#google video de cul

[lazeecomet]

How to teach someone to drive

Featuring my younger brother who has anxiety and has already been a passenger in a car crash

I learned to drive in spite of my parents. They got me an online class (no video, just walls of text and clip art with quizzes) and sat in the car, but they didn't really do any teaching. I failed my behind the wheel test on my first go around. I wasn't gonna have my brother go though the same thing so this is how I got him able to pass his test with 0 faults on his first try in about 6 months (and my parents never even knew it was happening)

Make sure this is something they want to do or feel like they should do. It's very hard to learn to drive if you don't think you need to learn to drive. my brother was against driving but ultimately conceded that he needed to learn at some point even though he didn't like the idea of it

Use the right car. Don't use a big truck or something with weird or large blind spots. I hated driving my mom's volt because i sat way too high in it and couldn't see out very well which feed back to point 1

Link it in with a fun outdoor activity. Are you going somewhere? Plan to do driving afterwards. Do not spring this as a surprise. since your already out and about go for a drive.

Plan a route. Look on Google maps for some cul-de-sac or neighborhood where there is only 1 or 2 ways in or out. This will ensure they can't get onto a main road and also cut down on other traffic

Park the car and take photos of the mirrors from the drivers seat. Show them what you have centered in each. Have them adjust the mirrors to match the photo

Drive around the cul-de-sac. The first few drives will only be about 10 minutes long. Show were to stop at a stop sign. show when to yield. get use to accelerating and breaking gently. Do a 3 point turn and go the other way for some variety. reverse the car against the sidewalk for about 30 feet. parallel parking comes later.

Repeat step 6 until they are comfortable.

Plan a longer route. Use Google maps to find a different neighborhood that has more cross streets and route out a 20 min weave though the neighborhood. with android auto/apple carplay/a phone clip, seeing the route to be taken and knowing what turns need to be taken ahead of time will add purpose to the drive. it sucks to drive around aimlessly. always have a destination

Drive the longer route. This should only need to be done once or twice. Point out any new road signs and what the mean and what to check for

Find the driver's handbook for your state and send it to them. It's usually not more then a 10-20 page PDF with lots of pictures and is a very quick read. the next step is dealing with THE PUBLIC so they should know ALL the rules of the road

plan a route along a less populated multi lane road. something that gets up to 35-45 mph with low traffic. you know the type

drive the multi lane road. go over merging and practice changing lanes at speed. point out new road signs and have them keep awareness of surrounding cars. is there someone behind them that wants to pass? move over. is there someone beside you in the blind spot? are they in front with their signal on? let them in.

its time to start extending the driving time. have them drive to the destination/event or drive home from it. stick to back roads. do not use the highway. google maps has a setting to avoid highways. just follow that. parking lots will now be the new practice backing up

when the situation presents itself, practice parallel parking. its not on the test but its just so good to know. if you could pull into a parking space have them try and parallel park instead

register online for the behind the wheel test and have them drive the car to DMV to take the test

and thats it. in ~6 months only driving one day a week for no more then 2 hours, you can get someone comfortable with driving. going from not driving to driving is all about building confidence. the steps need to be small enough not to overwhelm and the stakes low at the start to make messing up inconsequential. and speaking of mistakes, unless the error is unsafe, do not point out an error until after the situation was passed. its overwhelming and stress inducing if you point out the error while its happening as they will try to correct it, usually slamming on the breaks which is less then ideal.

for example, if they go though a pedestrian crossing without checking for pedestrians (even when there are none), point out how they didnt check, the signs that were leading up to it, and make a point to call out the next one so they do check. on the other hand, if they are about to make a unprotected left on green with cross traffic, STOP THEM.

I hope some people find this helpful. driving is stressful at times. learning how to drive does not need to amplify that

[cherry-bot]

You couldn't google "how to play [sport]." Hell, you couldn't even search it on Webcrawler or Lycos.

The other kids could tell you to "stop being offsides," but didn't have to tell you how to not be. So you'd get yelled at until you just left to go climb onto the chin- up bar and sit there wishing you could be your D&D character. Tennis, they wouldn't tell you how to not let them keep scoring. Baseball, you couldn't watch videos on how to actually hit the ball or find public batting cages to practice.

It would've been nice, not being completely useless in PE class or with the little league kids in their baseball games at the end of the cul-de-sac.

And yeah, if you got cornered by the father of an 18 year old girl you were interested in, and told that Texas has two legal ages based on whether or not a girl lives in her dad's house, and if you so much as ask her out, he's going to have you prosecuted for statutory rape and jailed for twenty years for sex crimes; you had no way to actually check the statutes because you had no way of knowing the county has a public law library.

Because the other dads knew you were single, had been gossiping over the phone, and figured you had something wrong with you.

Over the *telephone.*

Which cost 5¢ for a local call on a phone your parents were still *renting* from the phone company because they didn't want to buy one. And it still had a rotary dial.

(Also worth noting, one of those dads thought it was funny as hell to stuff a loaded shotgun up his daughter's prom date's nose when he answered the door. But I didn't find that out until at least five years later.)

[carolyncarillo]

SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES (Film en français) durée: 28 min - Verity et Chelsea #sonic…

SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES (Film en français) durée: 28 min - Verity et Chelsea #sonic #chasseursdefantômes #verityandchelsea Devenir sponsor de nos vidéos ➡️ https://rb.gy/m4nxm9 🚀 Accrochez-vous à vos manettes et préparez-vous à une expérience totalement déjantée avec SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES ! Ce film de 28 minutes, mettant en vedette les audacieuses Verity et Chelsea, vous propulse dans un monde où le speed est roi et où les monstres pullulent comme des champignons hallucinogènes. Sonic, le hérisson bleu le plus rapide de la galaxie, n’est pas là pour jouer à cache-cache ; il est ici pour botter des culs et défier les lois de la physique ! Plongez dans cette odyssée bizarre, où Sonic croise le chemin de Shin Sonic, un personnage mystérieux aux pouvoirs obscurs qui va pimenter cette aventure déjà explosive. Ensemble, ils s’aventurent dans des dimensions tordues peuplées de créatures cauchemardesques, tout droit sorties de l’univers ténébreux de Sonic.EXE. Qui aurait cru que les cauchemars pouvaient avoir une telle vitesse ? Assistez à des courses effrénées, des combats épiques, et des répliques cinglantes qui feraient rougir les plus grands scénaristes de Hollywood. Avec des graphismes qui font exploser vos rétines et une bande-son qui vous fait vibrer jusqu’aux os, ce film est une expérience cinématographique que vous n’oublierez jamais. Vous êtes prêt à vivre une aventure qui déraille, où l’absurde et l’excitation se rencontrent dans un tourbillon de folie ? Ne restez pas sur le bord de la route ! Plongez dans ce chaos organisé et rejoignez Sonic et ses amis dans un combat effréné contre des monstres qui semblent tout droit sortis d’un rêve… ou d’un mauvais trip. SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES : un film qui fera parler de lui, mais attention, il pourrait bien vous rendre un peu… monstrueux ! Devenir sponsor de nos vidéos ➡️ https://rb.gy/m4nxm9 🚀 Nous suivre 🥳 ➡️ 👉 https://linktr.ee/veritychelsea ❤️‍🔥 👍 + ���� + 💬 Arcade funny comedy movie commentary drone 3am reaction trending trend game games pg13 craniacs sonic .exe scary jester youtube hotel google gaming arcade craniacs 3 AM among us Edward Centeno family friendly chuck e cheese lyssy noel lyssy noel 3am jester 3am you tube youtube videos Music : https://open.spotify.com/intl-fr/artist/4H8QU4iafPob1fjE0ko3XI tags: gaming, video game, super sonic, sonic mod, roleplay, sonic, sonic the hedgehog, caylus, space, super sonic mod, $1 shin sonic, $1000000 shin sonic, biggest shin sonic, Amira, Massilia et Papa, la Famille Ventura, Amina, Amelina Kiss, Lily-Rose, Sana et Lina, Madame Récré en français, Kiara Paris, Adem & Bilal, Nastya, Swan et Neo, Amira et Maman, Willibed, Sami, Robtec, Bébé Louis, Nastia en français, Peppa Pig, Vlad et Nikita en français, Titounis, Amira et Sami, Diana and Roma, Sami Adel. Ceci est une vidéo tous publics aussi appelé contenu familial, adapté aux annonceurs de type divertissement & humour favorable à la famille en français. Gros bisous de la part de Verity and Chelsea ! 😘 SHIN SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES (Halloween Special) durée: 28 min - Verity et Chelsea published first on https://www.youtube.com/@VERITYandCHELSEA/ SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES (Film en français) durée: 28 min - Verity et Chelsea #sonic… published first on https://verityetchelsea.tumblr.com/

[verityetchelsea]

SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES (Film en français) durée: 28 min - Verity et Chelsea #sonic #chasseursdefantômes #verityandchelsea Devenir sponsor de nos vidéos ➡️ https://rb.gy/m4nxm9 🚀 Accrochez-vous à vos manettes et préparez-vous à une expérience totalement déjantée avec SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES ! Ce film de 28 minutes, mettant en vedette les audacieuses Verity et Chelsea, vous propulse dans un monde où le speed est roi et où les monstres pullulent comme des champignons hallucinogènes. Sonic, le hérisson bleu le plus rapide de la galaxie, n’est pas là pour jouer à cache-cache ; il est ici pour botter des culs et défier les lois de la physique ! Plongez dans cette odyssée bizarre, où Sonic croise le chemin de Shin Sonic, un personnage mystérieux aux pouvoirs obscurs qui va pimenter cette aventure déjà explosive. Ensemble, ils s’aventurent dans des dimensions tordues peuplées de créatures cauchemardesques, tout droit sorties de l’univers ténébreux de Sonic.EXE. Qui aurait cru que les cauchemars pouvaient avoir une telle vitesse ? Assistez à des courses effrénées, des combats épiques, et des répliques cinglantes qui feraient rougir les plus grands scénaristes de Hollywood. Avec des graphismes qui font exploser vos rétines et une bande-son qui vous fait vibrer jusqu’aux os, ce film est une expérience cinématographique que vous n’oublierez jamais. Vous êtes prêt à vivre une aventure qui déraille, où l’absurde et l’excitation se rencontrent dans un tourbillon de folie ? Ne restez pas sur le bord de la route ! Plongez dans ce chaos organisé et rejoignez Sonic et ses amis dans un combat effréné contre des monstres qui semblent tout droit sortis d’un rêve… ou d’un mauvais trip. SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES : un film qui fera parler de lui, mais attention, il pourrait bien vous rendre un peu… monstrueux ! Devenir sponsor de nos vidéos ➡️ https://rb.gy/m4nxm9 🚀 Nous suivre 🥳 ➡️ 👉 https://linktr.ee/veritychelsea ❤️‍🔥 👍 + 🔔 + 💬 Arcade funny comedy movie commentary drone 3am reaction trending trend game games pg13 craniacs sonic .exe scary jester youtube hotel google gaming arcade craniacs 3 AM among us Edward Centeno family friendly chuck e cheese lyssy noel lyssy noel 3am jester 3am you tube youtube videos Music : https://open.spotify.com/intl-fr/artist/4H8QU4iafPob1fjE0ko3XI tags: gaming, video game, super sonic, sonic mod, roleplay, sonic, sonic the hedgehog, caylus, space, super sonic mod, $1 shin sonic, $1000000 shin sonic, biggest shin sonic, Amira, Massilia et Papa, la Famille Ventura, Amina, Amelina Kiss, Lily-Rose, Sana et Lina, Madame Récré en français, Kiara Paris, Adem & Bilal, Nastya, Swan et Neo, Amira et Maman, Willibed, Sami, Robtec, Bébé Louis, Nastia en français, Peppa Pig, Vlad et Nikita en français, Titounis, Amira et Sami, Diana and Roma, Sami Adel. Ceci est une vidéo tous publics aussi appelé contenu familial, adapté aux annonceurs de type divertissement & humour favorable à la famille en français. Gros bisous de la part de Verity and Chelsea ! 😘 SHIN SONIC et les CHASSEURS DE MONSTRES (Halloween Special) durée: 28 min - Verity et Chelsea published first on https://www.youtube.com/@VERITYandCHELSEA/

[jeremiah225]

RIVAL BEGINING for diss track RAP

Reddit. has so much annoying Fans they're cul-de-sac and uses their film to make ruined childhood putting Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey from no mercy also they scam hell of Mercy they pop on Google they don't know how to react normal they just act stupidity on this site no point no use or worth it to this internet even Fanboys and girls are even horny on this Reddit oh wow who would have dreamed living down their mother's basement jack off even they cut their camera showing their inappropriate naked and clapping their booty all on internet Reddit and necessary toxicity talking about real life of us and prepared they don't have no life but theirselves because ain't right in the head. Tumblr. Looks new 24 year stays forever to make day of Tumblr he has a lot of good taste which matter fact he doesn't pick on people in fact he does not like YouTube because only thing they took our videos down because I'm saved for this one I only parody and make video games no harm no cap which I make good videos and make good poster only for now they need to stop bugging Our lives because on internet people Cults they ain't got nothing on us I take lower wouldn't take criticism for anybody because I ain't got nothing on me and I respect Tumblr it's because it's between nothing on anything The Fun Is Begin and Stream and Parody TO MAKE LIFE EVEN BETTER WITHOUT NOTHING ON ME.

[diana-daphne]

Thank you for the tag!!

Last song?: Cul-de-sac by welly

Favorite color? Pink!

Currently watching? School spirits and the x files

Last movie? The undertakers wedding, very off beat movie with Adrian Brody that I found oddly delightful!

Sweet/spicy/savory? Sweet and savory, but NEVER spicy or I will die sadly…

Relationship status? Delusional and delirious

Current obsessions? The phantom of the opera, and musical theater history in general, I’ve been binging waiting in the wings videos like a mad woman lol also formula 1, I’ve been watching it with my dad!

Last thing you googled? “Does Sudafed keep you awake” because I have a stuffy nose :(

No pressure tags! 🩷 @pinkishreveries @yeahawvampire @oneeyedcatlover

tagged by lovelyyy @zaegreus☺️❤️‍🔥

LAST SONG? "You're so Good to Me" by Mac & Monica

FAVORITE COLOR? emerald green

CURRENTLY WATCHING? youtube :)

LAST MOVIE? American Fiction, SO GOOD + frogs +satyricon mentions🔥I really recommend this film if you're looking for a satire that's actually nuanced, sad, and entertaining without being smug. I think a lot of you would love it <3

SWEET/SPICY/SAVORY? sweet :)) I love sweet and spicy or sweet and sour too🥓

RELATIONSHIP STATUS? single🤯

CURRENT OBSESSIONS? I'm taking an amazing class on Hellenic epigrams that are inspiring me so much. I hadn't realized how much I based a lot of my writing on them and they are so much fun to rediscover🥰 (I also get a little depressed because i'm so NOT a poet and I wish i could have my characters break into hexameter more often)

And i'm obsessed with drinking water because my throat just started feeling crusty yesterday.... idk how that's going to go...

LAST THING YOU GOOGLED? trajanic cut... needed for school

tagging @headsinsand @seianus @hellokittysasuke @ozymandiaskingofkings ❤️

[echangesnap-blog]

escorts french

Tu as (1) MESSAGE

[heckyeahponyscans]

Yeloli Watch Party time!

So it turns out the first episode WAS on Youtube, on a different channel and with Portuguese subtitles!  That was great, since I was able to use Google Translate + the subtitles to figure out the dialogue.

True story, I downloaded the video and painstakingly added English subtitles, but DailyMotion refused to upload it because the file was too big, lol.

Instead, here’s a Google Doc with the script: English Translation S01E01

Okay, on to the plot.

Season 1, Episode 1: The Magic Begins

Our story begins with narration explaining that Yeloli, the land of the fairies, is ruled by an evil queen who wants to enslave all humans.  The only thing standing in her way is a group of good Yeloli fairies who want to protect humans.

Currently evil Queen Pandora and leader of the good fairies, Evelyn, are having an anime magic battle.  (Nice Dutch angle!)  Evelyn fights Pandora, giving the other good fairies time to flee through a portal to Earth.

Evelyn casts a spell on Pandora, preventing Pandora and her army from entering the human world.

Pandora’s like, “Oh yeah? Watch this,” and performs a curse that will cause any Yeloli fairy who enters the human world to turn into a lifeless doll.

Evelyn flees to Earh, shouting, “CLOSE THE PORTAL!” But it’s too late; all the fairies shrink and turn into dolls.

(They do a good job giving the dolls a dead-eyed stare compared to the living characters.)

Evelyn casts a spell to alter the curse, so that if the dolls find an owner who truly loves them, they will regain their original size / powers.  Evelyn vows to care for the dolls in the meantime.

Cut to Mary, a fifth grader who, she tells us through narration, is bad at school and sports.  There’s something very depressing about the matter-of-fact way she tells us she’s “not talented.”  Like she’s not even mad or sad about it; she just takes it as fact.

Mary is minding her own business when a bunch of cherry blossoms magically swirl around her and lead her to a narrow alley with a mysterious glow at the end.  For some reason the first shot of the cherry blossoms is just . . . video of real cherry blossoms.  I dunno why, everything else is CGI.

Naturally Mary follows the glow and at the end of it she finds a little cul-de-sac with . . . a doll store!

Mary is entranced by the doll in the window, and if I was a little kid looking at that window display, I would be too.

She goes inside, of course, and admires the dolls, which Evelyn has hilariously posed to look bored.  I mean, I’m assuming the dolls can’t move on their own.  Or is this a Toy Story situation?

^ Also WHERE IS THIS DOLL’S LEGS?

Mary hears a voice and finds Evelyn casting a spell on a doll. My favorite part is Mary sees this lady levitating a doll and wonders, “Is this magic?”  Mary, please.

Evelyn then implants something that looks a lot like a spark (Transformers soul) from Beast Wars into the doll . . . and it comes to life!

Wow!  I’ve only known this doll for five seconds, but it seems evil!

The doll notices Mary, who backs out of the room which, fair.

Mary apologizes for intruding and Evelyn is like, “That’s okay.  Want a DOLL?”

Mary says she doesn’t have any money.  Evelyn is like, “Well, you can still play with them, they love visitors. Pick one you like.”

Mary picks the doll from the window--her name is Loli.  Magical light surrounds them both, indicating that Loli has chosen Mary to be her owner.

I was expecting Mary to gradually learn the doll’s backstory, but Evelyn straightout tells her that Loli is a princess who was cursed to be a doll, who needs love to break the curse.  She says many children have looked at Loli, but the doll rejected them all . . . until Mary came along.

tfw no one is good enough for your doll

So you’d  expect this would be the point where Mary gets the doll, but no, things take a very weird turn. Evelyn says Mary can have the doll . . . if she signs the Yeloli Contract.  What is the Yeoli Contract? WELL, it says the doll is your responsibility forever and you can’t give her away.  

You sign it via fingerprint.

That’s weird, right?  It seems like a mystical trap, right?  But the first half of the story frames Evelyn as heroic, so I dunno.  Just, if I had only seen the last half of the episode I would 100% think Evelyn was a villain trying to steal Mary’s soul or something.

Anyway, Mary signs, Evelyn boxes up the Loli, and Mary leaves, promising to take good care of Loli.  

Mary heads home . . . until a mysterious voice says, “Little girl . . . Little girl, GIVE ME YOUR DOLL.”

DUN DUN DUUUUUN, cliffhanger!

Some thoughts:

- Is Evelyn a fairy?  Or is she an Earth woman who knows magic? Why wasn’t she transformed into a doll with the rest of them?

- She brought Red-Eyes-Evil-Doll to life...  Is that doll a fairy, or can Evelyn bring regular dolls to life?  Red-Eyes could move / speak on her own, so maybe the fairy dolls DO all move when kids aren’t looking?

