#industrial panel saw

[garnetindia]

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[killjoy-prince]

Trying on the cosplays imma wear to a con in a month and getting excited that ill be cosplaying said characters in a month

[ame-to-ame]

life is fine you just learn to not send the things you would've sent before in a heartbeat

[daydreamerdrew]

Iron Man (1968) #36

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity rips off its investors, too

I'm coming to DEFCON! TOMORROW (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

It's amazing how many of the scams that have devastated our economy and everyday people owe their success to the fact that we assume that rich people know what they're doing, so if they're doing something, it must be real.

Think of how many people lost everything by gambling on junk bonds, exotic mortgage derivatives, cryptocurrency and web3, because they saw that the largest financial institutions in the world were going all-in on these weird, incomprehensible bets.

Then there are the people who are convinced that online advertising is built around a mind-control ray, because tech companies claim that's what they have ("I am an evil dopamine-loop-hacking wizard and I can sell anything to anyone!"), and because huge, sober blue-chip companies hand billions to these soi dissant svengalis. Sure, online ads are a swamp of clickfraud and garbage, but would these super smart captains of industry spend so much on online advertising if it didn't work super-well?

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

From our worms'-eye-view here on the ground, it's easy to assume that rich people and the people who sell them stuff are all on the same side. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," right? If Facebook is tormenting you with surveillance advertising, it must be doing so on behalf of the surveillance advertisers, for whom Mark Zuckerberg has bottomless reservoirs of honest, forthright impulses.

The reality is simultaneously weirder, and obvious in hindsight. The reason Zuck is tormenting you is that he's a remorseless sociopath who doesn't care who he hurts. He rips off everyone he can rip off, and that includes advertisers, who have seen steady price-hikes and lower-fidelity targeting, even as ad-fraud has skyrocketed while Facebook draws down its anti-fraud spending:

https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/

This is not to say that Facebook advertisers have your best interests at heart, that they aren't engaged in active deception in order to better themselves at your expense. Rather, it's to say that there's no honor among thieves, and Zuck is an equal-opportunity predator. Moreover, both Zuck and his advertisers are credulous dolts, so the mere fact that they are pouring money into something (advertisers: FB ads; Zuck: metaverse) it doesn't follow that these are real or important or the coming thing.

For me, the Ur-example of "rich people are dumb, even when it comes to money" is the private equity sector. I've written a lot about PE, and how destructive it is to the real economy, from Toys R Us to pet grooming:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

How they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And how they actually created the death panels that Sarah Palin warned us about (it's OK, though: these death panels are run by the efficient private sector, not government bureaucrats):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

The devastating effect of private equity on the real economy is increasingly well understood, and a curious side-effect of this is that people assume that if PE is destroying their lives, they must be doing so on behalf of their investors, who are making bank.

But – like Zuck – PE bosses are just as happy to steal from their investors as they are to to steal from the workers and customers of the businesses they acquire on those investors' behalf. They swaddle this theft in performative complexity and specialized jargon, but when you strip all that away, you find more fraud.

All the misery that PE inflicts on workers, communities and customers are just a convincer in a Big Store con, a bid to make the scam seem credible. For a certain kind of investor, any economic activity that destroys communities and workers' livelihoods must be a good bet. This is the dynamic at work in the pitch of AI image-generator companies, who spend tens of billions on technology that there is no substantial market for:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter

AI image generators represent a high-profile, extremely visible example of "a job that AI can do." Nevermind that AI illustration went from a novelty to a tired cliche in less than a year. Even if you think that AI illustrations are a perfect substitute for commercial illustrations, that still won't come anywhere near making AI companies a profit. Add up the entire wage bill for every commercial illustrator in the world, hand it to Open AI, and you're not even gonna cover the kombucha budget for Open AI's staff kitchens.

Hell, all the wages of every commercial illustrator that ever lived won't pay back even a fraction of the money the AI companies spent on image generators. The pauperization of an entire class of creative workers is just a canned demo, a way to fool investors into thinking that there is a whole universe of similarly situated workers whose wages can be diverted to AI companies. This is the logic of small-time spammers, scaled up to the scale of the entire S&P 500. Smalltime spammers looked at AI and thought, "OK, I can generate as much botshit as I want on demand for free. Science fiction magazines pay $0.10/word. So if I generate a billion words, I'll get $100 million." But that's not how any of that works: sf magazines don't buy botshit, and even if they did, the entire market for short fiction adds up to what Sam Altman spends on a single designer t-shirt. The point of destroying these beloved, useful things isn't to make a lot of money by taking their markets – it's to convince dopey, panicked rich people to give you lots of money you can steal, because they think you can do this to every market and they don't want to miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Take "divi recaps": after a private equity firm acquires a company (by borrowing money against its assets), it typically declares a "special dividend," emptying out the company's cash reserves and pocketing them. A "divi recap" is when PE then takes out another massive loan against the company's (remaining) assets and pockets that:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

All of this happens under an opaque cloud, thanks to the light-to-nonexistent disclosure rules for PE. A public company has to open its books for the SEC, its investors, and the world. PE is private – and so are its finances. It is absolutely routine for PE bosses to put their spouses, kids, and pals on the payroll and hand them millions for doing little to nothing, all at the expense of their investors:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/sec-set-to-lower-massive-boom-on-private-equity-industry.html

PE bosses charge huge fees to their investors – not merely the usual 2-and-20 (2% of the funds under management and 20% of any profits) – but also a wide variety of special one-off fees that pile to the sky. They also dip into their investors' funds to issue themselves massive loans that they use to make side-bets, without telling the investors about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#gary-gensler

PE investors are chickens ripe for the plucking: take "continuation funds," which allow PE bosses to soak the rich people and pension funds who supply them with billions:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/matt-levines-money-stuff-buyout-funds-buy-from-themselves

Remember 2-and-20? 2% of all the money you manage, every year, and 20% of all the profits. You'd think that these would be somewhat zero sum, right? If you use some of your investors' cash to buy a company, and then sell off that company for a profit, you get the 20%, but now the pot of money you're managing has gone down by the amount you used to buy the company, and so your 2% carry goes down, too.

