#hire network engineer
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hiringjournal · 1 month ago
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How to hire a Network Engineer for a Small Business
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A strong and secure IT infrastructure is your keen to sustain your business in the competitive digital age. Whether you are setting up the internal network of your company or troubleshooting technical issues, having the right network engineer in your team can make all the difference.
For smooth operations you must hire a network engineer who can manage your networking needs, optimize performance, and safeguard your system from vulnerabilities. Let’s consider a few key steps that you must follow to find and hire the right talent for your small business.
Steps to Hiring the Right Network Engineer
Determine your network requirements
It's critical to evaluate the unique network requirements of your company before starting your search. Do you require continuous maintenance and troubleshooting, or are you searching for someone to design and execute your network from scratch? 
A network engineer may be needed by a small business to manage duties including firewall setup, router configuration, network security, and performance monitoring. Finding the perfect applicant for your network engineering job will be made easier if you have a clear idea of its size, complexity, and top goals before hiring.
Look for relevant skills and certifications
In the field of network engineering, credentials and expertise are essential. Strong knowledge of networking technologies, including TCP/IP, VPNs, LAN/WAN, and firewalls, is essential for a certified network engineer. Furthermore, credentials like the Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE), CompTIA Network+, and Cisco CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) are excellent measures of technical proficiency. Be careful to keep an eye out for these credentials when you hire a network engineer to make sure the person you choose has the abilities and expertise required to manage the IT infrastructure of your small business.
Evaluate problem-solving approach
Network engineers frequently have to work independently and fix problems as they come up in small business settings. It's critical to evaluate the candidate's capacity for problem-solving and their ability to act fast under pressure. By inquiring about prior projects or particular network problems they have resolved, you can assess these abilities. Hiring a network engineer will be crucial to the smooth operation of your company because of their fast diagnosis and resolution of problems.
Ensure competent soft skills
A network engineer should not only possess the necessary technical skills but also mesh well with the company culture. They'll probably have to work with non-technical employees and translate difficult networking concepts into understandable language. Particularly in a small business setting where the network engineer may need to collaborate closely with different departments, strong communication skills are essential. 
The total effectiveness of your operations will be increased if the candidate can collaborate successfully with the team and clearly communicate technical information.
Consider outsourcing vs in-house hiring options
Choosing between hiring a full-time network engineer in-house and outsourcing to a managed service provider is a common dilemma for small organizations. Outsourcing could be a more affordable choice if your networking requirements are simple and don't call for continuous supervision. 
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On the other hand, having an internal network engineer gives you more control and quicker response times if your company depends significantly on its network. To make the best decision, carefully consider the needs of your organization and make the right talent pick to strengthen your IT infrastructure by hiring network engineers.
Summing Up
To find and hire a network engineer is a critical step in ensuring the security and stability of your IT systems. Follow the above-discussed steps to confidently hire competent experts who will support your business growth and ensure smooth execution of your business operations. 
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orcelito · 1 month ago
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I do find it so funny that I will graduate college days away from my birthday. Like my birthday is literally in between the end of the semester ("graduation") and commencement
It really will be like a joint graduation & birthday party for me lmao
#speculation nation#i dont really do birthday parties anymore. havent in a long time. mostly just go out and do smth fun around my bday. ya kno#also have cake but like not in a party way. just like. here's cake lol#but im probably only gonna graduate from college once. which means i might as well live it up and all.#invite all sorts of extended family and people who have known me. etc etc.#actually it just kinda sunk in that i am. Computer and Information Technology (Systems Analysis and Design focus) w a minor in Communication#like those are words. it's a lot of words but actually it really is pretty accurate?? like that's indeed what ive been studying.#now how much i *remember* is another question. considering how long ive taken to get thru school lol#but that's what people will see on my degree. that's my Thing. graduated in Computer Systems and Talking.#idk it's just weird to have spent so much of my life on this and like That's the culmination. it took so much work.#even beyond a normal 4 years. i switched my major *twice*. switched my minor too.#first year engineering to undecided liberal arts (as a temp major trying to switch to computer science bc i couldnt stay in FYE)#but then computer science sucked so i switched to trying to get into computer & info tech. which is different. and better.#and ive been in it long enough now that ive kinda forgotten but it did take some fuckin work to switch into it.#like i had to take certain classes first & i couldnt take them during the semesters that in-major students would take them#and i had to have my gpa up to a certain level etc etc. so many hoops to jump thru. i think it took me at least a year. or more. idr#but i made it in and thats my major. thats my thing. computers and information systems and communication.#doesnt FEEL like im an almost-graduate. but then i think about all the things ive taken and learned.#and maybe i dont remember a lot of the more specific things from these classes. but i took core lessons away from each one.#wont be able to recite the theories but i can live them. and thats the point of an education i guess.#anyways im gonna have to start job searching before too long and eughhbb. need to get my license first tho probably.#which i will... i will.... i have so many things to deal with... my life will be So Different in a year...#it will require me to put in the work now. but i can do it. and then a year from now. i'll hopefully be in a better spot.#living somewhere else. graduated from college. with a license and a car. maybe even an IT job of some kind.#kind of scared of trying to find a Big Boy Job. aka a job that requires a degree and networking and all that shit.#rather than just showing up and being like Hi i can do this job. i am not a total drain of a person. hire me please 👍#hfkahfks so many things to think about. and through it all i am still dealing with DEADLINES...!!!!#but yeah this is why my writing has largely been put on hold. idk i have a lot of things im dealing with rn.
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dpr-stay · 1 year ago
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Cupid | LH44
Lewis Hamilton x Reader
Warnings: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, reader is a press officer, don't think gender is stated specifically, implied sexual content, second chance romance, she is not edited, zhou guanyu does not crash, and there are swears.
WC: ~7.7k (kill me now)
I literally hate this, im so sorry. I haven't edited it because it's late but I hope it's not bad. I'll edit it tomorrow. also how is it so longgg, it was supposed to be 5k at best. (why have i written two fics about exes having dinner?)
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Being Valtteri Bottas’ PR Agent was a wild ride. From being hired by him in his early days at Williams, to his successful years at Mercedes, and now at Alfa Romeo, you’d gotten to know the man through all stages of his career. You’d been there to field off questions about his declining performance at Mercedes and had been the first one to slam open the door and start yelling at him after the ‘cheated-on-his-wife’ rumours started floating around.
However, the paycheck was good and, when he wasn’t causing you to spend many nights in meetings about his public image, you didn’t mind the guy, happy to have to follow him around the world for most of the year.
The whole Formula One thing was also a bonus, you having been hooked on the sport after your Dad introduced it to you at an early age. You’d spent countless hours watching your dad watch the car’s speed by on his tv set, finally deciding to pay attention to the race after a few years. And boy, did you love it. 
You’d spent many an early birthday present forcing your parents to take you to the Grand Prix nearest to you, saving up for months to be able to afford the tickets and the travel. Something about the sport just intrigued pre-teen you, nothing to do with Michael Schumacher at all.
So, when the chance to be a F1 driver’s personal PR agent had landed on your advertisement agency’s desk, the place you had worked in the early days of your career, you had snatched it up quickly. The work started well before the start of the 2013 season, you having to meet the man himself and quickly getting adjusted to the many people you’d need to know to network for the guy. 
You’d also met Maldonado’s PR agent, one from the Williams team, who quickly brought up the ideas of doing interviews and press releases between the two drivers. You were swept into the world of the sport, beginning to get into the swing of things. 
Years passed, as did teammates, and Valtteri got signed to Mercedes alongside Lewis Hamilton. You didn’t know if your employment would carry over to Mercedes, but a team shirt and a letter letting you know about when Valtteri’s responsibilities started being mailed to your house confirmed it pretty quickly.
The atmosphere at Mercedes was more professional, though the team still treated each other as family. You’d often see engineers leaving together, going to go get drunk and celebrate Lewis’ common wins and Valtteri’s less common, but still happening, wins. 
You’d often spend hours at a time bargaining for spots for Valtteri in interviews and in PR related spots, and it worked. He was a well-known man, your job was practically done. The bosses were (finally) appeased, Valtteri was happy, and you could finally relax after years straight of stressing about social media and whatever the hell a vine was and if that was still relevant.
And then you’d gone and got yourself trapped in an elevator with Lewis Hamilton. 
Being a Mercedes employee, though only temporary, you’d met Lewis often during interviews and team meetings. However, you never really know a person until you spend five hours sitting opposite each other in a broken-down elevator, only being able to see each other by the light of your phone's flashlight, waiting for some sort of help as there was no signal.
Your conversation had started off hesitantly, you incredibly intimidated by the several-time world champion and him having a fleeting idea of who you were. The conversation had eventually fizzled out till the lift jolted, and a creaking sound echoed into the cavern of the contraption.
Your telling groan that you couldn’t hold back elicited a concerned “You alright?” from Lewis and then you eventually had to tell the professional F1 driver, who raced cars at over 200km/h every other weekend, about your fear of small spaces.
He hadn’t judged you for it, something which you thought was rather nice, and had even tried to adjust for you, moving to the very other side of the small box. Granted, your feet still touched, but you thought the sentiment was nice. 
He was more down to earth than you expected, you knew he wasn’t a prick but you weren’t expecting him to be… kind. Soon enough, after a few more questions about why you were afraid of small spaces and other questions, you both had spiraled into boundless conversation. 
You had talked about things you’d never talked about with someone, let alone a practical stranger, his soothing accent making it easier to open up to him. Things like the future and where it would take you, uncertainties about both your careers, even relationships, the type of conversations you only have trapped in a suspended metal box in the dark. 
