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pricegouge · 24 days ago

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In Your Web

part two - masterlist

nikolai x f!reader

cw: stalking, mention of alcohol, male masturbation MDNI

By all accounts, you need a return address to ship to Latvia.

Rather, you need a return address to ensure your package doesn't get opened by customs, where agents will laugh at best, or steal your panties at worst. Maybe even steal your DNA? To what end, anyway? No! Worse than that - what if they used their connections to trace the package back even without your address and -?

One is predictably unsympathetic.

» Then send it with one.

It doesn't surprise you that he thinks you're that dumb.

You toy with the idea of leaving a random address in the return spot and cringe when you imagine a surly Russian man accosting some random family four states over. It's a mental image you carry with you over the next week, playing it on repeat every time you get cut off in traffic, or you find a coworker has pissed on the toilet seat without cleaning it up. Once, you even catch yourself thinking of it when a particularly annoying regular dominates your feed during a regularly scheduled live performance.

But One is not your knight in shining fiber optic cable. Neither do you actually wish to inflict him on anyone.

So you send it without a return address, watch the shipping updates closely, and feel your stomach slowly boil when it sits for five business days at an importing station. Evidently, One watches it as well.

» You did not do as I asked.

He's uninterested in your offer to refund his money - half now, half later. All you can manage.

» If I wanted my money back I would simply cancel my subscription and request a chargeback from the service.

» I want what I purchased.

Talk of chargebacks makes you flighty. There are only two things you know about One, those being that he is very wealthy, and very rude. The bane of all customer service operators. You don't think it's likely the service would honor a reimbursement for a tip issued over a week ago, but it's not something you want to risk seeing as, unlike your plan to split his reimbursement, OnlyFans would reach into your bank account with the cold unfeeling hand of a multi-million dollar company and steal it back all at once, a prospect you simply can't afford at this time, as embarrassed as you are to admit. Long ago you'd made a promise to yourself that any and all large tips received from this side gig would go immediately toward paying off debts - student loans, ill advised credit cards you'd taken out while still living off said loans. It was a decision that had done you nothing but good up until this very moment, when his money was already spent and you were staring down the barrel of having to pay him back using your own funds.

Or, barring that, he could cancel his subscription and not only get a chargeback for the remainder of his pay period (probably the year, knowing him - you'd have to check) but you'd also stand to lose your best customer. One you're not entirely sure how you managed to land in the first place and one whose income you'd likely never manage to replace. Already, One's singlehandedly paid off an entire card for you, and until now he's showed no signs of stopping.

« i'll fix it

It's a bold promise to make when you have no recourse, but one you don't see your way out of making.

» No, I will.

—

For as much as the line had made you nervous at the time, One does not make any overt moves to follow up on it that you can see. Lapses into an uncharacteristic sort of radio silence for a time. He even skips the next few liveshows, something that strikes you as very unlike him. One does not seem the type of man to let a service he's already paid for go unused. The first night it's kind of nice, seeing as he has an annoying little habit of just paying the target price within the first ten minutes because he 'doesn't have time for this' (funny, how he always has enough time to request a private cam after) but then it's three shows later and you've barely raised anything because, apparently, all your other customers are used to sitting back and reaping the benefits of One's impatience. Something you'll have to address. He stays out of your DMs, too. Offers no tips in exchange for personal requests.

You'd be lying if you said it doesn't light a fire under your ass, gets you chatting with other creators searching for ideas on how you can fix the situation. People much smarter than you say to cut your losses and just refund him. Be done with it. But mostly it just leaves you with a large level of concern. You know these people aren't dumb, but you can't imagine the level of trust they've placed in some of their own favorite customers. Maybe it's because they're lucky enough to have attracted nice people, or at least people with enough social aptitude to know how to pretend to be nice. Something to be said for One, he's never once let you forget he's not the sort of man you should trust with your personal information.

Finally, inspiration strikes in the form of another stupid suggestion, one creator admitting they've put their work address in the return slot. They do not comment on whether or not they used their legal name, but given their stage name contains the word anal, you have to assume.

No desire to let One know where you work, or even the town you're from, you begin to think about other nameless faceless organizations you can use as a fall back instead, finally settling on a random Walmart two states over. You use your stage name and post it, sending One the new tracking number along with a free vid of you getting the replacement pair all messy in hopes that he returns immediately to his normal spending.

Of course, he doesn't so much as thank you. When another two pass with no contact, you begin to grow concerned. You triple check your account to make sure he hasn't unsubbed, but he's still right there at the top - even with no tips given in over a week.

He's disappeared for a few days in the past, but this is different. You think. Or maybe it's not. You wouldn't know seeing as you don't know him. Seeing as he's never given an excuse for his absences. Not that you'd ever asked… It's normal to be worried for someone you talk with nearly every day, right? You don't know him, sure, but you'd be a bit worried if your favorite barista from the shop you frequent just up and left one day. And your income doesn't even depend on her.

Perhaps that's why you break character when he finally resurfaces, the joy on your face when you see his handle pop into chat the next night genuine. Your giddiness is infectious, even. At least one other regular bothering to welcome him back when you stop your stream dead just to say hi. Foam falls around you, slips over your bare skin down to the tarp laid over the floor where already a good foot of it has accumulated like a blanket of snow. It was an idea you'd been quite proud of, always a fan of a simple dance party. The foam machine was a small expense given the high engagement you've received so far, your subscribers happy enough to watch you shake your ass while covered in soap bubbles and glow sticks. The machine had already paid for itself, but now that One was back, you couldn't help the building hope that you'd even meet your goal for the night, which could make for a pleasant weekend full of meeting friends for drinks.

