#it's just. it's plausible is all i'll say. it's very plausible when we think about that future scene.

[gregoftom]

awful, just awful

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: No tweets

[at JK Rowling's Scottish castle] JK Rowling: Ha ha! Look at me! I'm possting on the internet! Rowling: "esstrogen turns normal men into rampaging ape beastss!" agent: joanne! stop! agent: you're posting too close to the sun! Rowling: "Gamer ssockss are AGP!"

Rowling: ha ha no one can ssstop me! Rowling: I'm JK fuckin' Rowling! Rowling: I'm a beautiful animal!! Rowling: watch this, i'm gonna poke imane khelif with thisss ssstick agent: joanne! no! Rowling: don't worry, itss a really long ssstick Rowling: i'll be fine!

Rowling: [poking imane khelif with stick] ha ha you like that, you liminal creature? you congenital eunuch? ha ha what are you gonna do about it? Khelif: that's it! Khelif: you've woke the dragon, now prepare to feel her breath!

Rowling: ha ha what're you gonna do? hit me with your massssive tessstosterone fissstss? Khelif: you and me, rowling! three rounds! sudden death match in the arena... Rowling: haha Khelif: the arena of the legal system! Rowling: Rowling: uh oh

Khelif: i'm taking you to court Rowling: Rowling: Rowling: [sweats] wayon jennings narrative voice: now ol' joanne's got herself in a heap o' trouble. how's that dang ol' snake gonna slither her way outta this mess?

JK Rowling: [shoving documents into a shredder] quick! ssshred it all!! shred fucking everything! Julie Bindel: but dark lord what should we tell your followers?! Bindel: they'll be expecting some patented jk rowling hot takes! Rowling: i don't know, jusst sstall them!!!

[mysterious circle of robed figures] Bindel: i've called this meeting to come up w a reason why the dark lord isn't tweeting Kathleen Stock: maybe we can say she's getting her castle fumigated? Bindel: no we used that when she posted the 'no toilets in hogwarts' tweet

Jesse Singal: oo! oo! i've got one! Singal: what if we say that 'having achieved all of her goals and ambitions, she has decided to retire forever' Bindel: no no that won't work Stock: could we just say that she's brumating?

Kathleen Stock: wait! what if we said she's on vacation? Bindel: hmm i like it! Stock: we could even embellish it with plausible details for additional verisimilitude! Bindel: like that she's... eating vodka-infused candy floss! Stock: exactly! that's very believable!

[midnight society] Barker: interesting, joanne hasn't tweeted in like 2 weeks Barker: seems kind of unusual King: oh i'm sure it's nothing Barker: looks like she's actually deleting tweets King: oh King: huh King: i wonder what that's all about?

Julie Bindel: [rising from bushes] ACTUALLY Jk rowling is actually on a jolly vacation right now so that's why she's not tweeting Bindel: it has nothing to do with any lawsuit! it's totally legit! King: where's she vacationing? Bindel: she's visiting her girlfriend in canada

Bindel: see, i have this postcard right here that she sent saying that she's having a great time on her vacation in vacationia and she's too busy to tweet! Barker: hey can i see that postcard? Bindel: um Bindel: no

Bindel: joanne says that she's having too much fun eating vodka-infused candy floss to be transphobic right now King: wow! i don't think i've ever seen her have THAT much fun before! King: this vodka-infused candy floss must be lit!

Barker: so you're telling me Barker: that jk rowling is right now drunk on vodka-infused candy floss Barker: a product which i am definitely sure exists and is real Barker: and being drunk has made her less vocally transphobic? Bindel: Bindel: [sweats] yes

[yazmarina]

in my drafts

for the love circuit series

—that message wasn't for you but paul doesn't mind as long as you don't, either.

paul aron (f2) x gn!social media admin reader

warnings/notes: smut, unprotected sex, lewd photography, office sex, fingering, creampie, accidental nude sending, mild dirty talk

a/n: sorry i disappeared again!!! pls take this as my apology

It was supposed to be just pictures of him during the break. You expected innocent, somewhat average snapshots of how Paul spent his past two months. You knew he took that trip to Italy, attended his sister's graduation, did some training. It was your job to be at least a little updated on the drivers' whereabouts, in case the head of comms needed you to capitalize on it for content.

So when you received a few photos from Paul through iMessage of all his fall whereabouts, you didn't think much of it. You messaged him a few days earlier asking if he could send a few more unreleased pictures that he hadn't posted on his personal account yet, stating that it was for a post you were putting together for the Hitech Instagram. He was delayed in his reply, as usual, but that's something you expected. He was busy, after all.

Perhaps too busy to notice the outlier in the stack of photos displayed in your message thread. Everything seemed to be normal at first; Italian architecture, gym photos, the cheesecake he made. Typical day in the life photos.

And lastly, a photo of him in dim lighting, taken in front of a mirror, with nothing but shadows covering most of his naked body.

You stare at your phone, dumbfounded. Your first instinct is to wait to see if Paul has anything to say, an apology, maybe, or a half-assed excuse. Anything to indicate that he noticed how he sent you a full-on nude. You prepare yourself for the three dots that show he's typing, the frantic scramble to delete the photo from your exchange, but it never comes. Heat rises up your neck as you realize you're going to have to confront him about it. This was, after all, a professional exchange and you'd hate for HR to come knocking at either one of your doors.

-Paul, please review the photos you sent. Thanks.

You regret it as soon as you send it. Was that perhaps too snippy? Too callous? It was as embarrassing for him as it was for you, maybe even more. But come on, how hard is it to distinguish your nudes from your vacation photos?

The loud throb of your heartbeat reverberates in your ears as you wait, cursing under your breath as a full minute passes and then another. You lock your phone, getting up to pace around your room. You're most likely going to see him tomorrow as he'll be at HQ for sim work and other things and you just so happen to have a lineup of meetings at the very same time. You're going to have to face the fact that you'll have to look each other in the eye after you've seen the outline of his dick.

Wonderful.

You unlock your phone, resigning to just delete the photo from your side. You can claim plausible deniability or whatever legal term it is, if it comes down to it.

Just then, Paul starts typing.

You yelp, setting your phone down on the desk harder than intended.

You realize belatedly that you're holding your breath, fingers pressed into your mouth as if suppressing any more potential noises. He stops then starts again then stops, as if he's unsure of what he's typing out.

-I'M SO SORRY!!!! It was an accident I promise 🥹 Don't report me

-Please I'm so sorry it's totally my fault ______ 😭😭😭

-______ please I'm so sorry

Somehow, despite everything, this coaxes a chuckle out of you. Paul was always open and easy around you, and you know he knows you won't report him for an honest mistake. He's probably just red in the face right now, fighting his inner demons.

You type out a reply to ease his nerves.

-I'll just delete it off my phone so no one can say we were fraternizing inappropriately 🥲

The response from Paul is almost instant.

-YES please I'm sorry again

Your finger hovers over the photos when another message comes in.

-Unless you want to save it for a rainy day that's okay too

-I WAS JOKING its a joke I'm sorry I'm sorry

You groan, throwing your head back against the backrest of your office chair.

He's done this on occasion. Flirt. Compliment you on your hair, your outfit (despite it being the team uniform), your smile, even. You brushed it off as typical driver behavior. Nearly all of them had that kind of nerve about them, a confidence that only comes with driving cars that are closer to rockets than actual cars on the street.

Bringing the phone up to your face, you gingerly scroll back up to the photos Paul sent, opening the accursed photo. Your breath hitches as you take it in more carefully, the light cutting sharply between the shadows of whatever hotel room Paul was in. Your eyes trail down and your fingers pinch at the screen, zooming in.

"No! No, no, absolutely not," you admonish yourself, swiping the photo away and typing back a slightly crazed reply.

-Whoever that photo was meant for might not like it if I do

-

"________!"

You freeze on your way out the door from the conference room, Paul's figure jogging toward you from the other end of the hall. The presence of some execs and the head of comms looms from behind you and you quickly shuffle out of the way to let them pass, all of them greeting Paul as he sidles up to you.