But what if you sell your portfolio companies to yourself, using your investors' own money? When you do that, you continue to hold the company on your PE firm's books, meaning you continue to get the 2% carry, and you can pocket 20% of the sale price as a "profit":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

This is straight-up fraud, wrapped up in so much jargon that it can successfully masquerade as "financial engineering" ("financial engineering" is really just a euphemism for "fraud"). PE bosses keep coming up with new, exotic ways to steal from their investors. The latest scam is "tax receivable agreements":

https://archive.ph/RczJ9

On its face, this is a tax scam. When a company goes public, early investors generally hold stock in the original partnership or LLC; this company ends up holding a ton of shares in the new, public company. When they sell those non-public shares in the LLC, this creates a (potentially gigantic) tax credit.

A TRA hustle involves tracking down these LLC shareholders and convincing them to sign off on dumping the LLC's shares, which generates a huge tax credit for the public company. The hustler offers to split these credits with the LLC holders.

All of this is especially attractive to PE bosses, who often take a company private, do a bunch of "financial engineering" and then take it public again, leaving the PE firm as the owner of those LLC shares that can be converted to a TRA and a huge windfall – which the PE bosses pocket, because they (not their investors) are holding those credits.

This scam is really doing big numbers. KKR – the monsters who killed Toys R Us – just diverted $650 million in TRA loot, prompting a lawsuit from Steamfitters union pension fund, which had handed these jerks millions of its members' money to gamble with:

https://archive.ph/kqQvI

This highlights another very weird aspect of the PE scam: they are absolutely dependent on pension funds. To add insult to injury, PE funds are notorious union-busters – they use union money to buy companies and destroy their unions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/05/mr-gotcha/#no-ethical-consumption-under-capitalism

People who try to understand the PE business model often give up, because it seems to make no sense, leading many to assume that they're too unsophisticated to grasp the complex financials here. For example, PE is absolutely dependent on massive loans as a way of looting its businesses, but it also often defaults on those loans. Why do banks and investors keep making huge loans to PE deadbeats? Because – like the PE fund investors – they are credulous dolts.

The reason PE seems like a scam is that it is a scam. It is a fractal scam – every part of it is a scam. You might have heard about the "carried interest" tax loophole that allows PE bosses to avoid billions in taxes on the money they steal from their investors, creditors, workers and customers. Most people assume "carried interest" has something to do with "interest" on a loan. Nope: "carried interest" is a 16th century nautical tax rule designed for mercantalist sea-captains who had an "interest" in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

But rich people and other "sophisticated investors" (like pension fund investment managers) are no smarter than the rest of us. They are herd animals. When they see other rich people piling into some scheme or asset class, they rush to join them, which makes the asset price go up, which makes them think they're smart (until the inevitable rug-pull). When one plute jumps off the Empire State Building, the rest of them jump, too.

Which is why there's more money flooding into PE than at any time in history, $2.62T in "dry powder," handed over to greedy, thieving PE bosses in a poker game where everyone is the sucker at the table:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

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/2024/08/08/sucker-at-the-table/#clucks-definance

[reasonsforhope]

African poverty is partly a consequence of energy poverty. In every other continent the vast majority of people have access to electricity. In Africa 600m people, 43% of the total, cannot readily light their homes or charge their phones. And those who nominally have grid electricity find it as reliable as a Scottish summer. More than three-quarters of African firms experience outages; two-fifths say electricity is the main constraint on their business.

If other sub-Saharan African countries had enjoyed power as reliable as South Africa’s from 1995 to 2007, then the continent’s rate of real GDP growth per person would have been two percentage points higher, more than doubling the actual rate, according to one academic paper. Since then South Africa has also had erratic electricity. So-called “load-shedding” is probably the main reason why the economy has shrunk in four of the past eight quarters.

Solar power is increasingly seen as the solution. Last year Africa installed a record amount of photovoltaic (PV) capacity (though this still made up just 1% of the total added worldwide), notes the African Solar Industry Association (AFSIA), a trade group. Globally most solar PV is built by utilities, but in Africa 65% of new capacity over the past two years has come from large firms contracting directly with developers. These deals are part of a decentralised revolution that could be of huge benefit to African economies.

Ground zero for the revolution is South Africa. Last year saw a record number of blackouts imposed by Eskom, the state-run utility, whose dysfunctional coal-fired power stations regularly break down or operate at far below capacity. Fortunately, as load-shedding was peaking, the costs of solar systems were plummeting.

Between 2019 and 2023 the cost of panels fell by 15%, having already declined by almost 90% in the 2010s. Meanwhile battery storage systems now cost about half as much as five years ago. Industrial users pay 20-40% less per unit when buying electricity from private project developers than on the cheapest Eskom tariff.

In the past two calendar years the amount of solar capacity in South Africa rose from 2.8GW to 7.8GW, notes AFSIA, excluding that installed on the roofs of suburban homes. All together South Africa’s solar capacity could now be almost a fifth of that of Eskom’s coal-fired power stations (albeit those still have a higher “capacity factor”, or ability to produce electricity around the clock). The growth of solar is a key reason why there has been less load-shedding in 2024...

Over the past decade the number of startups providing “distributed renewable energy” (DRE) has grown at a clip. Industry estimates suggest that more than 400m Africans get electricity from solar home systems and that more than ten times as many “mini-grids”, most of which use solar, were built in 2016-20 than in the preceding five years. In Kenya DRE firms employ more than six times as many people as the largest utility. In Nigeria they have created almost as many jobs as the oil and gas industry.

“The future is an extremely distributed system to an extent that people haven’t fully grasped,” argues Matthew Tilleard of CrossBoundary Group, a firm whose customers range from large businesses to hitherto unconnected consumers. “It’s going to happen here in Africa first and most consequentially.”

Ignite, which operates in nine African countries, has products that include a basic panel that powers three light bulbs and a phone charger, as well as solar-powered irrigation pumps, stoves and internet routers, and industrial systems. Customers use mobile money to “unlock” a pay-as-you-go meter.

Yariv Cohen, Ignite’s CEO, reckons that the typical $3 per month spent by consumers is less than what they previously paid for kerosene and at phone-charging kiosks. He describes how farmers are more productive because they do not have to get home before dark and children are getting better test scores because they study under bulbs. One family in Rwanda used to keep their two cows in their house because they feared rustlers might come in the dark; now the cattle snooze al fresco under an outside lamp and the family gets more sleep.

...That is one eye-catching aspect of Africa’s solar revolution. But most of the continent is undergoing a more subtle—and significant—experiment in decentralised, commercially driven solar power. It is a trend that could both transform African economies and offer lessons to the rest of the world."

-via The Economist, June 18, 2024. Paragraph breaks added.

