#most useless machine

[brainyrot]

When you have long hair and your gremlin of a demon likes hiding in them to blend in with the shadows (he likes the dark for some reason he says he likes talking to the shadows ((he's a weirdo but we like him like that)))

[realwizardshit]

can this pisshole country please outlaw gas powered like. lawn appliances. like lawnmowers and tillers. hearing that noise for hours on end is going to turn me into The Joker

[roobylavender]

one thought before i disappear again but i really fail to understand damian fans' logic or interaction with canon on any level like your entire engagement with him as a character relies on a bastardization of every person around him. i don't see what worth there is in comparing how dick and bruce are comparatively written as parental figures in damian's life when your primary basis for analysis is canon from a writer who believes (1) dick shouldn't be in a relationship with kory bc he's happy-go-lucky and hates drama; and (2) bruce's life as a hero naturally culminates in fascism. neither of these are good faith takes on the characters involved so how can you place any value in how either of them are portrayed to interact with damian by way of that. and obv this doesn't even get into the plethora of talia issues which i have essayed about to the point of exhaustion. like idk i get that i can't make people hate a character obv lol and for many damian fans that attachment is there bc they read about him when they were young but i still don't really understand what there is about damian to be invested in once you're an adult who realizes he is holistically built on character assassination and racist stereotypes that he is inseparable from. like you can't really analyze his interactions with anyone without the context for those interactions being shoddy writing of someone else and i know that can happen in comics a lot but it happening in isolation is different from it forming the entire basis for a character

[k0kichiimagines]

those symbols on ovens are useless mothers made them up so they can yell at us for not putting the oven on whatever little symbol they liked the most that day

im not even joking i dont know what they mean or what the difference is they are useless everything i bake goes on whichever i like the best and nothing changes an actual scam

[theladygazingatemptiness]

.

[nozunhinged]

I feel like a broken record with my "lazy/poor/bad/inconsistent writing" criticism but here's the thing: you can read the most amazing, life changing story off a coffee stained napkin and the only thing that would bother you would be messy handwriting because that keeps you from reading in peace. No other element in entertainment media has that kind of power. You can make the most amazing movie with the most amazing production but at the end of the day, everything stands and falls with the script. No special effects or CGI or millions of production value will save you from a shitty story. Of course there is a lot more in play but at the end of the day, every single production element has to be put in writing. And needs to support the writing. It seems simple but I feel like in the past few years the value of good — no even just basic, comprehensive — (script)writing has been totally neglected. It's so sad, but on the other hand even more rewarding when you stumble over a piece of media that values the power of writing.

[seat-safety-switch]

There's a really non-obvious consequence to all those "smart" appliances out there. Your average corporation lasts less than ten years before it's acquired, goes bankrupt, or is no longer doing the thing it first started out doing. However, all those internet-of-things gadgets still need someone to be paying the server bill, otherwise half of the features go "poof."

This is great for me: I get cheap appliances, tools, construction robots, and pseudo-sentient war machines because most of their functionality required a now-nonexistent web service to be working. For instance, this oven I pulled out of a ditch works perfectly fine to cook food, but the "Turkey Mode" that makes an obnoxious gobbling sound on Thanksgiving Day no longer activates on its own.

Not everything is as lucky. Lots of gadgets are just totally useless, so they get turned into other things. A lobotomized robot lawnmower quickly became a regular ol' human-operated lawnmower with the attachment of a Princess Auto two-stroke engine and a very, very long wood pole. And then there's the stuff that just gets plain weird.

A few weeks ago, I got a new microwave from the "gettin' spot." It was due to be recycled, to be turned into some other microwave. I figured it would still work perfectly fine, so I brought it home, plugged it in, and got ready to heat up some Pizza Pockets. Nothing doing: the screen had only one functional "app" remaining.

On its flickering high-dollar OLED screen, I saw the words "death prediction date." And, clicking on it, the microwave began to read out an entirely plausible date and cause for my personal demise. For a couple days after, guests to my house were also amazed by the microwave's chillingly reasonable projection of their inevitable fatal accident or terminal illness.

I'll never know why the Guangzhou Champion Home Appliance Company imbued the microwave with such an eerie memento mori, but I am grateful for it. The whole experience taught me that life is short, far too short to listen to some snarky-ass microwave that won't even cook a Pizza Pocket. If it's so smart, maybe it should have guessed that I was going to drag it behind my truck on the highway until the transformer – with its delicious, copper-rich windings – fell out.

[sparklingchim]

game on | jjk

pairing: jungkook x reader

word count: 2.2k

genre: footballer!jungkook, fake dating, f2l

rating: pg

warnings: koo gets scolded for sleeping around 🥺, playboy jk <3, hints of a threesome 🫢, oc fights w a laundry machine

summary: jungkook is in desperate need to polish up his playboy image, and naturally, he turns to you for help.

a/n: hii my pretty besties!!!! it's my bday😋 so i wanted to share this silly piece i've been having so much fun writing!!! love uuu n treat urself to smth nice for me today <3 mwah😙

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

Jeon Jungkook is a charming man – and he is well aware of the fact. He plays that card effortlessly.

Most of the time, it works in his favour.

But sometimes, it backfires spectacularly and gets him into trouble.

Which is why he stands in front of his fuming manage, who is radiating enough anger to fill the entire office.

The sight isn’t foreign to Jungkook. He wouldn’t say he is used to it, but he has found himself often enough in this situation to recognise the signs of deep trouble.

Not only is Jungkook’s charm complicating things, but the fact that he is famous too.

