#purchasing services for life sciences

[mostlysignssomeportents]

With Great Power Came No Responsibility

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in NYC TONIGHT (26 Feb) with JOHN HODGMAN and at PENN STATE TOMORROW (Feb 27). More tour dates here. Mail-order signed copies from LA's Diesel Books.

Last night, I traveled to Toronto to deliver the annual Ursula Franklin Lecture at the University of Toronto's Innis College:

The lecture was called "With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It." It's the latest major speech in my series of talks on the subject, which started with last year's McLuhan Lecture in Berlin:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

And continued with a summer Defcon keynote:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

This speech specifically addresses the unique opportunities for disenshittification created by Trump's rapid unscheduled midair disassembly of the international free trade system. The US used trade deals to force nearly every country in the world to adopt the IP laws that make enshittification possible, and maybe even inevitable. As Trump burns these trade deals to the ground, the rest of the world has an unprecedented opportunity to retaliate against American bullying by getting rid of these laws and producing the tools, devices and services that can protect every tech user (including Americans) from being ripped off by US Big Tech companies.

I'm so grateful for the chance to give this talk. I was hosted for the day by the Centre for Culture and Technology, which was founded by Marshall McLuhan, and is housed in the coach house he used for his office. The talk itself took place in Innis College, named for Harold Innis, who is definitely the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan. What's more, I was mentored by Innis's daughter, Anne Innis Dagg, a radical, brilliant feminist biologist who pretty much invented the field of giraffology:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

But with all respect due to Anne and her dad, Ursula Franklin is the thinking person's Harold Innis. A brilliant scientist, activist and communicator who dedicated her life to the idea that the most important fact about a technology wasn't what it did, but who it did it for and who it did it to. Getting to work out of McLuhan's office to present a talk in Innis's theater that was named after Franklin? Swoon!

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

Here's the text of the talk, lightly edited:

I know tonight’s talk is supposed to be about decaying tech platforms, but I want to start by talking about nurses.

A January 2025 report from Groundwork Collective documents how increasingly nurses in the USA are hired through gig apps – "Uber for nurses” – so nurses never know from one day to the next whether they're going to work, or how much they'll get paid.

There's something high-tech going on here with those nurses' wages. These nursing apps – a cartel of three companies, Shiftkey, Shiftmed and Carerev – can play all kinds of games with labor pricing.

Before Shiftkey offers a nurse a shift, it purchases that worker's credit history from a data-broker. Specifically, it pays to find out how much credit-card debt the nurse is carrying, and whether it is overdue.

The more desperate the nurse's financial straits are, the lower the wage on offer. Because the more desperate you are, the less you'll accept to come and do the gruntwork of caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying.

Now, there are lots of things going on here, and they're all terrible. What's more, they are emblematic of “enshittification,” the word I coined to describe the decay of online platforms.

When I first started writing about this, I focused on the external symptology of enshittification, a three stage process:

First, the platform is good to its end users, while finding a way to lock them in.

Like Google, which minimized ads and maximized spending on engineering for search results, even as they bought their way to dominance, bribing every service or product with a search box to make it a Google search box.

So no matter what browser you used, what mobile OS you used, what carrier you had, you would always be searching on Google by default. This got so batshit that by the early 2020s, Google was spending enough money to buy a whole-ass Twitter, every year or two, just to make sure that no one ever tried a search engine that wasn't Google.

That's stage one: be good to end users, lock in end users.

Stage two is when the platform starts to abuse end users to tempt in and enrich business customers. For Google, that’s advertisers and web publishers. An ever-larger fraction of a Google results page is given over to ads, which are marked with ever-subtler, ever smaller, ever grayer labels. Google uses its commercial surveillance data to target ads to us.

So that's stage two: things get worse for end users and get better for business customers.

But those business customers also get locked into the platform, dependent on those customers. Once businesses are getting as little as 10% of their revenue from Google, leaving Google becomes an existential risk. We talk a lot about Google's "monopoly" power, which is derived from its dominance as a seller. But Google is also a monopsony, a powerful buyer.

So now you have Google acting as a monopolist to its users (stage one), and a monoposonist for its business customers (stage two) and here comes stage three: where Google claws back all the value in the platform, save a homeopathic residue calculated to keep end users locked in, and business customers locked to those end users.

Google becomes enshittified.

In 2019, Google had a turning point. Search had grown as much as it possibly could. More than 90% of us used Google for search, and we searched for everything. Any thought or idle question that crossed our minds, we typed into Google.

