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assortedseaglass · 9 months

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🌟Mistletoe | Yuletide🌟

Michael Gavey x Fem!Reader

Summary: Michael's Christmas plans are scuppered, but a chance encounter lifts his hopes for the New Year.

Content: Fluff, Language.

Yuletide Masterlist

December 15th. The night of the Catton Christmas party in Brasenose College. Term ended a week ago, but the prospect of partying with the university’s hottest boy and his gaggle of gorgeous followers was too delicious to pass up. Freshers to third-years clamoured to rub shoulders with the prime ministers and business men of tomorrow. Any way to get your foot in the door, and maybe some Christmas action too.

The single-pane windows of the old college dorm room rattled to the beat of NOW XMAS, and each time the door opened a pair of drunk undergrads tumbled into the quadrangle.

The latest two, a straw-haired girl in a Juicy Couture tracksuit and a burly boy wearing a rugby polo, stumbled from the old double doors leading to the common room. On their way, between sloppy kiss and over the top giggles, they bumped into a solitary figure.

“Sorry, mate,” the drunk boy said, watching the other young man through alcohol-heavy eyes. The girl beside him eyed the stranger and snorted. “Merry Christmas.”

Hands tucked into his pockets, scarf wrapped neatly around his neck, Michael Gavey stumbled. The pair got no reply, only a cold glance of annoyance as he made for his dorm.

Gold, string-light bulbs decorated Brasenose quadrangle, tacky Christmas trees were perched in various student windows, and the saccharine chorus of Band Aid 20 was shouted from the common room.

Michael didn’t hate Christmas. He quite enjoyed the fuss from his aunties and the jumpers his grandmother bought him. His mum snuck extra roasties onto his plate and his dad made a point to buy him each year’s Telegraph Quiz Book. This year would surely be even better. The pride on his family’s faces, each asking about his first term at Oxford. First one in his family to go to university and he gets into Oxford.

It was precisely because he liked Christmas that this one was so miserable. Michael was neither surprised nor upset when he checked his pigeonhole that morning to see no invitation to the Catton Christmas part. Him and Oliver. A pair of nobodies.

He took the new Nokia his dad got him for his A Levels out of his pocket. No texts. Punching the numbered keys, he sent one to Oliver.

Back at BC. Mince pies and port ready.

The corridor to his dorm room was empty. With the turn of his key, he opened the door. The room was cold. The ancient radiator was ticking into life and the old windows were beginning to fog with condensation. On top of his stack of maths textbooks a bottle of unopened port gleamed.

Turning on his bedside lamp, Michael gathered two dusty glasses his mother insisted he pack with him, and from his Tesco bag produced a pack of mince pies. He placed them on a paper plate and emptied the rest of the carrier bag (wallet, keys, pencil case, workbook) next to the E45 cream and battered copy of GH Hardy’s biography.

The Nokia buzzed aggressively on the table. Removing his scarf, Michael checked the screen. It was from Oliver. He unlocked the phone and checked the small envelope icon.

Something’s come up, sorry.

Michael slumped on the bed. His thumb hovered over the keypad.

Get a better offer, did you?

He deleted the text, locked the screen and threw it on the cheap duvet.

The others would still be at the pub. He could just go back and meet them there. Could, were it not for his pride. It just wasn’t the same, a group of people forced together, as opposed to those who found each other.

The pub was full of his fellow mathematics students. Spotty, eager to please and reeking of desperation to prove themselves. Michael didn’t need to. He watched as they fought for Professor Mathison’s attention, keen to discuss tutorial projects and career prospects. Mathison was already keenly aware of Michael, judging by the way his jaw dropped when Michael recited the Lagrangian form to the last letter.

With Oliver it was different. They were two outsiders, making their way in a world entirely foreign to their own, their intellect their only way in. Now it seemed the friendship Michael was working so hard to cultivate with Oliver was slipping away.

He stared at the empty glasses. Fuck it. Pouring a little too much port in one of the glasses, Michael stuffed a mince pie into his mouth, grabbed another and made for the door.

The air was crisp, but mild for mid-December. The music of the Catton party across the quadrangle had mellowed, and through the misty windows Michael could make out shapes dancing close together, swaying slowly.

A pang of jealousy twisted in his naval and he twitched awkwardly. He wondered what it would be like, having another body pressed against his. Or rather, to have someone want to be that close to him. His mind flashed to the French girl in tutorial. She’d pressed her leg against his at the pub when Mathison mentioned a partnered project for the new year, and when he’d looked down, he saw her fingers brushing the cuff of his jumper. He’d flinched away.

Everyone was doing it. Quick flings with no regard for consequence. He supposed he could do it too. With the French girl, or the girl with agoraphobia. Lord knows, she was getting as much action as he was. But there was something in his studious nature, his desire for knowledge, that meant he had to be consumed by knowing someone fully, or nothing at all.

Perching his bony bottom on the cold concrete step under an old brick archway, Michael took a gulp of port and began on the mince pie. He took the top off, ate it, and thought of his grandfather, and how he would add brandy butter before replacing the pastry cover. He ate the rest quickly and sipped his port slowly, thinking over the last term. The successes; far and away the best student on the course, and the failures; one (?) friend. It was as he did this that the door behind him opened.