Lewis was a fantastic person to talk to. He’d listen when he needed to and returned your conversation with equal energy, as though he actually wanted to be part of the conversation. For some reason he had decided to trust you and had talked freely to you, showing you a side that you doubted many people had seen.
Maybe it was the fact he couldn’t see your face or maybe you just gave off a trustworthy vibe. You didn’t know. All you knew was that, all of a sudden, you were one of Lewis Hamilton’s most trusted confidants. 
Even after someone had finally realised you were missing and exactly where you were, calling more firemen than necessary to bust open the lift though you supposed that’s what you were supposed to do when a ‘Sir’ was trapped in an elevator, Lewis had asked for your phone number and had continued to text you.
You’d met up a few times over the season, quickly becoming incredibly close friends who told each other everything. You’d had to deal with a few teases from Valtteri, who’d shut up when you reminded him who controlled the public’s opinion of him. 
During the off-season Lewis had invited you to come to his house for dinner. You’d went, it was lovely, and then you’d unknowingly experienced the moment of truth in your weird friendship/developing relationship. 
You’d been sitting at Lewis’s dinner table, eagerly chatting to the man about your family, leaning in closer and closer until the both of you were nearly leaning over the table. He’d cooked for you, an act you found incredibly sweet for the multi-millionaire who probably had ten private chefs on speed-dial, and you’d spent the evening wining and dining. 
You had both finished your main courses, talking about everything and anything when a loud bang had come from the upstairs of the man’s house. He glossed right over it, ignoring the loud sound. You had been about to comment on it but, at his nonchalance, you deigned not to. 
The conversation had continued, you both moving from his table to the couch he owned, which probably cost more than your salary earned you, when another loud sound, which sounded suspiciously like a bark, reverberated through his open-plan house. 
He sighed loudly at your questioning look, deciding that he couldn’t ignore it this time. He opened his mouth to speak but, before he could utter a syllable, the tapping of claws sounded against the stairs located, conveniently, in view of his living room. 
You looked up and there stood one of the largest Bulldogs you had ever seen. It was almost majestic, the way that he stood there on the steps, panting as though he’d just run a race. His brown coat was shining in the twilight glow, his muzzle a white colour in comparison to the rest of his body.
He took a few steps down the stairs, tripping on one before regaining his posture. You could only watch in wonder, mouth agape, as the beautiful beast padded down the steps and took a turn, approaching you head on.
The dog was a thing of beauty, his droopy face conveying no discernable emotion except from being tired. He slowly made his way to the couch, you doing nothing but watching as he trotted along the hardwood floors. You didn’t catch Lewis staring at you warily as you were only focused on the thing that younger you would’ve fought a clan of savage chipmunks in order to have.
The dog eventually made his way in front of you, plopping his behind down on the carpet and staring up at you questioningly. You didn’t know what emotion your face was conveying, you only knew it was very silent.
You cautiously reached a hand down to rub between his ears. After a second of your rubbing he made a gruff ‘woof’ sound and you couldn’t help it, an entranced whine releasing from your throat. Collapsing onto the floor beside the dog, you forgot about Lewis, focusing completely on the magnificent specimen of a dog. 
Roscoe, as you’d soon come to know via a fond Lewis, took to you as soon as you took to him. Within a minute the dog was letting you handle him as much as you’d like, rolling over on his back to let you get his stomach and vigorously licking your arm as you pet him. Praises spilled from your lips abound, making sure to let the bulldog know just how much of a good boy he was.
At a cough you turned from your spot on the floor to face Lewis, the radiant grin he had on his face making you feel as though you’d passed a test of sorts. Roscoe also turned to look at Lewis before turning back to you and huffing. 
He moved forward, stepping on your legs, trying to sit on you, before falling off the slope onto the carpet. You then picked him up and cuddled him, trying to keep eye-contact with Lewis as you did so. Lewis’ eyes had turned into half moons as he watched you love on his dog, his smile consuming his face.
“I’m glad he likes you, I don’t know what I would’ve done if he didn’t.” He admitted, placing his drink on a wooden table that stood beside the couch. He then slowly slid from the couch onto the floor beside you, leaning his body down till he was face-to-face with Roscoe and gave the dog a kiss.
“He’s got good taste.” You commented and Lewis released a laugh, glancing up at you.
“Me or the dog?” He asked after a second and you paused, overdramatically placing a finger on your chin and tilting your head as though you were thinking. You then shrugged and he laughed again, you not missing the incredibly familiar twinkle in his eye as he looked at you.
After that, you’d found that Lewis was a lot more eager to meet at his house. Roscoe, accompanied by the sheepish man, was bowling you over nearly every time the door was opened to you. Lewis had also made the trip to your house, though you doubted he’d seen a house as small as yours within the last ten years. He seemed to like it though, settling in quickly and even staying there when you were at work. The off-season had continued like that, casually building your relationship between his training and your many meetings with Alfa Romeo, trying to settle the discussions about your contract after Valtteri’s move.
You’d finally gotten somewhere just before the season started after having to plead to not be replaced by an inside hire, Valtteri backing you up and stating he wouldn’t race without you. Alfa Romeo had accepted and then you finally had the contract you’d wanted. 
You’d left the meeting, Valtteri in tow, before turning around and hugging the man for having your back before you both said goodbye and made your way home and to the gym respectively.
The uber ride you’d hired was peaceful, the man staring straight ahead as you looked out the window, your small apartment building coming into your view. You smiled as you saw it, thinking of the Lewis you’d left in bed that morning, having to pull yourself out before him to go to your meeting. 
The climb up the steps (the elevator didn’t work which Lewis hadn’t complained about when you’d explained it in embarrassment) had seemed to take forever no matter how fast you climbed. When you’d finally made it to your floor, you had to practically drag yourself across the hallway to your door, unlocking it with force after the lock had gotten stuck.
Immediately you could tell something was off, the place seemed colder than that morning and it didn;t have to do with the fact the thermostat had broken a few months ago. All the lights were off and there was no noise coming from within, a telltale sign that Lewis was somewhere within whether he was listening to music or talking to someone. 
That was ok, though, he might’ve been at a meeting like the one you’d had, though you doubted there would be less than 7 zero’s on his contract. But that’s the difference between a big team and Alfa Romeo, you work with what you get.
You looked to the side table, placing your keys in the bowl, noticing the absence of Lewis’ keys. But that made sense if he was at a training session or a meeting, so you continued into the apartment, losing components of your outerwear as you went. 
You’d lost your scarf and blazer as you’d made your way to your bedroom, prepared to change from your business outfit into one of Lewis’ many shirts when you opened your closet. A quick rummage and you couldn’t find any. Weird.
You checked again before moving to another part of your closet and noting the lack of his hoodies or jumpers, which was even weirder as you’d stolen a few of them last week. You turned and moved to your dresser, an old antique wooden piece you’d picked up from an op-shop a few years ago after seeing it and falling in love.
You’d opened your drawer specifically for pajamas and found everything you’d acquired through your time of living independently but Lewis’ shirts. Moving to the many drawers Lewis used specifically when he’d stay over, a small inkling of panic settled in your stomach however you ignored it and opened the drawer.
Nothing. There was nothing left in the drawer. You quickly opened all his other drawers, almost pulling them out of the dresser with the force you were applying. All of them were empty. This caused the inkling to grow to an uneasy pool. Maybe he’d taken them to wash them at his place?
You stepped back from the dressers, incredibly confused and vehemently denying the growing panic in you. You walked, not ran, into your bathroom. The lonely toothbrush sitting on the counter sent a strange feeling, almost like adrenaline, rushing through you. Opening the cupboards under the counter you noted the loss of his extra face wipes and the moisturizers he insisted on using. 
You ran to your kitchen, not seeing anything off, before slamming into the back of the couch in your open plan apartment in your haste to get into the living room. The action caused pain to ring through your shins but you barely registered it, the missing cd’s that normally sat on the table your tv was balancing on that he had insisted were better than Spotify the only thing you were focused on. 
A quick look down the hallway to the door of your apartment only furthered your dread, noticing details you hadn’t seen before. The missing stack of shoes that he normally toed-off at the door and the missing extra wallet he left on the side table in case someone broke in almost confirmed your fears.
But what really set in the fact that he’d packed up and left was the missing leash that normally hung from a hook you’d installed specifically on the back of your front door. The inscribed ‘Roscoe’ on the hook seemed almost mocking from your place on the couch, but you couldn’t really acknowledge it, the tears filling your eyes blurring your vision.
You stood up from the couch and stormed back into the bedroom, slamming the open drawers shut, not hearing the splintering of the vintage wood. You picked up your phone from your bed that you’d tossed earlier in your haste to become relaxed, and opened your messages.
He hadn’t sent anything to you explaining his leaving and when you went to send a text (‘??? Where are you’) the message that you’d been blocked popped up at the bottom of the screen. You could only stare at the screen for a second, the implications of what he’d done sending emotional shockwaves through you. 
You barked out a sardonic laugh, your hand flopping from its position in front of you to be held uselessly at your side, your phone slipping from your grasp onto the floor. The world went still for a moment before you lifted a hand to cover your vision, the tears slipping from your eyes wetting your hand.
You sat alone on your bed that had, not even 24 hours ago, contained what you had thought was your future. You couldn’t find it in yourself to be angry at this point, the grief for something that was evidently never meant to be controlling your thoughts. A long deep sigh left you before it was interrupted by a sob. And then another sob.