[omgbilly]

☆ dog days ☆

𝕕𝕚𝕧𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝕔𝕣𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕥𝕤: @lunaridae 

𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕥𝕖𝕝𝕝 𝕞𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕙𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝕨𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕕𝕟'𝕥 𝕓𝕖 𝕒 𝕕𝕠𝕘 𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕠𝕟

𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤: 𝕙𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕤 𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕠𝕨𝕟 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘, 𝕠𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕦𝕤 𝕗𝕝𝕦𝕗𝕗 𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕕 𝕔𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕥: 𝟚𝕜

You let out an exasperated sigh as you stared at your screen, emails pinging your inbox every minute. You rubbed your eyes, pushing your glasses up through your hair to rest on the top of your head. It had felt like the longest week of your life—every department in Vought was coming down from the highs of the holiday season, with taskers and deadlines due at all hours of the day and night.

Pushing your glasses back down, in a desperate attempt to deter another migraine today, you started clicking through the incessant and continuous barrage of emails in front of you.

Trash. Someone else’s problem. Trash. Junk. I’ll work on that next week—

Your eyes instantly lit up when you saw the only email that mattered.

Reading aloud, you muttered the contents of the message to yourself, “Hey, Team Vought! It’s the first Friday of the month, and you know what that means: another morale event courtesy of the men and women on the 82nd floor to thank you all for your hard work and dedication and blah, blah, blah…a local animal shelter will be coming by during lunch to share some puppy love with our team! They’re here now, so swing on by!”

You all but squealed as you stood up abruptly, grabbing your blazer as you ran out of your cubicle, waving through your fellow low-level employees. You didn’t love your job but you did enjoy these little events they managed to swing all the time. You rolled your eyes as you knew it was how they kept the little guys—like yourself—content with the below-industry-average pay and the little job satisfaction that corporate work was notorious for providing. But, puppy snuggles are puppy snuggles—and it got you away from your desk for a couple of hours with no need to clock out.

You rounded the corner to the elevator and eagerly pressed the descend button. You tapped your foot impatiently, watching the floors count down above the elevator. As the doors opened, you found yourself face to face with the familiar blue suit and star-spangled cape of Vought’s very own poster boy, The Homelander. His stoic face immediately put on that familiar I’m trying too hard smile when you stepped inside.

“Good morning, Homelander!” you chirped, heels clicking on the tiled floor of the elevator.

“Good morning,” he returned politely, a red glove reaching to the panel of buttons in front of him. “Floor?” 

“Oh, um, ground floor,” you smiled, wringing your hands before adding a small “please.”

“Of course,” he nodded, pressing the button. The elevator’s doors closed and began its descent with a small rock. “Heading to lunch?”

You laughed, “No, sir, but I get the next best thing.”

His piercing bright blue eyes fluttered to you, turning curiously to face you with his hands clasped firmly behind his back. “Which is?”

“Dogs! There’s this morale building thing 82 put together for some of the employees,” your smile and excitement radiating from you as your babbling continued, “a local animal shelter is bringing some dogs by during lunch for cuddles!”

He nodded, watching you intently as you brought your manicured hand to your lips to bite nervously at one of your nails. His presence was unnerving, larger-than-life. You’d, of course, seen him around the building but this was your first interaction with the super-abled commercialized celebrity who seemed more brand than person—especially in such close proximity.

“Um,” you continued, proceeding cautiously to fill the awkward silence, “do you like dogs, sir?”

“For the most part,” he answered nonchalantly and equally noncommittally, pleasantly surprised in your genuine interest in him. “It definitely seems like you do. Do you have any at home?”

You hummed, pleased with his response. “I wish…it’s not something I can afford right now but I’ll be satisfied with some snuggles during my lunch break.”

The silence was, yet again, apparent but Homelander was the one to continue the conversation this time. He took a step towards you, hoping to close some of the distance between you before the elevator’s descent concluded.

“What kind of dogs do you like?”

“Oh, easily the big scary-looking ones,” you laughed aloud, curiosity in his interest spurring you on. “German Shepherds, Dobermans, Rottweilers, you know the ones. I’ve found they’re usually the biggest love bugs.”

He wasn’t sure why he cared at all or why he relished in the attention from someone as insignificant as a bottom-rung employee as you but he was intrigued. You weren’t fawning over him and you didn’t appear to be overtly intimidated by him either and that, that, was what got under his skin. For someone so far beneath him, so small, the more he watched you, the more he found himself wanting.

He was about to ask you more about you when the elevator gently lurched to a stop with a small chime, alerting you both that you had reached Vought Tower’s lobby. You exited the elevator with Homelander following closely behind, his broad shoulders cutting through the light, airy corridor of the lobby with the calculated grace of a predator stalking its prey.

“Thanks for letting me talk your ear off,” you laughed, extending your hand. His reached out to shake your hand with a gentle grasp, letting his gloved fingertips linger longer than he knew he should have.

“Any time, but I’ll be joining you. It’s my eleven o’clock appointment, after all."

You walked up the few flights of stairs towards your apartment, pausing briefly to take your heels off and stretch out your aching toes. Long strands of dog hair were sprinkled across your skirt, a small smile finding its way to your lips as you continued up the flight of stairs and through the door, remembering your time with the shelter dogs and Homelander over lunch.

Following a brief photo-op and his signature crock of “you’re the real heroes” spiel, Homelander had stood off to the side watching insignificant people play with equally insignificant creatures but there was something about the way you interacted with the dogs that was…unexpected.

You had eagerly kicked off your high heels and moved quickly to rid yourself of your jacket and blouse to kneel down next to a large German Shepherd—exactly as you had mentioned, this dog was well-over one hundred pounds and looked like a mean old thing. You had effortlessly gained its trust with the dog rolled over on its back for you in a matter of minutes.You leaned over to give vigorous belly rubs. Homelander’s head tilted slightly to watch as your form-fitting skirt rode farther and farther up the back of your thighs. A predatory grin twitched at the corner of his mouth despite his attempts to conceal it.

You turned around quickly, eyes searching for his, with a stupidly large smile on your face, gesturing for him to join you on the floor to which he reluctantly complied.

"Look at that face," you said softly, your voice laced with affection as you nudged Homelander with your elbow, coaxing him into the moment. "Seriously, just look at that face. Come on, give him some pets.”

Homelander let out a soft, amused laugh, the corners of his mouth twitching upward as he glanced at you, then at the dog, still nestled comfortably in your lap. After a moment of feigned hesitation, he gave in, his hand reaching down to ruffle the dog’s fur, his touch light and almost tentative. The warmth of a reluctant smile spread across his face as he gave the dog a few quick, affectionate pats on the head, his usual cool demeanor momentarily softened by the scene.

