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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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FCC strikes a blow against prison profiteering

TOMORROW NIGHT (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Here's a tip for policymakers hoping to improve the lives of the most Americans with the least effort: help prisoners.

After all, America is the most prolific imprisoner of its own people of any country in world history. We lock up more people than Stalin, than Mao, more than Botha, de Klerk or any other Apartheid-era South African president. And it's not just America's vast army of the incarcerated who are afflicted by our passion for imprisonment: their families and friends suffer, too.

That familial suffering isn't merely the constant pain of life without a loved one, either. America's prison profiteers treat prisoners' families as ATMs who can be made to pay and pay and pay.

This may seem like a losing strategy. After all, prison sentences are strongly correlated with poverty, and even if your family wasn't desperate before the state kidnapped one of its number and locked them behind bars, that loved one's legal defense and the loss of their income is a reliable predictor of downward social mobility.

Decent people don't view poor people as a source of riches. But for a certain kind of depraved sadist, the poor are an irresistible target. Sure, poor people don't have much money, but what they lack even more is protection under the law ("conservativism consists of the principle that there is an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group whom the law binds but does not protect" -Wilhoit). You can enjoy total impunity as you torment poor people, make them so miserable and afraid for their lives and safety that they will find some money, somewhere, and give it to you.

Mexican cartels understand this. They do a brisk trade in kidnapping asylum seekers whom the US has illegally forced to wait in Mexico to have their claims processed. The families of refugees – either in their home countries or in the USA – are typically badly off but they understand that Mexico will not lift a finger to protect a kidnapped refugee, and so when the kidnappers threaten the most grisly tortures as a means of extracting ransom, those desperate family members do whatever it takes to scrape up the blood-money.

What's more, the families of asylum seekers are not much better off than their kidnapped loved ones when it comes to seeking official protection. Family members who stayed behind in human rights hellholes like Bukele's El Salvador can't get their government to lodge official complaints with the Mexican ambassador, and family members who made it to the USA are in no position to get their Congressjerk to intercede with ICE or the Mexican consulate. This gives Mexico's crime syndicates total latitude to kidnap, torture, and grow rich by targeting the poorest, most desperate people in the world.

The private contractors that supply services to America's prisons are basically Mexican refugee-kidnappers with pretensions and shares listed on the NYSE. After decades of consolidation, the prison contracting sector has shrunk to two gigantic companies: Securus and Viapath (formerly Global Tellink). These private-equity backed behemoths dominate their sector, and have diversified, providing all kinds of services, from prison cafeteria meals to commissary, the prison stores where prisoners can buy food and other items.

If you're following closely, this is one of those places where the hair on the back of your neck starts to rise. These companies make money when prisoners buy food from the commissary, and they're also in charge of the quality of the food in the mess hall. If the food in the mess hall is adequate and nutritious, there's no reason to buy food from the commissary.

This is what economists call a "moral hazard." You can think of it as the reason that prison ramen costs 300% more than ramen in the free world:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in

(Not just ramen: in America's sweltering prisons, an 8" fan costs $40, and the price of water went up in Texas prisons by 50% during last summer's heatwave.)

It's actually worse than that: if you get sick from eating bad prison food, the same company that poisoned you gets paid to operate the infirmary where you're treated:

https://theappeal.org/massachusetts-prisons-wellpath-dentures-teeth/

Now, the scam of abusing prisoners to extract desperate pennies from their families is hardly new. There's written records of this stretching back to the middle ages. Nor is this pattern a unique one: making an unavoidable situation as miserable as possible and then upcharging people who have the ability to pay to get free of the torture is basically how the airlines work. Making coach as miserable as possible isn't merely about shaving pennies by shaving inches off your legroom: it's a way to "incentivize" anyone who can afford it to pay for an upgrade to business-class. The worse coach is, the more people you can convince to dip into their savings or fight with their boss to move classes. The torments visited upon everyone else in coach are economically valuable to the airlines: their groans and miseries translate directly into windfall profits, by convincing better-off passengers to pay not to have the same thing done to them.