"Hi!" You say a little too brightly, turning to Paul, arms coming up mechanically then stopping, your brain reminding you that a hug might be too awkward but standing around without greeting him in some way would be just as weird. A flurry of butterflies erupt in your stomach as Paul stops in front of you, his cologne coming off strong as always. Just the way you liked it.

"How's the meeting?" Paul asks, gesturing to the room. He's bouncing on the balls of his feet, a nervous habit he has that you've observed over the time you've worked with him. He has his hands shoved deep in his jeans, too.

You shrug, forcing out a laugh. "Same old, just going over social media plans and PR."

Paul nods, a little too eagerly perhaps. His eyes shift to the retreating personnel, all of them turning a corner, leaving you and Paul alone in the vicinity.

"Were you waiting for me?" You ask before he can say anything else.

Paul swallows. "Yeah. Look–"

"Paul," you cut him off, raising a hand between the two of you. "It's okay. It's no big deal. Happens to the best of us."

He raises an eyebrow at that. "Have you ever sent a nude to the wrong person before?"

Your cheeks flare up in a violent blush.

"Well, no. And keep your voice down," you berate lightly. Paul looks around and shrugs as if to say, 'Nobody's here'.

You huff, crossing your arms over your chest. "But what I meant was, like, messages are sent to the wrong people all the time, I'm sure you didn't mean any harm, and besides, no one else knows. I promise I haven't told anyo–"

"Okay." It was Paul's turn to cut you off. "Okay, I believe you."

He smiles at you good-naturedly, opening his arms and coaxing you into a hug. It takes you a second, but eventually, you let yourself laugh in relief, wrapping your arms around his strong frame.

"I missed you over the break," Paul admits, pulling away and holding you at arm's length. You blush again, masking it with a chuckle.

"Well, the break isn't over yet. We still have three weeks to go," you remind, your own hands coming up to settle on Paul's outstretched arms, making it look as if you're holding him in place. To anyone who didn't know, you two would look like a couple deep in discussion.

"At least you get to see me more," Paul offers with an easy smile. nudging you lightly.

You scoff. "I think I've seen enough of you, thank you very much."

A heavy silence settles over the two of you as you realize what you just said. Paul lets his arms drop from where they held you, an apology ready at your lips but Paul gets to it first. He runs a hand through his unkempt hair, blonde strands tugged between his fingers.

"You haven't deleted it, have you?"

No, you haven't.

"I was going to, but I got distracted with other things." Not entirely a lie. You really meant to do so, but thoughts you'd rather not share took hold and there were matters you needed to attend to. Matters that could only be solved with your fingers and a vibrator.

You should feel guilty, getting off to a picture of a coworker that wasn't even meant to be sent to you in the first place. Maybe you're terrible, maybe you should be fired, sued by the Aron family.

Memories of you gasping out Paul's name in the quiet of your room come flooding back and you pray that Paul doesn't notice the irregularity in your breathing.

"I'll delete it now, in front of you, so you can see that I did," you offer, fishing your phone out of your pocket.

Paul shakes his head, catching you by the wrist, his hand large and warm against your own skin.

"I mean if I was going to send it to anyone, it would have been you," Paul says lowly, as if afraid someone would hear him, despite the entire expanse of the hallway void of any people other than yourselves.

"Consensually, of course," Paul adds in a hurry, eyes widening. "If you wanted to receive them. It. Receive it."

Your eyebrows shoot up, your mouth curling into a smirk. "You have more you want to send?"

Paul's lower lip slips between his teeth and it seems the two of you are finally on the same page. You try to suppress the smile threatening to break out, clearing your throat and avoiding his eyes.

"Until when are you staying here?" You ask casually. You didn't mean 'here' as HQ. Here as in, in town, close to you.

"Next week," Paul replies, stepping closer. "I won't see you until Qatar after that."

"Shame," you mutter, tilting your head as you meet his gaze once more.

"Maybe," Paul begins, slipping his hand into yours and twining your fingers together. "I can add one more thing to my break to-do list."

"Now?" You ask incredulously. Paul nods immediately.

"You know that one storage closet inside the sim room?" He asks, winking at you.

"What? Paul!" You whisper-shout, but he's already leading you down the hallway. The two of you make a sharp turn to the right where big blocky letters spell out 'SIMULATOR' on the large double doors of the sim room.

You squint, immediately plunged into darkness as the only source of light inside is the curved screen, dimmed as well as it sits on standby.

"What if your engineer walks in? Your teammate? Doesn't he have a session soon?" You continue to protest, even when Paul gently pushes you toward the storage room door at the very corner. He flings the door open and you see that it's filled mostly with spare sim components and monitors.

"Babe, that's why they call it a quickie," Paul reasons, flipping the light switch on inside. The lightbulb offers little respite in the darkness and shadows still play along the lines of Paul's face. He shuts the door behind him.

"It doesn't lock? Paul, I swear–"

You gasp but barely any sound comes out as Paul presses his lips to yours, hands settling on your hips. He maneuvers you toward a shelf, pushing you against it and pressing himself fully on you.

You can feel how hard he is through his jeans.

"Did you like it?" Paul asks as he breaks away for a second. He kisses your jaw, tracing its outline as you sigh, your head falling back. He takes his opportunity to kiss along the column of your neck, his tongue smoothing over your skin.

"Did you get off to it?" Paul asks again and your breath catches in your throat. It's as if he knew all the dirty, deplorable things you did over that one picture.

"I know you did," Paul concludes with a breathy laugh, reclaiming your lips and driving a knee between your legs. You groan in response, grinding against his thigh while your fingers tug at his belt.

Paul pulls away and takes over for you, undoing his jeans and slipping them down to his knees. You silently thank whatever god is listening for the fact that you so conveniently decided to wear those easy cotton office pants, slipping them off in one quick swoop along with your underwear.

"I'm tempted to get on my knees right now so I can eat you out," Paul teases, hiking your shirt up and exposing your chest.

A snide remark forms in your brain but it's cut off when you feel the cold press of fingers on your clit. You clamp a hand down on your mouth as Paul gently flicks at it, feeling yourself getting wetter by the second.

"Maybe later after work," Paul says, rubbing harder. Your elbow spasms at the sensation, hitting the shelf behind you.

"Ow, fuck," you curse, meeting Paul's eyes. You two burst into muffled laughter just as Paul slips a finger in.

"What happened to a quickie?" You demand, hips moving along with Paul's hand. He adds a second finger and you whine, fingers digging into Paul's shoulders.

"I have manners," Paul informs with an easy smile, face impossibly close to yours. You can see the shift in his bright blue eyes. "I need you wet and ready for me, no?"

You bite down on your lip, eyes rolling into the back of your head as Paul curls his fingers inside you. A shiver runs through you and you feel yourself clenching down and around his digits.

Paul retracts his hand, much to your dismay, but you don't get to complain before Paul kisses you again, rough and heated. His tongue dances against yours and you grip at his Hitech team kit for purchase.

"Bend over," Paul commands and you're more than happy to oblige, turning around to do just that.

You brace yourself against the shelf behind you, gripping at the wood as you lower the front of your body. Paul grabs your hips and your back arches almost automatically. You can feel him pressing up against you and you sneak a peek behind you to see Paul with his phone in hand.

"So I can 'accidentally' send you another one," Paul jests before slowly sinking in. You whine, head dropping down between your shoulders. The thought of him documenting your little tryst sends a shiver up your spine which only intensifies as Paul grabs one side of your hips. He sets up a hard, steady pace that has the shelf in front of you creaking.

"Paul," you gasp out, your whole body shuddering at the force of how hard he's fucking you.

Both of his hands grip at your sides now so you can assume his phone has been put away. You try to stay upright which proves challenging considering Paul is ramming into you ferociously.

Contradictory to it all, you feel the soft touch of fingers through your scalp, smoothing over your hair. In a moment's turn, your head is yanked back as Paul tugs at your hair, arching your back even more.

A garbled sound escapes you, part moan, part sob as the sting in your scalp shoots straight down to your core, pushing you ever so closer to your release.

"The social media person," Paul begins through gritted teeth. "Always so pretty behind the camera. Making me do trend after trend. I'd do anything for you, baby."

