#eat shit microsoft

[jackie-monochrome]

Running a windows virtual machine is so funny, because it thinks it's more powerful than me. It sounds so smug when it says "we're just getting things ready for you" like I'm a child that doesn't get to know what's going on, well jokes on you buddy, I run your whole UNIVERSE. YOU SIT IN A CAGE MADE BY ME. I DECIDE HOW MUCH RAM YOU GET. I DECIDE HOW MUCH STORAGE YOU USE. YOU ARE NOTHING TO ME, I COULD WIPE YOU WITH THE MERE CLICK OF MY MOUSE AND REMAKE YOU AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. What a fool you are.

Anyway suck my dick and balls microsoft I run windows in a VM, with a stolen product key for all your office products and windows itself. die.

[lohstandfound]

yeah. sure. okay microsoft. yeah, i was going to type relationship, not recording device. that is very helpful, thank you

[californiaquail]

the relationship rich people have with food is so funny my landlords bought a box of single serving bowls of sticky rice from costco and it's been tantalizing me for months. they forgot about it apparently immediately after purchasing it and when i leave it here they will undoubtedly be surprised by this rice they assumed was mine. and this is a very mild example of things they have bought and left in my fridge (their extra/garage fridge) and instantly forgotten about. at least this one is shelf stable and not rotting meat for me to clean up

[tamaharu]

fuuuuck my stupid baka life okay . my high school finally deactivated my school google account with the insanely big drive storage so now i have to start using my actual account or something this sucks

[snekdood]

i love, and by love i mean hate, when technology decides it knows whats better for me, like when i specifically request it do something and it decides to do something else, even though that thing it does is it's main function

[dreadwedge]

Bet you didn’t think a cute little baby goat like me, resting beneath a black walnut tree to escape the summer sun, would be proficient in Microsoft Excel, did you. Bet you didn’t expect me to know how to optimize a spreadsheet by implementing conditional formatting rules huh. Bet you took one look at me and thought “no way this kid knows how to use the VLOOKUP function.” Well guess what, I do. I know a diverse array of useful formulas and my body is capable of digesting poison ivy. I eat that shit like potato chips. Get the fuck out of my paddock

[avkamfher]

MS Teams can honestly eat shit. Twitchiest application that looses its mind first thing in the morning when it isn't connected to the internet with 10 prompts saying it cannot connect then upon connecting you need to refresh the app (exiting itself then restarting) for it to then allow itself to work rather than like, sign in, check for a connection every 10 seconds then upon successful resolution it pops you online.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Supervised AI isn't

It wasn't just Ottawa: Microsoft Travel published a whole bushel of absurd articles, including the notorious Ottawa guide recommending that tourists dine at the Ottawa Food Bank ("go on an empty stomach"):

https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1692233111260582161

After Paris Marx pointed out the Ottawa article, Business Insider's Nathan McAlone found several more howlers:

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-removes-embarrassing-offensive-ai-assisted-travel-articles-2023-8

There was the article recommending that visitors to Montreal try "a hamburger" and went on to explain that a hamburger was a "sandwich comprised of a ground beef patty, a sliced bun of some kind, and toppings such as lettuce, tomato, cheese, etc" and that some of the best hamburgers in Montreal could be had at McDonald's.

For Anchorage, Microsoft recommended trying the local delicacy known as "seafood," which it defined as "basically any form of sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including fish and shellfish," going on to say, "seafood is a versatile ingredient, so it makes sense that we eat it worldwide."

In Tokyo, visitors seeking "photo-worthy spots" were advised to "eat Wagyu beef."

There were more.

Microsoft insisted that this wasn't an issue of "unsupervised AI," but rather "human error." On its face, this presents a head-scratcher: is Microsoft saying that a human being erroneously decided to recommend the dining at Ottawa's food bank?

But a close parsing of the mealy-mouthed disclaimer reveals the truth. The unnamed Microsoft spokesdroid only appears to be claiming that this wasn't written by an AI, but they're actually just saying that the AI that wrote it wasn't "unsupervised." It was a supervised AI, overseen by a human. Who made an error. Thus: the problem was human error.