Of course, with rare exceptions (flying to get an organ transplant, say) plane tickets are typically discretionary. Housing, on the other hand, is a human right and a prerequisite for human thriving. The worse things are for tenants, the more debt and privation people will endure to become home-owners, so it follows that making renters worse off makes homeowners richer:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

For Securus and Viapath, the path to profitability is to lobby for mandatory, long prison sentences and then make things inside the prison as miserable as possible. Any prisoner whose family can find the funds can escape the worst of it, and all the prisoners who can't afford it serve the economically important function of showing the prisoners whose families can afford it how bad things will be if they don't pay.

If you're thinking that prisoners might pay Securus, Viapath and their competitors out of their own prison earnings, forget it. These companies have decided that the can make more by pocketing the difference between the vast sums paid by third parties for prisoners' labor and the pennies the prisoners get from their work. Remember, the 13th Amendment specifically allows for the enslavement of incarcerated people! Six states ban paying prisoners at all. North Carolina caps prisoners' wages at one dollar per day. The national average prison wage is $0.52/hour. Prisoners' labor produces $11b/year in goods and services:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

Forced labor and extortion are a long and dishonorable tradition in incarceration, but this century saw the introduction of a novel, exciting way of extracting wealth from prisoners and their families. It started when private telcos took over prison telephones and raised the price of a prison phone call. These phone companies found willing collaborators in local jail and prison systems: all they had to do was offer to split the take with the jailers.

With the advent of the internet, things got far worse. Digitalization meant that prisons could replace the library, adult educations, commissary accounts, letter-mail, parcels, in-person visits and phone calls with a single tablet. These cheaply made tablets were offered for free to prisoners, who lost access to everything from their kids' handmade birthday cards to in-person visits with those kids.

In their place, prisoners' families had to pay huge premiums to have their letters scanned so that prisoners could pay (again) to view those scans on their tablets. Instead of in-person visits, prisoners families had to pay $3-10/minute for a janky, postage-stamp sized video. Perversely, jails and prisons replaced their in-person visitation rooms with rooms filled with shitty tablets where family members could sit and videoconference with their incarcerated loved ones who were just a few feet away:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Capitalists hate capitalism. The capital classes are on a relentless search for markets with captive customers and no competitors. The prison-tech industry was catnip for private equity funds, who bought and "rolled" up prison contractors, concentrating the sector into a duopoly of debt-laden companies whose ability to pay off their leveraged buyouts was contingent on their ability to terrorize prisoners' families into paying for their overpriced, low-quality products and services.

One particularly awful consequence of these rollups was the way that prisoners could lose access to their data when their prison's service-provider was merged with a rival. When that happened, the IT systems would be consolidated, with the frequent outcome that all prisoners' data was lost. Imagine working for two weeks to pay for a song or a book, or a scan of your child's handmade Father's Day card, only to have the file deleted in an IT merger. Now imagine that you're stuck inside for another 20 years.

This is a subject I've followed off and on for years. It's such a perfect bit of end-stage capitalist cruelty, combining mass incarceration with monopolies. Even if you're not imprisoned, this story is haunting, because on the one hand, America keeps thinking of new reasons to put more people behind bars, and on the other hand, every technological nightmare we dream up for prisoners eventually works its way out to the rest of us in a process I call the "shitty technology adoption curve." As William Gibson says, "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" – but the future sure pools up thick and dystopian around America's prisoners:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

My background interest in the subject got sharper a few years ago when I started working on The Bezzle, my 2023 high-tech crime thriller about prison-tech grifters:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

One of the things that was on my mind when I got to work on that book was the 2017 court-case that killed the FCC's rules limit interstate prison-call gouging. The FCC could have won that case, but Trump's FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, dropped it:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/prisoners-lose-again-as-court-wipes-out-inmate-calling-price-caps/

With that bad precedent on the books, the only hope prisoners had for relief from the FCC was for Congress to enact legislation specifically granting the agency the power to regulate prison telephony. Incredibly, Congress did just that, with Biden signing the "Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act" in early 2023:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1541/text