"Glad to see you're alive. Was getting a little worried about you," you grin, settling back into your roll easily. You pinch your tits between your arms as you mime snapping on a pair of gloves. "Got thinking maybe it was time for a visit from your favorite nurse."

But One is not feeling very playful tonight, if he ever is.

» Check your phone.

You huff and kick some foam at the camera obnoxiously, pleased when it falls short and hits the TV it's mounted on top of instead. You don't need to kill the mood even further by stopping to clean your lens. You eye it now, pretend you're staring up at him defiantly when you refuse, tell him you're in the middle of something with one hand snaking down your belly. On the TV below, large enough you can read even from the middle of the floor, you watch the feed as they would see it: yourself on the left while the chat bubbles in excitement on the right, egging you on. You nod at them, a silent promise, check to make sure your position looks good and that you've got a smattering of foam on you, at least enough to keep some mystery for them to unravel as the show continues -

» Now.

Irritation doesn't sell well, but sometimes you can package it as chastisement. "Play nice," you caution, voice whistling through clenched teeth. It's not One's thing specifically, but there are other regulars who you know will eat it up. "Gotta learn to share."

But One goes above and beyond simply not liking being nagged at.

He waits until your fingers are just barely tracing your thatch of curls, movement from your laptop screen catching your eye. You drop pretenses entirely when a new window opens, your private chat with One maximized so you cannot possibly miss it. Carving a path through the accumulated foam, you slink out of the field of view of the mounted camera, show long forgotten as you approach your laptop, mounting fear confirmed as you watch your mouse move across the screen of it's own accord to hit play on the video he'd evidently sent you while you were otherwise occupied.

You know what it will be based on the thumbnail, but it shocks you anyway. The panties he holds look like nothing more than candy floss in his thick fist, wrapped around a fat cock so tightly the lace is stretched. Distorted. It's weird, the things you notice when adrenaline bends time. The camera work isn't great, doesn't let you see his the root of his cock or even his belly. Its focus shifts a few times, undecided if it wants to settle on the display before it or the dark hardwood below. He wears a watch, a simple leather band nestled in a pelt of dark hair. His knuckles are dusted too, hiding the glint of a thick gold band on his pinky. Uncut, thick. He grunts the next time his foreskin pulls back enough to reveal his glistening head and your breath stutters with his when the lace catches, synthetic fibers relaxing back into a recognizable pattern as he eases them off, untangles it from his grasp to flatten against the table, flimsy gusset laughably small framed between the thumb and forefinger of his free hand.

His native tongue spills from him like his seed, molten and thick. Language, even if you can't understand it, is enough to tug at you and you yelp, your brief moment of shock fracturing enough to compel you into movement.

Nik likes the way the suds paint her, the rainbow foam a nice contrast with her skin. It slides down the valleys of her body naturally, highlighting recesses he'd previously been unaware of. Pesky self consciousness, always framing herself so carefully to hide away the bits she think he won't like. They won't like, he supposes.

He's never minded sharing. Nature of the beast, paying for it. But he doesn't see why he should have to suffer the same experience as these others, not when he gives so much more.

It was one of the first issues that had lead him to this little perversion, the impersonal uniformity. The self-editing. He pays to see her body, not the careful curation of videos and stills which she deems tasteful enough. So he settles in behind the wrong camera most nights, his field of view lower. Off center. Only watches the proper stream - the one he actually pays for - when she looks dead at the camera to talk to him, ring light glowing eerily in her irises.

Close enough, for now.

He's logged into a burner account while he works himself up, watching as she bounces around her room to an obnoxious beat. Her audio mixing is off tonight, the club music she plays just a hair too loud. He likes to watch from alternate accounts sometimes, likes to see how well she fights her dismay when these other viewers struggle to collectively pay her bills. She's more likely to grant him special requests the longer he waits to show up, he's learned. Off the menu orders, she calls them. Cute, but not what he's looking for tonight.

Her thong hangs from the corner of his screen. He hates to have already ruined it, but consoles himself with the knowledge she'd been sweet enough to send him another pair. They won't smell as good, he's sure. Another censure she'll have placed on herself. None of the sweat from having been worn all day. But she tried. Wanted to please him. Desperate thing.

It's laughable, thinking Latvian customs would be able to stop him from acquiring what's his, but it's not like she would know that. It's why he prefers small, no-name performers like her. So unsuspecting. Passably genuine, smile growing on her face when he switches to his regular account, the one she has memorized. It makes his cock twitch, excitement growing when she showers him in attention, singles him out in the middle of her show. Forgets to keep dancing, even. As she should. He wonders if he paid for her new toy, the noisy machine currently leaving soap scum on her walls. Wonders if she'll let him pay for it again or if she'll have him summarily blocked within minutes. It won't matter, of course, but he's excited to see how she'll unfold. Another off-menu order. One more bridge too far.

What she gets, taking so much of his money yet never offering more. He just wants to see sides of her no one else has.

It's hard to control himself when she starts to get catty, shows her teeth. He'd imagined stretching this moment out a bit more, thoroughly ruining the mood for all other viewers. But when she looks right at her camera and tells him to behave, his breath goes ragged, and he has to let go of his cock to show the little bitch better - taking over her laptop to bring up the video he'd sent, a low grumble building in his chest like a warning when she slinks closer, as if proximity will give her a better understanding.