You ended up falling asleep alone that night, still dressed in the smart pants and white shirt you’d worn to your meeting. Your only lullaby was your sobbing, not the sound of his gentle humming, something which you kept reminding yourself of. 
Valtteri had commented that you’d seemed sad the next time he’d seen you but neither of you had addressed it past that, him knowing when to keep his mouth shut. He especially knew to shut up after the intense glare you had fixed him. 
The season had started again and, while you were prepared for your duties as a PR agent, Valtteri’s full calendar being proof enough for that, you weren’t sure you were prepared to see Lewis again. Especially after the news that he was already seeing someone else had come out a week before the first race.
You’d returned Valtteri’s knowing glance with as much strength as you could muster and promptly ignored his further pitying look, choosing to feel sorry for yourself at home that night. You’d also ignored his attempts to try to get you to talk to Tiffany, you liked the woman but you didn’t think you should burden her with your ridiculous, because that’s what it was looking back, delusions that you could’ve been something more than just a summer fling to Lewis Hamilton.
You’d successfully managed to avoid Lewis the whole first couple of races, eventually beginning to see fleeting glances of him throughout the paddock. Seeing him for the first time with his partner had hurt but, looking at her, you couldn’t exactly blame him.
She was gorgeous and, after you’d done a bit of searching, was exactly his previous type. She was wealthy and had a respectable job, someone worthy of being with him. You’d made sure to avoid him after that.
You kept on at work though, determined to be the best goddamn PR Agent Alfa Romeo had ever seen. And you were succeeding. Valtteri was getting brand deals and after more positive press around him and his dedication to the sport regardless of his company, you were finally able to relax. 
And by relaxing, you meant getting wasted at a bar. In fairness, last time you’d relaxed you’d ended up more broken hearted than you’d ever been, so releasing some steam at a bar had seemed an appropriate route.
And it was, being able to drink away your sorrows and spill your guts out to a bartender in a small rundown pub in the middle of Canada was the perfect way to unwind. You hadn’t told the whole story of course, you resented the guy for what he did to you but you didn’t want to tarnish his reputation, but it was nice to tell it to some random person who probably didn’t even understand the way you were switching between Swedish, English, and Finnish. 
You’d woken up the next morning with a heavy weight off your shoulders and a nice Canadian man in your hotel bed, sending him off with a promise to call before promptly adding his phone number to your phone. Valtteri could tell something had changed when you’d walked into his driver’s room the next day, prepared to tell him about his schedule. You greeted his questioning look with a smirk and he shook his head, a disbelieving look on his face.
You’d found that you hadn’t thought about Lewis the whole day, when you’d settled into your hotel bed the night after the race. A warm feeling had spread through you at that, the knowledge that the man no longer consumed your thoughts making you feel good inside.
The next race weekend you were ready to go, the British GP making you pumped. You weren’t so pumped when Valtteri DNF’ed and were mentally preparing answers for the Finn as the race continued, briefing him on every response you could think of in relation to the gearbox issue. Zhou Guanyu did well in his race though, so the garage was quite excited for him, even though Valtteri hadn’t finished.
When the interviews had rolled around after all of the celebrations, you were following Valtteri on the walk to his first interview, eventually stopping to the side of him as a mic was held in front of him and the cameras had started rolling. 
Typical questions such as if he was happy for his teammate and if he was happy with the car were asked, some weirder questions such as if he thought the car’s not-working had to do with some obscure political issue before eventually the interview was wrapped up and the Finn moved on to his next interview, you following him.
You could see other drivers beginning to arrive in the area, being interviewed before you quickly looked away, not wanting to see if he was close. You’d managed to avoid him thus far today, how hard could a few more hours be?
You’d thought that before you heard the faint but tell-tale bark of Roscoe and you had to force yourself not to turn around and run to the dog. Lewis had mentioned bringing the dog to his home race at some point while you were together, so you weren’t exactly surprised at Roscoe’s presence. 
Valtteri’s interview was continuing in the background of your mind as you thought over the nights you’d spent cuddled with Roscoe and Lewis. Did you miss him or Lewis more? Did Lewis even miss you?
Valtteri nudged you in the side, his eyes wide and you snapped back to reality, staring at the interviewer.
“Pardon?” You asked, politely trying to make it seem as though you just hadn’t heard them and were paying attention.
“I just asked if Valtteri preferred Mercedes or Alfa Romeo.” The interviewer filled in and you turned to Valtteri, a questioning look on your face. Surely he could handle that question? He vehemently shook his head. Alrighty then.
You brought out both your hands in front of you, prepared to gesture out an answer for Valtteri to say. But before you could a large force had pounded into your back, knocking you to the floor and landing on top of you. The weight was heavy but it was warm and… was it licking you? “Roscoe! Oh my god, I am so sorry!” A voice came from behind you.
Oh no.
While you had been mentally preparing an answer for Valtteri, Lewis had been walking around the media area, Roscoe in tow on a leash. The dog had been restless ever since he’d entered the pen, Lewis echoing that sentiment as he saw a brief glimpse of you. He wanted nothing more than to run to you but he couldn’t with media responsibilities weighing him down.
Eventually the interviewer’s fill of Roscoe was full and he was able to do a little bit of wandering around the area. Lewis had handed the leash of the now-agitated Roscoe to Angela as he went to go answer some more questions, the press incredibly curious about the dynamics of the car.
Angela, bless her soul, had tried her best to wrangle the dog, but his continuous pulling and barking was beginning to annoy some of the media. Seeing this, Angela had decided to just let the dog pull her away, Roscoe almost dragging her as he went. 
He had pulled her almost completely across the room before he got too violent and managed to rip the leash from her hands, leaving Angela stumbling in the dust as he began to run. Lewis had watched this happen, and continued to watch in horror as Roscoe ran up behind you.
One gigantic leap and you were pushed to the floor, the big bulldog nuzzling into your neck. The world seemed to almost go quiet before Angela ran over, trying to grab the collar of the rabid dog, asking if you were ok.
Lewis had started to move over, dismissing the reporter who he was talking to as he made his way to his dog and his ex-lover. He saw you roll over on the floor, a small sad smile on your face as the dog began slobbering over you. A few more steps and he was in front of you, scolding Roscoe and apologising as he effortlessly grabbed the dog’s collar and pulled him back.
You tried not to look in his eyes, knowing all your effort of trying to get over him would be null if you saw his face. You ignored the hand he extended, instead smoothing down your clothes as you sat on the floor, only pulling yourself up when he awkwardly lowered his hand, framing it as if you just didn’t see.
He knew though, he’d developed the unfortunate skill of reading you.
You didn’t look at him as you assured him you were fine and that he should continue with his interviews, only sparing a glance at Angela who looked at you with a regretful hint in her eyes. You didn’t want to think about that more than you had to, waving them off to more interviews. 
You turned around before you could see Lewis leave, thankfully not seeing the longing he had displayed over his face as he turned away, back to his interviews. 
Would you have been able to hold it together if you’d seen the look he’d shot you? No. Were you when you watched it back after the weekend? Also no.
You turned back to Valtteri, cracking a quick joke, before he got back to his interviews. You spent the rest of that day picking gravel out of your palms, trying to forget about the whole interaction. You wouldn’t let this break your progress, the handsome Canadian man in your contacts getting a ring that night as you tried to distract yourself.
After a few days of you cursing Roscoe for trying to see you while also feeling as though you should arrange some sort of custody agreement so you could see the beautiful beast, a notification had popped up on your phone. It was a recommended tweet, a news article about how Lewis had apparently split from his “new fling”. 
That sent you spiraling, questioning why on earth the algorithm had thought to show you this and wondering what you’d done wrong in your past life in order for this to be what was happening to you.
You’d only become more confused a day later, when Angela had sent you an email, saying that Lewis would like to meet up and apologise because of the media backlash. The thing was you’d seen no media backlash, people just finding the dog's enthusiasm funny. 
If there was any sort of trouble, you’d have seen it, it was your job after all, so you were left sitting on your couch, pondering what was the point of the meeting she was trying to set up.
You’d aired the email for a few days, wondering what you should do. You wanted to say yes, to talk to Lewis again and ask him what had happened, but you didn’t want to get hurt again. And you knew you’d be hurt when you saw him doing perfectly fine without you.
The fact that Angela was waiting for you to respond didn’t cross your mind till you received a text from an unknown number, politely asking you to respond. The older woman had waited till she knew you’d read the text, about five minutes, before sending a more desperate text. That had your eyebrows raising unwillingly, confused about why she had sent three “please”’s in one paragraph.
Regardless you fell victim to knowing how hard it was to try and manage a driver's personal and professional commitments and said yes. Only because you felt bad for Angela was what you kept telling yourself.
Eventually the day had come and you were dreading it, lying on your couch until the last second possible. The thought of canceling had popped through your head multiple times but it was too late now. The only way you could back out is if an emergency happened or you died on the way to the private restaurant Angela had insisted on booking, saying that even though the meeting was supposed to be platonic, it shouldn’t be aired to the public.
A deep sigh left you as you pulled yourself up and walked to your bedroom, dressing yourself in business clothes. You wanted to put effort in, but knowing that you’d definitely be embarrassed if you showed up glammed out and he showed up in a shirt and jeans, you decided against it. It was a business dinner anyway, simply to smooth over a wrong that had been committed against you. 
But it wasn’t a wrong, it was Roscoe pushing you over, which could hardly be considered a wrong and was more the dog testing the things he could get away with.
The real wrong was what Lewis had done to you. You hoped that you could get through the ordeal without talking about it, showing up and then posting a picture to Lewis’s instagram or something about how it was all good to appease the critics.