With the new law in place, it fell to the FCC use those newfound powers. Compared to agencies like the FTC and the NLRB, Biden's FCC has been relatively weak, thanks in large part to the Biden administration's refusal to defend its FCC nomination for Gigi Sohn, a brilliant and accomplished telecoms expert. You can tell that Sohn would have been a brilliant FCC commissioner because of the way that America's telco monopolists and their allies in the senate (mostly Republicans, but some Democrats, too) went on an all-out offensive against her, using the fact that she is gay to smear her and ultimately defeat her nomination:

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

But even without Sohn, the FCC has managed to do something genuinely great for America's army of the imprisoned. This week, the FCC voted in price-caps on prison calls, so that call rates will drop from $11.35 for 15 minutes to just $0.90. Both interstate and intrastate calls will be capped at $0.06-0.12/minute, with a phased rollout starting in January:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/fcc-closes-final-loopholes-that-keep-prison-phone-prices-exorbitantly-high/

It's hard to imagine a policy that will get more bang for a regulator's buck than this one. Not only does this represent a huge savings for prisoners and their families, those savings are even larger in proportion to their desperate, meager finances.

It shows you how important a competent, qualified regulator is. When it comes to political differences between Republicans and Democrats, regulatory competence is a grossly underrated trait. Trump's FCC Chair Ajit Pai handed out tens of billions of dollars in public money to monopoly carriers to improve telephone networks in underserved areas, but did so without first making accurate maps to tell him where the carriers should invest. As a result, that money was devoured by executive bonuses and publicly financed dividends and millions of Americans entered the pandemic lockdowns with broadband that couldn't support work-from-home or Zoom school. When Biden's FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel took over, one of her first official acts was to commission a national study and survey of broadband quality. Republicans howled in outrage:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/10/digital-redlining/#stop-confusing-the-issue-with-relevant-facts

The telecoms sector has been a rent-seeking, monopolizing monster since the days of Samuel Morse:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/18/the-bell-system/#were-the-phone-company-we-dont-have-to-care

Combine telecoms and prisons, and you get a kind of supermonster, the meth-gator of American neofeudalism:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-police-warn-locals-not-flush-drugs-fear-meth-gators-n1030291

The sector is dirty beyond words, and it corrupts everything it touches – bribing prison officials to throw out all the books in the prison library and replace them with DRM-locked, high-priced ebooks that prisoners must toil for weeks to afford, and that vanish from their devices whenever a prison-tech company merges with a rival:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

The Biden presidency has been fatally marred by the president's avid support of genocide, and nothing will change that. But for millions of Americans, the Biden administration's policies on telecoms, monopoly, and corporate crime have been a source of profound, lasting improvements.

It's not just presidents who can make this difference. Millions of America's prisoners are rotting in state and county jails, and as California has shown, state governments have broad latitude to kick out prison profiteers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/08/captive-audience/#good-at-their-jobs

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/19/martha-wright-reed/#capitalists-hate-capitalism

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#pluralistic #prison tech #fcc #martin hench #marty hench #the bezzle #captive audiences #carceral state #worth rises #bezzles #Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act #capitalists hate capitalism #shitty technology adoption curve

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apas-95 · 4 months ago

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could you explain why, if china is communist/trying to become communists, it still has a lot of sweat shops and relies on that kind of exploitative production? I'm just curious because this never made much sense to me

China at the time of revolution was one of the poorest countries on the Earth, only ten countries had a lower GDP per capita. A century of humiliation, colonial occupation, and genocide had destroyed the nation.

Until the recent eradication of absolute poverty, many Chinese people still lived in sparse mountainous regions with little access to infrastructure, healthcare, or education, and subsisted off absolutely brutal dependence on local resources. Much of the countryside is still under the process of modernisation. China's current GDP per capita is equivalent to that of Mexico. China is not a rich country. In as much as China interacts with the global economy, it does so as a global south nation, a target of exploitation by the imperial powers.

The benefits of interacting with the global economy - technology transfer, trade, outside capital - have been significant, and worth the negatives. Don't be confused, China's worker protections are strict, and its defense of its people absolute - but it is true that foreign corporations operating in China absolutely exploited Chinese workers and subjected them to bad conditions. To a large degree, straightforwardly *because this strategy has worked*, China has developed significantly, and now relies significantly less on foreign capital, and has a much greater focus on its own domestic market.