“Shit, sorry! Didn’t see you there!” You hadn’t done anything wrong. Not opened the door on his back or tripped over him. Michael waved his hand noncommittally and without answer. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

He looked up at this. An old grey coat at least a size too big was wrapped around you, a scarf pulled up to your nose and muffling your voice. Michael couldn’t make much of you out, just the eyes peering down at him from above the scarf, but he could tell you were beaming at him. Why?

He gestured to the cold step. You sat beside him, gave him a bright smile that didn’t falter when he stared at you a little too long, and turned to look at the night beyond the small archway.

“Pretty, aren’t they? All the lights?” Michael didn’t respond. He shifted his body slightly away from yours and took another sip of port. You weren’t deterred. “You a Billy-no-mates too then?”

“It’s Norman-no-mates-”

“I don’t think it matters.” You cut him off. “Well?”

Michael turned his face to you. You were still watching the lights but sensed him looking at you. In turn, you looked back at him, unabashed and direct.

“I might have mates waiting inside.”

“You might, but you don’t. You’re out here drinking wine,”

“Port.”

“Port’s just fortified wine. Drinking on your own when everyone’s off partying.”

Michael didn’t blink as he watched you. You weren’t being cruel by making him feel bad for his social ineptitude. Nor were you prying into what it was that made him so deplorable to seemingly everyone in college. No. You were just stating the facts. Michael loved facts.

“NFI.”

“Snap.” You held out your hand and gave him your name. Michael’s heart didn’t leap, but it did give a strange sort of jolt.

“Michael Gavey.” He shook yours and his mouth twitched when you gave him a firm smile.

“What about you? Why are you sitting on a cold step with a stranger?”

“Mate’s back there screaming at her fella cos he necked some girl in Exeter after a Hooch too many.”

“Let me guess, Business Management?”

“The very same.”

There was a contented silence a while. Michael sipped his port and watched you from the corner of his eye. The fingerless gloves you wore were fraying a little. Everything looked second hand. From your slightly battered Mary Janes and baggy jeans to the bag by your feet. Even the scarf still wrapped around your neck. The hair there was bunching under the fabric and a few wisps kept sticking to your lip gloss. Too pretty to be sitting with him, and too rough around the edges to be the usual Catton-fodder.

Michael licked his lips. “What are you reading?” Please be something good.

“Computer Sciences.” Merry fucking Christmas. “You?”

“Maths.”

“Ah, we could have done with you at the pub quiz! ‘How many birds in total are there in the twelve days o-’”

“One-hundred and eighty-four.” Michael rattled off as though the answer was a grocery list. You stared at him, an impressed smile playing at the corner of your mouth. Michael’s heart vaulted that time. He wanted more.

“Ask me anything. I can do any sum.”

You eyed him with barely supressed glee. “Twelve times thirty-one.”

“Three-hundred and seventy-two. Come on, ask me something harder.”

“Three-hundred and seventy-two times eight.”

“Harder.”

“Times twenty-three?”

“Harder.”

You almost shouted with excitement. “Three-hundred and seventy-two times forty-seven!”

“Seventeen-thousand, four hundred and eighty-four.”

You giggled and let out a low whistle. “Fuck me,”

Yes please.

A broad flush spread across Michael’s cheeks and he licked his lips again. “I can also-”

“Better check madam is ok,” your eyes indicated behind you as you took you phone from your pocket. The white light from the small screen was garish amongst the soft golds of the Christmas lights, and Michael’s heart sank as he watched you scroll through your contacts list. So many names. He’d give anything to be among.

He didn’t pay attention to anything you were saying as you chatted to your friend. The shine of your lip gloss beneath the fairy lights was too mesmerising. Michael raised his port glass to his lips, took a sip and let the glass linger there as you ended your call. He was entranced.

“Love you, mate. Alright, chat tomorrow.” You sighed as you hung up and looked at Michael. “Home for me, I think.”

As you stood, Michael did too, pulling his trousers up and tucking his hands into his pockets. “Nice to meet you, Michael.” You shook his free hand again and took the port from the other. He watched, agog, as you downed it in one. “Graham’s? Very nice.” You passed him the empty glass and began making your way to the end of the archway. He followed you like a shadow.

At the end of the passageway into the old quadrangle you turned to face him. “What are you doing for Christmas, Michael?”

“Home,” his voice was unnaturally high and he coughed. “Home, to see family but not much else.”

“And new year?”

“Seeing some boring old school friends then back here before term st-starts-starts,” you were leaning towards him. With no hint of shyness, and perhaps a little too forcefully, you kissed him. You pulled back, smiling.

“What was that for?” The surprise of your lips on his made him shout, and it sounded more hysterical than genuine shock and curiosity.

“Mistletoe,” you stated simply, pointing at the small poesy hanging from the archway.

Michael coughed. “Of course, yeah. Thank you.” He made an odd movement and almost clicked his heels. You laughed again, turning into the dark night.