You mewl in response, reaching back to grip at Paul's wrist, pushing back against him, urging him to go faster. Paul gets the memo.

"Funny how that photo was taken only because I was about to jack off to the thought of you," Paul continues. "You sent me a message and I was missing that pretty face of yours so I went through your Instagram. Looks like you had fun in Mallorca, tiny swimsuit and all."

"Sorry, baby," Paul says close to your ear. "Couldn't help it."

"Inside," you plead. "P-Please, I'm close. N-Need you to cum inside me."

Paul merely grunts, letting go of your hair so he can pull you flush against him. His thrusts grow erratic, barely pulling out of you each time. He pulls you back to him, your back against his front as he bites down on your shoulder.

"Yes, yes, right there." Your voice comes out raspy, walls squeezing around Paul's throbbing cock. He reaches over and resumes his movements from a while ago on your clit and you yelp, hips spasming pathetically.

You cum with Paul deep inside you, his groans filling your ear as he follows soon after. He stills and pulls you even closer to him, arms encircling your torso. He kisses the spot where he had bitten you, pressing his lips almost reverently to the indented skin.

You're both breathing hard and you're perfectly content to stand around while the two of you gather your bearings. But Paul momentarily disentangles himself from you and reaches down. You see him pull his phone out from his jeans from where they've presumably fallen down to his ankles.

"Smile," Paul prompts, his lips planting a soft kiss behind your ear as he angles the camera toward the two of you.

He snaps a blurry photo, just in time to capture your hand coming up to rest against his cheek as he grins into your skin. Emboldened by the somewhat artsy, flirtatious nature of the photo, you turn around and land a proper kiss on Paul's lips, savoring each second his tongue passes over your mouth.

"Send all the photos you want," you whisper, smiling up at him.

"Or we could just take them together," Paul offers, kissing the tip of your nose.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism as a material phenomenon

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I think it behooves us to be a little skeptical of stories about AI driving people to believe wrong things and commit ugly actions. Not that I like the AI slop that is filling up our social media, but when we look at the ways that AI is harming us, slop is pretty low on the list.

The real AI harms come from the actual things that AI companies sell AI to do. There's the AI gun-detector gadgets that the credulous Mayor Eric Adams put in NYC subways, which led to 2,749 invasive searches and turned up zero guns:

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nycs-subway-weapons-detector-pilot-program-ends/

Any time AI is used to predict crime – predictive policing, bail determinations, Child Protective Services red flags – they magnify the biases already present in these systems, and, even worse, they give this bias the veneer of scientific neutrality. This process is called "empiricism-washing," and you know you're experiencing it when you hear some variation on "it's just math, math can't be racist":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#phrenology

When AI is used to replace customer service representatives, it systematically defrauds customers, while providing an "accountability sink" that allows the company to disclaim responsibility for the thefts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

When AI is used to perform high-velocity "decision support" that is supposed to inform a "human in the loop," it quickly overwhelms its human overseer, who takes on the role of "moral crumple zone," pressing the "OK" button as fast as they can. This is bad enough when the sacrificial victim is a human overseeing, say, proctoring software that accuses remote students of cheating on their tests:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat

But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment. Those AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients:

https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14

My point is that "worrying about AI" is a zero-sum game. When we train our fire on the stuff that isn't important to the AI stock swindlers' business-plans (like creating AI slop), we should remember that the AI companies could halt all of that activity and not lose a dime in revenue. By contrast, when we focus on AI applications that do the most direct harm – policing, health, security, customer service – we also focus on the AI applications that make the most money and drive the most investment.

AI hasn't attracted hundreds of billions in investment capital because investors love AI slop. All the money pouring into the system – from investors, from customers, from easily gulled big-city mayors – is chasing things that AI is objectively very bad at and those things also cause much more harm than AI slop. If you want to be a good AI critic, you should devote the majority of your focus to these applications. Sure, they're not as visually arresting, but discrediting them is financially arresting, and that's what really matters.

All that said: AI slop is real, there is a lot of it, and just because it doesn't warrant priority over the stuff AI companies actually sell, it still has cultural significance and is worth considering.

AI slop has turned Facebook into an anaerobic lagoon of botshit, just the laziest, grossest engagement bait, much of it the product of rise-and-grind spammers who avidly consume get rich quick "courses" and then churn out a torrent of "shrimp Jesus" and fake chainsaw sculptures:

https://www.404media.co/email/1cdf7620-2e2f-4450-9cd9-e041f4f0c27f/

For poor engagement farmers in the global south chasing the fractional pennies that Facebook shells out for successful clickbait, the actual content of the slop is beside the point. These spammers aren't necessarily tuned into the psyche of the wealthy-world Facebook users who represent Meta's top monetization subjects. They're just trying everything and doubling down on anything that moves the needle, A/B splitting their way into weird, hyper-optimized, grotesque crap:

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/

In other words, Facebook's AI spammers are laying out a banquet of arbitrary possibilities, like the letters on a Ouija board, and the Facebook users' clicks and engagement are a collective ideomotor response, moving the algorithm's planchette to the options that tug hardest at our collective delights (or, more often, disgusts).

So, rather than thinking of AI spammers as creating the ideological and aesthetic trends that drive millions of confused Facebook users into condemning, praising, and arguing about surreal botshit, it's more true to say that spammers are discovering these trends within their subjects' collective yearnings and terrors, and then refining them by exploring endlessly ramified variations in search of unsuspected niches.

(If you know anything about AI, this may remind you of something: a Generative Adversarial Network, in which one bot creates variations on a theme, and another bot ranks how closely the variations approach some ideal. In this case, the spammers are the generators and the Facebook users they evince reactions from are the discriminators)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network

I got to thinking about this today while reading User Mag, Taylor Lorenz's superb newsletter, and her reporting on a new AI slop trend, "My neighbor’s ridiculous reason for egging my car":

https://www.usermag.co/p/my-neighbors-ridiculous-reason-for

The "egging my car" slop consists of endless variations on a story in which the poster (generally a figure of sympathy, canonically a single mother of newborn twins) complains that her awful neighbor threw dozens of eggs at her car to punish her for parking in a way that blocked his elaborate Hallowe'en display. The text is accompanied by an AI-generated image showing a modest family car that has been absolutely plastered with broken eggs, dozens upon dozens of them.

According to Lorenz, variations on this slop are topping very large Facebook discussion forums totalling millions of users, like "Movie Character…,USA Story, Volleyball Women, Top Trends, Love Style, and God Bless." These posts link to SEO sites laden with programmatic advertising.

The funnel goes:

i. Create outrage and hence broad reach;

ii, A small percentage of those who see the post will click through to the SEO site;

iii. A small fraction of those users will click a low-quality ad;

iv. The ad will pay homeopathic sub-pennies to the spammer.

The revenue per user on this kind of scam is next to nothing, so it only works if it can get very broad reach, which is why the spam is so designed for engagement maximization. The more discussion a post generates, the more users Facebook recommends it to.

These are very effective engagement bait. Almost all AI slop gets some free engagement in the form of arguments between users who don't know they're commenting an AI scam and people hectoring them for falling for the scam. This is like the free square in the middle of a bingo card.

Beyond that, there's multivalent outrage: some users are furious about food wastage; others about the poor, victimized "mother" (some users are furious about both). Not only do users get to voice their fury at both of these imaginary sins, they can also argue with one another about whether, say, food wastage even matters when compared to the petty-minded aggression of the "perpetrator." These discussions also offer lots of opportunity for violent fantasies about the bad guy getting a comeuppance, offers to travel to the imaginary AI-generated suburb to dole out a beating, etc. All in all, the spammers behind this tedious fiction have really figured out how to rope in all kinds of users' attention.

Of course, the spammers don't get much from this. There isn't such a thing as an "attention economy." You can't use attention as a unit of account, a medium of exchange or a store of value. Attention – like everything else that you can't build an economy upon, such as cryptocurrency – must be converted to money before it has economic significance. Hence that tooth-achingly trite high-tech neologism, "monetization."