Foreign exploitation of Chinese workers is, really, a characteristic much more of the '90s-'00s period than modern China, which has developed, and now demands better wages and conditions from foreign prospects (who largely outsource their sweatshop work to, for example, Bangladesh, now).

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latestnews-now · 27 days ago

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NATO’s Admiral Pierre Vandier issues a wake-up call for Europe to reform its defense strategies and ramp up military readiness. Highlighting weaknesses in space tech, IT systems, and logistics, Vandier warns that Europe risks falling behind in the global arms race. Learn how increased defense spending and strategic reforms can shape Europe’s future.

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#europe arms race #nato commander #military modernization #european defense spending #space and IT vulnerabilities #global arms race #admiral pierre vandier #nato transformation #military logistics #defense strategy reform #nato news #military spending increase #defense innovation #european security #space technology #global defense challenges #defense spending reform #military technology advancements #Youtube

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defensenow · 2 months ago

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aettuddae · 10 days ago

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business matter — chapter 125.

↳ synopsis: two of the most important kpop companies covet a partnership with a huge global brand, only to be surprised when the deal is extended to both labels. fearing potential sabotage and cynical strategies to secure exclusivity for just one of them, both CEOs resort to desperate measures. in a bid to maintain trust and prevent betrayal before the signing, they come up with a pact: forcing a fake relationship between the leaders of their star girlgroups. if one side attempted to fail the other, they threaten to expose it all to the conservative south korea.

masterlist | prev | next

[written chapter]

ryujin and serim were lying on the older woman's bed, both at extremely opposite ends, as far apart as possible. ryujin had half her body slumped towards the floor, but she would never have moved an inch closer to her best friend's woman. both pairs of eyes staring at the ceiling, in a room in almost total darkness if it weren't for a colored light that serim turned on for her phobia, and not a word filling the air. serim's foot kept tapping the air repeatedly because of the discomfort and anxiety of the situation.

the hours passed and they tried to sleep, but there was such tension and thoughts flitting around in their heads that they were not allowed to. something about the situation was not right, and no one can sleep when something is not right.

"are there any habits you have when sleeping that you want to do to make yourself more comfortable?" dared jang to vocalize from her extreme.

"i usually have a stuffed animal to cuddle with." commented ryujin with a thread of a voice. "but the truth is that today i was hoping to sleep cuddling a beautiful woman." honesty charged her words, making what she was referring to very clear.

"but i am a beautiful woman." for a moment she completely forgot about the previous situation, offense clear in her tone.

"yes, you are a beautiful woman, serim." she admitted defeatedly, bringing her hand up to her forehead to squeeze between her brows. "but i want to sleep cuddling with yeji." she admitted.

"you can sleep with yeji every day, but you can only sleep with me this one time." she pointed defensively.

"since when do you want to sleep holding me?" she questioned quickly, tired.

"i don't want us to sleep cuddled, but i can't believe someone has the chance to sleep with me and doesn't take it." she explained haughtily, arranging her hair even when she could barely be seen by the girl.

"serim, focus." she threw her body more towards the center of the bed to manage to reach the opposite one and tap her on the shoulder.

"i'm sorry." she spoke regretfully. "it's hard for me to think of only one thing at a time."

"listen." she ordered decisively. "you have to sleep with jimin."

as hard as it seemed to believe, ryujin wasn't thinking about her manhwa. even her manhwa wasn't as important as yeji at that moment.

"don't even think about it." she flatly refused, raising her upper body quickly, erect, giving the younger girl a mortifying look.

"please." she got down on her knees over the bed. "this is my chance to sleep with the girl i like." she grabbed the older one by her t-shirt, shaking her lightly. "i know you and jimin are going through a marriage crisis-"

"marriage?" she exclaimed.

"basically." she confirmed. "but i need you to stand her for just one night and let me sleep in the arms of a beautiful cat-eyed gemini."

she threw herself forward, leaning her forehead on jang's shoulder and pretending to cry from despair as she continued to mumble pleas.

serim had been a queer girl for as long as she could remember, and even though she had a hard time dealing with her feelings, she was a romantic. many times she would have begged for the chance to sleep next to someone she was attracted to, or just to be alone with her. she was moved, she felt as part of the situation, she might have to deal with her greatest nemesis and yet she couldn't refuse to help a woman be happy with another one.

fucking sagittarian victim of the sense of community and the need to fight for a movement,

or fucking hopeless romantic.