Except there were no critics, it was just Lewis wanting to have dinner with you. Or maybe it was just Angela trying to meddle. Maybe he was going to try to apologise for him ghosting you? You didn’t know if you would accept it.
You might’ve been able to accept it if he’d been honest from the start, telling you that he wouldn’t want you past the end of the break so you could quickly shut down the relationship before it started and move on with your life.
A thought that’d you always try to flush from your mind sprung to the front of it as you wondered. Maybe you were being too harsh. You’d never explicitly expressed what you were, maybe you had just been overthinking it the whole time you were together. Or rather, not together. 
But that would’ve been unfair to you anyways, you reassured yourself. Him letting you get a taste of his future before exempting you from it was a cruel thing to do to anyone.
A ring from your phone let you know that you should’ve been out the door at this point. You quickly cursed before grabbing your essentials and running to your entryway, pulling your shoes on, before grabbing your keys from the side table. 
After locking your door, you ran down the stairs to your apartment building and hailed a taxi. Luckily traffic wasn’t too bad, so you were able to arrive at the restaurant on time, quickly hurrying inside and getting led to your table.
You never had to worry about being late though, as Lewis wasn’t there when you got to the private booth. It was fine, he came from the other side of town so he’d probably only be a few minutes late.
It was about twenty minutes later you’d sighed and decided to ring Angela. Ironically, she didn’t pick up. You couldn’t help the bark of a laugh that left your throat, shaking your head at the sad reality of your situation.
Ghosted by two members of Mercedes. Maybe it was a good idea for Valtteri to move when he had, otherwise they may have just stopped picking up the phone. You gave him ten more minutes before trying Angela again. The same response. 
At this point you were sick of being made the fool of. Perhaps it was your fault for believing your dispute could be resolved, your fault for believing you were worth showing up for. You stood up with a pressure at the back of your eyes and began the walk from the private booth all the way at the back of the swanky restaurant to the exit.
Before you got even five meters from your table, the door to the restaurant slammed open. Everyone turned to stare at the heavily breathing world champion as he took a second to recoup himself. He didn’t let himself look at anyone in the restaurant as he straightened his suit and turned to the host, who looked a little shell shocked. A quick exchange later and the host stepped back from the little podium he was stood behind. 
You quickly scampered back to your seat, making it just in time and plastering an unimpressed look over your face. Looking back up, you could see Lewis scanning all the patrons of the premises before his eyes paused and locked onto you. 
The simple action of making eye-contact, a luxury which you had refused yourself during your bump with Roscoe, sent a lick of emotion down your spine. You couldn’t exactly read his face, you didn’t know what he was choosing to display or doing unwittingly after being played by him for months, but you believed he was relieved. 
When he arrived at the table he waved off the host with a small ‘thanks’ before sitting down in the seat opposite to you. It was silent for a few seconds, you both continuing eye contact. You were trying to find anything you could recognise in his eyes while he was just looking at you, at your face. 
“I’m sorry for being so late.” He spoke finally, a slight tilt growing at the corners of his lips. You didn’t respond and the awkwardness won him over after a few more seconds, something that was quite uncharacteristic of him. He coughed.
“The lift wouldn’t work, I’d left my keys, then no one would pull over. I tried to call you but my phone died, so I just ran trying to get here.” He said and averted his eyes, a mannerism you’d recognised as a nervous tick the couple of times you’d seen it. You didn’t know how to reply so you let your emotions take hold.
“Your call wouldn’t have gone through.” You said blankly and he looked back to you, before chuckling awkwardly. You didn’t find it funny.
“You would’ve had to unblock me first.” You needlessly elaborated, getting some sadistic enjoyment out of the way the man squirmed. He continued his awkward laughing, you joining in to laugh sardonically.
You didn’t know where this feeling, of needing him to a sliver of the uncomfortableness he’d caused you, had come from. The feeling you got from his discomfort wasn’t pleasure though, it felt empty as though it was pointless in the long run. You supposed it was, he wouldn’t remember you in a few years and your small petty actions wouldn’t even matter when he married the princess of some country. 
He cleared his throat, drawing your attention from your musings to his face.
“I wanted to apologise.” He stated bluntly and you raised an eyebrow. Yeah, no shit. He caught your expression and winced. 
“I should’ve had Roscoe on a tighter leash and not have given him to Angela. It was my fault-” You tuned him out as he continued, shaking your head in disbelief. Yeah sure, it was why the meeting had been arranged, but you’d genuinely thought he might’ve talked about the elephant in the room at some point. Maybe you were judging harshly though. Maybe after a few minutes he’d start talking about the model he’d piped the other day or the Albanian billionaire who wanted to be his sugar mommy.
You’d forgotten that he could read you like a book and had stopped when he realised you were no longer paying attention. He reached over the table to wave a hand in front of your eyes, an action that was very rude, and you reacted accordingly. You turned to face him, affronted, and he smiled at your expression before his face turned serious and he breathed a deep breath.
“I didn’t know if you’d want to talk about what had happened.” He said finally, staring down at the table, and you scoffed, crossing your arms in front of your buttons. You started to talk, the words leaving your mouth before you could properly think about them, hurt blurring your thoughts.
“Of course I would love to recount the time I came home and I found my place ransacked.” You said, the fakeness of your enthusiasm leaking into your words causing him to flinch.
“I’d love to talk about the messages I sent you before I realised I’d been blocked. Sure, let’s talk about how, not even two weeks after telling me you thought we’d have a future together, you’d completely left me, without a word of discussion.” You finally let out, almost strangling your throat closed so as to not let more of the hurt out. This was a work-related dinner after all and you didn’t want to draw more attention than Lewis already had.
His face had fallen, an incredibly unfamiliar look coating his face and you tried to stop yourself before you spoke, trying to tame the biting uncertainties in your head.
“Was it because I’d moved companies?” You questioned and he looked up. “Should I not have followed Valtteri?” Your question floated in the air and he shook his head, a sorrowful expression taking over his face.
“Then why?” You asked after a second and he paused, not responding. You, tired of his silence, thought about all the reasons you’d gone over in your head, and settled on the one that made the most sense to you. Looking back, it was probably the most unrealistic, but it made sense to the angry and sad mindset you had.
“Was it because I couldn’t afford everything?” His head snapped up, shock colouring his features. “I could’ve moved to a new apartment if it bothered you, having to stay over at my place. I knew you didn’t do a lot of things that break because I couldn’t pay, but you could’ve told me if you wanted to. I do have a savings account I could’ve dipped into.” You said quietly, looking down at the table, all the fight having been sapped from your body. 
You were tired. You didn’t know what the time difference was between you and Canada, but you were sure that you could set an alarm and wake up to spill your guts to the stranger, it was better than telling anyone you knew. 
Lewis called your name but you didn’t look up from the table, hoping to not see any form of confirmation in his eyes. He reached a hand over the table, this time to not be rude but to lift your chin up and look in your eyes. He contemplated for a second before speaking softly.
“I thought it was what you wanted.” He said and you reared back, completely shocked before he continued.
“You kept going to meetings with Alfa Romeo and I thought it was your subtle way of telling me to fuck off. You know, that you had more important things to worry about than a driver from your old company. We’d never talked about what we were and I just thought…” He paused for a second here, furrowing his eyebrows as he looked at the wall before looking back into your eyes.
“I thought I could bite the bullet, leave before you could tell me to go. And it worked in the end, you’ve been doing exceptionally well. I haven’t seen a bad story about Valtteri in months.” He said and withdrew his hand as he leaned back against the chair behind him.  You processed his words for a moment before he cleared his throat, drawing you back to look at him.
“I would never, by the way.” He disclosed quietly and you tilted your head. He continued. “I don’t mind if you have the money or not, for that break your apartment was the best place for me.” 
The use of the present tense threw you off for a second, leaving you to rearrange yourself in your seat and clear your throat as you thought of a response. You couldn’t, opening your mouth but no words coming out. He’d stunned you into silence. You finally found your voice after steeling yourself for a second. “W-what about umm… what was her name?” You asked, a stutter permeating your words. He just sighed, letting his head fall slack to stare at the table. 
“It was a mistake.” He said quietly, and guilt for the poor girl rushed through you. “I thought that after I’d let you go I should at least try to find something as a replacement.” He looked up at you.
“I couldn’t though, no one could match to you. But I couldn’t leave her without a reason.” 
He leaned further back in his seat, his voice terse as he spoke. “She gave me plenty of reason after I caught her in bed with her ex.” You winced at the tone of his voice and gave him a second to collect his thoughts. Even if he was trying to break it off, it’s never a good feeling to be cheated on. 
You spoke up after a second, trying to clear the silence between you and deciding he should know about your fling after you’d ended if this dinner was going to way you thought it was.
“I met a man in Canada.” You said hesitantly and you saw his shoulders drop.
“Oh.” He said quietly, before shaking himself out as if he was a cat and plastering a smile on his face. Lewis made eye-contact and asked you a question.
“What’s his name?” Fake-enthusiasm permeated his question, as though he was trying to hide his disappointment. 
You didn’t want to address that, though you knew you had to. Could you take him back? You didn’t know for sure if he would leave you again, which scared you. The whole idea of taking him back scared you, though the thought of more time with him that wasn’t spent trying to avoid looking his way made you hopeful. You tried not to feel that way, knowing that you shouldn’t base your happiness on the man.
But he had apologised and explained his reasoning. As much as you wanted to curse him out for not talking with you, it did make sense. Feelings of inadequacy were present in every person, no matter how remarkable they were.