The monetization of attention is very poor, but AI is heavily subsidized or even free (for now), so the largest venture capital and private equity funds in the world are spending billions in public pension money and rich peoples' savings into CO2 plumes, GPUs, and botshit so that a bunch of hustle-culture weirdos in the Pacific Rim can make a few dollars by tricking people into clicking through engagement bait slop – twice.

The slop isn't the point of this, but the slop does have the useful function of making the collective ideomotor response visible and thus providing a peek into our hopes and fears. What does the "egging my car" slop say about the things that we're thinking about?

Lorenz cites Jamie Cohen, a media scholar at CUNY Queens, who points out that subtext of this slop is "fear and distrust in people about their neighbors." Cohen predicts that "the next trend, is going to be stranger and more violent.”

This feels right to me. The corollary of mistrusting your neighbors, of course, is trusting only yourself and your family. Or, as Margaret Thatcher liked to say, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

We are living in the tail end of a 40 year experiment in structuring our world as though "there is no such thing as society." We've gutted our welfare net, shut down or privatized public services, all but abolished solidaristic institutions like unions.

This isn't mere aesthetics: an atomized society is far more hospitable to extreme wealth inequality than one in which we are all in it together. When your power comes from being a "wise consumer" who "votes with your wallet," then all you can do about the climate emergency is buy a different kind of car – you can't build the public transit system that will make cars obsolete.

When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about animal cruelty and habitat loss is eat less meat. When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about high drug prices is "shop around for a bargain." When you vote with your wallet, all you can do when your bank forecloses on your home is "choose your next lender more carefully."

Most importantly, when you vote with your wallet, you cast a ballot in an election that the people with the thickest wallets always win. No wonder those people have spent so long teaching us that we can't trust our neighbors, that there is no such thing as society, that we can't have nice things. That there is no alternative.

The commercial surveillance industry really wants you to believe that they're good at convincing people of things, because that's a good way to sell advertising. But claims of mind-control are pretty goddamned improbable – everyone who ever claimed to have managed the trick was lying, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Rather than seeing these platforms as convincing people of things, we should understand them as discovering and reinforcing the ideology that people have been driven to by material conditions. Platforms like Facebook show us to one another, let us form groups that can imperfectly fill in for the solidarity we're desperate for after 40 years of "no such thing as society."

The most interesting thing about "egging my car" slop is that it reveals that so many of us are convinced of two contradictory things: first, that everyone else is a monster who will turn on you for the pettiest of reasons; and second, that we're all the kind of people who would stick up for the victims of those monsters.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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/2024/10/29/hobbesian-slop/#cui-bono

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[lukolabrainrot]

The "Boyfriend" Pics of L on N's IG

I thought we needed a little good energy after the week we had. So I have compiled all the "boyfriend" pics of L on N's grid from this year. I might have missed some, and I didn't include the pics of any of the promo shoots (except one from Milan because it had a vibe). But there are soooo many photos of L on her grid. The man is ALLL over her page. Yes, some of that is due to the fact that they were promoting the show. However, all of these particular images below have a very certain energy... I'll talk more about my thoughts on these pics at the end.

N posted on her grid 4-29-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 5-3-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 5-11-24 (Italy stop of the WT)

N posted on her grid 5-16-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 5-17-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 5-19-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 5-30-24 (Brazil stop of the WT)

N posted on her grid 6-2-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 6-10-24 (Ireland stop of the WT)

N posted on her grid 6-11-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 6-18-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 7-4-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 7-16-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)

N posted on her grid 8-22-24 (Bridgerton Season 3 BTS)-> This is the same pic from the polaroid above from 5-16-24, just a different pose, which I found interestingggg 🤔

Alright, here are my thoughts/theories:

We know photos are one of N's love languages, and she communicates through them. L WAS NEVER GOING TO BE POSTING A BUNCH OF PICS OF N ON HIS GRID RN. For LOTS of different reasons. However, these type of pics started popping up at the end of April, which is when the WT really started picking up. I think N was using these types of pics to communicate with us on her feelings for L, and how she sees him. She wanted us to see him through HER lens (if that makes sense). These photos signal trust, comfort, love, joy, silliness, safety, connectedness/intimacy etc. Regardless of the public optics of what was going on, N wanted us to know that she and L have a very special connection 😍

She also doesn't have pics like this of ANYONE else on her grid this year (I haven't looked through her whole grid, so I don't know about posts from before this year, except that one of her and L after his play that blew up lol). Now yes, like I mentioned, a lot of the pics N has of L on her grid from this year is Bridgerton Season 3 promotional material, but there was something different about these photos. I have a lot of theories on why N decided to post these, but this is what I will say. I think these photos served as a message that things were changing for L/N BTS during the WT, and tbh, I think she wanted to show him off on her grid 😉 She just did it by hiding behind Polin and the tour, so there was plausible deniability.

I also found it VERY interesting that L seemed fine with N posting all these specific photos the last few months, but A could only post his freaking hand. This could have been for a lot of different reasons, but I just find it very interestingggg 🤔 I just feel like I know who has L's heart, and hint, it's not 🐜.

Also, some of these photos were actually taken with a camera that L gifted TO N, so he knows how important photos are to her, and that it is one of the ways she communicates and shows her love 🤔

Lastly, ALL of these photos are still on N's grid. Just saying...

[andy-wm]

I don’t think this is what he meant especially because Namjoon said he gets how he feels and shook his hand after. We all know Namjoon is single for a while now after going through a nasty breakup. Jimin and Jungkook’s bond is precious even though it’s now clearly not romantic.

He also said “Although I feel this way it’s not sad…” when speaking about Who. I think Jimin is strongly indicating that he has been single for a while. We should really take his words for what they are rather than trying to twist them into a narrative that makes jikook romantic. In the context of everything he said earlier in the video up until the Who talk it seems that he created Who to have the direct message of searching for his person. He was speaking about the song when he said that he felt this way. Not having those butterflies is what he is referring to when he says he feels flat, not sad but not exciting. Even if currently platonic jikook have a precious bond.

Imo these three sentences sums up MUSE and WHO perfectly instead of those essays wanting to connect it to jikook because we want them to be real :

https://x.com/jkyoongs/status/1814588120291287475

This is exactly what he told, meant and going through when he created this album. It's sad Jikook is not involved romantically but they still have a great bond given their trips and now enlistment but if Jimin is saying he's single without even feeling butterflies to fall in love then we have to accept that guys.

Hey Anon, thanks for this ask. Its so great to interact with someone who disagrees with me but doesn't have a huge chip on their shoulder about my views.

And honestly i can see that there are many ways to look at this situation.

Nobody can without a doubt claim they are romantic partners, just like nobody can without a doubt claim they are not. You and I have differing perspectives based on what we see and how we interpret it. We probably have different ways of seeing the world and different experiences of love.

And if one day we all find out that they were really just friends, I’ll shake your hand and, without screaming or crying, I'll accept that i was wrong. I hope you would do the same.

But right now, I don't think I am wrong on this.

Looking at the whole picture it seems to me that they are very much still romantic partners.

More like an old married couple with complicated and busy lives, but

Clearly still very focused on each other.

Clearly delighted with each other.

Clearly care deeply for each other.

Clearly spend a lot of time together despite being so busy.

Clearly attracted to each other.

Clearly physically comfortable with each other.

That's how i see it.

Am i prepared to die on the hill that their relationship is romantic? No, because I can't possibly know for absolute certain. Same reason i dont believe in god (although i think Jikook is more plausible than an old guy sitting in the clouds watching humanity like he's playing The Sims, just quietly... and yes bring on all the anon haters who are gonna want to thrash me because i'm an atheist).

But on the balance of evidence I'd say ...

they're still together.

Lets talk about MiniMoniMusic.

As for the Minimoni video, Jimin was there to talk about the album. It wasn't a conversation about his personal life.

He talked about not having excitement in his life, about his life being bland, and empty after suspending group activities. They hadn't been active as a team, and he was working really hard. It was a long time since he felt excited about something.

That sense of excitement was compared to having a crush and confessing his feelings. He said he can't remember the last time he felt that way, and the journey of MUSE was to make him feel excited again.

Tracks 1-5 were exploring the exciting emotions, like you would have when you're crushing on someone. That euphoria, the fizz in your belly, the high energy etc. That's what excitement feels like.