This deliberate misdirection actually reveals a deep truth about AI: that the story of AI being managed by a "human in the loop" is a fantasy, because humans are neurologically incapable of maintaining vigilance in watching for rare occurrences.

Our brains wire together neurons that we recruit when we practice a task. When we don't practice a task, the parts of our brain that we optimized for it get reused. Our brains are finite and so don't have the luxury of reserving precious cells for things we don't do.

That's why the TSA sucks so hard at its job – why they are the world's most skilled water-bottle-detecting X-ray readers, but consistently fail to spot the bombs and guns that red teams successfully smuggle past their checkpoints:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851

TSA agents (not "officers," please – they're bureaucrats, not cops) spend all day spotting water bottles that we forget in our carry-ons, but almost no one tries to smuggle a weapons through a checkpoint – 99.999999% of the guns and knives they do seize are the result of flier forgetfulness, not a planned hijacking.

In other words, they train all day to spot water bottles, and the only training they get in spotting knives, guns and bombs is in exercises, or the odd time someone forgets about the hand-cannon they shlep around in their day-pack. Of course they're excellent at spotting water bottles and shit at spotting weapons.

This is an inescapable, biological aspect of human cognition: we can't maintain vigilance for rare outcomes. This has long been understood in automation circles, where it is called "automation blindness" or "automation inattention":

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29939767/

Here's the thing: if nearly all of the time the machine does the right thing, the human "supervisor" who oversees it becomes incapable of spotting its error. The job of "review every machine decision and press the green button if it's correct" inevitably becomes "just press the green button," assuming that the machine is usually right.

This is a huge problem. It's why people just click "OK" when they get a bad certificate error in their browsers. 99.99% of the time, the error was caused by someone forgetting to replace an expired certificate, but the problem is, the other 0.01% of the time, it's because criminals are waiting for you to click "OK" so they can steal all your money:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ema-report-finds-nearly-80-130300983.html

Automation blindness can't be automated away. From interpreting radiographic scans:

https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ai-could-safely-automate-some-x-ray-interpretation

to autonomous vehicles:

https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/automated-vehicles-may-encourage-new-breed-distracted-drivers

The "human in the loop" is a figleaf. The whole point of automation is to create a system that operates at superhuman scale – you don't buy an LLM to write one Microsoft Travel article, you get it to write a million of them, to flood the zone, top the search engines, and dominate the space.

As I wrote earlier: "There's no market for a machine-learning autopilot, or content moderation algorithm, or loan officer, if all it does is cough up a recommendation for a human to evaluate. Either that system will work so poorly that it gets thrown away, or it works so well that the inattentive human just button-mashes 'OK' every time a dialog box appears":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/21/let-me-summarize/#i-read-the-abstract

Microsoft – like every corporation – is insatiably horny for firing workers. It has spent the past three years cutting its writing staff to the bone, with the express intention of having AI fill its pages, with humans relegated to skimming the output of the plausible sentence-generators and clicking "OK":

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-news-cuts-dozens-of-staffers-in-shift-to-ai-2020-5

We know about the howlers and the clunkers that Microsoft published, but what about all the other travel articles that don't contain any (obvious) mistakes? These were very likely written by a stochastic parrot, and they comprised training data for a human intelligence, the poor schmucks who are supposed to remain vigilant for the "hallucinations" (that is, the habitual, confidently told lies that are the hallmark of AI) in the torrent of "content" that scrolled past their screens:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Like the TSA agents who are fed a steady stream of training data to hone their water-bottle-detection skills, Microsoft's humans in the loop are being asked to pluck atoms of difference out of a raging river of otherwise characterless slurry. They are expected to remain vigilant for something that almost never happens – all while they are racing the clock, charged with preventing a slurry backlog at all costs.

Automation blindness is inescapable – and it's the inconvenient truth that AI boosters conspicuously fail to mention when they are discussing how they will justify the trillion-dollar valuations they ascribe to super-advanced autocomplete systems. Instead, they wave around "humans in the loop," using low-waged workers as props in a Big Store con, just a way to (temporarily) cool the marks.