“See you in the new year, Michael.” Your voice echoed off the old stone walls. Just as Michael expected, you sounded so certain. In all your ten minutes of knowing each other, he’d learned that about you. The statement wasn’t speculation or conjecture. It was a fact. Michael loved facts.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope it's been a kind and calm one. H x

The usual suspects: @arcielee @targaryenrealnessdarling @theoneeyedprince @ewanmitchellcrumbs @ellrond @cyeco13 @babyblue711 @exitpursuedbyavulcan @humanpurposes @myfandomprompts @barbieaemond @anjelicawrites

#ewan mitchell #michael gavey #michael gavey x reader #ewan mitchell x reader #mistletoe #saltburn #OI SALTBURN PEEPS #if you're fed up with the lack of oliver and felix fanfic #write your own and leave us to thirst over the nerd in peace #merry christmas!#hilde's twelve days of christmas

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

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Brinkwhump Linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

Once again, I find myself arriving at the weekend with a giant backlog of links, triggering a linkump, the 15th such dumpage, a variety-pack of miscellany for your weekend. Here's the previous editions:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Let's start with the latest incredible news from KPMG, the accounting and auditing giant that is relied upon as a source of ground truth for a truly terrifying share of the world's economy. KPMG has a well-deserved reputation for incompetence and corruption. They first came on my radar in 2001 when they sent a legal threat to a blogger for linking to their website without permission:

https://memex.craphound.com/2001/12/05/reason-4332442-not-to-ask/

The actual link was to KPMG's corporate anthem, which remains, to this day, a banger:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040428063826/http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/uknewsita/http://anthems.zdnet.co.uk/anthems/kpmg.mp3

Don't miss the DJ remixes (and the Nokia ringtone!) that the internet thoughtfully provided when KPMG decided that it didn't want the world to know about "Our Vision of Global Strategy":

https://web.archive.org/web/20011128153057/http://corporateanthems.raettig.org/

Now all this is objectively very funny, a relic of the old, good internet from one of its moments of glory, but KPMG? They were already enshittifying, even in 2001, and the enshittification only intensified thereafter. Nearly every accounting scandal of the past quarter-century has KPMG in it somewhere, from con-artists selling exhausted oil fields to rubes:

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/03/miller-energy-kpmg-auditors-oil-fraud/

To killer nursing homes that hire KPMG to audit its books – and to advise it on how to defeat safety audits and murder your grandma:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

They're the architects of Microsoft's tax-evasion plot:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

And they were behind Canada's dysfunctional covid contact-tracing app, which never worked, but generated tens of millions in billings to the government of Canada, who used KPMG to hire programmers at $1,500/day, plus KPMG's 30% commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

KPMG's most bizarre scandal is literally stranger than fiction. The company bribed SEC personnel help its own accountants cheat on ethics exams. The corrupt officials were then given high-paid jobs at KPMG:

https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-professional/article/sec-probe-finds-kpmg-auditors-cheating-on-training-exams-061819

I mean it when I say this is stranger than fiction. I included it as a plot-point in my new finance crime novel The Bezzle (now a national bestseller!), and multiple readers have written to me since the book came out a couple weeks ago to say that they thought I was straining their credulity by making up such an outrageous scandal:

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

But all of that is just scene-setting (and a gratuitous plug for my book) for the latest KPMG scandal, which is, possibly, the most KPMG scandal of all KPMG scandals. The Australian government hired KPMG to audit Paladin, a security contractor that oversees the asylum seekers the country locks up on one of its island gulags (yes, gulags, plural).

Ever since, Paladin has been the subject of a string of ghastly human rights scandals – the worst stuff imaginable, rape and torture and murder of adults and children. Paladin made AU423 million on this contract.

And here's the scandal: KPMG audited the wrong company. The Paladin that the Australia government paid KPMG to audit was based in Singapore. The Paladin that KPMG audited was a totally different company, based in Papua New Guinea, who already had a commercial relationship with KPMG. It was this colossal fuckup that led to the manifestly unfit Singaporean company getting nearly half a billion dollars in public funds:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/24/incredible-failure-kpmg-rejects-claims-it-assessed-the-wrong-company-before-423m-payment-to-paladin

KPMG denies this. KPMG denies everything, always. Like, they denied creating "power maps" of decision-makers in the Australian government to target with influence campaigns in order to win contracts like this one. Who knows, maybe, this one time, they're telling the truth? After all, the company whose employees gather to sing lyrics like these can't be all bad, right?

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

https://everything2.com/title/KPMG+corporate+anthem

You may find it strange that I'm still carrying around the factoid that KPMG once threatened to crush a blogger for linking to its terrible corporate anthem, but that's just my "Memex Method," which helps me keep track of literally everything that seemed important to me through most of my adult life:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

One of my favorite quips from the very quotable Riley Quinn is that "leftists are cursed with object-permanence" – that is, we actually remember what just happened and use it to think about what's happening now. The Memex Method is object permanence for 20+ years worth of stuff. A lot of those deep archives never see use, but there's a surprising number of leading indicators buried in the stuff that happened in years gone by.

Take James Boyle's 2014, XKCD-style comic about the experience of driving a notional Apple car:

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/11/07/apple-updates-a-comic/

Apple, it turns out, spent the next decade working on just such a car, and while that car has now been canceled, Boyle's comic correctly anticipates so much about the trajectory Apple's products took. It's uncannily accurate – real "don't invent the torment nexus"/"cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion" stuff:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

But no matter how many times we insist that the torment nexus shouldn't be created, the boardrooms of end-stage capitalism continue to invent them. Take HP, the poster-child for enshittification, edging out even KPMG in the race to turn everything into a pile of shit. After years of tormenting people to punish them for wanting to print things, HP has announced a new service that so mustache-twirlingly evil that it lacks verisimilitude:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

Here's the pitch: HP will sell you a printer that you don't own. In addition to paying a monthly fee for your ink – which you pay no matter whether you print or not – you will also pay a monthly fee just for having HP's printer on your premises. You are absolutely, positively forbidden from using third-party ink in this printer, and must use HP's own ink, which sells for about $10,000/gallon.