- Even though the CGI is older, the storyboarding, facial expressions, and movement are quite good, which is the key to being able to suspend disbelief. (Same reason I think Beast Wars made better use of their CGI than Siege, even though Siege is better in a technical sense... BW REALLY put effort into their facial & movement animations, while Siege was pretty lazy about it.)

- I like the shamelessness of the marketing. This is beyond “Cartoon shows character to get you to buy toy” . . . The ACTUAL DOLLS are magic and they need a child’s love to save them.  Amazing.

[ottermeat]

walkswithdave: How do you do this? Meander through street view for hours?

It's my superpower. It's the dumbest thing that I'm proudest of.

1) I've always had a preternatural sense of where things are. When I was 22, I drove without a map, without directions, and without making a single wrong turn from Santa Fe, New Mexico to my cousin's house in Louisville, Colorado at the end of a cul-de-sac, deep in a faceless, monotonous subdivision, where I had only been once when I was 12. I just had a sense of how the neighborhood lined up with the light off the Front Range, particularly in the afternoon.

2) I use a lot of deductive reasoning. Patton is a celebrity with a view of the ocean so that means he probably lives in Malibu. So that's where I start. The video he made included views of the hills, views of the intersection, and views of the surrounding houses. That's a lot of information.  

3) And yes, armed with that, I can meander through Google Earth and street view for hours and never lose interest. This probably took about 10 minutes.

[unpack-my-heart]

Unpack My Heart With Words – Updated

Chapter 5 of my Hamlet/Theatre Reddie AU. The chapter is called When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

You can read it on AO3 HERE or I’ve pasted it under the cut.

Preview:

“Heh. I suppose,” Eddie responds. “I remember reading King Lear when I was at RADA, when I was convinced that I’d be the one reciting the lines, rather than instructing people how to read the lines. My Lear is based on someone from my past.”

Richie feels sick.

“Oh?” the interviewer probes, “I imagine you don’t think favourably of them, then? They’ve got to be a pretty painful relic, surely?”

Richie watches the on-screen-Eddie pause. Eddie’s eyes close before he responds.

“Quite the opposite, actually. Thank you so much for having me”

Tag List:

@constantreaderfool @xandertheundead @violetreddie

The road Richie lives on is small and unassuming, a forgettable cul-de-sac. He’d moved there with Sandy, as soon as he got the email confirming that he’d ‘read Hamlet’. It hadn’t lasted. They’d broken up less than a year after they’d bought the house. She’d accused him of cheating on her, and he hadn’t denied it. He hadn’t cheated on her, of course, but it had given him a very convenient way of avoiding having a conversation he’d been putting off for several months prior. I’m still in love with the boy (man?) that broke my heart over a decade ago doesn’t roll off the tongue particularly well, nor is it all that believable. So they’d split. Richie had taken on sole tenancy of the small townhouse they rented, and Sandy had left him and moved back in with her parents in Bath, leaving him in Stratford-Upon-Avon on his own.

The road Richie lives on is small and unassuming, a perfectly pleasant and quiet area of a perfectly pleasant and quiet town. That’s why, when Richie was stumbling down the street pissed out of his mind at 3am after trying (and failing) to drink Ben under the table, and singing (or howling) along to Prowlin’ from Grease 2, a large number of people peered around their curtains and glared at him. He paid them no mind. He fumbled with his keys, dropping them six times, before his uncooperative fingers finally managed to shove the key into the lock and turn it. The stuffy, gaping black maw of his hallway stared back at him. Scoffing, and swearing at everything and anything, Richie managed to turn on all the lights in his living room and kitchen, and flop onto the sofa, without breaking anything – limbs and extremities included.

Richie smacked his lips. His mouth tasted like someone had been using his tongue as an ash tray for the last four hours, before telling him to gargle with white spirit. In short, it tasted like ass. Not that Richie remembered what ass tasted like. It had been far too long. His laptop sat, screen open and inviting, sat on the coffee table. Richie tugged it towards him, before lifting it over to his lap by the screen. He almost missed Sandy shrieking ‘if you lift it like that, the screen will come off in your hands and you’ll be fucked’. Almost.

The machine booted up, whirs and purrs breaking the silence. Richie’s fingers worked on autopilot, his alcohol-hazed brain taking several seconds to catch up.

Google: Edsss kaspbrK

Did you mean: Eds Kaspbrak?

Did you mean: Edward Kaspbrak?

Yes. Yes he did mean Edward Kaspbrak. Richie supposed he wasn’t allowed to call Eddie Eds anymore.

Edward Kaspbrak, 486,972 results in 0.0003 seconds

Richie’s eyes lazily scanned the first few lines of results. The first page was Eddie’s staff page on the RSC website. The second was Eddie’s twitter. The third was an article from the Edinburgh College of Dramatic Arts student newspaper. Richie clicked on it.

“The ECDA is super stoked to announce that the opening night of the student production of the Phantom of the Opera, directed by our very own Eddie K, …. Blah blah blah blah Eddie blah blah blah successful blah blah blah” Richie mumbled out loud to himself, heart tightening in his chest.

Backspacing out of the page, Richie clicked on the next article. This one was from four years ago, and was a review of a production of King Lear that Eddie had directed. Richie skimmed the article, before clicking on the embedded video interview at the bottom of the page. Eddie’s face fills the screen. He looks younger than the Eddie Richie had seen earlier that day. His face is smoother, and his mouth isn’t set in a harsh line. His eyes are soft. He looks happy. Richie feels sick.

“So,” the interviewer begins, “Tell me about this production. Your Lear is particularly arrogant and unlikable, and unlike other productions that I’ve seen, I actually don’t feel like your Lear had any redeeming features at all. He’s just … consistently unlikable. That’s a pretty bold move for someone’s debut RSC directorial job, right?”

“Heh. I suppose,” Eddie responds. “I remember reading King Lear when I was at RADA, when I was convinced that I’d be the one reciting the lines, rather than instructing people how to read the lines. My Lear is based on someone from my past.”

Richie feels sick.

“Oh?” the interviewer probes, “I imagine you don’t think favourably of them, then? They’ve got to be a pretty painful relic, surely?”

Richie watches the on-screen-Eddie pause. Eddie’s eyes close before he responds.

“Quite the opposite, actually. Thank you so much for having me”

Eddie leaves the frame, and Richie doesn’t listen to the interviewers cursory wrap up. His ears are ringing too loudly.

Richie backspaces, before blindly clicking on one last link. It takes him to the announcement of Eddie’s appointment as Artistic Director in the newsletter of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Richie can feel bile swelling in his throat.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is privileged and pleased to announce that  Edward Frank Kaspbrak has accepted the position of Artistic Director. Edward replaces Claire Van de Camp, who wishes her successor success. Edward joins us at a particularly exciting time, and his first production will the semi-centenary celebration of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a milestone marked with a production of Hamlet. We wish Edward a long and happy tenure with us, and we all look forward to working with him for years to come

A few words from Edward himself: “I’m delighted to join the RSC as Artistic Director to celebrate the momentous semi-centenary anniversary of the company. I am a man of few words, so I’ll leave you with the words of a wordsmith more skilled than I. And so, all yours. I am all yours, RSC, and I will serve you as long as you’ll have me.”

The last words force the bile that had been bubbling in Richie’s throat to surge up his oesophagus. He scrambles to his feet, laptop falling gracelessly to the floor, and scrambles to his bedroom. He pulls an inconspicuous wooden box from under the bed, upending it so white envelopes come tumbling out. He spreads them all out on the carpet, before he grabs the one marked 15th April 2019. He opens the envelope. Two pieces of paper fall out, and he stuffs one back in without looking at it. He unfolds the other piece of paper.

15th April 2019

And so, all yours

E

The paper is fragile – It had been recklessly torn in half, before it has been painstakingly sellotaped back together. Richie couldn’t count how many times he’d stared at those four words.

– X –

When Richie had first started receiving the letters from Eddie, he had become almost incensed with anger. He’d vented to Stan, ugly, venomous ranting.

“I fucking hate him, Stan”

“No you don’t”

“Yes I fucking do. He abandons me to chase some stupid fucking selfish dream in Scotland, and then has the audacity – the fucking NERVE – to write to me, to plead with me to forgive him?”

“That’s not what the letter says, Richie”

“Wow. Fucking Wow. I thought you were supposed to be on my side? You know, your best friends side?”

“You haven’t spoken to me for three months, Rich. I thought you forgot who I was”

“You’re being fucking ridiculous”

“Richard? Can I have a word, s’il vous plaît?"

“Uh, sure, Jacques”

Stan disappeared down the corridor, without so much as glancing over his shoulder. Jacques was stood behind Richie, holding the door to his office open with a gracious arm. Richie walked inside.

“What’s all this ruckus, Richard?”

“Nothing, Jacques. Just – just personal stuff, s’all.”

“Are you arguing with master Stanley about Edward?”

Richie felt himself stiffen.

“How did you know?”

Jacques sits back on his chair, and folds his arms across his chest. His scarf flutters slightly in the breeze coming from the oscillating fan on his desk.

“Did you know that I told Edward to apply for the Edinburgh school?”

“No.”

“Did you know that I convinced him to go when he was reticent to leave you?”

“No.”

“Well, I did. Send some of that rage my way, if you must, but please do leave master Stanley out of it, he really isn’t at fault here”

“He’s been writing to me. I want to burn them.” Richie blurts out, without really meaning to.

“Spoken like a true dramatist”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you’re being melodramatic”

“With all due respect, Jacques, you have no idea what you’re talking about” Richie snaps, in a tone that he’d probably regret later when he’s being disciplined for being mouthy to a member of staff.

“Perhaps. But perhaps you also have no idea what you’re talking about”

“Now you’re just not making sense”

“You’re nineteen, Richard. Things have a way of working out. Don’t burn the letters. Don’t send your memories of him up in flames. You’ll regret it.”

“Can I go now?”

