#mobile app for lawyers

[idvmelucci]

What did you use to make your Freddy Riley Roblox avatar? 👀

Hiii there 👋

For the freddy avatar i made it from a game where u can adjust the placements and positions and sizing of accessories so you may not get the results you may want (the original adjustments are bad the bangs dont even align with his hairline 😭) but I DO have an alternative which may be able to work

(i dont have him as an avatar on my account bc not much robux and also I also recommend getting the black torso chibi doll bundle if you want the black to blend with his classic clothes)

At the bottom is a demonstration on how he would look like so yeah, i hope that helped sorry for the yapping, i just felt like I needed to clarify because I wouldn’t want you getting items that would botch the character appearance :<

[reasonsforhope]

"As a Deaf man, Adam Munder has long been advocating for communication rights in a world that chiefly caters to hearing people. 

The Intel software engineer and his wife — who is also Deaf — are often unable to use American Sign Language in daily interactions, instead defaulting to texting on a smartphone or passing a pen and paper back and forth with service workers, teachers, and lawyers. 

It can make simple tasks, like ordering coffee, more complicated than it should be. 

But there are life events that hold greater weight than a cup of coffee. 

Recently, Munder and his wife took their daughter in for a doctor’s appointment — and no interpreter was available. 

To their surprise, their doctor said: “It’s alright, we’ll just have your daughter interpret for you!” ...

That day at the doctor’s office came at the heels of a thousand frustrating interactions and miscommunications — and Munder is not isolated in his experience.

“Where I live in Arizona, there are more than 1.1 million individuals with a hearing loss,” Munder said, “and only about 400 licensed interpreters.”

In addition to being hard to find, interpreters are expensive. And texting and writing aren’t always practical options — they leave out the emotion, detail, and nuance of a spoken conversation. 

ASL is a rich, complex language with its own grammar and culture; a subtle change in speed, direction, facial expression, or gesture can completely change the meaning and tone of a sign. 

“Writing back and forth on paper and pen or using a smartphone to text is not equivalent to American Sign Language,” Munder emphasized. “The details and nuance that make us human are lost in both our personal and business conversations.”

His solution? An AI-powered platform called Omnibridge. 

“My team has established this bridge between the Deaf world and the hearing world, bringing these worlds together without forcing one to adapt to the other,” Munder said. 

Trained on thousands of signs, Omnibridge is engineered to transcribe spoken English and interpret sign language on screen in seconds...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” ...

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. "

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024. More info below the cut!

To test an alpha version of his invention, Munder welcomed TED associate Hasiba Haq on stage. 

“I want to show you how this could have changed my interaction at the doctor appointment, had this been available,” Munder said. 

He went on to explain that the software would generate a bi-directional conversation, in which Munder’s signs would appear as blue text and spoken word would appear in gray. 

At first, there was a brief hiccup on the TED stage. Haq, who was standing in as the doctor’s office receptionist, spoke — but the screen remained blank. 

“I don’t believe this; this is the first time that AI has ever failed,” Munder joked, getting a big laugh from the crowd. “Thanks for your patience.”

After a quick reboot, they rolled with the punches and tried again.

Haq asked: “Hi, how’s it going?” 

Her words popped up in blue. 

Munder signed in reply: “I am good.” 

His response popped up in gray. 

Back and forth, they recreated the scene from the doctor’s office. But this time Munder retained his autonomy, and no one suggested a 7-year-old should play interpreter. 

Munder’s TED debut and tech demonstration didn’t happen overnight — the engineer has been working on Omnibridge for over a decade. 

“It takes a lot to build something like this,” Munder told Good Good Good in an exclusive interview, communicating with our team in ASL. “It couldn't just be one or two people. It takes a large team, a lot of resources, millions and millions of dollars to work on a project like this.” 

After five years of pitching and research, Intel handpicked Munder’s team for a specialty training program. It was through that backing that Omnibridge began to truly take shape...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” 

In order to achieve that dream — of transposing their technology to a smartphone — Munder and his team have to play a bit of a waiting game. Today, their platform necessitates building the technology on a PC, with an AI engine. 

“A lot of things don't have those AI PC types of chips,” Munder explained. “But as the technology evolves, we expect that smartphones will start to include AI engines. They'll start to include the capability in processing within smartphones. It will take time for the technology to catch up to it, and it probably won't need the power that we're requiring right now on a PC.” 

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. 

But it is more than a transcription service — it allows people to have face-to-face conversations with each other. There’s a world of difference between passing around a phone or pen and paper and looking someone in the eyes when you speak to them. 

It also allows Deaf people to speak ASL directly, without doing the mental gymnastics of translating their words into English.

“For me, English is my second language,” Munder told Good Good Good. “So when I write in English, I have to think: How am I going to adjust the words? How am I going to write it just right so somebody can understand me? It takes me some time and effort, and it's hard for me to express myself actually in doing that. This technology allows someone to be able to express themselves in their native language.” 

Ultimately, Munder said that Omnibridge is about “bringing humanity back” to these conversations. 

“We’re changing the world through the power of AI, not just revolutionizing technology, but enhancing that human connection,” Munder said at the end of his TED Talk. 

“It’s two languages,” he concluded, “signed and spoken, in one seamless conversation.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024

[mostlysignssomeportents]

MIT libraries are thriving without Elsevier

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Once you learn about the "collective action problem," you start seeing it everywhere. Democrats – including elected officials – all wanted Biden to step down, but none of them wanted to be the first one to take a firm stand, so for months, his campaign limped on: a collective action problem.

