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bunnyhugs77 · 20 days ago

Text

Driven 2 U

Pairing: Rich! Reader x Mechanic! Jungkook

Word Count: 5.2k

Notes: am i back from the dead??

Content Warning: reader is a bit spoiled but she can't help it!, ft manager! yoongi, jk is so whipped, fluff, car troubles, reader is a bad driver, kissing, witty jk, some smut, pining, mentionsn of ex boyfriends, dirty hands, flowers, reader is a bit oblivious, mention of death, jungkook is delusional just like us.

Other Content: making out, late-night rendezvous, choking, semi-public sex, they're both so desperate, marking, soft dom! jk, light hair pulling, oral sex (f! receiving), cute conversations in between, praise.

The sun beamed down gently between the spaces of the clouds that littered the otherwise bright blue sky. Your Chanel sunglasses framed your face perfectly and your arm rested on the ledge of the window as you steered with the other. The air was sweeter, the flowers were in full bloom and the grass seemed greener.

The world always seemed so much more colourful when you had a hair appointment ahead of you. "I swear this is your third hair appointment this month." Yerin's voice rings through your aux, judgy as always, but you love her for it. She's been your best friend since you could walk, if anyone was gonna call you out it was gonna be her--it could only be her. You didn't listen to anyone else.

Especially not your overprotective dad, who kept nagging you to get your engine checked since that little light kept flashing at you. You didn't see the point. You thought of yourself as a pretty good driver even though all of your passengers often fled the moment you parked, swearing to never get in a car with you again, but they always came back.

"Yeah? What's your point? These roots aren't gonna touch up themselves." Your car began to jolt, "Uhh-" You trailed off, looking down to your dashboard and scanning for a source of the issue, "What?" Yerin asks and you quickly begin to lose speed. \

Turning on your four-ways you begin to pull over on the side of the road, "My engine light is flashing red and there's smoke coming out from my hood, is that bad?" Yerin doesn't say anything, there's silence in the car until she exhales, "You need to take your car to a mechanic like yesterday."

"-But I can't take it to Wheely's, that's where Jae used to take me whenever my car needed work." This time Yerin made sure you could hear her distress with an extra long sigh, "You guys broke up almost 6 months ago, I doubt they remember you. It's not like they'll refuse service because you broke up with one of their customers."

"Okay fine. You're lucky it's close, I'll just drive-" Before your hand could even make contact with the clutch, you're interrupted by a shout, "Do not even think about moving that car, Y/n. You'll completely kill the engine. Just call a tow truck. As a matter of fact, I'll call one for you."

That brings you to where you are right now. The passenger seat of a high-rimmed tow truck with a rugged driver. He seemed miserable to you at first, hooking your car up with a lot of grunts and 'tsks' slipping through clenched teeth until he really looked at you, eyes looking you up then down, taking in your very wealthy attire.

Suddenly small talk and friendly conversation were being made. With a rocky abruption, you bounced in your seat as the truck pulled into the back alley of the shop where there were lots of other damaged cars sitting around.

You thanked him and tipped him one hundred dollars. You clearly had no general comprehension of the value of a dollar, not when it comes to tipping at least.

You stood off to the side of the open garage, against the wall, waiting for the driver to come back after he'd gone inside to notify the mechanics that your car would need to be manually rolled in.

"You're still rolling in this piece of junk, Scooter?" A voice catches your attention two more men walk out of the garage alongside the driver. It seems the driver was known as Scooter around here though you doubt that's his real name.

"Hey, you better watch it, ol'Ruby here may be a bit aged but she's got character." Scooter taps the hood of the rusty pick-up truck while the two men stand in front of him with their arms crossed, one with mint hair and the other with dark locks; both of their backs facing you, yet to notice you were standing there.

"A bit aged? I'm certain Julius Cesar could identify it." The mint-haired man jokes and the brunette laughs while Scooter rolls his eyes.

Scooter waves you over, cueing the two men to look over their shoulders, a bit shocked they hadn't noticed you standing there earlier. "This is Yoongi and Jungkook, they'll be overseeing your repairs." They finally turned and Yoongi hardly got a full glance at you before his gaze was fixated on the man beside him who couldn't look away.

Unsure if your mind was playing tricks on you but you're fairly certain you'd seen them both before. Maybe not for long as you'd only ever been at the mechanics for a few short moments while Jae dropped off your car and switched into his.

Eyes wide and alert, you resembled a deer in headlights, unable to hold the soft gaze that was being sent your way. "Don't worry, you're in good hands," Yoongi reassures while Scooter gets back in his truck and pulls out.

"We need to roll it in, Jungkook and I are going to push from behind the car. Do you mind getting in the front and just steering to make sure to aim for the inside of the garage? Try to get it between the two pylons." Yoongie points into the garage where there are two markers a few meters apart.

Agreeing, you're just about to get back into the front seat when your phone rings. Both men were already in position, strong arms bracing the trunk and hunched over slightly, legs split apart, ready to bear the force back into the ground with each push, but you answered the phone instead.

Yoongi's brow arched while Jungkook just watched you.

"Y/n speaking."

It was your hairdresser, calling to see if you were still on your way as expected. Your heart sunk, you'd nearly forgotten ever since your car committed suicide and then Yerin was yelling at you.

"I'm so sorry- my car broke down and--" The boys listen intently, nosey as always. It wasn't often they had someone so interesting stroll into their quarters in the middle of the week.

"Yes, I know you're very busy and I would never want to waste your time--" You start but she interrupts you again. "No! Please don't put me on the waitlist I'll be there. I'm coming!" Hastily you get into the driver's seat and steer it in with the guys pushing behind you.

You got out nervously panicking, scrolling through all your contacts for someone to give you a ride. "Something wrong?" Jungkook couldn't help himself. He had to ask, even though he knew the answer.

"I have a hair appointment and she'd booked through for the next three months and if I'm not there in the next 15 minutes she's giving my spot away." Jungkook just stood there, while Yoongi worked on elevating the car.

Not a thought behind his eyes at your worries. You were in your own world for that to be your biggest concern but he tried to understand. "Why not get a Lyft?"

"Ew," Your hand clasps over your mouth almost immediately. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that--or to offend you-" Now Jungkook seemed taken aback, "Why would that offend me?" Your mouth gapes open like a fish before finally shutting.

"I'm just saying, the choice is yours. You can either get a Lyft or call the b-b-bus." He puts on a horrified expression as he chops up the last word to get it through to you. The result on your face was priceless.

"How about you give me a ride? I'll pay you." He stills, straightening his posture while his brows contorted, evidently confused. Even though Yoongi was on the opposite side of the car, crouched down on one knee, he too was confused. That wasn't an option. Jungkook is in full uniform, on the clock.

Does he get ahead of himself sometimes? Yes. The kid's got a big heart but he's not crazy, there's no way he would- "I'll get my keys." Yoongi lets his head fall in disappointment.

Jungkook led you around the back of the building then outside to the lot where he was parked and you turned to him blankly. "Which one is yours?" He unlocks the car as an answer, the headlights flashing at you. Quick on your heels you pivot to face him.

"This is your car?" Your acrylic points to the grey polished, sleek sports car that had the two doors opening on their own. "Not too shabby for the working class, huh?" He quips and you swat at his arm.

"I already said I was sorry about the Lyft thing, will you just let it go already? He snorts at how flustered you're getting, "Already? That was literally 60 seconds ago." You pout and get into the car, avoiding any further conversation.

His car smelled good, like really good. You found yourself taking deeper breaths than usual. It was hard to describe the smell but if you tried you would describe it as a bold yet comforting aroma, it almost reminded you of a man's cologne but mixed with the fresh scent of smoked leather. Sweet but musky.

"Leave some air for me." Jungkook jokes and your eyes nearly pop out of their sockets, he pulls out of the lot and heads for the address you gave him. "Just hurry up." You slouch back into the seat hoping the chair would consume you.

"You do realize you're basically in a Lyft right now." Jungkook points out as the ending revs and the car accelerates, cutting up traffic, one hand on the wheel and the other out the window, just like you.

You ignored how attractive his driving was and zeroed in on the topic at hand. "No, this is different. I personally hired you, for the next..." You lean forward to see the GPS and the remaining time to your location, "6 minutes, you're my personal chauffeur." He just had to laugh, all those times he saw you with Jae, he'd always wondered what you'd be like.

He never would've guessed you be so full of...you. But it would be one hell of a lie if he said it didn't add to your appeal. He was no longer in dangerous waters, no no. The moment he accepted your proposition, he'd thrown himself into shark-infested waves with a pressuring current, destined to pull him to the bottom.

Jungkook pulled up to the side of the salon and you hurried got out. "Thank you, Jungkook. I really appreciate it; oh and take care of my car!" You smile from outside the window looking in, about to leave when you reach for your phone and hand it to him.

His heart leaps from his chest. That's it? So easy? He lags for a moment, staring at your arm that was outstretched to him. "So you can tell me when my car is ready."

Oh.

"OH. Yeah. Of course." he enters in his information before handing it back to you, and the sight of your bouncy steps in your high heels and sunglasses is the last he sees of you before he makes his way back to the shop.

Walking into the garage he picks up an oil cloth that he knows he'll need soon. Startled, Jungkook's hand grabs his chest as Yoongi pops up from behind the car, the opened trunk shielding him from sight before. Grease-covered hands and stained attire are what he notices before his displeased expression.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't get in the front seat and back this car over you." He threatens, not a smile in sight except for the big one that spreads across Jungkook's apologetic face. "Because I'll work overtime for a week, unpaid."

Yoongi taps the wrench in his palm, thinking about it. "You were on the clock, Jeon. Make it two."

"Deal."

The two round the car to the open hood to get a better look at the engine. "Was it at least worth it? I know you've had your eyes on her since she first came in with that guy like two years ago."

"She's funny and she's beautiful. It's so over for me." Yoongi chuckles, reaching his hand into the hood, and starting the repairs. "Just ask her out, I don't see what the big deal is." He shrugs and Jungkook's head slowly turns, "This could be the love of my life, Yoongi. One wrong move and I lose my one chance, all my greatest dreams and aspirations-" Yoongi playfully closes the hood on Jungkooks fingers to shut him up.

"Alright Shakespeare, now help me get this engine out."

A week goes by when you are flipping through a magazine, 'What's the perfect job for you' the letters read and surprise surprise you got a model. You smiled as you placed the magazine back down on the craft services table as the photographer called you over to the center to resume the shoot.

This was for the cover of Serpahine, thankfully you weren't as nervous this time around as you were three years ago when it was your first time.

