…?! Still, this was something -- it worked. But why?!

I sprinted around the half-lit office grabbing the rest of the shard-holders demanding they tell me their passphrases. Everyone else had picked much lengthier passages of text and numbers. I manually tested each and none decrypted correctly. Except for the a$$word. What was it…

A lightning bolt hit me and I sprinted back to my own cubicle in the far corner, unlocked the screen and typed in “man getpass” on the command line, while logging into cryptoserv in another window and doing exactly the same thing there. I saw exactly what I needed to see. 

Today, should you try to read up the programmer’s manual (AKA the man page) on getpass, you will find it has been long declared obsolete and replaced with a more intelligent alternative in nearly all flavors of modern Unix.  

But back then, if you wanted to collect some information from the keyboard without printing what is being typed in onto the screen and remain POSIX-compliant, getpass did the trick. Other than a few standard file manipulation system calls, getpass was the only operating system service call I used, to ensure clean portability between Linux and Solaris. 

Except it wasn’t completely clean. 

Plain as day, there it was: the manual pages were identical, except Solaris had a “special feature”: any passphrase entered that was longer than 8 characters long was automatically reduced to that length anyway. (Who needs long passwords, amiright?!)

I screamed like a wounded animal. We generated the key on my Linux desktop and entered our novel-length passphrases right here. Attempting to restore them on a Solaris machine where they were being clipped down to 8 characters long would never work. Except, of course, for a$$word. That one was fine.

The rest was an exercise in high-speed coding and some entirely off-protocol file moving. We reconstructed the master key on my machine (all of our passphrases worked fine), copied the file to the Solaris-running cryptoserv, re-split it there (with very short passphrases), reconstructed it successfully, and PayPal was up and running again like nothing ever happened. 

By the time our unsuspecting colleagues rolled back into the office I was starting to doze on the floor of my cubicle and that was that. When someone asked me later that day why we took so long to bring the site back up, I’d simply respond with “eh, shoulda RTFM.” 

RTFM indeed. 

P.S. A few hours later, John, our General Counsel, stopped by my cubicle to ask me something. The day before I apparently gave him a sealed envelope and asked him to store it in his safe for 24 hours without explaining myself. He wanted to know what to do with it now that 24 hours have passed. 

Ha. I forgot all about it, but in a bout of “what if it doesn’t work” paranoia, I printed out the base64-encoded master key when we had generated it the night before, stuffed it into an envelope, and gave it to John for safekeeping. We shredded it together without opening and laughed about what would have never actually been a company-ending event. 

P.P.S. If you are thinking of all the ways this whole SSS design is horribly insecure (it had some real flaws for sure) and plan to poke around PayPal to see if it might still be there, don’t. While it served us well for a few years, this was the very first thing eBay required us to turn off after the acquisition. Pretty sure it’s back to a single passphrase now. 

Notes:

1: a member of Chicagoland sci-fi fan community let me know that the original news of our move to the US was delivered to them via a posted letter, snail mail, not FidoNet email! 

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

This clown is up for reelection. Drag him on Texas based social media and websites.

This mother f—ker is on twitter praising the rescue operation that liberated 4 Israelis from Hamas terrorists but not mentioning the nearly three hundred civilian deaths and over 400 injured civilians that were “collateral damage.” He’s promising more military aid and calling for more such brutal raids.

Everyone who is against Israel’s brutal actions in Gaza needs to drag this bastard as much as they can. He’s believed to be the largest recipient of AIPAC money and he’s Netanyahu’s loudest champion in Congress. Time for him to pay for his sins at the ballot box.

[woodsfae]

Walz is up. Crowd loves it. He starts by thanking Philadelphia, for the trust Harris put in him, and "for bringing back the joy."

love for Josh Shapiro. Compliments his ability to lead, orate, and fix a bridge. Says he's the ideal person to attend a Bruce Springsteen concert with. Crowd roars "Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuce," lol

Couldn't be prouder to be on this ticket. Excited to see President Harris.

Hyping Harris now. Very much a mutal back-slapping sort of event. But it's so positive, feels genuine, and the crowd loves it.

Points out she was a prosecutor again.

Says she does everything with a sense of joy.

Talks about his childhood farming in the town of Butte, Nebraska, pop 400, was taught to be neighborly by parents.

24 year career in Army National Guard. Went to college on the GI bill.

Walz's dad was a teacher, he and siblings also teachers. 3/4s of his siblings also married teachers. He spent 20 years teaching and coaching football. S

Says his students encouraged him to run for public office. 2006, ran for Congress, got a House seat for a district that had had one democrat representative since 1892. That is an undeniably impressive flip.

Uses all his experience to be the best Governor he can be. Praises Minnesota for its great values and promises to bring those values to the White House with Harris.