Patent trolls use bullshit patents to shake down small businesses, demanding "license fees" that are high, but much lower than the cost of challenging the patent and getting it revoked. Collectively, it would be much cheaper for all the victims to band together and hire a fancy law firm to invalidate the patent, but individually, it makes sense for them all to pay. A collective action problem:

https://locusmag.com/2013/11/cory-doctorow-collective-action/

Musicians get royally screwed by Spotify. Collectively, it would make sense for all of them to boycott the platform, which would bring it to its knees and either make it pay more or put it out of business. Individually, any musician who pulls out of Spotify disappears from the horizon of most music fans, so they all hang in – a collective action problem:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/21/off-the-menu/#universally-loathed

Same goes for the businesses that get fucked out of 30% of their app revenues by Apple and Google's mobile business. Without all those apps, Apple and Google wouldn't have a business, but any single app that pulls out commits commercial suicide, so they all hang in there, paying a 30% vig:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/15/private-law/#thirty-percent-vig

That's also the case with Amazon sellers, who get rooked for 45-51 cents out of every dollar in platform junk fees, and whose prize for succeeding despite this is to have their product cloned by Amazon, which underprices them because it doesn't have to pay a 51% rake on every sale. Without third-party sellers there'd be no Amazon, but it's impossible to get millions of sellers to all pull out at once, so the Bezos crime family scoops up half of the ecommerce economy in bullshit fees:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

This is why one definition of "corruption" is a system with "concentrated gains and diffuse losses." The company that dumps toxic waste in your water supply reaps all the profits of externalizing its waste disposal costs. The people it poisons each bear a fraction of the cost of being poisoned. The environmental criminal has a fat warchest of ill-gotten gains to use to bribe officials and pay fancy lawyers to defend it in court. Its victims are each struggling with the health effects of the crimes, and even without that, they can't possibly match the polluter's resources. Eventually, the polluter spends enough money to convince the Supreme Court to overturn "Chevron deference" and makes it effectively impossible to win the right to clean water and air (or a planet that's not on fire):

https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/us-supreme-courts-chevron-deference-ruling-will-disrupt-climate-policy

Any time you encounter a shitty, outrageous racket that's stable over long timescales, chances are you're looking at a collective action problem. Certainly, that's the underlying pathology that preserves the scholarly publishing scam, which is one of the most grotesque, wasteful, disgusting frauds in our modern world (and that's saying something, because the field is crowded with many contenders).

Here's how the scholarly publishing scam works: academics do original scholarly research, funded by a mix of private grants, public funding, funding from their universities and other institutions, and private funds. These academics write up their funding and send it to a scholarly journal, usually one that's owned by a small number of firms that formed a scholarly publishing cartel by buying all the smaller publishers in a string of anticompetitive acquisitions. Then, other scholars review the submission, for free. More unpaid scholars do the work of editing the paper. The paper's author is sent a non-negotiable contract that requires them to permanently assign their copyright to the journal, again, for free. Finally, the paper is published, and the institution that paid the researcher to do the original research has to pay again – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per year! – for the journal in which it appears.

The academic publishing cartel insists that the millions it extracts from academic institutions and the billions it reaps in profit are all in service to serving as neutral, rigorous gatekeepers who ensure that only the best scholarship makes it into print. This is flatly untrue. The "editorial process" the academic publishers take credit for is virtually nonexistent: almost everything they publish is virtually unchanged from the final submission format. They're not even typesetting the paper:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1

The vetting process for peer-review is a joke. Literally: an Australian academic managed to get his dog appointed to the editorial boards of seven journals:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/olivia-doll-predatory-journals

Far from guarding scientific publishing from scams and nonsense, the major journal publishers have stood up entire divisions devoted to pay-to-publish junk science. Elsevier – the largest scholarly publisher – operated a business unit that offered to publish fake journals full of unreveiwed "advertorial" papers written by pharma companies, packaged to look like a real journal:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090504075453/http://blog.bioethics.net/2009/05/merck-makes-phony-peerreview-journal/

Naturally, academics and their institutions hate this system. Not only is it purely parasitic on their labor, it also serves as a massive brake on scholarly progress, by excluding independent researchers, academics at small institutions, and scholars living in the global south from accessing the work of their peers. The publishers enforce this exclusion without mercy or proportion. Take Diego Gomez, a Colombian Masters candidate who faced eight years in prison for accessing a single paywalled academic paper:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/colombian-student-faces-prison-charges-sharing-academic-article-online

And of course, there's Aaron Swartz, the young activist and Harvard-affiliated computer scientist who was hounded to death after he accessed – but did not publish – papers from MIT's JSTOR library. Aaron had permission to access these papers, but JSTOR, MIT, and the prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz argued that because he used a small computer program to access the papers (rather than clicking on each link by hand) he had committed 13 felonies. They threatened him with more than 30 years in prison, and drew out the proceedings until Aaron was out of funds. Aaron hanged himself in 2013:

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

Academics know all this terrible stuff is going on, but they are trapped in a collective action problem. For an academic to advance in their field, they have to publish, and they have to get their work cited. Academics all try to publish in the big prestige journals – which also come with the highest price-tag for their institutions – because those are the journals other academics read, which means that getting published is top journal increases the likelihood that another academic will find and cite your work.

If academics could all agree to prioritize other journals for reading, then they could also prioritize other journals for submissions. If they could all prioritize other journals for submissions, they could all prioritize other journals for reading. Instead, they all hold one another hostage, through a wicked collective action problem that holds back science, starves their institutions of funding, and puts their colleagues at risk of imprisonment.