But while you aren't allowed to use this printer in ways that are bad for HP's shareholders, HP is absolutely free to use the printer in ways that are bad for you. When you click through the signup agreement, you grand HP permission to surveil every document you print – and your home wifi network more generally – and to sell that data to anyone and everyone.

What's more, HP reserves the right to discipline you with punitive credit-card charges if you disconnect this printer from the internet, on the basis that doing so makes it harder for them to spy on your printer.

I'm sorry, this is just more torment nexus shit, the kind of thing you'd expect to drop on Apr 1, not Feb 29, but I guess this is where we are. I can only conjecture as to whether HP's businesses strategists are directly taking direction from my novella "Unauthorized Bread," or whether they're learning about it second-hand from a KPMG consultant who converted it to Powerpoint form and charged $1,500/day for the work:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

All of this cartoonish villainry is the totally foreseeable consequence of a culture of impunity, in which companies like HP and KPMG can rob, cheat, steal (and sometimes even kill) without consequence. This impunity is so pervasive that the exceptions – where a rich criminal faces real consequences – become touchstones: Enron, Arthur Anderson, Theranos, and, of course, FTX.

FTX was arguably the largest-scale corporate crime in world history, stealing more than $10 billion dollars, mostly from rubes sucked in by hype and Superbowl ads. When news that FTX founder and owner Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and was in for a lengthy prison sentence made a huge stir, because criminals like SBF usually walk away from the wreckage with their hands in their pockets, whistling a jaunty tune.

One of the very best commentators on cryptocurrency scams generally and FTX/SBF in particular is Molly White, whose Web3 is Going Just Great feed is utterly indispensable. White's newsletter, "Citation Needed," dives deep into the wrangle of SBF's sentencing:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-52/

Bankman-Fried's parents – prominent law professors at top law schools – helped brief the court this week on their son's punishment. According to them, SBF faces 100 years in prison, but should be sentenced to 5.5-6.5 years at the most. Why? Because he is a vegan, who is not greedy, and feels remorse, and cares for individuals (recall that SBF presented himself as the avatar of the batshit "effective altruism" philosophy while privately admitting that he used this as a smokescreen).

The most bizarre note in the 100-page filing is SBF's mother declaring that her son is an "angel of mercy," apparently unaware of the grisly meaning of that term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_mercy_(criminology)

America's prisons are a travesty and I wouldn't wish them on anyone, but that's not the argument SBF's parents are making; rather, they're arguing that their special boy doesn't deserve the treatment America metes out to poorer, less white people who merely steal hundreds or thousands of dollars. A crook who steals ten billion should be handled the way a casino handles a whale – with concierge service.

The problem is, there are so many of these remorseless, relentless crooks that there's no way we could scale up that white-glove treatment when we finally round 'em all up and make them pay. Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tkacik tells us about the ransomware attack that shut down America's pharmacy system last month:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-03-01-zoomer-hackers-shut-down-unitedhealthcare/

The attack brought down Change Healthcare, part of the monopolist Unitedhealth, which serves as the "pharmacy benefit manager" to a vast swathe of American pharmacies. PBM is one of those all-American finance scams, a middleman garlanded with performative complexity put there to make you feel stupid for asking why independent pharmacies all have to pay rent to this malicious, unaccountable – and now, manifestly incompetent – gang of crooks.

Tkacik's breakdown of this scam – and how it rendered Americans' ability to get the drugs they depend on to go on breathing – is characteristically brilliant. Tcacik is fast emerging as my favorite Explainer of Scams, a print version of John Oliver or Adam Conover. You may recall her work from my post last week on how private equity has taken a wrecking ball to America's hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

I always try to finish these linkdumps with some upbeat news to carry you through the weekend, and this week brought two genuinely wonderful – and totally underreported – pieces of amazing news.

The first is that Starbucks has sued for peace in the war against its workers' unions. Hundreds of Starbucks stores have unionized in recent years, but not one of them had a contract. Instead, Starbucks had waged dirty war on their own workers, from denying gender-affirming care to unionized employees to simply shutting down whole stores after they voted to unionize:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/14/starbucks-union-company-threatens-that-unionizing-could-jeopardize-gender-affirming-health-care.html

But the workers held fast and after years of this, Starbucks has caved, promising contracts for all unionized stores and an end to its campaign of terror against workers seeking to unionize more of its stores. In a postmortem for Jacobin, Eric Blanc rounds up "seven lessons from Starbucks workers' historic victory":

https://jacobin.com/2024/02/starbucks-sbwu-contract-bargaining/

This is the kind of listicle I can get behind. According to Blanc, the Starbucks unions won by deploying worker-to-worker organizing, a tactic that many of the new unions that are shaking up formerly impossible-to-organize jobsites are using (Blanc has a book about this coming from UC Press called "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Unionism Can Transform America," so he should know).

