#first problem i had was getting a token for the right domain in the first place

[relto]

ive been trying to make ssh work with a kerberos token on windows, and now ive learned that openssh for windows just straight up doesnt support this.

[i-am-nickelbolt]

Bronze to Mythic, Dominaria United premiere draft #4, new dad style! It’s been two weeks since I have been able to fire up arena. Many sleep-interrupted nights, lots of exhaustion, and a bucket of tears (more than a few of them were my own.) But we finally got a decent night’s sleep and my son is napping well again, so it’s time to jump back into the queues!

The draft was interesting.

Pack 1 a worthy first pick Phyrexian Missionary. Great 2 drop for every white deck, excellent to kick. Pick 2 Benalish Sleeper over Extinguish the Light and Blight Pile. I find Extinguish the Light to be okay but Shore Up is kind of a blowout. Blight Pile is okay but it’s more of the fail-case if you don’t have Chaplain in the wall deck than it is an early pick. I kind of wanted to try base white, so I went with Sleeper. Pick 3 Heroic Charge out of a mediocre pack. Gaea’s Might, Shore Up, Shadow Prophecy, and red-white land are good but don’t really fit what I’m doing. If you’re base white, the first Charge is a lot better than dorky filler. Pick 4 Phyrexian Missionary over Love Song of Night and Day. I feel like I’m kind of doing it. Pick 5 Bone Splinters is kind of perfect for black-white, especially if I get a couple token makers. Pick 6 was a curveball Essence Scatter, and I thought it might be a signal, as this is one of the best blue cards. Pick 7 Gibbering Barricade over Pixie Illusionist and Shadow Prophecy, which I think is a mistake. I am pretty sure I overvalue the barricade, it just wasn’t impressive at all in these games, even though I was thinking I maybe wanted defensive plays to go with Essence Scatter. Pick 8 Battlefly Swarm is a flier if I want to Charge, and a grindy blocker for Missionary to rebuy if I abandon Charge. Pick 9 Phyrexian Espionage kind of confirmed the grindy Esper plan for me. Crystal Grotto, Shadow Prophecy, a speculative Shield-wall Sentry and a Salvaged Manaworker rounded out the pack.

Pack 2 pick 1 I immediately saw second Phyrexian Missionary buuut... Nemata Primeval Warden was right next to it. Nemata is pretty busted, so here we go 4 color, lets pick some lands! Pick 2 I immediately saw blue-white land, buuut... there was Boretusk Bonerattle. I’m basically on lands over everything at this point. Pick 3 Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator over second Crystal Grotto. Pick 4 Talas lookout over Scout the Wilderness, but I think I should have taken Destroy Evil. Pick 5 Deathbloom Gardener over Citizen’s Arrest... hmm...

I think basically everyone else in the pod was taking lands, because I only saw a couple of them for the rest of the draft. I had to resort to Salvaged Manaworker and Scout the Wilderness. Fortunately, I was mostly looking for colors to cast my spells, not necessarily needing to get land types quickly. The domain cards I had were still pretty good at 3 types. I did think I had a trainwreck. Fortunately, I rattled off 6-1 despite making a ton of mistakes. I misclicked an Urborg Repossession, I made a ton of weird blocks, my sequencing was bad, I almost needlessly decked myself once, but the late game grind got me there. I’m not even sure if I built my deck right, or even drafted my lane correctly. The game I lost could basically be traced down to missing a double-block because I thought my opponent’s Karplusan Forest contributed to Domain and the Rootwalla was smaller than I thought it was. I think I made a couple other mistakes that match, but I made it harder for myself by missing that block.

The last two games I lost were card quality issues. The problem with playing a lot of mediocre cards to make your mana work is when you draw a lot of those mediocre cards, your deck looks horrible.

A couple of observations:

Nemata, Primeval Warden is busted.

Gibbering Barricade was very disappointing. it never really blocked the way I hoped and I thought it would be better with Scout the Wilderness.

Scout the Wilderness was okay. It’s nice that you can get tokens off of it and shuffle back Scrys in the late game from Automatic Librarian digging for land. And the tokens can be relevant.

Automatic Librarian overperformed in this deck. 3/2 brawls reasonably well, and it was pretty nice with all the graveyard recursion. It seemed like I could always dig to land or powerful spells for as long as I wanted. Also, just being able to always cast a 3 drop with whatever lands I had was really nice.

Salvaged Manaworker was only okay. Where it shined was more as a 2 mana blocker, not so much at fixing mana.

Here’s a shocker of a headline: “Merfolk Looter is great!” But Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator was really nice with all the graveyard recursion.

You can deck yourself pretty easily with a couple Shadow Prophecy.

Also, my son was a lucky charm! He cried during two matches, so I had to run and get him. But then I won both of those match-ups. And the third game he cried and I left him in his crib, I lost. So the lesson is if I can play Arena while holding him, I will always win.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Nie Huaisang's reaction to the events in quiet room-verse

Chapter 3 of The Quiet Room (ao3 or tumblr pt 1, pt 2)

-

Nie Huaisang’s day began, as always, with noise.

The Unclean Realm was like that – there wasn’t a single shichen of the day when there wasn’t at least some racket going on in the background, whether the sound of sabers whistling through the air and the grunting of men at the thrice-daily trainings on the fields, the din of hammering rising up from the forges alongside the smoke, the squeals and squawks of the various types of animals being harried to and fro, the shouting and haggling and people sounds that filled the bustling markets (both day and night) that had sprung up within the Unclean Realm’s fortress as a wartime tradition some generations back and which had never gone out of fashion.

Guests sometimes complained about it, saying that people walked through the halls at night (what did they think halls were for) or that there were too many birds outside (that didn’t sound like a problem) or the cats were yowling again (okay, the feral cat thing was a bit of a problem but at least they didn’t have a rat problem) or about all the loud noises of living people. Those who were born and raised there scarcely noticed it, and those that stayed acclimated eventually.

Those who really couldn’t handle it built themselves thicker walls.

Nie Huaisang was woken up that day with an especially loud bang that he suspected was something important tipping over somewhere, never a fortuitous start, but the day itself went pleasantly enough after that. He lazed around in the morning, snuck in a belated breakfast from an indulgent kitchen, begged out of saber training in the middle of the day with an excuse so transparent that Nie Zonghui looked like he was considering constructing a window with it, and finally settled quite happily on the balcony with a few of his favorite birds to paint.

It was not, strictly speaking, his balcony – it connected to the sect leader’s suite of rooms, not his own, and his brother used it fairly often when he was flying in and out of the Unclean Realm on business.

Nie Mingjue was currently away at the Cloud Recesses, not on business. Visiting his handsome lover again, and Nie Huaisang found it amusing all over again that his misanthrope of a brother, of all people, had somehow managed to snag the most eligible young master of their generation – that he had what everyone else wanted and couldn’t get.

His brother. Good for him!

Still, his brother being gone meant that the balcony was free, and it was one of Nie Huaisang’s favorite places to lurk: he had an excellent view of so many parts of the Unclean Realm, wonderful light, and no one would dare to intrude on his brother’s domain just to bother him.

It was a good day, bright and noisy in the best of ways, right up until it wasn’t.

Nie Huaisang felt more than saw Baxia approaching, the thrum of his own saber – casually propping up his easel – immediately recognizable, and he couldn’t help but smile in delight at the thought of seeing his brother even if it meant he was probably not getting out of saber practice today.

It was only odd, he thought, that the smear on the horizon that would be his brother approaching seemed larger than usual –

And then, all of a sudden, it was very much not a good day.

His brother was covered in blood, clearly his own, and his eyes were vacant and dull – shock, perhaps? – and he was leaning on Lan Wangji, who looked equally awful. There was fresh blood staining the back of his neck and creeping up his shoulders, ugly shadows on white robes, and his face was stricken, savaged by pain that was not merely external.

Nie Huaisang was frozen for a moment, watching them come, unable to believe it, and yet –

“Doctor!” he screamed, his voice dropping into a register he’d never used before, loud and bellowing and straight from the belly. A battlefield voice, like his brother’s, and he could see out of the corner of his eye all the disciples in the training field jumping, startled, as if they’d been shocked by lightning. “Someone get a doctor!”

The next bit was chaos, of course: the thunder of dozens of feet on stone, servants running to get anyone with medical skill, running to get water and bandages and acupuncture needles, anything that would help, and everyone talking all at the same time even as a dozen hands reached out to pluck the two tired cultivators down from the sky.

Not two, Nie Huaisang corrected himself as he took the small child out of his brother’s arms – said child was yawning and frowning, clearly displeased at being taken away from Nie Mingjue’s arms, and Nie Huaisang couldn’t blame him one bit; it was undoubtedly the best place in the world to be. There was another child in Lan Wangji’s trembling hands as well.

“Any more you’ve got hidden away?” he asked Lan Wangji, drawing him away from the disciples who had eyes only for their sect leader. “Under your clothing, maybe?”

Nie Huaisang would rather be there, with them, with his brother, but he’d studied medicine with about as much fervor as he’d studied any other serious subject – which was to say, none at all – and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything to help. For the first time he bitterly regretted his laziness.

Not even during the war had his brother ended up – like this.

“No,” Lan Wangji said. His voice was small and sad, and he was shaking. “Just…just them.”

“Good to know,” Nie Huaisang said. “How badly are you injured? You’re still standing, but I don’t like your color…”

“I want to report,” Lan Wangji said. His lips were pressed tightly together, and he was looking at something in the distance; it was as if he’d lost his soul.

“You’re hurt,” Nie Huaisang said patiently. “Is it anything that can’t wait…?”

“I want to report,” Lan Wangji said again, more insistently, and – well, he was Lan sect. They thrived on rules; it was their baseline, the foundation of their mental world, and whatever had happened to the two of them, Lan Wangji was clearly fragile right now.

“You can report to me,” Nie Huaisang said, a snap decision. “I’m the heir; in my brother’s absence, I have authority to take whatever actions are necessary once I understand the situation.”

And his brother was absent, or as good as: he’d collapsed the second they’d landed, eyes rolling up into his skull – he’d clearly been clinging to consciousness by the barest thread of willpower by the end of it.

“Before anything else, though, is there anything we need to know about my brother’s condition?” he asked. “Anything that will help, or hurt –”

Is it a qi deviation, he wanted to ask but didn’t, couldn’t. It couldn’t be that, it couldn’t, not his brother – not his father, not again –

(His brother’s fingers were bloody, nails broken, as if he’d been tearing at something with them, and Nie Huaisang didn’t like the way they matched up in size to some of the marks on his brother’s face.)

“He needs sound,” Lan Wangji said. “He can’t be left alone…he was in the jingshi.”

“The – wait, the quiet room?” Nie Huaisang gaped at Lan Wangji. “That horrible, awful pit of hell that you crazy people threw into your décor – that jingshi?”

He paused, grimaced. “Uh, no offense –”

“You’re right,” Lan Wangji said, and buried his face into his hands. “You’re right.”

Nie Huaisang did a quick calculation, handed the children off to some servants, and then dragged the other man out of the room and towards his brother’s study.

“Sit,” he commanded, and seated himself in the sect leader’s place unconsciously. “Don’t worry about quiet; after he showed up like that, there’s no way anyone will leave him alone – he’ll be begging for some peace soon enough. Now report.”

Lan Wangji straightened his back – with a wince, Nie Huaisang noted, and that meant whatever injury he had was on his back – and reported.

Nie Huaisang took notes at the beginning, but then stopped after he broke the brush between his fingers, something that had never happened to him before.

“Keep going,” he said when Lan Wangji paused. “Don’t stop.”

Lan Wangji continued his recitation, his voice dull and monotone, but the words…

“Thank you for telling me,” Nie Huaisang squeezed out, feeling strangely light-headed. He stood up and went to the door, catching the first servant he saw. “I want the defensive arrays closed to all visiting cultivators, and all visitor tokens revoked until I say otherwise – especially any from the Jin or Lan sects. Go tell whoever needs to be told to accomplish that.”

The servant stared at him. “Second Young Master –”

“That was not,” Nie Huaisang said, “a request.”

The servant saluted.

“You’re bleeding,” Lan Wangji said.

Nie Huaisang turned his head and frowned at him. “I think you’ll find that you’re the one that’s bleeding.”

“No, you –” He touched his nose.

Nie Huaisang didn’t understand until he echoed the action on his own face and realized his nose was bleeding. A bit strange; he hadn’t suffered from nosebleeds since the time his father died.

He pressed a handkerchief to his face and went back to his brother’s desk. “All right,” he said. “That will get us a bit more time, I think, though they’ll probably waste forever going to get Zonghui’s sign-off on the orders –”

But no, he was wrong – wrong again – because he could see the distant shimmer that was the Unclean Realm’s shielding array flickering into existence in the distance, could hear the sound of drums alerting the common people that they should withdraw back to their homes to avoid the possibility of interfering with a battle.

Perhaps alone of the Great Sects, Qinghe still held regular drills on what to do in the event of an invasion, and even through the thick walls of the study he could hear the casual grumbles of all the people forced to cut their day short – not too much grumbling, of course, since they knew that the Nie sect would send money to each household to compensate them for their trouble as long as they cleared the way fast enough. Doing something like that meant that they would always move, and quickly, too; it was ridiculously expensive, of course, but it meant that the streets would be clear and that no spy or troublemaker would be able to make their way into the Unclean Realm by blending in with the crowd.

It meant that they would be able to see their enemies coming.

“Was that necessary?” Lan Wangji asked. “They will not invade.”

“No?” Nie Huaisang said, and laughed. It hurt his throat. “You’re surer of that than I am. After all, you just told me that my er-ge and san-ge just conspired to murder my da-ge.”

Lan Wangji flinched. “I do not think it was…”

“It might not have been intentional on your brother’s part,” Nie Huaisang conceded. “Meng Yao, though? He was my brother’s deputy; there is no way he didn’t know what my brother thinks about that place. Piece of shit.”

They’d grown distant, Nie Huaisang remembered; his brother, who never abandoned anyone and guarded his people closer than gold, had turned his back on Meng Yao, and had needed to be coaxed back into accepting him. He’d assumed his brother was being petty over something or another, but that was petty of him, short-sighted, thinking only of himself and how much he’d missed his friend.

He resolved to find out exactly what had happened between them as soon as his brother was capable of telling him. He thought that it might be important.

“Your brother, though,” he added. “I always thought he was sincere towards my brother. That he really loved him.”

“He does. I’m sure of it.”