Despite this structural barrier, academics have fought tirelessly to escape the event horizon of scholarly publishing's monopoly black hole. They avidly supported "open access" publishers (most notably PLoS), and while these publishers carved out pockets for free-to-access, high quality work, the scholarly publishing cartel struck back with package deals that bundled their predatory "open access" journals in with their traditional journals. Academics had to pay twice for these journals: first, their institutions paid for the package that included them, then the scholars had to pay open access submission fees meant to cover the costs of editing, formatting, etc – all that stuff that basically doesn't exist.

Academics started putting "preprints" of their work on the web, and for a while, it looked like the big preprint archive sites could mount a credible challenge to the scholarly publishing cartel. So the cartel members bought the preprint sites, as when Elsevier bought out SSRN:

https://www.techdirt.com/2016/05/17/disappointing-elsevier-buys-open-access-academic-pre-publisher-ssrn/

Academics were elated in 2011, when Alexandra Elbakyan founded Sci-Hub, a shadow library that aims to make the entire corpus of scholarly work available without barrier, fear or favor:

https://sci-hub.ru/alexandra

Sci-Hub neutralized much of the collective action trap: once an article was available on Sci-Hub, it became much easier for other scholars to locate and cite, which reduced the case for paying for, or publishing in, the cartel's journals:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.14979

The scholarly publishing cartel fought back viciously, suing Elbakyan and Sci-Hub for tens of millions of dollars. Elsevier targeted prepress sites like academia.edu with copyright threats, ordering them to remove scholarly papers that linked to Sci-Hub:

https://svpow.com/2013/12/06/elsevier-is-taking-down-papers-from-academia-edu/

This was extremely (if darkly) funny, because Elsevier's own publications are full of citations to Sci-Hub:

https://eve.gd/2019/08/03/elsevier-threatens-others-for-linking-to-sci-hub-but-does-it-itself/

Meanwhile, scholars kept the pressure up. Tens of thousands of scholars pledged to stop submitting their work to Elsevier:

http://thecostofknowledge.com/

Academics at the very tops of their fields publicly resigned from the editorial board of leading Elsevier journals, and published editorials calling the Elsevier model unethical:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/may/16/system-profit-access-research

And the New Scientist called the racket "indefensible," decrying the it as an industry that made restricting access to knowledge "more profitable than oil":

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032052-900-time-to-break-academic-publishings-stranglehold-on-research/

But the real progress came when academics convinced their institutions, rather than one another, to do something about these predator publishers. First came funders, private and public, who announced that they would only fund open access work:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06178-7

Winning over major funders cleared the way for open access advocates worked both the supply-side and the buy-side. In 2019, the entire University of California system announced it would be cutting all of its Elsevier subscriptions:

https://www.science.org/content/article/university-california-boycotts-publishing-giant-elsevier-over-journal-costs-and-open

Emboldened by the UC system's principled action, MIT followed suit in 2020, announcing that it would no longer send $2m every year to Elsevier:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#nerdfight

It's been four years since MIT's decision to boycott Elsevier, and things are going great. The open access consortium SPARC just published a stocktaking of MIT libraries without Elsevier:

https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-knowledge-base/unbundling-profiles/mit-libraries/

How are MIT's academics getting by without Elsevier in the stacks? Just fine. If someone at MIT needs access to an Elsevier paper, they can usually access it by asking the researchers to email it to them, or by downloading it from the researcher's site or a prepress archive. When that fails, there's interlibrary loan, whereby other libraries will send articles to MIT's libraries within a day or two. For more pressing needs, the library buys access to individual papers through an on-demand service.

This is how things were predicted to go. The libraries used their own circulation data and the webservice Unsub to figure out what they were likely to lose by dropping Elsevier – it wasn't much!

https://unsub.org/

The MIT story shows how to break a collective action problem – through collective action! Individual scholarly boycotts did little to hurt Elsevier. Large-scale organized boycotts raised awareness, but Elsevier trundled on. Sci-Hub scared the shit out of Elsevier and raised awareness even further, but Elsevier had untold millions to spend on a campaign of legal terror against Sci-Hub and Elbakyan. But all of that, combined with high-profile defections, made it impossible for the big institutions to ignore the issue, and the funders joined the fight. Once the funders were on-side, the academic institutions could be dragged into the fight, too.

Now, Elsevier – and the cartel – is in serious danger. Automated tools – like the Authors Alliance termination of transfer tool – lets academics get the copyright to their papers back from the big journals so they can make them open access:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Unimaginably vast indices of all scholarly publishing serve as important adjuncts to direct access shadow libraries like Sci-Hub:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#cornucopia-concordance

Collective action problems are never easy to solve, but they're impossible to address through atomized, individual action. It's only when we act as a collective that we can defeat the corruption – the concentrated gains and diffuse losses – that allow greedy, unscrupulous corporations to steal from us, wreck our lives and even imprison us.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/16/the-public-sphere/#not-the-elsevier

[sirthisisa-wendys]

HEY WENDY! I hope you are doing good. I have with me this very✨interesting✨request. I hope you haven’t done one like this before. It’s more headcanons for bonten members reacting to mikey testing their loyalty. How would they react to Mikey asking them if they would let him sleep with their wife (reader). They are very loyal members to bonten/mikey but could this be too much for them??! You don’t have to do with all members . I’m more curious to know with with haru, kakucho , rindou and ran (separately pls) thank you 😊

I love this idea! Thanks for stopping by, love. Happy to hand this one over

Hand Her Over: Bonten Era Sanzu Haruchiyo/Kakucho Hitto/ Rindou Haitani/Ran Haitani x Fem!Reader

wc: 1k

tw: dub-con?

masterlist (take a look here if you're having a hard time navigating the masterlist via mobile app)

Hand Her Over Megapost

All of this begins with a simple request: "Your wife. Let me sleep with her."