Look at you, already being hypocritical over your own words. You’d said you didn’t know if you’d take him back, but now you were already planning it. Was that pathetic? You didn’t like to think it was, but maybe you were wrong, ignoring your dignity in favour of the man.
God, if only the world was more simple and less complicated. If only you hadn’t gotten locked in an elevator, if only Roscoe hadn’t been as adorable as he was, if only you’d said no to this dinner. If only you’d just talked about your feelings from the start instead, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
Too late now though, you supposed, snapping back to the present and leveling eye-contact with Lewis. You contemplated your words, knowing they’d probably either be the start or the end of your time with him.
“I don’t remember.” You said finally, staring at Lewis’ face as a smile that he tried to contain spread over it.
“You don’t remember his name?” He asked, almost trying to confirm his words and you shook your head. He couldn’t control his smile, trying to mask it behind a cough. You only started to grin in response, looking into his eyes as they slowly turned back into half-moons.
A cleared-throat startled you both out of your bubble and you turned to the waiter, who looked as if he had just watched a soap opera play out in front of him. He awkwardly held out menus to the both of you and you quickly accepted them, apologising for making him stand awkwardly for so long.
When he’d left you both had looked at each other and exchanged smiles. The dinner had continued and it was as lovely as Lewis himself. That is to say, very lovely. 
After paying and making the walk to Lewis’ house, you both stumbled into Lewis’ abode, not able to keep your hands off of each other. However a large obstacle had stopped you from taking it further, namely the heavy weight of the british bulldog that decided to settle himself on top of you the second you’d walked through the door.
You could barely hear Lewis’s laughter over the sound of Roscoe licking the side of your face, you muffling your own laughter into the carpet. 
When you’d next seen Valtteri, he’d only taken one glance at your neck before shooting you a smirk, the knowing glance he had on his face making you roll your eyes as you pushed him to his interviews.
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i got stuck halfway through but i just wanted it overrrr. Hopefully it's not too bad, let me know in the comments.
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rickybabyboy · 2 years ago
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Just got hired as network engineer ^_^
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themirokai · 11 months ago
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now I wanna know- why isn't drinking water free in the US?
Hi there friend! Thanks very much for taking the bait from this post. Buckle up, this is a long one.
If you want to put out a cistern and collect rainwater and use that, congratulations! Your water is free! Plus the cost of maintaining your cistern and keeping it clean. If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere with a high enough water table to have a well, then your water is also free + the cost of the well and well maintenance.
But if you want water to come out of your tap on demand and you can’t or don’t want to maintain a cistern and you can’t or don’t want to have a well… you need public water!
How do we get public water? Well, a government entity (usually. there are some private utilities, but that’s a different post. I have strong feelings) has rights to take water out of a river or a lake, or they have a reservoir, or they have access to an aquifer. Then they have to transport the water out of the source. This generally requires aqueducts or massive pipes, which are expensive and need to be maintained, which is also expensive. The pipe leading out of one of my utility’s reservoirs is 12 feet in diameter.
Does the water go directly from the source to your home? Nope! It gets piped to a water filtration plant! The process of modern water filtration is complicated but it involves both physical and chemical treatment to make sure the water isn’t carrying any parasites, harmful bacteria, or pollutants and it has the right pH. Not only are these filtration plants extremely expensive to build and maintain but the process of operating them is extremely expensive, both in terms of hiring skilled staff and having appropriate materials for the filters and chemical treatment.
After the treated water (called “finished water” in the biz) is ready it does get piped to your house.
If you use public water, do you know where your local water filtration plant is? No? That probably means it’s not in your immediate neighborhood, which probably means it’s several miles or more away. To get to your house, the water needs to travel through an extensive pipe network. These pipes are smaller but they have to remain pressurized so that no contaminants can get into the water on its way to your house. But pipes break! Especially if you live somewhere with a freeze/thaw cycle. Maintaining this pipe network is, you guessed it, expensive! It requires materials and extremely skilled workers who perform in very very difficult conditions. Plus lots of engineering to keep the whole system pressurized even when one part of it breaks. Oh, and you know what lots of pipes were made out of in the early 20th century? Lead! So all around the country utilities need to make extensive and costly infrastructure upgrades because now we know lead pipes are really freaking bad.
Okay, so you get the basic picture. And I haven’t even gotten into Safe Drinking Water Act compliance, but most of that happens at the filtration plant. Oo! Or desalinization because some utilities pull their water from the sea and need to take the salt out. I know basically nothing about this except that it is likely complicated and expensive to do at scale.
This is essentially why I get frustrated by people who argue “why should we pay for something that falls out of the sky?” Because finished water doesn’t fall from the sky and it sure as hell doesn’t fall from the sky into your faucet. (Side note: as a public utility official I have been screamed at by the “it falls from the sky” people. A thing I like about the private sector is that people scream at me a lot less.)
Now, there is a very strong argument to be made that because water is necessary for human life, it should be provided by the government for free to everyone. And just like the costs of roads or public education, this should be part of the public budget and paid for by taxes and no one should have a water bill. I don’t disagree with this. I’m sure that’s how it’s done in some countries.
I don’t have a well-researched answer on the history of water utilities but I do have some facts and some (very) educated conjectures. Water rights in the US are complicated (another separate post!) but they’re based on private ownership. Ever since white people came to this country people have been claiming ownership over water and charging each other money for taking water out of rivers or lakes or the ground. You can measure how much of it someone uses and charge them for it. Water is treated like a commodity because unlike other public goods, it *can* be treated like a commodity and then, you know, capitalism. Again, I’m not saying that’s right.
But as a society, if we believe that no one should have a water bill, then we need to figure out how to pay for all the very expensive steps in the process I outlined at the top. Could that just be taxes? Sure, if you have a system that supports taxes at that level. Do I believe that public funding of water infrastructure would be a fuckton better than a lot of things we use taxes for now? Absolutely! But that requires massive institutional change and this isn’t generally an issue that people know enough about to demand change.
If you read this far, congratulations! You now know more stuff about drinking water!
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myreputatioooon · 6 days ago
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AU so we can all be in denial
Futari Wa Pretty Cure AU with doctor4t and Luxintrus as the chosen Pretty Cures
Content SMP still has it's insanity going on but it got hit with the Boring Modern AU-inator
So let's say that Lux & R4t are both engineers or something else showing of their doohickeys at the same even to gain recognition and hopefully a well or better paying job
Lux is following in her dad Arathain's footsteps but she wants to reach for the stars. He either holds a position with the event holders or is checking it out in support of his daughter and also in hopes of making connections with up and coming geniuses
Cue Arathain finding a really good explosive drill automobile by doctor4t himself who he quickly starts networking with, planning contracts with him and— he could get that Netherite he's eyeing
See there's a place in the Nether the government is eyeing for a potential boon in Ancient Debris. Debris Arathain knows is there but it's gonna be time before the government claims or sells the area to the highest bidder
Unfortunately by the time the area is snagged, Arathain will still not have his contracts with R4t finalized
So it's simple, make some calls, steal and reconstruct r4t's design, maybe pin it on someone else to be sure and he's got his debris. He'll share it with the inventor, he's an opportunist, not a bastard
It doesn't work out evident by Doctor4t showing why he isn't to be fucked around with by hiring mercenary Clownpierce to get confessions out of Arathain's co-conspirators and going after the Mason himself
Lux finds out that R4t is after their dad and is like "what the hell are you doing?" And they fight on the way to Arathain and Lux tries to stop the fight and—
Then golden chains nuke Arathain. Not fun
Luxintrus is present and they're like "R4T WHAT THE FUCK!?" and R4T can only defend himself saying he had no clue what was going on
In comes Folly, or a servant of her, saying that they've been chosen to cleanse an evil from this world, that is already taking lives—Charter
Cue the two getting their magical transformation items and learning they can only become the magical warriors destined to save the world when they're together
doctor4t — Cure Rat. The fact that people out of the never never figure out the doctor rat is the cure rat is a comedy never lost on them
Luxintrus — Cure Moth, she even grows actual moth features when transformed. And keeps the less obvious ones as a human. That's a learning curve for her
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fatkish · 8 months ago
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Tamaki Amajiki x Reader: Fake Marriage
Tamaki and reader decided to get a marriage license for hero agency insurance purposes since their long time friends and so that should anything happen to Tamaki in the field, he can make sure that his agency is covered and that the reader would inherit it. The Hero Insurance companies can be extremely tricky to deal with so the reader poses as Tamaki’s spouse who is a non hero but works in the agency.
The reader’s quirk is called Archive. (If you’ve seen Fairy Tail, it’s the same as the blue Pegasus guy’s magic) Basically the reader’s quirk creates a vast information network that spans centuries into the past. This quirk is similar to Iida’s family’s engine quirk as it’s passed down through generations. Any information that has been learned throughout the reader’s blood relatives is automatically added to the archive.
Since the reader isn’t a fighter they work as a support for heroes. They help Tamaki by overseeing his patrols and helping guide him via their quirk’s communication link.
During the raid at the Gunga Mountain Villa and the Jaku Hospital, the reader was with All might inside the room with the attack coordinators. When Shigaraki took out communications via EMP, the reader was the only person who was able to still have any contact with the field.
Hado, Mirio and Tamaki all use the reader’s Archive quirk as network for information as well as communications since the reader doesn’t really have that many drawbacks. Tamaki is especially grateful for the reader since they’re always talking him through everything whenever his anxiety gets to him.