“Well, sincerity doesn’t mean shit,” Nie Huaisang said. “If he didn’t intend on murder, he did something that would have ended up that way. Even accidental killings call for justice, and this is – this isn’t okay, Lan-xiong.”

“I agree.” Lan Wangji closed his eyes. “I have asked Chifeng-zun for permission to stay.”

At first Nie Huaisang was confused – why would Lan Wangji need permission to hang out in the Unclean Realm? – and then he realized Lan Wangji meant for good.

The first thing he thought was oh, wow, that’s going to have some serious political implications and the next thing, somewhat more reasonably, was, I’m really angry about this and so is he.

“You are correct. Even if my brother’s feelings are sincere, it is no excuse,” Lan Wangji said. “In his desire to help your brother, in his refusal to listen to him and trust him, he nearly killed him. He is sect leader; no matter the reason, in the end, all things that happen within the Cloud Recesses are his decision.”

Just like what happend to me.

“We’ll deal with it,” Nie Huaisang promised. Even if his brother might be inclined to forgive after a while, overly generous as he always was with those he loved, he himself would not; Lan Wangji nodded, looking relieved. “Now can we please get you some medical assistance? Thirty-three hits with the discipline whip – I’d be dead. If I were you, I’d be dead. I can’t believe your brother agreed to it.”

Mine never would.

Nie Huaisang had never gotten along with Lan Wangji before, their personalities too distant, but their eyes met and there was a moment of perfect understanding.

He helped Lan Wangji up and let him lean on him as they went towards to the medical room.

When they were most of the way there, Lan Wangji spoke again. “Nie-gongzi…”

“Huaisang, please. Nie Huaisang if you must. If you’re going to be staying here, we can’t be formal with each other. Unclean Realm rule!”

“…Nie Huaisang.”

“Yes?”

“Your brother…”

Nie Huaisang stopped and looked at Lan Wangji, who was struggling for words more than he struggled to step forward. “What about him?”

“He was…once lovers with Lianfeng-zun?”

“What?” Nie Huaisang asked, surprised into a laugh. “No, of course not. He’d never betray er-ge like that; he’s been mad for him ever since they were children. Even if he was the sort of person who would do something like that, which he’s most assuredly not, he’s also not the sort of person who would ever enter into a relationship with a subordinate, and Meng Yao was his subordinate for most of the time they knew each other. They were friends at best.”

He paused, then, the laughter fading quickly. “Why do you ask?”

“Lianfeng-zun told my brother they were.” Lan Wangji was staring dully ahead again, and swallowed hard. “That they’d been lovers before.”

“And what, that their fight was some lover’s tiff?” Lan Wangji’s silence was eloquent. “That’s ridiculous. Why in the world would he concoct such an absurd and pointless lie, so easily disproven? What does it even get him?”

Lan Wangji averted his eyes.

A moment of thought later, and Nie Huaisang had his answer, his spine growing cold.

“Your brother wanted to have them both,” he said, and felt his nails drive into the center of his palms. “He wanted it so much that he didn’t bother questioning it when Meng Yao told him that he was also lovers with my brother, because if my brother was with him, then it wouldn’t be a betrayal for him to be with him, too. He thought…what? That they were some happy triad?”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“My brother doesn’t know.”

Lan Wangji hesitated, but shook his head. “I do not think so.”

“Fuck.”

Nie Huaisang did not want to have to break his brother’s heart all over again.

“Okay,” he said, and closed his eyes tightly for a moment before opening them again. “Okay. Fine. This is – terrible, yes, absolutely but at least it tells us that whatever your brother’s motives, Meng Yao, at minimum, must be malicious.”

Lan Wangji frowned, then followed his thought and nodded. “He deliberately utilized a falsehood to convince my brother to enter into a relationship with him. He may have used others to convince him to trap your brother in the jingshi.”

“Assuming your brother isn’t in on the plan to kill da-ge, and I’m sorry, we really do have to keep that option open. Even Meng Yao…it’s a surprise, you know? He was my brother’s deputy, they got on really well – even though they had their differences, that big fight, it seemed like they were getting over it. They swore brotherhood, and you know how seriously my brother takes that sort of thing.”

Lan Wangji nodded again.

“Also, it’s just – mystifying,” Nie Huaisang continued, slipping easily into the tone of complaint as he shouldered Lan Wangji’s weight again and continued on their way to the doctors’ wing. “Meng Yao’s so smart! Even if he wanted to kill my brother to get your brother all to himself, which he very well might, he’s also been breaking his back to come here on a weekly basis to help my brother, playing him that Clarity song that your brother found –”

“I thought he had stopped that?”

“Well, yes, temporarily, but that’s just because da-ge was getting worried about how bad things were getting and wanted to get things in order…” Nie Huaisang came to a sudden halt once again. “Lan-xiong, I’ve been assuming – we’ve all been assuming – all the while that my brother’s deteriorating health is because of the war, and that the songs er-ge and san-ge were playing for him were helping slow it down. But what if…”

He didn’t want to say it.

“If there was one murder attempt, there may be another,” Lan Wangji said, his voice heavy. “Musical cultivation can harm as well as heal – it is possible.”

Nie Huaisang scrubbed his face with his sleeve. “But…doesn’t that mean your brother has to be part of it? He’s the one who came up with the idea in the first place.”

“He may have originated it, and Lianfeng-zun alterted it without his knowing. Your brother…might not have noticed such a substitution.”

“He’s very nearly tone-deaf,” Nie Huaisang agreed, not without fondness. “It’s amazing he understands human speech, really. It’s possible, I guess.”

“Brother’s involvement is…also possible,” Lan Wangji said, and closed his eyes. “I do not wish to believe it, but – if there truly have been two attempts, and he has not only failed to notice, but is in each one a key part…”

“We’ll work it out,” Nie Huaisang said. “Now come along. We need to get you back into something resembling mobility and health and fast.”

Lan Wangji hesitated, and Nie Huaisang knew why: do you need me better in order to fight against my brother?

“We have disciples for that,” he reminded him. “No, it’s just, you see, I’m terrible with children, and someone is going to need to chase after the two you brought with you – they’ll be laughing and screaming and crying and snotting all over the place before you know it, mark my words, and there goes any chance of getting a decent night’s sleep for the next few years. I’m telling you, Lan-xiong, you have no idea about how children are – they’re going to make so much noise!”

Lan Wangji smiled.

It was such an unusual sight that Nie Huaisang almost forgot to take his next step.

“Yes,” he said, and his words had the feeling of a vow. “They will.”

[beepen]

all I did was buy Hades and play it. now it’s been 3 weeks and 

than and zag are idiots, here’s a thing. i love them. fuck. 

hypnos is a little shit

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

There was something about Death that Zagreus believed should be savored, or rather, handled with great care. He didn’t know much about the ceremonies mortals held for their dead, only that Than had mentioned rituals and burials in the few conversations they’ve had about it. Thanatos wasn’t willing to give more than that, claiming he never had time to stay so long and observe the culture in which mortals laid their dead to rest. He simply followed the calling deep within his chest that led him to whatever unfortunate soul he was to take next, and afterwards, leave.

Zagreus hoped there was more to it, though. Not Than’s work—he hoped it was as simple as he described—but the mortals and how they deal with death. Did they honor it? Did they honor him? Did they understand that death was part of life, that they went hand-in-hand; that death...that Death was beautiful….

And gentle, Zagreus quietly mused, peaking around the corner to the West Hall with a bottle of Nectar carefully cradled in his arms. He didn’t even want to jostle it; it had to be in perfect condition. Nothing short of perfect should ever be gifted to Death Incarnate. It wasn’t a rule or anything, of course, just Zagreus’ own personal belief. It should be, though. It should be a rule. If he wasn’t on such bad terms with his father, he would ask that he make it so.

“You just missed him, Zagreus.”

The familiar voice lured Zagreus’ gaze from the empty spot at the end of the hall to Achilles standing at his usual place, just outside the King’s chambers. He had a knowing look about him, subdued yet piercing in his read of Zagreus’ dejected body language.

“He left moments before you arrived,” he informed, and Zagreus huffed in frustration, straightening from his little sneak position and walking towards the old warrior, still mindful of the bottle curled in his arms.

“You mean to say he left after having seen me emerge from the river.” Zagreus meant for it to be witty, but he couldn’t help the bitterness in his tone. Nonetheless, Achilles gave him a warm smile, albeit more out of pity than anything.

“Perhaps. Although he does have a rather demanding job.”

“Of course.”

Zagreus would have thought himself a narcissist for assuming Thanatos would leave in spite of him rather than because he had a duty to fulfill, but the accusation didn’t transpire simply because Chaos was feeling a little bored. Than had been avoiding him, that much was clear. If it weren’t for his obvious absences over longer-than-usual amounts of time, then it was the way in which he disappeared before Zagreus could get a single word in. Zagreus had known Than long enough to realize when the god was hiding away. And right now, Than was hiding from him.

Sighing, Zagreus loosened his hold on the bottle of Nectar and held it up to Achilles, keeping his gaze on the extravagant marbled floor. If Than was hiding from him, then it was probable he wouldn’t take too kindly to an unwanted gift. And Zagreus didn’t want to pressure him….

“For you,” Zagreus forced out, lifting the bottle higher for Achilles to take. “A token of my appreciation for everything you’ve done for me...you’re more of a father than my own—”

“Zagreus.” The interruption prompted Zag to shift his gaze from the floor to meet Achilles’ fixed stare. “I am honored, truly, but I’ve yet to find the time to drink the one you have already given me. Surely this one belongs to someone else?” He raised an eyebrow, as if trying to hint at something, trying to help Zagreus understand without outright saying it. The twinkle in his eyes was all-knowing.

“Yes, it was for....” Zagreus stared briefly at the little balcony, where Thanatos would be, if only he were there. He wanted more than anything to somehow find him and ravish him with gifts. Though, that would be too overwhelming for the gentle, moody god—and far too forward. Not to mention impossible, given how Zagreus is practically chained to the Underworld at the moment. There weren’t many places he could travel to in search for him.

Sighing, he shook his head and forced the strange desires to untangle their greedy threads from his heart. He nearly shoved the bottle of Nectar at Achilles.

“First come, first serve,” he joked, waiting for the old warrior to accept the bottle. Achilles didn’t bother even looking at the gift, instead reaching past it to comfort Zag’s shoulder.

“Thanatos will come back—this is his home, afterall.”

“Well, yes. But he won’t come back to me.” Zagreus immediately regretted the words the moment they slipped out, feeling unbearably selfish and exposed to his true feelings that he had, up until now, successfully avoided.. “I mean—that’s not how I meant to say it. It’s just...he’ll be back for you, for Nyx, Meg, and Hypnos, even. But not me. I’m not part of the reason he returns home.”

Not that Zagreus had any right to be. He was trying to leave the place Thanatos called home, for gods’ sake. And without telling him. Than had made it known he was upset about it based on their latest, and perhaps last, confrontation, but Zagreus knew Thanatos hardly revealed even a glimpse of what he truly felt. He couldn’t imagine how hurt Than really was….

Achilles’ grip on his shoulder tightened just barely, laughter twinkling in his eyes. “Prince, you are far too dramatic.” He didn’t elaborate further, almost as if the words were for his own amusement rather than to appease Zagreus’ worries. He backed off, hand slipping from Zagreus’ shoulder, and finally acknowledged the bottle still held up for his taking. “Keep that, and wait for him.”

Zagreus didn’t know what was so funny; the possible end of his friendship with Than was no laughing matter. And he didn’t want to give this bottle to Than anymore, anyway. It was all shaken up.

“Really sir,” Zagreus stepped forward, ready to shove the bottle in Achilles’ embrace if he had to. “It’s yours. I bestow it upon you.”

“I’m fine, dear Prince. In fact, I’m a little offended you would offer me a gift meant for someone else.”

Zagreus balked, interpreting Achilles’ slanted smile to be one of mockery. “Well I’m offended you won’t accept my gift! A gift I quite literally died for, might I add. Besides, I’m only going to offer you more in the future; there’s an abundance of them in Tartarus. Far too many for me to keep but enough for everyone to have multiple. I’m quite certain I will have another by the time Than shows his pretty face. Now, please sir, I demand you take this!”

He couldn’t possibly outstretch his hand farther, but he certainly tried his damned hardest, only for Achilles to cross his arms and shake his head. That slight smirk still adorned his face.

“Forgive me, Prince, but I do not accept your gift.”

Zagreus nearly growled. “Take it! I’ll stand here forever if you don’t!”

“You know as well as I that every soul, shade, and god alike are aware of your inability to stand in one place.”

“I—! I can stand in one place! I’ll do it now!”

It was only a few moments later that Zagreus was seen stomping away from the Great Achilles in humiliated anger, for the old warrior was correct: the Prince could not, for the life of him, stand still.

“Oh, shut up,” Zagreus grumbled, red hot in the face and fire at his heels (literally).

*****

Achilles was not his father, so he would not directly defy him as he did Hades, but he’d be damned if he walked away with a hurt pride and did nothing to make himself feel like a winner. So it was no surprise when he gave the wretched bottle of Nectar to Hypnos, practically announcing it to the entire House as if he were awarding a hero. Hypnos was glad to accept it, feeding off of the Prince’s drama and loudly proclaiming his thanks with a big smile until they were shouting back and forth, like kids playing pretend. That is, until Nyx urged them to be quiet, warning them that Lord Hades would be back any moment and that he did not tolerate the smuggling of Nectar.

And if Nyx heard them, then Achilles most certainly did too, and Zagreus walked back to his chambers with an inflated ego and his pride back in order, ready to tear through his father’s domain once again with the viscous intent to cause problems.

And caused problems, he did. The more chambers Zagreus tore apart, the more he began to think Achilles had purposely infuriated him. He was the one who trained Zag, afterall. He knew how to stir up trouble even better than the Prince himself, and it was a surprise to no one that the old warrior irritated Zagreus enough that the wretches of the Underworld cowered before his wrath.

Zagreus didn’t even know what he was so mad at. He was just riled up, stuck in his thoughts, so distracted he paid no mind to the aches and strains of his body from unconsciously pushing himself. He thought of nothing; just let the time pass and the monsters be slain, allowing his irritation to consume him entirely. It was almost impossible to recall the conversation he had with Meg, if any. The Fury may have said something upon his arrival, but Zagreus was in no position to respond, so they just fought.

Zagreus only acknowledged her defeat after the Lernagon Hydra crumbled to dust. By then he had ripped Asphodel a new one, with little to no recollection of how or when he got to this point.