How could Google grow? There were no more users left to switch to Google. We weren't going to search for more things. What could Google do?

Well, thanks to internal memos published during last year's monopoly trial against Google, we know what they did. They made search worse. They reduced the system's accuracy it so you had to search twice or more to get to the answer, thus doubling the number of queries, and doubling the number of ads.

Meanwhile, Google entered into a secret, illegal collusive arrangement with Facebook, codenamed Jedi Blue, to rig the ad market, fixing prices so advertisers paid more and publishers got less.

And that's how we get to the enshittified Google of today, where every query serves back a blob of AI slop, over five paid results tagged with the word AD in 8-point, 10% grey on white type, which is, in turn, over ten spammy links from SEO shovelware sites filled with more AI slop.

And yet, we still keep using Google, because we're locked into it. That's enshittification, from the outside. A company that's good to end users, while locking them in. Then it makes things worse for end users, to make things better for business customers, while locking them in. Then it takes all the value for itself and turns into a giant pile of shit.

Enshittification, a tragedy in three acts.

I started off focused on the outward signs of enshittification, but I think it's time we start thinking about what's going in inside the companies to make enshittification possible.

What is the technical mechanism for enshittification? I call it twiddling. Digital businesses have infinite flexibility, bequeathed to them by the marvellously flexible digital computers they run on. That means that firms can twiddle the knobs that control the fundamental aspects of their business. Every time you interact with a firm, everything is different: prices, costs, search rankings, recommendations.

Which takes me back to our nurses. This scam, where you look up the nurse's debt load and titer down the wage you offer based on it in realtime? That's twiddling. It's something you can only do with a computer. The bosses who are doing this aren't more evil than bosses of yore, they just have better tools.

Note that these aren't even tech bosses. These are health-care bosses, who happen to have tech.

Digitalization – weaving networked computers through a firm or a sector – enables this kind of twiddling that allows firms to shift value around, from end users to business customers, from business customers back to end users, and eventually, inevitably, to themselves.

And digitalization is coming to every sector – like nursing. Which means enshittification is coming to every sector – like nursing.

The legal scholar Veena Dubal coined a term to describe the twiddling that suppresses the wages of debt-burdened nurses. It's called "Algorithmic Wage Discrimination," and it follows the gig economy.

The gig economy is a major locus of enshittification, and it’s the largest tear in the membrane separating the virtual world from the real world. Gig work, where your shitty boss is a shitty app, and you aren't even allowed to call yourself an employee.

Uber invented this trick. Drivers who are picky about the jobs the app puts in front of them start to get higher wage offers. But if they yield to temptation and take some of those higher-waged option, then the wage starts to go down again, in random intervals, by small increments, designed to be below the threshold for human perception. Not so much boiling the frog as poaching it, until the Uber driver has gone into debt to buy a new car, and given up the side hustles that let them be picky about the rides they accepted. Then their wage goes down, and down, and down.

Twiddling is a crude trick done quickly. Any task that's simple but time consuming is a prime candidate for automation, and this kind of wage-theft would be unbearably tedious, labor-intensive and expensive to perform manually. No 19th century warehouse full of guys with green eyeshades slaving over ledgers could do this. You need digitalization.

Twiddling nurses' hourly wages is a perfect example of the role digitization pays in enshittification. Because this kind of thing isn't just bad for nurses – it's bad for patients, too. Do we really think that paying nurses based on how desperate they are, at a rate calculated to increase that desperation, and thus decrease the wage they are likely to work for, is going to result in nurses delivering the best care?

Do you want to your catheter inserted by a nurse on food stamps, who drove an Uber until midnight the night before, and skipped breakfast this morning in order to make rent?

This is why it’s so foolish to say "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." “If you’re not paying for the product” ascribes a mystical power to advertising-driven services: the power to bypass our critical faculties by surveilling us, and data-mining the resulting dossiers to locate our mental bind-spots, and weaponize them to get us to buy anything an advertiser is selling.

In this formulation, we are complicit in our own exploitation. By choosing to use "free" services, we invite our own exploitation by surveillance capitalists who have perfected a mind-control ray powered by the surveillance data we're voluntarily handing over by choosing ad-driven services.

The moral is that if we only went back to paying for things, instead of unrealistically demanding that everything be free, we would restore capitalism to its functional, non-surveillant state, and companies would start treating us better, because we'd be the customers, not the products.

That's why the surveillance capitalism hypothesis elevates companies like Apple as virtuous alternatives. Because Apple charges us money, rather than attention, it can focus on giving us better service, rather than exploiting us.