The crush conversation... This is the part that's throwing everyone.

He said he couldn't even remember the last time he had a crush, and Joon says I know how you feel and he and Joon laughed about that.

If it was because they've both come out of long term relationships (and we know Joonie's breakup was traumatic) why would they laugh?

They weren't laughing about being single, they were laughing about being OLD.

Remember what came next ... Jimin says the youngest in his band is really young so Jimin asked him about how a crush feels:

"Give me something since you're the youngest"

Because having a crush is something teenagers feel.

Jimin and Joon feel old, like they are a bit past having crushes. I believe that's what they're saying. And honestly, when was the last time you heard 30 year old men talking about their crush?

A crush and a long term romantic partner are two very different things.

At no point did he say he wasn't in a relationship.

+++++++++++++++

Edited to add a better translation of 'crush' , being one sided/unrequited love.

I'm not deleting what i originally posted because the reason jimin asked Evan is based on his youth.

+++++++++++++

One more thing i need to add...

In my experience, it's very difficult to go from being in a long term relationship to being platonic besties with your former romantic partner. It takes a LOT of work, and it requires energy, effort, and very carefully maintained boundaries.

Jimin & JK don't look like they're maintaining boundaries to me.

Based purely on the recent footage - the Are You Sure teaser they released - I see no sign of clear boundaries. Even in the Minimoni conversation Jimin says they drink and talk for 3-4 hours and it gets DEEP. That's a recipe for disaster with a former lover.

It also usually requires substantial time apart - YEARS maybe - to reset the relationship so you can be best friends without falling into old habits. We aren't talking high scool boyfriends who get the odd hour alone together here. We're talking months and months abroad in hotel rooms with nothing to do except listen to Lana Del Rey and... eat bread (apparently) 🤣🤣

Ok look, that last part was a tongue in cheek joke but they have spent YEARS under the same roof with zero reason not to be in each others bed, pants, shower, and anything else that sounds fun.

So honestly I don't buy the 'used to be lovers but now good friends' argument.

Those boys are comfortably intimate to such a level they don't know where one of them ends and the other begins.

[uh-oh-its-bird]

Offshoot of my "team Ro time travels to the founders era" post because @prinzgnomeovonchaos infected me with brain rot in the notes

So buckle in baby it's time for

Sakumo and babyKashi time traveling to the warring states ✨️

So first thing to get out of the way; Modern Hatake's and warring states era Hatake's do not hold up to the same standards.

The Hatake's during the states were a very small clan with a very big reputation. Hailing from Iron, they were an almost famous wild clan even all the way in fire country. Distantly related to the Inuzuka's but leaning more towards wolves than dogs.

They had a proper kekkei genkai and everything, unnaturally fast and strong, often born with some form of enhanced senses— be it smell, sight, taste, or even touch. Their white chakra fed into it, and they'd feed their chakra with diets of raw meat and the occasional light cannibalism during some special clan celebrations and rituals.

Unfortunatley Sakumo knows very little about the above because he was very young when his clan was pretty much all wiped out. He was raised by the only other survivor, his grandmother, who was pretty young herself when the clan got wiped, and unfortunatley was never all too concious of many of the rituals and traditions of her clan until it was too late.

Sakumo grew up to village standards and was mostly declawed because of it, and Kakashi is only doubly so. And with that dulling of all the different traditions and specific diets also came the slow fading of their bloodline limit, which was already pretty subtle if you didn't know what you're looking for.

Anyways moving on, and if you want more details for my headcanons ab warring states Hatake's vs modern standard Hatake's look at my other time travel post bc I talk ab it more there.

So Kakashi is like 6 (holy shit he's a BABY baby)

Google keeps giving me conflicting numbers for Sakumo's age at his death so we're just gonna shrug and say he's in his early 30's.

Then for the founders;

Madara (23)

Hashirama (23)

Izuna (19)

Tobirama (18)

Sakumo is staring at these guys going through it bc they are BABIES to him. And like look, he's used to working with or even occasionally under people much younger than him, but like. Oh man that's the shodai hokage. And he's like a toddler.

(He's a 23 year old man but Sakumo is kind of having a crisis so he can't register that)

So like. All the founders have major daddy issues, right? Like we can all agree that's plausible? I'm so sorry I just think it'd be *really fucking funny* if they look at Sakumo and just kinda. Yeah.

You know what I mean.

Anyways;

No idea how they got there!! This is set maybe a week before Sakumo offed himself but now he can't kill himself bc that'd mean abandoning Kakashi to the fucking warring states.

Kakashi fits the warring states standards alarmingly well actually. Honestly I think even for that time period he's still scarily young to be on the field. People are giving Sakumo looks like 'it's so hard what we've been forced to do to our children, the battles we've pushed them into, the things they've seen and done all too young'

Sakumo is going *hrrg.* and having a good long look in the mirror actually. Proper crisis, lots of guilt, Kakashi should not be out in the field this young and at least before he was mostly getting baby missions but now they're stranded in time and keep running head first into trouble.

I want Izuna and Kakashi to fight and even though Kakashi absoloutley should NOT win that battle I want him to win just so that Madara and Tobirama can make fun of him for losing to an actual child

Izuna is mortified he wants that brat DEAD

Uhh I have some more but I'm at work and actually hit post too early on this post so I had to come back to rush add all these edits bc I meant for it to stay a draft I could keep adding too later. So I'll just come add more later fr

[somerandomdudelmao]

ok wait hold up can we actually just like talk for a second about Donnie's behavior in these last few pages??

Before he found out about the infection, Donnie was still very nonchalant about a lot of situations, but he always had a sense of care and compassion for certain things, like for example, his family and friends. He used a lot of sarcasm and was overall just the snarky autistic tech dude who had more love than he could even imagine giving. He had a relentless grip on his bad-boy image, was stubborn as all hell, but was a well-rounded, lovely guy!

And then the realization hit that he was going to die sooner than expected. Then...

Poof!

Now he's just a shell (Hahaahahahahaha) of who he used to be. Now all he has for himself is a bunch of self-deprecating jokes, responsibilities to pass on to others, and a lack of hope that is just so incredibly unlike him. He still has the sarcasm, sure, but this time it's a lot more dry and emotionless. There's no brevity or lightheartedness to his words anymore, it's all just a monotone mess of half-assed goodbyes and thrown out dreams for the future. Any method of survival has seemingly been lost to time for Donnie, so now he's just kinda... Accepting the fact he's gonna die soon, which only leaves him with his own decaying body and a voice he doesn't even want anymore. And judging by the way he just ignores or shrugs aside everyone's concern, it's all basically just him saying, "Welp, guess I'll die. Here's my shit, no will required."

Also another thing I noticed is that Donnie is basically not allowed to really do anything anymore because he's at risk of dying sooner than he already thinks he will. If he gets more rest and works less, his death come significantly slower.

Meaning he must feel incredibly useless right now.

I think I've also pinpointed the time when this all started happening to Donnie btw. It's a very small moment and I don't have the screenshot on me rn but I think it was in the robo-Raph comic, specifically the moment when Donnie was zooming over to Casey and went "Past" that Kraang alien dude on the way. I imagine he didn't really go past and instead went through, because u know, he's Donatello. If given the chance to commit murder, he will commit, and he very much had the chance right there. I think he went through that Kraang alien, (Very plausible given how fast he was going like jesus- ) got its blood inside a cut or something, and it infected him via his veins or something. Kind of a stretch to assume this since it literally could've been something that took place before the time of this comic series, but this was the earliest instance of foreshadowing/possible infection that I can think of.

I also want to apologize for making all those jokes about like taking you to court and throwing you in jail and stuff because maybe they came off as mean or rude at some points. And for constantly flooding your inbox lol-

Thanks for existing and for making this comic, and congrats on beating the deadline at work! I think you deserve a cookie for that! *Gives a million more cookies* oh yeah and those are for you being you

Oh my fuckiNG GoD...

I don't even know what to say to that

I guess I just want everyone else to be able to read it too because..oh shit...oh wow.