Other tactics that made the difference for Starbucks unions: new digital training and support tools and partnering with established unions for support and infrastructure. Blanc also calls out the success of "salting" – the venerable but largely disused tactic of union organizers applying for a job at a non-union shop in order to organize it.

Blanc also mentions government policy, including the outstanding work of NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a shrewd and committed tactician whose understanding of the technicalities of labor law have let her push for bold measures. For example, in Thrive Pet Care, Abruzzo is arguing that when a company refuses to bargain in good faith for a contract with its union, she can step in and order them to honor the terms of a contract at comparable unionized competitors until they produce a contract of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Abruzzo is one of several smart, competent tacticians in the Biden administration who are working to kneecap corporate power. Another is Rohit Chopra, chair of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, who just announced another bold, important initiative that will help Americans fight corporate corruption and get a fair deal:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-03-01-public-option-credit-card-shopping/

Chopra is taking aim at credit-card comparison sites that purport to show you where you can get the best deal. If you're an affluent person who doesn't carry a balance, this might not matter to you, but if you're an average working stiff, high interest rates can gobble up a massive share of your paycheck. What's more, credit card margins are higher than they have ever been:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/credit-card-interest-rate-margins-at-all-time-high/

The most expensive credit cards come from the big, monopolistic banks, but you wouldn't know it from the leaderboards produced by Credit Karma, NerdWallet, LendingTree, and Bankrate. All of these sites take bribes from the big banks to list their credit cards above those offered by credit unions – who are typically 10% cheaper than the big banks' cards.

The new CFPB rule prohibits this fraudulent ranking, but the Bureau is going even further. They're using their administrative powers to force banks to report their rates to the Bureau, which will publish them on a publicly funded, neutral website – what David Dayen calls "a public option" for shopping for credit cards.

This policy makes a perfect bookend to the last CFPB initiative I wrote about here: a rule that forces banks to allow you to transfer your account to a rival with a couple of simple clicks, importing all your history, payees, and everything else you need to switch to a better bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

Combine that ease of switching with reliable information on which banks will give you the best deal and you get something that will directly transfer millions and millions of dollars from giant, wildly profitable banks to low-income people who've been tricked into paying them punitive interest rates.

So that's it, this week's linkdump. I promised you I'd end on a high note, and I did it. The world may be full of all kinds of terrible things, but workers and regulators are scoring big, muscular victories in battles where the stakes are real and important. Have a great weekend – we've earned it.

And remember!

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/2024/03/02/macedoine/#the-public-option

Image: Stacy (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/notahipster/4402860361/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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michellemisfit · 6 months

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WEEKLY TAG WEDNESDAY - FIRSTS!

Tagged by @suzy-queued @deedala @darlingian @heymrspatel @lingy910y @energievie @mybrainismelted @blue-disco-lights

Name: Michelle

Age: Currently getting a kick out of telling people that I’m nearly 40 and having them go ‘NO WAY!!!’ - It’s funny and flattering :)

First Pet: Siberian gerbils called Tom & Jerry

First Word: No idea. Turns out my parents kept a baby book for my older brother where they painstakingly recorded all of that stuff. I found mine a few years ago and it’s got a grand total of 3 entries, one of which is talking about how chubby I am, and how I am yet to find a food I’ll say no to, and let’s hope that’s not a sign of things to come… after which it was abandoned. Thanks mum.

First Celebrity Crush: Leonardo DiCaprio

First IRL Crush: Dominik. We hung out basically every day after school. I would go round to his house and he would play me the latest Michael Jackson tape and show me new dance steps that he’d taught himself. I thought he was so cool.

First Kiss: Age 14 with my first boyfriend. He was 20 years old. We were in a relationship for over a year. Shit was fucked up. At the risk of repeating myself… Thanks mum.

First Car: Bebop 🚙 He’s my baby and I bought him this year and I love him! He’s a turquoise 2013 Toyota Yaris Hybrid.

First apartment/house/dorm/whatever away from your parents: Heh. I moved straight from my childhood bedroom to a different country. If you’re gonna do something, do it right! lol

First Time on a Plane: I was… 18 months old? Parents went on holidays to Florida. I have about 3 memories from that trip.

First Cellphone: Nokia 3210 😎

First Concert: David Hasselhoff. I was maybe… 6? And I got very tired and slept through the second half, but my parents woke me up for Looking for Freedom, which was my favourite song of his.

First Foreign country you visited? Italy or France most likely. Pure proximity, and most of our family vacations were done by car from Switzerland so…

First sport you ever played? Hmm. I did competitive swimming when I was very young. And then gymnastics. And after that… about five minutes of football (the only sport I to this day do not understand. How do I run AND kick a ball simultaneously?!?), then 3 years of tennis, 2 years of basketball, 8 years of roller hockey, and a whole smattering of other sports on and off.

First career aspiration? I mean… I basically wanted to be a Disney Princess, purely for the Animal Best Friend aspect! And then any form of Animal Whisperer would have done the trick. I watched all the TV shows and movies where characters had magical bonds with animals, and I wanted that. And then I realised that the characters in the shows and movies aren’t real, but the people training and handling those animals *are*. However that wasn’t something realistic to aspire to, being Swiss, so instead I became a bookseller (somehow that made sense at the time… 🤷🏽‍♂️). And then 15 years later, in a different country and a different life, I did end up training animals for TV and film. So that’s kinda nifty.