"Good boy," you cooed with a proud smile, your voice dripping with affection as you leaned in to press a flurry of loud, playful kisses to the dog's cheek. "Who's a good boy, huh?”

Homelander’s breath caught in his throat, a quiet, breathy sigh escaping him as he shifted slightly. His face flushed a deep shade of red, and he cleared his throat in an attempt to regain some composure, his usually confident demeanor faltering for just a moment under the weight of your praise.

You looked up, the weight of Homelander’s unblinking, steely blue gaze settling on you like a tangible presence. The air around you felt charged as your gaze drifted to his lips for just a heartbeat, the barest flicker of a thought passing through your mind before you caught yourself. They were so close, so tempting in their sharpness and quiet authority. You could feel the tension building, the subtle shift in the air that made everything feel heightened—like the space between you and him was shrinking with each passing second. Homelander didn’t pull away nor did he close the gap between you. His expression remained unreadable, yet there was a flicker of something behind his cold exterior.

“You’re good with him,” Homelander noted, breaking the silence and turning his head away, clearing his throat again in attempt to recover from his previous shift in demeanor.

Biting your lip at the thought of him so close, you rounded the corner of the hallway within your small apartment building, the familiar hum of the city fading into the background. As you neared your door, something caught your eye—a piece of paper taped haphazardly to the surface. Your steps slowed, and your brow furrowed as you approached, a small knot of curiosity tightening in your chest.

Reaching up, you peeled the note free from the old, weathered wood. It was a cheap piece of paper, hastily torn from what looked like a notebook, and your name was scribbled across it in thick, bold all-caps, written with an almost aggressive stroke of black marker. You couldn’t help but feel a small shiver run down your spine, an unsettling but familiar sensation. The handwriting was unmistakable.

Turning the note over, you unfolded the creased paper with fingers that seemed to fumble despite your best efforts. The ink seemed fresh, the words blunt and clear.

"Enjoy the promotion. I like dark roast coffee. Don’t be late. — H”

A chill danced over your skin. You couldn’t quite place the mix of surprise and unease that washed over you. You blinked slowly, standing still for a moment as you processed the note. H—there was no need for clarification. You already knew who it was. The way his presence lingered in your mind after today felt almost like a shadow.

Shaking off the feeling, you fumbled for your keys, your mind still partially caught up in the cryptic message. Your fingers brushed against the cold metal before finally unlocking the door with a small click. You pushed it open and stepped into your apartment, but the scene before you made your heart skip a beat.

There, in the middle of your living room, was the same German Shepherd from earlier that day. His sleek coat glistened in the soft light of your apartment, the deep brown and black fur shimmering with every subtle shift of movement. His tongue lolled out in a relaxed pant, and with every breath, his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. His tail thumped eagerly against the hardwood floor, the sound echoing through the quiet apartment like a steady drumbeat, as if he’d been waiting for you.

As the dog jumped down from the couch to greet you, nuzzling your thigh, the realization hit you that you were being drawn deeper into something far more complicated than you’d expected. You looked at the sweet dog before looking back down at Homelander’s note, running your fingers over the paper again. His mark was unmistakable—each line in his handwriting bold and deliberate. The simple black ink now carrying more weight than it had just moments ago.

[munsonsmixtapes]

Let’s do it:

🦇❤️‍🩹🎤

Eddie x fem!reader

cw: MDNI (18+) make out session, Eddie leaves hickeys all over reader's body, Eddie had a degradation kink

You hated Eddie Munson’s guts. Hated him so much that you were filled with rage every time you saw him. Why you disliked him was a mystery to everyone since he seemed to be a nice guy. And he was one, just not to you. He knew exactly how to get under your skin, every single verbal attack hitting you harder than the last.

And Eddie didn’t like you either. It upset him that you never fell for his charms. You see right through them, knowing their exact intent: to get you into bed. And it wasn't going to work. You had heard all of his phone calls with his groupies on the tour bus and decided that you wanted no part in that. He was just like the rest of the sleazy guys in the industry.

You had joined Corroded Coffin as the band’s temporary drummer on tour while Gareth was out with a broken arm and had hated every second of it solely because of the lead singer. The other members were great, though. They were so nice to you and you didn’t feel like you deserved it since they hadn’t said a word about your feud with Eddie.

Both Jeff and Doug had just sat on sidelines while you and Eddie would constantly argue during rehearsal or even right before going on stage. They would talk to Eddie in private about his behavior but he would just brush them off. His hatred for you was his business and his business only.

He didn't know why you were so pissed. It wasn't like he hadn't promised to call you so he didn't understand why you took it all so personally. It was a mutual agreement every time so it wasn't his fault if they got upset. That was all on them for expecting him to be something he wasn't.

And deep down, Eddie didn't actually hate you. He just wanted you to explain to you that it wasn't any of your business and that he didn't wish all ill will on you. He was actually very attracted to you and felt his dick twitch every single time you threw an insult his way. He didn't know why he liked being degraded by you so much, but he did.

It had gotten to the point that any time you insulted him, he had to stop himself from pushing you up against the nearest wall and sticking his tongue into your mouth, hearing you whine against his lips for more.

You headed down the hallway in an outfit Eddie swore was going to kill him. You were dressed in a black corset that had sheer paneling that exposed your tattoos perfectly and a pair of jeans that were so tight that he was just trying to figure out how he was going to get them off of you. You were twirling your drumsticks between your fingers while humming a song and he wondered what else your fingers could do.

That was it. He couldn't take it anymore. He needed to know what your lips felt like and he needed to know right then. He made a beeline for you and felt his dick harden as you glared at him. He pushed you against the wall that was to your left and you let out a gasp at the sudden movement.

"What the fuck Munson?" you asked as he took your drumstick from you, putting them in his back pocket. He watched your eyes drop to his lip for a brief second and he wet them before a smirk broke out on his face.

"Will you just shut the fuck up?" He asked before pressing his lips to yours roughly. You gasped into his mouth, but eventually melted into him, your lips moving with his as you let him that whatever he wanted from you.