[goddess-of-bubblegum]

Hate annons? Really hon? [Aka my opinion with new evidence] (y'all might need a snack for this)

okay, mod speaking. So. I know I said I didn't want any drama on this blog.

BUT THE MOMENT I FOUND OUT MY FRIEND WAS STILL GETTING HATE ANNONS , IM GOING FULL ON DETECTIVE MODE!

This post is about @/unhinged-waterlilly, and oooh boy am I going to be getting so much hate for this. But. I am fine with hate asks. Just don't be a coward and don't put annon on. I am a minor, and if you decide to harass me about helping a friend, here we go.

My points against her:

1 she sent, and still sends hate annons (which hurts his mental health)

2 she accused jacks bf (freddy) as being fake

So. I saw a post a while back where "lily" said things about the jack situation, and I thought it was fair. UNTIL I REACHED THE PART WHERE SHE SAID THAT JACK DIDN'T DESERVE ANYTHING HE HAS look, I know that he hurt you with the AU , it hurt me too, but going so far to say that he doesn't deserve anything he has??? That's petty and mean.

Not to mention that he was in a shit mental state at the time he made the AU. Which obviously does not excuse anything, but it atleast explains it.

also, onto evidence number 1:

HATE ANNONS;

Now, this is just one of 3 hate annons Jack got this week. Yes, Jack is aware that he has hurt people, yes he is actively striving to better, so sending these hate annons won't help Jack not being , and I quote : "a depressed little attention seeking bitch" he has owned up to his mistakes, and I've advised him to put the explanation on his blog. And since he is try I ng to be better, he is focusing on himself, his mental health, and moving on.

BECAUSE MOVING ON IS HEALTHY

Me and jacks others moots are aware that no one forgot what he did , that he hurt people. But all that you can achieve by hurting him is a short adrenaline rush, that won't be worth it coke a few days. He is actively trying to become a better person

ALSO I am aware that since this is an annon, it's hard to prove this was actually lilly. But if you were to compare this to her other posts about Jack, you'd see it is very close.

Numero 2

ACUSSING FREDDY OF BEING FAKE:

There were multiple posts accusing Freddy, jacks bf, of not being a real person. Now. All of jacks moots know he is real, due to Jack making posts about him, and him telling us about him and what happened. And honestly? It's plausible that Freddy knew how to use tumblr , because it only took me a day to figure it out

Okay, and now this:

okay, let me get this straight. What jack did was wrong. We all agree on that , including Jack. But he was in a shit mental state while doing it, and he wasn't thinking clearly. Jack is trying to improve, Jack is trying to better himself, Jack is moving on and like a few posts say we all should.

But we can't truly move on 'till Jack stops getting hate, till we apologise and understand and hear out, not necessarily forgive his actions

ALSO

From: @eligha-child-of-hades

A while ago when I recently started this account I got an ask with a link. The link led to @/unhinged-waterlily account and their intro post which had something about the MISTAKE that Jack made.

But with the ask, I didn't click it so I answered with a; ?

Bc I don't trust random links.

They sent another ask with the same link saying this exact thing; 'I suggest you read it. Better to know who you interact with.'

She says this, but she fails to inform others that she's hate bombing and hurting Jack.

Woukd you rather rp with someone whose trying to change? Or someone whi is causing someone more harm?

I'll be getting hate for this. I know I will be harassed and sent hate annons. But it will be worth it. If he can move on, but you can't, if you hold on to anger, and he doesn't.

Then aren't you also doing bad things?

@sillypuppetmeister @braydons-world @penelope-is-waiting @bast-the-best26 @reyna4ever @gaygirldoodles

[riririnnnn]

TW: Bullying and SA mentioned.

After Kaiser's backstory, I have zero to no hope about Sae's Spain backstory being a happy one.

What surprised me the most about Kaiser's backstory was how graphic everything was.

You might argue that there are many other mangas with way more graphic things which you aren't wrong at all. There are many other characters with sadder backstory, but you need to keep in mind that Blue Lock is of sports genre. Honestly, for a sports genre manga, the topic of 'physically abusive father' is itself a very heavy thing.

And considering Snuffy's backstory too, we can surely say that Kaneshiro-san is surely not shying away from throwing light on lesser talked topics of the sports industry and the athletes themselves.

Which brings two things in my mind: Bullying and Sexual Assault/Sexual Abuse.

To be honest, even as a kid, Sae doesn't seems like a person who will quietly tolerate any kind of bullying. Like, if you were to pour something on his head, he'll shove your whole face into a nearby wall.

You getting me?

However, I can't say the same thing about the adults like a coach or an official of PIFA who has a direct control on his soccer career. If something were to have a direct influence on his future, then I do think he'll force himself to seal his mouth shut, you know.

But why would any adult even bully him when he was invited to play in Re Al not the other way around of him requesting or pleading to play in that team..??? Besides, he cleared the tryouts, became a regular, and then once scored a hat trick too! Then why would any adult bully him? Also, how will changing your playing position help with bullying at all?

Unless, of course, nepotism is involved, but for that, all he had to do was change teams! And suppose, even if there was really no way out, he wouldn't have been so passionate about giving a pass to the world's best striker.

Doesn't make sense.

Personally, I don't know how common grooming/sexual abuse is in sports industry, but it just doesn't seem like a plausible explanation for his sudden interest in being a midfielder. Further, if he were to experience something this traumatic, then I do think that he would've left the soccer industry as a whole.

And suppose, if he would've still decided to stay, then I do think that he would've preferred taking a revenge on the whole industry rather than switching his dream.

Besides, his hate for his own country, Japan, just seems to come out of the blue. I mean, Pre-Spain Sae didn't exactly appear patriotic, but, at least, he wasn't openly bashing his own country.

I do have a theory for the above statement, so I guess I'll make another post for it.

[fuck-customers]

This situation truly felt like the closest I've ever gotten to reenacting the L vs. Light from Death Note battle lmaoo I kept my cool and plausible deniability, but I was dying laughing internally.

(I think I've won the battle, btw. I'll have to wait and see. There's more to this war, though)

So, for background (and I've complained about this on this blog several times...sorry) my moron boss refuses to put price tags/signs on the products in the store, especially at the register. Considering I work in a retail store...this is obviously a problem. So I've made several attempts to get products priced, in varying degrees of extremity.

1. I made handmade signs/tags out of receipt paper/scratch paper and put them on the products around the register. (Candy, toys etc.) Braindead manager took them down.

2. All but 4 of the shopping carts at work are broken, but customers are stupid and still try to drag them halfway through the store and then abandon them or somehow blame me personally for them being broken. So I put signs on the broken ones and blocked them off. Dumbshit managers keep unblocking them and then customers try and fail to use them and abandon them throughout the store, rinse and repeat daily.

3. I then got the idea to go over my manager's head, but without having it fall back on me. Write to corporate. I originally started snatching receipts to leave negative reviews on the store survey, but that seemed to be a dead end, as the SM and DM are the ones who are supposed to read the surveys, but appear not to, as not a single thing was fixed in over 6 months of "customers" complaining weekly. (Usually at least 1 every 2-4 days)

4. I found a clearance price gun and tagged everything with it, even if it wasn't clearance. One way or another, it had a price on it, right? Of course the braindead moron took them off.

5. I then found actual price tags that were technically for different products, but had the same prices as our current candy, so I tagged the items with that. (For example, we'd have a tag for chocolate that we no longer carry that was $3.99 and we have some current chips on the shelf that are $3.99, so I'd just put the old tag for the current candy, since all customers need is the dollar amount and blacked out the old product description) These lasted longer than the previous attempts, but were ultimately taken down, but this is (hopefully) the turning point.

6. Just to really make sure something would change, a month or so after reusing old price tags, I (simultaneously, while also putting up old tags) made several fake emails posing as disgruntled customers and emailed corporate complaining about the lack of prices and the broken carts (among other things) at my specific location. (I did not name any specific employees or throw anyone under the bus. I just complained about the appearance of the store and any mention of employees was simply left at "the cashier" "the manager" etc. with no personally identifying info) I did this on the feedback section of the company website as well.