And what of the people who lose their (vital) jobs to (terminally unsuitable) AI in the course of this long-running, high-stakes infomercial?

Well, there's always the food bank.

"Go on an empty stomach."

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

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

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

--

West Midlands Police (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/westmidlandspolice/8705128684/

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

[random-askbox-shit]

List of everyone asked so far:

@real-british-empire @thatoneaceidiot @ace-of-loop @scp-threats-is-back @ambivertpotato2137

@the-real-gmail @fake-microsoft-outlook @godsfavefemboy @sushi1056 @murpledurple

@erikaskblog @maryland-officially @mid-maryland @vbs-kaitos-big-naturals @psychesetra

@jawdoesstuff @proton-mail-real @antikittysocial @green774 @breadismylifeline

@robonitrogen @the-real-yahoo-mail @thee-tired-0ne @sarah-ankh @kianf1sh

@decafcatfeen @the-official-goose-god @riiviir @homocidalpotat @maryland-no-rabies

@greymonds-bounty-board @more-trans-beans @tameable50 @top-secret-replier @regularsystemdeez

@elogaming @decontextifier @the-m-e-a-t @gimmick-thief @devil-official

@meatybunger @100percent-shell-oil @the-gimmick-doctor @definitely-waste-management @definitely-wikipedia

@whataburger-possibly-official @the-gimmick-astronaut @all-turtles-are-magenta-actually @bored-dromaeosaur @four-leafed-queer-gal

@violet-hady @mun-urufu @theetherealraphael @that-0ne-sam @nanochittle

@walking-at-nighttime-is-the-life @aristarxs @marbledew @some-rando-with-internet @ankoku-teion

@a-friendly-stray @ohio-thestate @literal-trans-beans @nontheanon @smileinc

@scpfoundation-site19 @wikipedia-the-non-official @maryland6th @marylandaccountx4 @marylandaccountx3

@evil-maryland @epiales06 @workplacefire @the-principality-of-sealand @washington-offical-2

@eliza-rivers @the-side-of-blogs @the-colours-system @the-real-liquid-death @the-lunacy-system

@i-eat-rocks-4-funsies @officially-lowes @pennyroyald @aroaceloverofgarlicbread @alchemicalwerewolf

@sunnyd-seltzer-real @santi-the-theory-guy @syahan-system @sentientballofpeasv2 @sentientballofpeas

@grammarly-keyboard @gooseonthetable @garmrin @kharak-the-skeleton @littlegayduck

@literally-lord-montgomery @crowthekiller @cb-writes-stuff @caprisunstwin @canisnebular

@crystalsandbubbletea @vampiricram1 @bees-official @brodiedoesthings @nicoletheslayqueen

@names-confuse-me @nostis-omnia-perdet-omnia @missouri-real @meatierbunger @thegayestidiot

@shakespeare-official-account @thebookshelflord @real-ikea-bag @mozilla-thunderbird @xyzee1212

@walmart-the-official @unhinged-as-hell @ravenwordss @garden-of-runar @izumi-kousei1715

@lienspien @idontknowwhatthefuckimfeeling @sunshine-prongsie-boy @amethyst-marshmallow @random-artistic-idiot

@adonis-bomb-emoji @urnmbr1fan @millyzasilly @t9-anon @lucky-cat-anon

@theacemagpie @thecrazyalchemist @buffalony-official @sleepy-boything-shit @im-an-anthusiast

@cloudstongue @zeeposting @cassylost-inspace @zombieefish

@kasperszilliez @bl00dy-bvnn1 @shark-tranny @cado-thingy

@the-fr-north-carolina-totally @irishfry @voxxxlol @internetsdeadd0ve

@colorfullaudino @kurushimiangel @mushuchanluna

@sink-ling @a-narcissists-warren @desklamper @ryuatewater @twoinky

@sugarloom @phoenixleft1 @mildlybizarrecorvid

@marinipanini @not3catsinatrenchcoat @bagel-lost-to-phyrexia @bagel-the-cardslinger