You'd been in the modelling world for a few years now, you got into it on a whim not expecting to really go anywhere with it, but the people loved you. You were only 19 when you went to your first shoot for a local retail store, fast forward six years and you'd actually driven past a billboard with your face on it this morning.

Once the shoot was done you finally reconnected with your beloved phone and saw there was a message from an unsaved number. "Your car is ready for pick up." Ah, finally.

You were sick of carpooling and hiring drivers this week, all you wanted was to finally get back behind the wheel of your own car.

The evening hadn't escaped you just yet. The sun was still out but slowly setting and casting an orange hue as you got out of the car in front of Wheeley's and dismissed them.

You could already see Jungkook from where you stood outside of the garage. Leant over the hood of another car, sleeves rolled up and tattoos on display. Just when he couldn't get any hotter.

You knocked on the wall, not sure if you could enter. He looks up with a glance before doing an immediate double take and stands to his full height. He welcomes you with a soft smile and gestures you over.

You approached him slowly, the last thing you wanted was to eat shit and land on the greasy floors in front of him.

The closer you got, the more intense his gaze became, "Wow, you look amazing." Jungkook compliments almost speechless. It was like you'd gotten even prettier from the last time he'd seen you.

Instinctively, you play with the chain of your white gold orchid necklace. It was just something you did when you were flattered or shy, in this case, a bit of both.

"Ahem." Neither of you had any idea where Yoongi had come from but he spawned and reminded Jungkook to stay focused before he vanished back into his office.

"Right. So. We assessed the damage to your engine, and the overheating engine caused the gasket to blow, causing the coolant and the oil to start mixing which is very bad." You could tell he was dumbing down the words for you and you had to stop yourself from chewing on your lower lip as he talked.

He's so hot when he talks about cars and stuff. "Are you following?" What? You thought you were doing such a good job of listening. He continued to explain what had been done and import fees and blah blah blah.

You weren't listening to a damn thing he was saying and Jungkook could tell. If he was being honest, he was hardly listening to himself, brain so warped on the fact that this was probably the last time he'd see you for a long time.

He walked you over to the register, "With the coverage you get from guardian auto insurance it reduces your initial price from 2,785.61 to 875.50." You blinked, guardian auto insurance. You had no memory of buying that, which is why you assumed your dad did and thank god for that.

Not that you couldn't afford the initial price but who would want to spend money on boring car stuff when they could go shopping? You paid and then remembered something.

"Here's your tip, for the Lyft." You smile handing him a hundred-dollar bill and he just smiles, not reaching for the money. "Aren't you gonna take it?" He shakes his head. "The car did all the work, all I did was steer. Besides, if I were you, I'd consider putting my money towards a better car."

Your hand falters, and you pout. "What's wrong with my Magma GRT?"

"I hate to say it, but this is the worst car money can buy. I see about three of these every week. For starters, the engineering of it is shit, it makes our job ten times harder. Not to mention it was wired by preschoolers, the batteries are cheap and I can guarantee you, your transmission is gonna blow sometime in the next year."

You stood there, jaw dropped.

"That's not true." You argue, feeling defensive over your sweet baby.

Jungkook guides you over to the hood of the car he had just been working on. "I'll take everything back if you can show me where the engine is."

You stood there for a solid minute, really giving it hard thought. "It's right here." You hold up the middle finger in front of his face before walking away and he laughs taking long strides to catch up to your furious pace.

"Where is my car, anyway?" Jungkook leads you around the back where the completed cars sit with a ticket on the windshield. He watched you excitedly hop into the driver's seat and run your hands over the wheel, then touching the fuzzy orchids that hung from your mirror.

You started it up and she sounded better than ever. You got out and fought the urge to do a little dance but you lost. It was cute, adorable really. "Thank you!" Without even thinking you placed a quick peck on his cheek before you returned to your car, honking at him twice before you sped off.

His fingers lightly grazed the cheek your lips had just met. His vision started to blur, he was about to faint. And then the doom settled in his stomach, you were gone.

"Let's take 5 everyone. Y/n, a minute." The head photographer calls you over. "What's going on? You seem out of it, and you can't be out of it. Not until this shoot is done, at least. I've got bills to pay too."

It's been a few weeks since you'd gotten your car fixed but now everything else felt broken. Suddenly a new outfit didn't put a smile on your face, and the buzz you got from a night out at the bar didn't compare to the flames you felt with the few moments you had with that pretty mechanic.

You shake away the thoughts and apologize, reassuring him that you'd get your head back in the game.

It's been a month.

He hasn't texted you, which isn't crazy considering you gave him your number for repair purposes only. Though it did make you sad to know he ignored the resource he had to contact you. Then again the phone did work both ways.

You were spiralling, just a tad.

Besides, you didn't want to text him, you needed to see him, but you can't just show up to a mechanic for no reason...

You paced around your room until your gaze landed on your car keys.

You shake your head.

No.

That's crazy.

You grab the keys anyway.

After a quick Google search, you concluded that this evening you would be making an impromptu trip to the gas station. Your tank holds about 30 liters so you pumped it with 35.

Once you got back in the car, just as Google said, your check engine light was on. At least this time it wasn't red.

"Oh no, looks like I've gotta get a check-up."

You pulled onto the lot with a mischievous grin, you weren't sure how you were going to pull this off but you had to.

Parking outside the open garage, you locked the car before walking in, looking around for any signs of anyone but it was empty--

"Back so soon?" You turn, face to face with the same face you'd been wanting to see for weeks. "Well yeah, I-"

The loud engine of that familiar tow truck came roaring up the driveway. A loud horn caught your attention. "Come on Jeon, roadside call ain't gonna solve itself!" Scooter shouts and Jungkook visibly gulps, looking between the two of you with a panicked gaze.

"I'm sorry, I have to go. Yoongi is in his office, he can help you."

Your shoulders slumped and your pout was prominent. Let this be the first and last time you ever stuck your neck out for a man.

A few days had passed when Jungkook sent you the invoice for your repairs. Your eyes analyzed the familiar statement of reduction showing that Guardian Auto Insurance saved you another 600 dollars.

You sighed.

You completed the transaction online and made sure to avoid him at all costs when you picked up your car. Unable to face him after he had blown you off. Even though you know it wasn't intentional, it was still humiliating.

The following weeks may not have been anything special for you but were most certainly eventful for Yerin. "I warned you not to dance on top of that bar." You joke as you walk Yerin out of the emergency room with a slight hangover while she has a cast on her left arm.

After driving her back to her place, not a silent ride at that, even on three different pain killers she was still whining about this curb and that curb, 'watch out for that pedestrian' she would yell as if you didn't have eyes.

"How am I supposed to get to work tomorrow." She sulks, resting her cast on a nearby couch cushion. "I can take you." You offer and she glares, "I guess I wasn't clear. I need to make it in one piece." You rolled your eyes.

"I'll just take my car, driving with one hand can't be that hard." She shrugs.

"It's not, but you're not left-handed. It's a bad idea." You warn but she is more stubborn than you are.

It was only around 10 am the following morning when you received a message from Yerin. She attached an image of her car, it looked normal aside from the missing side mirror.

Oh boy.

'I told you so.' You send her and she replies with a middle finger.

'Now it's your turn to go to Wheeley's and make sure to use your guardian auto insurance. Saves a ton.'

She gives you a thumbs up.

Talking about that shop made your mind wander. You wonder how Jungkook was doing. It's been a while since you last saw him. Sometimes you regret not sticking around for him to come back, or even avoiding him to pick up your car.

But maybe this was for the best.

Besides, you were just a customer. One of many. You're sure he's forgotten all about you.

Your phone buzzes once, then twice, pulling you out of the realm of peace and tranquillity that your nap had rolled you into. You'd fallen asleep on the couch while reruns of your favourite movie passed by on your screen. "Hello?"

"Guardian Auto Insurance my ass. I was charged $450. I asked Yoongi to double check and he said apparently that doesn't even exist." Slowly sitting up, you try to make sense of it.

How's that possible? If it doesn't exist then who made it up?-

Oh shit.

You quickly finish the call with Yerin, and check the time. The shop would close in about an hour, you had little time to get ready before you made your way there.

Pulling into the driveway so late at night made your headlights seem like spotlights, bouncing off every reflective surface in sight. Catching Jungkook's attention as he wasn't expecting anyone this late at night.

In his fitted jumpsuit, he watched the car pull up closer to the garage, shining the bright light in his face until the engine was shut off. He'd seen this car hundreds of times. He couldn't get his hopes up, but the second your red bottoms hit the concrete his heart was pounding.

You were headed right towards him.

You looked angry- no, upset, no-

"When were you gonna tell me that there's really no Guardian Auto Insurance and that you've been covering 80% of my costs out of your own pocket?" You definitely sounded angry but your gaze seemed... soft.

You stopped right in front of him, face to face. Your breathing was heavy and your brows furrowed as your eyes danced between both of his deep brown, apologetic ones. "I-"

"Just shut up." Grabbing a gentle hold of his cheeks in your hands, you pulled his lips down to meet yours. It took Jungkook a second to process what was going on but once his brain caught up, so did his hands.

He held you securely at the waist, tugging you into him until your front was against his and he worked his tongue with yours. Your heads tilted slightly to deepen the kiss.

You always knew he'd be a great kisser, but this was taking your breath away. Literally. You pulled away from him, lungs reaching for a much-needed dose of oxygen while Jungkook did the same. His gaze was much darker.

"You and this stupid uniform. I want to finally see what's underneath-" Reaching for his buttons, you're able to get the first four undone with a few stray kisses to his neck that send Jungkook absolutely reeling. A soft moan escapes him before he pulls back.

"Wait. Wait, I have something for you." He disappears into one of the offices before coming back with a bouquet of orchids. Your gasp is genuine.

"Yoongi said a friend of yours was in the shop earlier and I'd already been thinking about you non-stop so I just took it as a sign to reach out. I was actually going to bring these to you later once the shop closed. I noticed you had orchids on your necklace and in your car so I just thought you'd like them." You give them a sniff. "I love them. They were actually my mom's favourite flower before she passed."

He frowns, "I'm sorry to hear that," you give him a sad smile, "Thank you, it means a lot. Really. But we can talk about that later," You place the flowers behind you on the trunk of the car. Jungkook grins.

"You're very direct aren't you." You shrug. "You'll get used to it."

He walks up to you, looking down at you with the six inches his head carried over yours. "Oh, will I?" You nod with unwavering confidence. "Unless you can't handle it-" A big, gentle hand is placed around your neck, no pressure applied until he speaks, "I'm not the one who needs to be worried about."

With that said he slowly sinks himself to his knees, big hands reaching under your ruffled skirt, taking two handfuls of your ass and giving it a firm squeeze. You gasp as you feel him slowly drag a finger along the soaked fabric of your panties.