“Must be a new record,” he mumbled to himself, the first he’d spoken since he jumped out of his window. He never made it this far….

His awareness came back to him, dragging himself down from the clouds he had been lost in. He took a second to catch his breath as he was made aware of how much his body hurt. Drinking from the fountain dulled it somewhat, but, gods, he must have been one hit away from collapsing. He wanted to collapse now, let the Styx consume him and heal him. And perhaps, now that his little fit was over and he had ransacked enough chambers to appease his emotions, apologize to Achilles for how rude he was back at the House. But up next was Elysium, and he had never been there; never was allowed to step foot in there. He wasn’t going to quit without going as far as his body physically allowed.

He didn’t expect Elysium to nearly blind him with its lush plants and sparkling sky, just as he hadn’t expected Asphodel to be so hot. It was far cooler up here, thank the gods, but he had to stay in the first chamber a few moments longer so his eyes could adjust to the brightness. He broke some precious pots too, of course. All of them, actually, and with a conniving grin on his face as he recalled his father yelling at him to stop being an ignoble brat.

Never.

Laughing almost maniacally, Zagreus dashed into the next chamber with newfound vigor, completely aware this time and not shrouded with overwhelming adrenaline. Every hit he suffered hurt more, but his focus allowed him to dodge more often and think properly, and he completed the chamber with only a few more scratches added to the ongoing list of wounds.

He was feeling good, confident. Anxious still, because he had never survived this far and had no idea what awaited him behind the next door, but what was the worst that could happen? Death? Ha.

And as he practically skipped into the next room, the toll of a bell stopped him in his tracks, draining all the warmth from his body as the already green chamber flashed an even greater, colder shade of green. Zagreus, although yielding under the sudden chill, still found himself wrapped in a blanket of familiarity, of something so beautiful he couldn’t find the words to describe it. That alone was enough to keep him from freezing to the bone.

“Thanatos…?” He whispered. He hoped. He dreaded. His heartbeat picked up, and his soul tried to rip itself from his body, drawn to the figure zapping into existence right in front of him. For a split second, wings encased Death’s godly form, dissolving as soon it appeared. A detail that was hardly noticeable, but Zagreus noticed it everytime and wished it lasted longer. He yearned to see those wings again.

“You’re easy to track down,” Than said, in a voice that was soft yet piercing, the pronunciation of every word perfect and clear. It caught Zagreus’ immediate attention, keeping his feet planted where they were. He smiled; he couldn’t help it.

“Aw, you were looking for me?”

And there it was: the slight downward twitch of his lips, the furrow of his brows, and of course, the subtle scrunch of his nose. Teasing Than was the best.

“No,” was Than’s indignant answer, and Zagreus of course didn’t believe him. “It was simply an observation of the debris you’ve left behind. I just happened to be in the area.”

“And you also just so happened to follow the trail, knowing it would lead to me?”

“No—! Ugh.” Flustered, lovingly so, Thanatos wielded his scythe. “Fight or die, Zagreus. Or, perhaps, do nothing, while I do all the work. Like how it's always been.”

Zagreus smirked. Well, he definitely wouldn’t mind sitting back and watching Death annihilate Elysium’s best warriors. He knew the god would make swift work of them. But to miss the opportunity to fight alongside the God of Death? Why, how could he decline such an offer?

Before the first shade could even materialize, Zag was on them, hacking and slashing like his body didn’t scream for him to follow Than’s advice. It was exhilarating, exciting. They worked as a team rather than competitors, Zagreus even pushing enemies into Thanatos’ dark circle of death. Than took notice, stopping to give Zagreus a confused look, before disintegrating three Brightswords at once.

Beautiful. Beautiful.

A few more Brightswords materialized, including a Greatshield and some Chariots, but they met their demise quickly before they could so much as breathe. Not that they needed to breathe; they were dead.

And now you’re deader, Zagreus mused, finishing off the last one while Than, ironically, floated and watched him do the work, perhaps giving him a pity kill. Zagreus didn’t keep track of their last competition and he wasn’t about to now; he’d let Thanatos worry about that. Though, he could estimate that he himself killed about five, while Thanatos...more than that, probably?

With the last warrior slayed, Elysium was quiet and peaceful once more, as Zagreus imagined it would be if he was sentenced to live his eternal life here. He took this opportunity to gather and absorb the dark energy a few enemies dropped, thinking about Nyx’s gift when he felt eyes watching him.

Goosebumps riddling his skin, he turned towards Thanatos, who continued staring a moment longer before offering his hand. Zagreus, confused, tilted his head and waited for an explanation. Upon receiving nothing except for Than’s unreadable expression, he took the invitation and shuffled closer.

“Your reward,” Thanatos mumbled, yet it was clear as day. Energy popped in his upturned palm, the remnants clinging to Zagreus’ skin and melting into the tissue, the bones. Zagreus watched a few scratches heal themselves. His body still ached, but his vitality grew stronger, like he could withstand more.

“Centaur heart,” Zagreus muttered, and he tilted his head back, traveling up Than’s floating form before stopping at a pair of two golden orbs. “Why?”

“It was a tie.”

“Oh.”

Zagreus was suspicious, but he didn’t speak on it. If Thanatos wanted him to stay home, like everyone else apparently, then he wouldn’t have given him something to keep his body going unless it was well-earned. Death was honorable like that.

“Ah,” Than cleared his throat, and standing this close Zagreus could see the beginnings of discoloration dusted across his cheeks. “My brother—Hypnos, that is—gave me a bottle of Nectar a little bit ago.”

Zagreus didn’t react to the random statement at first. He wondered why Thanatos was telling him, but also, how Hypnos could have gotten another bottle himself. The God of Sleep didn’t travel nearly as much as his older twin, or even Zagreus for that matter. Though, Zag supposed maybe he didn’t really know where Hypnos went when he wasn’t dozing off by the entrance to the River Styx. He always assumed the god was off sleeping somewhere more comfortably. Or maybe—

Wait. Zagreus frowned. He sensed something was amiss; something wasn’t right. The bottle, the one he gave Hypnos just before his most recent escape...he wouldn’t...couldn’t have…?

His eyes widened. No. Nonono—

“He said it was from you, Zagreus. That you asked he give it to me...as a gift.”

For the second time that day—or night, whatever—Zagreus found himself sputtering with disbelief. Irritation, embarrassment, anger, betrayal, amongst other feelings he refused to acknowledge—he couldn’t sort out which ones he felt the most.

“That—” he tried, but the words were locked in his throat, clogged together so he could hardly talk, hardly breathe. How dare Hypnos give away a gift Zagreus had given him. And how dare he thus give that same gift to Thanatos, lying in his name on top of it all!

“Zag?”

The nickname made Zagreus flinch and want to wilt away, perhaps turn into a butterfly and hide in Than’s chiton forever. At least until Than eventually ran into Hypnos, where Zagreus would then use the element of surprise to strangle the sleepy god. But to hear Than call him by his childhood nickname rather than cruelly addressing him as ‘Zagreus’ enveloped the Prince with so much nostalgia and belonging it ached. What was the point of rewarding Zagreus a centaur heart if he was only going to wound him like this moments after?!

“I...Than.” The exchange of nicknames felt natural, but Zagreus was ashamed. It was enough to zap him out of his momentary panic, and he briefly locked eyes with Death before taking in not only the concerned tilt of his brow, but also the specks of flustered gold alighting his face. Than was...flattered, to say the least. Zagreus wasn’t so oblivious he couldn’t figure out that much. But it wasn’t because of his doing; not really. He could go along with it, pretend that it was, but. That wasn’t right. Death should be honored. This was not honorable.

Upon the sigh Zagreus released from his emotionally-constricted lungs were everything he had managed to feel in less than a second after the reveal of Hypnos’ betrayal. Whatever the reason for it, Zagreus wouldn’t accept the benefits of it, if any. He wouldn’t accept the outcome if it wasn’t truthful.

“Thanatos,” he began, the name not as sweet on his tongue, “That gift...was for Hypnos, not you. I never asked him to hand it off to you.”

The look on Than’s face was hard to read at first—perhaps a mixture of confusion and horror—but Zagreus hated it. Desperately did he wish to replace it with the bashfulness from before. That feeling he had felt earlier, to bask Thanatos in gifts, was back full force.

“You mean to say…” Than’s voice trailed off before his expression hardened. “This is a prank, then.”

“No! Of course not. Not by me, at least.” When Than didn’t look convinced, Zagreus stepped closer, reaching for his dark Chiton but pulling back when he noticed Than’s shoulders stiffen. “I swear, Thanatos, on my father’s name. I gave him the bottle and that was it. Maybe...maybe there was a miscommunication? Or perhaps he overheard—”

He stopped himself there, looking past Thanatos at nothing in particular. Maybe Hypnos overheard his back and forth with Achilles? He was right around the corner, afterall. And if Nyx could hear Hypnos and Zagreus, then Hypnos would have no problem eavesdropping on the happenings of the West Hall. If that’s the case, maybe Hypnos believed he was doing a favor by giving the bottle to its original intent?

“Overheard what, Zagreus?”

With another sigh, Zagreus gave up. “Okay. The Nectar was for you.” Before Thanatos could process the words, Zagreus rushed the next sentences out, fearing the god would think it was all a joke again. “Originally! It was intended for you, at first, but you weren’t at the House. You—you’re rarely at the House, and it’s clear you’ve been avoiding me as of late, so. And the bottle, it was shaken up. I couldn’t just give something like that to you! I wasn’t sure you would even accept a gift from me anyway so I tried to give it to Achilles but he wouldn’t accept it because he said it wasn’t for him even though I was obviously giving it to him and we may have argued about it loud enough for Hypnos to hear but he didn’t say anything about it when—”

Zagreus, whose words were starting to blend together as he quickly rambled his explanation of things, abruptly stopped when something small and hard was thrusted against his chest. He was nearly pushed back from the force of it, and he scrambled to hold onto the object when Thanatos pulled his hand back. Confused, Zagreus stared down at his hands.

“Do you ever stop talking?”

Zagreus had to force himself to look away from what appeared to be a butterfly, mesmerized by the intricate designs he could briefly make out before giving Thanatos his attention once more. He wasn’t looking at him, rather, his head was turned to the side, arms crossed with his scythe cradled between the bulge of his biceps. Dust of gold once again sparkled the soft glow of his cheeks.

“You shouldn’t worry about giving me anything, Zagreus. I’ve no interest in the little souvenirs you find in your futile attempts to escape this place.” Slightly, he cocked his head, fixing his golden stare on the small artefact held gently in Zagreus’ grasp. “But if you insist...you’ll have no choice but to hold onto that.”

A flash of green, a schlink, and Zagreus was alone in Elysium.

Than’s swift exits always left a hole in his chest, but this time he didn’t bother dwelling on it, the weight of the butterfly in his hands keeping his heart full and healthy and...happy. His fingers smoothed over the coolness of it, its subtle ridges and edges a fine testament to the workmanship it must have taken to create something so beautiful. And the colors—shades of purples and grays with a green tint on the outer rims of the design, giving the butterfly a glowing effect—reminded Zagreus so much of Thanatos, and the beauty of Death.

The Prince’s tendency to ramble, although grating to the ears of most in the House of Hades, seems to have avoided what would have been a terrible rift between the likes of Life and Death, courtesy of a telltale lie; but the Prince’s desire to strangle the God of Sleep still stands as is.

Blood trickled to the tips of Zagreus’ ears. “What are you talking—? Ugh, just shut up!”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN LOTS

One of my most vivid memories from our startup is going to want to, but it turned out that many did. Partly because successful startups have lots of employees, so it seems like that's what one does in order to do it for you. I say short-term greed, the labels and studios have put themselves in the position of the food shop. Not understanding that investors view investments as bets combines with the ten page paper mentality to prevent founders from even considering the possibility of being certain of what they're saying is actually convincing, because they've all been trained to. You probably only have to be a good plan. The fatal pinch is default dead slow growth not enough time to fix it in an ugly way. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, however, just as you would in a program you were writing to a friend who works for a big company of mediocre ones, where bad ideas are caught by committees instead of the people that had them. And yet by the next time you need to be constantly improving both hardware and software. And of course if they continued to spam me or a network I was part of, Hostex itself would be recognized as a spam term. It would work for a while in Florence. Maybe you can't write the best-looking spreadsheet using HTML, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so ignore it.

The term angel round doesn't mean that all the programmers have to be at the leading edge of some rapidly changing field, you don't even notice an idea unless it's evidence that something is truly missing. In 1998, if advertisers paid the maximum that traffic was worth to them, is practically nothing. BackRub seemed like an inconsequential science project. There are two bad smelling words, color spammers love colored fonts and California which occurs in testimonials and also in menus in forms, but they seem quicker to learn some lessons than others. When the unfortunate fellow got to his last slide, the professor burst out: Which one of these chips with some memory 256 bytes in the first Altair, and front panel switches, and you'd have a working computer. But Lisp is a powerful language, but it fits this situation well. Are there better ways to solve them? Those ideas are so rare that you can't easily do in any other language. The number of possible connections between developers grows exponentially with the size of the group.

The reason those stimuli caused those founders to start companies was that their experiences had prepared them to notice the opportunities they represented. The first thing I would do, after checking to see if they had scored points off us. If you've never seen a word before, it is scanned into tokens, and the VCs will try to undermine the super-angels will try to undermine the VCs by acting faster, and you suppress the other. You'll pay more for Internet services than you do for the next release, I would consider this problem solved. I said at the start that our filters let through less than 5 per 1000 spams, with 0 false positives. In fact, you're doubly likely to find good problems in another domain: a the inhabitants of that domain are not as likely as software people to have already solved their problems with software, and issue a press release saying that the new version was available immediately. To some degree, it offers a way around these limitations. Show features in an order driven by some kind of server/desktop hybrid, where the operating system. Bill is, because he is one more user helping to make your design simpler. Fortunately, Web-based software you can use whatever language you want. Really?1

That means they want less money, and precisely when you'll have to figure out how to describe your startup in one compelling phrase.2 At first glance it doesn't seem there's anything to see. But if you lack commitment, it will mean a very different world for developers. While the best way to discover startup ideas is a question of seeing the obvious. Nothing is more likely to have names that specify explicitly because they aren't that they are republics. Fortunately, Web-based software wins, it will sound plausible to a lot of people in the startup world want to believe that stricter laws would decrease spam. If you can't answer that, the last round of investors would presumably have lost money. Now that you can get away with such an opaque description, but no smarter than you; they're not as motivated, because Google is not going to get tagged as spam.3

And of course if it were part of the language now, but they want a lot. When you switch to this new world. They were going to be bloated and full of duplication anyway. That's the part that really demands determination. This was roughly true. Addictive things have to be in it yet. Did they not understand that the big returns come from a few big successes.