He moved one of his hands up to your chin and pulled down on it to open your mouth just wide enough so he could get his tongue in there. It swirled around your mouth in such a way that you felt yourself getting wet from it. You accidentally let out a whine and Eddie pulled away from a split second to help you wrap your legs around his waist. Then his lips were on yours again as you threaded your fingers through his hair, your fingertips pressing into his scalp. His tongue found its way into your mouth once again and you took it between your lips and gave it a little suck, eliciting a whimper from Eddie.

With that, he pulled you away from the wall and hurried you both down the hall to his dressing room. You had about twenty minutes before you both needed to be on stage and he figured that would be plenty of time to do what he needed to do.

He pushed the door open and let it slam behind him before he threw you down onto the couch. He then removed his shirt from his body before letting it fall to the floor in a messy pile. He then placed himself on top of you, placing his hands on your shoulders as he pushed you deeper into the couch. His lips moved down to your chest right about your corset and peppered the spot with kisses before giving the right side a hard suck, causing the most delicious moan to fall from your mouth.

"Eddie." God, it sounded even better than he could have ever imagined.

"Taste so good," He mumbled against your skin. "What is that?"

"It's edible lotion," you were able to get out through labored breaths. "You didn't think the attraction was one sided, did you? Now can we get on with it? We only have like twenty minutes." He really loved when you were bossy.

"Yes ma'am," he saluted you before getting back to work on your chest. He then had you flip onto your stomach so he could undo your corset since the back was complicated. He spent at least five minutes getting it undone then kissed his way down before giving your shoulder a rough suck. He then grazed the skin with his teeth and you moaned a little too loud for your liking, but Eddie hardly minded. The louder the better. He then flipped you over onto your back, letting out a gasp at your bare chest.

"Can't believe it took me six months to see these," he shook his head.

"Eddie, can you stop staring at my tits and fuck me already?" God, he wanted to, especially when you were being so mean to him. He'd do anything if you kept talking to him like that.

"Wanna mark you up first."

"Why?" You leaned up but Eddie just pushed you back down then straddled your waist so you couldn't go anywhere. Not that you would.

"So if anyone tries to get with you tonight, they know that you're already taken." You felt your underwear become soaked at that. God, he was so fucking hot.

"Well, hurry up." He leaned down and worked his magic on your chest, more moans falling from your lips as he moved his way down your body, sucking on every single inch he could find, loving the way you looked with the pretty bruises all over you.

As much as you were loving being scandalized, you swore that you were going to just take care of yourself if Eddie didn't get on with it. As soon as he could see how desperate you were, he reached around for a condom in his pockets. once he got one. He unbuckled his belt, zipping down his pants. Just as he was about to pull down his underwear, the dressing door opened. Fuck, he swore he locked it.

Jeff entered the room and Eddie's head popped up from the couch, exposing his bare chest to his friend to signify that he was in the middle of a hookup. He put his hand over your mouth so you wouldn't speak and pinned you down to the couch so Jeff wouldn't be able to see your half naked body. That was just for him.

"What are you-Do you have a girl in here?" Jeff asked, a knowing smirk making its way onto his face. He knew his friend all too well.

"Yeah man," Eddie nodded.

"It's almost time to go on stage so wrap it up. Have you seen y/n? No one can find her."

"Nope," Eddie shook his head before eyeing you. "Haven't see her."

"Okay, thanks," Jeff nodded before closing the door. As soon as the door was shut, Eddie climbed off of you and the both of you laughed at how you actually had gotten away with it. You both were in a fit of giggles as Eddie helped you put on your corset before throwing on his shirt, the two of you rushing to the side stage to get ready to go one. You supposed you were just going to have to invite him to your hotel room later so he could finally take care of you

[jesncin]

A Queer and Asian review of Xanthe Zhou + Spirit World

I haven't exactly been thorough about how I specifically feel about Xanthe Zhou as "representation" for people like me and a part of me didn't want to be too harsh since they're a fan favorite and I'm sure the writer did their best and what not- but there is this sense of "I'm not even whelmed I'm underwhelmed" by Xanthe as a character. I don't dislike them, but I can't say I'm a fan if I don't find them particularly interesting.

I'm sure for a lot of people the idea of a Chinese non-binary anime sword wielding, bomber jacket wearing, shaved cut having, envoy between the living and spirit world character is a novel concept. But when you've lived the reality this character attempts to represent (ghosts and spirits are a tuesday where I'm from) and have sought out that representation from within your own communities, Xanthe pales in comparison like a really corporate product. So I want to talk about intersectional storytelling and what a holistic queer Asian superhero could look like.

Again I'm aware Spirit World was written by a queer Chinese author (+ an all Chinese team) and as a fellow author who has to navigate mainstream publishing and deal with attempts at sandpapering authenticity for capitalism I want to stress that I Get The Struggle. But I'm allowed to be critical of how the final product turned out. Some of this is subjective musing even.

Here's the premise of Xanthe Zhou's character: When Xanthe was a very tiny kid, they were run over by a car when they were walking alone at night in the rain. They're resurrected by a powerful spirit called Po Po to be the half-dead, half-living Envoy of the Spirit World.

Everything about Xanthe is exhaustively corporate for me. Like industry planted representation designed to be as safe as possible and attempts at being intersectional are limited. Spirit World features Cassandra Cain Batgirl and John Constantine Hellblazer because that's how we get Asian and queer DC fans to hop onto out new queer Asian character! Xanthe doesn't get to stand out in their own world, or have an established cast system the way Kong Kenan gets to. Spirit World suffers from being a follow up to an Event comic, with all these characters crossing over- but it didn't rise to the challenge of including Batgirl and Johnstantine in meaningful ways. The story would've been better if they were replaced by characters unique to Xanthe's cast system.

I've become pretty cynical about scenes like this one. It's a scene where Xanthe is forcefully invited to have dinner with their family they haven't seen in years. The transphobic dinner pages made rounds on social media because "ooh look at John Constantine gendering a non-binary person correctly even when Xanthe's family keeps misgendering them", and "whoa even the magic system respects a trans person's name". It's free marketing, you can see comments on these posts asking what comic this is from to read more. People will start discourse over "Constantine going woke" and the defenders will pull up receipts that "John has always been a lefitst" and so on and so forth. I saw the promos for Spirit World, but these panels were what piqued my interest early on.