"Please, Jungkook." The harmonious sound of you begging rattled him to his core. With no self-restraint, he would do anything you asked. "Don't worry princess, I've got you. Gonna take good care of you." he pulls down the only thing keeping him from your soaked cunt and a low growl rumbles in his chest at the sight.

He helps you to step out of your panties with your heels still on, he couldn't let your bare feet touch the floors. You open your hand for the garment but you roll your eyes at the sight of him pocketing them in his uniform. You already know you'll never see them again and you accept it.

He has you bunch up your skirt around your waist for better sight. Smoothly he places one leg over his shoulder while your body rests against the trunk of the car. The grip he holds on your left thigh is tight enough to make your brain spin and surely marks will follow.

"See. I always knew I'd have you on your knees for me one d-AY. Oh fuck!" Jungkook can't be bothered to bark back at you not when he has an insatiable appetite and a full meal right in front of him.

His jaw worked itself as he lapped up at your center. Tongue long and warm, licking every square inch of you until you couldn't take it, hands reaching desperately for his hair and he groaned.

Once he finally had you where he wanted you, reduced to nothing but begs and whimpers, he allowed his tongue to flick over your clit repeatedly, until he felt half of your body weight fall onto his right shoulder for a moment.

You could hardly even keep yourself up. He was going to make sure you remembered this. "Oh shit! P-please Jungkook. M'So close." He groans, his right hand pressing down on the solid bulge in his pants for a little relief.

Your slick was running down his chin, some even down the sides of his neck as he worked you with his tongue. Writhing nonstop, though this wouldn't be an issue if he had a better environment. He'd have you pinned and unable to run from him.

To finish you off he let his teeth graze so lightly over your clit, you almost wouldn't feel it had he not heightened your senses to such an extreme with his intricate pussy eating.

You came with his name falling off your lips.

Your face turns beet red as he tells you to look down at the mess you made on the ground below you. "What were you saying earlier? Something about me being on my knees for you-"

"Just fuck me already." Jungkook stands back up to his full height, clicking his tongue with tsk' sounds. "I pay for your repairs, I buy you flowers, I make you cum and this is how you talk to me? Where are your manners." Jungkook adjusts your skirt so it's back in place and he picks you up to sit on the trunk.

"Besides. I'm not fucking you in here. I wanna take you out first." You smile at that, "Finally, a smile." He remarks, and your body limps forward naturally, your arms wrapping around his neck while your head settles in the crook of his neck and your eyes flutter shut. You ignore his previous statement until he whispers in your ears. "You do realize the garage was open this whole time, and anyone who drove by got a front-row show?" Your eyes shoot open.

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codehunger · 1 year ago

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Top 5 helpdesk ticketing system in php laravel

Hello there, I hope you guys are doing well, today we will discuss about top 5 ticket system built with laravel, with all the features explaining why to choose it. Before moving forward let’s understand what is ticket system or helpdesk, is and how it will help you to grow your business. What is a ticket system? A ticket system, also known as a ticketing system or issue tracking system, is a…

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mostlysignssomeportents · 11 months ago

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What kind of bubble is AI?

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "What Kind of Bubble is AI?" All economic bubbles are hugely destructive, but some of them leave behind wreckage that can be salvaged for useful purposes, while others leave nothing behind but ashes:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Think about some 21st century bubbles. The dotcom bubble was a terrible tragedy, one that drained the coffers of pension funds and other institutional investors and wiped out retail investors who were gulled by Superbowl Ads. But there was a lot left behind after the dotcoms were wiped out: cheap servers, office furniture and space, but far more importantly, a generation of young people who'd been trained as web makers, leaving nontechnical degree programs to learn HTML, perl and python. This created a whole cohort of technologists from non-technical backgrounds, a first in technological history. Many of these people became the vanguard of a more inclusive and humane tech development movement, and they were able to make interesting and useful services and products in an environment where raw materials – compute, bandwidth, space and talent – were available at firesale prices.

Contrast this with the crypto bubble. It, too, destroyed the fortunes of institutional and individual investors through fraud and Superbowl Ads. It, too, lured in nontechnical people to learn esoteric disciplines at investor expense. But apart from a smattering of Rust programmers, the main residue of crypto is bad digital art and worse Austrian economics.

Or think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.

AI is definitely a bubble. As I write in the column, if you fly into SFO and rent a car and drive north to San Francisco or south to Silicon Valley, every single billboard is advertising an "AI" startup, many of which are not even using anything that can be remotely characterized as AI. That's amazing, considering what a meaningless buzzword AI already is.

So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? To be sure, there's a legion of technologists who are learning Tensorflow and Pytorch. These nominally open source tools are bound, respectively, to Google and Facebook's AI environments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed – collecting, labeling and processing training data – but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There's a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be).

Charging teenaged D&D players $10 month for an image generator that creates epic illustrations of their characters fighting monsters is low value and very risk tolerant (teenagers aren't overly worried about six-fingered swordspeople with three pupils in each eye). Charging scammy spamfarms $500/month for a text generator that spits out dull, search-algorithm-pleasing narratives to appear over recipes is likewise low-value and highly risk tolerant (your customer doesn't care if the text is nonsense). Charging visually impaired people $100 month for an app that plays a text-to-speech description of anything they point their cameras at is low-value and moderately risk tolerant ("that's your blue shirt" when it's green is not a big deal, while "the street is safe to cross" when it's not is a much bigger one).

Morganstanley doesn't talk about the trillions the AI industry will be worth some day because of these applications. These are just spinoffs from the main event, a collection of extremely high-value applications. Think of self-driving cars or radiology bots that analyze chest x-rays and characterize masses as cancerous or noncancerous.

These are high value – but only if they are also risk-tolerant. The pitch for self-driving cars is "fire most drivers and replace them with 'humans in the loop' who intervene at critical junctures." That's the risk-tolerant version of self-driving cars, and it's a failure. More than $100b has been incinerated chasing self-driving cars, and cars are nowhere near driving themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Quite the reverse, in fact. Cruise was just forced to quit the field after one of their cars maimed a woman – a pedestrian who had not opted into being part of a high-risk AI experiment – and dragged her body 20 feet through the streets of San Francisco. Afterwards, it emerged that Cruise had replaced the single low-waged driver who would normally be paid to operate a taxi with 1.5 high-waged skilled technicians who remotely oversaw each of its vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html

The self-driving pitch isn't that your car will correct your own human errors (like an alarm that sounds when you activate your turn signal while someone is in your blind-spot). Self-driving isn't about using automation to augment human skill – it's about replacing humans. There's no business case for spending hundreds of billions on better safety systems for cars (there's a human case for it, though!). The only way the price-tag justifies itself is if paid drivers can be fired and replaced with software that costs less than their wages.

What about radiologists? Radiologists certainly make mistakes from time to time, and if there's a computer vision system that makes different mistakes than the sort that humans make, they could be a cheap way of generating second opinions that trigger re-examination by a human radiologist. But no AI investor thinks their return will come from selling hospitals that reduce the number of X-rays each radiologist processes every day, as a second-opinion-generating system would. Rather, the value of AI radiologists comes from firing most of your human radiologists and replacing them with software whose judgments are cursorily double-checked by a human whose "automation blindness" will turn them into an OK-button-mashing automaton:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

The profit-generating pitch for high-value AI applications lies in creating "reverse centaurs": humans who serve as appendages for automation that operates at a speed and scale that is unrelated to the capacity or needs of the worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

But unless these high-value applications are intrinsically risk-tolerant, they are poor candidates for automation. Cruise was able to nonconsensually enlist the population of San Francisco in an experimental murderbot development program thanks to the vast sums of money sloshing around the industry. Some of this money funds the inevitabilist narrative that self-driving cars are coming, it's only a matter of when, not if, and so SF had better get in the autonomous vehicle or get run over by the forces of history.

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren't, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn't matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn't matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn't even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites:

https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509

These applications are all riding on the coattails of the big AI models that are being built and operated at a loss in order to be profitable. If they remain unprofitable long enough, the private sector will no longer pay to operate them.

Now, there are smaller models, models that stand alone and run on commodity hardware. These would persist even after the AI bubble bursts, because most of their costs are setup costs that have already been borne by the well-funded companies who created them. These models are limited, of course, though the communities that have formed around them have pushed those limits in surprising ways, far beyond their original manufacturers' beliefs about their capacity. These communities will continue to push those limits for as long as they find the models useful.

These standalone, "toy" models are derived from the big models, though. When the AI bubble bursts and the private sector no longer subsidizes mass-scale model creation, it will cease to spin out more sophisticated models that run on commodity hardware (it's possible that Federated learning and other techniques for spreading out the work of making large-scale models will fill the gap).

So what kind of bubble is the AI bubble? What will we salvage from its wreckage? Perhaps the communities who've invested in becoming experts in Pytorch and Tensorflow will wrestle them away from their corporate masters and make them generally useful. Certainly, a lot of people will have gained skills in applying statistical techniques.

But there will also be a lot of unsalvageable wreckage. As big AI models get integrated into the processes of the productive economy, AI becomes a source of systemic risk. The only thing worse than having an automated process that is rendered dangerous or erratic based on AI integration is to have that process fail entirely because the AI suddenly disappeared, a collapse that is too precipitous for former AI customers to engineer a soft landing for their systems.

This is a blind spot in our policymakers debates about AI. The smart policymakers are asking questions about fairness, algorithmic bias, and fraud. The foolish policymakers are ensnared in fantasies about "AI safety," AKA "Will the chatbot become a superintelligence that turns the whole human race into paperclips?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

But no one is asking, "What will we do if" – when – "the AI bubble pops and most of this stuff disappears overnight?"

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/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

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

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

tom_bullock (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombullock/25173469495/

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

#pluralistic #ai #economics #business #hype #bubbles #bubblenomics #residue

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tinystepsforward · 2 months ago

Text

autocrattic (more matt shenanigans, not tumblr this time)

I am almost definitely not the right person for this writeup, but I'm closer than most people on here, so here goes! This is all open-source tech drama, and I take my time laying out the context, but the short version is: Matt tried to extort another company, who immediately posted receipts, and now he's refusing to log off again. The long version is... long.

If you don't need software context, scroll down/find the "ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening" heading, or just go read the pink sections. Or look at this PDF.

the background

So. Matt's original Good Idea was starting WordPress with fellow developer Mike Little in 2003, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) that was originally just for blogging, but now powers lots of websites that do other things. In particular, Automattic acquired WooCommerce a long time ago, which is free online store software you can run on WordPress.