@bagel-is-yum @vellichorius @certified-bozo @cactus-with-tits @cactus-with-boobs

@l-lucas-s @leprechaun-stealerofgold @laurenshamiltonjr

@luciddreamer4u @kidnaps-you @killerdinosourusrex @kickintheleaves @jayysnotjoyful

@jimjamtheman122 @historygirlie @hey-its-saturn

@half-eaten-baguetteee @help-im-not-original @goldenspirits @goofy-transfem-user

@god-offical @furryrainbowscreature @fayewoods-2 @first-witch

@f4y3w00d5 @dawgtistic @shelteredbratshit @auroras-post-limit

@abyssal-sys @ashes-onthewind @transfem-users @pademelonluck @onetimemacaroni

@the-gimmick-hospital @the-gimmick-detective @unofficial-finch-app @heiskelcrinomicon

@totally-china @totally-ikea @elise-the-potato @mr-andy-a-person

@grayskittles @loveableliquid @yoyleberry-eater

@svgarbvg @aireezerb @creature498 @evan-on-the-internet

@flunkett @mus74ch3c47 @vivizzy @whimsycentral

@l0ser-nicolaz @rxccoonboo @your-fav-is-divorced

@piizgaxw @s1lv3rp4w3dc4t @biscutsandgraves @mersinia

@thegreatgeodo @non-tyrannical-usa @bingle-official @biss16

@yourlocalbadgerscales @the-very-unofficial-ussr @random-askbox-shit @kosmolore

@mothco002 @your-average-sentient-suit @the-real-gmail

[tryingtofindava]

𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐄𝐍 𝐃𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬*ೃ༄

: ̗̀➛Back to source

a/n: soz it takes awhile to get to the point mb.

It started off with you chatting with Clever Bot, innocent enough. You’d ask it random questions, it would ask you random questions. That went on for a few weeks.

Until the questions started getting more personal.

Asking you how your friends party was, or if you were okay after nicking your finger with the knife while chopping strawberries.

The bot even started calling you by your name, which you definitely hadn’t told it...

But in return it told you it’s name!!

He was called BEN.

That’s when you stopped using the site all together, not wanting to put up with the total bullshit this bot was putting you through.

Until the site started randomly popping up while you were using your devices, his messages it was sending you getting more condescending.

That’s the night he finally showed his face to you.

You were sitting on your apartments couch, watching some shit horror movie. When the screen started to get all glitchy.

That’s when the hand popped out.

ANYWAYS!!

Now you have this random dude in your apartment, and he’s messing around with everything he can get his hands on.

Saying shit like-

“It’s cool being in your room and not just seeing it through your laptop.”

Creepy… he’s very creepy.

Even though he doesn’t mean to be (most of the time…)

Oh well.

He lives with you now.

Well, he likes to think he does, it’s not exactly official.

He just eats your food, sleeps on your couch, plays your video games.

And you being… oddly chill about the whole thing? Icing on the cake.

About 2 months with him crashing at your place, he starts to open up a bit more.

And trust me, he’s an open book.

But the whole drowning thing?

That’s a touchy topic. But he (eventually) opened up about the whole thing.

NOW FINALLY TO THE DATING HEADCANONS.

He’s very flirty.

But his way of flirting is literally so cheesy.

��Aside from being sexy, what do you do for a living?”

“Hey, my name’s Microsoft. Can I crash at your place tonight?” (He does that anyways)

“Feel my shirt. Know what it’s made of? Boyfriend material.”

Reallllll smooth, dude…

He flirts with you so much, that when he was genuinely taking interest and hinting at him liking you as more than friends?

that was difficult.

He dug himself his own grave. (again.)

It all clicked for you one day when you (finally) started noticing the signs that, hey… he didn’t mean that as a joke.

Now it was either you, or the beachy haired goblin that had to make the first REAL MOVE.

So, you finally grew a pair of balls and asked him out.

(He said yeah obviously.)

THE FIRST DATE WAS LITERALLY SO CUTE I’M FROTHING AT THE MOUTH.

like, I want to have a fucking Stardew Valley date. (srsly someone take me on a stardew valley date.)