My twin and I were taking turns reading Spirit World- Jes asked Cin (who finished reading first) "so what about that transphobic dinner scene? Was it there? Are there other scenes that talk about it?" and Cin said "nope that's it. The rest is magic fight scenes and spirit world stuff." And honestly that feels calculated. It's like that Jenny Nicholson Star Wars Hotel thing: "whoa if they have this droid and this animatronic alien performer, imagine what else they have!" but nope. That's it. Just enough to fit in a tik tok promo. Just enough to fit in a tweet and make rounds. It's not like Alan Scott's Green Lantern solo, where his queer identity isn't limited to one scene designed to go viral. The whole narrative holistically discussed what it was like to be a gay man in that era. Spirit World on the other hand felt like it had a representation quota to fulfill before moving on to the generic Superhero Stuff- an entirely separate plot.

Then there's Xanthe and John. As a Hellblazer purist I already knew this was going to be a hard read for me since I'm not a fan of DC!Constantine but I've talked before about how Spirit World still has that appeal for me because sometimes og Hellblazer is a pain to read as a person of color. Maybe I can enjoy the fantasy of Constantine being an ally to an Asian person instead of fetishizing them like he did in those old Vertigo comics (people love to leave that out when they're defending Constantine as an ally but whatever). And people kept talking about how this is an elder and younger queer friendship dynamic and I love those.

So where was that? Sure, John genders Xanthe correctly over transphobic dinner and comforts them afterwards. But nothing he says or does is specific to a queer elder. Any ally or character can say these things or do these gestures. He doesn't speak from personal experience about how "it gets better" or "I know what it's like" it's just. "yeah throwing up in Gotham is great I do it all the time". Excuse me if I don't think that's substantial.

Ooh but the ghost of Johnstantine's ex boyfriend Oliver showed up! And then there was a bi joke about how John hooks up with a clone of himself a "dozen times" because he's such a slut amirite, gays. Diversity win. I expected bi jokes from DC!Constantine but marketing this as a queer narrative or generational friendship is a stretch.

Spirit World would've been a more holistic queer narrative if Wan Yujing, the villainous corrupted spirit that wanted to be remembered properly (or reincarnated, depends on the writer's mood)-was revealed to be a queer person. This would've been a fantastic opportunity to recontextualize Xanthe's personal transphobic encounter with their family into a larger systemic theme of queer historical erasure. The original meaning of a "dead name" is the idea that when a trans person dies, their family will put the wrong name on their grave. It's literally their "dead" name, erasing their legacy in writing. So why not include that in your conflict?

Wan Yujing is revealed to be a famous poet, slowly forgotten because "time erodes everything" (vague and bad writing btw). Why not pitch something more motivated and specific? Make it so that she wrote queer literature that was destroyed. Make it so that her lover was rewritten in history books as her "friend". Then when Xanthe makes the promise to remember Wan Yujing as she truly was, it'd be a holistic act of queer recognition and solidarity. But instead the resolution is just Xanthe Zhou promising "hey I'll remember you" and Wan Yujing just takes their word for it.

Can we talk about the huge missed opportunity of what this dialogue implies? Xanthe proclaims that they are both living and dead, granted the living's power to remember and the dead's immortality. Why was this not thematically paired with their experience as a non-binary person struggling in a cis-heteronormative world. Heck, why not pair this with how they're a queer Asian American, a perpetual foreigner wherever they go? Not Asian enough for traditional spaces, but not white enough for a majority of queer American spaces. Are we worried we'll scare off the white audience if this got too intersectional?

Xanthe gets more fleshed out under a different writer (Jeremy Holt) for one of the DC Pride stories (2023). Here, Xanthe talks about how being in the land of the living feels like going about a routinic obligation; "Reminding me that home isn't necessarily where the heart is". This is so much like the disassociated way trans people go about life before figuring themselves out. It's also like how a perpetual foreigner doesn't fit in anywhere. But it's not paralleled to that experience. The fantasy aspects of Xanthe Zhou the Envoy, are completely separate from the very few personal civilian parts of them. Like they're a Superhero first and a person second. The later half of this story gets overtaken by a team up with Batwoman, because once you have a new character set in Gotham you are at the whims of being absorbed into the greater Batfam conglomerate.

There's interesting concepts at the center of Xanthe's character. But it's hard to give credit to writing that doesn't follow any of that through. Xanthe's a hero motivated by making sure the dead are remembered and respected. That's a decent motivation in general, and a pretty resonant one for a queer hero-but everything surrounding the execution of that idea feels so half-assed to me. Xanthe's origin story has so many plot holes, it feels like it was thought up in 5 minutes.

Why was their death just some random car accident and not something more motivated? Why did the all powerful Po Po decide to resurrect them specifically? Where's the tension in any of the many excessive fight scenes in Spirit World, if Xanthe's apparently immortal? Also they age? What are the stakes for a character like this? This isn't even covering the shoddy writing for their transphobic family drama (Why did they just stalk their family after being resurrected? Why did their mom recognize them even though they've been gone and have aged for 15 years? so many questions ugh).

(why was this toddler walking around alone in the rain with their own umbrella. In Gotham. What is this-)

I casually propose that instead have Xanthe's origin be that they died as a runaway trans teen who went missing and was murdered. Maybe because the way police and society in general don't look into the disappearances of trans poc, Xanthe's death went completely unnoticed. Maybe as Xanthe's dying, Po Po sees their determination to fight for the forgotten and chooses to resurrect this kid specifically. Then we'd have a really motivated origin story that ties their identity to their heroism. Instead we get these over the top fantasy concepts + transphobic dinner with my talisman wielding mom.

Spirit World is a fun enough action fantasy with troubled pacing and generic MCU-quippy dialogue. It's so overwhelmed by it's own spectacle that we don't get a chance to get to know our new hero. What is Xanthe's character development? What flaw do they grow out of or overcome? If I'm honest outside of the attempt at quippy banter, what even is their personality? The ending is rushed; not only is the conflict resolved with Xanthe just promising to remember a dead poet, but they also make a deal to work with the Spirit World authorities. Because it's always so fun to watch queer people assimilate to the powers that oppress.

In one of these action sequences, I guess the writer decided there needed to be a semblance of themes to make it feel like the readers' time isn't being wasted. So while Cassandra Cain Batgirl from Detective Comics and John Constantine from Vertigo Hellblazer are holding the giant anime sword, Xanthe goes on an internal monologue about how change is natural and people's fears make them resistant towards it. Xanthe says that to embrace magic, "you need to look at everything you think you know about the way the world should be...and imagine something new."