“But of course”

As soon as he wakes up, Richie decides that he’s not going to rehearsal. This is partly because he’s hungover, but the hangover was nothing worse than he’d ever experienced after getting pissed after the opening night of every other production he’s ever done. It was mostly because he couldn’t bear to look at Eddie’s face. Or, perhaps more accurately, he couldn’t take nearly twelve hours of Eddie refusing to look at him with anything other than scorn. Not today.

He contemplates ringing to tell Eddie that he’s ill, but he doesn’t have Eddie’s number. He thumbs over the ‘Eds <3’ contact in his phone. Eddie’s old number, of course. Richie had a new number, too, in fact, he’d had several new numbers in the fifteen years since he’d last text Eddie. He had, however, copied the ‘Eds <3’ contact into every new phone he’d has since 2019. He assumed that Eddie had probably also had several new numbers since they’d last talked, but that didn’t deter him.

Now, though, the sight of ‘Eds <3’ in his phone turns his stomach more than the whiskey in the tumbler on his nightstand does.

He decides not to ring anyone.

Instead, he clicks on the YouTube app, and types in ‘Edward II’.

He watches other people say the lines that he’d whispered to Eddie until he falls asleep, tear tracks marking his cheeks.

Richie wakes up several hours later. His phone is buzzing furiously on his bedside table like an angry hornet. When he picks it up, the screen reads ‘Unknown Number’. He throws the phone on the floor.

The buzzing stops, but almost immediately starts up again.

He doesn’t answer.

The unknown number calls back again.

He doesn’t pick up.

His phone buzzes again, but this time its three short buzzes.

A Text.

He grabs his phone off the stained carpet.

From: Unknown Number:

Where the fuck are you?

From: Unknown Number:

Today was a fucking disaster. Where are you?

From: Unknown Number:

How dare you make me worry about you.

Richie stares at the last text, shrouded in the dark comfort of his room, for what feels like hours.

[local-girl-tries-her-best]

Tips for Kicking A** on the AP Euro Exam

Hey kiddies, so it’s reached that time of year where all AP students are reduced to balls of stress as ExamCrunch is upon us. As a vet of the AP Euro trenches, and a current soldier in the trenches of APUSH, I just wanted to drop some of the things I’ve learned over the years as well as things I wish I had done. 

Tips under the cut:

i. Studying the Actual Content

All history courses can typically be broken down into a series of periods. The different periods will contain different important events; now I don’t know them off the top of my head for Euro, but you can easily google them or ask your teacher! These are super helpful for going through and figuring out what you don’t know. And here’s how to use this: 

 go over the things you know you don’t know very well first (kind of obvious, but surprisingly overlooked)

don’t feel like you need to know every single piece of specific information; as long as you know and understand a general timeline and how events fit into the bigger, overarching picture (like cause & effect, how did an event influence later events) you’ll be peachy!

that being said, do know the dates to the super duper influential events (i.e. war years, English Bill of Rights, etc)

for me personally, I can’t study by just rereading notes, so Crash Course is super helpful in helping to understand the impact of different events and I also watched some of Tom Richey’s videos to help myself review

make sure you are actually studying and not cramming! I know I’m notorious for not studying until the couple days before exams, but cramming is not effective! you’re more likely to forget information and also spaced studying (studying periodically) is actually shown to help you retain information better 

honestly I just really cannot stress enough the importance of understanding the consequences and implications of historical events. this is what the exam is testing, not just your ability to memorize dates. so make sure that, as you’re studying, that you know why an event was important and not just when it happened.

I know a lot of that sounded like just general studying advice, but trust me! It’s the little things that make a big difference. 

But on to the next thing: the dreaded DBQ. Now if you’re like me, you likely feel pretty good about the multiple choice and are just worried about how the DBQ will go down. Because duh, you’re expected to write an essay with supporting evidence about a currently unknown topic, that’s really intimidating. So here’s some advice on how to write a hella DBQ.

ii. Writing the Essay

before you even look at the documents, read the prompt and start listing everything you know about the prescribed time period, both pertaining to the focus of the prompt and general info. I find this to be immensely helpful and stops me from using the documents as a crutch for the essay. Not only can this help you organize your essay, but it gives you a wealth of things to use as outside evidence and even some things that may help you do extended analysis! 

writing your intro: personally, I try to pick one part of the prompt and just sort of expand on it. For example, if the prompt asks how (country) changed socially, politically, economically following (event) during (time period), start your context by taking about what the country is like historically, tapering down so that by the time you reach the end of your intro, your context provides an easy segue into your thesis. 

speaking of, don’t half-ass your intro! your intro alone is how you can secure 2 out of 7 points on this essay. It’s important and is the building block for your entire essay!

try your best to use all of the documents! while some documents may not seem pertinent, college board will not give you redundant docs. It’s best to use as many docs as you can because if one of them isn’t used correctly, there are others that you can fall back on for points. It’s like essay insurance. 

start off with your point before introducing the document. this also goes into the point of not using the docs as a crutch. If you start by stating the point and then using the doc as support, I find that this helps me find a smoother transition into both extended analysis and outside evidence. 

also just a general writing preference: something I like to start my body paragraphs with my best paragraph first, ending with my second best, and then putting my worst in between the two. I’ll change this depending on the essay though, you just have to decide what will flow the best. 

your conclusion: there’s not a lot of advice to be said, as your conclusion is just a rewording of your thesis. However, I will pass down a little writing advice that my Euro teacher told me. Your essay is like a cul-de-sac in the way where you start and end with your thesis. But keeping that in mind, when you restate your thesis in the conclusion, list your last paragraph first and then end with your first (this also goes with what I said in the previous bullet).

Overall, your DBQ is really only as good as your understanding of the content. Like yeah you can technically BS this essay, but the best way to feel confident in your writing is really knowing the actual content. As I said before, the exam is not testing your ability to memorize dates, it’s testing your ability to put things into a larger historical picture.

iii. Before the Exam 

The AP Euro exam is an afternoon exam so you have your entire morning, use it! I don’t recommend studying the day of the exam. By this point you know everything that you are going to know. But here are some things that I did just to calm my nerves and to go into the exam with low stress.

Pot some plants. You can take this both literally and metaphorically. I did actually pot plants the morning of my exam because it’s a calm activity that keeps my mind busy and quiet. You can try some mindful meditation or even doing some spring cleaning. Really just anything that will keep you from psyching yourself out.

AP Euro Breakfast w/ Tom Richey. Now I know I said not to study the day of the exam, but I will make an exception for this. I am a huge fan of livestreams and podcasts for the simple reason that they keep my thoughts from becoming scattered. This livestream had a similar effect for me as well as it helped me to just kind of recall some events I may have forgotten without the stress of last minute cramming. It’s super chill and something I really recommend. 

Drink water. You are about to test for a whopping 3 1/2 hours, it’s important that you are taking care of your mind. It’s simple but drinking water always helps me feel refreshed and clean. 

Breathe. You got this. You have spent the last nine months crawling through the trenches of AP Euro and this is where you can finally show off all your hard work. No matter what happens, or how you feel after the exam, you’ve done a really challenging thing and saw it through until the end. You just have to believe in yourself and trust in your abilities. 

I hope that at least a few things on this list have helped you or lessened your stress about the upcoming exam. I wish all you luck and here’s one last pro tip: go eat some waffles after the exam, they make everything better.

[comiccrusaders]

Oni Press announces Dream Daddy comic based on the popular video game

Will you go out with Teacher Dad? Goth Dad? Bad Dad? Oni Press welcomes Dream Daddy, a new comics series based on the acclaimed Game Grumps visual novel video game co-created by Vernon Shaw and Leighton Gray! Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator invites the player to Maple Bay, where they play as a single Dad new to town and eager to romance other hot Dads. The comic series tells five standalone stories, each focused on different Maple Bay Dads.

You can pick up the first print issue, with a cover by Kris Anka (Runaways), at the Oni Press booth #6305 all weekend at PAX West (Penny Arcade Expo) in Seattle, WA. If you’re not attending, don’t worry! The issue will also be available in the Oni Press online shop. All subsequent print issues will also have covers by Kris Anka, and will be available via the Oni Press store and convention appearances at RCCC, NYCC, and PAX Unplugged. Digital versions of each comic are available monthly on Steam, Comixology, Amazon/Kindle, Google Play, and iTunes/iBooks! Fans can sign up for Dream Daddy comic alerts here.

“There are so many more stories we wanted to explore in the DDADDS universe,” said Vernon Shaw. “And Oni is giving us this amazing new outlet to tell them. Hope everyone likes Dad jokes!”

#gallery-0-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

“It’s always been a dream of mine to work on a comic book series,” said Leighton Gray. “I couldn’t be happier that we got to make all these cool new Dad stories with such cool people!”

Issue #1: “Much Abird About Nothing” (Aug. 29) Wendy Xu (A/C) Ryan Maniulit

It’s college reunion time! Who’d have thought that it’s already been fifteen years since Keg-Stand Craig and the new Dad on the block went to college? This one’s like a buddy cop comedy, only there are no cops and more avoiding old flames while trying to stifle an existential breakdown, bro.

Issue #2: “Let The Right Dad In” (Sept. 26) Lee C. A. (A/C) Jack Gross

There’s a new Dad in the cul-de-sac… and he’s already sunk his fangs into the neighborhood! But Robert knows a vampire when he sees one, and he’s armed with enough garlic and rewatches of F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Issue #3: “Dream Ad-y” (Oct. 24) Leighton Gray, Vernon Shaw (A) Jarrett Williams (C) Jeremy Lawson

Sales are dropping at the Coffee Spoon, and Mat is looking for a way to drive new customers to the shop. Thank goodness the rest of the neighborhood is filled to the brim with enough seasoned craftsmen of the film industry to create the best local ad Maple Bay has ever seen! Just kidding, have you ever asked a Dad to take a picture of you? What can we say? The Dads and their kids try their best.

Issue #4: “Fair Deal” (Nov. 21) C. Spike Trotman (A) Drew Green (C) Reed Black

The science fair is tomorrow, and Daisy hasn’t started her project yet! All she wants is a ride to the library and a participation ribbon. But Brian has bigger plans for her: wind turbines, working replicas of Mount Vesuvius, human genome editing. Turns out Daisy’s not the only one who procrastinated, and Joseph is out to force Christian and Christie to become the next science superstars. Can the kids get their presentations ready before the librarian kicks them all out for a no holds barred Dad-off?