There's a superficially plausible logic to this. After all, in 2022, Apple updated its iOS operating system, which runs on iPhones and other mobile devices, introducing a tick box that allowed you to opt out of third-party surveillance, most notably Facebook’s.

96% of Apple customers ticked that box. The other 4% were, presumably drunk, or Facebook employees, or Facebook employees who were drunk. Which makes sense, because if I worked for Facebook, I'd be drunk all the time.

So on the face of it, it seems like Apple isn't treating its customers like "the product." But simultaneously with this privacy measure, Apple was secretly turning on its own surveillance system for iPhone owners, which would spy on them in exactly the way Facebook had, for exactly the same purpose: to target ads to you based on the places you'd been, the things you'd searched for, the communications you'd had, the links you'd clicked.

Apple didn't ask its customers for permission to spy on them. It didn't let opt out of this spying. It didn’t even tell them about it, and when it was caught, Apple lied about it.

It goes without saying that the $1000 Apple distraction rectangle in your pocket is something you paid for. The fact that you've paid for it doesn't stop Apple from treating you as the product. Apple treats its business customers – app vendors – like the product, screwing them out of 30 cents on every dollar they bring in, with mandatory payment processing fees that are 1,000% higher than the already extortionate industry norm.

Apple treats its end users – people who shell out a grand for a phone – like the product, spying on them to help target ads to them.

Apple treats everyone like the product.

This is what's going on with our gig-app nurses: the nurses are the product. The patients are the product. The hospitals are the product. In enshittification, "the product" is anyone who can be productized.

Fair and dignified treatment is not something you get as a customer loyalty perk, in exchange for parting with your money, rather than your attention. How do you get fair and dignified treatment? Well, I'm gonna get to that, but let's stay with our nurses for a while first.

The nurses are the product, and they're being twiddled, because they've been conscripted into the tech industry, via the digitalization of their own industry.

It's tempting to blame digitalization for this. But tech companies were not born enshittified. They spent years – decades – making pleasing products. If you're old enough to remember the launch of Google, you'll recall that, at the outset, Google was magic.

You could Ask Jeeves questions for a million years, you could load up Altavista with ten trillion boolean search operators meant to screen out low-grade results, and never come up with answers as crisp, as useful, as helpful, as the ones you'd get from a few vaguely descriptive words in a Google search-bar.

There's a reason we all switched to Google. Why so many of us bought iPhones. Why we joined our friends on Facebook. All of these services were born digital. They could have enshittified at any time. But they didn't – until they did. And they did it all at once.

If you were a nurse, and every patient that staggered into the ER had the same dreadful symptoms, you'd call the public health department and report a suspected outbreak of a new and dangerous epidemic.

Ursula Franklin held that technology's outcomes were not preordained. They are the result of deliberate choices. I like that very much, it's a very science fictional way of thinking about technology. Good science fiction isn't merely about what the technology does, but who it does it for, and who it does it to.

Those social factors are far more important than the mere technical specifications of a gadget. They're the difference between a system that warns you when you're about to drift out of your lane, and a system that tells your insurer that you nearly drifted out of your lane, so they can add $10 to your monthly premium.

They’re the difference between a spell checker that lets you know you've made a typo, and bossware that lets your manager use the number of typos you made this quarter so he can deny your bonus.

They’re the difference between an app that remembers where you parked your car, and an app that uses the location of your car as a criteria for including you in a reverse warrant for the identities of everyone in the vicinity of an anti-government protest.

I believe that enshittification is caused by changes not to technology, but to the policy environment. These are changes to the rules of the game, undertaken in living memory, by named parties, who were warned at the time about the likely outcomes of their actions, who are today very rich and respected, and face no consequences or accountability for their role in ushering in the enshittocene. They venture out into polite society without ever once wondering if someone is sizing them up for a pitchfork.

In other words: I think we created a crimogenic environment, a perfect breeding pool for the most pathogenic practices in our society, that have therefore multiplied, dominating decision-making in our firms and states, leading to a vast enshittening of everything.

And I think there's good news there, because if enshittification isn't the result a new kind of evil person, or the great forces of history bearing down on the moment to turn everything to shit, but rather the result of specific policy choices, then we can reverse those policies, make better ones and emerge from the enshittocene, consigning the enshitternet to the scrapheap of history, a mere transitional state between the old, good internet, and a new, good internet.