"go." she averted her gaze to the floor of her room, dejected.

"what?" ryujin raised her head with speed to look at her expectantly to see if she had heard correctly.

"go." she reiterated louder. "but tell jimin to get lost on the way." she joked, though not quite as much.

"i can't tell her that." she warned as she got out of bed. "it's because of plot issues."

"of what?" she looked at her in confusion as ryujin walked away.

"it's for the plot." she repeated walking out of the room almost running.

after a couple of minutes the door opened with strength and from behind it jumped jimin who came almost striding towards serim's room, to lash this one behind her back once inside.

"ryujin said you wanted me to come sleep with you!" she made an almost olympic leap towards the mattress, remaining kneeling next to serim, looking at her with eyes full of illusion waiting for her to confirm ryujin's side.

"i never said that." confessed serim, causing jimin's expression to drop to one of disbelief.

"disappointed, but not surprised." she said.

"she must have said it so yeji wouldn't suspect she begged me so she could go sleep with her." the oldest added.

"oh, so i'm here just for ryujin?" she asked in a low volume as she tucked in the sheets.

"what can i say?" she said seriously, confirming the girl's doubt.

now the taste in their mouths was sour. when ryujin told her to go sleep with serim, jimin already knew not to expect anything since the woman was still angry, but she couldn't help it. the thought that maybe she couldn't resist having her so close and not being right next to her invaded her brain and wouldn't let her find clarity until serim reminded her that it wasn't so. in fact, jang was in a bad mood since she didn't want to share a bed with her.

they both had the realization that it would be best to pretend the other wasn't there and sleep, hoping that time and grief would fly away without them noticing, thus waking up in the morning with no more pain to bear or resolve.

but if it had been difficult to fall asleep next to ryujin, for serim it would be even more complex having a few centimeters away a woman who usually without even being there already kept her awake during the nights. she could feel her perfume from her place.

no one talks about the willpower you need to resist the perfume of the one you love.

serim was losing her patience and composure, if she got into a certain position she could feel her there, her presence, her scent and the pungent idea that if she stretched out her arm she could touch her soft porcelain skin. if she settled on the other side she would become impatient thinking that maybe she was looking at her and longing for her in the same way, only to immediately block it out by telling herself that this was impossible, and the doubt kept her brain active. she couldn't stop moving around trying to find a place on the mattress where she could lose consciousness in peace without feeling intoxicated by yu jimin.

"namu." called the younger girl gently, but only got as an answer another abrupt rotation of serim's body still searching for comfort. "namu." she said again louder.

"what?" her voice sounded bitter, because of the bad taste in her mouth from not being able to sleep and having the dancer next to her.

"are you okay?" she inquired with concern.

serim gave a long sigh, closing her eyes in an attempt to calm down a bit all the negative emotions she was feeling. "yes, i'm fine." she assured, but she sounded stressed.

"you can't sleep?" she turned her head to look at what was visible of jang's profile in the dim light.

"no, i can't."

"do you want me to help you?" she offered.

"what could you help me with?" she asked wryly, assuming it was an idea with no possible outcome.

"i don't know." she said, her voice weak. "i know you like me to play with your hair until you fall asleep, i could do that." she proposed, in her voice you could hear she was smiling slightly.

"no." she coldly declined.

"anything else?" sounding vulnerable again.

"jimin." she took a breath. "you can't help me solve the problem because the problem is you." admitted.

there was a silence that took over the room, but it didn't become uncomfortable. they could have tried to sleep in that silence and it would have been fine, but they both had a bad habit of not knowing when to let things go.

"i know that." commented the younger one. "but maybe i can still do something for you." she thought. "would you be better off if i lay down in the sleeping bag?" she suggested.

"as mad as i am at you i wouldn't let you sleep on the floor." she refused. "i can use it."

"you're crazy if you think i would let you sleep on the bag." jimin held serim by her arm in case she thought about standing up.