FOSS is... interesting. It's a world that ultimately is powered by people who believe deeply that information and resources should be free, but often have massive blind spots (for example, Wikipedia's consistently had issues with bias, since no amount of "anyone can edit" will overcome systemic bias in terms of who has time to edit or is not going to be driven away by the existing contributor culture). As with anything else that people spend thousands of hours doing online, there's drama. As with anything else that's technically free but can be monetized, there are:

Heaps of companies and solo developers who profit off WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, and other services;

Conflicts between volunteer contributors and for-profit contributors;

Annoying founders who get way too much credit for everything the project has become.

the WordPress ecosystem

A project as heavily used as WordPress (some double-digit percentage of the Internet uses WP. I refuse to believe it's the 43% that Matt claims it is, but it's a pretty large chunk) can't survive just on the spare hours of volunteers, especially in an increasingly monetised world where its users demand functional software, are less and less tech or FOSS literate, and its contributors have no fucking time to build things for that userbase.

Matt runs Automattic, which is a privately-traded, for-profit company. The free software is run by the WordPress Foundation, which is technically completely separate (wordpress.org). The main products Automattic offers are WordPress-related: WordPress.com, a host which was designed to be beginner-friendly; Jetpack, a suite of plugins which extend WordPress in a whole bunch of ways that may or may not make sense as one big product; WooCommerce, which I've already mentioned. There's also WordPress VIP, which is the fancy bespoke five-digit-plus option for enterprise customers. And there's Tumblr, if Matt ever succeeds in putting it on WordPress. (Every Tumblr or WordPress dev I know thinks that's fucking ridiculous and impossible. Automattic's hiring for it anyway.)

Automattic devotes a chunk of its employees toward developing Core, which is what people in the WordPress space call WordPress.org, the free software. This is part of an initiative called Five for the Future — 5% of your company's profits off WordPress should go back into making the project better. Many other companies don't do this.

There are lots of other companies in the space. GoDaddy, for example, barely gives back in any way (and also sucks). WP Engine is the company this drama is about. They don't really contribute to Core. They offer relatively expensive WordPress hosting, as well as providing a series of other WordPress-related products like LocalWP (local site development software), Advanced Custom Fields (the easiest way to set up advanced taxonomies and other fields when making new types of posts. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it), etc.

Anyway. Lots of strong personalities. Lots of for-profit companies. Lots of them getting invested in, or bought by, private equity firms.

Matt being Matt, tech being tech

As was said repeatedly when Matt was flipping out about Tumblr, all of the stuff happening at Automattic is pretty normal tech company behaviour. Shit gets worse. People get less for their money. WordPress.com used to be a really good place for people starting out with a website who didn't need "real" WordPress — for $48 a year on the Personal plan, you had really limited features (no plugins or other customisable extensions), but you had a simple website with good SEO that was pretty secure, relatively easy to use, and 24-hour access to Happiness Engineers (HEs for short. Bad job title. This was my job) who could walk you through everything no matter how bad at tech you were. Then Personal plan users got moved from chat to emails only. Emails started being responded to by contractors who didn't know as much as HEs did and certainly didn't get paid half as well. Then came AI, and the mandate for HEs to try to upsell everyone things they didn't necessarily need. (This is the point at which I quit.)

But as was said then as well, most tech CEOs don't publicly get into this kind of shitfight with their users. They're horrid tyrants, but they don't do it this publicly.

ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening

WordCamp US, one of the biggest WordPress industry events of the year, is the backdrop for all this. It just finished.

There are.... a lot of posts by Matt across multiple platforms because, as always, he can't log off. But here's the broad strokes.

Sep 17

Matt publishes a wanky blog post about companies that profit off open source without giving back. It targets a specific company, WP Engine.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?

(It's worth noting here that Automattic is funded in part by BlackRock, who Wikipedia calls "the world's largest asset manager".)

Sep 20 (WCUS final day)

WP Engine puts out a blog post detailing their contributions to WordPress.

Matt devotes his keynote/closing speech to slamming WP Engine.

He also implies people inside WP Engine are sending him information.

For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc. I have a bunch of journalists happy to connect you with as well. #wcus — Twitter I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. — Tumblr

Matt also puts out an offer live at WordCamp US:

“If anyone of you gets in trouble for speaking up in favor of WordPress and/or open source, reach out to me. I’ll do my best to help you find a new job.” — source tweet, RTed by Matt

He also puts up a poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed back at WordCamps.

Sep 21

Matt writes a blog post on the WordPress.org blog (the official project blog!): WP Engine is not WordPress.

He opens this blog post by claiming his mom was confused and thought WP Engine was official.

The blog post goes on about how WP Engine disabled post revisions (which is a pretty normal thing to do when you need to free up some resources), therefore being not "real" WordPress. (As I said earlier, WordPress.com disables most features for Personal and Premium plans. Or whatever those plans are called, they've been renamed like 12 times in the last few years. But that's a different complaint.)

Sep 22: More bullshit on Twitter. Matt makes a Reddit post on r/Wordpress about WP Engine that promptly gets deleted. Writeups start to come out:

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg Sparks Backlash

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers

Sep 23 onward

Okay, time zones mean I can't effectively sequence the rest of this.

Matt defends himself on Reddit, casually mentioning that WP Engine is now suing him.

Also here's a decent writeup from someone involved with the community that may be of interest.

WP Engine drops the full PDF of their cease and desist, which includes screenshots of Matt apparently threatening them via text.

Twitter link | Direct PDF link

This PDF includes some truly fucked texts where Matt appears to be trying to get WP Engine to pay him money unless they want him to tell his audience at WCUS that they're evil.

Matt, after saying he's been sued and can't talk about it, hosts a Twitter Space and talks about it for a couple hours.

He also continues to post on Reddit, Twitter, and on the Core contributor Slack.

Here's a comment where he says WP Engine could have avoided this by paying Automattic 8% of their revenue.

Another, 20 hours ago, where he says he's being downvoted by "trolls, probably WPE employees"

At some point, Matt updates the WordPress Foundation trademark policy. I am 90% sure this was him — it's not legalese and makes no fucking sense to single out WP Engine.

Old text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. New text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Sep 25: Automattic puts up their own legal response.

anyway this fucking sucks

This is bigger than anything Matt's done before. I'm so worried about my friends who're still there. The internal ramifications have... been not great so far, including that Matt's naturally being extra gung-ho about "you're either for me or against me and if you're against me then don't bother working your two weeks".

Despite everything, I like WordPress. (If you dig into this, you'll see plenty of people commenting about blocks or Gutenberg or React other things they hate. Unlike many of the old FOSSheads, I actually also think Gutenberg/the block editor was a good idea, even if it was poorly implemented.)

I think that the original mission — to make it so anyone can spin up a website that's easy enough to use and blog with — is a good thing. I think, despite all the ways being part of FOSS communities since my early teens has led to all kinds of racist, homophobic and sexual harm for me and for many other people, that free and open-source software is important.

So many people were already burning out of the project. Matt has been doing this for so long that those with long memories can recite all the ways he's wrecked shit back a decade or more. Most of us are exhausted and need to make money to live. The world is worse than it ever was.

Social media sucks worse and worse, and this was a world in which people missed old webrings, old blogs, RSS readers, the world where you curated your own whimsical, unpaid corner of the Internet. I started actually actively using my own WordPress blog this year, and I've really enjoyed it.

And people don't want to deal with any of this.

The thing is, Matt's right about one thing: capital is ruining free open-source software. What he's wrong about is everything else: the idea that WordPress.com isn't enshittifying (or confusing) at a much higher rate than WP Engine, the idea that WP Engine or Silver Lake are the only big players in the field, the notion that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But he's started a battle where there are no winners but the lawyers who get paid to duke it out, and all the volunteers who've survived this long in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by big money are giving up and leaving.

Anyway if you got this far, consider donating to someone on gazafunds.com. It'll take much less time than reading this did.

#tony muses #tumblr meta #again just bc that's my tag for all this #automattic #wordpress #this is probably really incoherent i apologise lmao #i may edit it

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odooexperts · 2 years ago

Link

It is globally accepted that upgrading the business infrastructure with an advanced ERP system will result in more efficient company processes and higher revenue. One should carefully choose among the available open-source or closed-source ERP software considering the affecting factors like costs, implementation time, and more.

#Odoo Customization #Odoo Implementation #odoo services #odoo software #Odoo open source v/s close source

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jolalibrary · 5 months ago

Text

met you once, saw you thrice

lucien flores x f!reader

summary: the first time, he kissed you. the second time, you found yourselves in a bathroom. the third time, well, the third time.

warnings: 18+ smut, fingering aka hands go inside underwear under a tree. not-friends to not-lovers. tension. lots of references to past debauchery. slight mention of lucien's sobriety. lots of plot for some sexy rewards. wc: 5.3k an: this is my submission to summer lovin', brought to you by @pedgito, @chaotic-mystery and @amanitacowboy. i got Lucien, and this gorgeous moodboard. im a touch nervous about this man as i usually need the source material to write, so be kind. huge thanks to @pedgito for hand holding and to my circle for lifting me when i kept falling.

You shouldn’t be here.

That’s what you think, hovering under the white canopy away from the sun, surrounded by expensive bottles of champagne chilling in silver buckets, their labels catching the flickering candlelight strategically placed around the sprawling garden.

Another bead falls down your glass, the ice in your drink melting. Thick rolls of condensation drip over your knuckles, along your hand, and down your wrist. Each one falls like rain, landing on the flowy skirt of your summer dress.

It's a new purchase, far too expensive, the label tucked inside, hidden away—pressing and cutting into your skin when you move—doing so each time you nod and over-pronounce a hello to those draped in designers and silk, while the grill sizzles and steams as more is added to it.

You shouldn’t be here because you don’t belong.

Not an actor, not someone on stage; not a writer or a producer. Not the girlfriend of one either. Just a friend of a friend—one ditched, left to ferment with the salad wilting in the warm temperatures as Smith flits between flirting with a waiter and the one he really wants.

You’re not sure why you let him convince you to come. Even as you take another sip, glancing at the time on your wrist, the free food and drink are slowly becoming less worth it. Assessing through sideward glances where the hand needs to be before you can dismiss the worries of being a bad friend and hail a cab.

Not that Smith would notice.

To him, you had completed your role, and earned your accolade in his eyes—the role of not allowing him to come to this alone. It would be criminal to do that. To let him arrive at a house tucked into acres, with Dom Perignon on tap and a grill larger than your kitchen.

You know you should be grateful Smith hadn’t traded you for his new friends. The ones who walk red carpets and call him Smithy. You suppose you should also be thankful he brings you so you can take home stories that make you not hate that you live in a studio apartment and work a 9 to 5.