Sometimes, he uses that as an advantage. Not in an obvious way — never by flaunting his own achievements or demanding special treatment.

That’s not his style.

His name alone carries weight, and he knows how to let it work for him, quietly bending the world to his will... until the world pushes back.

And right now, it’s pushing back hard.

One thing Jeon Jungkook does enjoy about being a pro footballer, though, is the way women obsess over him.

He knows they love him – sees it in the comments they leave on his ig posts, sees it in the DMs flooding his inbox daily, and experiences it firsthand at public events, where hordes of fans scream his name. Jungkook thrives on that attention.

However, something he doesn’t love, and what he was never prepared for, is the media. The way they scrutinise his every move, how his face ends up on every headline anytime he does something remotely noteworthy.

And now, thanks to his latest shenanigan getting caught by the press, here he is. Standing in front of his manager, Taesung, and his PR agent, Jiwoo, eyes downcast, bracing himself for the scolding that’s already begun.

“You’ve gone too far this time, Jungkook.”

His manager speaks in a flat, monotonous voice, void of even the slightest hint of disappointment, as if he’d long since given up expecting anything different.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean up the mess you leave behind?”

A sense of guilt creeping up on Jungkook, even though he knows if he were just a regular guy, none of this would matter at all. And he finds it a bit unfair.

But to survive in this business, you can’t complain about unfairness.

“Have you completely lost your mind?” Taesung barks.

Jungkook remains silent. He forces himself to.

“If there was more involved than just alcohol-”

“No! Nothing like that,” he denies, his response firm and immediate. “It was just alcohol – and, well, just good vibes because we won the last match, and with the World Cup being next, everyone was just really excited.”

If he had known what kind of trouble a simple, innocent celebration of his team’s win at a club would bring, he would’ve gone straight home yesterday. He would’ve skipped the rounds of drinks, the flashing lights, the loud music, and definitely the attention. But hindsight was useless now.

“Good,” his manager says. “I’m glad you were happy.” Mock sympathy drips from his voice. “Perhaps the last time you are going to be happy this year.”

Jungkook nods, accepting the gravity of the situation. No more clubs, no more parties, no more girls.

At least, not for a while. His reputation had taken a few hits recently, and this latest mess wasn’t helping. He could almost hear the whispers: reckless, irresponsible, unprofessional. The kind of things that could ruin him if he didn’t get a handle on it.

He clenched his jaw. No more distractions. From now on, it was all about the game. He needed to remind everyone why he was Jeon Jungkook — the best on the field, not just the headlines.

“You’re no longer in for the World Cup. You’re out.”

His head snaps up at that. Did he hear that right?

“What?! What do you mean?”

“Myungbo doesn’t want you on the team anymore.” Taesung’s words sound heavy and final.

Jungkook’s heart pounds in his ears.

His world tilts. The room seems to spin, the edges of his vision darkening. This wasn’t just a setback — it was a disaster. The World Cup was everything to him, and now it felt like it was slipping through his fingers. The crushing weight of the news settles on his chest, making it hard to breathe. One silly night is all that happened.

He can’t believe that a single photo of him leaving the club with two girls clinging to each arm has cost him his spot on the national football team. He went home with two girls – so what?

But he doesn’t voice his frustration. He knows better than to add fuel to the fire. Speaking his mind now would only escalate the situation and make things worse. Jungkook knows from experience.

He swallows hard, forcing himself to stay calm. His pulse is still racing, but he takes a deep breath, focusing on controlling his emotions. He has to keep a level head if he’s going to find a way to fix this.

“There has to be a way to fix this.” His eyes move to Jiwoo, his PR agent. “Right?”

His manager fixes him with a stern glare. “Jungkook, remember the promise you gave everyone a few months ago?” Taesung reminds him.

Jungkook cringes. When he made a promise to avoid actions that might damage his reputation, he didn’t think it’d be that serious. He cut back on going out, made the effort to play the role of the “good boy” but really – come on. He can’t maintain that facade for an eternity. Especially after a triumphant victory like yesterday’s.

Taking away his spot on the national football team? He didn’t think that was possible.

“How many more times do we have to fix your problems, because you don’t care enough? How many times do we have to repeat this scenario?”

“I promise I’ll better myself,” he pleads desperately, looking back and forth between his manager and his PR agent. Someone has to believe him, help him.

“Do you genuinely believe this country wants to be represented by a 20-year-old boy, who can’t keep his personal life under control?” Taesung asks, eyebrows deeply pinched together. “This isn’t just about you, Jungkook. It’s about the team, the fans, and the nation. They need a role model, not a scandal waiting to happen.”

“I know. I know.” Jungkook scrambles for something convincing to say, desperate to sway their decision. This can’t be it. He won’t let his career take a hit because of something like this. “But – but this isn’t too bad. This is fixable. I can fix this.” His voice quivers with a desperation he barely recognises as his own. “Jiwoo.” Jungkook turns to her with pleading eyes. “You always know what to do. Please, help me”

“I did propose an idea but-”

“We’re not doing that,” Taesung cuts in. “It’s off the table.”

“What is it?” Jungkook’s eyes bounce back and forth between them. “I’ll do anything. This is – this is everything to me. You have to give me a chance.”

Taesung scoffs. “A chance? As far as I know, you have been given countless chances.”

Sweat coats the back of Jungkook’s neck.