"just forget it." she removed her limp from the girl's grip. "the problem is that you're here and i don't want you to be here." she acknowledged sullenly. "i couldn't sleep when ryujin was around, less i'll be able to with you." she complied.

"but you've shared a bed with me before." she reminisced.

"that was before you screwed things up." jang scorned.

"are you seriously telling me you're not comfortable sleeping next to the one you love?" she ignored her comment.

"i'm just saying that even ryujin i would trust more than you."

serim fixed her pillow, ending the conversation. even if she had implied that she couldn't give herself to morpheus, she still closed her eyes so as not to let jimin continue talking. but after a moment of being still her own body was bothering her again, and she tried to cover herself with the blanket, remove it, raise and lower her legs, tilt the pillow to different sides, but nothing was working.

her eyes remained sightless and with all the chaos she was generating, she hadn't heard when jimin slid across the bed until she reached her, it was only when she felt her hands holding her head that she realized she was there. her body rested against hers, while with one hand she made room to slip her full arm behind her neck and hold her in her embrace with it, while with the other she ran her fingers through her locks of hair.

serim over time had learned that jimin would never listen to her, but sometimes it didn't even bother her. it felt good, her body heat felt good. her cuddling, her touch, the feeling of her lips resting on her forehead, her breath crashing against her. jimin always felt too good. she didn't feel the need to seek comfort in any other way, perhaps because she couldn't think of anything else but the woman around her.

was she so pathetic? once she came into contact with jimin she couldn't push her away? was she all talk?

even more humiliating was when jimin began to leave kisses on her temple, gently, carefully as if she were made of glass. her lips leaving short caresses as they moved across her face, serim's forehead, cheeks, nose, even kissing her eyelids that lay closed still, no longer trying to sleep, but enjoying the contact.

at no time did they intend to approach her mouth, but it's not like serim had time to think anything about it, to complain or thank her, because something much more daring was happening on her neck that was being soaked by the saliva of the younger girl. the kisses were still subtle, but they were spreading naughtily from her collarbone to her jaw, who just responded by putting her hand on jimin's waist, squeezing it.

for a moment she had to force herself to wake up from the trance she had entered so she could use her head and remember why she was so angry at karina.

was there anything, really, that yu jimin had done right?

serim gathered strength and increased the force she had on her waist, pushing the girl away from her arms.

she rolled over on her body, lying on her stomach, her forearms pressed against the blanket and her face sunk into them to cover herself from the mixture of embarrassment and annoyance she felt, catching her breath, coming back to herself.

"i'm sorry." karina spoke first.

"do you just want me for sex?" she lifted her face, looking at her uneasily.

"no, my namu." she approached her gently. "i just don't know how to behave around you." she rested her palm on the back of serim's neck, as they looked into each other's eyes with a very short distance between them. "i like you too much." she put strength where she was holding, making serim, who didn't resist much, lean into her. "i don't get to be around you without wanting to kiss you." jimin laid on her back and guided jang to lie on top of her, the woman's head resting on yu's chest.

jimin was the oldest's achilles heel. when she found herself in these situations where she couldn't fight her desires, she wondered if she ever behaved this way for other people, but not even when she broke up with her ex-girlfriend yeeun, for whom she suffered deeply, did she allow herself to succumb to her in this way. which led her to think about what was so special about the person under her at that moment that made her so vital to her, and she would always bump into herself finding endless reasons why there was no other like karina.

serim left a few kisses on the youngest's skin, unable to hold back her need to adore her, but immediately being hit again by the wave of reality that had come to her earlier and was still lurking around them. "you can't do whatever you want with me." she flung herself to the side falling face up, right next to jimin, but not touching her.

"i know, it won't happen again." she flipped her body over, lying on her side, over her arm, facing serim. "i just want to show you how much i care for you." she whispered.

jimin molded herself to serim, closing the distance that kept their skins from touching. she brought her hand to her cheek to caress her there, her chin on her shoulder, her breath colliding with her neck, and to the surprise of neither, jang was unable to resist. as she did this, her leg snaked up the vocalist's, gently, until her knee dropped over her belly and the rest she wrapped around the woman.

she knew what she was doing.

serim's eyes fell to the intruding limb above her waist and she had to take in an embarrassing amount of air, she was moving without realizing it, out of complete inertia, and her palm wrapped around karina's thigh tightly, squeezing, clawing and considering forgetting all the reasons why she was angry, as the milky skin scraping so stubbornly over her stomach and the warm breathing on her neck seemed to be stronger than she was.