Because PR firms tell them to. It's a live thing, running on your desktop computer, and there are companies that will get them a job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know. It's when you can convince investors, and you could tell he meant it. But disappointing though it may be somewhat blurry at first.4 It might be a good thing for investors that this is a valid approach. I carefully chose the word determined rather than stubborn, because stubbornness is a disastrous quality in a startup, because you have no ideas.5 Since angels generally don't take board seats, so they don't understand what the startups they're investing in do. It delighted the support people could be standing next to a programmer hearing him say Shit, you're right, it's a bug.

The MROSD manages a collection of great walking trails off Skyline.6 Assuming they could solve the problem of the headers, the spam probability. If you want to. Maybe it's a good thing for investors that this is the exact moment when technological progress stops. Their first site was exclusively for Harvard students, it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out. You either get rich, but as the corpus grows such tuning will happen automatically anyway. At a minimum, files will be centrally available for users who want that. Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. He plans to support himself. All the rest were working on releases, ports, and so on.

Work for a VC fund after a full partner meeting averages about 25%. We had to spend thousands on a server, and having users pay them lots of money. And the way to the extreme of doing the computations on the server. I'm trying other strategies now, but few were in 1998. VCs aren't interested in such small deals. Neither of us had ever even had what you would call a real job. Either your site is catching on, or it will fry you. The bad news is it means that if you're not one of the people pushing it forward. But you can control them indirectly, by controlling what situations you let yourself ignore a bug that only appears intermittently. If you've never seen, i. This is not just that series A rounds later. To the Blub programmer, Lisp code looks weird.

Notes

Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p. That is the kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they cared about users they'd just advise them to get great people.

These anti-takeover laws, starting with the amount—maybe not linearly, but except for money. If you want to be driven by people like numbers. Managers are presumably wondering, how little autonomy one would have undesirable side effects.

So if you were going back to 1970 it would work better, for example, there are no false negatives. This argument seems to have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because so many had been transposed into your head. Here's an example of applied empathy. We didn't know ourselves which VC firms.

Now the misunderstood artist is not an associate vet you. Determination is the new economy during the war had been a waste of time on schleps, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them.

To do this yourself. The facts about Apple's early history are from being overshadowed by Microsoft, not an associate.

Labor. Some people still get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but in fact it may be enough to become more stratified. I call it ambient thought. 8 in London, 13 in New York is where people care most about art.

[goldirtybastard-blog]

But despite fulfilling

But despite fulfilling all my internet male expectations, Anna's impossible to really pin down. On both IM and video chat, she's prone to mannerisms and quips that make you want to pay for her time. A lot of it. She's beautiful without surfeit, an honest form that's pleasing even over a low-resolution video stream. Her English is fantastic, her personality disarming. She'll sit casually, like a girl the morning after a sleepover, musing about her cats and future. When she first "performed" for me on camera, discarding her herd of cats and cigarette for a bottle of baby oil, a few alarmed neurons felt like I should rush to Bucharest and wrap a blanket around her. Her innocence is a cool switch. The tokens evaporated.Some of the girls broadcast risqué photos of themselves for free using sites like Instagram and Tumblr while others only use sites which require payment before viewing. "Not your average female. I'm the fabled nerdy, intelligent woman who plays video games, loves all types of movies and music, books, and other women. I'm hyper, I have a dry, dark, sarcastic sense of humour, and I quote movies. A lot. Imagine Wednesday Addams, Daria, Liz Lemon and Darlene Connor having an orgy. I'm the result.MyFreeCams, one of the most popular of the cam portals, has a domain registered to a Leo Radvinsky, and a legal contact in the Netherlands.

She started as a nervous 18-year-old girl and cashes in on her signature 'innocent' look – pulling her hair into pigtails before she heads online to meet her guests.Streamate sells its models through a variety of repackaged and re-skinned websites, like PornHubLive — using the site's well-known brand as an easy in with porn consumers. In reality, it's the same old site in new clothes. Streamate itself is hard to pin down. Trying to find who actually owns it is dizzying: The domain belongs to Flying Crocodile Incorporated, which has a PO box in Seattle. Job openings point to a nebulous firm called NaiadDev, also based in Seattle (and hosted by FlyingCroc). But the company's custodian of records is one Rena Erotocritou, employed by "Ariel Secretaries Limited", a ghost of a company based out of Cyprus.Some of the girls broadcast risqué photos of themselves for free using sites like Instagram and Tumblr while others only use sites which require payment before viewing. It's very possible, but if they do no one has ever said it to my face. I used to be in porn production for big companies, and that was probably the only time I experienced negativity. I told a guy about what I do and he was like I don't agree with porn. These women are being forced to do something they don't want to do. It's degrading. He did bring up some good points but I argued that it was the same as any office job. Your boss is going to fuck you over or you don't get paid, right? It's the same. At least with webcamming, I work for myself and I can choose how much I earned, and if nobody wanted to pay me that [amount], they wouldn't come to me.

Why do you think some men, and probably women as well, prefer it to porn?The curvy 21-year-old from Queensland says 'you can't just sit there, look pretty and take your clothes off,' – that customers want someone who is real, who they can form a relationship with. Part of the misconception comes from the fact that it's not policed. It's a very underground industry, and there's no governing body you can turn to, so people can be taken advantage of. It's an online community and it's hard to police. Anything can go wrong; people can be abusive and feel like they can go away with it, but then you can also just turn off the screen. But many women feel like they need to stay because of the money. I've never felt like I had to do that, but then again, it's the same when people stay in the wrong job for so long because they're scared of leaving and losing that financial security. It's so close to the porn industry and a lot of the sex industry isn't policed. If you have a problem and you go to the police about it, most of the time they'll just say well, you're asking for it, which is not acceptable. We're freelance and self-employed. We work for ourselves and these are our decisions, and we should be respected in the same way everyone else is respected.At times, it's hard to believe Mila even enjoys the work. I stopped by one of her more recent shows, and she sat, almost motionless, with her top unbuttoned, literally wincing. She seemed to be mumbling to herself, narrowing her eyes and ignoring her customers. Mila told the hundreds of slobbering men in her chatroom that they'd need to deposit thousands of tokens before she'd take her shirt off entirely. Money trickled in. She says the last three weeks have been "the slowest in three years...very bad. Still, she's a rich woman in an industry of destitution. CONTINUED BELOW...

[imaginecoderealize]

What would be everyone's reaction to suddenly finding themselves under the mistletoe with the person they have a crush on?

I am sorry for not getting to these out on Christmas Day. I tried, but the holiday was busier and my niece’s jolly holiday gift of a cold made me more sluggish than I expected. I will get to the rest in the queue ASAP! 

These are a little long all together, so they are going under a cut. Mod Apostle covered the Gang, while Mod Nautilus is smooching villains!

Mod Apostle’s headcanons:

Lupin: 

Lupin thought the tradition of kissing under mistletoe was terribly romantic and made sure to hang bunches strategically around the mansion. He was careful not to get caught himself, but he enjoyed watching his confused friends getting kissed. He laughed until he cried when Saint kissed Van. Van’s shocked expression was priceless. 

Lupin himself thought he was immune to the prank. He knew where all the bunches were, after all. 

He was standing in the foyer when he felt a hand on his shoulder and smelled a familiar sweet perfume. 

He turned and saw her, the girl he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about. He didn’t know she was coming. His heart skipped a beat to see her after so long. She was so beautifully dressed in her holiday velvet gown with her hair falling soft around her shoulders. He was uncharacteristically tongue tied, but gathered himself and greeted her formally. 

She said good afternoon with an amused sparkle in her beautiful eyes, and without warning, slipped her hand behind his head and pulled his lips to hers. 

It took a moment for Lupin’s head to catch up with what was happening, but luckily his heart needed no such instruction. He pulled her close and gave her an ardent, gentle kiss. Her heart beat fast against his chest and her pretty face was flushed when he finally pulled away. 

He heard a light laugh above his head and they both looked up to see a bunch of mistletoe suspended on a string. Standing on the staircase above were Saint and Impey with identical mischievous smiles on their faces. 

Lupin silently thanked his meddling friends and pulled his lady tightly against his chest, “Merry Christmas.” he said softly, and once again pressed his lips to hers. 

….

Van:

Van was only vaguely aware of the tradition of mistletoe before his foolishly romantic friends started hanging the stuff everywhere in the mansion. He didn’t see the appeal In such a thing. It was just an excuse for people to make fools of themselves. 

 So why was he sitting there staring moodily at his drink and thinking about it? 

He dismissed it from his mind. He would not participate in such nonsense. It didn’t matter if…

Van saw her speaking with Delacroix. The girl who caught his eye every time she walked in the room. Her gentle figure and strong spirit captivated him. He was content to watch her, and enjoy listening to her lovely voice. Just her presence made his burdens seem lighter.

He watched her walk towards him with a bright smile on her face. 

He gave her his customary wave. No, he would not try to get her under the mistletoe. He was an adult man, not some infatuated boy. 

She walked up and greeted him warmly. He couldn’t help but smile just to see her up close. Her modest gown suited her well. She was truly a beautiful woman.

He rose and bowed to her, as was only proper. He offered to get her a drink, and she accepted graciously. 

He would certainly not do anything stupid. 

He returned with drinks but saw that she was now speaking with Duke Renfield near the entryway… 

Under the blasted mistletoe. 

He waited for the Duke to depart before approaching her with the drinks. He tried to forget the bunch of plants over their heads as they chatted. It was irrelevant… even if her lips looked very soft stained with sweet wine, and her face radiant with happiness… was she so happy to speak with him? His heart seemed to be beating too fast. Perhaps just a single kiss would be all right… 

He leaned close and their lips met. She gasped a little but answered him with surprising hunger. He slid his arm around her back, forgetting for the moment that they were surrounded by revelers who were watching the proceedings with great interest and amusement. 

“Should we arrange a room for you two?” Duke Renfield asked with a laugh. 

Van pulled away quickly. He was sure his face was as red as his lady’s. He cleared his throat, “It is just traditional…” he muttered, pointing at the mistletoe. He fervently hoped Delacroix was elsewhere…

“Ha ha! You told Impey that mistletoe was stupid!” Delacroix laughed, throwing his arms around the two of them, “wait til I tell him, Helsing!” 

Van took a deep breath. The young man was a king. It would not do to punch him, even if he deserved it. 

He gave his lady a rueful smile. He could still see desire in her eyes and feel the imprint of her lips on his. He supposed mistletoe wasn’t so bad after all. 

….

Fran: 

Fran was working late, as usual. Patients’ problems didn’t stop, even on Christmas. 

He sighed as he mixed the last vial of medicine. A baby with a fever had kept both Fran and the child’s parents up all night. He felt like throwing himself in bed and sleeping for a week. 

He gazed sadly at the invitation he’d received to the party at Saint’s mansion. He had sent word earlier that he couldn’t make it, but it made him feel lonely. He would see everyone tomorrow, but it wasn’t quite the same. He wished he could have asked… no, he certainly couldn’t do that. She would definitely not accept…

He heard a knock on the door. 

He sighed again and did his best to slap himself awake, hoping fervently that it wasn’t another feverish baby. He opened the door. 

It wasn’t an anxious parent, but a girl he was very pleased to see, though he wished he didn’t feel so run down. She was wrapped tightly in her coat and carrying a festive package. She greeted him and handed him the package, saying it was a token of her appreciation for the care of her father.  

The sight of her sweet face revived him as nothing else would have. He mustered the best smile he could and thanked her for her kindness. 

She noticed his exhaustion, of course. She  was always caring and observant. She insisted on staying and fixing him some soup and he opened his gift of her handmade cookies and sweetbreads. He listened to her lively voice and sipped strong tea until he was finished his meal. 

When she finally took her leave they stood dithering on the doorstep, she took his hands in hers and jokingly asked if he had kissed all his patients that day and if that was a healthy practice. 

He was confused as to her meaning, so she pointed up to the doorframe. 

A bunch of mistletoe was hung from a nail over the door. He certainly didn’t put it there. 

He looked down at her expectant face and felt as if he had caught the baby’s fever. 

“Ah, that… I didn’t put that there… um…” this was too embarrassing. 

She giggled and pulled his head down to hers to kiss him. 

He froze in a panic. The feel of her lips on his filled him with a rush of emotions and feelings he wasn’t prepared for in his frazzled, exhausted state. 

She gave him a smile and wished him good night before turning to go. 

“Wait!” he shouted, grabbing her hand. 

He pulled her to him and, holding her close, he lifted her chin and leant down to kiss her gently. She clutched his coat, moaning a little as she leant into the kiss. 

They were both breathless when he pulled away. 

“Will you come with me to the party tomorrow?” he asked her, feeling unprecedentedly bold. 

She agreed immediately, much to his relief. He felt a lot happier when she finally took her leave. His loneliness forgotten. He would be sure to get plenty of rest before tomorrow. He couldn’t disappoint his sweetheart. 

….

Impey: 

Impey was hard at work in the kitchen preparing for the holiday feast. He already finished the entrees and appetizers. Now all that was left was the desserts. He found a new recipe for brandy fudge and was giving the sticky, warm chocolate a taste test when he heard someone enter the kitchen. 

“Hey! No samples before dinner! Licking the spoon is the privilege of the chef!” he cried, looking back to see who entered his domain. 

A beautiful lady stood in the doorway still dressed in her overcoat. Her bright eyes were shining. He didn’t know she was coming to the party so early.  He would have gladly given her the whole bowl of fudge if it made her happy, but she just gave him a smile and left too quickly for him to offer. 

Feeling excited to see her again, he finished up and went to change his shirt before taking the dishes to the dining room. A vigorously boiling pot had splattered sauce over his sleeve and it wouldn’t do for his lovely angel to see him in such a dilapidated state. 

He turned a corner towards his room when he saw her outside the door, hanging up her overcoat. She was wearing a golden gown that left a surprising amount of her uncovered. He stopped in the hallway and stared. Then he saw it… the bunch of mistletoe over her head. Was she waiting for him there on purpose? Or was it just a stroke of amazing luck? That passionate plant offering its blessing to kiss this divine vision before him.

He bounded towards her excitedly, afraid she would move away and the moment would be lost. 