Since Tamaki is a naturally shy person, I personally headcannon that after highschool he decided to become an underground hero who specializes in steak outs, espionage, and any task with minimal interaction. Or at the very least, he’s a nighttime hero.
Reader handles the day to day stuff as well as hiring. The reader is the public face who handles the media as well as any publicity while Tamaki is the backbone. The reader has made sure that the entire staff from those who handle paperwork and manage menial and mundane tasks to even the sidekicks, all of them are aware of Amajiki’s shyness and most likely have their own social hang ups
Whenever there is a pro hero gala or event that they’re invited to, reader uses their marriage to keep fans from trying to get with Tamaki. The reader does a lot of the talking for him.
Whenever Tamaki has to talk to reporters, the reader is always telling him what to say and is telling him how good he’s doing and encourages him.
You always make sure to have Bento’s ready and prepared for Tamaki. You make sure that he has whatever food he needs and that his meals are both tasty and delicious as well as healthy and useful for his quirk.
For fun, and to tease him, you’ll write notes in his bentos for him to find. Often times the notes are the typical lovey dovey notes that a mother or girlfriend will write.
“Hey Honeybun,
Hope you have a great day out there. Keep your chin up and kick butt. I’m so proud of you💕💕 I made sure to pack your favorites this time so enjoy your lunch, love you<3 xoxo
Love,
(Y/n), your dutiful spouse”
He always blushes but loves the notes and secretly has a box full of them that he has kept since you started doing this is high school.
(I know it’s kinda short but I plan to add more as it comes to me)
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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months ago
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Twinkfrump Linkdump
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I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!
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Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:
https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/
If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.
Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.
The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:
https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html
And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.
In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:
https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/
I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.
The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:
https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html
Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.
Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.
Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.
The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."
If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.
Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:
https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing
Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:
https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them
Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.
The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:
https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/
But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.
Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf
In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.
This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.
SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack
Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:
https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle
Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.
Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:
What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.
After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain
Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/
That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643
Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":
https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/
The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."
AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way
Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:
https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to
Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:
In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.
The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674
One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/
AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.
Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:
https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/
It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.
Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.
It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/
Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.
Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."
This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."
The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights
And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/
Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.
Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.
Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:
https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union
Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.
I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."
I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":
https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg
As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.
Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").
Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:
https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/
Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence
Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:
https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement
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Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png
CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
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cantsayidont · 1 year ago
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August 1984. This won't change anyone's feelings about cult movie perennial THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI: ACROSS THE EIGHTH DIMENSION one way or the other, but if you're wondering what the hell the deal is supposed to be with Buckaroo Banzai and his team, the answer is, "It's an obvious pastiche of the pulp hero Doc Savage."
Launched in 1933, Doc Savage was one of the leading adventure heroes of the pulp magazines. Doc (whose full name was Clark Savage Jr.) was scientifically trained from childhood to the peak of human perfection, singularly adept in everything from mechanical engineering to medicine to martial arts. He had a secret headquarters called the Fortress of Solitude and a whole array of specially designed vehicles and equipment, but he was also a public figure, with offices in the Empire State Building. Doc had a team of eccentric, highly specialized aides — Monk Mayfair, Ham Brooks, Renny Renwick, Long Tom Roberts, and Johnny Littlejohn — who each had a particular skill and a couple of distinctive personality traits (for instance, Monk was a skilled industrial chemist, but also an "ape-like" brute with a ferocious temper). They were sometimes aided by Doc's cousin, Pat Savage, who was almost as capable as Doc, although he tried to keep her out of the fray because she was (gasp) a girl.
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This was a fairly common pattern for pulp heroes. For instance, the pulp version of the Shadow (who was distinctly different from the radio incarnation) relied on a whole network of agents, some appearing only once or twice, some recurring across many of his published adventures. From a narrative standpoint, the agents and assistants had two principal purposes: The first was to offset the rather overpowered heroes — pulp heroes didn't necessarily have superhuman powers, but even those who didn't tended to be preternaturally skilled at nearly everything, so it was convenient to limit their direct involvement in an adventure to crucial moments, and let the assistants (who could be much more fallible) do much of the legwork. The second object was to beef up the characterization. Doc Savage was morally irreproachable as well as absurdly multi-talented, so there wasn't a lot to be done with him character-wise, while maintaining the mystique of a character like the Shadow required him to remain a fairly closed book.
Although the pulp heroes were a huge influence on early comic book superheroes like Superman and Batman, some of these conventions didn't translate well to other media: In a 13-page comic book story or half-hour radio episode, having too many characters was cumbersome (and expensive, where it meant hiring extra actors), and comic book readers normally expected to follow their four-color heroes quite closely, even before the breathless internal monologue became a genre staple. So, Superman inherited Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude, but not his "Fabulous Five" assistants, while heroes like Batman and Captain America generally stuck with a single sidekick rather than a team of aides. Even the late Doc Savage pulp adventures (which ended in 1949) de-emphasized the assistants to keep the focus more on Doc himself. Ultimately, the pulp heroes didn't really have the right narrative center of gravity for visual media, which is why they've become relatively obscure, despite repeated revival attempts. The 1975 Doc Savage movie with Ron Ely, for instance, was a notorious commercial flop, and elements like Doc's childishly bickering assistants seemed odd and dated, even taking into account the film's nostalgia-bait '30s period setting.
What BUCKAROO BANZAI tried to do was to bring that old pulp hero formula into the modern era with a big infusion of '80s style and humor. Like Doc Savage, Buckaroo is a wildly gifted polymath (in the opening scenes, he rushes from performing brain surgery to test-driving his Jet Car through a mountain), so famous and important a personage that he puts the president of the United States on hold, and he surrounds himself with an array of brilliant, eccentric aides with silly nicknames who play in his rock band when they're not fighting crime or doing advanced scientific experiments.
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Alas, judging by the poor box office returns, general audiences were no more amenable to the '80s version of this formula than they had been to DOC SAVAGE: MAN OF BRONZE nine years earlier, even with the 1984 film's extraordinary cast and memorably witty dialogue. Granted, even many of the movie's most diehard fans are baffled by the convoluted plot — a crucial expository scene where the leader of the Black Lectroids (Rosalind Cash) explains much of what's going on is nigh-incomprehensible without subtitles or closed captioning — but beyond that, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI is essentially an extended riff on a particular slice of pop culture that had long since dropped out of the public consciousness, which is both part of its charm and also its commercial undoing, at least as mainstream entertainment.
(Also, if you're wondering, yes, the TOM STRONG series by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse is also an obvious Doc Savage pastiche, although at least some of its plot and character concepts were probably retoolings of unused ideas from Moore's earlier Maximum Press/Awesome Comics SUPREME series, which was an extended pastiche of the pre-Crisis Superman.)
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ontheoddoccasioniwritestuff · 10 months ago
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A Reunion to Remember (John Price x Nikolai x Reader)
Summary: It's a special day, not that John realises as he walks right into a set-up of his lovers’ making.
AN: This is part of @bunnyreaper's Valentine's Day Fic Swap for @bookobsessedram <3 I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
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Content warnings: Allusions to sex (18+ only, minors DNI), reader wears some lacy underwear (not specified), pronouns not used but John calls the reader "sweet girl".
Masterlist
It was once in a moon as crystal blue as his eyes that Captain John Price got the opportunity to collect on intel and deals for himself. After a month of Sundays was when he felt up to it. Usually there were officers undercover, various rats, CIA operatives who could handle that kind of thing – Kate having her own networks of underlings to seek out the truth.
Yet today John made sure that he was the person going to gather this and Kate allowed it. Both of these actions were made with the same reason in mind: it required an interaction with Nikolai. Neither John nor Kate told the brass that, of course. Fed into their paperwork was something about maintaining relationships with allies in important places across the world.
Three train rides, a red-eye flight and a hired car brought John to exactly where he wanted to be: a familiar hanger with an apartment built along the side, fit for the purpose of his visit, overcast clouds hiding their illicit rendezvous from the glare of the sun.
Nikolai spotted John before John spotted him, scaling down the plane and sauntering out the hanger. The two men engaged in a light jog. Delight burrowing in their cheeks and chests, they clapped hands, hugged, and – with the absence of the task force to observe – shared a whiskery kiss, engine oil mixing with cigar smoke in a bitter reunion.
“Glad to see you, Captain.”
“Been too long, Nik.”
“Good thing I coaxed you over, impeccable timing too.” Though his brow creased in curiosity, Price didn’t question – for now – what his boyfriend meant by that whilst following his lead back into the hanger. He spoke briefly about the state of his journey before Nikolai’s gloved hand grasped John’s jaw.
“Do you know what day it is?”
“Fourteenth, why?”
“Anything springing to mind? Anything important?”
After a moment’s consideration, John shook his head slightly with a suspicious squint. Cocking his head over one shoulder, Nikolai let out a two note laugh and whistled sharply through his teeth.
Your arms popped out first through the open canopy, shortly followed by your head as you crowed, “Surprise!”
John’s hearty hoot echoed around the hanger as he removed his hat to clutch to his chest while catching his breath – the one that you took away from him every time he saw you. These occasions had grown more scarce nowadays. If two of your throuple meeting up was like finding a four leaf clover, then all three of you coming together was an entire landscape of the bastards.
Trying to work out what you being with them had to do with the date and felt a fleeting flash of fear at the impossibility of it being your anniversary. It wasn’t. So, while he watched you clamber down the steps with Nikolai holding your hand, John wracked his brain for the connection.
“You are a sight for sore eyes,” John approached the foot of the steps.  