Taesung understands just how much Jungkook has fought to secure his place on the national team. He’s well aware that it’s one of Jungkook’s greatest dreams, a pinnacle of his career that he’s poured countless hours of hard work and sacrifice into. That’s why, each morning, when he wakes up to the latest news of Jungkook’s escapades, he feels a deep sense of disappointment, texting Jungkook with a dejected shake of his head to visit his office first thing in the morning.

When it’s all he wants, like Jungkook claims, why doesn’t he act like it?

“If the head coach won’t give me a chance now, he’ll never do. This is my last opportunity to change his mind, make him rethink. I need to at least try.”

Jiwoo looks at the manager, waiting for his approval. He nods.

“Very simply put: you need a girlfriend,” she says.

For a second, Jungkook is at loss for words.

“A girlfriend? How’s that going to help?” Jungkook tilts his head in confusion. This is not how he thought Jiwoo was going to save him.

“You need a girlfriend to help polish up your image as a player. It’ll make you appear more like a gentleman, softer and nicer. We need to completely shift public perception and counter the negative image they’ve formed about you. It’s all about changing the narrative,” she explains.

“And that is not something we can easily achieve,” Taesung interjects. “Rebranding your entire persona is not feasible at this stage. You’ve been projecting what kind of boy you are to the media for the past two years. It’s going to be incredibly difficult to make a sudden shift look genuine.”

“No! We — I can make it seem real. This is my only chance,” Jungkook insists, his voice gaining a hint of determination. For a moment, breathing feels a bit easier again. “The World Cup is just a month away. That’s enough time to shift public opinion and prove I’m worthy of representing the country on the team.” There’s a hopeful lilt in his voice as he speaks, clinging to the belief that he might not have to bid farewell to his biggest dream after all.

But his manager doesn’t look as hopeful as Jungkook feels.

“How are we going to find a girl who will agree to this? Someone who isn’t an obsessive fan, understands this is purely professional, and can keep quiet? You won’t be able to pull this off.”

“I was actually thinking-” Jiwoo starts, but she’s cut off.

Jungkook hesitates, glancing between them before speaking. “Actually... I think I already have someone in mind.” His voice is more measured now. “That’s not the issue.” Jungkook doesn’t need to think twice.

Taesung sighs while Jiwoo looks at Jungkook apologetically.

“You can’t rebrand your entire persona from a playboy to a lover boy within a month, Jungkook. This is over.” His manager shakes his head, a sense of finality glimmering in his eyes.

One thing that Jungkook forgot to mention is that he is an extremely competitive man, too.

~

“This is ridiculous.”

You kick the laundry machine in frustration, but all you end up doing is yelping and clutching your aching foot.

“That’s the third time this month,” you mutter under your breath. “What did I even spend all that money on if it’s just going to break down whenever it feels like it?”

You shoot a death glare at the machine, teetering on the edge of losing your mind.

“Guess I’ll have to use the public laundromat again,” you sigh, grabbing the overflowing laundry basket filled with your and your roommate's clothes, and heading out of the bathroom with a huff.

On your way to the front door, the doorbell rings.

Please, you think. You were hoping for some quiet, uninterrupted time to deep-clean your dorm on this peaceful Sunday with no one around.

But when you peek through the peephole and see Jungkook standing there, your frustration melts away. You swing the door open, the laundry basket tumbling to the floor beside you in your haste.

“Jungkook!” you exclaim. “You’re timing is perfect! Can you please fix my laundry machine again? It’s been acting up, and I’m getting frustrated.” You groan annoyed.

Jungkook doesn’t share the same excitement upon seeing you.

You grow smaller and take an indecisive step back.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, noticing the tension in his features. “Did you lose the match yesterday? I couldn’t keep up because I had too much cramming to do last night.”

While studying medicine had always been your dream, the reality is less exciting. Right now, it means sleepless nights and relentless pressure. You know that pursuing this path will offer you many privileges later in life, but you have to suffer first.

“I need your help.”

His dark eyes, usually bright and full of energy, seem clouded with worry, and his hair falls messily over his forehead, like he’s run his hands through it a hundred times in frustration.

“Are you okay?” You study him closely, scanning his face for any signs of injury. Physically, he seems fine — still tall, muscular, and as fit as ever. But something is clearly off.

“You need to do something for me.”

“I can help,” you reply, your voice soft with concern. ‘But what is it…?”

“Can you be my girlfriend?”

You blink, repeatedly.

“Huh?”

You start giggling when he doesn’t add more. You expect him to clarify or laugh along, but Jungkook stays serious, stepping closer and gently taking your hands in his. You look down at them, then back up at his face, utterly bewildered.

“You’re silly, Jungkook. If someone on the team made you do this, tell them you did the punishment and quit acting so weird.”

It’s too early in the morning for Jungkook’s nonsense.

“No, ___, you don’t understand.” He squeezes your hands when he feels you trying to pull them back. “I actually need you to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Fake date me.”

[theprettynosferatu]

How to Masturbate like a Good Toy

We all masturbate. We all enjoy it. It's perfectly natural and something we do because we deserve to feel good.

But not you.

No, you are just a toy for real people, aren't you? Therefore when you play with yourself, you don't do it for yourself. You do it to bring pleasure to others, to enhance the joy of your betters either directly or by training yourself to be a better fuckdoll in the future.

Therefore it is your duty to use your playing time in a way that maximizes your usefulness. But fear not! I'll give you a few pointers on how to break yourself as you should.

1) Setup:

Time to be a good toy? Excellent! Before you fully start ravaging yourself like an animal in heat, you need to set the mood. First you need to choose: will you do it at home or will you do it hidden, in some bathroom, playing with yourself, unable to stop, just a drooling mess touching yourself where you shouldn't?