Sanzu Haruchiyo

Sanzu doesn't hesitate.

"It's just one night," he murmurs into the phone, sitting across from Mikey and holding the device to his ear. "Do this for me, baby. For us."

Mikey looks up at his companion, feeling his cock harden with a sense of pride. His one turn-on, he explained to Sanzu, is you. You're a beautiful woman, everyone knew that. But not everyone would let him sleep with their wife. So maybe Mikey got lucky you were Sanzu's wife and not someone else's.

Sanzu stands up to argue with you, trying to coerce you into this one thing, this one favor, this one simple task, and you'd be rewarded handsomely!

"What do you want in exchange?" Sanzu wonders, leaning a hand on the wall. Mikey eyes his friend with curiosity, noting the beads of sweat forming on his face. "You want a new car? Alright. Done." Another pause. "And a bigger shopping allowance. I'll do that." You both seem to come to some kind of concession, and Sanzu hangs up, smiling widely.

"She'll be here in thirty."

Mikey leans back in his chair and looks up at his closest friend. "I want you to watch," he adds dreamily. Sanzu blanches but then comes to a sputtering start.

"A-a-anything for you, Mikey. I'll do anything for you." The smirk that crawls across Mikey's face is fully devious. Sanzu smiles back at him, deriving a deep sense of satisfaction from finally making his boss smile.

Ran Haitani

"No. Hell, no."

The usually cool-headed Haitani is shaking his head over and over. Mikey stands before him with an empty look, the kind where Ran knows he's devising a way to get what he wants.

"You can have anyone else." Sanzu leans on the door, crossing his arms as he watches one of his co-workers deny the boss his wife.

"Why?" Mikey asks. Ran stalls for an answer, reclining in his chair and crossing his legs.

"She barely has the capabilities of pleasing me," Ran lies easily. "You'd be disappointed."

"Then why are you still married to her?"

Rindou speaks up, his presence unaccounted for until he exhales. "She's got money connections," Rindou admits. "And a damn good set of lawyers that have kept us out of prison."

"But you don't love her." Ran's eye twitches. "You sleep around on her, don't you?" Mikey's trying to wind his way through his case for keeping this one thing to himself. And it irritates Ran to no end.

"I may have a mistress," he huffs. "But my wife is my wife."

"Would be a shame if she found out, huh, Sanzu?" Mikey turns away from Ran and proceeds out of the room, placing his hands in his pockets. When he and Sanzu leaves, Ran slumps against his desk.

"You haven't slept around on her, have you?" Rindou asks, and Ran lifts his head wearily.

"No," he murmurs softly. "I love her too much to do any of that."

Kakucho Hitto

Kakucho's hidden the fact that he has a wife and a child on the way from the boys for many years. So why would Mikey - of all of the men, he expected one of the Haitanis or even Takeomi - ask him to sleep with his wife?

Kakucho and Mikey stare at each other for a long while, measuring each other up, perhaps.

"Mikey." Kakucho folds his hands together, trying to be diplomatic. "I can't let you do that." Mikey eyes him, attempting to perhaps stare him into submission, but Kakucho doesn't back down.

"I'll tell everyone what you're hiding." Kakucho swallows hard. "And then, I'll let them decide what to do."

"You're turning out to be so cold," Kakucho whispers. "Is it because I have a family and you don't?" The slap he receives, in turn, isn't unexpected, but it does hurt.

Mikey doesn't make any other moves except to step back and drop his hand. "I could make it so both of us are alone." Kakucho breaks out in a sweat and feels his heart begin to race.

"Please, no. She's pregnant, I--"

"One night is all I'm asking."

Kakucho wants to rebuff him, wants to put his hands on Mikey and tell him no with all of the force in his body, but he knows one word might doom his entire family.

"One night," he relents softly, lowering his gaze. "If she says yes, then you get one night."

"She will," Mikey hums, smiling. "When I tell her what's on the line if she doesn't... she will."

Rindou Haitani

"She's going to say no, Mikey." Rindou shrugs, lazily poking at his gums with a toothpick. "She barely says yes to me."

"And?" Mikey's sprawled across the couch, hands behind his head. "I can be persuasive."

"You're not even her type."

"Are you?" Rindou's vision blurs, but then he laughs, shaking his head.

"Call her up, then. See what she says." The phone rings for a while until Rin's wife finally picks up.

"Hey." Your voice is curt, and Rindou wonders if he's caught you at a bad time.

"Hey. Mikey has a request."

"What?"

"He wants you to sleep with him." There's a very long pause, and then a loud laugh echoes on the other end.

"What kind of fantasies swirl around in your head when you're at work, Rindou?" He huffs a breath, then looks at Mikey apologetically. "Tell Mikey if he can come up with a gold mine, then I'll agree." Mikey's off the couch in a flash, no doubt hurrying off to Sanzu so he can find a gold mine and give the rights to you.

Rindou takes the phone off speaker and then whispers, "You'd really do it?"

"Fuck no," you reply just as quickly. "I'm in Oaxaca. Now get off the phone. I'm trying to finish my massage and you're making my muscles tense."

"I could make them looser if you'll let me," Rindou teases, smirking.

"I'd rather eat a live stingray," you grumble, then hang up on him. Ah well, Rindou muses. Such a pain having a trophy wife who is only a trophy.