Rolling your eyes, you pointed semi-accusingly at him, “You, Jonathan Price, are a difficult man to get a meeting with.”
“Kate knew?”
Nik kicked over a footstool, “She knows everything; I thought you understood that.”
“Enough about work.” You dragged the stool over with the tip of your foot, stepped up on it, grabbed John by the straps of his vest and tugged him to your level for a long-awaited kiss.
Sandwiched between the barrel chests of your two lovers was your new reality. Some idealist cell in your brain sparked in hope that it could be your permanent home with John on your lips and Nik on your neck – right where a crick was just emerging.
Forced to pull away, you stretched out the muscle on your neck, “Fuckin’ hell, I’ve been folded in that cockpit for half an hour waiting for you to show up.”
“Good thing today’s all about treating you,” Nik squeezed your shoulder and you prayed this was a precursor to a full back rub. Your Nik was very talented with his hands like that.
You cupped his cheek, swaying on the spot as he moved down to hold onto your hips, “Too right.”
Simultaneous to your affection exchange, John was frowning again. The date, the expectation of the day, the apparent arrangement that had gotten him and his two partners in the same place…
His eyebrows relaxed and his face cleared.
“It’s Valentine’s Day,” He said quietly.
Locking onto John’s confounded expression – a rarity that you relished - you ribbed, “You’re just now getting that?”
John coughed a laugh out to cover his embarrassment, “I’m out of practice.”
Your eyes flashed in amusement and the recollection of rumours of Price being a bit of a bunny in his rookie days – rumours that probably had no foundation. Your source had been Soap while he’d been stirring for the circumstances of your relationship to his Captain.
“We’ll be sure to warm you up a bit first then,” You promised as you led John like a pleasant smell wafting from a kitchen, into Nikolai’s private apartment.
Familiar décor welcomed you in, plus the smell of candles that Nikolai was lighting. Apparently he was going all out with the classic stuff. John found himself not turning up his nose at them, nor at the idea of potentially being fed chocolate like in an advert he’d seen on plastered on the train. Once he’d locked the door behind him, John found himself faced with an outstretched rose from Nikolai. You were already beaming behind your own flower.
“Nik,” Price’s cheeks were determined to show him up, shifting in shade to match the roses. His eyes rolled but were clearly contradicted by his grin and how he was unable to hide it.
“What?” Nikolai replied innocently, “I can’t get my partners flowers on the most romantic day of the year?”
“But I didn’t get either of you anything.”
Rose tucked in the crook of your elbow, your thick jacket protecting you from the thorns, you took off John’s hat, tossing it off onto Nikolai’s desk. It clashed into the pencil pot and covered up the photograph taken of your throuple the last instance you’d been together (post-helicopter ride across Belarus). You didn’t acknowledge it, choosing instead to run your fingers through John’s cool cropped hair.
“You didn’t even know it was Valentine’s Day; no shit you got us nothing,” You ribbed before getting serious, “John, we’re just glad you’re here with us.”
His nose nudged down into the petals of his rose, and you scratched the back of his neck where his hair stubbled. Like a cat, he hummed in encouragement.
“I’ll make it up to you anyhow,” He whispered, “Sweet girl.”
“Yeah, there’s always next year,” You gave a playful little tug before releasing him. As if he didn’t know that there was nothing to forgive and you meant every word: you just wanted to be near him.
 Nikolai swooped in to peck John on the lips. A peck turned into a more intoxicating kiss, one that shut up his boyfriend effectively.
John would’ve happily let Nikolai take all the kisses he wanted but he spotted you, in his peripherals, watching dreamily sat on the desk. Your legs swung back and forth gleefully. His hat was in your lap as you twisted the rose around by the stem. Nikolai drew away and in a deep breath at the hearts your pupils were shifting into.
“Get back over here,” He said with two fingers coaxing you over, “And take that jacket off.”
Dutifully, you followed his instructions. A gift from your previous engagement, your jacket was draped it where Nikolai had done the same to his signature tan leather jacket, leaving John feeling overdressed when he caught a hint at something lacy and meadow green peeking out where your skin showed, your shirt caught on your jacket removal. Greed suddenly sprouted from his blooming heart and latching onto you by your plush hips when you were within reach, hauling you close and murmuring how much he adored you while you twisted Nikolai’s chain between compliments and neck kisses as if idle. You were about to be anything but, in for one hell of a reunion.
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I made your love language physical touch because you’re away from your boys so much that you just wanna soak it up when you’re with them. Nikolai’s is gifts (like when he gives Price his favourite gun and his hostages <3) because he loves seeing how his partners react to something that made him think of them. Price’s is words of affirmation because he’s a man of his word and equally loves seeing how his partners are affected by them.
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hiringjournal · 3 months ago
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Why Your Business Needs to Hire Network Engineers: Building a Resilient IT Infrastructure
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gayhenrycreel · 13 days ago
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the world would be much better if the current idea of "employment" didnt exist.
we should view work not as being under someone else's authority and working FOR them, but rather SELLING our labour.
to elaborate, consider how someone who sells something is typically in control of themself. if you control your own labour, you are selling your work. much of capitalism is built on the idea that you work for your boss.
but no, your boss should be buying your work. you are selling your time and ability to pack groceries efficiently, or your skills at building. you should be in control. at this point bosses wouldn't exist, because they have no authority.
this is why freelance art is appealing to me. unfortunately its in very low demand, but its a skill that i have that i enjoy.
but freelancing sucks.
the reason for this is that companies only care about HIRING you to work for them. ideally, companies should be a form of client.
someone i know tried doing freelance engineering. they are extremely talented and while working for a company everyone wanted to hire them. after freelancing they became completely bankrupt and still haven't recovered nearly a decade later.
capitalism doesn't favour freelancing because it gives you power. the easiest way to get rid of freelancing is to create an environment where there is no organisations that freelancers can use to advertise their work.
companies cant gain money and power if you work on your own behalf. when the goal is to just get rich and own other people, it is not favourable to create freelancing networks.
imagine if you freelanced something you had a degree in. lets say medicine. suppose that hospitals function not only as a workplace, but also an organisation that gets you publicity so you actually get work, instead of just not being known at all.
this could work well with high wages and universal basic income, or a total lack of money where people work to help their communities or just because they genuinely enjoy working (a lot of people love working when they arent being abused by authorities).
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mitigatedchaos · 21 days ago
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Election 2024
EigenRobot's opinion for you all this election eve.
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I expect that whoever wins this election, I'm going to have to shift my writing towards the other side.
Unless Kamala suddenly becomes assertive and independent-minded, very much unlike what we've seen so far, and starts disciplining the left coalition, the capability of institutions is likely to continue to decline under a Harris administration, with something like an amnesty grant making direct future challenges less feasible. Today's left are off-the-charts conformist - I've never seen anything like it - and with this, there is a tremendous disregard for inconvenient reality in the face of social opinion. (It's anti-agentic, which is bad for the meta-rational thinking needed to update formal systems.)
Their selection criteria for personnel disregard merit in favor of credentials, and use credentials as political rewards. With each round the quality of personnel will get worse. This is not sustainable, so it will not be sustained - alternative institutions will have to grow in the shadow of declining state capacity.
If Trump wins, and they start cutting back on agencies, there is likely to be more economic growth, but Republicans don't have a good stack for actually replacing all of these agency personnel with highly agentic, highly intelligent, mission-driven individuals. In a sense, this limits the potential damage, as they'll have to continue hiring a lot of blues due to manpower shortages, just as they already do.
However, the reduction in agency power may lead to increased corporate power, leading to increased influence suppressing the re-emergence of agency power on a correct trajectory and lead to a cyberpunk dystopia. Today's US left aren't set up to even discuss how to prevent a cyberpunk dystopia, because they're all-in on censorship, to the point that they can't even consider the implications of the science fiction stuff happening all around them.
There are two big changes to the dimensions of human life coming down the pipes during the next 20 years.
The first is the obvious one, artificial intelligence. AI increases the dimensionality, the richness of the response, of machines in production systems. This makes capital, as controlled by AI, more like labor.
It is the opinion of Samo Burja that automation will not arrive fast enough to outpace tightness of labor supply caused by collapsing birthrates, which are falling all over the world.
The second big change is genetic engineering.
While people weren't paying attention, the FDA have approved multiple monogenic gene therapies. The costs are staggering now, running a range from around $500,000 to $3 million dollars, but if it's anything like gene sequencing costs, which fell from $100M to $1,000 per genome over about 25 years, it will fall rapidly towards the price of surgery.
If the price does fall, this means that a gene is no longer a life sentence. Something that's genetic will be more likely to be something that can be changed. Most major ideologies right now are based on the assumption that genes can't be changed. Gene therapy has not yet reached the periphery of people's social networks, so, mentally, people still treat it as "sci-fi."
So that's my assessment. The blue candidate is low-variance short-termism. The red candidate is high-variance medium-termism. You have to decide how comfortable you are with risk. You have to estimate what you think the current rate of burn is.
If you can't bring yourself to accept either of them, you can still vote and leave the "President" portion of the ballot blank.
The good news is, both vice presidential candidates are smarter and more civilized than both presidential candidates. For what it's worth, my read is that Vance is smarter and more focused on long-term issues than Walz.
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taylorrepdetective · 5 months ago
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Story time.
One of my all time favorite movies is Office Space. If you know that movie, you will be familiar with the Red Stapler:
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For me, the red stapler is a perfect symbol of the ridiculousness of office life. While the stapler itself doesn’t perfectly symbolize the performative nature of much of office work (water cooler talk, networking, trying to look busy all the time, dressing the part,) it has become a symbol of the movie, which captures perfectly the disillusionment with and existential dread we have about the workplace, whether you’re a waitress, lab tech, engineer, accountant, or dare I say, entertainer.