Issue #5: “Dungeons & Daddies” (Dec. 19) Josh Trujillo (A) D.J. Kirkland (C) Matt Herms

Hugo has been preparing for this moment for months, and it’s finally here. He’s wrangled all of the Dads to play an extremely popular but non-descript tabletop role playing game together! And with his carefully laid plans, Hugo is sure he’ll be the best Dungeon Master they’ve ever seen… as long as they all take the game as seriously as he does.

Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator was released on July 20, 2017 for Windows and macOS, and on September 22, 2017 for Linux.

Who’s Your Daddy? Oni Press announces Dream Daddy comic based on the popular video game Will you go out with Teacher Dad?

[abovethesmokestacks]

Haunted

Title: Haunted Pairing: Bucky x reader Word count: 3.8k Spoilers: general spoilers for CA: CW Warnings: none

This is my contribution to the Halloween Writing Challenge hosted by @rotisserierogers. My prompt was “I know you, don’t I?”, and well… this is what became of it.

Do not repost my fics.

1996

There are few things as intoxicating to a ten-year-old as freedom. Or, okay, maybe a few things. But this came a close second. Or third. The point is, in your ten-year-old eyes, finally getting to go trick-or-treating without a chaperone was as close to true freedom as you could get. You’d wished for this for two years, even feeling a bit ashamed last year when you were among the few to still walk the neighbourhood accompanied by an adult. Sure, it was your older sister (and she suffered just as much, or even more if her whining was to be believed), but still. It was embarrassing.

You and your friends had planned your outfits for weeks, counted your allowances and finally gone down to the masquerade section of the supermarket, clutching your chosen costumes while your mothers shook their heads with amused smiles. Your own mother had glued sequins with such precision, you almost felt guilty about it. They were gonna come off, sooner or later, and you wouldn’t even need a tornado.

“How much did you get?”

“We should go home and change and then run back to mrs. Applebaum’s for more!”

“Trick or treat!”

The neighbourhood is teeming with kids in costumes, greedily looking into their pumpkins and cauldrons, assessing the candy they have been given. You and your friends have finished your round, your basket laden with goodies. As predicted, your shoes look a little worse for wear, apparently glue is no match for your heel clicking abilities.

“See you tomorrow?” your friends ask as you turn onto the street that will lead you home.

“If I don’t die from eating all of this!” you titter, swinging your basket and making the wrapped candy rustle.

Waving goodbye, you hurry down the street. The weather has quickly turned cold, fog billowing in from the sparse forest beyond the houses, and stubborn as you are, you’d refused the poofy jacket your mother had insisted on. Either way, home isn’t far away. The street you walk down turns off into a cul-de-sac a little ways ahead, and at the end of that cul-de-sac is your home. The street is eerily empty, not a trick-or-treater in sight. The cold creeping up your legs has shivers running up your spine, your steps quickening. You’ll never admit it, never in your life, but the quiet street with the fog-wrapped houses scares you.

He comes seemingly out of nowhere, a ghost materializing from the misty wisps clinging to the world. If it wasn’t for your shriek, he would probably have marched past you, never even sparing you a glance. Instead, he turns sharply, fixing you with eyes hidden behind pitch black goggles. Your legs won’t carry you, frozen to the ground in flats with poorly glued red sequins on them. Your cheeks that had only seconds before sported a blush brought on by the chill have now been drained of colour.

He is dangerous, that much is clear. Between the unsettling black goggles and the intimidation that oozes from him, he isn’t someone heading for a Halloween party. Letting your gaze skitter down his torso, you spy a knife strapped to his waist, black masses you think are guns. Dangerous. Seconds tick by, you are still alive. With each passing moment, you start thinking maybe you’ll make it home, maybe he won’t hurt you, maybe it’s all just-

“Беги домой, маленькая Дороти.”

His voice is rough, deep, the language sharp and oddly unfitting. When you don’t do anything, your feet still frozen to the ground, he tries motioning away from himself. It doesn’t escape you that he keeps glancing down the street, the set of his jaw like what you’ll see on your father sometimes. Stressed, but it’s laced with something else, something you can’t quite place yet. Rifling through your basket, you close your hand around a familiar shape, the wrapper crackling as you pull it out from the mass of candy.

He hesitates when you hand it to him, perhaps some part of him recognizes the gesture. You’re handing him one of your favourites, all too aware that you only have one other left. If you’re gonna get away alive, you might as well thank him. Like the people who paid the ferryman in the story from your favourite book. When he finally makes up his mind, his hand shoots out to snatch the candy from you, circling it between his fingers. The mask comes off, and somehow you expected there to be… more beneath it. A monster, something grotesque. Not this, not someone who looks so… ordinary. His teeth glint in the low light as he tears the wrapper, pulling the candy from it.

“Спасибо, маленькая,” he grinds out between chews, reaching out to gently push you away, pointing down the street. “Беги, пожалуйста.”

When you still don’t move, he moves to lunge at you, the movement meant to scare you. It unfreezes you, your yelp shrill in the quiet night, and you run without looking back, clutching your basket to you. Your mother says you look like you’ve seen a ghost when you stumble through the front door, tuts and chuckles when you nod mutely. He was a ghost, you tell yourself that night when you go to bed. Part of you reasons that he wasn’t real, he can’t get to you. Part of you fears he will haunt you.

Isn’t that what ghosts do?

He never comes for you. Despite the vigil you keep for the days following Halloween, you never see him again. Nothing strange happens. Your friend gets a new cat. There’s a funeral for someone one street over, your sister kisses a boy and gets mono. No ghost turns up at your window, nor anyone else’s window. Not that you actually ask, but if a strange man turned up at your window, people would know. Especially if it’s the ghost.

2014

Time passes. Days, weeks. Time flies. Months. Years. With each passing measure of time, you lose him more and more. One Halloween in college, you find yourself doing a double take when someone enters the party dressed in black. It’s some video game character, but from the corner of your eye, it could be him. You try to remember, and the vision of him is still as clear as the night you saw him, but his voice is lost. The words he spoke, foreign to your ears then, have dissolved into a muddle, distorted and weakened.

Years later you wake from a dream of sparkly shoes and a shapeless shadow, its edges flimsy as it reaches for you. Your thundering heartbeat as you jolt awake screams that you dodged some incomprehensible danger, but your mind persists that it is something familiar. There was that… man? No, a ghost? There was something that one Halloween. The image is vague, the sensation of fingers crinkling around candy wrapper and a firm push on your shoulders.

No matter, it’s been years. You’re living in the present, and the present tells you to go back to sleep because work is sure to be hell tomorrow. Never a boring day at SHIELD.

And then Captain Rogers defects.

And then the Triskellion falls.

And then you see him.

He’s all over the news, the internet, and just like that he materializes in your mind just as he was then. Black clothes, the mask, the weapons. You finally see his eyes, cold and determined, and something in you reacts violently, refuses to accept. Swallowing it down, you force yourself to think logically. It’s a memory, tainted by nostalgia, by your own insufficiency. It’s him, all of him.

But just like Halloween, he manages to slip away. One moment he is everywhere, the next there is not a peep to be heard. You scour the internet, tries to dig through the mass of files released by agent Romanov. Your world shrinks, the walls seemingly closing in as you realize the place you worked at was a front for something far more sinister. Some of the files make you sick. Some make you cry. You try cross referencing and searching for anything you could come up with. Halloween 1996. Russian attacker. It yields nothing conclusive. Russian soldier yields a few vague references to a HYDRA program, taken over by the Russians. One file is all text in Russian cyrillic, and you know Google translate enough that you won’t gain much by trying to run the entire file. You copy the title instead, pasting it into the translator.

ПРОЕКТ ЗИМНИЙ СОЛДАТ

PROJECT WINTER SOLDIER

Using that as your search term yields much of the same results, all vague, all text, all ominous in their content. It’s gonna take another two years before the name truly means something to you, to the world. For now, you ghost remains a ghost.

Present day

What remains of the Avengers, of SHIELD, has been salvaged as best anyone has managed to. It’s in shambles, but it’s something. A tentative truce has been called between the factions, lines of communication established and dutifully used as signs of good faith. You’re called back, vetted and confirmed, an… intermediary of sorts. It’s absurd, having to play go-between, but you’re happy to do it. A lot of people moved on after D.C, you almost missed your shot, but a missed bus gave you the opportunity to step up to the plate again.

A lot of your work is making arrangements. Captain Rogers and his team are still keeping their base of operations in Wakanda, and you have finally reached a stage where the plane you’re on now is headed for the wealthy nation. Stark insisted on a jet, horrified at the thought of sending you a) on a commercial flight, and b) flying coach. That alone had taken a good deal of negotiating, and for you to overcome your fear of flying.

It’s not the flying that’s got your stomach in knots now, though. It’s seeing him again. For all the mess caused in Vienna and Leipzig, it gave you a name. Bucky Barnes. The internet was full of information, part of the Captain America-exhibition at the Smithsonian dedicated to him. For decades, Sergeant James Barnes had been kept and brainwashed by HYDRA. He was your ghost, the stranger from Halloween. Captain Rogers has been loath to mention anything about Sergeant Barnes. Thoughts swirl through your head as you clutch the armrests of the leather seat, knuckles paling by the second. It’s preposterous to think he’d remember you, right? You were a kid, he was brainwashed.

Stepping off the jet in Wakanda, the heat and humidity hit you like a wall after the air conditioned flight, your skin flushing before you’ve descended the stairs. The perk of flying Stark and being received by the king of Wakanda is that you don’t have to suffer for long. In time, there will be opportunity to acclimatise, to enjoy the balmy weather. For now, a sleek town car waits, and beyond that, a meeting you have feared and expected for months.