[abbysimsfun]

Sims In Bloom: Generation 1 Pt. 22 (Love and Heartbreak)

The Nesbitts spent Sportsball Sunday at the Gnome’s Arms with friends, watching the Henford Hens win the big game in an exciting overtime. Daisy and Neal even allowed Heather and Holly to order alcohol – they both picked wine instead of a cocktail, but while Daisy loved a crisp glass of apple nectar, Holly was into Von Haunt Estates Meloire and Heather loved Granite Falls Grappo Blanco. Neal, on the other hand, loved his sweet mixed cocktails, and even had the bartender make Cupid Juice martinis a full week before Love Day. He’d helped the bartender perfect the verdant and funk – a drink which landed her on the cover of Pub Life Monthly – and he was undoubtedly one of her all-time favourite customers.

Hazel invited Pierce Delgato while River spent time with his old friend Carlton Bell – soon enough the boys were dating, and they had the Nesbitts to thank for introducing them. All around Hazel, her friends were falling in love, but she was still too young and immature to know what they were feeling. She was grateful for Heather’s example; she didn’t need a man, and neither would Hazel. She was sure of it.

Heather entered an Incredible e-Sports tournament to celebrate the Sportsball Bowl, and this was the first tournament she ever won. It was so exciting for her – ButtercupNesbeets was practically famous in the online gaming community, and now she had a first-place prize to brag about!

She was so confident with computers that an idea struck her, inspired by her family’s many hour-long trips to Brindleton Bay. They had the resources, but not every sim was as fortunate as Heather and her family. She set to work designing a mobile app connecting pet owners in smaller towns with veterinarians remotely, to help pets everywhere stay as healthy as possible. She started carving out more free time to work on the app, even as she took advanced computing classes and attended more vet courses, learning to make treats for her pets that wouldn’t send them to the hospital.

For Love Day, Mortimer convinced Neal and Daisy to join him and Bella for an awkward double date at the Gnome’s Arms. While Neal and Daisy were loved up and happy after all their years together, Mortimer and Bella were clearly still together as a matter of course. The love between them had dwindled to polite kisses and half smiles across the old wooden bar. By the time they returned home to Brindleton Bay, Mortimer was bursting, and he finally confessed his affair to his wife. At first, she seemed unfazed by the revelation, but when Mortimer said it wasn’t just sex, that he was head over heels in love with Karl Nesbitt, too, Bella was shocked. She shed a tear and forbidden words over the truth, but it didn’t take long for her to realize their marriage had been over for a long time, already.

With her head held high, Bella went to her lawyer who drew up divorce papers. She’d keep the house and primary custody of the kids, and Mortimer was free to be with Karl. He didn’t love leaving the children for the city almost two hours away, but Karl’s job meant he couldn’t leave San Myshuno, and Mortimer didn’t face the demise of his marriage to end up living unhappily ever after without his soulmate.

Where would the Goths go from here, and would it impact Cass' relationship with River Nesbitt? ->

<- Previous Chapter | From the Beginning

[spnfanficpond]

Weekly Pond Newsletter

We are coming up on the most depressing day of the year, January 21st. The holidays are over, there are no (US) work holidays for another three months or so, and the weather is just blech. (It's cold up north and hot down south and only those lucky enough to live somewhere temperate all year round are happy.) How about sending us your fic recs and getting entered into a drawing for amazing prizes? Also, every so often we ask for fic recs in our Discord server in exchange for unique prizes not listed on the usual prize list. Right now, you could win a Gotham Knights Season One Court of Owls coin from Stands just for dropping links to GK/SPN crossover fics, or AU fics where Cas is a lawyer. It's so easy! The deadline is 4pm Sunday Eastern US/Canada time!

Old Business:

November/December Angel Fish Awards - The post went up and the raffle winner was notified! Click here for a slew of awesome fic recs!

SPNFanFicPond Fic Highlight - We highlighted a Sastiel AU fic this past week! Click here to check it out!

SPN Rewatch: Fanfic Edition - We had another great chat yesterday about episodes 1.13 Route 666 and 1.14 Nightmare. The Archive masterpost and episode docs have been updated, but the theme docs have not. It's on Admin Michelle's to-do list!

#TweetFicTues prompts -

New Business:

Martin Luther King Jr Day - Monday is a holiday in the US! Enjoy your day off and drop some fic recs on us!

Fishing For Treasures - Next weekend is FFT weekend here at the Pond and we're celebrating Underappreciated Fics! Drop a link to your most underappreciated fics, or someone else's, in our #fishing-for-treasures channel in the Discord server, or submit a link to the blog here with a note telling us it's for FFT. The deadline is Friday night at midnight Eastern US/Canada time!

Manta Ray in the Discord server - Admin Michelle will be hanging out in the Discord server next weekend! Want to ask about Pond events? Give suggestions for things we could be doing? Want her to run some sprints for prizes? Let her know during her chat next weekend!

Anonymous Suggestion Box - Got an idea or suggestion for the Pond, but you're afraid to say anything in person? Submit it through our anonymous suggestion box! It's a Google form, so it doesn't send us any information about you, and you can write as much or as little as you want. We're here for you, so tell us what you want!

(Divider by @glygriffe!)

That's all for this week! To see all Pond events, and also other SPN-related things like conventions and online concerts, check out our Google calendar! Click here for a static view in Eastern US/Canada time (desktop only, no mobile app access, sadly), and click here to add our calendar to your own Google calendar! We try to keep it as up-to-date as possible. If there's something you want to see on the calendar that's not there (maybe a convention we missed, cast birthdays, or something similar), send us an ASK and let us know!