For this guide, we'll assume you're not being a public whore and you'll be in the privacy of your own home. First, lock the doors. Close the blinds. Make it so the real world is left outside of your bubble of debauchery. You don't need it, and it doesn't need you. All you need is to make others cum, now or later. All you need is your own depravity. Silence your phone if you must. Your only need is to serve by fucking yourself.

Now you need to choose what you'll touch yourself to. Make sure to have multiple tabs open, and wear headphones so the sounds of the worst, most depraved porn you enjoy blasts your brain. Don't be afraid to explore new, more fucked up kinks! Remember: it's your duty to get worse!

All ready? Now, you must inform people that you will be touching yourself, and what filth you'll be enjoying. So write on Tumblr! Your masturbation isn't for you. Give people the chance to imagine you, to see you in their mind as the depraved fucktoy you are. Give them reasons to stop seeing you as a human.

Good! Now you're ready to start!

2) Performance:

Yes, performance. Even if you are alone, you exist to be porn. You exist to be degraded and mindfucked. So imagine, at all times, that a camera is on you, or that you're exposing yourself to your superiors. Your actions must be for yourself and for that imaginary audience- until you can't separate your pleasure from the pleasure you bring to others.

Moan loudly. Talk dirty. Call yourself a useless fucking slut. Revel in your own humiliation. Stick your tongue out. Arch your back. Grind on objects. Drool on yourself. Abandon all dignity. People have dignity. You are not a person. You are a toy. Use every chance to practice being the best toy you can be. Go on your knees, look up and throat a dildo. Let go of any delusions of personhood. Embrace your place as an obedient little doll. Expose your body. Expose your kinks. Babble. Let your mind fade away.

And remember, take the time to tell people online exactly what you're doing. Your alone time is just a chance to be porn!

3) Finishing:

Time to finish! How to do it?

Don't.

You don't get to cum unless told to. You get to edge. To get right there, right at the point of orgasm... and stop. And then, do it again. And again. And again.

Every edge makes you dumber. Every edge makes you more obedient. Every edge makes you more open to suggestion. Every edge makes you a better toy.

And tomorrow you'll do it again. You'll get more and more depraved. Your morals will weaken as the accumulated edges turn you into a mindless humping machine.

And so, day by day, you'll get closer to the perfect fucktoy you were born to be.

Do remember: masturbation isn't for your pleasure! It is your duty. Your calling. Your purpose.

Now get to it. A new you awaits.

Good Toy.

[prokopetz]

Okay, so you know how search engine results on most popular topics have become useless because the top results are cluttered with page after page of machine-generated gibberish designed to trick people into clicking in so it can harvest their ad views?

And you know how the data sets that are used to train these gibberish-generating AIs are themselves typically machine-generated, via web scrapers using keyword recognition to sort text lifted from wiki articles and blog posts into topical subsets?

Well, today I discovered – quite by accident – that the training-data-gathering robots apparently cannot tell the difference between wiki articles about pop-psych personality typologies (e.g., Myers-Briggs type indicators, etc.) and wiki articles about Homestuck classpects.

The upshot is that when a bot that's been trained on the resulting data sets is instructed to write fake mental health resource articles, sometimes it will start telling you about Homestuck.

[xo100]

Coffee - LN4

*:･ﾟ Summary: Lando Norris visits a coffee shop every day after his run, mainly to see the barista—you. After some playful conversation, he finally asks you out.

*:･ﾟ Word count: 1318.

୨ৎ

The familiar chime of the bell above the door rang softly through the cozy coffee shop, signaling the arrival of another customer. It was still early, and the usual bustle of mid-morning crowds hadn’t yet begun. The only sound besides the quiet hum of the espresso machine was the faint tapping of your fingers as you wiped down the counter, your mind only half-focused on the task at hand. It was quite in here at his hour, which meant you could almost always expect a familiar face to appear any minute now—his face.

—

Lando Norris had a routine, and his routine involved this little coffee shop on the corner. Every morning, after his early run, he would show up in his running gear, hair tousled from exertion, cheeks flushed pink from the cold, and order the same thing: a simple black coffee. It wasn’t the most complex drink on the menu, not by a long shot, but somehow, you had found yourself looking forward to it every time. Because when he walked in, it wasn’t just the coffee that caught your attention.

From behind the counter, you’d noticed him the very first time he walked in. How could you not? He was handsome in that effortless, boyish kind of way, with soft brown curls that always seemed to be perfectly messy, and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes that gave the impression he was always one joke away from making you laugh. He was the kind of customer you wanted to chat with for longer than just a few minutes it took to pour a cup of coffee.

And Lando had noticed you too.

At first, he had been shy about it, his glances from across the counter lingering just a second too long. He’d fumble with his card or take an extra moment to say thank you, just so he could meet your eyes. Each time, his heart would do a funny little leap in his chest. Maybe it was the way you smiled at him—genuine, warm, the kind of smile that made him forget how could it was outside. Or maybe it was the you’d always remember his order without asking, your quiet kindness making the simple act of buying coffee feel personal.

Whatever it was, he found himself coming back every day. And today was no different.

—

As you wiped down the counter, you caught the familiar sight of him jogging up the street through the large glass window, his hoodie pulled over his head to keep out the chill. Your heart skipped a little beat, as it always did when you saw him approach. You quickly turned back to the coffee machine, pretending to busy yourself, though you knew it was useless. The chime above the door rang again, and you felt a flutter in your stomach as Lando stepped inside.