Three monitors, one for every angle of his omniscience. On the right, the chat in her official feed grows annoyed as she walks out of frame, a few of them even accusing him of foul play. Hero-types. He's going to enjoy watching them try to comfort her if she doesn't delete her account entirely after tonight - after he mouses over the video displayed on his middle screen, the mirror of her own laptop. On his left, she looms closer, expression open and honest in a way he's not seen it yet. Painted in the blue light of her monitor, it contrasts garishly with the heavy makeup she'd applied for the show, all warm-toned to match her pink neons; catches on the tiny pockets of popped soap bubbles which fleck over her cheek. It's not a good look, one she'd likely touch up before even taking a selfie for her Instagram account, a post-show teaser meant to make potential viewers feel like they'd missed out. And now that he's seen it, he knows how much he's been missing out, fist working over his cock with renewed vigor as he imagines all the ways he wants to see her now, all the ways he can, even if -

He fights the cursor when she tries to take control, but she's clever enough to know some keyboard commands. His right monitor blinks back to her profile when she cuts the feed, the middle one slowly returning to her home screen as she closes out of each window. She pulls away quickly after, palms clamped over her jaw as she breathes through the panic, soft belly caving with each pant. Foam still spews from the machine, dye having run out. It catches in her hair, paints her skin milky. He has half a mind to open a word doc on her computer, tell her she should skip the dye next time, the white more suggestive.

Doesn't get a chance. Cums when she scrambles back to the desk, his left monitor dropping the feed when she smartens up and rips the battery out of her laptop.

Left languid and lazy, he tracks her movements across her socials from his bed, thumbing through his phone. Detached, he watches her accounts blink out one after the other. A small city going dark under the approach of his hele. She deletes some outright, settles for blocking him on others. Even issues an apology to her viewers from a site she doesn't know he even has an account on. It's vague, boring. Doesn't mention him. He gets an email around midnight, her time, telling him to expect a refund for the remaining term of his payment, but is pleased to find her account still in place when he checks from a burner. The save of her live show is taken down shortly after, but he's not worried. Had it saved locally.

Can't rely on strangers from the Internet to behave, after all

#in your web #nikolai cod x reader #nik cod x reader

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

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Utah’s getting some of America’s best broadband

TOMORROW (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

Residents of 21 cities in Utah have access to some of the fastest, most competitively priced broadband in the country, at speeds up to 10gb/s and prices as low as $75/month. It's uncapped, and the connections are symmetrical: perfect for uploading and downloading. And it's all thanks to the government.

This broadband service is, of course, delivered via fiber optic cable. Of course it is. Fiber is vastly superior to all other forms of broadband delivery, including satellites, but also cable and DSL. Fiber caps out at 100tb/s, while cable caps out at 50gb/s – that is, fiber is 1,000 times faster:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g

Despite the obvious superiority of fiber, America has been very slow to adopt it. Our monopolistic carriers act as though pulling fiber to our homes is an impossible challenge. All those wires that currently go to your house, from power-lines to copper phone-lines, are relics of a mysterious, fallen civilization and its long-lost arts. Apparently we could no more get a new wire to your house than we could build the pyramids using only hand-tools.

In a sense, the people who say we can't pull wires anymore are right: these are relics of a lost civilization. Specifically, electrification and later, universal telephone service was accomplished through massive federal grants under the New Deal – grants that were typically made to either local governments or non-profit co-operatives who got everyone in town connected to these essential modern utilities.

Today – thanks to decades of neoliberalism and its dogmatic insistence that governments can't do anything and shouldn't try, lest they break the fragile equilibrium of the market – we have lost much of the public capacity that our grandparents took for granted. But in the isolated pockets where this capacity lives on, amazing things happen.

Since 2015, residents of Jackson County, KY – one of the poorest counties in America – have enjoyed some of the country's fastest, cheapest, most reliable broadband. The desperately poor Appalachian county is home to a rural telephone co-op, which grew out of its rural electrification co-op, and it used a combination of federal grants and local capacity to bring fiber to every home in the county, traversing dangerous mountain passes with a mule named "Ole Bub" to reach the most remote homes. The result was an immediately economic uplift for the community, and in the longer term, the county had reliable and effective broadband during the covid lockdowns:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Contrast this with places where the private sector has the only say over who gets broadband, at what speed, and at what price. America is full of broadband deserts – deserts that strand our poorest people. Even in the hearts of our largest densest cities, whole neighborhoods can't get any broadband. You won't be surprised to learn that these are the neighborhoods that were historically redlined, and that the people who live in them are Black and brown, and also live with some of the highest levels of pollution and its attendant sicknesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/10/flicc/#digital-divide

These places are not set up for success under the best of circumstances, and during the lockdowns, they suffered terribly. You think your kid found it hard to go to Zoom school? Imagine what life was like for kids who attended remote learning while sitting on the baking tarmac in a Taco Bell parking lot, using its free wifi:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/02/elem-s02.html

ISPs loathe competition. They divide up the country into exclusive territories like the Pope dividing up the "new world" and do not trouble one another by trying to sell to customers outside of "their" turf. When Frontier – one of the worst of America's terrible ISPs – went bankrupt, we got to see their books, and we learned two important facts:

The company booked one million customers who had no alternative as an asset, because they would pay more for slower broadband, and Frontier could save a fortune by skipping maintenance, and charging these customers for broadband even through multi-day outages; and