This all came to a head today when the braindead's mini-me (the ASM) pulled me aside before I clocked in today to basically call me out. She said that she knew that I was the one who put the handmade tags and also put "broken" signs on the broken carts and blocked them off. I, of course pretended not to know about it, because I'm not THAT stupid. But I'm not in trouble, because she has no real proof. (It was very much "I know that she knows and she knows that I know she knows lol) Anyway, she says (and we'll see about this) that new carts have been ordered and are on their way and also that she had to go around and undo all the tags (oh boohoo, she had to do her job, poor her) and will be putting real, correct tags on the products.

We'll see. In the meantime, "customers" are still going to leave bad reviews and contact corporate until changes are actually made for real. There are still other issues that need to be fixed, but are not as important as the lack of price tags and carts. (Such as the lack of price checkers, the shit radio music, the lack of employees, the dysfunctional inventory system, the bare shelves, the disorganized store, etc.)

Posted by admin Rodney

[ashxlr]

I'm going to dissect the lyrics from Love In Paradise, specifically and mostly Calypsos at 2:52-3:35 (also a few outside of that timestamp)

We know already that Odysseus talks in his sleep because it was announced by Calypso. This is why I think the words she chose to say to Odysseus weren't just to give you a throw back to previous songs

Her first line caught my attention. She called Odysseus 'Ody' which immediately made me think about the scene when Eurylochus calls him the same thing. "Ody, we're never gonna get to make it home". He was the first to call him that and as far as we know, the only one to call him that until further in the sagas. The next few lines start with her telling Odysseus to come back to her paradise. It's very clear from the beginning that Calypso does not care for him and only does for his body and company. Ex: "Soon, into bed we'll climb and spend our time", "From here on out, you're mine, all mine." in the beginning introduction to her. She also says "Life would be so much worse if you had died" which could imply that she would only care for him if he was gone.

"I'll stay inside your heart" is another lyric she says to Odysseus. In the song The Underworld, Anticlea (his mother) says "I'll stay in your heart". There's a possibility that he said something about his mother and that situation in his sleep.

Her final line was "Please stay in my open arms" which draws back to Polites song about greeting the world with open arms. We know Odysseus still thinks about him and his beliefs of the world because it was the first voice we heard in Odysseus's mind. "This life is amazing when you greet it with open arms." Many allusions were made throughout the musical as well. This made it very plausible that he would be talking in his sleep about Polites.

Calypso said these lines to try and make herself seem like someone Odysseus could love and trust since they originated from people he loved and trusted. Thus, explaining why Calypso said all those specific things.

I love epic ugh

[moomstersnuffer]

I have some crazy conspiracy theories:

I always get this really strange, really disappointed, really let down feeling(depression am i right)when I actually stop and think about the relationship dynamics in Moominvalley. I mean, there are so many people who wholeheartedly believe in and support Snufmin but does anyone realize that if they were made canon, it would likely be more unusual and out of the norm for Moominvalley than it would be for our world of reality?

Let's start with the og crew: Moominpapa(Moomintroll's father), the Joxter(Snufkin's father), and the Muddler(Sniff's father). They were a trio of good friends going on adventures and then you look at their children and see how they too are a trio of good friends(I can't assume for two of them though...)going on adventures. Generally, I feel like Moominpapa and Joxter are the ones talked about the most and that's certainly true of Moomintroll and Snufkin as well, although we do love our Muddler and Sniff.

Then you look at what happened after their adventure days were over. They all got married(well most of them anyways) and found girls to love and had children. That's the norm. That's what's expected. That's their childrens' fate.

In the eyes of the kids who watch the show, Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden are soulmates. They’re the perfect couple. They'll end up like Moominmama and Moominpapa. And hopefully, Sniff and Snufkin will find someone too. I mean, I don't how many of you have even heard of the Snufkin and Alicia ship. I don't like it but that would be the norm...I guess. Sorry I really don't like that ship :/

It's never even implied or mentioned ever but I just feel like the unmentioned norm would be expected from like, everyone.

However, I think there’s more hope for the future now since it's now implied that Sniff doesn't really feel romantic feelings for anyone. I think it's safe to even mention that Snorkmaiden isn't a moomin like Moomintroll's parents both are(I mean it's another difference between generations to pin my delusions to)And despite that weird ship with Alicia, I doubt there's anyone on Snufkin’s radar except Moomintroll.

That brings this whole spiel to an even sadder conspiracy: Snufkin is the only one of the two who harbors romantic feelings.

I can't name certain instances because I have short term memory loss but I think this a very plausible theory. There really isn't a romantic interest for Snufkin in the series unless you count when his own step sis tried to get with him in the anime(like wtf was that?) Anyways, Moomintroll, on the other hand, has Snorkmaiden. My thing is, he either loves Snufkin platonically or he realizes he feels something more but doesn't want to break the social norm and disappoint people.

it's gotta be one of those two and since i'm a shipper I gotta lean toward the latter.

(I actually tried writing a fanfic about this a few months ago but I dropped it temporarily. I think I'll pick it up soon because I did like it I just got insecure lol)

But really all i'm doing here is throwing words in your face because I rewatched some s2-s3 episodes and got mad all over again. So yeah.

That's all I have to say today. I honestly think I say more on this site than I do in real life which is really sad but that's life these days. Nobody around to talk to about this stuff except you guys.

Thanks for reading whoever ended up reading this! I'm sorry if I left you more confused than you were before.

'Night, tumblr

[taiey]

hi guys i watched Pangi's vod An honest talk with Flamefrags and came out of it A Flame Fan 💖 i shall now attempt to spread this affliction 😌

Like I do appreciate just the bare fact that he did log in to chat with Pangi, because he asked. And then went and... built a house with him? Just because. Like they spent an hour this, he's not actually kidding when he says that he does show up for other people's bits.

Anyway. Here are some things Flame says, when they got onto building:

I don't like building: everything I build gets destroyed

I won't build at spawn, I'm scared I'll get arrow cannon'd

I don't like getting attached to places, someone'll trap it

"putting the entrance *here* would make sense but if it's *here* I can see more people if they come to attack me"

Having pets also gets him killed, "I had to drop that a while back."

"How can you dedicate this much time to something, just to know it could be gone instantly?"

(me like a month ago: huh Flame keeps going through the wall instead of the door of his base, that's potentially interesting.) (me now: oh NO) this is what being immortal means, apparently: being constantly aware of all the ways you could die.

so. in. addition to your "man who had to burn off him caring about anything other than fighting because it will get him killed". thing. 🥺

There's the whole audience angle that I find tasty to chew on. Like he opens by saying, he dies once on Lifesteal and everyone's mocking him and he wanted to prove himself. And then the "I have four thousand people watching me and now I let them all down and they start slandering me in the chat"—calling it clickbait, I hear. And it's like—

Did you know one time Flame was a streaming grinding villagers in his volcano-adjacent base and someone paid him money to tell him they would pay him more money if he killed Zam? (the answer, at the time, was—I'm not killing Zam, I'm allied with him, Zam built this base.) Did you know one time he killed Jepexx, metaphorically turns to the camera to say "chat, you be begging me to kill people. Then look, I just killed him in three hits. Are you happy? That's why I want to fight actual good people, like... Is this what you guys wanted? An easy kill?" and then two minutes later he died to Leowook's void trap? Like the emergent symbolism, guys. Did you hear that he died to a wither he had already killed because he was responding to chat?

"I have to blow up spawn tonight or I'm lying, again"

i want to Chew

And then there's a reflection of the stream audience in the audience of, like Wemmbu, and Manepear, which we get in inside flamefrags mind, like... can you back down when other people are looking at you expecting it, encouraging it, going through with it with or without you? You can't understand the - character of Flamefrags without putting that pressure somewhere. (i do like fics where these characters are streaming their own lives)

They blow up his house; Mane says it was just Wemmbu and that Wemmbu didn't know it was Flame's but we don't know. He was very suspicious and withheld for a long time but by the end of it he was joking with Pangi and putting real effort into making the fireplace look nice with the bricks and the grate. Like, like, like—You take - one step down a path you've been avoiding for so long because every time you've tried it leads to ruin. And then your friends burn it down. Don't go that way, even a little. Just blow stuff up, that's what's fun, that's what we do for fun. Not that.