“Morning,” he said, his voice a little breathless as he tugged his hood down. He flashed you that lopsided grin that always made you want to smile back.

“Morning,” you replied, already reaching for the cup. “The usual, right?” He laughed softly, nodding. “Yeah, you know me too well.”

You gave him a playful glance as you worked, pouring the dark liquid into the cup with practiced ease. “It’s hard to forget when you order the same thing every day.” Lando leaned casually against the counter, watching you with an almost lazy kind of interest, as if he had all the time in the world to stand there and chat. And, well, maybe he did. “Maybe I’m just predictable,” he teased, eyes twinkling.

You shrugged, handing him his coffee. “Predictable can be good sometimes.”

Their fingers brushed slightly as he took the cup from you, and you felt a jolt of something—something warm and sweet—shoot through you. Lando seemed to feel it too, because his hand lingered for just a second longer than necessary before he pulled away, a soft smile playing on his lips.

“Yeah?” He asked, raising an eyebrow. “What else have you figured out about me then?”

You blushed at the question, suddenly very aware of how close he was standing. He had this way of looking at you, like you were the only person in the room, and it made your pulse quicken in a way that was both exciting and nerve-wracking.

“Well,” you started, trying to sound nonchalant as you wiped your hands on your apron, “I’ve figured out you like to run, considering you’re always showing up in running clothes. And you’re not too fond of sugar, since you never ask for it in your coffee.” You paused, glancing up at him. “Oh, and you’re a fan of coming in right after your run. Probably so you don’t freeze out there.”

Lando chuckled, shaking his head slightly. “Guilty,” he admitted. “But maybe I just like the coffee here.”

“Is that so?” You asked, narrowing your eyes playfully. “Because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a few other coffee shops on your way here.”

“Yeah, well, they don’t make it like you do.” His voice was soft, the teasing edge still there, but laced with something a bit more genuine. His gaze lingered on you a moment longer, and you felt your face grow warmer under his attention. There was a beat of silence, one that neither of you seemed in a rush to fill. The morning light filtered through the window, casting a golden hue over the small shop, and for a moment, it felt like it was just the two of you. No rush, no distractions—just you and Lando, standing there with his cup of coffee between you.

Finally, Lando cleared his throat, breaking the spell but not the connection. “You know,” he began, a hint of hesitation in his voice. “I was wondering… if you ever get a break?”

You blinked, not expecting the question. “A break?”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, a touch of nervousness creeping into his usually confident demeanor. “You know, like… a break durning your shift. I thought maybe, if you’re free sometime, we could, I don’t know, grab a coffee? Well, not here, obviously,” he added quickly, grinning sheepishly.

You felt your heart skip again, this time harder, and you bit back a smile as you looked up at him. “You want to get coffee? With me?”

“Yeah,” Lando said, his eyes locking into yours. “I mean, I’ve been coming here for the coffee everyday, but honestly… I think it’s you I’m really here for.”

The words hung in the air between you, soft and sincere. For a second, you thought you might have misheard him, but the look on his face—hopeful and just a little bit vulnerable— told you otherwise. You felt a smile tug on your lips, warmth blooming in your chest. “I’d like that,” you said, your voice soft but sure.

Lando’s grin widened, the relief evident on his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you replied, feeling the butterflies in your stomach dance widely. “Maybe after my shift? I finish around two.”

“Perfect,” he said, his excitement barely contained. “I’ll be here. I’ll vene let you choose the place.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” you teased lightly. “Please do,” Lando shot back with a wink. He stood there for a second longer, as if he didn’t quite want to leave just yet, but eventually, he pushed off the counter, taking a step back. “Alright, I should probably let you get back to work. But, um… I’ll see you later?”

You nodded, feeling like you were floating on air. “See you later.”

He gave you one last smile before turning and heading to the door, the bell chiming softly as he left. You watched him walking down the street, the same way he always did, but this time, it felt different. You felt different.

Because today, nothing was really the same after all.

୨ৎ

*:･ﾟNotes; thank you for reading my first story! Hope you enjoyed it! Also is there anyone who can tell me how to make a masterlist?

[dyinggirldied]

A John Doe that one day mysteriously appeared in the Gotham City Morgue is driving everyone crazy. Anytime someone attempts to move him or trying to find cause of death, well, they escape the morgue looking dishevelled, eyes wide in fear and unable to speak about what occurred.

Any recording became statics. Face recognition machine broke down. Surgery knives bent like plastic. All the while the corpse stayed peacefully, not deposed like any normal corpse despite the months passing.

Most scary at all, they couldn't utter a word about this to anyone. Writing or signing was also useless. So this miraculously didn't reach the bat's ears.

Priest, (fake) occult detectives or any of the likes were invited under the pretense of blessing or destroying the cursed corpse but their attempts are futile and they were traumatized.

Until Jason Todd, who was in his undercover disguise as father Jasper, was invited.

He didn't expect the corpse to open his eyes the moment he arrived inside. Nor for the doors to lock tight and all communication cut off.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Company that makes millions spying on students will get to sue a whistleblower

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia handed down a jaw-droppingly stupid and terrible decision, rejecting the whistleblower Ian Linkletter’s claim that he was engaged in legitimate criticism when he linked to freely available materials from the ed-tech surveillance company Proctorio:

https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/ca/23/01/2023BCCA0160.htm

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/2023/04/20/links-arent-performances/#free-ian-linkletter

It’s been a minute since Linkletter’s case arose, so I’ll give you a little recap here. Proctorio is a massive, wildly profitable ed-tech company that sells a surveillance tool to monitor students while they take high-stakes tests from home. The tool monitors the student’s computer and the student’s face, especially their eye-movements. It also allows instructors and other personnel to watch the students and even take control of their computer. This is called “remote invigilation.”