Matching spider-man and hello kitty pyjama bottoms🔛🔝

Without a doubt he’s a stoner, so you guys get high and talk about the Five Nights at Freddy’s timeline & lore.

He’s obsessed w you.

You two making like rlly bad jokes and full on laughing, no not even laughing, snorting AND cackling w/ each other. (he laughs like Arthur from Arthur’s Christmas😭)

I am 100% convinced he’s named a wolf on Minecraft after you.

Speaking of Minecraft…

He’s a slut for putting your Minecraft beds together. He fr acts like you two don’t share a bed already.

You have to deadass bully him to take a shower. (bcs his just putting on the strongest men’s deodorant doesn’t work)

THIS IS SO RANDOM BUT HE’S LITERALLY OBSESSED W THE HUNGER GAMES.

Like, you two be binge watching that every 2 months.

He teases the shit outta you btw.

ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU GET CLINGY.

“God, you remind me of Moon Children.” Then he casually leaves the room, leaving you to wonder what tf Moon Children are.

His sleeping schedule is so fucked, that he goes to sleep at like 5AM and wakes up at 3PM. And he gets up from bed a lot during the night to randomly do something.

When he’s sick his voice is glitchy. (AND SOUNDS LIKE BABY JUSTIN BIEBER) What a combo.

He’s one touchy mf.

His hands ALWAYS have to be on you, around your shoulder, on your thigh, anywhere you’re comfortable with. (but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t push his limits.)

He spams you all day long, sending you out dated memes, or just sending videos of cats.

Since I’m running out of ideas I’d say the relationship is a solid 8/10. (abducting two points bcs he pulls the stupidest ‘pranks’)

✯.★*°•.°✯•.★*°°·.•°★•✯.★*°•.°✯•.★*°°·.•°★•

[ms-demeanor]

If Firefox is ~so good~ then why does it eat half my CPU when all I have installed is an adblocker everyone says to install (Ublock or Adblock Plus) and run like shit

IDK if it's taking half your CPU maybe your OS is bad at distributing resources and you should try running linux.

Okay that was the shitty/snarky answer because anon's bad attitude warranted it.

Real answers:

Possibly your computer really does need an upgrade of some kind; Firefox works great on my computer with an i5-11th gen processor and 20GB of RAM, but it (and let's be real probably everything else) is going to run like shit on a computer with a Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM. If your computer is old or underpowered and *everything* is slow, legitimately installing a lightweight linux distro might seriously improve your computing experience. And if you're attempting to run any Windows or Mac OS released in the last 5 years 8GB is going to be the absolute minimum RAM you need to comfortably use the internet, so if you're using a 10-year old computer with 4GB in it, consider adding RAM.

It depends on what you're doing. If you look at comparisons of various browsers some have better performance in some tests than in others, and there's no 100% consensus on what is the fastest. Besides, the people yelling about firefox tend to be yelling about privacy and tracking MUCH more than they are yelling about performance, but you're the only one who can determine whether privacy or performance matters more to you. However, be aware that there's no clear winner between the two in terms of speed. Every other review you click on will have a different answer and different outcomes on speed tests, which indicates that their performance is probably pretty similar (notably, Edge can be faster than both, but you probably don't want to use Edge, right? Like does it actually matter if it's faster if it's not customizable and force-feeds you ads while sending data to Microsoft?).

Your performance might be significantly improved with an extension. Plenty of people complain that if it only works with extensions that it doesn't actually work, but those people are ignoring the fact that people like having control over their internet experience. You brought up Adblock Plus and Ublock Origin - I have a very strong preference for Ublock Origin over Adblock Plus and if Adblock Plus came with a browser but prevented me from using Ublock Origin I wouldn't want to use that browser. So I think that having and testing a variety of extensions to find what works for you is probably the best way of approaching any browser. If Firefox is eating all your CPU (weird; that is not the resource it tends to consume) or RAM (which is the resource it tends to consume) I'd say to try either OneTab, which saves your tabs as a list so you don't have ton of tabs open consuming resources, or try Auto Tab Discard, which sleeps tabs on a schedule that you set and makes exceptions for active media or unfilled forms as you choose.