Hope you have a great week! - From your Admins and Manta Rays, @manawhaat, @mrswhozeewhatsis, @mariekoukie6661, @thoughtslikeaminefield, @spencereliotwinchester and @heavenssexiestangel!

[daloy-politsey]

InReach is the world’s first open source platform matching LGBTQ+ people facing persecution or discrimination with safe, independently verified resources. InReach aims to serve as a comprehensive digital one-stop-shop for the diverse, intersectional LGBTQ+ community: InReach lists verified services for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, refugees and other immigrants, LGBTQ+ Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) folks, LGBTQ+ youth and caregivers, and more LGBTQ+ communities. To ensure accessibility, the InReach App is free for all users, including resource seekers, lawyers and legal support staff, case managers, social workers, teachers and other direct service providers searching for safe resource referrals for LGBTQ+ clients.  The InReach App matches the diverse LGBTQ+ community with a wide range of verified service types, including: Medical Care; Abortion Care; Legal Help; Food; Housing / Shelter; Hygiene and Clothing; Education and Employment; Community Support; Spiritual Support; Mental Health Care; Trans Focused Services; Translation and Interpretation; Transportation; Computers and Internet; Mail Services; Sports and Entertainment.

[cars-and-planes-dork]

Here's how I like to imagine Tex. He just cannot stop expanding his business, it's like an addiction. I think these two incorrect quotes summarize it best.

Contex: During the WGP in cars 2 while Stirling was making his way up in the business ranks.

Stirling: What if I bought allinol?

Tex: You realize they're about to be in a huge lawsuit, why would you want to buy it now?

Stirling: Well first I got a good lawyer team, I can take any people suing. Second I need more businesses.

Tex: True.

Stirling: And lastly, Come on, non fossil fuels? That sounds like a Dinoco business already!

Tex: I am begging you please don't do it.

Stirling: Why not?

Tex: Cause I'm gonna beat ya too it!

Stirling: Wait what!?

______________________________________

Context: After Cars 3 Florida 500.

Cal: Is Tex alright?

Tex a distance away in a shaky voice at mach 10: We're gonna expand! Maybe a movie, a TV show, why not a couple of mobile apps! Some console games, a bunch more side businesses, why not? Lets go!

Okay first of all, I'm sorry for the delay in answering, I was distracted by life. Second of all, Tex being addicted to expanding his business does make sense, I can absolutely see that. My difficulty with him in particular is determining what role he has in the narrative. And kind of a struggle with thinking how to portray a Texan oil billionaire, considering the real world industry. I could always be an idealist on the matter.

[hussyknee]

What. The. Fuck.

I've been off all social media since before I was hospitalized in March. Today I opened TikTok after ages – and was immediately greeted wth a clip of my ex husband's wedding.

The fucking app had gone in my phone contacts for my fyp. It repeatedly kept asking me to sync them when I opened the app and I kept saying no, fuck off. It's why I only signed up with my junk email address. Must have accidentally clicked "yes" one time.

Mother of fuck. Immediately uninstalled the app and then found I need it to unsync that shit, because I can't do shit on the mobile web browser. Or even download my own videos.

Best part is that even if I unsync now, it still stores all my data up to that point. That should not be fucking legal. The only way to erase it is to delete my account. And honestly I don't trust them to do even that.

To think, if my lawyer hadn't thought to check in on me a few days ago because we had become friends, this is how I would have found out. While my mental health is still a Jenga tower.

If you wanna know why privacy is important, this is a shining fucking example.

(I'm fine. Just a bit shaken. And fucking furious at this stupid app.)

[snarp]

The ChatGPT Lawyer post, which I just reblogged to prospitianescapee again, has gotten too long for the Android mobile app to handle: it cannot be reblogged via the app and cannot be viewed on the app dashboard.

[cyarskj1899]

I sing this all the time. Michigan winters especially Detroit,Michigan winters ain’t no joke

LISTEN

NEWSClassified documents at Pence's home, too, his lawyer says

WWJ NEWSRADIO 950NEWSLOCAL

"It's So Cold in the D" turns 15 — the truth behind the accidental Detroit anthem we can't stop singing

By WWJ Newsroom

January 20, 20234:56 pm

DETROIT (WWJ) -- When it comes to Detroit artists who have made an impact on music and culture, there are truly too many to name.

But there’s one local rapper that Metro Detroiters quote regularly — especially during the winter months — who has never really gotten her due.

We’re talking about T-Baby, who had a massive viral hit 15 years ago this month with her now-iconic song, “It’s So Cold in the D.”

And if you tell us you didn’t just sing the hook as you read that — we don’t believe you.

The unbelievably catchy and quotable song was originally penned as a tribute to T-Baby’s late friend Mason Graham, who was fatally shot while trying to break up a fight at Universal Coney Island on Detroit’s east side in 2006.

The music video, was made with a shoe-string budget of just $300, hit YouTube in January of 2008, and went on to rack up an impressive 11 million views.

NOTE: VIDEO CONTAINS PROFANITY

In the years that followed, variations of the “It’s So Cold in the D” catchphrase have been included in tracks such as Eminem’s “Detroit vs. Everybody” and Big Sean’s “Story by Snoop Lion,” and the song has been performed in-concert by the likes of New Kids on the Block and Usher during tour stops in Detroit.

"It's So Cold in the D" received new life in 2011 when it was included in an episode of MTV’s “Beavis and Butthead” reboot, and the resurgence later resulted in a 2015 remix of the song (though nothing beats the original.)

NOTE: VIDEO CONTAINS PROFANITY

But even with all of its popularity, T-Baby says she received so much online hate after releasing the tribute — which she intended to be a commentary on violence in the city — she took an extended hiatus from YouTube and music to avoid the negativity.