So quite a few years back, I suffered a fairly debilitating work burnout, accompanied by some pretty dire personal stuff going on at the same time and one of my coping mechanisms was to take on a newer, “better” attitude about my job. To quote the guy from fight club: “you are not your job”. That became my mantra. I quit the job I hated, and used the good will and connections I had established over years of good, hard work to get a new job. They loved me! They gave me lots of money, a good title and a boss who was in a different country, an 11 hr flight and 9 hrs in the future away. Armed with my new attitude, I bought myself a red Swingline stapler, which was entirely staple-free, and placed it on my desk to serve as a reminder that none of it matters, and I set about doing as little work as possible for as long as I could get away with it. No one noticed the symbolism of my red stapler, but it made me smile and helped keep me going.
One day, we hired someone new. This girl was kind of a “cool girl”. Like, you could tell she wasn’t your typical office worker. And then one day she walked past my desk and said “I love your stapler” with a wink. Ah! Someone gets it! It made me so pleased. So pleased that I still remember it and tell this story from time to time. Someone saw my joke, and I imagined they had a small window into my outlook on life and maybe they felt the same. I felt seen.
So this job sort of got weirder and weirder over the course of a year. I started getting lay-off vibes toward the end of that year. I had less and less to do, I barely showed up (I was hybrid before there was a word for it), and I was pretty sure the products we were working on had little to no value. My boss was on the other side of the world and didn’t seem to care what I did. And still my stapler sat. It was biding its time for its big moment, but I didn’t know that then.
So finally, one year and one day after I got this job, I got that dreaded meeting invite with HR first thing in the morning, and I sighed and said well I guess I’m getting laid off, and went in and yes, I and 65% of my colleagues were done and I needed to leave today. Those who had been here a year would get a generous severance. Oh how fortunate for me that I had been there one year and one day! I said “ok but you know no one else here knows how to do what I do and I’m afraid the product is going to suffer because my work is very important” (it actually was, just not 40 hrs a week important) and they said “yes we know, and we were hoping you’d become a part-time consultant for us” and I said “sure I can do that, but my rate is twice as much as I’m currently getting paid” and they said “we understand and that’s fine” and so I left my layoff meeting with a severance package, a full bonus, and a promise of a consulting contract. Later that day, they called and said “so we have been informed that the work you’re doing is actually super important right now and we’re wondering if you’d continue working as you have been for the next week while we work out your contract. We promise to pay you as soon as the contract is signed.” Well dear reader, I sat there and looked at my red stapler and thought of poor Milton getting his desk moved into the basement and they stopped paying him without telling him and I did the smoking duck head shake and I said “sure!” while mumbling I could set the building on fire.
So I sat there and worked for free for a week while they fucked around with my contract and then they paid me for a month at double my usual pay to do the very little work I needed to do while I looked for a new job, got one almost immediately and gave 2 weeks notice.
On my last day, as I was leaving I took a Post It note and wrote “For you. Good luck!” stuck it to the red stapler and left it on the desk of the office cool girl who would Get It. Later she sent me a LinkedIn message thanking me and said it made her laugh.
I wish I could say we got together and now we’re married or something, but alas, this is a true story not fanfiction, so I never saw her again.
But the lessons of the red stapler remain, and I am now in a much healthier place with my employment (and personal life,) somewhere between being too-invested-so-I-will-burnout:
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And being this guy:
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Sometimes I do miss my red stapler though.
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empirearchives · 11 months ago
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Napoleon and Sewers and Sanitation
Excerpt from the book Aaron Burr in Exile: A Pariah in Paris, 1810-1811, by Jane Merrill and John Endicott
Napoleon began in 1805 to build a modern vaulted underground sewer system in Paris, following the topography of the streets. Practical changes for the better were already in place when Burr was in Paris. Sewer floors were lowered and new lines were created everywhere between 1805 and 1812, while at the same time the existing sewers were disinfected and the flow of water purified.
During the Enlightenment there was a movement for improved hygiene in France, and investigations of public health. Napoleon was a forerunner of hygiene for his armies and for Paris. In the first place he paved streets and did away with the flowing gutters in the middle of the road. Second, he wanted to give Parisians clean water. In 1802, he commissioned Pierre-Emmanuel Bruneseau as his inspector of works for the City of Paris to chart the sewer system and also keep them clean. Under Napoleon, the existing network was extended, 19 new miles of sewers were added. By 1812, vast improvements had been made.
Bruneseau died in 1819, but Baron Haussmann studied Bruneseau’s maps in the mid-century, rebuilding, constructing new gas-lit and vented sewers. The sanitation models of Paris were adopted by other cities in France and around the world.
A survey of 50 kilometers took seven years. It was dangerous as well as putrid work. While Bruneseau was hailed as an intrepid adventurer, he had difficulty all along with hiring assistants to keep up with him. Victor Hugo was Bruneseau’s friend and hailed him as an adventurer. The engineer inspired Hugo to write the portion of Les Misérables in which Jean Valjean carries Marius, wounded at the Barricades in 1832, through the sewers to safety. Hugo called the sewers “the conscience of the city” and created a whole metaphor around the sewer system: “A sewer is a cynic. It tells everything.” It wouldn’t have been possible for Jean Valjean to make his way carrying Marius through the sewers before the curage methods introduced by Bruneseau. The rushing water when gates are opened to clean the sewers with great hydraulic force, as well as the manholes and dripping pipes, are well described in the novel.
[Bold italics for quotations by me]
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mariacallous · 4 months ago
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KnowBe4, a US-based security vendor, revealed that it unwittingly hired a North Korean hacker who attempted to load malware into the company's network. KnowBe4 CEO and founder Stu Sjouwerman described the incident in a blog post this week, calling it a cautionary tale that was fortunately detected before causing any major problems.
"First of all: No illegal access was gained, and no data was lost, compromised, or exfiltrated on any KnowBe4 systems," Sjouwerman wrote. “This is not a data breach notification, there was none. See it as an organizational learning moment I am sharing with you. If it can happen to us, it can happen to almost anyone. Don't let it happen to you.”
KnowBe4 said it was looking for a software engineer for its internal IT AI team. The firm hired a person who, it turns out, was from North Korea and was "using a valid but stolen US-based identity" and a photo that was "enhanced" by artificial intelligence. There is now an active FBI investigation amid suspicion that the worker is what KnowBe4's blog post called "an Insider Threat/Nation State Actor."
KnowBe4 operates in 11 countries and is headquartered in Florida. It provides security awareness training, including phishing security tests, to corporate customers. If you occasionally receive a fake phishing email from your employer, you might be working for a company that uses the KnowBe4 service to test its employees' ability to spot scams.
Person Passed Background Check and Video Interviews
KnowBe4 hired the North Korean hacker through its usual process. "We posted the job, received résumés, conducted interviews, performed background checks, verified references, and hired the person. We sent them their Mac workstation, and the moment it was received, it immediately started to load malware," the company said.
Even though the photo provided to HR was fake, the person who was interviewed for the job apparently looked enough like it to pass. KnowBe4's HR team "conducted four video conference based interviews on separate occasions, confirming the individual matched the photo provided on their application," the post said. "Additionally, a background check and all other standard pre-hiring checks were performed and came back clear due to the stolen identity being used. This was a real person using a valid but stolen US-based identity. The picture was AI 'enhanced.'"
The two images at the top of this story are a stock photo and what KnowBe4 says is the AI fake based on the stock photo. The stock photo is on the left, and the AI fake is on the right.
The employee, referred to as "XXXX" in the blog post, was hired as a principal software engineer. The new hire's suspicious activities were flagged by security software, leading KnowBe4's Security Operations Center (SOC) to investigate:
On July 15, 2024, a series of suspicious activities were detected on the user beginning at 9:55 pm EST. When these alerts came in KnowBe4's SOC team reached out to the user to inquire about the anomalous activity and possible cause. XXXX responded to SOC that he was following steps on his router guide to troubleshoot a speed issue and that it may have caused a compromise. The attacker performed various actions to manipulate session history files, transfer potentially harmful files, and execute unauthorized software. He used a Raspberry Pi to download the malware. SOC attempted to get more details from XXXX including getting him on a call. XXXX stated he was unavailable for a call and later became unresponsive. At around 10:20 pm EST SOC contained XXXX's device.
“Fake IT Worker From North Korea”
The SOC analysis indicated that the loading of malware "may have been intentional by the user," and the group "suspected he may be an Insider Threat/Nation State Actor," the blog post said.
"We shared the collected data with our friends at Mandiant, a leading global cybersecurity expert, and the FBI, to corroborate our initial findings. It turns out this was a fake IT worker from North Korea," Sjouwerman wrote.
KnowBe4 said it can't provide much detail because of the active FBI investigation. But the person hired for the job may have logged into the company computer remotely from North Korea, Sjouwerman explained:
How this works is that the fake worker asks to get their workstation sent to an address that is basically an "IT mule laptop farm." They then VPN in from where they really physically are (North Korea or over the border in China) and work the night shift so that they seem to be working in US daytime. The scam is that they are actually doing the work, getting paid well, and give a large amount to North Korea to fund their illegal programs. I don't have to tell you about the severe risk of this. It's good we have new employees in a highly restricted area when they start, and have no access to production systems. Our controls caught it, but that was sure a learning moment that I am happy to share with everyone.
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