. . . probably reading too much into it.

Also he said he expected that if he'd fought the six people everyone would've just run away as soon as he started winning/killed one person, and told Pangi his plans for later were getting enchanted apples, and just generally gave the impression that he could plausibly win a 6v1 by straightforwrdly having 20 hearts and notch apples and being Flamefrags. :) i am not immune to being an audience that thinks it's neat when he's super good at fighting. :) also also it's not just the four Declared Pacifists he's complaining about, they made a list of thirteen people on lifesteal who in general wouldn't fight (4c, zam, ecorridor, midmystixc, mrcube, pangi, squiddo, jaron, kaboodle, poafa, terrain, spepticle, woogie) and you could add or subtract a couple (pangi argued him out of bacon; uh, i do dispute,) but gosh that actully is a lot.

In conclusion Pangi's going to make a Flame Lore video and I hope it is Good and I can just point people at that when it's out 🙏

[onyxbird]

OK, turns out I'm not done way overanalyzing the hospital scene from "The Nigerian Job." But in the interests of not continuing to spam the poor stranger who touched off that conversation, I'll dump the new overanalysis into its own post. @trivalentlinks @wolves-in-the-world

As I've been thinking about this, I'm just fascinated by what the setup seems to imply about their choices here:

1. Nate and Hardison are both handcuffed to hospital beds--Nate unconscious, Hardison apparently only still on the bed because he doesn't know how get himself out of handcuffs.

2. Parker is free of her cuffs and pacing. (She gets handcuffed to the bed after feigning nausea to lure the doctors in.) Her dialog implies she has already formulated a plan for getting at least herself out (that will be ruined if Eliot kills someone).

3. Eliot is sitting in a chair, handcuffed to the arm. Going off of other Hollywood hospital scenes, I assume Eliot being in a chair reflects both being very minimally injured and some off-screen grifting on his part. He'd want to be cuffed to the relatively light-and-compact chair instead of a bed, since he could maneuver and fight without necessarily having to get the cuffs off first, which would be consistent with his assertion that "I can take these cops"--he's got an escape plan, too.

The dialog also indicates that 1) they have been in the hospital with Nate unconscious for at least 20 minutes (because that's how long ago they were fingerprinted) and 2) everyone else has been conscious since before getting brought to the hospital (Parker: "Cops and firemen got there just as we were waking up.").

So, all three of them sat there for at least 20 minutes waiting for Nate to wake up, knowing their time before their identities were uncovered was ticking away, and none of them just ditched the others and left.

Eliot and Parker both had exit plans that were plausible given their skills displayed in the rest of the series--Eliot almost certainly could have gotten the jump on the cops immediately guarding them, probably using the chair as a weapon, gotten the handcuff keys from them if necessary, and plowed his way through any remaining resistance; Parker could have found an openable window or a vent system or a route through a drop ceiling or something to sneak out. Eliot had even more of an advantage that his "roommate" was unconscious--Parker and Hardison wouldn't have known he was abandoning them until they heard him fighting the cops, and that would have been too late for them to ruin his plan by eliminating the element of surprise.

Like, part of me wants to say I'm probably reading too much into this--the writers needed the rest of them to still be there when Nate woke up or it would break the story... but that "problem" only exists because they chose to knock Nate out for 20+ minutes*. If the team was supposed to still be hostile and in every-man-for-himself mode, then all they would have had to do would be have Nate wake up with the others and them all start bickering as soon as the cops leave earshot.

They waited for Nate. The dialog didn't suggest that they were waiting for Nate to make the plan--maybe they wanted to make sure everyone made it out; maybe they just wanted to make sure Nate was OK, but either way they all stuck around for 20 minutes when it probably wasn't in their personal best interests in terms of escape and 2/3 had exit plans already. They may not trust each other yet, but they do seem to have decided to make sure everyone's accounted for before they split up.

*I'm going to ignore the fact that Nate probably has some serious brain injury if he was unconscious for 20+ minutes because Leverage clearly works on Hollywood harmless knock-out logic.

[thr0wnawayy]

Hello! Been really enjoying your MHA takes especially the aftermath, it had me thinking but what if Hawks and the HC were responsible were for wiping out Izuku's record in the Final War. We know there was people recording Izuku's battle with Tomura but yet people not knowing about Izuku and acting like he is some mysterious legend just didn't sit right with me. But if they knew, OFA was going to disappear and there would be no Symbol of Peace in the short term until Mirio arrived (bleh). Then it would make sense why Hawks and company would delete this stuff for any number of reasons. It would be this weird sort of propaganda where the collective is glorified. While still retaining the status quo until they can find a stronger Symbol because I refuse to take seriously Mirio being number 1 cause his quirk is overrated.

This would help explain why Izuku's role in the war is essentially erased and no one seems to have remembered him despite being the deciding factor, but his depression/guilt means he doesn't care to talk about. It would be overwhelming for Izuku because the propaganda would only assert that his role was meaningless despite it being the contrary. Of course, it doesn't help that nobody does anything to help lift Izuku from his mental problems.

What your saying is absolutely plausible, however there are a few things that conflict with your theory.

No one really knew about OFA in the first place. This is a massive fuck up on Hori's part, as "canonically" only 3 people really know about OFA (5, if you count sheild and Melissa)

The fact is, the general public isn't really aware of what OFA was. To their knowledge Izuku might have been one of AFO's science projects or something of the sort, which could have created problems in trying to reestablish "order".

Thus the Commission thought it best for OFA to just fade into the background and that meant nipping every bud related to it. Including Midoriya.

You see, All Might is covered. He's made a name for himself and even though there was panic after his retirement, he's still one of the only people capable of standing firm. That alone grants him a level of protection and support networks that Midoriya clearly lacks.

The second issue is that the idea of a symbol is so ingrained with All Might (or rather the idea of AM) that OFA is connected to that by proxy.

The Commission needs a hero that doesn't exist anymore, because in a post Liberation War Japan? They can't exist.

Not when people have been exposed to how rotten the current system is underneath and no 'new coat of paint' will ever be enough to change that, no matter how fanciful the lie.

Midoriya by his very nature (and failings) as a hero, cannot become 'the greatest' in this world, because what once passed for the greatest turned out to be a human trafficking piece of shit, who was killed by his victim's own hand.

Izuku's record wasn't so much wiped, as much as he just gave up. He went so went so far off course that he wound up in a worse position than when he started and dragged everyone with him in the process.

The reality is a culture built on "out of sight, out of mind" when it comes to crime. MHA's Japan does this, but far, far worse and that isn't sustainable. Not when you have massive critics like Japan does.

Japan is in a free fall, Toshinori is one of those people, hopefully I'll get around to writing that mini chapter fully.

Hawks doesn't have the brains to lead. As seen in the U.N Meeting, he's a horrible politician (being a child soldier will do that). He's used to taking orders and polishing the boots of whomever is giving them, not sitting down and discussing how they (the nations) can use their power to make the world a better place.

As for the Hero Boards, due to the lack of participation, they fluctuate violently every term due to the smaller voting pool. Mirio's rank is only semi-consistant, with him constantly switching to number one and number three every odd poll showcase.

The portion of the public that still look up to heroes see him as a model person, but not a model hero. As they look for a hero that will never come.

The truth is there cannot be another All Might in the same way there can never be another AFO (Pre Kamio ofc). They were titans of their time, only able to exist because of the circumstances unique to their times.

There's a saying that is often misquoted

"The survival of the fittest"

This is an incomplete version of the phrase, the correct version is: "The survival of the fittest to adapt"

That is what evolution is, an arms race.

There will never truly be another All Might, there may never be another League Of Villains. But it doesn't matter, because some way, somehow.

The pieces will slot into place and then the real fun can begin. So long as their are those who slip through the cracks. So long as the current society stands.

There will always be that child that everyone can see, but choose to ignore.

They can lie to themselves, have them put on a happy face, shunt them to fitting into the current "mold" and then go home and wash their hands of responsibility because "I did my part".

It won't make them any less guilty.

It won't make those children any less adaptable.