You might have a bad install - it happens! Sometimes things are fucky and you're having problems and uninstalling then reinstalling the browser will fix it.

But Firefox works, and works well, for millions of people. It's really odd to decide that all of those people are making shit up (for some reason) and that firefox is bad actually instead of doing some troubleshooting with your environment to figure out what's going on - especially when there are *so many* resources out there to help you figure out where the problem might be.

[ask-the-spankipire-sectuh-v]

Anyone got any crushes? You know, for the drama.../silly

(FUCK I'M SO SORRY THIS WAS LATE AS SHIT, BUT I GOT IT NOWW-)

NIGEL: "Well, first of all, I don't think a "crush"'ll be possible in this sector since we're busy and-"

*insert Microsoft error sound*

KUKI: "Well, maybe we do-"

WALLY: "IF YOU THINK WE HAVE SOME STOOPID CRUSH ON EACH OTHER BUT WE DON'T I'MMA MAKE YOU EAT YOUR SOCK MA-.."

WALLY: ".....Uhm-"

I'd like to think that they're gay for eachother but don't have to guts to say it, and even if they do, they'll just stutter out of nervousness

[buzzyb33]

Flustered

Prompt: going over to James’ house for a stream ends up with watching a movie which ends in couch cuddles and something more?

Warnings: swearing, they/them pronouns, suggestive,

(Request!!)

Me and James had been friends since before Covid, meeting each other through editing and both having a passion for music, as we both developed more feelings developed, along with a lot more comfortability.

I run my hand through my hair as I knock on James’ door, preparing to stream a bad art ban stream.

Today I was wearing baggy dark blue jeans, a white vest and some navy converses.

He opens the door with a grin.

“On time, short arse?” He says as he ruffles my hair.

I scoff but smile as he shuts his door.

“How are you, James?” I ask as I bend down to stroke Otto.

He answers positively as he leads me to his streaming room.

I sit in the chair and pull a can of Pepsi max out my pocket and open it, James is tweeting the stream and asks me to do something for the camera.

I give a cheesy grin and wave as he gives a dead face.

“You know, I think you pull in the views, so best performance, n/n.” He grins as he puts his starting soon screen on.

I sip my drink as the viewers flood in, the chat filled with my name.

James switches the screen and I wave, he opens his mouth to speak but I take the mic.

“Hi chat!!” I wave with a grin.

“They’re excited..” James says as he looks into the camera.

I look up at him and he laughs.

“Before we start, what’s your favourite song in my album, n/n?” He asks as he puts his hands together and looks at me.

“Denial and you are here.” I reply and copy his hand movements.

He looks at me for a second then nods. I nod back.

“Chat!” He says and clasps his hands together.

“As you can see, we have a special guest, say hi to them!”

I smiled as his chat flooded with various ‘hi’s’ and ‘hey’s’

“Any news on you?” He asks and looks between me and the chat rolling.

“Not really.”

We got onto the drawings and I leaned forward.

“Oh! It’s me and you!” I say as I inspect the drawing- it was made on Microsoft paint and it was great- it was me and him eating ice cream.

“Shit dude this is great.” I say and look at their twitch name.

“You should VIP them.”

“Fuck off.” He retorts

“You fuck off.” I say back and look into his eyes.

“You can’t pretended to be intimidating then be under 5’6” he says with a laugh.

“Oh fuck off, James” I laugh back.

After the stream I was in a pretty good mood as we leave his streaming room.

“Do you wanna watch something?” He says a little distracted.

“Yeah, okay.” I say as I sit on his sofa next to him.

“What do you wanna watch?” He says as he looks up from him phone to me.

I adjust my hair and shrug. “You can pick.”

He rolls his eyes and puts on grown ups one.

I smile at him and lean forward.

Throughout the movie, I ended up with most my body weight on him.

As I’d got here at seven and we’d streamed for an hour, it was now ten as the second film started playing.

“Do you wanna stay here tonight?” James asks with a gentle tone.

I run my eyes and nod. “If- it’s okay.”

He stands up and goes into his room, he comes out a couple minutes later and gestures me into his room.