Additionally, the rapper and artist, who grew up Latonya Myles on Detroit’s east side, has never really been given much in the way of compensation or credit for her original song.

Most artists who perform or reference it do so without permission, and despite holding a copyright on the “It’s So Cold in the D” phrase, it often appears on t-shirts, mugs and even candles with little to no money going back to T-Baby.

Though she has continued to have a social media presence and create music through the years, T-Baby says she still keeps mainly to herself, and doesn’t put a lot of trust in others.

But regardless of how people feel about the song itself, T-Baby created something that most artists have a difficult time achieving: staying power.

The song is now used on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, meaning a whole new generation is discovering the viral hit.

In another 15 years, you can bet that on a freezing winter day, Detroiters will still be turning to one another and uttering the phrase, “It’s so cold in the D.”

But if we don't start to give T-Baby the credit she deserves right now...well, there's really nothing colder than that.

RELATED

From traffic island to the heartbeat of the Motor City – did Campus Martius save Downtown Detroit?

It's So Cold in the D

T-Baby

Detroit

Rap

Viral Video

The Daily J

Podcast

Metro Detroit

Viral

Featured Image Photo Credit: T-Baby

WWJ Newsradio 950  |  

Detroit and Michigan's only all-news station.

Listen to WWJ Newsradio

Contact Us

Get Your News Delivered

EEO

Public Inspection File

Contest Rules

FCC Applications

Advertise with Us 

© 2023 Audacy, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PART OF AUDACY NEWS. WWJ is a registered trademark of CBS Broadcasting Inc. All rights reserved.

LISTEN

Listen Live

Mobile App

CONNECT

FAQ

1Thing

Get My PERKS

#ImListening

Contact Us

Submit a Station

Submit a Podcast

Sitemap

Advertise with Us

Audacy Corporate Site

LEGAL

Careers

Privacy Policy

Terms of Use

Copyright Notice

Music Submission Policy

Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Info

Public Help File

© 2023 Audacy, Inc. All rights reserved. Part of Audacy.

!

blob:https://www.tumblr.com/1f6702f0-f773-4fa1-838a-b37c876ab869

Sent from my iPhone

[attorneys-against-court-violence]

Bonjour ma chêr et chêrie, hello!

Realising I had too many thoughts about the funny lawyer people, I made this side-page to contain my fixation. Feel free to throw your Attorney-isms my way here if you like! Anything AA is welcome, though you shouldn't have to guess who gets preferential treatment! (^ - ^)

Asks are open! Non-AA inquiries can be directed to @butter-helgi.

(a brief explanation of my coloured text is below, if you're confused and somehow care)

In case anyone here is new/unfamiliar with AA5-6 and is confused about why I randomly colour my text like so, it's based on the Mood Matrix from said games - essentially, it's just a convenient shorthand for emotional signposting + a bit of fan indulgence on my part.

This is purely a thematic choice, so if it gets obtrusive or if being earnest is more important I'll tend to drop it. The @athena-appreciation-page is a fan-page first, but I am a halfway sensible person sooner - this is the only place where this applies and not at all how I communicate in general! This is just for fun!

To summarise:

Blue - Generic emphasis. I just want to call attention to something. Also what I colour this little dude if I can't think of any better fitting colours: ( '-' )

Green - Joy or Affection. I like this thing or am happy about something and want to express as much!

Red - Anger or Fired Up, depends on the context. I want to highlight this as annoying or that I am passionate about this point in particular. (never targeted towards a person, that would be daft on my part)

Purple - Sadness or Concern. I want to show that this aspect of a thing makes me glum somehow. (I know the colour closer to lilac or something, but you know. Limits.)

Orange - Surprise or Shock. Alas, I have been caught off-guard! You'll know I wasn't expecting something when this colour pops up. Mostly to get around the fact the mobile app doesn't let you use yellow-

-ahem. Sorry 'bout the noise, just find that a bit odd.

Thank you for reading my emotive text guide, if that's the right turn of phrase for it. Now go do something fun for a change! (^-^)

EDIT: "Surprised" text will be rendered exclusively in orange going forward. Turns out yellow isn't the best choice for posts that are going to be seen on a white background 70% of the time... (- -);

[supreme-burrito]

You know what I just realized

So Spirit of Justice came out in 2016 near the end of the 3DS’s life span.

Ace Attorney thrived because its core game mechanics (not counting the GBA era games from Japan) heavily relied on the mechanics of two consoles from Nintendo. Yes, it’s possible to play these games on other consoles, but you don’t get that same experience as you did in their original format. I never played an Ace Attorney on in its original format so I don’t know what that experience feels like. I played the original trilogy and the Sholmes games on PlayStation and the remainder of the series that is available to the West (I do plan on getting around to playing Investigations 2 at some point) on mobile.

The PlayStation experience is alright because the graphics are an inherent glow up, but in my opinion, the best, most current way to experience the Ace Attorney games is through mobile. You don’t need the dual screens, just having the ability to play via touching the screen is sufficient enough.

Now here is the depressing realization. It’s been almost 7 years since a brand new AA game as been released to Western audiences. All other new entries have been either remakes or ports. The last new game for Japan was in 2017 with The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve, almost 6 years ago.

Everyone wants AA7. I want AA7, your grandma wants AA7. However, as I see it, because of the simplicity of Ace Attorney game mechanics, but it shouldn’t be difficult to make a new game.