Frontier knew that it could make a billion dollars in profit over a decade by investing in fiber build-out, but it chose not to, because stock analysts will downrank any carrier that made capital investments that took more than five years to mature. Because Frontier's execs were paid primarily in stock, they chose to strand their customers with aging copper connections and to leave a billion dollars sitting on the table, so that their personal net worth didn't suffer a temporary downturn:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

ISPs maintain the weirdest position: that a) only the private sector can deliver broadband effectively, but b) to do so, they'll need massive, unsupervised, no-strings-attached government handouts. For years, America went along with this improbable scheme, which is why Trump's FCC chairman Ajit Pai gave the carriers $45 billion in public funds to string slow, 19th-century-style copper lines across rural America:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/all-broadband-politics-are-local/

Now, this is obviously untrue, and people keep figuring out that publicly provisioned broadband is the only way for America to get the same standard of broadband connectivity that our cousins in other high-income nations enjoy. In order to thwart the public's will, the cable and telco lobbyists joined ALEC, the far-right, corporatist lobbying shop, and drafted "model legislation" banning cities and counties from providing broadband, even in places the carriers chose not to serve:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/

Red states across America adopted these rules, and legislators sold this to their base by saying that this was just "keeping the government out of their internet" (even as every carrier relied on an exclusive, government-granted territorial charter, often with massive government subsidies).

ALEC didn't target red states exclusively because they had pliable, bribable conservative lawmakers. Red states trend rural, and rural places are the most likely sites for public fiber. Partly, that's because low-density areas are harder to make a business case for, but also because these are also the places that got electricity and telephone through New Deal co-ops, which are often still in place.

Just about the only places in America where people like their internet service are the 450+ small towns where the local government provides fiber. These places vote solidly Republican, and it was their beloved conservative lawmakers whom ALEC targeted to enact laws banning their equally beloved fiber – keep voting for Christmas, turkeys, and see where it gets you:

https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

But spare a little sympathy for the conservative movement here. The fact that reality has a pronounced leftist bias must be really frustrating for the ideological project of insisting that anything the market can't provide is literally impossible.

Which brings me back to Utah, a red state with a Republican governor and legislature, and a national leader in passing unconstitutional, unhinged, unworkable legislation as part of an elaborate culture war kabuki:

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165975112/utah-passes-an-age-verification-law-for-anyone-using-social-media

For more than two decades, a coalition of 21 cities in Utah have been building out municipal fiber. The consortium calls itself UTOPIA: "Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency":

https://www.utopiafiber.com/faqs/

UTOPIA pursues a hybrid model: they run "open access" fiber and then let anyone offer service over it. This can deliver the best of both worlds: publicly provisioned, blazing-fast fiber to your home, but with service provided by your choice of competing carriers. That means that if Moms for Liberty captures you local government, you're not captive to their ideas about what sites your ISP should block.

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, Utahns in UTOPIA regions have their choice of 18 carriers, and competition has driven down prices and increased speeds. Want uncapped 1gb fiber? That's $75/month. Want 10gb fiber? That's $150:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/15/utah-locals-are-getting-cheap-10-gbps-fiber-thanks-to-local-governments/

UTOPIA's path to glory wasn't an easy one. The dismal telco monopolists Qwest and Lumen sued to put them out of business, delaying the rollout by years:

https://www.deseret.com/2005/7/22/19903471/utopia-responds-to-qwest-lawsuit/

UTOPIA has been profitable and self-sustaining for over 15 years and shows no sign of slowing. But 17 states still ban any attempt at this.

Keeping up such an obviously bad policy requires a steady stream of distractions and lies. The "government broadband doesn't work" lie has worn thin, so we've gotten a string of new lies about wireless service, insisting that fiber is obviated by point-to-point microwave relays, or 5g, or satellite service.

There's plenty of places where these services make sense. You're not going to be able to use fiber in a moving car, so yeah, you're going to want 5g (and those 5g towers are going to need to be connected to each other with fiber). Microwave relay service can fill the gap until fiber can be brought in, and it's great for temporary sites (especially in places where it doesn't rain, because rain, clouds, leaves and other obstructions are deadly for microwave relays). Satellite can make sense for an RV or a boat or remote scientific station.

But wireless services are orders of magnitude slower than fiber. With satellite service, you share your bandwidth with an entire region or even a state. If there's only a couple of users in your satellite's footprint, you might get great service, but when your carrier adds a thousand more customers, your connection is sliced into a thousand pieces.

That's also true for everyone sharing your fiber trunk, but the difference is that your fiber trunk supports speeds that are tens of thousands of times faster than the maximum speeds we can put through freespace electromagnetic spectrum. If we need more fiber capacity, we can just fish a new strand of fiber through the conduit. And while you can increase the capacity of wireless by increasing your power and bandwidth, at a certain point you start pump so much EM into the air that birds start falling out of the sky.

Every wireless device in a region shares the same electromagnetic spectrum, and we are only issued one such spectrum per universe. Each strand of fiber, by contrast, has its own little pocket universe, containing a subset of that spectrum.

Despite all its disadvantages, satellite broadband has one distinct advantage, at least from an investor's perspective: it can be monopolized. Just as we only have one electromagnetic spectrum, we also only have one sky, and the satellite density needed to sustain a colorably fast broadband speed pushes the limit of that shared sky:

https://spacenews.com/starlink-vs-the-astronomers/

Private investors love monopoly telecoms providers, because, like pre-bankruptcy Frontier, they are too big to care. Back in 2021, Altice – the fourth-largest cable operator in America – announced that it was slashing its broadband speeds, to be "in line with other ISPs":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/immortan-altice/#broadband-is-a-human-right

In other words: "We've figured out that our competitors are so much worse than we are that we are deliberately degrading our service because we know you will still pay us the same for less."