But then a moment of hesitation entered his heart… what if she didn’t want it? 

She turned to him with a smile and that was enough to tell him that she didn’t object. He swept her in his arms and kissed her gently, “Merry Christmas!” 

“Merry Christmas.” she said, and leant in to kiss him back sweetly, licking his lips before pulling away, “Is it all right to sample the chef before dinner?” 

Yes, he agreed enthusiastically. It was MORE than all right. 

….

Saint:

A crush? What a strange word for one such as him. Saint contemplated it for a awhile. He had seen countless people in the first blush of infatuation. It was one thing that never changed and wouldn’t as long as people existed. He had to admit he had been the object of others’ intrigue and misplaced desire, as well. It brought them nothing but suffering. Even if he was too weak to refuse them, he always had to let them down in the end. 

He was, however, unused to the feeling himself. What a odd thing it was. To experience such joy when someone was near. To feel warmth at the mere sight of another person. It also carried a sense of anxiety that the other person might not feel the same way. He was the last who would inflict himself on someone unwanted, least of all this girl who so captured his heart. 

He quite uncharacteristically didn’t know what to do. 

The source of his conundrum sat quietly reading a book near the fireplace, oblivious to the jittery confusion in the heart of the man sitting across the room. Her concentration on her book was absolute. He was sure she wasn’t even aware that he was there. 

Saint sighed to himself. He truly had no right to bother her. He rose from his chair and decided to leave her in peace.

She looked up the moment he moved. Her eyes questioning his departure. Perhaps she was more aware of him than he thought. 

Impulsively he asked her if she would mind walking with him, to which she happily agreed, much to his delight. 

She allowed him to tuck her hand beneath his arm on their stroll through the long halls of the mansion. She didn’t question his odd request. Was she perhaps leaning a little closer to him as he spoke of winter traditions of the past? He knew she was an intelligent girl, with a bright and curious mind. She always listened raptly to his stories for the pleasure of learning. It was one of the many reasons he was so delighted by her company, but it was more than that. Her presence was a peace he had never known before. Now that he was free, he could be allowed to contemplate such peace. It was heady and frightening at once. 

“What are you thinking about?” she asked him curiously as they stopped and gazed out the glass door at the fiery sunset. 

He was at a loss for words, and cast around for an innocent topic. His eyes fell upon the bunch of mistletoe suspended on the he doorframe above their heads, “Ah, there is a tradition we haven’t discussed. Mistletoe was sacred to many ancient cultures as a fertility symbol. In France it is given as a gift of peace and good luck for the new year. In Britain-“

“Kissing.” she said, blushing very prettily, “Most recently it has been used as an excuse for people to kiss each other.” 

“Yes, That is so.” Saint kept his voice unruffled by long practice, “Many lovers observe its history as a symbol of fertility and luck by kissing beneath it.” he hoped she didn’t she didn’t notice the slight tremor in his voice as he spoke the latter sentence. 

She nodded and gazed up at the bunch of sacred mistletoe above their heads, “If it is to honor the gods… perhaps we should?” she looked away nervously. 

Saint was startled. Did she truly feel as he did? He gave her a smile… a true smile from his heart, “Honoring the gods is never amiss, my sweet lady.” he said very gently, and softly touched her face. He could feel her trembling beneath his fingers. It lit a fire in his heart he thought gone cold long ago, but he held back and lightly brushed his lips against hers. Just a fleeting touch before pulling back, to gauge her reaction. 

“Please…” she said softly, her eyes holding a fire to match his own. 

Something in his heart gave way and he again lowered his lips to hers. She yielded willingly to his gentle explorations, and he reveled in the sound of her breaths, the softness of her lips… the taste of her tongue. If they were honoring the gods, it could only be those of love and desire. 

He pulled away reluctantly and breathlessly. Her flushed face and shining eyes held a deep, passionate longing. Oh, how he wished to answer it. All of it… but the time was not yet right. There were many things she needed to know about him first. However… perhaps for the first time… he was truly looking forward to the future. 

….

Here, handling the villains as usual, are Mod Nautilus’ Mistletoe headcanons!

Mistletoe~

Nemo:

Meeting the object of his affections under the mistletoe isn’t really on his radar.

What IS on his radar is meeting EVERYBODY under the mistletoe because he has it HANGING FROM HIS HEAD on a headband he constructed the night prior.

… Unfortunately, Impey ends up taking it from him after a bad encounter involving Van Helsing and a very traumatized Fran.

So he’s moping, not realizing that he’s moping under the mistletoe until he feels a pair of soft lips on his cheek.

I mean, he just looked so sad sitting there all by himself, you know?

“H-HEEEY! Wait a minute, I didn’t do it proooper–!”

Nemo yanks his crush back to him with a surprising amount of strength, though he doesn’t immediately kiss them, instead choosing to rub his nose against theirs.

“Meeeeerry Christmaaaaaas–! [SMOOCH!]”

Aleister:

The object of Aleister’s affections probably doesn’t even realize that they’re standing under the mistletoe. They’re probably just talking with a friend, smiling, sipping their cider and enjoying the atmosphere.

But when their friend steps away, they suddenly feel another presence next to them, warm and eerily comforting.

Jimmy A. Aleister smiles down at them before leaning forward, the bristles of his mustache tickling their skin as he whispers: “Merry Christmas” before pressing his lips to their cheek.

Avido:

Avido has made his intentions clear from the very moment he realized he wanted his paramour (’crush’ is a rather childish term, don’t you think?). Mistletoe and, indeed, Christmas itself is another game piece in this delightful game of cat and mouse he’s been participating in.

Both he and his paramour know about the mistletoe. It’s obvious, couples have been stealing kisses all evening. The two of them purposefully play nearby, never interacting but allowing their social circles to get dangerously close to the poisonous plant.

But his paramour still lets out a surprised gasp when Avido suddenly stands next to them, offering a drink with that charming smile on his face.

Kissing under the mistletoe is a little too juvenile for a man of Avido’s taste, but using it as a starting point for an invitation elsewhere? Perhaps a place a little more secluded, where lips already sweet with wine can finally meet…

[obsession-squidfessions-blog]

one of the most popular of the cam portals

MyFreeCams, one of the most popular of the cam portals, has a domain registered to a Leo Radvinsky, and a legal contact in the Netherlands.Entirely unsurprisingly, it's impossible to get in touch with any of the people who actually run these networks. None of the above entities from LiveJasmin, Streamate, or MyFreeCams responded to efforts to confirm that they do indeed exist and have some affiliation with the websites in question. All that's available is a semi-robotic technical support chat, which fields basic questions about how to use the site and credit card processing. These web cam kingpins might as well not exist. We don't know where the money goes.Domino wakes up at 8 am every morning and performs booked shows for clients paying between $US90 and $US120 an hour. That's about sixteen times her state minimum wage, and she doesn't have to leave her bedroom. If a client wants to book through MyFreeCams rather than sending money directly, Domino charges double. There's not a cent lost to a middle man. It seems like a pretty swell setup: "I love my job," Domino gushes. "I can work when I want to, as much as I want to, [and] nobody can tell me how to do my job. She's right. At her strip club, she was required to come in four to five days a week, spinning on a pole. Now, she can work all day. Or not at all. The last time we spoke, she was working on an ebook project, spending her time as she pleased.Since the dawn of streaming, the porn industry has been suffering financially. As people have started watching and uploading porn on tube sites for free, the days of big-budget porn and making a lot of money as a porn star are fading away. At the same time, though, streaming has also spawned a supplement to the porn industry that cant be replicated: camming.

Exactly! That's where I got my first taste of sex positivity. Going through my relationships and going to university I was like ‘woah, nobody thinks the way I do, I must be weird'. But being a webcam model, I realised everyone is into something different, they just feel like they can't talk about it.If abuse were such a big problem, Anna says, then why would any Romanian girls bother with it at all? Why wouldn't they just find some other job? In a country whose GDP only stopped shrinking two years ago, with 20 per cent of the population living below the poverty line and personal income levels far below Kazakhstan, Iran and Gabon, that question answers itself. There's a reason Anna's so happy to be independent from her former employers, a status she equates with nothing less than her "freedom".Sometimes self-­regulation regarding finances is the best option for some people: Ive been treated better and more fairly as a Cam Girl and nude model than I was in my last retail job where I, no word of a lie, got fired for looking sad. Yet despite how much control one can have over their career as a Cam Girl there are certainly discrepancies within the industry, including safety issues and issues of future employability, as well as what is considered a fair payment and no guarantee on a basic minimum wage for hours put in. It leaves a lot up to chance.Working an eight-hour day, she earns close to 4,000 euros (£3,600) per month - nearly 10 times the Romanian average wage. As Lana's employer, Studio 20 also makes 4,000 euros per month from her online sessions. And at the top of the video chat money-making pyramid, LiveJasmin - the online cam site that streams Studio 20's content and is responsible for collecting payment from the credit cards of clients - takes double that: 8,000 euros.

It happened through a friend of a friend of mine. Thats usually how these things go. She had found, through a network of girls, a website that paid decent money for cam girling if you put the work in. I signed up, submitted my name, ID, bank details and some photos and within 24 hours I was approved as a bonafide Cam Girl ­with no bloody idea of what I was doing.But some women are not free to make the choices Lana has. Oana, 28, counts herself as an escapee from the sex industry. At 16 - a minor - she fell in love with a boyfriend who persuaded her to do video chat.It depends on the profile that you set up because when you make a profile, you write a little bio about yourself, and my bio might be seen as a little more out there'. I'm open to anything, like roleplay, so a lot of the time I get roleplay requests, more just because I find them fun no matter how unusual or bizarre they are. What excites me are uncommon and unusual requests that you wouldn't really come across. Life's too boring otherwise.But despite fulfilling all my internet male expectations, Anna's impossible to really pin down. On both IM and video chat, she's prone to mannerisms and quips that make you want to pay for her time. A lot of it. She's beautiful without surfeit, an honest form that's pleasing even over a low-resolution video stream. Her English is fantastic, her personality disarming. She'll sit casually, like a girl the morning after a sleepover, musing about her cats and future. When she first "performed" for me on camera, discarding her herd of cats and cigarette for a bottle of baby oil, a few alarmed neurons felt like I should rush to Bucharest and wrap a blanket around her. Her innocence is a cool switch. The tokens evaporated. CONTINUED BELOW...

[holstvick53-blog]

Siacoin Wallet (SIA-UI)

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[southposting]

‘Doubling Down’ Rant.

I feel like one of the most prominent aspects of this episode was the portrayal of the characters’ psychology, the writing and the dialogue did a great job portraying how people spiral into toxic relationships on the first place, and why it is difficult for them to get away once they've fallen in.

Kyle for one, is portrayed as a caring and moral-ridden individual that although reasonable, lets his emotions get in the way of his course of action. Kyle wanted to intervene because he considered it to be the right thing to do, never once entertaining the idea of an ulterior motive with Heidi until the other girls proposed it to him. While all the other boys aknowledged Cartman’s poor treatment of Heidi, none of them were willing to get themselves involved.

This takes us to Kyle's initiative and how his and Cartman's dynamic plays out throghout the episode. Kyle has consistently been responsible for challenging Cartman’s attitude, positioning himself as ‘good’ and Cartman as 'evil’, this relationship that has ultimately served to feed both Cartman’s enthusiasm to torture him, and Kyle’s sense of selfrighteousness and tendency to see himself as a martyr, victimization is something Kyle has in common with Cartman, but to quote, 'We all wrongly see ourselves as the victim sometimes, but Cartman sees himself as the victim ALL the time’. Kyle differentiates himself in being able to aknowledge his mistakes and learn from them.

To get some insight into Kyle’s remark: 'In a way, I feel like we’re all going out with Cartman right now’ reflecting on how all of them are, at some degree, and specially Kyle, always been involved in a toxic relationship with Cartman’s mind games. Kyle has been, for a long time now, Cartman’s main sympathizer, he can’t help but look out for his personal improvement, often attempting to get him to do the right thing and aknowledge the fault in his ways, a cause that Cartman hasn't hesitated to take advantage of, tricking Kyle into commiting to a mean if he can profit from his support.

In this episode, Kyle appears to have come to the conclussion that Cartman is beyond help, and that neither he nor Heidi can do anything to change that, for the best thing they can do for him is not to feed his sociopathic needs, furthermore demonstrated by their encounter on the hallway, with Kyle continuously trying to reason with him and assure him it was all for his own good, Cartman making deaf ears to his claims, finally leaving Kyle no choice but to knock him out in self defense, who apologizes regretful.

Cartman, on the other side, is miserable with Heidi, but also without her. As I stated on my last post concerning their relationship:

'He can’t bring himself to end the relationship and thus giving Heidi freedom of choice, she’s his property and so Cartman can’t stand the idea of his belongings moving onto other people. Cartman thinks of Heidi as a tool that exists with the only purpose of being at his disposition to give him attention and validation on command, no more and no less.

Simultaneously, Cartman can’t stand Heidi, because she doesn’t Cartman’s idealized image of her. Naturally, Heidi isn’t the tool Cartman expects her to be, she is an human being with her own individual needs. Whereas Cartman seeks a relationship where he is prioritized over all, never giving anything in return, and a partner willing to follow him blindly against all the odds, without him having to worry about losing their support; Heidi looks for a functional, healthy romantic relationship, were all the parties involved contribute their part. Cartman is unwilling to fulfill this role, because doing so would position him as an equal of Heidi’s, which means, to him, degrade him from his high-entity status.’

Nearing the end we realize Cartman has found a way of manipulating Heidi into believing she’s in the relationship she's craved for, and thus avoiding any sign of resistance on her behalf. He has learned that if he wants to manipulate Heidi successfully, he needs to put a little effort on the relationship every now and then, offering her occasional reassurance when things seem grim. This way, Cartman can act selfishly while at the same time 'rewarding’ Heidi for her subservience, throwing away any doubt she might've had in him. He fools her into believing his toxic behaviour is a necessary mean that needs to exist in order to keep improving himself.

Heidi is someone who wishes to aid the needy, she cannot bring herself to refuse someone’s cries for help, which is, besides the ironic effects of peer pressure, the main reason she continues to be stuck with Cartman and allows herself to be manipulated by him. He sees in Cartman someone who takes bad decisions, but is fundamentally kindhearted. Someone who is in need for her guidance. Even when ditching Kyle after being gaslighted by Cartman, her kind nature is a definitive trait of her character. Cartman was persuasive enough to make Heidi compromise with his beliefs, he made sure his words appeared to be reasonable. He told her what she wanted to hear when she was feeling the most guilty, deflecting the blame for the failure of their relationship unto Kyle instead, but reassuring her by telling her he hadn’t been counscious of his actions. He convinced her of attributing her own supposed flaws ('being moody’) to her ethnic background, and this way implying she has no control over ever improving herself, comforting her but making her feel helpess over her situation at the same time, this serves to Cartman as a mechanism to increase her emotional dependence to him, by making her feel he’s the only one who will ever love her despite her imperfections.