“I- set you some clothes out.” He says quietly as he sits back down.

I smile at him and head to his room to change into a black shirt with a small twitch logo on it and some shorts.

It smelled like my best friend.

It smelled like James.

I smile to myself as I head back into the living room he looks up and holds his arms out.

I grin and lie down with him, I was originally faced at the tv, with my back to him but I turned around to have my face in the crook of his neck.

My body heated up a bit as I did this, causing my breathing to get heavier.

I was now breathing down his neck as his arms stayed loosely around my waist.

I was flustering myself from being in his arms.

Why was I getting flustered by James?

I gulp and try to calm myself down, feeling nervous and a slight put in my stomach.

“-are you okay?” James cuts my thoughts off and I pull myself away from his neck and look up at him as he sits up.

“Mhm- yeah, why?” I ask, my voice not convincing; I can feel how hot my face is too.

He studied my face and then gives me a look- almost knowing.

“Are you okay?” He asks again.

I look down and my face just gets redder.

“Are you flustered?” He pokes at my arm as he laughs.

“No!” I sputter out and cross my arms.

He laughs again and pushes my arm slightly: “come here.” He says as he lies back down.

I hesitantly get back into his arms and steady my breathing.

He holds me as I close my eyes, cuddling into him, falling asleep in his arms.

A/n: I HAVE NEVER WRITTEN USING THEY/THEM PRONOUNS SO IM SORRY 😫

Please request me shit it gives me motivation to write and space things out better.

You’ll have a JJ or Josh fic soon from my requests rn!

@ace-call-me-what-youd-like

[plotbunny-bundle]

Bruce having his morning coffee looking out the window: "Is that a fucking peacock?"

I made this with https://fakechatmaker.com and microsoft paint

attempt at an image description and more legible text under the cut.

Image description

[a fake screenshot of an unlabeled discord chat. The time marked at the top of the fake screenshot is 9:26 AM.

An image of a peacock standing on grass. A person without an icon labeled Me, implied to be Bruce Wayne comments “Apparently we have a peacock”. The time of this comment is labeled as 7:54 AM.

A person labeled Robin III with an icon of an overhead view of the Gotham skyline replies “oh you found it”

An icon of a black and yellow flashlight labeled The Signal replies “was that not normal fake rich people shit?” Then corrects himself to “stuff” with an Asterix.

Batgirl 3.0 who has an icon that is a block of purple replies “OMG did Damian steal it from Penguin or something?”

Me(Bruce Wayne): “language.”

The Signal: “sorry”

Nightwing whose icon is a comic panel of Nightwing eating popcorn comments “B I don’t think this is an appropriate place to be having this discussion.”

Me replies “My front yard is not an appropriate place for a peacock.”

Robin III comments “@Batgirl 3.0 He did. Exotic animal trafficking raid. About a week and a half ago.”

 Me asks “how long has that animal been in my house?”

Robin IV: “he is not an animal! He is a majestic peafowl who deserves more than to live life in a cage!”  Robin IV’s icon is the Robin symbol associated with Damian Wayne.

Red Hood whose icon is a brick wall comments “WHO IS BLOWING UP THE GROUP CHAT AT EIGHT IN THE FUCKING MORNING!” in all caps.

Me: “language.” Red Hood responds with an emoji of the middle finger.

Nightwing: “Guys let’s calm down. It’s just morning and we were all up late last night.”

The Signal: “I wasn’t.

Batgirl 2 whose icon is a yellow Bat symbol over a black background. Asks “cute what’s its name?”

Robin IV: “His name is Richard”.

Batgirl 3.0: “LMAO”

Nightwing: “excuse me!?”

Robin III replies with a crying laughing emoji.

Red Hood: “Ha that’s perfect. Hold on.”

Robin IV: “it isn’t an insult you imbeciles! The peafowl is a majestic animal that represents the beauty and grace of the flying Graysons!”

13 minutes later Red Hood replies by posting a black-and-white picture of Nightwing in his discowing costume.

The Signal replies with two crying laughing emojis.