I'm not going to talk about AI today, because oh my god is AI a boring, overhyped subject. But I will use a metaphor about AI, about the limited liability company, which is a kind of immortal, artificial colony organism in which human beings serve as a kind of gut flora. My colleague Charlie Stross calls corporations "slow AI.”

So you've got these slow AIs whose guts are teeming with people, and the AI's imperative, the paperclip it wants to maximize, is profit. To maximize profits, you charge as much as you can, you pay your workers and suppliers as little as you can, you spend as little as possible on safety and quality.

Every dollar you don't spend on suppliers, workers, quality or safety is a dollar that can go to executives and shareholders. So there's a simple model of the corporation that could maximize its profits by charging infinity dollars, while paying nothing to its workers or suppliers, and ignoring quality and safety.

But that corporation wouldn't make any money, for the obvious reasons that none of us would buy what it was selling, and no one would work for it or supply it with goods. These constraints act as disciplining forces that tamp down the AI's impulse to charge infinity and pay nothing.

In tech, we have four of these constraints, anti-enshittificatory sources of discipline that make products and services better, pay workers more, and keep executives’ and shareholders' wealth from growing at the expense of customers, suppliers and labor.

The first of these constraints is markets. All other things being equal, a business that charges more and delivers less will lose customers to firms that are more generous about sharing value with workers, customers and suppliers.

This is the bedrock of capitalist theory, and it's the ideological basis for competition law, what our American cousins call "antitrust law."

The first antitrust law was 1890's Sherman Act, whose sponsor, Senator John Sherman, stumped for it from the senate floor, saying:

If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity. 

Senator Sherman was reflecting the outrage of the anitmonopolist movement of the day, when proprietors of monopolistic firms assumed the role of dictators, with the power to decide who would work, who would starve, what could be sold, and what it cost.

Lacking competitors, they were too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care. As Lily Tomlin used to put it in her spoof AT&T ads on SNL: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.”

So what happened to the disciplining force of competition? We killed it. Starting 40-some years ago, the Reagaonomic views of the Chicago School economists transformed antitrust. They threw out John Sherman's idea that we need to keep companies competitive to prevent the emergence of "autocrats of trade,"and installed the idea that monopolies are efficient.

In other words, if Google has a 90% search market share, which it does, then we must infer that Google is the best search engine ever, and the best search engine possible. The only reason a better search engine hasn't stepped in is that Google is so skilled, so efficient, that there is no conceivable way to improve upon it.

We can tell that Google is the best because it has a monopoly, and we can tell that the monopoly is good because Google is the best.

So 40 years ago, the US – and its major trading partners – adopted an explicitly pro-monopoly competition policy.

Now, you'll be glad to hear that this isn't what happened to Canada. The US Trade Rep didn't come here and force us to neuter our competition laws. But don't get smug! The reason that didn't happen is that it didn't have to. Because Canada had no competition law to speak of, and never has.

In its entire history, the Competition Bureau has challenged three mergers, and it has halted precisely zero mergers, which is how we've ended up with a country that is beholden to the most mediocre plutocrats imaginable like the Irvings, the Westons, the Stronachs, the McCains and the Rogerses.

The only reason these chinless wonders were able to conquer this country Is that the Americans had been crushing their monopolists before they could conquer the US and move on to us. But 40 years ago, the rest of the world adopted the Chicago School's pro-monopoly "consumer welfare standard,” and we got…monopolies.

Monopolies in pharma, beer, glass bottles, vitamin C, athletic shoes, microchips, cars, mattresses, eyeglasses, and, of course, professional wrestling.

Remember: these are specific policies adopted in living memory, by named individuals, who were warned, and got rich, and never faced consequences. The economists who conceived of these policies are still around today, polishing their fake Nobel prizes, teaching at elite schools, making millions consulting for blue-chip firms.

When we confront them with the wreckage their policies created, they protest their innocence, maintaining – with a straight face – that there's no way to affirmatively connect pro-monopoly policies with the rise of monopolies.

It's like we used to put down rat poison and we didn't have a rat problem. Then these guys made us stop, and now rats are chewing our faces off, and they're making wide innocent eyes, saying, "How can you be sure that our anti-rat-poison policies are connected to global rat conquest? Maybe this is simply the Time of the Rat! Maybe sunspots caused rats to become more fecund than at any time in history! And if they bought the rat poison factories and shut them all down, well, so what of it? Shutting down rat poison factories after you've decided to stop putting down rat poison is an economically rational, Pareto-optimal decision."

Markets don't discipline tech companies because they don't compete with rivals, they buy them. That's a quote, from Mark Zuckerberg: “It is better to buy than to compete.”