It’s hard not to be bitter right now. On your own. Exhaling and staring around, wearing that plastered-on half-smile perfected from shitty customer service jobs.

Bringing your glass back to your lips, doing one last sweep before you sneak out, fighting the scent of split open apricots and pungent flowery perfume, you see him. Spot him. The crowd practically parting for him to come into view, creating a gap that would make a romantic swoon.

But, you’re no romantic—more thrillers and mysteries on your nightstand than meet cutes and midnight kisses. If anything, you’re more a cynic, a twisted-up, poisoned hater of hand-holding and Sunday mornings.

Especially when it comes to him.

Lucien Flores.

His name echoes around your skull in the same way it did when it was first introduced to you. Dropped to you, honeyed and elongated as though by stretching it out, you’d fall under some spell as he seated himself beside you—a deck of cards in hand.

Tipping the glass, your mouth fills with lemonade, holding his gaze—willing to do so until your eyes burn, until it feels impossible. All stubborn to a fault. Obstinate and arrogant.

You’re saved as a group moves in between the two of you—breaking it for you.

And you decide, rather quickly, it’s time to move—hoping the sight of your back will be enough for him not to press further.

You’re not counting—but he waits an hour.

Crosses the garden, where the tables have moved into standing groups around various points of the green. Some have stood to mingle, to mill around with their flutes and their tales of marriage, honours, and complaints once the grilling finished and the bubbles got to some of the louder women. Others begin the garden games, the ones which had no rules but also had some, as though the aim was to confuse rather than create fun.

Smith had returned between the salad being offered and the grilled steaks. A leaf between his fingers, he whispered he was going back to his tennis match. A twinkle in his eye, a kiss to your forehead, a promise there but one that never really seals itself or makes itself solid. Just confirms that your use was done—You don’t have to wait for me, pumpkin.

A nickname which had once made you smile and now just makes your heart lurch when you let go of his hand and watch him vanish into the house.

One person who hasn’t vanished is Lucien. It surprises you that he’s waited so long to make his approach. Almost as surprising as it is to see him, having heard rumours he’d landed a role in a movie—something British, remote, taking him overseas.

But he’s here. All brown eyes that attempt to drown you, pull you under—dig into you. You feel you should be used to them; they’ve been fixed on you for so long. Soaking you in deep chocolate, thick enough to make it feel like it’s hard to move, to fight it—akin to sludge, mud—as he begins to smirk as he nears.

And maybe he remembers too.

Able to recall a time similar to this. Not the first, but the second. When instead of barbecues and setting suns, it had been wine, cheese and a much later evening. Card games having caused outrage, shrieked words from a woman who should have been cut off a while ago, having caused you to slip out, escape to the first-floor bathroom. Finding he followed.

Don’t think about him—

The opposite sprouts so easily, you have to wonder what soil lives in your mind.

Because, of course, you had thought about it, about him. More than you should. Heat gliding up your neck now, making you shift your shoulders as the straps of your dress cut in, as you do. You think about how his lips felt on the juncture of your neck when you sit in conference calls, and how his hips had dipped before you felt his hardening cock slide over your covered ass. At night, you think about how it feels to have his thick fingers sliding open the button and zip of your pantsuit, how they’d slid inside your new lace undies and collected your slick to enjoy a taste.

The more you stopped yourself, the worse it became. Craving him when the moon was at its highest, hand delving between your thighs as you tried to replicate all the places he touched. Wanting, needing—desperately desiring until you arched from your sheets, sprinkled in sweat as you hissed his name out between gritted teeth.

That’s all you allow.

No second-glances passing newspaper stands when he makes the front page, no secret Google searches when you were frustrated and impossibly lonely. Knowing, and comprehending, that if you did, it would only lead to further disappointment. It would land you somewhere close to remembered disinterest, like those times when you’d found yourself sat across from charm and wit—making you disassociate when your palm rested on white linen with a candle flickering in the middle as you hoped, prayed, internally begged for a comment on how nice you’d looked.

Not again.

Never again.

So, you placed him where you suspected he had placed you. Out of sight, out of mind. Yours a box, right at the back of your mind—the lid sliding free when you needed release, and only then. It marked in thick Sharpie: a good time, even better cock, but comes with baggage.

It’s why you stand as he takes the final steps to you, your hand retrieving your glass, only to find it empty, drained, with only the little bits of fruit and a smidge of ice at the bottom. But his hands were not.

Extending one to you, one that looked close to the one you’d been enjoying—all mint leaves and lemon slices swimming in lemonade.

“What are the chances?”

You snort, taking a sip. “You’ve used that line.”

“Have I?”

“The last time.”

It’s his turn to snort. Staring. Looking you up and down in a soft drag that makes your stomach flip and your skin prickle with heat.

“Next you’ll tell me your name, tell me that you’re a movie star and that you’ve not seen me around.”

For a second, he gives you a silent stare, eyes speaking volumes that you couldn’t hear as he chews his tongue, and flicks his eyes from your chest back to your face once, twice. “Does it make you nervous when I stare?”

Swallowing, wrapping a hand around your middle, you smile—cold, wickedly. “No.”

“S’that why you won’t look at me?”

You eye him, as he does you. Despising that he looks good—that it’s another silk shirt, slightly unbuttoned, similar gold chains hanging from his neck. Hating that he looks so broad, that you remember how it feels to have them spreading your legs, how his chest feels pressed to your back with his cock in your pussy.

Loathing that right now, as you will a quip, a response, your thigh remembers how his palm felt on it as he held it and speared into you. How much of a mess he made of you, that you’d come so hard you’d seen galaxies and not just stars.

“Never known you to be this qui—”

Scowling at him through your eyebrows, you slide your lips into your cheek and straighten your spine. “Do I still look nervous?”

Your pulse quickens as he takes another step closer. His aftershave smothers you. It’s wooden and earthy this time, it flooding your senses as blood hammers in your ears. Every muscle in your frame going taught, tight—so close to snapping that you expect with one breath you’d play a tune like a harp.

Scoffing, a roll of his eyes and he’s taking a long drink of his water—a pebble of it remaining on his lower lip, it commanding to be stared at, to be wiped, to be noticed and applauded like the rest of him as he replies no.

You’re quick not to react, to let pride flood your expression. Something warning you against it, telling you not to—especially when he places his bottle down. The sound echoes out in the quietness of the moment.

“You do look fucking miserable though.”

There it is. Expecting it, the doorway to show itself so he can use a line to cheer you up, to have you smiling, as though he’s a gift. His cock might be, not that you’ll admit it—not even if he begged, if he pleaded.

“Maybe that’s because this asshole keeps staring at me.”

“You think I’m an asshole?”

Eyes narrowing, head tilting to the side as you shrug. “I don’t think you’re not an asshole.”

Rolling his lips, pursing them, before they flatten into a line—hand stroking the hair along his chin, his jaw, he bathes in it, your insult. Let it simmer, cook, before clearing his throat. “Is that why you gave me a fake number?”

Your mouth falls open. Your eyes quickly widen—all cards gone, knocking the air out of your lungs as your heart slams into your stomach for different reasons as he sneers, and shakes his head.

“Enjoy your drink.”

“I—I…”

But, he’s already turned his back.

While a perfectly good exit window had cracked itself open for you, you don’t take it.

Even if it would have allowed you to bid the ache in the arch of your foot goodbye, slide out with the people moving into the house to avoid the chill and those making their own escape.

But, guilt gnawed, chewed. It there ruminating when you catch sight of his silk shirt between other guests. When the scent of his aftershave lingered in the air when you stepped inside to catch your breath from having to re-explain what it is you do to the same people you had done hours ago.

You know he’s presenting a chance to leave, yet your hand grabs another glass bottle of water, the lemon slice bobbing around as you venture down the lit path no one else seems to be trekking.

The one you know he escaped down earlier, seeing it after you’d heard some of them talking about him—the man who doesn’t settle, the one who’s clean but not really clean, the one who has talent and charm, and they wonder in their hushed voices if his cock is really as big as it’s rumoured.

It took all you had to bite back that it is, wanting to point out you’d discovered it in one of their new bathrooms only three months ago.

You pause when you reach the end of the path as it morphs into perfectly manicured grass. Feet sliding from your shoes as you grab the straps, wondering what you’re doing—cursing yourself as your chest heaves and presses roughly against the too-expensive fabric as you question all life choices.

Because you wouldn’t survive him.

A man too big for you, who wouldn’t fit in your world. There’d be no farmers markets and Chinese takeout boxes in bed; no quaint coffee shops and sharing of woes of the day. It would be unbalanced, wrong, awkward, in the same way, it would be if you let him step into your shoebox of an apartment and battle feeling smaller than you do when you’re alone.

Adventure, you think.

He’d said that the first time—when his fingers had wrapped around your wrist and tugged you further into someone's hedge you didn’t know. All green leaves and the scent of flowers sticking to your skin as his mouth pressed to yours. He’d repeated it in the bathroom, your palm flush to the white tiles above the sink—clawing at grout as he hissed it in your ear, filling you, making your mouth contort around a moan of his name as he dragged his cock in and out of your puffy, needy hole.

You suppose adventures are fleeting, not ever after.

Something momentary, nothing serious.

You wonder if he’s actually an adventure or if he just thinks he is. Whether he struggles to leave the fun of who he plays or whether it bleeds into him—a patchwork personality of who he’s had to morph into. It gives him the tools to be an escape, becoming a pause from the mundane, but nothing that stretches itself out passed an evening into the daytime.

When you spot him, your adventure has his phone in hand—spinning it, round and around. Lit cigarette between his lips, the tip burning, paper crisping.

“You seem like trouble.”

Lucien doesn’t turn, but he hears your announcement.

The phone pauses in its 180—it catching the light flickering in the tree above, making the leaves and branches more ominous than they do surrounded by the vivid oranges and reds of the sunset, all fiery intensity. As though the horizon itself had caught fire from the tension, the sun sinking slowly into it, leaving a trail of molten gold and crimson streaks.

“Trouble?” he asks, deep, guttural—caked in smoke and disbelief.

“Trouble.”

Taking another step closer, you stop close to his side. Handing him the bottle, feeling him take it as drop your shoes and stare in the same direction he is—taking in the shades as they deepen before the sun bids the day goodbye.

“That realisation come before or after you came on my cock?”

Nostrils flaring, you regret finding him almost instantly. Shame blooming, filling you from stomach to throat. “A-after.”

He makes a noise, and leaves you in the cold of his mood. To the point, you question again what it is you’re doing. Why you fucking care. Because you don’t. Not really. There’s nothing to know, to latch to—no feelings that could become anything more than a crush.

Incompatible, you think. Incompatible. Incompatible. Incompatible—

“You brought me water.”