This is ghastly in just about every way. For starters, Proctorio’s facial monitoring software embeds the usual racist problems with machine-learning stuff, and struggles to recognize Black and brown faces. Black children sitting exams under Proctorio’s gimlet eye have reported that the only way to satisfy Proctorio’s digital phrenology system is to work with multiple high-powered lights shining directly in their faces.

A Proctorio session typically begins with a student being forced to pan a webcam around their test-taking room. During lockdown, this meant that students who shared a room — for example, with a parent who worked night-shifts — would have to invade their family’s privacy, and might be disqualified because they couldn’t afford a place large enough to have private room in which to take their tests.

Proctorio’s tools also punish students for engaging in normal test-taking activity. Do you stare off into space when you’re trying through a problem? Bzzzt. Do you read questions aloud to yourself under your breath when you’re trying to understand their meanings? Bzzzt. Do you have IBS and need to go to the toilet? Bzzzt. The canon of remote invigilation horror stories is filled with accounts of students being forced to defecate themselves, or vomit down their shirts without turning their heads (because looking away is an automatically flagged offense).

The tragedy is that all of this is in service to the pedagogically bankrupt practice of high-stakes testing. Few pedagogists believe that the kind of exam that Proctorio seeks to recreate in students’ homes has real assessment merit. As the old saying goes, “Tests measure your ability to take tests.” But Proctorio doesn’t even measure your ability to take a test — it measures your ability to take a test with three bright lights shining directly on your face. Or while you are covered in your own feces and vomit. While you stare rigidly at a screen. While your tired mother who just worked 16 hours in a covid ward stands outside the door to your apartment.

The lockdown could have been an opportunity to improve educational assessment. There is a rich panoply of techniques that educators can adopt that deliver a far better picture of students’ learning, and work well for remote as well as in-person education. Instead, companies like Proctorio made vast fortunes, most of it from publicly funded institutions, by encouraging a worse-than-useless, discriminatory practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/24/proctor-ology/#miseducation

Proctorio clearly knows that its racket is brittle. Like any disaster profiteer, Proctorio will struggle to survive after the crisis passes and we awaken from our collective nightmare and ask ourselves why we were stampeded into using its terrible products. The company went to war against its critics.

In 2020, Proctorio CEO Mike Olsen doxed a child who complained about his company’s software in a Reddit forum:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#moral-exemplar

In 2021, the reviews for Proctorio’s Chrome plugin all mysteriously vanished. Needless to say, these reviews — from students forced to use Proctorio’s spyware — were brutal:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/04/hypervigilance/#radical-transparency

Proctorio claims that it protects “educational integrity,” but its actions suggest a company far more concerned about the integrity of its own profits:

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

One of the critics that Proctorio attacked is Ian Linkletter. In 2020, Linkletter was a Learning Technology Specialist at UBC’s Faculty of Education. His job was to assess and support ed-tech tools, including Proctorio. In the course of that work, Linkletter reviewed Proctorio’s training material for educators, which are a bonanza of mask-off materials that are palpably contemptuous of students, who are presumed to be cheaters.

At the time, a debate over remote invigilation tools was raging through Canadian education circles, with students, teachers and parents fiercely arguing the merits and downsides of making surveillance the linchpin of assessment. Linkletter waded into this debate, tweeting a series of sharp criticisms of Proctorio. In these tweets, Linkletter linked to Proctorio’s unlisted, but publicly available, Youtube videos.

A note of explanation: Youtube videos can be flagged as “unlisted,” which means they don’t show up in searches. They can also be flagged as “private,” which means you have to be on a list of authorized users to see them. Proctorio made its training videos unlisted, but they weren’t private — they were visible to anyone who had a link to them.

Proctorio sued Linkletter for this. They argued that he had breached a duty of confidentiality, and that linking to these videos was a copyright violation:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/17/proctorio-v-linkletter/#proctorio

This is a classic SLAPP — a “strategic litigation against public participation.” That’s when a deep-pocketed, thin-skinned bully, like Proctorio, uses the threat of a long court battle to force their critics into silence. They know they can’t win their case, but that’s not the victory they’re seeking. They don’t want to win the case, they want to win the argument, by silencing a critic who would otherwise be bankrupted by legal fees.

Getting SLAPPed is no fun. I’ve been there. Just this year, a billionaire financier tried to force me into silence by threatening me with a lawsuit. Thankfully, Ken “Popehat” White was on the case, and he reminded this billionaire’s counsel that California has a strong anti-SLAPP law, and if Ken had to defend me in court, he could get a fortune in fees from the bully after he prevailed:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1531684572479377409

British Columbia also has an anti-SLAPP law, but unlike California’s anti-SLAPP, the law is relatively new and untested. Still, Proctorio’s suit against Linkletter was such an obvious SLAPP that for many of us, it seemed likely that Linkletter would be able to defend himself from this American bully and its attempt to use Canada’s courts to silence a Canadian educator.

For Linkletter to use BC’s anti-SLAPP law, he would have to prove that he was weighing in on a matter of public interest, and that Proctorio’s copyright and confidentiality claims were nonsense, unlikely to prevail on their merits. If he could do that, he’d be able to get the case thrown out, without having to go through a lengthy, brutally expensive trial.