Unless they completely overall the system and mechanics entirely so the franchise can survive on future at-home consoles OR they stick to the mobile market where the game is currently the best and current experience. The most recent release to the West for Ace Attorney as far as I can tell, was the original trilogy to mobile which was a year ago as of yesterday according to Wikipedia. Which makes me ask, why the three year gap between EVERY OTHER PORT of the original trilogy and THEN have this disclaimer on the App Store?

My point in all this is my hopes for AA7 ever coming to fruition are slim to none due to Capcom and the whole project got canned

OR

Due to searching up some information, we might be getting Ace Attorney 7 soon

I did some digging and found out that back at the end of 2020, Capcom had a massive data breach where a handful of projects got leaked including the following: RE4 remake, Street Fighter 6, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and AA7.

The prior three projects have already been announced/released as of this year.

Capcom does not give specifics on what was let out, so all I can find about this specific list of games is from old articles talking about AA7 speculation and the leak. According to this roadmap, supposedly the main production phase of AA7 was supposed to begin around October of 2021.

This is just my speculation (like all the other game articles), but depending on how much of the main game mechanics have been overhauled (if at all) or if they’re just making Ace Attorney with a glow up, it will most likely be later at the end of this year or sometime around this time next year and might be announced during Capcom’s biggest round of game release announcements.

I could be 100% wrong or I once again have the deduction skills of Sherlock Holmes and gift of prophecy from Apollo.

2024: Gay Lawyers 2: Electic Boogaloo

And yes Yagami you count too

Who knows he might get a cameo in Yakuza 8 (YES I KNOW THE SERIES IS CALLED LIKE A DRAGON NOW BUT I WIL ALWAYS REFER TO IT AS YAKUZA. It’s the same reason it’s why I will always refer to Cole Cassidy as McCree. Because the change was made solely for political reasons and was kind of unnecessary)

[dertaglichedan]

I don’t know what Fox is thinking, considering how they have treated Tucker Carlson and his team. You drop your most popular host in a way that just antagonizes your viewers and shows no loyalty for all he has brought to the network.

Now, Fox is reportedly showing that same attitude toward the remaining people who had worked for Carlson but who were still working for the network until Friday.

According to Chadwick Moore, Carlson’s biographer, the remaining nine people who worked on Carlson’s show were going to be “frog marched” out of the building tonight after they finished the show on Friday. One former Carlson producer called it “Degrading!” Here’s the email that those people allegedly got:

EXCLUSIVE: @TuckerCarlson’s remaining team at Fox News (nine employees) will be frog marched out of the building tonight at 9:00pm. HR will be waiting outside the control room when they finish tonight’s show to escort the remaining producers outside. One former Carlson producer… pic.twitter.com/kQLVhkS0KS

— Chadwick Moore (@Chadwick_Moore) July 14, 2023

What’s the point in that besides trying to humiliate them? Do they think these people were going to do anything? That’s just treating your employees so poorly. Again, does Fox still want viewers? Because that’s not going to go over well with the folks who are already mad at them for cutting Tucker.

But Carlson may have the last laugh, as may the people who worked for him. We reported before that Carlson was working on the idea of starting a new media venture and now there are a lot more details.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former White House adviser Neil Patel are raising funds for a new media company that likely would use Twitter as its foundation, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

People familiar with the matter told the Journal the new company would run on subscriptions for longer versions of the free videos Carlson has been posting on Twitter for free since he was ousted from Fox News earlier this year.

The shorter videos will still be available for free for users on Twitter and other platforms, with subscriptions required for the longer videos in their entirety, people told the Wall Street Journal. [….]

Carlson and Patel are reportedly seeking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the company. The pair founded the conservative publication The Daily Caller in 2010 and were roommates at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

People familiar with the new project said Carlson’s team recently met with Twitter to talk over the endeavor, which would feature a website and mobile app and potentially air on other platforms beyond Twitter.

They’re looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and the word is they already have lined up some financial backers.

Fox sent Carlson a cease and desist letter, claiming he’s still under contract with them. But Carlson’s lawyer Harmeet Dhillon said he would “not be silenced by anyone.”

[sekhithefops]

Today on "Elon Musk's Steady Descent into Madness"

So, if you saw my most recent post on this malarky you'll notice that Zuckerberg set up his own response to Tweeter's downfall that's basically garbage.

It won't let you see anything in your feed but what the algorithm deems appropriate, it won't let you have it on browser (mobile only,) and if you decide you'd quite like to leave it holds a gun to your Instagram account's head and says "Are you sure?"

Well... today THIS happened:

Thats right. Musk is suing Meta for creating Threads.

To be fair, Threads had around 30 million users sign up almost immediately after it went up which just highlights how fucked Twitter is at this point that the second anything remotely viable appears everyone will immediately jump ship and run flailing their arms towards it and even with an ego like Elon's that has to ring a few alarm bells.

But... its just such a dogshit app. I'm not even going to bother because it requires a mobile device already and seeing this just makes me wonder if Musk isn't hoping against hope that he can use him for enough money to cover some of his debt.

Whats really hilarious is that there's no way in hell Musk will win this. Alternative social media has existed for ages and all Zuckerberg's lawyers will need to do is point to any other social media website and say 'we're just doing what they've been doing for years.'

So yeah.

[ahmeammar]

Hello Guys 👋

Almuhami - Lawyer Finder Mobile App

This is the result of my exploration design about Lawyer Finder called Almuhami.

Almuhami is a platform where you can find a lawyer according to the skills and fields you want. Almuhami also offers many categories for you to explore.

To see full project: https://lnkd.in/duC4X558

Like ♥️ | Share 📬 | Save 📥 | Comment ✍️

Save this post for later & share with friends

Follow me: https://linktr.ee/akammar