Maybe you’re a little disappointed that there’s no sign of him when you’re brought into a conference room. The smile you give Captain Rogers is hopefully convincing enough to hide your disappointment that he and Sam Wilson, along with king T’Challa and a few guards from the Dora Milaje are the only ones present. The disappointment will just have to wait to be felt.

The king is a generous man, offering you a grand bedroom in the private section of the royal residence. You’re not due to return to New York until the day after tomorrow, and the king had graciously offered to host you while you were there. His insistence when you said you would be happy to book a hotel had rivalled that of Tony’s.

The night is humid, but mercifully cooler, a soft fog rolling in from the mountains and wrapping around the large statues situated in front of the palace. It set a chill travelling up your spine as you rifle through your luggage for something to wear. The business-like outfit lies discarded on the floor, and even though you are bone-tired, something pulls at you. Maybe it’s the fog. Maybe it’s knowing he’s here.

And maybe you pick the blue dress on purpose, takimg extra care to part your hair and make two neat braids.

If someone asks, you’re only heading to the communal kitchen for something to drink. Your footfall, though muted by the slippers on your feet, make a dull echo as you ghost down the corridors. It’s beauty beyond anything you could have dreamed of, an understated pride and majesty emanating from the rooms. You see no one, but you don’t doubt someone knows exactly where you are.

The kitchen is empty, dimly lit and open in its design. Quickly, you make a beeline for the row of fridges, opening one after the other and revelling in the cool air until you find one stocked with water bottles. Picking out two, you close the door, only to walk into what feels like a wall.

“Sorry- God, I- Are you all right?” A hand grabs you to steady you, the grip gentle and warm.

You don’t need to look up to know who you’ll see. In fact, you fight the urge to do just that, knowing that if you do, there’s no telling what will trip across your lips.

“I haven’t seen you before. Did… Are you the, uh, envoy from Stark?”

You can’t help but snort, your eyes flitting up to meet the crystalline eyes trained on you. “That sure beats go-between.”

There’s a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth, a little spark in his gaze that flicker out when his eyebrows knit together. His head cocks to one side, taking a step back to look at you. It gives you the chance to look at him, really look at him, for the first time since that Halloween. He seems… bigger. Shouldn’t he look smaller, the memories of your childhood surely having exaggerated his size.

“I’m Bucky, and…” He reaches out, his right hand coming up to twirl one of your braids around his index finger. “I… I know you, don’t I?”

I know you, don’t I?

Movement is restricted. Words well up only to die in your throat. You barely manage the small nod in confirmation, your gaze fixed on him as he tries to figure out why he knows you. Bucky lets go of your braid, his eyes drifting close, lips moving, seemingly repeating something.

“Беги домой… Беги домой…”

Bucky snaps his eyes open, lips frozen slightly parted, taking another step backwards. It almost looks like he might run, but he forces himself to approach you again, fingers trembling as they reach out to pull both braids to rest against your chest.

“You… Dorothy. You were smaller.” When you nod, he cracks into a smile that is laced with so much relief you would think his entire existence has hinged on this detail.

“You gave me candy. I don’t think- It felt like it was the first time I tasted anything that sweet. It was the first thing I ever bought myself after…” He falls quiet, but you can see where his thoughts are heading. After D.C. After the helicarriers. After the fall of SHIELD.

“I got out before the building came down,” you offer, shifting the bottles you’re holding,the condensation starting to seep through the material of your dress. “And I’m not HYDRA. I doubt anyone has been vetted more thoroughly than the few of us who came back after the Accords backfired. I’m pretty sure all the Avengers know the exact balance of my bank account and what my favourite ice cream flavour is.”

Bucky nods, quiet and polite, but you can imagine he’s not going to take your word for it. You probably wouldn’t either. It’s a bizarre situation, and you wouldn’t fault him for seeing more than coincidences in the way your life has played out.

“I thought you were a ghost, you know.” You smirk at the idea you carried with you for so many years, childishly silly now that you stand before him. “You were the strangest thing I’d ever seen, and I saw you on Halloween.”

“That was the point,” Bucky mumbles, looking down at the fingers of his metal arm, no doubt restored by king T’Challa’s skilled scientists and engineers, as they whir ever so softly before closing to a fist. “A ghost has no body, no life, no meaning beyond haunting.”

“Hey…”

“It’s fitting. Restless spirit, killing people. Just… passing through and never staying, never living.”

You want to reach out for him, but even if he is in control, you still have a healthy respect for the material of his clenched fist. “You didn’t kill me. I saw you, right? Would have been so easy to kill me, dispose of a witness.”

Bucky looks up again, brow furrowed. “You… You were a kid.”

“I saw you. You talked to me.”

“Told you to go home.”

“Exactly. I’m still here, aren’t I? And so are you. You’re not a ghost, Bucky. I walked into you, didn’t pass through you.”

It’s not like you expect to be able to solve his moral torment. You wouldn’t even know where to begin. Bucky doesn’t seem like he’s overly keen on discussing it either, whether it’s because of you or the time or both. His lips are pressed together, the metal hand still a tight fist by his side.

“I should let you… I should go back to bed,” you flounder, giving a weak smile.

Bucky hums, avoiding your gaze and stepping aside to let you exit the kitchen. Walking past him draws the urge to touch him, to comfort him to the surface again, but you don’t want to be too forward. You barely know each other. You were a kid, he was brainwashed, you gave him candy, and he-

You stop, turning around. “The candy. It was the first thing you bought after D.C?”

Bucky inhales sharply, pulled from his thoughts. “Hmm?”

“You said it felt like you’d never tasted anything as sweet and that it was the first thing you bought.”

A smile flickers across his face. “Sort of. Left the US pretty much immediately after D.C. First time I ever had money to buy myself food, I almost fainted in the candy aisle. This vivid memory of sweet and sugary pushed through. Probably looked like an idiot, buying one of each kind of candy bar, trying to find the one you gave me.”

“It was my favourite,” you remark, “still is.”

“Never found it. Got a couple that came close, but never exactly like that.” He shrugs his shoulders, relaxing his fist and shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweats. “Started thinking it was just something my mind exaggerated because of the circumstances.”

“It’s not, I can tell you that.” Your heart jumps when you catch the faint chuckle. “Okay, well… I should… go.”

“Goodnight, Dorothy.”

“Goodnight, Tin Man.”

—

He doesn’t see her for the rest of her stay, but he can tell when she’s left. Knowing now that she was real, not just a figment of his scrambled mind, her presence in the palace had set off something like a proximity radar. He respectfully kept his distance, avoided any more nightly excursions, but just knowing that she was there, real and alive after everything, had him buzzing. It vanished the second she left to fly back, finding out from overhearing a conversation between two guards. Asking Steve was out of the question.

It’s not that he doubts himself and his memory when she’s gone. Or maybe just a little. So much in there is twisted, blurred or simply existing as a carved out space he’ll never be able to fill.

Time is still strange. Some days he wakes up, unsure of the date, his view offering no clear indicators as to whether it’s spring or fall. His hand will shoot out, rifle for his phone, pressing the home button to make the screen light up with today’s time and date.

It says October now, and his body tells him it should be squirming, fighting a chill that now more than ever has him itching and crawling in his own skin. His body still remembers the cold Brooklyn winters, just as it remembers the cruel bite of cryo before his mind went black. He hasn’t felt that in months now, always waking up to a perfectly temperate room, silky sheets soft and cool underneath him and a gentle breeze weaving in past the thin curtains of his balcony. The part of him that despises the cold appreciates it, relaxes to find himself back in what has become his new normal.

Two polite knocks on the door draws his attention. Though the force behind them has changed, but Bucky lived with Steve long enough to recognize the man’s knocks. Clearing his throat, his calls out for his friend to enter, picking his sweats off the floor and pulling them on.

“Something in the mail for you. Told them I’d take it to you,” Steve tells him by way of greeting, holding up a bulky-looking package.

Apprehension shoots through Bucky’s body, tenses muscles, pulls his face into an expression that could never be mistaken as anything but suspicion. No one outside the Avengers knows he is here. None of the Avengers would send him anything.

“Hey, Buck… Buck, relax. It’s okay, it’s been scanned, it’s harmless, I promise. Nothing sinister.”

“Who is it from?” he bites out, still standing with his legs apart, ready to jump back if necessary.

“Why don’t you open it and find out?” Steve smirks, setting the package down on the small table by the door, turning on his heel to leave.

Alone again, Bucky approaches the package with suspicion. It’s been scanned, he repeats. Not a threat. Just a package. Poking it reveals it to be… pliable. Made of something rustling. Plastic? Apprehension gives way to curiosity, and he pushes the index finger of his left hand under the sealed flap, pulling to make the paper and bubble wrap underneath give way and tipping it to let the content fall into his hand.

It’s… The laughter bubbles up and out of him, blooming through his chest as letters in vivid colours proclaims it to be a family sized bag of a wrapped candy his mind remembers. Taped to it is a scrap of paper, the script hurried, ink having bled a little in a few places. Bucky tears open the bag, plucking out a piece and shedding the wrapping, biting into it while smiling down at the note.

Consider this your clock, Tin Man. Happy Halloween.

- Dorothy

@ursulaismymiddlename, @loup-malin, @bakexprayxlove, @brookebarnes, @callamint, @mrshopkirk, @hellomissmabel, @sgtbxckybxrnes, @ceebeetumbles, @thetalesofmooseandsquirrel, @lenia1d, @andhiseyesweregreen, @basicallyericharris, @thatgirlsar, @bubblebathsandsarcasm, @amrita31199, @netflixa, @erisjade, @rockintensse, @marvelrevival, @writemarvelousthings, @gallifreyansass, @allyallyally-oh, @shy2shot, @angryschnauzer, @engineeringgirlcve, @hellstempermentalangel, @whyisbuckyso, @melconnor2007, @snuggleducky, @impalaimages, @shifutheshihtzu, @superwholocknda

@avengerofyourheart, @booksandshowsandmovies-ohmy, @themcuhasruinedme, @creideamhgradochas, @feepsmoothie, @nuvoleincielo, @wellfuckbuck, @rotisserierogers, @sarahsassafras13, @romanosgirl1978, @rrwilson66

@captainrogerss, @sebbytrash, @rosyskies, @cyanide-candyx, @hexacrypt, @4theluvofall, @just-another-fangirl777, @avengingnights, @softwhispers, @therealgingermermaid, @c-maximoffs, @ipaintmelodies, @reniescarlett, @mizzzpink, @winter-in-wakanda, @viollettes, @lenavonschweetz, @stephanie11220

[shirlleycoyle]

Inside ‘TALON,’ the Nationwide Network of AI-Enabled Surveillance Cameras

"Give your neighborhood peace of mind," an advertisement for Flock, a line of smart surveillance cameras, reads. A February promotional video claims that the company's "mission is to eliminate nonviolent crime across the country. We can only do that by working with every neighborhood and every police department throughout the country."