It's a nice sentiment that isn't reinforced by anything else in the story, but it does make me think. What is "new" about Xanthe Zhou to someone like me who seeks out representation like this? I've seen queer characters with the shaved hairstyle, I've seen queer coded Asian girlies with the bomber jacket, heck I've even seen the giant anime sword. I kinda cringe at seeing "giant spiritual sword" at this point even. But you know what I don't see as often? In real life I've seen the bravest Asian queer people reclaim cultural hairstyles, clothing, practices and beliefs (that originally excluded them). I've seen them join communities and create entire subcultures and lingo in a way that would be unrecognizable to the typical queer readers who enjoy Hellblazer-but I certainly don't see it reflected in fiction a lot.

(Is it really new if I've seen it in a Disney movie)

The premise of a Chinese American non-binary half-dead-half-living Envoy for the dead is something so metaphysical in its intersectionality, world building, stakes and themes that it would require Sandman-levels of out-the-box creativity to pull off. Which is why getting a generic action adventure (+ one scene about transphobic dinner with the family) feels so disappointing. I wish Spirit World took its own words to heart; I wish it took everything we're used to, everything we've known about how the world is and dare to imagine something actually new.

[garnetindia]

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[sgiandubh]

I saw a pic on Insta of Diana kissing Sam on the lips on stage! Do you know why they kissed and if C was present? I think it's disgusting and diana's husband very open minded. Hollywood, enterntainment industry is a very awkward and disgusting World. No wonder why most actors are f*cked up. They have to do things to make their boss happy 🤢

Dear Why They Kissed Anon,

Darling - are you new? If so, welcome. I can't believe you just discovered that supremely weird moment, when I lost any last bit of respect I had for 'Erself.

FWIW, in a nutshell: it was Gabaldon's idea and a totally spontaneous one at that, in a middle of a fan convention panel. Now try to imagine how S felt about this diminutive, rotund lady with a penchant for flip-flops and psychedelic nail polish, kissing him on the lips (and more? ugh, my brain froze!). Pretending afterwards that she self diagnosed as 'being on the spectrum' is a cynical, easy excuse for just about any other past or future eccentricity she might choose to show the world. As if we cared, seriously.

She has always maintained her towering husband was the main inspiration for Jamie's character and yet she kissed S on the lips in what is not only an aggressive breach of taste and social conventions, but also plain emotional abuse. Just to feed her Ego (yes, with a capital E), I suppose and to demonstrate she's got The Power. Disgusting, indeed.

When The Author herself mixes up the character and the actor portraying this character, calling people 'delusional' just because they supposedly did the same (fun fact: most didn't) is shameless.

No wonder C can't stand her. Could you?

[heavy-machinery-insights]

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[mariacallous]

I LOVED this article. Leslie Gray Streeter expresses it perfectly.

https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/opinion/column/kamala-harris-no-press-interviews-OPD4MAXYKRB4XJHB2TFB6ZJX6Q/

Since becoming the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, Vice President Kamala Harris has done myriad public appearances and given speeches but has not, as of this writing, talked to journalists outside a brief session on the tarmac before a flight.

I’m a journalist and have been for more than half my life. And you know what? I don’t blame her one bit.

Because of her refusal to sit for an interview with any print or broadcast media, Harris has been the target of a lot of indignant insistence that she change her mind — that she’s not giving the American public answers they deserve. Critics say she’s subverting an expected system that all other elected officials have gone through. They say she’s hiding behind a wall of hype and “irrational exuberance” that is proof she lacks the toughness to hold the office she seeks.

Be ever so real, y’all. You know that quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”? It would be insane to subject yourself to unfettered questions by an industry that doesn’t seem to know how to handle interviews with true journalistic integrity and practices. Why beat your head against a wall you know is made of brick and disinformation?

Harris has seen a media landscape that arguably legitimized soon-to-be-President Donald Trump as a normal candidate when he was sowing seeds of unrest, writing about him agreeing to accept the 2016 election results, “if I win,” and then denying those results in 2020 with not an nth of the absolute pushback and condemnation it deserved. She saw, as we all did, major outlets referring to obvious racist attacks by the current Republican nominee and others as “racially tinged” and to blatant bloody lies as “falsehoods” and “misstatements.”

The vice president recently approached the press gaggle with a deliberately direct “Whatcha got?” That is the same thing my late daddy used to ask me point-blank when I’d been calling and calling and he knew I wanted something. The reporters had been clamoring for this. And their response? A bunch of requests for a response to crazy stuff Trump said about her.

This is the same industry that initially wrote presidential fanfic pondering replacement candidates that weren’t Harris. Then, when President Joe Biden stepped down from the race and named her as his chosen successor, they compiled panels ruminating on Trump’s assertions about her racial identity. Fox News has gone on the attack about her every day, but she’s being called a coward for not agreeing to a debate on that network in front of an arena of opposing fans.

Yeah, no. She is not, as we say in my culture, Boo Boo the Fool, nor is she, as she’s stated, falling for the okey-doke. Would you rush to sit down to withstand more of that foolishness? I would not. Despite the protestations of several writers from traditional media absolutely aghast at her avoidance of them, the truth is that Kamala Harris doesn’t need them.

Just as Trump has flocked to friendly outlets like Fox and a live conversation on X with app owner Elon Musk (or what Harris’ team referred to as “whatever that was”), Harris has done speeches at a rally in North Carolina and last week in Prince George’s County, and she has her savvy and very online comms team to get her message out. It’s smart, because most outlets have proven they don’t know how to approach her.

The vice president has expressed interest in setting something up, but I wouldn’t be shocked if she sidesteps your Dana Bashes and Kristen Welkers and does something inventive. If I were her, I’d talk to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who has himself been critical of media colleagues, including his own network.

Maybe she should completely pivot and do something fun like “Hot Ones,” where she can answer policy questions while eating spicy wings. Talk to Teen Vogue. Do podcasts. Hang out with “The Real Housewives of Potomac.” I know these sound like lightweight options, but are any of these suggestions less weighty than Harris’ opponent, who bleats lies and racism on his own app, or his approved media partners who go on about Harris’ laugh, dating history and heritage? It’s all a circus. I say make your own big top.

And if madam vice president decides to talk to the traditional media, be it the New York Times or CNN, I think she should only do so with interviewers who have proven themselves to have cultural competency about race, gender, historically Black colleges and universities, the Divine 9 Greek system, step parenting and being a baddie in the 1990s. I’m not saying it has to be a friendly person like Trump seeks, but it does have to be someone who respects Harris enough as a candidate to do research and not spend the whole time asking gotcha questions about her opponent’s lies. Heck, I’ll do it! I know this is a long shot, but at least I know what okey-doke means.