His head turns, takes you in—and sweeps you in the familiar brown from earlier. And this time, you let it hang on your shoulders like a sweater. Let it warm you, and bring you comfort. Allow it to smother the shame and force it to seep away as he blows out rings of smoke.

It quickens in its retreat when he pushes off from the trunk, pocketing his phone—it stretching the pocket of his dark jeans as you will yourself not to stare at the bulge already there.

“I did.” It’s matter of fact, no further questions—head dipping, a tightness forming as you shake your head and exhale. “I… I just don’t think your sobriety is a joke.”

You feel his gaze snap to you as the words hang—stringing themselves together like twinkling lights. Unwilling again to meet him, wondering if he was thinking about it, that first time. When a sentence was said in response to a casual joke as the two of you hid out of view. It was made by someone you didn't know, at a party where people pretended to be friends when really they were trying to belittle one another, and Smith pretended he wasn’t in love with the older man he’s vying for.

His cigarette is almost out when you look at him, the lit end illuminating his face in some ways, and casted shadows in others. But, you could see his eyes searing—likely able to even in the darkest night. It etches into you as he takes another drag, as your nose tries to capture the scent of it, it so him, a thing which comes to you when you’re close from your own hand, blotched by it.

“Do you have a collection of silk shirts or something?”

Smirking, blowing a smoke ring between the two of you. “Do you not like my shirts?”

Breathing, you fight saying I do. Not enjoying that you think of how they feel between your thighs when he'd spread you with his thumb when his tongue had licked from clit to hole and made you sob.

“They’re okay.”

“Liar.”

Snorting, you roll your eyes. “Says you.”

“She miss me?” Stuffing the cigarette under his shoe, leaning the water against the base of the tree as his chains catch the light as he straightens. “Bet she’s missed me.”

“She?”

His lips curl, eyes flicking down to the place your thighs meet, before he hauls them back up.

And it’s instant, the way heat floods your cheek, pussy fluttering around nothing—remembering.

The noise is first, recalling whispering sweet nothings as he slid inside you in one thrust. Next is the feel of him, the stretch, how impossible it had felt as he kept going, and going, until those fingers, thick and dexterous slid over your swollen nerves. Then, there’s the aftershave, the same as he’s wearing tonight. How it mixed with smoke and liquor, and roses and expensive hand soap—

“D-don’t flatter yourself.”

But you swallow, give it away. Shaky on two legs as you try to look unfazed.

Because you’re pulsing between your legs, starving, aching. Trying to blink back memories of his tongue, of his thigh, or his crooked smile in the mirror as he repeated your name, over and over, like it held weight—like it lived on his tongue and in his mind—

“Parched, are you?”

“Parched?” you hiss. “Who the fuck even are you? Who the fuck says parched—”

Snorting harshly, leaning in his stance as he shrugs, “Oh, you know who I am. I’m baby, baby, right there, baby, I’m gonna come, Luci—”

In a step, your chest is flush with his—hands steadying you on your hips as your palm flattens to his words. You’re aware of him smirking, gloating, right against your skin; feeling the wiry hair around his mouth scratching at you, the same one that left your skin raw and irritated from lapping up the taste of you both before sending you back out to smile.

Lowering your hand, you become conscious of how close you are and how his fingers spread out, holding you tighter, keeping you pinned against him as you descend into his web all over again. Embers spreading out, electricity pulsing out from where his fingers touch you over your dress, as your body recognises, identifies.

“I’m trying not to be an asshole.”

“Is that what you’re doing…”

His hand reaches up, stroking your cheek, thumb caressing your lower lip as you take in a deep breath. “Tell me you don’t want me to make you come.”

You should. But, you don’t.

Instead, you close your mouth around his thumb, swirling the tip of it with your tongue as he grunts, right in the back of his throat before he slips it out with a pop. A second brews, and then another before his mouth crashes to yours, all impatient, hungry—rough. Lips parting for him as you feel him lick into your mouth, tasting cigarettes and lemon, at the same time as your back meets bark.

And you’re desperate, yearning.

Tugging him close, palms sliding over silk as you make a note that it’s softer than the faux-paint-splattered one. More velvety, smooth. Hooking your hands around the back of his neck as you pull him closer, practically feeling each breath as coolness slides up your leg, the heel of his hand gliding behind as he bunches the fabric in his hand, his jean-covered thigh coming up between yours as you hiss into his mouth at the contact. Lost in it, in him.

In how intoxicating he is, how wrong it is, clawing at him to come closer, to touch you, whining as he teases you by rocking his knee and slides his palm to cup your breast through your dress. Thumb expertly hardening your nipple, tongue lathing over a spot on your neck that has you keening.

You forget, for a moment, blissfully allow yourself to until he’s pulling at it—tugging at the label as you try to pull his face up.

“Shit, Lucien, no.”

He grunts. Not mockingly, but not full of surprise either. “Planning on returning this?”

Clenching your teeth, you take a breath—needing air to fill your brain to help you think. To ignore the way your lips are swollen and your underwear is already soaked and pressing to his thick thigh.

“Yes.”

“You look too fuckin’ good in this dress to return it.”

“Well unless you’re going to buy it, I have no other choice—”

“I’ll buy it.”

“No you fucking won’t.”

Because it would be wrong.

More than an exchange of your body, more than a mutual appreciation and hunger and need. It would be a gift. A something more. A thing that would fester in your closet and make you hope when you see it, make you dream when your finger slides over the fabric.

“Lucien.”

His fingers drop it, let it hang—the tag. Both your embarrassment and the price of it, just there, as his lips slide down your jaw.

“You won’t want to return it. You’ll want to see it hung in your closet—bury your fingers in your underwear as you stare at it, thinking of this.” Teeth grazing over your pulse, tongue swirling a signature you suspect is his own. “You’ll think of me when you stick that toy in your pussy, wishing it was me, turn it on right between your perfect fucking thighs and—”

You blame his fingers ghosting over your upper thigh for what you let escape, let slip free. “Already think of you.”

Pausing, his shoulders bow—somehow becoming even broader before his head comes up from his place buried in your neck. You see it, words, kindness—a bunch of things he could likely reel off that would make you ruin the wet patch on your gusset even wider.

But he ingests them, consumes them like they never existed. A different offered kindness, you suppose—as though he knows, can see, and begins to understand.

“Be rude of me not to say hi to her then.”

“Why do you…”

His thumb hooks into one side of your underwear, dragging it from its place. Aware of it, the way he’s gentle in shifting the fabric down, handing you the bunched-up dress with a pointed stare, before he’s teasing your lace from between your slick, soaked core. Tugging it down your thighs, eyes not breaking from yours, exhaling as he licks his lips at the sight of you bare to him in the middle of someone's fucking garden.

“Lift?”

And you do, without question. Taking a deep inhale in, closing your eyes, hand covering your face as you lift one foot, then the other.

Finding him staring when you look down. Ogling. Admiring you like what is there between your thighs is some art piece, an exhibit, a thing he’d queue for—as he pockets your panties.

“I’m keeping these.”

“Lucien…”

His hand urging yours to take the balled-up fabric of your dress as he rises, places kisses on your outer thighs, dragging his face slowly up your frame—breath fanning out, somehow feeling it under your layers.

“I’m. Keeping. Them.”

You swallow, silently surrendering. Back of your head flat against the tree as his hands nudge your thighs to part.

“Gorgeous.” He whispers. “You’re so gorgeous—prettiest pussy I’ve ever seen.”

A protest readying, but stolen as one of his thick fingers slides over and through your folds. Knowing you, understanding you. Standing as he drags your slick to your desperate, swollen clit, swirling it, massaging it as you hiccup his name and forget all about his compliment and chase his lips instead. Instead, your hips move on instinct, desiring—determined to find more friction even as he just slowly draws a circle.

You know he’s grinning. Cockily. Frame pressing to you as you feel his hard cock against your thigh—hips keeping you pinned. Fixed.

“You want my fingers? Let me give you my fingers, baby.”

Nodding, fingers tangling in his curls you say it, more in a whisper, something close to a whine: yes, please, yes—

Aware of the heaviness in the air, how thick it feels, even in the breeze. In the same way, you’re aware of the way he breathes good girl. It makes you shudder, yearn, more so when he slides his fingers down from your clit and works two into you.

You gasp. Almost crying out. Unable to stop yourself when he curls them inside of you, bearing down on him, squeezing him, hand releasing your dress as your fingers grip his forearm.

“Want me to stop?”

Shaking your head, no, no, no—

“Good,” he breathes, kissing the side of your mouth. “She’s the best pussy I’ve ever had my fingers in.”

You almost hiss your bet that he says that to all the girls. But, your teeth grit. Not wanting him to stop. Not as your head tilts, eyes opening to see the navy blue smothering burnt orange, blurring the afternoon into the night through your lashes. Shh, he coaxes, as your nails dig into the bark, as he finds that spot inside of you that makes you dizzy, makes you pant. He works it, makes you roll your hips and his palm catches your clit in teased movements—

“Feel so good clenching down on me.”

“Shut up.”

He laughs, and buries it right into your neck as he nips, as he grazes his teeth over your skin. “You tell me one thing but she’s giving you away, baby. Telling me all your secrets.”

Your hand tightens around the fabric in your palm, mouth falling open, paused around words that won’t appear—

“Said you’d tried to make your fingers feel like mine. But they just, wouldn’t, do.”

Each word is punctuated by his fingers fucking into you, crooked, making you messier, wetter, hearing the evidence of it, all filthy, obscene. Enough to get you barred from one of these events again.

Good you almost think, until his mouth slants over yours. Then, it’s bad. Very bad. Each flick of his wrist, and curve of his fingers solidifies it. How bad it would be to lose this, to lose him. The man who has your vision spotting, darkening in the corners.

“Fuck me, Lucien. Please—”

“Not tonight.”

Blinking, hearing it over and over: not tonight, not tonight, not tonight. Your body is lit, more electric than skin and muscle. Thrumming, vibrating bone against blood as he drags his moistened lips against your cheek.

“That’s it. Give it to me, can feel you squeezin’. I know you’re close, baby. So, soak my fingers, want you to stain them, make—”

You come somewhere amid his sentence—right when he kisses you properly. When he presses his vulgar words to your mouth and curls his fingers to meet that spot that has you arching, tensing and chasing. It’s maddening, and everything else before that. Hitting you, and exploding out—something like liquid fire erupting through you as you bear down on his fingers. Each cry and whine muffled by his mouth, by his tongue licking past your teeth and his hips being flush to yours. Pinning.