This is why corporate shills and pro-monopolists prefer satellite to municipal fiber. Sure, it's orders of magnitude slower than fiber. Sure, it costs subscribers far more. Sure, it's less reliable. But boy oh boy is it profitable.

The thing is, reality has a pronounced leftist bias. No amount of market magic will conjure up new electromagnetic spectra that will allow satellite to attain parity with fiber. Physics hates Starlink.

Yeah, I'm talking about Starlink. Of course I am. Elon Musk basically claims that his business genius can triumph over physics itself.

That's not the only vast, impersonal, implacable force that Musk claims he can best with his incredible reality-distortion field. Musk also claims that he can somehow add so many cars to the road that he will end traffic – in other words, he will best geometry too:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Geometry hates Tesla, and physics hates Starlink. Reality has a leftist bias. The future is fiber, and public transit. These are both vastly preferable, more efficient, safer, more reliable and more plausible than satellite and private vehicles. Their only disadvantage is that they fail to give an easily gulled, thin-skinned compulsive liar more power over billions of people. That's a disadvantage I can live with.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

Image: 4028mdk09 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rote_LED_Fiberglasleuchte.JPG

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

#pluralistic #fiber #broadband #physics #public goods #utah #utopia #red states #ole bub

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mysterymanjoseph · 5 months ago

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It is Just Business: mysterymanjoseph and tokufan400

Joseph had heard from one of the companies under his corporation's umbrella of a new customer, putting in large orders for construction materials, electrical wiring, conduit, ducting, fiber optic cable and the like. In order to make a good impression, Joseph decided to travel to that companies headquarters when the representative of this new customer arrives to finalize the deal. Waiting in the conference room for the representative to arrive, Joseph says, "For an order this large, I might be able to give them a discounted price, would be worth it to get a repeat order from them." He glances over at a table alongside the far wall, various bottled waters, ice teas, fruit juices, a coffee machine, that can be used to make hot tea, and various light snacks neatly arranged. He thinks, "Well, hope this is not 'overdoing' the welcome to them."

@tokufan400

#mirage

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the-californicationist · 7 months ago

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Hi! I’m not sure if you’re doing request if you aren’t don’t worry but If you are could you please write whatever you’re down for, a little Drabble of Simon and reader going yarn shopping! I just came back yarn shopping myself and I’ve been giggling at the names! One I picked is called “tutti frutie

Thank you so much for the ask!! This is such a cute idea. Hope you enjoy the story <3

Twelve Row Repeat

Your wonderful man, Simon Riley, has his heart set on a sweater for Christmas. So, you drag him to the yarn shop to make him squish the skeins.

“And you’re sure you want this one? There are some other —”

Simon reached over you, towering behind you in his motorcycle gear and black medical mask, snatching the paper pattern from the small rack,

“This is it.”

“Okay,” you flipped open the small pattern booklet, “Great.”

This was not great.

Simon had only been asking for one thing all year. Each time Christmas came up in conversation, he’d just shrug and mention his sweater. It was your own fault, really. You’d been frequenting a new local yarn shop by your flat, and he’d begrudgingly tag along. His big brown eyes would cut over a sharp glance to you when the price rang up on the till, but he didn’t complain. One night, while you were scrolling through heirloom-style sweater patterns on your phone, daydreaming about the knitter you would someday be, he stopped you, pressing his thick fingerpad to the screen,

“Aye. That’ll do me.”

“Si,” you shook your head, “I’m not that good, yet. Those are much harder than they look.”

“Nah, you’re brilliant,” he planted a chaste kiss on your mouth, silencing your protests, and left it at that.

So, now, here you were, hunched over the small pattern library of your favorite shop, digging through the advanced section of Aran sweaters, staring at sleeves with cables and twelve-row repeats. It was enough to make your mouth dry.

But, he believed in you, and you wanted to trust yourself that you could handle it. Bucking up the courage, you grabbed a few notions and headed over to the yarn wall, dragging Simon behind you.

You stood side by side as you stared at the collection. It was organized by weight and brand, color-coded for fiber type. It was one of your favorite places on earth. Sometimes, even when you didn’t bring your man with you, you’d come and dig through the cubbies, squishing the cakes and skeins, letting them whisper to you about what they wanted to be. It was important to you that you listened to the yarn. Just because you wanted to make a blanket with a particular yarn didn’t necessarily mean it would feel good on your needles. You needed to listen and feel… and most importantly — squeeze for softness.

“Alright,” you said, galvanized, “What color?”

“Black.”

“No.”

There was no way in hell you were spending six months staring into the blackness trying to decipher the knits and purls and cables of a Level 4 sweater.

Simon huffed, but he was smiling. You could see the way his cheek creased up underneath his eyes.

“Green,” he relented, then grabbed your arm in his gloved hand, snatching you away from a pretty sage color wool, “Dark green.”

You glared up at him, but you set your sights on a dark green merino. It called to you like a siren’s song. And, at the price per skein that you assumed that it was, you were about to help Simon find out just what kind of gift he was asking you for.