And finally… tell me about the first time you wrote/drew/created/whatever something that made you think “wow”

Hmmm. I dunno. I thought I was really fucking talented when I was about 12. I wrote a novel and sent it to publishing houses and literary agencies. One of them invited me for an interview, because they thought my writing was great and they wanted to meet the kid that had sent them a manuscript aged 12/13. They ended up giving me a job, working as a admin/secretary/slush pile reader. They also gave me lots of feedback and constructive criticism on my writing. I scrapped the novel I had sent them in favour of writing a different, better novel. I still think that novel was pretty fucking good. I tried to get my mum to proof read it and give me feedback so I could do any necessary corrections before I spent my pocket money on photocopies, C4 envelopes, and a whole bunch of stamps so I could attempt to get it published again. She was dragging her feet and I tried to explain the urgency, because I was clear that it needed to happen before I turned 14. That was the goal in my head. I had huge ambitions and dreams. I was also convinced that if it happened after I turned 14 it wouldn’t be special anymore. Like anyone could do it after 14… 🙄 In response to this my mum told me that she’d had ambition and dreams, too, when she was my age. But not to worry, that’ll go away, and once you’ve put away the fanciful notions of being talented then you can just get on with your life…

Not sure if this actually answers the question, but that was kinda the first and last time I remember feeling uncomplicatedly good about and proud of something I created. After this anything creative I did was always immediately followed by the doubt of ‘is this actually good, or is this just a fanciful notion I have about being talented, when in actual fact it sucks?’ 🤷🏽‍♂️

Wow. Ended that on a downer, didn’t I?

…

Erm… I wrote Tell me we’ll never get used to it,

They’re the only two people left that know what it’s like to have loved and to have lost a Lightwood.

And it’s a good story.

There.

I said it…

Tagging @crossmydna @palepinkgoat @too-schoolforcool @vintagelacerosette @heymacy @loftec @mikhailoisbaby @rereadanon @the-rat-wins @tsuga-of-mars @ian-galagher @andthatisnotfake @francesrose3 @faejilly @jrooc @creepkinginc if you fancy playing? I’m just very exited I’m actually posting this on a Wednesday still! Whoop!!

#Mys stuff #tag game #tag game Wednesday #firsts

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disfordevineaux · 1 year

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What's kind of phone I think each Carmen Sandiego character has:

Carmen: That limited edition red iPhone that came out a few years ago. Because it is red, along with a red case with a red pop socket on the back that keeps.falling.off. It's also mysteriously in perfect condition?

Player: A Google Pixel because he doesn't want to conform to the status quo of phone brands and claims he made it 'hack proof'. He sticks by it and claims it's better than any iPhone or Samsung on the market, but it's really not. And he knows that, we all know that. And no phone case because he literally can't find one for it because no one has a Google Pixel. So why make phone cases for a phone no one has?

Shadowsan: They got him an iPhone 12 Pro, big enough for him to use and see the screen because he has to view it from a distance as, and I quote 'The phone lights make his eyes blurry.' It also had one of those wallet cases mums have on their phones. He left it behind when he went on his sabbatical and got a Nokia brick and an international sim plan just for calls.

Zack: The most disgusting, feral, warped, sticky, crusty and shattered iPhone 6 in white you have ever witnessed in history yet it works completely fine despite the glass you find lodged in your finger when you use it and the centre button that is just an empty hole to the motherboard. REFUSES to get a new one because he doesn't want to lose the headphone jack and claims that apple removing it in the first place was cash grab and he will have no part in it. And honestly dam right zack I am with you there my man stay strong King xx

Ivy: She has a custom made franken-phone that is made up of various parts from all brands across the board. Alot of the parts donated from Devineaux's pile of fallen soldiers that met their doom between the 18-24 months he was actively chasing Carmen/VILE before VILE fell. Literally a beast and has a military grade case that she also crafted which she had tested. It is literally military grade, she has a certificate and everything.

Julia: Currently, a Lavender Samsung Ultra 23 256gb storage. She got it mostly for the cool pen it comes with, and because it's lavender. She updates her phone model every 2 years and sells the latter for almost the same price she bought it for because she keeps it in pristine condition. She's only ever cracked a phone once and it shook Julia to her core. It looked horrific in her opinion, the hair line crack so bad it made her gag when she brushed her finger over it. So now she always has a nice, strong silicone pastel purple case and screen protector over her phone which she cleans regularly.

Chase: He went through 6-7 phones during the 18-24 months while chasing Carmen/VILE before VILE fell. Before then and now after, he had whatever the latest phone was the year he got it regardless of the brand, about every 2-4 years or until it kicked the bucket. During that 18-24 months, he'd walk into a phone store, ask for the latest thing, and be on his way. Most of them died in his care before he even had the chance to take the back plastic off. Now, he's in far fewer situations that indanger his life or phone. Or if he is, takes the moment to hand his phone and wallet to whoever is nearby for safe keeping because he really likes the new one Julia picked out for him (which is just the same model as hers but black). Julia also being the one who made him get a case. He had no idea that phones came with their own clothing options.