Quietly, this seems to be happening. Flock, whose cameras use automatic license plate reader technology, is well on its way to deploying a connected network of AI-powered cameras that detect the movements of cars across the United States.

The cameras, which are sold to law enforcement, homeowners associations, and businesses, can automatically record when a "non-resident" vehicle drives into a community, and alert police to cars on a hotlist. Communities have created "virtual gates" around their neighborhoods, with cameras capturing each vehicle driving in and out of the area. Through a program called TALON, this little-known company is allowing police officers to track cars—and by extension, specific people—outside of their own jurisdictions.

Hundreds of pages of internal police emails from nearly 20 police departments around the country obtained using public records requests by Motherboard show how Flock has slowly expanded its network, helped law enforcement agencies gain access to it, and has rolled out TALON with very little fanfare. TALON gives police access to a nationwide network of cameras that have been installed by law enforcement agencies around the country.

The TALON network offers up to 500 million scans of vehicles a month, according to one email obtained by Motherboard. Over 500 police departments in more than 1,000 cities have access to Flock cameras, according to marketing material. In the promotional video, the company claims to be able to detect people, cars, animals, and bicycles, and says it is "collecting evidence" that helps police solve 4 to 5 crimes per hour. The administrator of the neighborhood's camera network can make the data Flock captures available to, say, the police, the home owner association's board, or the individual members of an entire neighborhood.

Previous coverage has focused on how residents in individual neighborhoods have banded together to purchase Flock cameras for their own use. In 2019, the Los Angeles Times reported how members of a community in Sherman Oaks purchased the cameras to keep tabs on which cars are driving in and out of their own area.

Emails obtained by Motherboard show police-purchased Flock cameras may be installed outside a Burger King, a Lowes, or other businesses, and that controversial Fusion Centers, which hoover in data from various federal, state, and local sources to monitor large areas of the country at once, have also discussed gaining access to the footage.

The emails also show how Flock works closely with police to try and generate positive media coverage, improve their PR strategy, and ultimately "get your jurisdiction activated" and "bring more private cameras into the area." In some cases Flock has helped write press releases for agencies, the emails show.

"I think of it as the Ring doorbell of LPR," Sergeant JT Maultsby from the Raleigh Police Department wrote in one July 2019 email to colleagues.

Flock marketing material included in emails obtained by Motherboard. Image: Motherboard

Garrett Langley founded Flock in 2017 after being the victim of property crime in Atlanta, according to the company's website.

"I'm not someone with 25 years of public safety or law enforcement experience. I'm just a civilian that happens to be an electrical engineer, and when I think about the larger mission of Flock, it is to eliminate crime," Langley told Motherboard in a phone call.

Traditionally, license plate reader cameras have been the expensive property of law enforcement, but Flock's much cheaper and sometimes solar-powered, $2,500 (annually) hardware has tapped a whole new market of private residents who also want to track vehicles in their neighborhoods with the goal of preventing and helping investigate crime.

"If our average private customer has two cameras, it's probably because they're a one-way-in, one-way-out cul de sac," Langley said. "This technology has existed for a long time, it's just never been widely available. And now, whether you're a community of 20 homes, or a community of 2,000 homes, you can now afford, what I would argue, is the best in class for crime prevention."

But beyond the cute and suburb-friendly marketing, Flock has privacy experts increasingly concerned about a pervasive, expanding network of AI-powered cameras that can be leveraged by both private residents and law enforcement.

"ALPR is a mass surveillance technology. It does not discriminate between people who are involved in crimes and people who are innocent. It just collects data on everyone, with the assumption that maybe one day you might commit a crime," Dave Maass, director of investigations at activist group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told Motherboard in a phone call.

Do you have any more information about Flock? Do you use it, or do you know about a case of abuse? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Such a system, like others before it, brings up questions: Is it biased in how and where the hardware is placed? Is the technology disproportionately used against cars belonging to Black people and people of color? Is the data eventually abused?

"My concern, much as with with Ring is that these technologies enable a massively expanded surveillance network that in most cases has little to no oversight or accountability," Chris Gilliard, a research fellow with the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, told Motherboard in an online chat. "On top of that, I worry that it creates another vector for neighborhoods, and by extension law enforcement, to surveil Black folks who are just going about their business. We saw this recently when LAPD requested Ring footage of Black Lives Matter protestors."

"As the Supreme Court has repeatedly explained, police access to people’s electronically collected location history raises serious privacy concerns. License plate readers can create a precise record of where we go and when, and over time can reveal a wealth of sensitive information about our lives," Nate Wessler, deputy project director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Motherboard in an email.

"It is no comfort when these devices are being deployed in supposedly piecemeal fashion by scattered private users," he added. "By providing police with an internet platform to easily stitch together information from dozens or hundreds of license plate readers—without getting a search warrant from a judge—companies like Flock threaten to enable pervasive tracking of our activities and movements."

Flock's cameras come in two models: the Sparrow for collecting footage that can be reviewed later and potentially used as evidence, and the Falcon, which can also send automatic alerts to police if the camera detects a vehicle on a hotlist. The cameras can work at night, and label vehicles that don't belong to the local community as "non-resident." Video surveillance trade publication IPVM found in its tests that the Flock hardware generally worked well, but had some issues misidentifying some vehicles as buses or misreading the state on a license plate. A publicly available document published by the County of San Diego says that Flock cameras work across distances of 8-120ft. Maass pointed Motherboard to the document.

Flock marketing material included in emails obtained by Motherboard. Image: Motherboard

The company also offers a product that turns existing internet connected cameras into Flock-enabled cameras, and the hardware can be connected to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which automatically alerts law enforcement when the camera detects someone in that database. The NCIC includes information on stolen vehicles, immigration violators, missing persons, sex offenders, gang members, and more. Flock pushes an average of 120 hotlist notifications every hour, according to its marketing material.

With these lists, police have wide latitude to use Flock for whatever is legally permissible in their own jurisdiction. The County of San Diego document also says that police departments can upload their own custom hotlists in a spreadsheet.

When asked if Flock could include scanning for immigration-related license plates, Flock's Langley told Motherboard "Yes, if it was legal in a state, we would not be in a position to stop them. I don't think we would be in a position to encourage it either."

"We give our customers the tools to decide and let them go from there," he added.

Police can also use a "Google-like" search feature to filter footage for certain types and colors of cars, as well as whether they have a roof rack or spoiler. The cameras also record vehicles that do not have a license plate at all, and can perform "convoy analysis" to identify suspicious groups of vehicles, marketing material shows. This year, the company plans to introduce a reverse image search feature and an app police officers can use to take a photo of a car and then look up the previous movements of that vehicle, it adds.

Beyond automatic alerts, communities can, similar to Ring, elect to provide their footage to a law enforcement agency who may then use it to investigate a potential crime.

"Our customers tend to buy this product to better serve their local law enforcement agency," Langley added.

The potential use cases are not just for law enforcement, however. When asked whether Flock data has ever been requested as part of a civil divorce case, Langley said, "In my knowledge, which is obviously not perfect, there's been one example of what you're describing, but by the time all of the legal proceedings and everything went through, it was past 30 days, and the footage was gone." (Camera footage is stored on Flock's systems for 30 days, the emails say. But police can download the data and keep hold of it if it is used as evidence in a criminal case, Flock told Motherboard in an email.)

At least some police officers are facing an overload of footage and material as citizens continue to move into self-surveillance tools, like Ring and Flock.

"Another issue I see in the future is adjusting expectations of the residents we serve as we are seeing a trend where we are overloaded with video evidence and multiple databases (RING, Nextdoor, individual cell phones and businesses, etc.)," Sgt. Bruce Clark of the San Antonio Police Department wrote to colleagues in an August 2019 email.

Flock marketing material included in emails obtained by Motherboard. Image: Motherboard

Once a community installs a set of cameras, Flock may then reach out to police departments to let them know about the possibility of accessing the footage.

"Would love to talk to you about access to free cameras already installed in Tucson (MOU) [memorandum of understanding] as well as access to State/national cameras (all free…)," a Flock territory sales manager wrote to the Tucson Police Department in an October 2020 email. Police can also use a "Camera Map" feature to see where cameras are located and then request access themselves, another email adds. Flock told Motherboard this map includes cameras from neighborhoods or small businesses within a certain radius.

Fusion Centers have also expressed interest in accessing Flock data.

"FLOCK already has their license plate reader systems in several neighborhoods in North SA [San Antonio] now," James Glass, the deputy director of the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, wrote in an October 2020 email to colleagues. "In order to be granted free access to search the FLOCK system for license plate reader hits, we are asked to agree to sign this MOU." Glass did not respond to a request for comment.

Ray Schultz, the chief of the Memorial Villages Police Department in Texas, told Motherboard the department recovered 61 stolen vehicles last year, with a $1.8 million value of vehicles recovered since it started using the ALPR system.

"A couple more great successes this weekend," Schultz wrote in a June 2020 email to Flock employees. "2 recoveries, including one with stolen ID, a Stimulus Check and Fake ID's. A few pics are below." Schultz clarified to Motherboard that the Stimulus Check was stolen, too. Flock encourages police officers to share these sorts of success stories with the company.

Similar to how Ring works hand-in-hand with police departments to help craft press releases and promote sales of its cameras, Flock's relationship extends beyond just selling cameras or providing law enforcement access to any generated footage.