I am excited for Harris’ future media choices because they are sure to be unprecedented, just like her candidacy. And it’s going to be on her terms. Everyone gets to set theirs, after all.

[scragon]

Webcomic interview

How did you get into making webcomics?

I just jumped in expecting to make a few chapters and it turned into multiple years of my life.

Consider drawing Short comics about ideas and throw them out there. My current official webtoons were short comics that I posted inconsistently in between other projects. They eventually got their own following.

Who inspires you?

I was very inspired by the comics I saw on early comic sharing platforms. Opening my mind up to self-published comics made me realize the possibilities beyond mainstream works.

Erri Pi on webtoon canvas is one of those early creators I felt inspired by. 

I am also what I would call ‘anti-inspired’. There are many very common tropes that turn me off from media, so when I write, I love to subvert the expectations of those tropes.

What are the best and worst aspects of your work?

The best aspect is creating my own story with full control and allowing it to write itself. I do not find myself getting hung up on the constant lore and rules and history of the work. I just write and allow natural progression. I consider myself an artist over author but you find yourself focusing less on art to make sure the story is good. If the story sucks, nobody will care about the art.

This makes the worst aspect also writing. It takes a long time letting words come to you and it takes more energy than the drawing.

What is the most important thing people should know about when working in the webcomic industry?

Whether it be today's financial climate or how much artists are undervalued, it is still brutal. You have to work fast. It is the only way I've been able to continue a social life, paycheck, and sleep. Learn to only put 30% effort into your comic art. Seriously. As you develop a consistent schedule and style, you will know when to put more effort. You will know.

I understand you created multiple series on and outside of Webtoon. What did you learn from those experiences?

For works like comedy, less is more. You don't need to have more than 4-6 panels to set up and execute a punch line. Sometimes you need even less. Also make sure your jokes are specific to your comic and characters. If any other characters are able to tell your jokes, your comic will become stale fast.

For romance, I've just learned to write what I would like to see more often. I don't care for lots of emotional and relationship mismanagement and it seems like many other people have agreed. So if you want it, chances are, a lot of other people want it as well.

What is your advice for someone planning to enter this industry?

Draw a lot. Write down all of your ideas. Come back to them. Just start drawing one. You learn so much by just doing it and realizing how things look on the page. Simplify the idea. Don't start off with a huge project. Just gesture a 10-page story in a sketchbook. Comics are a language.

The industry can be as professional as working with a publisher, or as casual as having a following on Patreon or social media to fund your work. Both require being fast and able to speak this language.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to screw up a whistleblower law

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me THIS WEDNESDAY (Apr 17) in CHICAGO, then Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Corporate crime is notoriously underpoliced and underprosecuted. Mostly, that's because we just choose not to do anything about it. American corporations commit crimes at 20X the rate of real humans, and their crimes are far worse than any crime committed by a human, but they are almost never prosecuted:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

We can't even bear to utter the words "corporate crime": instead, we deploy a whole raft of euphemisms like "risk and compliance," and that ole fave, the trusty "white-collar crime":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/07/solar-panel-for-a-sex-machine/#a-single-proposition

The Biden DOJ promised it would be different, and they weren't kidding. The DOJ's antitrust division is kicking ass, doing more than the division has done in generations, really swinging for the fences:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Main Justice – the rest of the DOJ – promised that it would do the same. Deputy AG Lisa Monaco promised an end to those bullshit "deferred prosecution agreements" that let corporate America literally get away with murder. She promised to prosecute companies and individual executives. She promised a lot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Was she serious? Well, it's not looking good. Monaco's number two gnuy, Benjamin Mizer, has a storied career – working for giant corporations, getting them off the hook when they commit eye-watering crimes:

https://prospect.org/justice/2024-04-09-reform-groups-lack-of-corporate-prosecutions-doj/

Biden's DOJ is arguably more tolerant of corporate crime than even Trump's Main Justice. In 2021, the DOJ brought just 90 cases – the worst year in a quarter-century. 2022's number was 99, and 2023 saw 119. Trump's DOJ did better than any of those numbers in two out of four years. And back in 2000, Justice was bringing more than 300 corporate criminal prosecutions.

Deputy AG Monaco just announced a new whistleblower bounty program: cash money for ratting out your crooked asshole co-worker or boss. Whistleblower bounties are among the most effective and cheapest way to bring criminal prosecutions against corporations. If you're a terrified underling who can't afford to lose your job after narcing out your boss, the bounty can outweigh the risk of industry-wide blacklisting. And if you're a crooked co-conspirator thinking about turning rat on your fellow criminal, the bounty can tempt you into solving the Prisoner's Dilemma in a way that sees the crime prosecuted.

So a new whistleblower bounty program is good. We like 'em. What's not to like?

Sorry, folks, I've got some bad news:

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/stephen-kohn-on-the-justice-department-plan-to-offer-whistleblower-awards/

As the whistleblower lawyer Stephen Kohn points out to Russell Mokhiber of Corporate Crime Reporter, Monaco's whistleblower bounty program has a glaring defect: it excludes "individuals who were involved with the crime." That means that the long-suffering secretary who printed the boss's crime memo and put it in the mail is shit out of luck – as is the CFO who's finally had enough of the CEO's dirty poker.

This is not how other whistleblower reward programs work: the SEC and CFTC whistleblower programs do not exclude people involved with the crime, and for good reason. They want to catch kingpins, not footsoldiers – and the best way to do that is to reward the whistleblower who turns on the boss.

This isn't a new idea! It's in the venerable False Claims Act, an act that signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. As Kohn says, making "accomplices" eligible to participate in whistleblower rewards is how you get people like his client, who relayed a bribe on behalf of his boss, to come forward. As Lincoln said in 1863, the purpose of a whistleblower law is to entice conspirators to turn on one another. Like Honest Abe said, "it takes a rogue to catch a rogue."

And – as Kohn says – we've designed these programs so that masterminds can't throw their minor lickspittles under the buss and collect a reward: "I know of no case where the person who planned or initiated the fraud under any of the reward laws ever got a dime."

Kohn points out that under Monaco, the DOJ just ignores the rule that afford anonymity to whistleblowers. That's a big omission – the SEC got 18,000 confidential claims in 2023. Those are claims that the DOJ can't afford to miss, given their abysmal, sub-Trump track record on corporate crime prosecutions.

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/2024/04/15/whistleblown/#lisa-monaco