Because he doesn’t slow or stop even as you tremble. Not doing so until you’re gasping, frayed, all shaking nerves and splintered edges. Lucien swallows each heaved and hissed version of his name until you’re nudging him with your forehead, face scrunching, fingers pushing on his forearm until he retracts.

And, like it does in the movies, your dress falls back down into place. Creased, likely ruined. But nonetheless perfect to anyone who may glance.

Not that you care. Not as you chase normal breaths, as you blink and he comes back into vision, all ridiculously handsome and wide, brown eyes.

Because he’s watching you, seeing his lips curl into his cheek, fingers being brought to his mouth before he wraps his tongue around them. Licks and sucks you clean from them—

It makes you breathe heavier. Want more.

Even on shaky legs, you take a step closer to be flush to him. Arms sliding around his neck, finding your mouth glues back to his as though it should be there. Tasting yourself now, discerning it from the other things he’s enjoyed tonight.

“You do make me nervous when you stare.”

He gives a short laugh, hand on the back of your neck, tugging you back so he can stare into your soul. Something there. Something hurt that has healed all wrong, left things poisoned and rotten as you.

“You know I’m too fucked to be anyone’s anything, right?”

You smile, fingers teasing the hair on the back of his neck. Swallowing, seeing it shift back—the usualness of the two of you.

“See, this is where I think you’re an asshole.”

“For being honest?”

“No,” you say, shaking your head—lips ghosting over his. “Because I think you’re a liar. I think you’d kill to be something, never mind an anything.”

Smirking, but you suspect he stops it from being a smile. Offering silence, instead of a lie—a thing that’ll hurt and sting.

“You going to keep the dress?”

Shrugging, offering a roll of your eyes. “I’ll think about it.”

“You think I could have your number now?”

Biting your lip, you tug on a particular curl. Hearing a dull yelp, watch him narrow his eyes. “I think you can have an email address and take it from there.”

Snorting, he tilts his head back as the both of you hear a commotion from the other end of the garden. Private time likely ending, his name called out in confusion by the same high-pitched voices you’re sure were comparing his inch size earlier.

“I fucking hate these things.”

“Yet you come to them every time,” you reply.

And then his head moves; stares at your side profile as you pretend not to notice. “So do you.”

So you do, you think.

hope you enjoyed! this was so much fun, and also so scary. but i did it, wahayyy. now, i should admit, i may have fallen for him...

npt's [added from the liked post]: @yorksgirl @maggiemayhemnj @janaispunk @sawymredfox @angiewatson

@survivingandenduring @saradika @purplerain04

#SummerLovin24 #lucien flores x reader #lucien flores x you #lucien flores fanfic #lucien flores smut #lucien flores x y/n #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal #the uninvited #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal character smut #lucien flores #pedro pascal fanfic

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hyperlexichypatia · 4 months ago

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I think the way nonprofits and public agencies are funded leads us to adopt some of the worst aspects of a capitalist mindset towards our service users.

In a business, the goal is clear: Generate profit. Sell more product, to generate more profit. Recruit more customers, to generate more profit. Upsell customers to a more expensive product, to generate more profit. Convince customers to keep coming back and buying more things, to generate more profit.

Manipulation is built into the process, and it's understood by all parties. When a business does something "for you," it's in the hopes that you'll buy (or keep buying, or buy more of, or persuade other people to buy) their product. When a company offers free ice cream with your insurance quote, it's not because they like you and and want you to have ice cream; it's because they want you to come for the ice cream, stay for the insurance quote, and buy their insurance policy before you leave, so they can get your money. Everybody knows this.

Nonprofits and public agencies theoretically don't have this motive. Theoretically, the services we offer are for you, the service user. Theoretically, there is no profit motive, and thus no motive for manipulation. Theoretically, whether or not people choose to use the services we offer has no effect on us, so our only goal in promoting or raising awareness of our services is so that potential users can know about them and decide whether or not to use them.

Theoretically.

But in reality, public agencies and nonprofits are funded by governments, foundations, and donors. They demand "data" to justify their funding, and a major source of "data" is the number of service users. Markers of success have to be measurable and numerical, even if that metric doesn't really make sense. So even if there's not directly a profit motive for recruiting service users as "paying customers," there can still be a financial incentive for recruiting as many service users as possible, including using "sales" techniques like giveaways and gimmicks.

Now, this isn't inherently a bad thing -- after all, people in the nonprofit sector want people to use our services, so we want to get the word out about what we have to offer. I'm not saying it's inherently wrong for a nonprofit to use a raffle or a giveaway or a pizza party or whatever to get the word out and recruit new service users.

But since the services we offer are supposed to be for the service users' own benefit, sometimes the attitude around promoting them slips into the idea that the people we're ostensibly trying to serve have to be manipulated or bribed or tricked into accepting services for their own good, because they don't know or care what's good for them.

This can get into some really unfortunate implications territory in the context of the demographics of people who tend to work at nonprofits and public agencies, compared to the demographics of people those agencies tend to serve.

Attitudes can quickly morph into "Those People don't care about their children's health/education/etc., so we have to trick and manipulate and bribe them with food and prizes."

There's a difference between "Giveaways are a fun way to get the word out about our services" and "Those People don't care about their children's diabetes risk unless we make them sit through a lecture before we give them food." And way too many public agency and nonprofit workers, in private, in what they think is a sympathetic audience, are way too open about saying the latter.

#nonprofit culture #helping helpers who help #white saviorism #late capitalism #classism #educational snobbery #and stuff #why i drink

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autolenaphilia · 1 year ago

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The main reason to use Firefox and Linux and other free and open source software is that otherwise the big tech monopolies will fuck you as the customer over in search of profits. They will seek to control how you use their products and sell your data. When a company dominates the market, things can only get worse for ordinary people.

Like take Google Chrome for example, which together with its chromium reskins dominate the web browser market. Google makes a lot of money from ads, and consequently the company hates adblockers. They already are planning to move to manifest V3, which will nerf adblockers significantly. The manifest V3 compatible chrome version of Ublock Orgin is a "Lite" version for a reason. Ublock's Github page has an entire page explaining why the addon works best in Firefox.

And Google as we speak are trying to block adblockers from working on Youtube, If you want to continue blocking Youtube ads, and since Youtube ads make the site unuseable you ought to want that, it makes the most sense to not use a browser controlled by Google.

And there is no reason to think things won't get worse. There is for example nothing stopping Google from kicking adblockers off their add-on stores completely. They do regard it as basically piracy if the youtube pop-ups tell us anything, so updating the Chrome extensions terms of service to ban adblocking is a natural step. And so many people seem to think Chrome is the only browser that exists, so they are not going to switch to alternatives, or if they do, they will switch to another chrominum-based browser.

And again, they are fucking chromium itself for adblockers with Manifest V3, so only Firefox remains as a viable alternative. It's the only alternative to letting Google control the internet.

And Microsoft is the same thing. I posted before about their plans to move Windows increasingly into the cloud. This already exists for corporate customers, as Windows 365. And a version for ordinary users is probably not far off. It might not be the only version of Windows for awhile, the lack of solid internet access for a good part of the Earth's population will prevent it. But you'll probably see cheap very low-spec chromebookesque laptops running Windows for sale soon, that gets around Windows 11's obscene system requirements by their Windows being a cloud-based version.

And more and more of Windows will require Internet access or validation for DRM reasons if nothing else. Subscription fees instead of a one-time license are also likely. It will just be Windows moving in the direction Microsoft Office has already gone.

There is nothing preventing this, because again on the desktop/laptop market Windows is effectively a monopoly, or a duopoly with Apple. So there is no competition preventing Microsoft from exercising control over Windows users in the vein of Apple.

For example, Microsoft making Windows a walled garden by only permitting programs to be installed from the Microsoft Store probably isn't far off. This already exists for Win10 and 11, it's called S-mode. There seem to be more and more laptops being sold with Windows S-mode as the default.

Now it's not the only option, and you can turn it off with some tinkering, but there is really nothing stopping Microsoft from making it the only way of using Windows. And customers will probably accept it, because again the main competition is Apple where the walled garden has been the default for decades.

Customers have already accepted all sorts of bad things from Microsoft, because again Windows is a near-monopoly, and Apple and Google are even worse. That’s why there has been no major negative reaction to how Windows has increasingly spies on its users.

Another thing is how the system requirements for Windows seem to grow almost exponentially with each edition, making still perfectly useable computers unable to run the new edition. And Windows 11 is the worst yet. Like it's hard to get the numbers of how many computers running Win10 can't upgrade to Win11, but it's probably the majority of them, at least 55% or maybe even 75%. This has the effect of Windows users abandoning still perfectly useable hardware and buying new computers, creating more e-waste.

For Windows users, the alternative Windows gives them is to buy a new computer or get another operating system, and inertia pushes them towards buying another computer to keep using Windows. This is good for Windows and the hardware manufacturers selling computers with Windows 11 pre-installed, they get to profit off people buying Windows 11 keys and new computers, while the end-users have to pay, as does the environment. It’s planned obsolescence.

And it doesn’t have to be like that. Linux distros prove that you can have a modern operating system that has far lower hardware requirements. Even the most resource taxing Linux distros, like for example Ubuntu running the Gnome desktop, have far more modest system requirements than modern Windows. And you can always install lightweight Linux Distros that often have very low system requirements. One I have used is Antix. The ballooning Windows system requirements comes across as pure bloat on Microsoft’s part.

Now neither Linux or Firefox are perfect. Free and open source software don’t have a lot of the polish that comes with the proprietary products of major corporations. And being in competition with technology monopolies does have its drawbacks. The lacking website compatibility with Firefox and game compatibility with Linux are two obvious examples.

Yet Firefox and Linux have the capacity to grow, to become better. Being open source helps. Even if Firefox falls, developers can create a fork of it. If a Linux distro is not to your taste, there is usually another one. Whereas Windows and Chrome will only get worse as they will continue to abuse their monopolistic powers over the tech market.