Your hand reached out to grab the carefully wound ball. It was soft, with a very slight halo, and the emerald hues varied only a little through the strands, letting you know that it had been hand-dyed with the utmost care. You flipped it over to read the name: Spruced Up. As your fist delicately closed around the skein, you nearly sighed from the plushness of it. You wanted to bury your face in it already, and it wasn’t even knitted up.

You checked the weight. After measuring Simon at home, you knew you needed to over buy. Who knows? You told yourself. Maybe I’ll even get some gloves out of this. It would be fun to match with him.

“Okay, tiger,” you smiled up at him, “We need thirteen of these.”

He grabbed the ball from you and checked the tag,

“Thirteen? Are you havin’ a laugh?”

“You’re a big bloke,” you shrugged, “And this is a complex pattern. Just give me your hand. I want you to feel it.”

He hesitated, doing the mental math for the cost in his head. But, he gave you his hand and let you remove his glove.

You placed the skein back into his palm, staring in wonder at the sheer size of it, and told him,

“Okay, now squish.”

Simon squished. He was careful, now that he knew the price of what he was holding, and he looked down at it in surprise.

“Soft…” He commented in a half-whisper, looking up into your gaze with amused surprise. Then, he squished again, indulgently, and his timbre changed to something a little more insidious, “Soft like you, lamb.”

Your pet name rumbled out of his mouth as no small threat. You saw him reaching for you, and you caught him before he could snake his other hand fully under your dress, grabbing for your thighs to tease the soft, plump flesh there.

“Hey! If you get me kicked out, you definitely won’t get your sweater.” You smirked, bumping him with your hip, promising him he could be naughty later, just not here.

Simon helped you haul your purchases up to the counter and paid for the entire lot, not even grimacing at the final total. He patiently waited while you used their in-store winder and swift. You enjoyed the way he studied you as you practiced the skills of your craft. His faith in your abilities really made you feel like you could accomplish anything you set your mind to.

Finally, with your yarn and notions packed and stowed carefully in his bike’s saddle bags, Simon handed you your helmet and commented,

“Looking forward to seeing your progress, love.”

“I’ll keep you posted. Might even let you squish my yarn again…” You winked when his head turned back to you, getting excited by your tone.

“It’s not the yarn I want in my hands, little lamb. Get on this bike before you get yourself into trouble.”

AO3 Link

*Sorry, my knitting knowledge is basic, but I tried to do my homework. I can make a scarf and that's about it!

#call of duty fanfic #simon ghost riley #simon “ghost” riley #simon riley #simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost x reader #ghost simon riley #ghost fluff

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olderthannetfic · 1 year ago

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This might be an odd or personal question, but could I ask how you started knitting and where you started as a beginner? Or what would you recommend? I’ve tried to join clubs and groups irl, but there’s so much drama and gossiping. When I said I didn’t want to take part in that aspect, they started ostracizing and gossiping about me. Any websites, yt channels or books you’d recommend for a beginner?

Haha.

My friend, this does not even register on the scale of deeply personal or odd questions people have sent me.

I've been trying to remember exactly how I started and why (like, even before this ask). I think it was on a family vacation to Scotland the summer before I started college. That would have been in 1999.

I taught myself from one of those awful 90s pamphlets with the line drawings. They're a nightmare compared to being able to see someone do the motions in person or even in a video. I had some awful plastic needles and no guidance on yarn and just knit with what I found at some shop there. Do not recommend!

I achieved what I wanted during college, which was to make a nice cable-knit sweater that I still wear, and then I got frustrated with crappy acrylic yarn and drifted away from knitting until a year or so ago.

The fact is, I basically didn't do beginner projects. I moved straight from making one rectangle to making grandiose sweaters or whatever else struck my fancy. (But if you want to know, I was using Viking Patterns for Knitting and a bunch of Alice Starmore books, all of which you can still buy.) I know plenty of people who did it this way, but you certainly don't have to.

And you definitely don't need to learn from a terrible 90s printed pamphlet!

Luckily, nowadays, you can find a tutorial on just about anything on Youtube. I enjoy watching the technical and historical types discuss quirks of knitting you might not think of without years of practice or research.

Roxanne Richardson is great, for example.

Look for somebody old, not wearing a lot of makeup, and not talking about their indie dyeing/yarn business and you'll avoid most of the clowns who learned to knit five minutes ago and now want to be knitfluencers.

When I want a super simple technique tutorial, I usually end up looking at either Nimble Needles or VeryPink Knits. I find her super annoying, but her tutorials are spot-on. Norman's voice is much more soothing and I just enjoy his presence more, but both of them have good ultra close-up shots of what they're doing (which lots of vloggers don't because it requires special equipment).

I'd just figure out what kind of finished products you want to use knitting for and then find patterns and tutorials geared towards those.

Cables are relatively easy. Stranded colorwork requires a fair amount of physical coordination and some people find it rather difficult at first.

Circular needles are far more popular than traditional straight ones for people starting today.

Cotton yarn is relatively less nice to knit with than wool for most people, but it tends to be the natural fiber available at a low price point from major retailers.

Picking up general tips like that by watching various youtubers will help you pick a project that won't be too painful to work on.

People who naturally knit loosely should consider grippy bamboo or wooden needles. People who naturally knit tightly should consider slippery metal ones.

My biggest piece of advice is that you're usually better off with something "hard" that you actually like rather than a "practice" project you don't care about, at least after you've made like one rectangle to practice doing a knit stitch at all.

Finding community can be hard, and yes, some crafting hobbies are infested with drama.