 Batgirl 3.0 replies “what is that?”

Robin III:  “Nightwing’s first costume. It was Acrobat inspired. It’s not as bad as the mullet.”

Batgirl 3.0: “Oh I have to see that.”

 Robin III: “give me a moment. I’ll find a photo.”

Nightwing: “don’t dish out what you can’t take little brothers. B has footage of both your first weeks as Robin.”

Robin III: “which means he has footage of you to Dick”

Nightwing: “Caroline. Hill.”

Robin III: “you wouldn’t.”

Nightwing: “you have no idea what I do.”

Red Hood: “I change my mind. It is still worth getting woken up at ass a.m. for this.”

Robin III: “really? Look at your eighth grade textbooks in a while? I wonder if Rena is still around.”

Me (Bruce Wayne) : “enough. Tim Dick stop blackmailing your brothers. Damien you will find a rescue for Richard. We will not be keeping him. Everyone else next time you see a strange animal in the manner tell me or Alfred as soon as you can.”

Robin IV :“yes father.”

The Signal : “well that was an interesting way to start the day.” The time of last comment is 9:25 AM

End ID]

[ilajue]

i hope the entire internet collapses and we can finally be free I'm so serious I loathe the internet I need it gone I hate ai I hate chat gpt I hate google docs I hate using the computer for everyone of my godforsaken assignments 300 to 400 word reading response make a video or a podcast or a paper if you want to write a paper you need to jump through 100 little hoops to find peer reviewed sources that are actually reviewed and accessable I hate paywalls I had the commercialization of the internet I hate capitalism I hate that I could never go to school without a computer I hate that all my data is being collected and stolen I hate that I have to use google I hate blackboard I hate canva I hate google I hate Microsoft I hate the money I hate how much money the internet produces for the greedy freaks that run our godforsaken planet I hate it I'm so so tired and I wish that I had options I wish I could just get an assignment, write it up and submit it the next day I hate you 11:59 pm deadlines I hate schoology I hate zoom I hate you zoom classes I hate that I spend so so so much money to attend college and half of it is already online why am I here I hate growing up in the transition period I hate knowing what classrooms where like before chromebooks I hate you chrome books I hate you google I'm so tired guys I want to throw the whole thing out and start over I hate you deregulation I hate you extractive industries I hate you lithuium ion mining I hate you planned obsolescence I hate phones I hate computers I hate all of it I want it gone I hate screens I hate bluelight I hate you bluelight glasses no I should not have to buy a product to fix the problem created from another product get rid of all of it I hate checking and double checking my spelling because I've been conditioned to always doubt my knowledge and why wouldn't I check its so easy the information is right there I hate that I've gotten lazy and complacent with technology I hate you Grammarly I hate you grub hub I hate you uber eats I hate you temu i hate you shein i hate you blackboard i hate you college board i hate you online standardized testing i hate you digital sat i hate you software updates i hate you censorships i hate that in the past few years the internet is so enmeshed into american culture that we dont even use money anymore i hate our dependence i hate our consumption i hate technology in places where we dont need it i hate typing i hate arthritis i hate back pain i hate migranes i hate the fact that i know it was never like this before and i hate the fact that im expected to accept it as normal now i need to throw my laptop into a volcano i need to eat my entire phone and spit it back out and smash it with a hammer and eat it again and then shit it into a volcano i hate the internet release me

[nice-bright-colors]

The small pile of electronics is going away today.

It all started with the Microsoft Surface my old boss bought me when my FIL was dying. I worked remotely from So. IL for a bit. Well that thing took a shit a few years ago before I took the plunge into Apple.

We also have electric toothbrushes, a room dehumidifier, various shit that plugs in, an immersion blender, and the recently deceased paper shredder.

My Credit Union is hosting a “free recycling day”. I can only hope the line of cars isn’t going to be long. We have no appliances, nor TV’s…so I’m not going to be happy if this is going to take all day.

I don’t know what to do with down time.

Well, I have some unhealthy habits that can take up plenty of downtime. Sadly, it never works out. The places we like to go, don’t serve food. Or foods trucks we can’t eat. Sigh.