Incredibly, though, the lower court found against Linkletter. Naturally, Linkletter appealed. His “factotum” is a crystal clear document that sets out the serious errors of law and fact the lower court made:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aB1ztWDFr3MU6BsAMt6rWXOiXJ8sT3MY/view

But yesterday, the Court of Appeal upheld the lower court, repeating all of these gross errors and finding for Proctorio:

https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/ca/23/01/2023BCCA0160.htm

This judgment is grotesque. It makes a mockery of BC’s anti-SLAPP statute, to say nothing of Canadian copyright and confidentiality law. For starters, it finds that publishing a link can be a “performance” of a copyrighted work, which meant that when Linkletter linked to the world-viewable Youtube files that Proctorio had posted, he infringed on copyright.

This is a perverse, even surreal take on copyright. The court rejects Linkletter’s argument that even Youtube’s terms of service warned Proctorio that publishing world-viewable material on its site constituted permission for people to link to and watch that material.

But what about “fair dealing” (similar to fair use)? Linkletter argued that linking to a video that shows that Proctorio’s assurances to parents and students about its products’ benign nature were contradicted by the way it talked to educators was fair dealing. Fair dealing is a broad suite of limitations and exceptions to copyright for the purposes of commentary, criticism, study, satire, etc.

So even if linking is a copyright infringement (ugh, seriously?!), surely it’s fair dealing in this case. Proctorio was selling millions of dollars in software to public institutions, inflicting it on kids whose parents weren’t getting the whole story. Linkletter used Proctorio’s own words to rebut its assurances. What could be more fair dealing than that?

Not so fast, the appeals panel says: they say that Linkletter could have made his case just as well without linking to Proctorio’s materials. This is…bad. I mean, it’s also wrong, but it’s very bad, too. It’s wrong because an argument about what a company intends necessarily has to draw upon the company’s own statements. It’s absurd to say that Linkletter’s point would have been made equally well if he said “I disbelieve Proctorio’s public assurances because I’ve seen seekrit documents” as it was when he was able to link to those documents so that people could see them for themselves.

But it’s bad because it rips the heart out of the fair dealing exception for criticism. Publishing a link to a copyrighted work is the most minimal way to quote from it in a debate — Linkletter literally didn’t reproduce a single word, not a single letter, from Proctorio’s copyrighted works. If the court says, “Sure, you can quote from a work to criticize it, but only so much as you need to make your argument,” and then says, “But also, simply referencing a work without quoting it at all is taking too much,” then what reasonable person would ever try to rely on a fair dealing exemption for criticism?

Then there’s the confidentiality claim: in his submissions to the lower court and the appeals court, Linkletter pointed out that the “confidential” materials he’d linked to were available in many places online, and could be easily located with a Google search. Proctorio had uploaded these “confidential” materials to many sites — without flagging them as “unlisted” or “private.”

What’s more, the videos that Linkletter linked to were in found a “Help Center” that didn’t even have a terms-of-service condition that required confidentiality. How on Earth can materials that are publicly available all over the web be “confidential?”

Here, the court takes yet another bizarre turn in logic. They find that because a member of the public would have to “gather” the videos from “many sources,” that the collection of links was confidential, even if none of the links in the collection were confidential. Again, this is both wrong and bad.

Every investigator, every journalist, every critic, starts by looking in different places for information that can be combined to paint a coherent picture of what’s going on. This is the heart of “open source intelligence,” combing different sources for data points that shed light on one another.

The idea that “gathering” public information can breach confidentiality strikes directly at all investigative activity. Every day, every newspaper and news broadcast in Canada engages in this conduct. The appeals court has put them all in jeopardy with this terrible finding.

Finally, there’s the question of Proctorio’s security. Proctorio argued that by publishing links to its educator materials, Linkletter weakened the security of its products. That is, they claim that if students know how the invigilation tool works, it stops working. This is the very definition of “security through obscurity,” and it’s a practice that every serious infosec professional rejects. If Proctorio is telling the truth when it says that describing how its products work makes them stop working, then they make bad products that no one should pay money for.

The court absolutely flubs this one, too, accepting the claim of security through obscurity at face value. That’s a finding that flies in the face of all security research.

So what happens now? Well, Linkletter has lost his SLAPP claim, so nominally the case can proceed. Linkletter could appeal his case to Canada’s Supreme Court (about 7% of Supreme Court appeals of BC appeals court judgments get heard). Or Proctorio could drop the case. Or it could go to a full trial, where these outlandish ideas about copyright, confidentiality and information security would get a thorough — and blisteringly expensive — examination.

In Linkletter’s statement, he remains defiant and unwilling to give in to bullying, but says he’ll have to “carefully consider” his next step. That’s fair enough: there’s a lot on the line here:

https://linkletter.opened.ca/stand-against-proctorios-slapp-update-30/

Linkletter answers his supporters’ questions about how they can help with some excellent advice: “What I ask is for you to do what you can to protect students. Academic surveillance technology companies would like nothing more but for us all to shut up. Don’t let them silence you. Don’t let anyone or anything take away your human right to freedom of expression.”

Today (Apr 21), I’m speaking in Chicago at the Stigler Center’s Antitrust and Competition Conference. This weekend (Apr 22/23), I’m at the LA Times Festival of Books.