"you know, in situations like this..." began jang. "i have to think about my mom."

"what?" karina blurted out suddenly, stunned.

"i can't get engage in sexually implicit situations while thinking about my dear mother." she used the arm that was between them to pull her off.

well, that had really killed the mood.

"are you seriously thinking about your mom?" she wasn't able to believe her ears.

"i have to fight you somehow." she started to shift until she was far enough away from jimin.

"but why should you fight me?" she questioned in exasperation. "just accept that you need me as i need you." she pleaded.

"why do i have to avoid falling for you again?" she reiterated angrily. "why did you have to be a piece of shit to me?" she countered.

"god, serim." she rubbed her face uneasily. "you're complicated too." she pleaded.

"me? what did i do so wrong?" she pressed her index finger to her own chest. "i might have treated you badly before, but since i know i have feelings for you i've done nothing but let it be clear and long for you to feel the same." tiredly, she began to let the things she was thinking come out. "you knew that i love you and yet you play with my emotions, you wouldn't fight for me, you can't even admit that you feel the same and you even kissed another girl." she listed, absorbed in her emotions.

"i didn't kiss that girl!" she defended herself. "i already told you that i stopped before and only confessed it to you so you would realize that i can't and won't get you out of my head." she tried to keep her voice low so no one would hear them arguing, but she was too overcome by the chaos inside her. "and i'm trying to make it up to you for the rest." she dropped her head, defeated.

serim didn't answer anything, the words wouldn't come out nor could she find ones she wanted to say. the reality was that it wasn't the time to talk about the things that bothered them when all their friends were sleeping in the rooms next door, though they never seemed to find the time to properly communicate in other instances. she gave her one last annoyed look and turned her back to her, laying down on her side and covering herself up, ready to sleep.

jimin watched her for a moment, dumbfounded by the exchange they had and even more so by how serim had chosen to cut the conversation short to simply go to sleep. she thought about how she should act, but couldn't find it in herself to dispel the thought that invaded her mind. "can i hug you?"

"do whatever the fuck you want." she replied curtly.

karina moved to her, letting her body fall just behind, resting her front against her back, her face in the crook of her neck and with her arm around her torso. her hand groped the space where it fell until it found serim's, and then wrapped her palm around her thumb.

"rest well." she said low in her ear. "i adore you."

"oh, fuck you." she replied without moving.

"jimin." she called her.

"yes, my namu?" the younger gave her a look that mixed tenderness and heaviness because of what they had discussed the night before.

"you know you can't solve everything by bringing me breakfast and having your manager pick me up from work, right?" she asked sincerely.

"i'm trying." she said again for the thousandth time. "give me more time and opportunities, please, and i'll show you how much i care about you."

serim said nothing in response and just lowered her gaze to the food.

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izooks · 9 months ago

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Some of Joe Biden’s accomplishments:

**Domestic policy**

* **American Rescue Plan (2021)**: Provided $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 relief, including direct payments, enhanced unemployment benefits, and funding for vaccines and testing.

* **Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021)**: Allocated $1.2 trillion for infrastructure projects, including roads, bridges, broadband, and clean energy initiatives.

* **Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (2022)**: Expanded background checks for gun purchases and provided funding for mental health services.

* **Child Tax Credit Expansion (2021-2022)**: Temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit to provide up to $3,600 per child in monthly payments.

* **Affordable Care Act Expansion (2021)**: Made health insurance more affordable for low- and middle-income Americans by reducing premiums and expanding subsidies.

**Foreign Policy**

* **Withdrawal from Afghanistan (2021)**: Ended the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

* **Re-joining the Paris Agreement (2021)**: Re-committed the United States to global efforts to address climate change.

* **Strengthening Alliances with NATO and the EU (2021-present)**: Repaired relationships with key European allies after strained relations during the Trump administration.