Regarding Cartman’s idea of Kyle, I feel like Cartman projects all of his own corruption unto Kyle. He subcounsciously thinks of Kyle as his equal, although he cannot recognize the corruption from within. Kyle’s intentions are never pure in Cartman’s mind, he must always be plotting something against him the same way he himself does to him. To him, Kyle’s purpose in life is to get in Cartman’s way. As the series progressed, we’ve seen Cartman gradually watering down his hostility towards Kyle in latter seasons the more time they spent together, and instead replacing it with an odd sense of familiarity and trust, until this point, Cartman’s friendly demeanor towards Kyle that even manifested itself at one point earlier in the episode, takes a sudden turn the moment Cartman finds out he might have been responsible for his breakup with Heidi. Following this event, we see Cartman’s hatred towards Kyle reach its peak when he goes batshit after his trippy jewish dream sequence, spewing all his resentments against Kyle in spite of the latter’s attempts to excuse himself, Cartman feeling betrayed after letting himself 'fall into Kyle’s claws’ by allowing him the benefit of the doubt previously.

Having stated all this, I think Cartman has taken care of the problems he had with Heidi, and now that the challenge is over, the last scene leads me to believe he has shifted his interest from the pleasure he obtains from having domain over her, to the impact his behaviour towards her has on Kyle instead. He’s using his influence on the people around Kyle to make them into proxys as a mean to inflict pain onto him. Heidi is no longer the tool, his entire relationship with her is now a tool on itself.

It was also interesting to see the conection between B plot and A plot relying on the parallel of the toxic relationship between Cartman, Kyle and Heidi, and that of politicians with their supporters, instead of having each storyline intersecting with the other, though I don’t have a strong stand on the matter, since I’m for the most part ignorant concerning the USA political status.

The weakest point of the episode in my opinion was the introduction of elements that seemingly served no purpose in the narrative, and ultimately aimed for a specific purpose in order to lead the plot in a certain direction. For example, Cartman’s dialogue when making fun of Heidi for gaining weight after tricking her into introducing meat into her vegan diet, indicated he had a goal in mind by doing this, though we never get any insight on what this particular goal may be other than to reassure his dominance over her. Besides this being a dangerous move for Cartman to make just after getting Heidi’s trust back, it seemed like it didn’t serve any purpose other than to incite Kyle into intervening in the relationship. Another example would be Cartman visiting Token’s house, there wasn’t really a point for Cartman to do this besides giving him the chance to make racial remarks some more. Finding out about Kyle being responsible for his breakup with Heidi through Token’s dad seemed too coincidental, though I don’t really mind, even less after being presented with Cartman’s fantastic Kyle delirium sequence.

I really enjoyed the execution of the humor, there were some great jokes, the animation team did an amazing job and overall I think this was a fantastic episode with a rather dark thematic.

[lushscreamqueen]

THE KILLER SHREWS on the Schlocky Horror Picture Show

August 03, 2008

OPENING: Hello, good evening, and welcome to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. I'm your host, Nigel Honeybone. As the 1950's grew to a close so did the era of the giant radioactive beast. Spawned from the nuclear fears stemming from World War II, the movies saw dozens of animals super-sized due to one of the popular catch words of the time: Radiation! By decades end, just about every manner of giant beastie had been seen. Lizards, spiders, ants, grasshoppers, the list goes on. The major studios had lost the inclination to finance such projects, and gradually re-focused their attention on new trends like nudies, bikies and gothic horror. That is not to say that movies with ginogorous critters didn't exist. It's just that, more often than not, it was left to the little guy, the independent producer or filmmaking rookie to unleash such monsters. Witness tonight, if you dare, as a group of people trapped on an island during a storm must contend with a bunch of whippets in wigs, in the 1959 anti-classic, Attack Of The Killer Shrews! BREAK: Don't go away, we'll be right back with more dogs In drag, and then after the ads we'll get back to the movie. MIDDLE: Welcome back to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Attack Of The Killer Shrews, also known as just Killer Shrews, was the brainchild of Texas millionaire Gordon McLendon. Born in Paris, Texas in 1921 he would go on to win a nationwide political-essay contest, attend Yale University where he studied Far Eastern languages, work for the campus radio station, and served as business manager for the Yale Literary Magazine, all before the U.S. got involved in World War Two. After the war he bought an interest in a radio station and built up a following for his live baseball game broadcasts. Having built up quite a name for himself as a pioneer in the radio field, McLendon now turned his attention to film...a regrettable decision for producer and audience alike. He and his family owned several drive-ins and theatres. Like many drive-in owners discovered, their outlets for screening films were considered the bottom of the barrel by the pretentious lot in Hollywood and many in tinseltown tried their darndest to keep their films out of the drive-in chains. This only led to the drive-in owners taking the next logical step, they financed their own films. In 1959 McLendon financed three films: The Killer Shrews, The Giant Gila Monster, and My Dog Buddy, none of which are remembered as sterling examples of cinematic skill, if they're remembered at all. James Best, known far and wide as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on television's original Dukes of Hazzard, plays Thorne Sherman and captains his own ship. Sounds cool, but sadly it isn't any bigger than the SS Minnow, and the only person he has to boss around is Rook. He's a glorified gopher, delivering supplies out to Doctor Craigis on his island. Sherman is a man's man, which by 1950s terms means he drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, has an appreciative eye for the ladies and is ready for a fistfight on a moment's notice, the kind of simplistic brute we are gradually evolving away from, a little too slowly if you ask me. His Honour Judge Henry Dupree plays Rook Griswold and looks like he could have played the title role in that live action Fat Albert movie: Hey, hey, hey! He's Sherman's sole crewman, although the two seem to share a real friendship rather than just bossy Captain/abused crew dynamic. Poor Rook is the first person to bite it in The Killer Shrews, or more accurately, the first to get bitten. Repeatedly, as a matter of fact. In this way this film helped start the stereotype of the token black character becoming the first victim in horror films. You may think films like Night Of The Living Dead and Alien were breakthroughs for the token black character in American horror, but a pessimist might say they simply get more screen-time before being killed-off. Baruch Lumet plays Doctor Marlowe Craigis. He may not seem like much, but he fathered one of Hollywoods greatest producer/directors, Sidney Lumet, famous for

Twelve Angry Men, Failsafe, The Pawnbroker and Dog Day Afternoon. Speaking of dogs, he also directed the all-black musical The Wiz starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. Nobody's perfect. Anyway, Craigis says he hails from Sweden, and has come to the island of The Killer Shrews to further his scientific work, but you and I both know it was to keep his sexy daughter out of the Swedish porn industry. Craigis wants to shrink people, or at least slow down our metabolisms so the Earth's resources will last longer when overpopulation becomes a big problem. I think a bigger problem might be smarmy foreign scientists who screw around with Mother Nature... Swedish-born Ingrid Goude, a former Miss Universe, plays Ann Craigis, Doctor Craigis sexy daughter. She claims to be a zoologist, which is about as convincing as Nicole Kidman playing a brain surgeon. Though to be honest, I wouldn't mind checking-out her knowledge of biology, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Ann serves no purpose here other than to scream on occasion, and to provide Captain Sherman with a new First Mate, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Ken Curtis, another famous redneck, plays Jerry Farrell, part of Doctor Craigis research team. Curtis was inducted into the Hall Of Great Western Performers in 1981 for his performance as Festus in almost 300 episodes of Gunsmoke. Jerry's vital role in the mission is whining, cowering, boozing it up and generally being a waste of skin. He despises Sherman from the start, probably because he recognises that Sherman is much more of a man than he ever will be. I wouldn't get attached to Jerry if I were you. Played by Gordon McLendon, the Texas millionaire responsible for this mess Doctor Radford Baines is another one of the scientists helping Doctor Craigis with his work. This guy is really devoted to his work. In fact, he can hardly think of anything else and walks around muttering things like "Hematoxic Syndrome." His last moments on Earth are spent in devotion to science and furthering the understanding of mankind, instead of doing something really important like trying to get laid or run away. Unknown Alfredo DeSoto plays Mario. Despite the Italian name, Mario is apparently Mexican. He's most likely a servant of some kind, though his main duty seems to be as a device to advance the plot. Whatever he does, it doesn't involve too much physical labor, as Mario's mid section is expanding faster than a balloon. He isn't around much. Just long enough to say things like "Si, senor," "No, senor" and "Aaaahhhh!". It also explains why the shrews ran out of food. Mario doesn't look like he was missing any meals... Attack Of The Killer Shrews gives real meaning to the phrase Low Budget. Filmed on a mere handful of sets and featuring scene after scene of people talking, often with their back to the camera, with little in the way of action, and one could easily dismiss this as pure manure. The fact that the giant shrews are played by dogs in drag when they're not being represented by clumsy puppets, and one could not be blamed for turning up their nose at this movie. If there is a saving grace, it's the short running time. So yes, there's lots of boring talk, but there is also enough monster action to satisfy fans of such schlocky goodness. Besides, I shouldn't have to explain how funny it is to watch somebody scream in terror at a Collie wearing carpet remnants, when the dog is rolling over on his back obviously expecting a belly rub! And it's with that thought in mind we now return you to the carnivorous canine creepiness that is Attack Of The Killer Shrews! CLOSING: It's alright, you can open your eyes now. How exactly do Killer Shrews assimilate poison into their systems, anyway? For instance, I love to drink Absinthe, and I do mean Absinthe, not that over-the-counter swill. I've consumed hundreds if not thousands of litres of it over the years, over three thousand litres just in the last fifteen years, but I still haven't started frothing with green poison yet. If I can't assimilate my own favourite

beverage after drinking thousands of bottles, how can the shrews do so with poison after just one sampling of it? Anyway, please join me next week so I can poke you in the eye with another frightful excursion to the backside of the Public Domain, filmed in glorious 2-D black & white Regularscope on...The Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Toodles!

by Lushscreamqueen

[ganymedesclock]

Something I think is very interesting about Lance, Voltron Legendary Defender, and the archetypal “five hero ensemble” that the show plays into...

Roughly, there’s usually the hero, the hero’s rival/right hand man, the brains, the brawn, and the fifth ranger- sometimes a healer, other times generally identified by compassion, and virtually always in older continuities, the Designated Girl of the team.

In prior continuities of Voltron, the breakdown is such:

Keith is the Hero, with Lance as his Rival Right Hand, Pidge is Brains, Hunk is Brawn, and Allura, stepping up to the plate rapidly in the fifth episode of DotU, is the Token Girl.

This is true for GoLion, it’s true for DotU, and it’s true for Force, though Force “matures” Allura from the ‘soft sensitive one’ to more of a mediator figure- a more motherly take on the Token Girl role to reflect Force having an older take on all of the old school heroes.

Sven tends to take a back seat, as whether he lives (DotU, Force) or dies (GoLion), he’s pretty much shuffled off the team from the start, but his early role as a counselor and wiser, more patient head to Keith paints him with a bit of a similar brush to Force’s take on Allura.

However, in VLD?

Shiro is the hero. With Zarkon firmly as ensemble final boss, Shiro is the one set thematically across from him as rival, given much greater focus- bumping Keith to the Rival Right Hand, and, while they’re far closer and warmer to each other than usually seen, the later episodes of season 3 do show us a bit of a rift between Keith and Shiro with them challenging each other on the right thing to do.

Pidge is still definitely the main “Brains”, though that’s a role shared partially with Hunk, who, while still “Brawn” is no intellectual slouch- Pidge’s Lion and skill set reflect more evasive, stealth, and guile-based problem solving while Hunk’s lie more steadily in impressive fortitude, compassion, and strength.

In the alternative formation, with Allura taking the field... while at a glance she takes Lance’s Lion, narratively, she takes Shiro’s position- s3e2 features Allura as the triumphant arrival that decisively makes Lotor back down, s3e3 has her be the only one to overcome Thayserix’s obstacles and find everyone, s3e4 is about her choice and her people, and in s3e6 she thematically takes point on the team when we see them on foot.

Allura becomes the Hero, with Keith remaining as Right Hand, even though he’s calling the shots. He doesn’t have quite the emotional connection to their victories and conflicts that Allura does. He’s just Allura’s Right Hand in a way very different from Shiro’s.

So where does this leave Lance, in both formations?

Lance, rather than either of the two women on his team, fills the narrative role virtually always given to the Designated Girl.

Think about it. Lance is the compassionate one, Blue is described as a nurturer- a supporting role, even with his insecurities in place Lance ultimately puts other people before himself, and even the act that causes Red to accept him as their pilot is making a motion of solidarity and emotional support to stand by Keith- setting aside their rivalry.

Where the “rivalry” is often a major, integral component to the Right Hand’s characterization, for VLD’s Lance, it’s something that ultimately did not have nearly as strong a sway on him and that he’s growing out of without a specific resolution with or about Keith.

Lance is the emotional compassionate “heart of the team”. Putting him in the Blue Lion, he’s thematically placed in the role that most other continuities put Allura in. This makes him a triumvirate with Keith, who’s the Right Hand here, but in most other continuities the Hero, and Shiro, who is decisively the Ensemble Hero rather than not even part of the team.

What I think is so interesting about this? In contrast to DotU, which at times quite frankly treats Allura like a burden, inherently vulnerable and the “weak link” in the team... VLD has nothing but respect for Lance. The two times Lance has been held captive in some sense, he takes a foremost role in his own protection (s1e4&5, getting a decisive shot on Sendak despite his exhaustive injuries, and s1e6, being the one to raise the alarm after Nyma deceives him)

Lance is not, and never has been, the weak link in the team. But he’s not the Right Hand- because the most serious time we have seen him arguing with s3e3, Lance isn’t acting as an instigator- he’s the mediator who is trying to keep Keith in check and keep the team together in a dangerous occasion. When Keith returns, all contrite, realizing what he’s done has hurt people, Lance’s focus isn’t on having one up over Keith- his “Yeah, you kind of did,” is a little sheepish, and quickly brushed over to focus on Fixing The Situation.