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[i-eat-mold]

can you imagine being Nakahara Chuuya, 15 years old? for starters you’re 15 which by itself is a nightmare but whatever. you’re the head of this weird kid gang in the slumps where you grew up and btw you also don’t remember anything that happened before the age of 8. you can manipulate gravity which is pretty cool and you have some friends ish that you have to protect (aka said gang members that are also just kids and early teenagers) because you just have a heart so big that won’t fit inside your ribcage but whatever. and you know how 15yos are they have like their own language and behavior for each of their own little social groups and if you don’t act or talk or whatever that way then you’re like really weird, but whatever.

one day you find this weird kid that is dressed like he walked right out of his own funeral and is also covered in bandages and just won’t fucking shut up. he’s the most annoying *thing* you’ve ever seen even though he’s barely alive. You obviously beat him up right away and then he becomes even weirder. suddenly you’re stuck with the weirdest boy you could have ever imagined. he’s the dumbest person alive, he communicates by staring into your soul with his one(1) empty void of an eye and saying absolutely nothing. he acts like he has never had a single social interaction in his life. he declares his love for you within the same day of meeting him. Btw, you’re stuck with him for the next seven years. Oh, and he lives in a metal container in a dump. Also he has like two friends which you are pretty sure don’t even like him either. one of them barely talks and is somehow even weirder than the boy itself and the other one is an absolute stuck up which you are pretty sure might be a double agent but no one says anything despite how obvious it seems to you. you still aren’t sure whether this boy wants to die or not. he is an absolute machine at playing arcade video games but a completely useless piece of shit at everything else. He rolls on the floor when he’s focused. oh and also he has stated several times that he spends every waking moment thinking of how to make you miserable, and somehow he still would never let you die.

i guess he’s your friend?

[reachartwork]

re: why nightshade/glaze is useless, aka "the chicken is already in the nugget", from the perspective of an Actual Machine Learning Researcher

a bunch of people have privately asked me to answer this aspect of the five points i raised, and i tire of repeating myself, so

the fundamental oversight here is a lack of recognition that these AI models are not dynamic entities constantly absorbing new data; they are more akin to snapshots of the internet at the time they were trained, which, for the most part, was several years ago.

to put it simply, Nightshade's efforts to alter images and introduce them to the AI in hopes of affecting the model's output are based on an outdated concept of how these models function. the belief that the AI is actively scraping the internet and updating its dataset with new images is incorrect. the LAION datasets, which are the foundation of most if not all modern image synthesis models, were compiled and solidified into the AI's 'knowledge base' long ago. The process is not ongoing; it's historical.

i think it's important for people to understand that Nightshade is fighting is against an already concluded war. the datasets have been created, the models have been trained, and the 'internet scraping' phase is not an ongoing process for these AI. the notion that AI is an ever-updating Skynet seeking to cannibalize all your art (or that the companies using it are constantly seeking out new art to add to the pile) is a science fiction myth, not a reality.

(for the many other reasons why it won't work see my other post. really i just wanted an excuse to make and post these two sloppy meme edits).

cheers

[yawnderu]

honestly i would die for bimbo!reader to have some sort of Legally Blonde level of intelligence but for the stupidest, most useless shit. no, she can't remember which knob turns on which burner for the stove, but she can tell you the effects of different chemical compounds found in all her favorite skincare products and now they react to an individuals derma-layer. simon once caught her watching a screensaver on TV for 30 min because she thought it was "a reeeeally slow nature documentary /:", but she's fluent in Korean because she got super into Korean make up brands from her favorite influencers and wanted to be able to read the product ingredients/reviews/tutorials, it just never gets brought up otherwise and when someone asks in disbelief she's all "what, like it's hard?"

and simon is just sooooo so so proud of his smart pretty girl. who cares that she thought soap's parents legally named him after a dishwashing product. can mactavish tell him how to tell dupes from authentic handbags based on the inner stitching that can only be done on machines specially made by Italian companies? no? then shut the fuck up. tell us more about glitter lipgloss, beautiful.

Absolutely!! She may be dim-witted when it comes to certain things, but she's not exactly dumb at all. This girl could recite the laws of astrophysics and solve complex mathematical problems while being piss drunk.

Simon is still amazed by how complex his sweet girl is— he knows she isn't stupid, yet it never fails to surprise him how you start speaking to MacTavish in fluent Scottish Gaelic, only offering the explanation that you learnt it because a character on your favorite movie spoke it once, looking at him like he grew a second head when he sheepishly told you most scottish people don't speak Gaelic anymore.

Sure, you may have thought movies were real and used to avoid watching them because you thought the actors were actually getting killed and you didn't want to support that, yet a window of your house is full of math equations that gave him a headache just by looking at them.

I'd say Simon sees bimbo!reader as a box full of surprises, telling him about something new every single time you have a conversation. How did you get into studying astrophysics? You got the highest score in the university admission exam and saw a poster that was shiny and had cute stars and a pretty nebula!! How could you resist when everything about it called for you?

Mhm, the smell of gunpowder and blood that sticks to him no matter what is such an odd perfume, yet it surely has an interesting molecular makeup! Of course it does, pretty girl.

They complement each other so well because Simon has the street smarts she's lacking, and she has the book smarts Simon doesn't. She can be extremely ditzy, but who cares when she can tell him exactly which inks are recommended for his skin and which chemicals can rough up his face? He had to buy a brand-new eye black stick simply because you could tell the materials used on it by applying it on your hand with a frown.

I'd like to imagine her as someone with lots of odd interests, knowledge and hyperfixations in the dumbest things besides the universe. He has to keep up with you buying materials for making bracelets and keeping a room full of dinosaur plushies.

Bimbo!Reader Masterlist