#my writings #mozilla firefox #google chrome #microsoft windows #linux #open source #foss

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boatboysrowout · 4 months ago

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please tell us more about the mall au, specifically etho and his pipe bomb, i need an entire thing of him running from the cops (i am your number one fan ignore that i only just found out about you that doesnt matter)

hey guys. wanna hear about white castle pipe bomb c plot?

this may come as a surprise to some, but etho is a natural at customer service. he’s always been a pretty chill guy- it takes a lot to faze him, probably a consequence of his proclivity towards explosives in his early years. that calm exterior translates well to working the front desk of a local electronics repair store (not that he had needed a summer job, really, but doc and beef both went home for the summer, and someone kept leaving him visa-friendly job applications in every nook and cranny of his dorm- he found one in his cereal a few weeks before finals, and even that one had nothing on the one he found folded up in his toothpaste).

that being said, being good at customer service doesn’t mean that he’s completely immune to the agonies of said customer service. being good at customer service just means that after the eighteenth laptop he has to factory reset while a teenaged boy swears up and down he had not in fact clicked on a link for sexy singles in his area, etho’s able to wait until the boy leaves before attempting to gouge out his other eye.

he’s searching for a screwdriver when his phone buzzes with a text, and after a longing look at his toolbox etho flips his sign to closed and heads over to the white castle. he makes a quick stop at the arcade tango mans to set a new high score on the pinball machine, effectively guaranteeing tango will be glued to the pinball machine until he regains the top leaderboard spot, and then continues on his way to the white castle, spirits high.

etho’s good mood abruptly vanishes after stepping into the white castle, as bdubs has apparently deemed etho’s delay in arrival unforgivable and is now withholding the free fries etho had been promised.

etho slumps himself over the front counter, not unlike a wet cat, and starts causing a scene, whining about his awful day full of idiot teens and potential self mutilation that can only be staved off with free food. bdubs staunchly ignores him and cleo threatens to pour hot oil on his head.

eventually actual paying customers come in and etho’s continued presence becomes a problem, so bdubs heaves a sigh and offers the fries to etho as long as he pays full price for them, to which etho, an extreme couponer, reacts appropriately.

etho’s eye narrows as he peels himself off of the front counter, demanding the fries free of charge. bdubs refuses. cleo smacks bdubs on the back of the head and tells him to just give etho the fries so he'll go away.

etho gives bdubs one last chance to give him the fries for free, and by the time bdubs physically removes him from the premises etho is already plotting his revenge and heading straight back to the art store to collect a favor.

(you see, somewhere between the fifth and eighth laptop etho had to factory reset, tango texted him that he managed to jailbreak the pinball machine to accept a quarter for unlimited plays, and etho abandoned his job immediately to take advantage of the incredible deal.

that was his intention, anyway. but what happened is this: etho had never really shaken off the hold explosives have over him. after he’d been put on a five different government watchlists by the time he was seventeen he’d taken a step back and started focusing more on computing and getting into college and other projects that were less likely to necessitate seizure by the canadian government. he’s clean. he left that life behind him.

however.

when the sound of an explosion comes from the cute little art shop as etho walks past, there’s not a second of hesitation before he swung the front doors open and entered the shop.

it hadn’t taken him long to locate the source of the explosion, following a trail of smoke down a half hidden flight of stairs to a door with a hastily scrawled sign on it reading 'SUPER TALL AND HANDSOME EMPLOYEES ONLY.’

etho opened the door, walking into what has to be the world’s most pathetic meth lab. in the corner there was a stack of cardboard boxes labeled NOT DRUGS/DEFINITELY LEGAL SUBSTANCES. beakers filled with unidentifiable substances were bubbling over onto the table. a laptop near etho’s foot displayed results for a google search of ‘how to tell if a cut needs stitches and also how long can you set yourself on fire without going to hospital.’

“THIS ISN’T WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.” a man who etho vaguely recognized from grian's beginning of summer introductions had shouted, throwing his body over the contents of the table in a desperate attempt to hide the beakers from view. a few shattered under his weight and etho heard him stifle a whimper. “everything here is perfectly normal and also legal.”

breaking bad played quietly from a tv somewhere in the background.

etho raised an eyebrow.)

in the end, they manage to work out a deal: etho would not call the cops or tell anyone about joel's secret little operation and in return, joel owed etho a favor.

and now etho will cash that favor in.

(“so let me get this straight. you’re pissed your friend wouldn’t give you chips for free and your first instinct is to go to a meth lab and steal my meth supplies to get back at him.”

“failed meth lab. and yup.”

“there’s something wrong with you.”

“at least i know how to make meth.”

“wait, you what.”)

they start small. prank calls, anonymous yelp reviews calling the really loud cashier short, launching fireworks through the drive-thru window. it doesn’t take long for them to get bored with that though, which leads to bdubs walking into the white castle one morning to discover a horse standing in the middle of the lobby.

the horse seems very at peace with the situation, wandering over to chew on bdub’s hair as he sputters and cleo ignores the situation entirely. bdubs is left with the task of removing the horse from the store, except the horse seems to be taller than the doorway and not particularly interested in leaving, so eventually bdubs is forced to give up. There’s just a horse in their lobby now.

it doesn’t take bdubs very long to become attached to the horse, much to the detriment of cleo. she’s running the white castle single handedly by the end of the second day, serving customers and manning the kitchen while bdubs whispers sweet nothings to the horse in the makeshift horse stall he made in the women’s restroom.

it’s pointless to try and reason with bdubs, so cleo makes her way over to the art store basement where joel and etho have set up their base of operations. ignoring the now functioning meth lab, she demands the horse be removed from the premises in exchange for a reasonable one free small fry per week.

reasonable to cleo, and least. both jeol and etho scoff at her offer and demand at least one large fry per day each, to which cleo laughs in their faces. she doesn’t bother making a counter offer, simply turning on her heel and walking out of the basement. she pauses for a moment at the front of the shop to make sure she hadn’t been followed before grabbing her lighter from her pocket, casually flicking it on and taking a step towards the tissue paper.

by the time joel and etho notice something is amiss the fire department has arrived, and they’re barely able to hide the evidence of their operation before firefighters are breaking down the door, carrying them out through the art shop, entirely engulfed in flames.

(“so in retrospect, ripping all the smoke detectors out of the ceiling probably wasn’t a great idea on your part.”

“how was i to know i was gonna get into a war with an arsonist, all i wanted to do was mind my own business and make meth!”

“fail at making meth.”

“shut up.”)

now relocated behind the counter at etho’s repair shop, joel and etho prepare their final attack.

the plan is simple: using supplies salvaged from the meth lab, etho will construct a smoke bomb and throw it through the white castle drive through window while joel takes advantage of the distraction and steals all the fries the white castle possesses.

making the smoke bomb is a piece of cake, and when joel isn't looking etho sneaks a few of his own more... volatile substances into his backpack. just in case.

joel enters the white castle and cleo immediately clocks him due to joel being the most suspicious person alive always, but she cannot be arsed to investigate. it’s been a long fucking week. joel knows what will happen if he messes with her.

bdubs, however, feels an impending sense of doom through his Etho Senses and rushes over to the drive-thru window and whips it open, immediately screaming at the sight of etho across the road winding up his arm with a smoke bomb in his hand.

and that’s when things really start to go wrong.

because here’s the thing: etho’s been missing an eye for most of his life. he knows his depth perception is shit. but he’s so caught up in the adrenaline of the moment, and bdubs screaming isn’t exactly helping him focus, and listen the baseball scene in canada isn’t exactly thriving-

all of this is to say that etho activates the smoke bomb, winds up, and promptly chucks it five feet to the left of the drive through window. it bounces off the side of the building and rolls to a stop against the tire of the car that had been pulling up to order.

several things happen in very quick succession:

1. the smoke bomb begins pouring out smoke, completely obscuring etho from view and flooding into the white castle

2. bdubs attempts to continue screaming but immediately regrets it as copious amounts of smoke invade his lungs

3. the car which had previously been pulling up to the drive through attempts to exit the scene as quickly as possible, but due to the aforementioned copious amounts of smoke misjudges where the road turns and makes a hard left directly into the wall of the white castle

the very same wall where bdubs had leashed his horse mere minutes before, and the very same wall joel had been creeping along.

the horse and joel are immediately flattened, and upon seeing this bdubs’ impassioned screaming reaches pitches previously unknown to man, and all hell breaks loose.

cleo starts cackling and arms herself with a makeshift flamethrower thrown together with hairspray and a personalized lighter. bdubs attempts to leap out of the drive-thu window but his foot gets stuck and he falls out of the building, crumpling to the ground in a still screaming heap before scrambling back up through the drive-thru window and into the fray. joel manages to claw his way out of the rubble, finds himself face to face with cleo and her flamethrower, and has half a second to regret the his and hers shrek mugs that trapped him in this stupid country before he’s running for his life.

etho himself ends up sitting peacefully on the bench outside the white castle entrance, his mask helpfully filtering out most of the smoke. it’s lucky he grabbed some extra materials from joel’s lab really, he knew bdubs wouldn’t hand over the fries without a fight.

he’s in the middle of assembling a device that’ll definitely get him put on the american government’s watchlist and ignoring the screams coming from inside when two men rush past him into the white castle, shouting something about justice and burgers. etho waits for a second, and almost immediately they come rushing back out. he waves at their retreating figures, one of whom he’s pretty sure is the theater kid that tried to put on a one man show of macbeth during welcome week.

etho wraps the fuse around his pipe bomb and stands up, brushing the debris off of his pants and strolling into the fray.

he finds bdubs almost immediately, the man standing on the counter and clearly audible even over the fire alarms and incessant swearing from joel and cleo, who now both have improvised flamethrowers and are duking it out in the kids play area. despite the smoke bduds and etho lock eyes instantly, bdubs paling a few shades when he sees what etho has in his hand.

bdubs jumps off the counter and attempts to run to etho, but is cut off by an entirely engulfed in flames joel. it seems that bdubs did not learn a single lesson about the flammability of his hair product from his run in with grian at the beginning of the summer, because his hair bursts into flames after the slightest brush from joel, and this time cleo isn’t standing nearby with a fire extinguisher.

it should be noted that most of the white castle is entirely engulfed in flames at this point. etho’s at the center of it all, cradling his pipe bomb like a baby and searching furiously for his promised free french fries.

he’s stopped by cleo who meets his eyes, smiles wide, and lights the pipe bomb fuse.

etho and cleo stare at the wreckage of the white castle. look at each other. look back at the rubble.

the sirens in the distance are distinctly closer now, and both etho and cleo abruptly realize how much evidence is contained on their person.

“joel’s probably fine.” cleo says. “i saw him run into the walk in freezer after i burnt away the last of his clothes and hair.”

etho nods. “bdubs is too short to get crushed by rubble.”

cleo hums agreement. they stand side by side for a moment longer before cleo turns to etho.

“well, i won’t tell if you won’t.”

with that she turns on her heel and walks away. etho sticks around for a few more minutes, watching the flames die down and the last of the white castle crumble. he digs around in his pocket for a moment and pulls out a blackened handful of fries, yanking his mask down to shove them in his mouth as emergency services skid into the parking lot.

sticking around turns out to be a mistake, etho quickly realizes, as his white hair reflects the light from the police cars and catches the attention of every officer there. he takes off at a sprint, pulling his mask back up and booking it straight into moving traffic, dodging cars and leaving the yells of the police officers and the rubble behind him.

and that’s the last anyone sees of etho that summer.