* **Supporting Ukraine in the Ukraine-Russia War (2022-present)**: Provided military, humanitarian, and diplomatic support to Ukraine in its defense against Russia's invasion.

* **Nuclear Deal with Iran (2023)**: Revived negotiations with Iran on a comprehensive nuclear deal, aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

**Other Notable Accomplishments**

* **Appointing Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court (2022)**: Made history by being the first Black woman appointed to the nation's highest court.

* **Signing the Respect for Marriage Act (2022)**: Ensured federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages.

* **Establishing the Office of the National Cyber Director (2021)**: Coordinated federal efforts to combat cybersecurity threats.

* **Creating the COVID-19 National Preparedness Plan (2021)**: Developed a comprehensive strategy to respond to future pandemics.

* **Launching the Cancer Moonshot (2022)**: Re-energized the government's efforts to find a cure for cancer.

#gop #democrats #vote blue #republicans #vote biden #democracy #fuck trump #maga 🧠 = 🐶 💩

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namidew · 5 months ago

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Here’s the next part of the design concepts for my story, this time featuring Athena, Ares, and Aphrodite !!

Normally in depictions of Ares and Athena, they would wear armor, but I drew them without it because I wanted to try to incorporate their other motifs !!

Details below for design ramblings !!

Athena - The design of her face and the shape of her hair combined is meant to have a faintly owlish resemblance, her expression stern to represent her domain of wisdom and connection war. For my story, she’d be a bit more steely and essentially logical, showing more of wisdom than knowledge by her actions being based on past experiences. Her peplos is in reference to greek pottery with its black and orange, and her epiblema is in reference to her birth from Zeus’s head (the version which I am going with for my story) with it weaved to resemble the brain from a side view on either side. Lastly, the shield on her back is the aegis (or aigis?), which in this version, is a shield. Her having a shield but no spear represents defense and more “distance” from battle (despite hoplite soldiers using both) to represent strategy, and Ares having a spear but no shield represents offense and closer proximity in fights, thus closer to see the uglier side of war: the bloodshed and death.

Ares - He and Athena have complimenting details in their spear and shield, and in their color palettes. Both of their weapons are bronze, but appear brown due to the shading. Both have very fiery colored clothing, showing their connection of war despite their differences. Said differences include Ares’s (at least, within my story) tendency for impulsiveness and better emotional intelligence. He has scars not because his injuries didn’t fully heal, but because he (within my story) thinks they’re cool. His near-black, dark red(ish) chiton and hair represent blood and death, both common on the battlefield. his himation is red for blood, with orangey details for the metal of weapons or metallic taste of blood, and in resemblance of vulture wings. He has a more boyish appearance in reference to the young age in which Ancient Greece (as well as many other civilizations and modern day countries) could draft men to war.

Aphrodite - Her hair is red due to its perceived beauty in Ancient Greece and its rarity within the global population. Several strands of her hair are shaped like hearts. Her face is meant to resemble a dove, with eyes blue like the sea. The pearlescent jewelry is in resemblance of the sea foam from which she was born (the version I’m using), her ionian chiton colored in resemblance of the sea behind the sea foam (and funnily enough, it is sea foam in color.) In addition, her necklaces resemble the pattern of feathers (dove) or scales (sea theme.) Her hair color is exactly the same reddish-orange shade as the details on Ares’s himation. If you look closely, there is a very faint heart shape within the shading of her forehead. A consistent element in my designs of the Olympians drawn so far is a metallic element, as seen in Apollo, Hermes, and Dionysus having matching gold jewelry, Artemis having silver hair bands, and Ares and Athena having bronze war gear. I’m not entirely sure what Aphrodite’s jewelry is made of, perhaps pearl, or perhaps white opal? Maybe the metallic design element will be a “children of Zeus” design choice.

Thank you if you’ve reading all this rambling, it’s much longer this time. All in all, I’m fairly happy with the designs of these three, but now I have to go back and add more details to the other designs to balance it out a bit. Anyway, if you have any ideas or suggestions for future designs, please do tell me !!

#athena #ares #aphrodite #greek mythology #my art

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