Chief: Only uses holograms. But has a landline??????????????

Zari: She once owned a black Samsung A20 with a yellowing clear case back in 2015 before she was declared missing at sea? That's all the information I can get on it my sources tried their best sorry.

Brunt: Doesn't need it because she can project her voice across vast distances. Get her a rolled TV guide and she can blast your message from one side of America to the other 🇺🇸 yeehaw and also because she's scared those 5g mega hd3g Max phone microwave rays will melt her brain if she gets one of those flat things and slaps it to her face like an genz zombie.

Bellum: Has 17 Ipads all with different cases on them.

Cleo: She has other people do that phone thing for her so she isn't sure what kind of phone she has and I don't know either.

Maelstrom: A telepathic link chip he had installed into his brain to connect to cell towers. It doesn't really work... Or do anything... But it's in there so.... Yeah?

Dash: A Samsung flip BECAUSE ITS JUST AS PRETENTIOUS AS HE IS and so he can snap it shut to prove a point. He's been through like 10 of them because he snaps them closed too slay-ily damaging it. No case because I have no idea how you'd even get a case for it?? Like it folds? I don't know.

Paper Star: Lives off grid.

Sheena: A white iPhone 11 with a gold trim case that has a huge crack down the front. The back glass is completely shattered, but it doesn't stop her from endlessly scrolling through those insta reels about reviewing different tanning lotion brands.

Crackle: An oily iPhone with the most humongous case you've ever seen. You could drop it and it would bounce around like a ping pong ball. The grease that covers the lens gives his selfies an air brushed vibe to them that he just loves.

Mimebomb: An invisible 1970s orange rotary phone.

Neal: That mystic purple conch shell with the pull string from that one spongebob episode that answered questions or something. You know what I'm talking about don't make me pull up a picture.

Topo and Chev: They share one phone so covered in stickers you can't even tell what kind it is but its probably an iPhone. It's filled with couples selfies and can only work when permanently charging so it's always connected to a power bank that is also covered in stickers. Ugh.

#tag yourself Im the invisible 1970s orange rotary phone #i was bored and inspired by my new phone #Carmen Sandiego #disfordevineaux #chase devineaux #julia argent #cs 2019 #carmen sandiego netflix #carmen sandiego 2019 #cs ivy #cs zack

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cosmicjoke · 2 months

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In the case of Levi the only scout who did not start using the new ODM equipment, Isayama compared Levi's to nokia when comparing the new generation of scouts or the equipment he used with the new model phone. lol if Levi lived in the modern world he would probably be the type to use a push button phone.

Most likely, haha. Levi doesn't seem like someone who would be into the latest and greatest gadgets. I think he'd be happy with anything serviceable. With a phone, he'd probably only want it to make calls with, so why bother with a smart phone, haha. Like Isayama said, too, Levi wasn't ever looking for anything fancy, just something descent.

#Levi Ackerman #anon asks

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everytechever · 2 years

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Check out these new Nokia phones for your holiday shopping

Make Christmas livelier than ever with Nokia smartphones that every Filipino will surely love, trust and keep for longer. #Nokia #NokiaX30 #NokiaC31 #NokiaC10 #mobile #tech #everytechever

Nokia fans better watch out and better not cry, for HMD Global, the home of Nokia phones, has last-minute gift ideas covered to help spread Christmas cheer in the season of giving. Here’s the Nokia X30 5G, Nokia C31 and Nokia C10 for your last-minute shopping. Nokia X30 5G : Perfect buddy for photography enthusiasts Let loved ones capture every treasured moment during holiday vacations, anytime…

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gadget-bridge · 1 year

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#smartphone #technology #tech news #tech #android #nokia c32 #latest smartphone

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months

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Rachel Connolly:

Earlier this year, I had a bout of what my friends and I term “mental health”. I was always tired. I couldn’t concentrate. I felt burnt out by the volume of communication that social media facilitates. I am 31 and, like many people my age, I’m in multiple group chats on WhatsApp and often find myself added to new ones. I use Instagram to post work and selfies, and to chat with people via the DM function. I use X similarly. (I’m too old for TikTok.) I enjoy some of this. I like talking nonsense with my friends. But I’d started to question how deliberate much of it was. I’d find myself posting a picture of a book I was reading and think, why do I need an audience to read? I began to wonder if, in the cycle of curating, recording and publicising our lives on social media, the things we do that are not seen and affirmed by people online feel somehow less “real”. My work as a writer means I probably get more online communication than the average person. Last year I published my first novel, and I have since noticed the slightly strange way that novels are discussed online. I get tagged in Instagram posts saying that my book is about a messy girl, a sad girl, a distant girl or a cold girl. There is an algorithmic basis to this. The easiest way to attract attention on social media is to talk about a trend everyone else is talking about, or to slot whatever you’re talking about into one of these trends.