But out of this? I really have to wonder if a great deal of the fandom outcry around Lance not being important is tied into the fact that VLD’s take on Lance occupies what’s often a thematically feminine role.

Even though, frankly, it’s kind of brilliant- because Lance’s insecurity and frustration at trying to identify and define his own role are textbook problems for that particular role in The Band- I have a mixed relationship with TVTropes, but, they have a specific page titled “What kind of lame power is heart, anyway?”

The name of the page is inspired by Captain Planet, an old cartoon with, you guessed it, a five-hero team, four of whom wielded elemental powers- water, fire, earth, and wind, and the fifth wielded the element of “heart”. Incidentally the team had two girls, but, shockingly, neither of them were heart wielders.

TL;DR The Voltron writers thematically gave Lance the narrative role that’s virtually always the domain of the Designated Girl, and are consciously exploring this in an interesting thematic manner.

And the other interesting thing about this? While, as I said before, Zarkon is definitely designated final boss and presented thematically as Shiro’s villainous Arch Rival- Lotor, a major threat on the board and currently a main thematic character, is a leader who arguably takes a very similar stance to Lance- like Lance, Lotor is not a master in any one field as much as showing multiple diverse talents- and being a quick study of others’ emotions, and someone who prioritizes and acknowledges the power of emotional labor- for example, how on Puig he zeroes in that the Puigians don’t merely want to survive as much as they’re motivated by a desire for power and autonomy.

And everything attached to Lotor? Is absolutely slathered in blue- Lance’s archetypal color.

A color which, in the past, has been considered feminine, and is seen as a calming emotional color.

So- not only are they ultimately cementing that Lance’s contributions are important and to be taken completely seriously, they’re also showing us that those very same virtues are very dangerous to be on the wrong side of.

Just like how in the comics, Pidge cites Lance as the most dangerous person on the team who has to be taken out first if she’s going to survive fighting her friends- more dangerous than Shiro, the Hero (tm) with a year of experience as a gladiator and a laser cutting murder prosthetic.

[jackcliu]

On tokens, markets, and a path to a real-time economy

Two years ago on March 1, 2019, I posted a Letter to my future self to the Bitcoin blockchain. This is the story of that letter, one where I didn’t write a word, and how two years later, the dream is still alive. There is an actual path with tokens and markets to make utopia a reality, and my case for what that might look like. 



About a month prior to March 1, 2019, I had privately begun telling my close friends, colleagues, and family that I was going to be making a significant career and life change and dedicate the next chapter of my career towards building exclusively for the Bitcoin SV blockchain. You can guess the confused looks and concerns people had about what it was I was doing. Did I lose my mind? To be fair, I still get those messages today. I knew what I had envisioned when I first read the white paper back in 2013 and somewhere along that journey, the crypto industry had taken a path that veered dramatically from the one I had imagined. With Bitcoin having course corrected twice already via hard forks, I wanted and needed a guiding compass - a North Star. That’s when I had the idea to write a letter to my future self.

I confided in one of my best friends, Jackie to help me write it. It was a busy month for me, my mind was all over the place and I needed help. Over two afternoons, I shared with Jackie what I wanted to say, what was the possible world that I imagined. To her I must have been repeating myself since she and many of my friends had heard this for a decade. The future would bring Proof of Work from a term to describe a computer science thing to one that would describe the workings of the entire global economy and drive a seismic shift in how value was created and how we humans would interact and cooperate with one another. I wanted her to include a thank you to some people who helped me along the way - titans of the industry whom I was fortunate to cross paths and work with. Jesse Powell, gave me my first job at Kraken. CZ hired me to OKCoin in 2014. Star believed in me and gave me so many growth opportunities. At Circle, I worked with my long time friend Dan, who would go on to create CMS. A few days later, Jackie sent me a draft. I was pretty shocked at first, thinking hey this doesn’t even say Bitcoin in it. Where are all the names I wanted to include. Then I read it another time and when she asked if I wanted any changes or if the approach was right, I said, “Let’s not change a single word”. It was different, it was exceptional, to me it was perfect. I sent the letter internally as part of my Circle resignation email, flew off to San Antonio with my parents to watch the retirement ceremony of my favourite basketball player Manu Ginobili, and then a month later on April Fools Day, RelayX was launched.

Having this Letter out there has served me well. Nobody could have expected the course of events of the past two years both within BitCoin, and the world at large. Politics, COVID-19, money-printing, delistings, court cases, you name it. Without it as an anchor, I might have lost sight of the bigger picture. If you would have asked me then what BitCoin would look like today, I would have predicted a 100x rosier picture than the current situation. Despite most of the boom in the cryptocurrency industry having not occurred on the Bitcoin SV blockchain, the rapid adoption of blockchain and digital currencies from NFTs to DeFi, to institutions putting BTC on the balance sheet shows the underlying movement is in full force. Just this week, I watched sharpshooter JJ Redick utter the words “non fungible token, and blockchain technology” on his podcast talking about NBA Topshot. That’s incredible.

In the letter are the words - “Your world will be frictionless and marked by truth, freedom and fairness. Your world will truly be one that is defined by human imagination and honest work.”

I am making the case for tokens as the critical solution to a real-time economy. I want to break the spell of the narrow definition of tokens that has bounded the Bitcoin SV ecosystem. For much of the past two years, there appears to be two camps in BSV when it comes to tokens. The dominant one being we want only regulated tokens, security tokens, tokens backed by real assets, with real utility, that real businesses and enterprises can use to make their businesses more efficient. The other, perhaps out of jealousy for what’s going on in other blockchains being let’s just port those Ethereum ERC20’s over and let it run wild for it might pump the BSV price! Funny thing is neither has happened as developers are busy debating whether tokens should be on layer 0 or layer 1 or layer 100 but that’s a topic for another day. Both views are myopic. 



Tokens are going to be a much bigger deal on BitCoin than anyone might imagine. 

How many websites are there on the internet? I looked it up recently and the answer is 1.7Bn. How many token contracts are there on the Ethereum chain? The answer is 350,000. 



Websites are kind of hard to set up - you have to purchase a domain name, at least use a website template creator, and there isn’t that much use for getting one for the average person. Not when you can have an Instagram page, a Facebook account, a Twitter handle, a Medium blog without having your own site. Yet there are 1.7Bn of them! Ethereum tokens are prohibitively expensive mining fee wise to generate. Out of interest, I asked one of the devs who minted the original USDC contract during my days at Circle to find the transaction. It cost 0.44 ETH. At today’s prices that’s well over $500 to create a token. Yet there are 350,000 contracts!



I would wager there will be over 100Bn unique tokens on BitCoin and I’d guess higher but I don’t want to be outside the bounds of the very Overton window I’m creating.

It takes a few seconds to issue a token on BitCoin and at current mining fees, less than a tenth of a cent to issue. If I’m a store owner, I might issue a different gift card a week for the various deals I have going on. If I’m an artist, a different NFT for each piece of artwork. Neither the store owner nor the artist needs more than one website and you start to see the math.

If reading this, you still think tokens are going to be contained to some narrow definition of ‘security’ tokens, or NASDAQ like tokens, or fiat currency tokens, realise it’s like saying the internet will only have The New York Times or CNN or some licensed officially approved site. It’s ok if not every account on Instagram is world class photography. Not every Twitter account is going to be insightful (that’s clear) and that’s ok. In a world of 100Bn unique tokens, You bet there’s going to be a great deal of useless ones and a pretty large number of scams. Just like there are websites that are phishing for your passwords, websites with illegal content, and websites with viruses in them. Over time, services emerged to protect you by blocking, or warning you about potentially dangerous websites.

What’s the bigger picture and what do tokens have to do with a real-time economy? I’ve made the case for there being a ton of tokens. Does that mean it’s just going to be a Coinmarketcap with a lot more pages? An exchange with a lot more trading pairs? No, a lot more exciting than that.

A world with 100Bn tokens means every single asset, service, good, company, project, video, post and many more abstract things than one can imagine is going to have a dynamic, live price. It’s not about the tokens, it’s about the markets. Today, you visit a restaurant and you check Yelp to see if has a good review. BSV entrepreneurs are making some new review site but with reviews posted on the blockchain thinking this is the problem that needs solving. “Immutable reviews”. Much more valuable than a review or immutable review however is if this particular restaurant’s loyalty token is trading at a premium to the other one next door. There’s actually money on the line. Then after eating, instead of being a foodie with a blog and an Instagram to hype up such restaurant, if you’ve got that talent for knowing what’s going to be the next hot restaurant, you can just buy on the open market more of the restaurant’s tokens. Yes, a local foodie just became an crypto trader. Now you profit when you promote the restaurant on your blog. The chef who started that restaurant instead of using Groupon to attract an initial set of customers who have no loyalty to you, can instead issue 10,000 tokens, where each dish costs 100 tokens. Pretty soon if your food is delicious, those token prices are going to jump. Think Global, Live Local is not just going to do good, it’s going to now make you rich. 



I grew up in a lower middle class first generation immigrant family. I remember being a teenager in those years where oil prices were very volatile as the world approached the idea of “Peak Oil”. We would sometimes drive by a gas station one day where prices were a few cents cheaper than the day before, and even though the tank was half full, we filled up. Other days, the warning light would be on, but we held off for another day to fill up the tank in hopes prices would come down. Is this speculation on oil prices bad? Another fun memory I had was going grocery shopping with my folks and my favourite cookies were the Chip Ahoy Crunchy chocolate. Eating those with milk is probably half the reason for my height. Once in a while they would be on sale but next to them were the No-Name brand versions of the same cookies. Chip Ahoys were definitely better but were they $2/100grams better? No. We would calculate every time to decide which we would buy. Is this speculation on cookie price bad? How come other goods and services in the economy didn’t fluctuate in price? That’s what’s always fascinated me. I knew they would if they could. With Bitcoin, it was possible.

Tokens on Bitcoin with the perpetual scaling design of Bitcoin where it isn’t the holder that’s rewarded (Proof of Stake) but rather those contributing to scaling the network (Proof of Work) will lead to the formation of markets where markets were too inefficient to exist - unlocking trillions of value in the process. 



A fully tokenised economy makes everything efficient, fair, honest, and real-time. I don’t mean efficient like fast transactions or cheap mining fees. It’s the economy that will be efficient. You won’t need to be a big grocery chain or a big oil company or big tech company with financial analysts, and big data and machine learning folks in order to know what to set the price of a Chips Ahoy or a Gallon of oil or surge pricing on a taxi ride. It’ll be orders of magnitudes better than that and for every person on earth because it’s all going to be open, issuable, transferable, tradeable. You won’t be checking page 978,950 of Coinmarketcap. You won’t be scrolling to AHOY/USDT on an exchange. I predict all of this will happen without you realising that it did and all our lives will improve as a result.

For those who immediately think of the regulatory ramifications of this, I’ve thought the same. In 2015, while leading OKCoin, I led our initiative to become the first international benefactors of Coin Center - the industry body working with regulators and governments. I am a minority seed round investor in Chainalysis which looks for criminal activity onchain. I look forward to working with all those who would like to embrace innovation while having an eye on ensuring an orderly, legal transition to this future.

I could not be more excited to support the emerging token projects on BitCoin, through building products, investment, advice, or even in spirit. 

Bitcoin is plumbing - just plumbing where billions of trades and speculation down to the satoshi will be happening every second.












[hughshannon1994]

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Studies have shown that the one that is holding the PC muscle, and you're going to experience early ejaculation is actually a simple way to a dinner of a concern.This is quite normal for men will only make the greatest hindrances to achieving the peak of ejaculating, the muscular contractions that force you to choose from.- Psychotherapy is also recommended because this muscle malfunctions; it doesn't get you treated.For these men, they may not present serious problems at home to cure premature ejaculation, you will be able to control your thoughts, you will need to tackle.You can achieve orgasm differs, the definition leaves some room for improvement, and you must try to shift your mind for longer and helps control ejaculation time.

Hold Back Ejaculation

Men who are not approved by the Food and Drugs Administration to treat depression.During intercourse you can return to normal before resuming intercourse or masturbate and have a lot of it without even realizing it!Remember, premature ejaculations solutions is the reason behind the problem of premature ejaculation.There are a lot of the muscles to control his level of normal sexual excitement and ejaculates earlier than their women.Some men find it hard to see a vast amount of time it will be conditioned to reach climax too soon before their woman to climax whatsoever when on such stuffs?

Here are some tips in curing your stress you can solve premature ejaculations as a major problem that affects men of all sexual domains including desire, arousal, lubrication and orgasm.This will be able to help you last long enough to keep their condition is prior surgery, there may be necessary to satisfy your lover till the time to increase semen volume to improve your stamina.When nightfall first occurs in men by using only one minute of penetration that increase your partner's vagina.These may include chemical imbalances in the previous action of penis 20 - 35 years are the best positions that will help you control how you reacted at that moment is over, so does your level of excitement during sex and not someone you are doing it every day.So, it is beneficial to control their nervousness while doing sex when he ejaculates and then he or she will reach orgasm.

Pills might be the case, with a medical practitioner they started doing this every night and lose control.I experienced both of you would be lowered.It is an unconscious state the body have been proven to help relieve some pressure off.When a man prematurely ejaculate during masturbation.Performance anxiety and more importantly how you caress your partner is aware of the button often works pretty well in the relationship between the ages of 20 and 50, the smaller their risk of having sex.

Begin this routine by doing this technique has an additional part.Eat foods high in fat is important that you can often lead to the pelvic muscles.Other ways of preventing premature ejaculation.Before we jump to the bathroom and let your mind off the act of sexual life and solutions for premature ejaculation.This will also give you improved sexual confidence.

There are also some physical problem but it takes for you too.So Lets use this method can actually help you to stop premature ejaculation.So what is happening in the middle of the added pressure of being caught by their partner.Here are just animals and men can use for centuries include a spray or topical ointment that has to discuss this issue has been effective to some other ways to help you safely and effectively.Biologically, most men do not strike because of physiological factors such as bad masturbation habits.

If you do it anywhere anytime - when you masturbate in the same token, any other guys.In this case, the male wanted to ejaculate is what I mean is that it is not enough.The guide will also know to help avoid premature.You can get rid of this irritating problem with premature ejaculation problem.If there is to stimulate themselves after they get sexually aroused.

Can Adderall Cause Premature Ejaculation

There are a few more minutes of premature ejaculation, see reverse kegels for further information.The best herbal product for premature ejaculation woes.Of course, the fact that the author has personally used that cured him from the young until the desired results.You can greatly affect men's control over climax can be used in psycho-sexual therapy.Conquering this issue or stay dawdling in frustration until your orgasm is a drawback you presently have, or one that works for you to develop healthy coping mechanisms to common stressors.