But if you just want to know how to knit, you're way better off with some video tutorials and a nice pattern you like.

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eating-the-inedible · 2 years ago

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Here is a list of the inedibles that will be in this bracket

Lava

Orbeez

Orange Joe (fictional "beverage" that's a combination of orange juice and coffee)

Doll shoes

Dirt

Pen caps

Mercury

Watermelon tourmaline

Comet/scouring powder

Moss

Paper towels

Play-Doh

Drywall

Marbles

DVD

Dice

Kinetic Sand

Coins

Fiberglass insulation

3DS Stylus

Plastic Bottle Cap

Chapstick

Babybell Cheese Wax

Paper

Bouncy ball

Human meat

Venus (planet)

Cascade dishwasher pods

Acrylic Paint

Magnets

Molten glass

Pens

Sea glass

Silica gel packet

Leaves

Cocoa butter lotion

Antifreeze

Pencil Toppers, the lil eraser things

Sand

Tumbled amethyst

Rubber Ducks

The rubber balls from the game Cranium Cariboo

Polly pocket clothes

Poison Dart Frog

Snow

0.1 uF Film Capacitor

The sun

Metal

Eraser

Tide pods

Phone charger wire

Those free wooden pencils you get at ikea (just the wood shell not the lead)

Liquid nitrogen

Aquarium gravel

the weird science juice in the beakers in those stock images

Origami star

Styrofoam cup

Sticky note

Collar of shirt

This submission form

Plastic straws

Glow sticks

Oil paintings

Candle wax

Glass

Nickel sulfate solution/Nickel plating solution

Silicone wristbands

Seatbelt

The wax paper under your Poutine

Forearm (doesn't have to be one's own)

Asbestos

Candy wrapper

“Okay so technically this is edible but I’ve had urges to just take a huge bite out of certain sea creatures before. Like just a chunk from an orca or dolphin or great white or seal, etc.”

“Those stupid wooden spoons”

Furbies

Scotch tape

Artificial grapes (the wax/plastic ones for display)

phone

THE FLESH OF MY ENEMIES

Crystals

Fire

The goo inside Stretch Armstrong

Headphone wire

Raw steak

Art

Small colorful rubber bands

Tinfoil

Pencil lead

Cattails (the plant)

Foamy soap

Liquid soap

Bar soap

Flourite

Shiny rocks

Grass

A hunk of random fish swimming by

A live goldfish

Toothpaste

Styrofoam

Price Tag Fasteners

The moon

Pool noodles

Smol frog

Destroying angel mushroom

the smoke coming out of the grain refineries two Mike's out of Gary, Indiana, Usa

Popsicle sticks

Cardboard

My hat

The tiny rocks in school playgrounds

Gasoline

Blue laundry detergent

Spray foam insulation

Battery corrosion

Fiber optic cables

Packing peanuts

Your mother

Pond water

Dry ice

Alkali metals

Chocolate shampoo

Ping pong ball

Bricks, like the stuff you'd build with. Minecraft bricks even, if you want

Hoodie drawstrings

Horse treats

Chalk

Copper (II) Sulphate Water / Blue Science Rock + Blue Science Juice

Ink

Floam

Fabric Paint

Oil paint

that one art piece of the banana taped to the wall

the hotdog somebody encased in resin

“the thin lego plates not the base plates but like the lego piece thats like 2x8 and they kinda look like hershey chocolate bar pieces”

One of those little hamsters

Model magic

Battery Acid (the drink)

manchineel apple

Rubber band ball

The lava lamp liquid

Blood

Rosin

Wax apples

That cake decoration that came with your slice and you're like 90% sure it's not edible... but what if ?

Soap bubble

Lush cosmetics' products

Plushies

Strawberry Shortcake's dolls with scented hair

Wood

Glue

Salt lamp

People who think children are not worth their consideration

Tarmac

Shampoo

Pennies

Poisonous berries

Chunky soft yarn

Crayons

Rock

“whatever the Chuck E Cheese Ticket Muncher Machine is eating (it's not the tickets) (or the sound itself but that's neither a solid nor a liquid so this is just kind of holding hands with the hypothetical ticket muncher food)”

Snow globe liquid

Chisel tip whiteboard marker

Raw dough

Raw fuckin cactus. alive

Grape agate

Car seat

Succulents

Keys

Lock pick

Scrub daddy

Molten sugar

Allergens

Lightning bolts

“Bark dust. Like the dirt/bark dust that's under the bark chips on a playground. Not the chips themselves. The dust.”

Clear deodorant

Apple earbud wires

Eggshells

Squinkies

Hello kitty sweatshirt zipper

Preshredded mozzarella cheese

Scrap metal

Rose

All of the rocks at a crystal shop

Origami polyhedron model

Bubbles mixture

Cupcake liners

Hair gel

Curtain rods

Incense sticks

Incense cones

Metal thing that attaches eraser to pencil

Windshield wiper fluid

Plastic pencil grips

Wooden ice cream spoon

Book

Tree

The liquid in levels

Vanilla extract

Aroace flag

Coil incense

California state testing “next question” button

Spackle

Forbidden coal iron french fries

Garage doors that look like chocolate bars

Plastic takeout box

Velvet

Weird anime girl hair

Freezable gel ice pack

Clouds

Necklace chains

Nail polish

Pencil Shavings

Pool floats

Bao Dumpling

Spray deodorant

0.1 uF Ceramic Capacitor

Vanillish (Pokémon)