So everywhere you look it is Brat summers or trad wives, cottage-core or bloke-core, high-functioning anxiety, parentified children or whatever happens to be the latest term for pathologising your life experience. Everything is flattened, simplified. I worried that being immersed in it was making me think this way too. A friend recently got a “dumb” phone, a Nokia 3210, to use when she’s out of the house. She leaves her smartphone at home like a landline. It has made her happier, she says. I needed a break too, but I was drawn to the idea of spending some time cut off from all communication. A reset, of sorts. I found a weekend-long silent retreat, no phones allowed, and booked myself in. My craving for a break is not uncommon. Social media is such a constant background presence in our lives that it’s easy to forget how recent it is. Facebook, which feels impossibly passé, is only 20. Instagram is not yet 15. Researchers first used the term “digital detox”, to refer to a period of abstention from phones and laptops, in 2012, around the same time that social media was really taking off (chat rooms had been around since the turn of the 1990s without the concept surfacing).

Digital detoxes remained unusual for a time. In 2015, Essena O’Neill, an Australian influencer with 612,000 Instagram followers, made news around the world when she released a statement about quitting the platform. Today, similar moves by celebrities are so common they barely make headlines. Billie Eilish deleted all social media apps from her phone. Actress Tavi Gevinson wrote about using an assistant to manage her Instagram. It has been hard to keep track of the number of times Stephen Fry has quit and rejoined Twitter over the years. These dramatic exits can seem amusing, especially when they’re followed by sheepish returns, but mostly they underscore how addictive and overwhelming social media can be. My silent retreat took place in a large house in rural Devon. I arrived on Friday, one of a group of about 50. We were allowed to speak during registration and, because I had gone there determined not to use reductive labels, I could already sense myself reaching for them. A young man told me he had done several silent retreats before. Ah, I thought, so you’re the type of person who does these often. Then I caught myself. What type would that be?

During the first meditation session, our instructors explained that we would sit and try to embody, rather than think about, the question “What is this?” This distinction struck me as confusing to the point of meaninglessness. But they explained that one way of attempting “not to think” about the question was to resist the urge to answer it. They encouraged us to focus instead on how we felt, on the physical sensations in our bodies. If you have never tried this, I will say that it is extremely difficult. We sat cross-legged for 30 minutes. I stared at a wall. Then we walked in a circle for 10 minutes. Then we sat down again, and so on, for about two hours. Then it was bedtime. I enjoyed the communality of me and the other girls silently working through our evening routines together. I realised that I had never decided to bring my phone everywhere, like an appendage to my body

The next two days were structured around meditation and chores. At 6.30am we were woken by a bell. We did two hours of meditation, after which we had breakfast. Then a break, followed by another two hours of meditation and lunch. My chore was washing up after we ate. Then more meditation, dinner, another break, meditation, bed. If sitting in an uncomfortable position and staring at a wall while trying not to think sounds impossibly boring, I would say it is not so different from the way my days would unfold when I worked in offices, traipsing from my desk to the tea station and back. More earnestly, I would say I could not have imagined how much I would enjoy the retreat, or how much I’d get out of it. Over the weekend, one of the instructors spoke about trying to be more conscious of the labels we put on our experiences and interactions. It struck me that a similar fatigue with the overload of digital communication is probably what draws a lot of people to try a silent retreat. We were all the type of person who is fed up with “types of people”.

On my first morning after breakfast, I went outside. The countryside seemed fantastically vivid. The blackbirds looked as beautiful as anything I had seen before. I watched one, like a dash of ink, flickering against the mottled grey sky, then two sailing as a pair, in tune with each other. I watched a cloud of them, pulsing. It reminded me of a jellyfish. Back inside, from my seat in the meditation room, I could see a tree that the birds would visit. When I was frustrated with the way my thoughts rattled around my head, reviewing unsaid rebuttals to months-old arguments, I watched the birds and imagined the paths they were taking in the world. One of my issues with the task “embody but try not to think” is that the semantic distinction between thinking and feeling is hard to grasp. If you notice that you feel happy or sad, is that a thought? Or a feeling? I found animals a useful framework to try to understand the distinction, as they negotiate the world using senses. A bird might fly north because of an environmental cue, but it does not say to itself in words, “I want to fly north.” I came to understand the task not as emptying your head of thoughts, but rather resisting the tendency to narrate things to yourself in words. I noticed that this interior monologuing would lead me along familiar, superficial trains of thought, to recent memories associated with certain feelings, say, and soon enough back to mundane anxieties.

At night, I would sit outside and look at the stars. The clouds, invisible in the darkness, shifted to expose one patch of stars, then another, making it look like the sky itself was swelling and shrinking. Memories and ideas still came to me, but deeper, more interesting ones than before. It was as if I had cleared the way for them. I remembered that I used to look at the stars when I was a teenager. I used to read about how they’re born, how they sustain themselves, why we see only some of them, how they die. On Monday morning at breakfast, we were allowed to speak again. Some participants had found the weekend hard, they said. One person had cried repeatedly. Others said that eating in silence had made them feel as though everyone was being cold towards them. As they talked, I remembered old corporate jobs where I was always the office loser. People could sense the aura of failure emanating from me, so I would eat lunch by myself, in silence. I got used to it. I didn’t feel I was learning anything valuable at the time, but life can surprise you. Sticking out is not so bad, I realised. This is the message of most children’s books, but one it’s easy to lose sight of as an adult. Other people’s perceptions of you, real or imagined, don’t have to influence how you see yourself. Social media is designed to erase this perspective. Much of the anxiety it fosters comes from forcing you to see yourself, constantly, as relative to others.

#meditation #contemplation #silence #silent retreat #scrolling #the internet #quotes #articles #Rachel Connolly

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