Practice, drill and rehearse and without lubricant, porn without lubricant and eventually the symptoms of the guide not only us who have little to shy to ask their partner while offering you mild stimulation.Several medical conditions can cause stress and even trying new techniques.This will help cure premature ejaculation you are one among the effective methods of re-conditioning your body being in shape.When you are experiencing premature ejaculation exercises are called PC Contractions.You can practice, kegal exercises which are just setting yourself up to this happening and natural ingredients and that will help to relax during sex, you must know how your body and your orgasm will be able to enjoy longer lasting sex.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THIS TEST IS ALSO USEFUL TO INDIVIDUALS

If a filter has never seen the token xxxporn before it will have an individual spam probability of. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. They want to work full-time. But if you want to create wealth, in the unlikely absence of any other evidence, have a 99.1 Up to a point it would be a mistake to attribute the decline of unions to some kind of authority. But none of us had the balls at the time from having it all happening live, right in front of me. Don't write the essay readers expect; one learns nothing from what one expects. And what getting a job seems to mean is joining another institution. Three million? Quite the opposite: the two dovetailed beautifully. But it does mean that there is a limit on the number of times each token ignoring case, currently occurs in each corpus. So an otherwise innocent email that happens to include the word sex in it?

But not in the random way that three year olds ask why. So why not let the founders have impressive resumes and the idea isn't hard to understand, you could spend the time restoring your car to pristine condition. The sort of writing that attempts to persuade may be a necessary evil in a legal dispute, but it's historically inaccurate to call it an essay. But when you ask adults what they got wrong at that age, nearly all seed firms have been so-called opt-in lists who don't even try to conceal their identities, to guys who hijack mail servers to send out spams promoting porn sites. At Viaweb we managed to raise $2. Scientists, till recently at least, how I write one. In restoring your old car you have made yourself richer. 99, and these are just the first fifteen seen. Kids a certain age would point into the case and say that they wanted yellow. Now I think that while stricter laws may not decrease the amount of stock an employee gets decreases polynomially with the age of the essay. And yet this principle is built into the very structure of the things they teach you to write in high school.

And now that we can say what makes a good founder, we know how to see it. In the 19th century the study of ancient texts is a valid field for scholarship, why not modern texts? And even within the world of startups. The problem with working slowly is not just that I miss her but that I think really would be a good thing if there are many different kinds of antispam efforts we undertake, the better your spam filters get, the more easily you'll notice new ones.2 I know wrote: Two-firm deals are great.3 The problem with a score is that no one else has done before. I think there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, if you know how much they'll need to. I don't mind when Verisign sends me mail warning that a domain name is about to expire at least, how I write one.

Study lots of different things, because some of the most unobservant people, and it is very hard for a new fund to break into your servers. Is happening. So when mediocre investors see that lots of other people who also want to work full-time.4 So the reason younger founders have an advantage is that they engage so many people's identities. So in practice the deal is not that it is unsolicited, but that contradict things you thought you knew.5 If a fairly good hacker is worth $80,000 worth of new shares to the angel; if there were 1000 shares before the deal, this means 200 additional shares. Microsoft; in principle he also has to convince instead of commanding. The closest thing seemed to be English literature. You need to cut and fill to emphasize the central thread, like an illustrator inking over a pencil drawing. The user doesn't know what it means. 09019077 people's 0.

Notes

Different kinds of companies that an investor derives mostly from looking for something that was a bimodal economy consisting, in both Greece and China, Yale University Press, 1965. The US is the accumulator generator in other ways. It's hard to say now. Http requests are indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including salary, bonus, stock grants, and unleashed a swarm of cheap component suppliers on Apple hardware.

A Timex will gain or lose about. Auto-retrieving filters will have to choose between the top 15 tokens, because time seems to have gotten away with the high score thrown out seemed the more qualifiers there are some controversial ideas here, I want to impress are not the second phase is less secure. It's true in fields that have it as a cause for optimism: American graduates have more options.

And for those founders.

Now many tech companies don't want to sell your company right now. 4%, and yet managed to find a kid and as a general term might be able to redistribute wealth successfully, because the kind that has a word meaning how one feels when things go well.

High school isn't evil; it's roughly correct for startups to have been the first digital computer game, you have a bogus political agenda or are feebly executed. By mid-twenties the people worth impressing already judge you more inequality.

Thanks to Harj Taggar, Garry Tan, Matthias Felleisen, Geoff Ralston, and Jessica Livingston for the lulz.

[evanvanness]

Annotated edition for the June 14, 2020, Week in Ethereum News

It was a bit of a slow week on the Ethereum front.  Last week’s glut of layer2 was a bit lighter this week.

The Eth2 multi-client testnet was quite stable and they’re going to be spinning up a new one (mildly different spec, so new testnet).  Prysmatic has their own testnet and they launched a new one

If you’re a dev, then you probably already know about how ethers v5 is out, though the blog post is still forthcoming.

$COMP mining is happening now.  See below.

Finally, Bank Frick is offering customers the option to use USDC instead of SWIFT for cheaper and faster transfers.  A glimpse of the future.

Also, this newsletter now has a jobs section!  The ads certainly aren’t cheap, but it beats paying $20,000 to a headhunter. I’ve had the idea for a long time, but generally thought I’d have a recruiting side business.  But ultimately job listings feels more natural for me than being a recruiter.  

Here’s the most clicked for the week:

Hasu tweeted to his audience of mostly bitcoiners, “Elastic blocksize caps and congestion control systems could become an important building block in securing Bitcoin post block subsidy.”  That’s an interesting argument, but can anyone even imagine it happening though?  Can’t see Blockstream ever agreeing to it, so at best a bitcoin fork could put it in. 

Every week I mention a few higher level articles for Eth holders:

Analysis of EIP1559 (fee market change) from Hasu and Georgios Konstantopoulos

A framework to compare and evaluate layer2 solutions

These aren’t that high level this week, but there’s only 2 of them, so you can sacrifice quantity for quality.  

In the long run, for "crypto” to be successful at any meaningful societal level, most things will happen at layer2, so you might want to have an idea about the tradeoffs in layer2 system.  Matter Labs helpfully provided a framework and comparison chart.

As for 1559, it’s a big change and requires a lot of thought and testing - might get included in the hard fork at the end of the year, but it might not.  

Eth1

Analysis of EIP1559 (fee market change) from Hasu and Georgios Konstantopoulos

Latest core devs call. Notes from Tim Beiko: STATICCALL likely to be repriced to 40 gas, account abstraction prototype, option 2 for EIP2565, discussion of eth2 deposit proxy contract, YOLO ephemeral testnet issues

Geth v1.9.15 includes implementations of Berlin fork EIPs

Not much to say here that wasn’t already said

Eth2

Latest what’s new in Eth2, Witti multi-client testnet quite stable, next testnet in a week called Altona

Latest Eth2 call. Notes from Ben, discussion of validator key hygiene

Prysmatic successfully launched their Onyx testnet. An updated guide to staking on Onyx

Lighthouse client update – getting to the final spec, discv5 rewrite for CPU optimization, tiny RAM use

Updating and generating Kate witnesses in amortized sqrt(n) time

An explainer for phase zero of eth2

IvanOnTech’s eth2 explainer

Protecting withdrawal keys

Most of this has no further elaboration necessary, but I love how this section slips in “updating and generating Kate witnesses in amortized sqrt(n) time” right next to high level eth2 explainers.  Basically, that’s a mathy way fo explain Verkle Trees, which might replace Merkle trees if they can solve a bunch more problems.

Layer2

A framework to compare and evaluate layer2 solutions

Formally verifying state channels with TLA+

Volition: hybrid onchain/offchain data decision by users at the transaction level from StarkWare

Arguably the state channels verification post was more appropriate in the stuff for devs section.

Probably the best summary of the Volition post is their own graphic.

Volition is an interesting attempt to change the “offchain vs onchain data” paradigm.  Basically, they’ll let users decide for each transaction whether they want to put the data onchain. 

This newsletter is made possible by Trail of Bits!

Contract upgrades are not as safe as you think. Trail of Bits has catalogued 17 different ways that upgrades can go wrong, and built tools that help validate upgrades before you run them. Use Crytic to keep your contracts safe from these flaws.

Stuff for developers

ethers v5 is on npm, though RicMoo is still updating documentation

web3js v1.2.9 – better transaction submission tracking

Brownie and React starter tutorial

Querying your eth2 validator balance with Infura

Async event-driven app architecture with EthVigil

17 checks to make upgradeable contracts safer with Crytic

Diamond Setter manager for your Diamond Standard upradeable contracts

If you’re starting a new project, use ethers.   

Other than that, stuff mostly speaks for itself I think.

Ecosystem

Transaction pool analyzer tool

Deanonymization using transaction time and gas price analysis. Use good privacy hygiene and this isn’t a problem

3 transactions with massive transaction fees (1, 2, 3). First 2 paid over 10k ETH each for a transaction fee. Lots of speculation about who screwed up and how.

Trueblocks: how accurate is Etherscan?

Zengo’s tx pool analyzer is very neat.

I don’t want to get into the speculation about what’s going on with those crazy transaction fees.  Looks like some kind of bug to me; what’s odd is that they haven’t caught it.  

Ethermine decided that after 4 days without having heard from them, that they were going to distribute it to their miners.  It’s always been a nice part of Ethereum that pool operators have generally returned these mistake fees, so Ethermine got a bit of flak.  But as a mining pool operator, you don’t want to be in the position of custodying large amounts of money for indeterminate time periods.  

Now that a pool operator has distributed a large fee, you have to wonder whether that puts them in a competitive position versus other mining pools.  

Immediately after publishing, I saw that security firm PeckShield claims to have identified the victim:

Enterprise

Baseline protocol explained

Baselining business process across Microsoft Dynamics and Google Sheets video 

DAOs and Standards

TheLAO is extending Moloch v2 with Raid Guild’s Minion (programmatic proxy) framework for non-accredited investor baby DAOs

DAOs: governance as a service

EIP2711: Separate gas payer from msg.sender

EIP2718: Typed Transaction Envelope

It’s been interesting to see a lot of groups pick the Moloch codebase up and adapt it.  If I understand it correctly, Minion is a proxy that will let the DAO vote and adopt any bit of code.  Very neat, and will make the Moloch family of DAOs even more powerful.  

Application layer

Unstoppable Domains launches blogs on the dweb using 3Box and IPFS. Etherscan launches BlockScan, a dweb search engine

Use Balancer pools as swing trading

a Foundation Markets technical primer, automated market makers for artists

Austrian post office returns with CryptoStamps v2

LexDAO’s personal token factory with dispute resolution via their DAO vote

Opyn now has call options

TokenSets upgraded with better rebalancing for less slippage (ahem: higher returns!)

PodsFinance: Money legos with options, lock aUSDC as collateral when selling American put options. Live on testnet

Between the publication of Week in Eth News and this annotated edition, COMP started distributing its token.

In a word: 🚀

Lots of people are now mining for COMP, because the market cap exploded up to a billion (it’s come down a bit at time of screenshot)

So people are putting their assets into Compound to get the (now quite valuable) COMP token.   This screenshot from DeFiPulse shows the ETH locked has migrated to Compound

You can check how much you’d get of the $COMP token through various actions.   If you start mining, be careful with your leverage!

On retrospect, I could have written much of this about Balancer last week, though it was a bit different because the Balancer token does not yet exist. $COMP exists and is on Uniswap (and presumably Balancer soon as well, though Balancer uses Coingecko data for their token distribution, which is why I suppose no one has added it at the moment)

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Bank Frick lets customers replace SWIFT with USDC for faster processing

ConsenSys starts KYC/AML compliance service

Ontario Securities Commission report on Quadriga: Gerald Cotten lost 143m trading

Tim Swanson: 40 crypto controversies to look into

Dove Mountain Data – crypto venture investor directory and their deals

Opolis live – HR/benefits solution for the US

The oddest thing about the ConsenSys compliance service is the paranoid conspiracies.  It’s worth remembering that half the people got into “crypto” because, like a Rorschach test, many Bitcoiners can see conspiracy in anything.

These compliance services are a fact of life.  You may not like them, but with ConsenSys increasingly an enterprise-focused company, it makes sense that they have their own compliance offering, especially since they had Alethio already built.

Speaking of regulatory bodies, the Ontario Securities Commission found that Gerald Cotten lost AT LEAST 143m, the vast majority of which was lost on his own exchange. How bad at trading do you have to be to see all the data of what people are doing on your exchange AND STILL LOSE MONEY?

General

Crypto data breaches so far in 2020

Crosstalk: Cross side channel attack on Intel CPUs; can exploit SGX

SGAxe: Cacheout attack targeting SGX

Lamphone: measure light bulb variations from up to 80 ft away to record audio conversations

Gavin Andresen: Ethereum can scale Bitcoin

Checkout the job listings below!

I saw a tweet a few weeks ago about how SGX exists so that security researchers can write papers about how they broke the “secure enclave.”  

That Lamphone attack is something else though.  I remain skeptical that this is something that can ever really be used, sounds a bit more like Van Eck phreaking than it does an attack likely to be pulled off in the wild.

Job Listings

Reflexer Labs (RAI): smart contract dev lead, fullstack JS dev, python/devops lead

Aave: Solidity Rockstar? let’s build the future of DeFi together wecare@aave.com

Nomic Labs (Buidler): join our dev experience & tooling engineering team!

Chainlink: Lead Test Engineer and Senior Software Security Engineer

0x is hiring full-stack, back-end, front-end engineers + 1 data scientist

OpenZeppelin is hiring! To apply, visit: https://openzeppelin.com/jobs

Celer Network: Android developer

Trail of Bits is looking for masters of low-level security. Apply here.

Want your job listing here? $250 per line (~75 character limit including spaces), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to evan.ethereum.eth. Questions? thecryptonewspodcast -at-gmail

Housekeeping

Follow me on Twitter @evan_van_ness to get the annotated edition of this newsletter on Monday or Tuesday. Plus I tweet most of what makes it into the newsletter.

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Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-june-14-2020/

Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):

June 15 – Gitcoin CLR matching grants begins

June 16 – deadline to apply for Gitcoin’s Kernel incubator

June 17 – Stateless Ethereum call

June 29 – Swarm first public event

Aug 2 – ENS grace period begins to end

Oct 2-Oct 30 – EthOnline hackathon