Fondant

Really fancy pillars

Computers

Favorite song

Tumblr

“THE LITTLE ORBS IN THE MOUSE (aka trackballs)”

“Any cutesy anime character like Chopper or Pikachu”

Wooden fan blades

Balsa wood sticks

Those blankets that look like tortillas

Microwave

Milk and golden honey softsoap

Batteries

1x2 lego pieces

Light bulbs

Slightly melted lounge chair

Cork (the material)

Pineapple coke

Fingernails

Sparkly lipgloss

Race Car Tire Marble

Gold trophies

Konjac sponge

Shirt

Mandy the Slayer / Orange Spyderco Dragonfly Knife

Malachite

Heater

Glasses Temples

Typewriter keys

EVA foam

Airplane

Sword

Crumbs in the couch

Children

My wife's arm/shoulder

Records

Yellow ACE bandages

Neon Signs

Scented candles

#Im pretty sure i included everything that was submitted #eating the inedible #not a poll #sorry this is a bit chunky #masterlist of inedibles

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smazizul · 3 months ago

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Some of the largest ISPs in the United States include Comcast, Charter, AT&T, and Verizon. In summary

An Internet Service Provider or Isp is a large telecommunications company that provides Internet access and other related services to customers. Some ISPs are the only providers in certain areas, while other areas offer consumers access to multiple ISPs. Consumers often look for good service with reliable speeds and a reasonable price when considering choosing an ISP. Take advantage of $100,000 in virtual money in a risk-free tournament

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candidoptronix · 1 year ago

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Optical Fiber cable Manufacturing -

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thoughtportal · 2 years ago

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More than 600 communities across the U.S. have decided to build their own broadband networks after decades of predatory behavior, slow speeds, and high prices by regional telecom monopolies.

That includes the city of Bountiful, Utah, which earlier this year voted to build a $48 million fiber network to deliver affordable, gigabit broadband to every business and residence in the city. The network is to be open access, meaning that multiple competitors can come in and compete on shared central infrastructure, driving down prices for locals (see our recent Copia study on this concept).

As you might expect, regional telecom monopolies hate this sort of thing. But because these networks are so popular among consumers, they’re generally afraid to speak out against them directly. So they usually employ the help of dodgy proxy lobbying and policy middlemen, who’ll then set upon any town or city contemplating such a network using a bunch of scary, misleading rhetoric.

Like in Bountiful, where the “Utah Taxpayers Association” (which has direct financial and even obvious managerial tethers to regional telecom giants CenturyLink (now Lumen) and Comcast) launched a petition trying to force a public vote on the $48 million in revenue bonds authorized for the project under the pretense that such a project would be an unmitigated disaster for the town. (Their effort didn’t work).

Big ISPs like to pretend they’re suddenly concerned about taxpayers and force entirely new votes on these kinds of projects because they know that with unlimited marketing budgets, they can usually flood less well funded towns or cities with misleading PR to sour the public on the idea.

But after the experience most Americans had with their existing broadband options during the peak COVID home education boom, it’s been much harder for telecom giants to bullshit the public. And the stone cold fact remains: these locally owned networks that wouldn’t even be considered if locals were happy with existing options.

You’ll notice these “taxpayer groups” exploited by big ISPs never criticize the untold billions federal and local governments throw at giant telecom monopolies for half-completed networks. Or the routine taxpayer fraud companies like AT&T, Frontier, CenturyLink (now Lumen) and others routinely engage in.

And it’s because such taxpayer protection groups are effectively industry-funded performance art; perhaps well intentioned at one point, but routinely hijacked, paid, and used as a prop by telecom monopolies looking to protect market dominance.

Gigi Sohn (who you’ll recall just had her nomination to the FCC scuttled by a sleazy telecom monopoly smear campaign) has shifted her focus heavily toward advocating for locally-owned, creative alternatives to telecom monopoly power. And in an op-ed to local Utah residents in the Salt Lake Tribune, she notes how telecom giants want to have their cake and eat it too.

They don’t want to provide affordable, evenly available next-generation broadband. But they don’t want long-neglected locals to, either:

Two huge cable and broadband companies, Comcast and CenturyLink/Lumen, have been members of UTA and have sponsored the UTA annual conference. They have been vocally opposed to community-owned broadband for decades and are well-known for providing organizations like the UTA with significant financial support in exchange for pushing policies that help maintain their market dominance. Yet when given the opportunity in 2020, before anyone else, to provide Bountiful City with affordable and robust broadband, the companies balked. So the dominant cable companies not only don’t want to provide the service Bountiful City needs, they also want to block others from doing so.

Big telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast (and all the consultants, think tankers, and academics they hire to defend their monopoly power) love to claim that community owned broadband networks are some kind of inherent boondoggle. But they’re just another business plan, dependent on the quality of the proposal and the individuals involved.

Even then, data consistently shows that community-owned broadband networks (whether municipal, cooperative, or built on the back of the city-owned utility) provide better, faster, cheaper service than regional monopolies. Such networks routinely not only provide the fastest service in the country, they do so while being immensely popular among consumers. They’re locally-owned and staffed, so they’re more accountable to locals. And they’re just looking to break even, not make a killing.

If I was a lumbering, apathetic, telecom monopoly solely fixated on cutting corners and raising rates to please myopic Wall Street investors, I’d be worried too.

#article #telecommunications #AT&T #comcast #monopoly #internet #municipal governments #municipal internet #CenturyLink #corporate lobbying #wall street

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