Details on a Flock deployment available on a publicly accessible URL included in emails obtained by Motherboard. Image: Motherboard

In one email, a Flock staffer offered members of the New Lenox Police Department their abilities for "drafting social media posts, pitching local reporters, writing press releases." The purpose, ultimately, is to "generate some goodwill and get your jurisdiction activated, bring more private cameras into the area, and highlight your successes!" the email from the Flock staffer continues. "Please use us as your resource!"

The result is a circle, with Flock working with police to generate positive coverage, to encourage more communities to purchase cameras, and to then provide access to that footage to the police, and around again.

"We have seen these stories be very successful in helping grow the awareness of the ALPRs, helping gain traction with HOAs [home owners associations], banks, and other businesses that could potentially buy more cameras for the Village," another Flock staffer wrote to the New Lenox Police Department. The email added that Flock has helped craft press releases for other Illinois agencies.

"I think they want to give it to us so they can say they are working with SAPD. Same method as Ring Doorbell," Aric C. Jimenez from the San Antonio Police Department wrote to colleagues in a July 2019 email.

Josh Thomas, VP of marketing for Flock, acknowledged in a phone call this sort of PR relationship between a private company and law enforcement agencies was "probably not standard."

"Historically law enforcement agencies just aren't that great at explaining to the public how they're using their technology," he said. "We need to let the public know what is happening, and we should work with them to make that possible."

Flock marketing material included in emails obtained by Motherboard. Image: Motherboard

Flock's business with law enforcement appears to be booming.

"What we're seeing is, very specifically, a market war going on between two particular companies," Maass from the EFF told Motherboard. One of those is Motorola Solutions, which owns Vigilant Solutions, an established ALPR vendor which sells cameras to law enforcement. The other is law enforcement contracting giant Axon, which has partnered with Flock, including integrating Flock with Axon's own in-car cameras.

"Axon Fleet 3 mobile ALPR will be integrated into the Flock Safety System allowing law enforcement to use Flock’s Vehicle Fingerprint Technology across both mobile and fixed ALPR reads. This will create an unmatched city-wide ALPR network designed to not only capture license plate numbers, but to capture objective vehicle evidence to help law enforcement solve more crime," Flock marketing material reads.

Historically, Vigilant had likely the largest market share of law enforcement-owned ALPR cameras around the country. But because Flock is so much cheaper it has been able to flip a growing number of police departments to its products, Maass said. Flock told Motherboard it has acquired some law enforcement customers who previously worked with other vendors, but also attributed that to what they said was a better product and their commitment to "ethical development."

"From what I understand there are people in the law enforcement community who have been turned off by Vigilant Solutions," Maass said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has bought access to Vigilant's nationwide dataset; Customs and Border Protection likely did the same. Vigilant also offers facial recognition technology. Vigilant is still a formidable presence in the market, however, working with more than 1,600 agencies according to the public County of San Diego document.

"Flock, because it is affiliated with Axon now, is posturing itself as the more ethical solution than Vigilant," Maass said. (Axon also makes tasers and body cameras, and has faced criticism from civil rights groups.)

In the recent marketing video, a Flock employee says "privacy is very important to Flock, and we have done a lot to protect privacy of our customers." The employee appears to be talking about the privacy of the people who own or administrate cameras, not the privacy of the general public, who may drive past a network of Flock cameras. Residents of communities that have bought the cameras can ask to opt-out of having their vehicle movements recorded, Flock's website reads. For other people who may drive past cameras, there is no meaningful mechanism of consent as they may not be aware such cameras are recording their movements or which neighborhoods to contact one by one in an effort to opt-out.

Some of the emails obtained by Motherboard include invitations from Flock to police departments to join online "roundtables" with Flock's Langley and Axon CEO Rick Smith.

"Rick will discuss ethics-first design of ALPRs and how that aligns with police reform efforts and where the technology is going. Joining him will be Flock Safety CEO and Founder, Garret Langley. The Axon AI Ethics Board is an independent body that is rapidly gaining influence among both law enforcement and community/justice reform communities," one of the emails reads. Another shows an AXON employee talking to members of the San Antonio Police Department offering to answer questions about Flock.

Maass also pointed to Flock's 30-day retention period, but doesn't think that will necessarily result in fewer plates being scanned. Because of Flock's cheaper price, "police can install more of them," Maass said. "Combined with all of the home owners associations, there actually may be even worse problems."

Police have been purchasing and installing Flock's cameras around their neighborhoods, according to the emails.

"Myself and Sgt. Nuesse have been working with Walmart, Lowes, and Burger King to secure permission to either sink a pole or attach to their existing for 03, 04 and 17," Hilary Davis, the deputy chief of the New Lenox Police Department, wrote in an August 2020 email to Flock, referring to a specific series of camera installations.

Some of the emails included links to web pages used by Flock's customers and engineers to lay out where the cameras are to be set up. As well as the New Lenox cameras, another showed camera locations in Atherton, California.

Details on a Flock deployment available on a publicly accessible URL included in emails obtained by Motherboard. Image: Motherboard

The City Council approved the purchase of 16 cameras in May 2020, according to a local media report.

"In addition to the 16 ALPR cameras located along the Atherton borders, Staff believes that the presence of additional ALPR cameras in an [sic] around the backstreets will further increase the chances of identifying a vehicle used in the commission of a crime. Thus, staff seeks to form a Public/Private partnership opportunity with any resident interested in purchasing a Flock ALPR camera," a City Council report reads. "In short, a private resident would fund single or multiple Flock ALPR cameras and the Atherton Police Department would assume the administrative responsibilities associated with the camera’s operation. Staff has already been approached by residents in the Lindenwood and Lloyden Park neighborhoods who expressed interest in this proposed collaborative crime solving effort."

Drawing even clearer comparisons to Vigilant, Flock now offers law enforcement clients access to the nationwide network of police-purchased cameras, called the Total Analytics Law Officers Network, or TALON.

"TALON—a local and national plate search with up to 500M monthly plate reads," one October 2020 email from a Flock employee to the New Lenox Police Department reads. Flock publicly announced the TALON product in August 2020. Each agency which owns Flock cameras opts-in to sharing their footage, the blog post adds.

Although operating in a more concentrated area than Flock cameras spread across the United States, in Johannesburg, South Africa, a company called Vumacam has installed smart cameras across a mostly white, middle-class suburb to increase the security of their neighborhood, in what can be described as an "AI-powered apartheid."

With Flock, "When you have these systems paid for by wealthier businesses, or wealthier neighborhoods, that may result in a disproportionate level of service between communities," Maass said. On one side, you may have a richer, whiter neighborhood, and on the other, a poorer Black community, but both with car thefts.

"If one neighborhood has a bunch of surveillance cameras designed to stop those car thefts, then perhaps they're going to have police come out and solve those crimes more than in other communities," Maass added.

Police departments may collect data on more communities than others, either with intent as part of a deliberate program, or passively by, say, responding to more crimes with an ALPR camera in their vehicle and then collecting more data with that, Maass said.

Police, for their part, will likely continue to both buy and obtain footage from, Flock cameras.

"We actually continue to encourage residents to obtain and use video doorbells and outside video systems. We have found that the various tools help investigators," Schultz, the chief of the Memorial Villages Police Department in Texas, said.

Inside ‘TALON,’ the Nationwide Network of AI-Enabled Surveillance Cameras syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[wozziebear]

Looking through the lawsuit, the scope and shamelessness of Google's greed would appear to be stark. Project Bernanke, for example, is claimed to take data from publishers' ad servers to boost Google's own services. Project NERA, to create a "not owned but operated" walled garden for users if they used any Google service. "Project Jedi" was allegedly meant to freeze out independent ad exchanges by using insider knowledge, and in "Jedi Blue", Google is alleged to have conspired with Facebook to parcel out the goodies between themselves.

Online harms don't need dangerous legislation, they need a spot of naval action

Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

Think your phone is snooping on you? Hold my beer, says basic physics

The planet survived six hours without Facebook. Let's make it longer next time

Please, no Moore: 'Law' that defined how chips have been made for decades has run itself into a cul-de-sac

Windows 11 still doesn't understand our complex lives – and it hurts

There are other charges in the 173-page unredacted filing, which you can and should read here [PDF]. If the allegations are true, the breadth and depth and sheer focused intent of Google's abuse of its position would be unique. The perversion of the ad market would be intense.

If you're a publisher, your content is like a portfolio of shares you give to a financial institution to handle by judicious trading on the Stock Exchange, with advertisers choosing to buy through their own banks. Only with Google, the financial institutions and the stock exchanges are either owned by the same cartel, or they're shut out of the market. This is hugely illegal in finance, for obvious reasons.

How much does this matter? "Online advertising promotes journalism," except journalism is dying. The money's gone. Where's it gone? Does Google have all the money? It takes up to 42 per cent of the cut from ad money that goes through it, alleges the filing, 42 per cent that can't be spent on content providers like journalists.

Without journalism, you get guaranteed corruption – fine for big companies that are keen to keep their dealings away from the public, and politicians and criminals who can entrench themselves in power and wealth, no questions asked. The big tech platforms don't care about journalism, they care about traffic, so fake news tastes just as good and if the funding comes from dark money, so much the better – they get to keep more of the ad revenue.

As one developer said on Twitter – having read the filing – either Google is screwed or society is. It's hard to argue with that. It's hard to argue that Facebook doesn't have its own equally damning and equally perilous culpabilities.

The deal we struck with Google for all that nice free stuff, the affordable mobile phone ecosystem, the entertaining videos etc. has proved a deal with the devil, and the other devils who infest the seven layers of Hell's own protocol stack. The damage is in plain sight, and these wide-ranging allegations are before the courts, and the decision isn't whether to do anything but what.

Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated like finance, aviation, medicine, and power. The giants who've cheated us must be broken up to their smallest viable constituent parts, and their future interactions be through a framework of radical accountability.

Google's 'Be Evil' transformation is complete: Time for the end game

https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/01/google_opinion_column/ Comments