Which is why Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for a billion dollars, even though it only had 12 employees and 25m users. As he wrote in a spectacularly ill-advised middle-of-the-night email to his CFO, he had to buy Instagram, because Facebook users were leaving Facebook for Instagram. By buying Instagram, Zuck ensured that anyone who left Facebook – the platform – would still be a prisoner of Facebook – the company.

Despite the fact that Zuckerberg put this confession in writing, the Obama administration let him go ahead with the merger, because every government, of every political stripe, for 40 years, adopted the posture that monopolies were efficient.

Now, think about our twiddled, immiserated nurses. Hospitals are among the most consolidated sectors in the US. First, we deregulated pharma mergers, and the pharma companies gobbled each other up at the rate of naughts, and they jacked up the price of drugs. So hospitals also merged to monopoly, a defensive maneuver that let a single hospital chain corner the majority of a region or city and say to the pharma companies, "either you make your products cheaper, or you can't sell them to any of our hospitals."

Of course, once this mission was accomplished, the hospitals started screwing the insurers, who staged their own incestuous orgy, buying and merging until most Americans have just three or two insurance options. This let the insurers fight back against the hospitals, but left patients and health care workers defenseless against the consolidated power of hospitals, pharma companies, pharmacy benefit managers, group purchasing organizations, and other health industry cartels, duopolies and monopolies.

Which is why nurses end up signing on to work for hospitals that use these ghastly apps. Remember, there's just three of these apps, replacing dozens of staffing agencies that once competed for nurses' labor.

Meanwhile, on the patient side, competition has never exercised discipline. No one ever shopped around for a cheaper ambulance or a better ER while they were having a heart attack. The price that people are willing to pay to not die is “everything they have.”

So you have this sector that has no business being a commercial enterprise in the first place, losing what little discipline they faced from competition, paving the way for enshittification.

But I said there are four forces that discipline companies. The second one of these forces is regulation, discipline imposed by states.

It’s a mistake to see market discipline and state discipline as two isolated realms. They are intimately connected. Because competition is a necessary condition for effective regulation.

Let me put this in terms that even the most ideological libertarians can understand. Say you think there should be precisely one regulation that governments should enforce: honoring contracts. For the government to serve as referee in that game, it must have the power to compel the players to honor their contracts. Which means that the smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to permit.

So even if you're the kind of Musk-addled libertarian who can no longer open your copy of Atlas Shrugged because the pages are all stuck together, who pines for markets for human kidneys, and demands the right to sell yourself into slavery, you should still want a robust antitrust regime, so that these contracts can be enforced.

When a sector cartelizes, when it collapses into oligarchy, when the internet turns into "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four," then it captures its regulators.

After all, a sector with 100 competing companies is a rabble, at each others' throats. They can't agree on anything, especially how they're going to lobby.

While a sector of five companies – or four – or three – or two – or one – is a cartel, a racket, a conspiracy in waiting. A sector that has been boiled down to a mere handful of firms can agree on a common lobbying position.

What's more, they are so insulated from "wasteful competition" that they are aslosh in cash that they can mobilize to make their regulatory preferences into regulations. In other words, they can capture their regulators.

“Regulatory capture" may sound abstract and complicated, so let me put it in concrete terms. In the UK, the antitrust regulator is called the Competition and Markets Authority, run – until recently – by Marcus Bokkerink. The CMA has been one of the world's most effective investigators and regulators of Big Tech fuckery.

Last month, UK PM Keir Starmer fired Bokkerink and replaced him with Doug Gurr, the former head of Amazon UK. Hey, Starmer, the henhouse is on the line, they want their fox back.

But back to our nurses: there are plenty of examples of regulatory capture lurking in that example, but I'm going to pick the most egregious one, the fact that there are data brokers who will sell you information about the credit card debts of random Americans.

This is because the US Congress hasn't passed a new consumer privacy law since 1988, when Ronald Reagan signed a law called the Video Privacy Protection Act that bans video store clerks from telling newspapers which VHS cassettes you took home. The fact that Congress hasn't updated Americans' privacy protections since Die Hard was in theaters isn't a coincidence or an oversight. It is the expensively purchased inaction of a heavily concentrated – and thus wildly profitable – privacy-invasion industry that has monetized the abuse of human rights at unimaginable scale.

The coalition in favor of keeping privacy law frozen since the season finale of St Elsewhere keeps growing, because there is an unbounded set of way to transform the systematic invasion of our human rights into cash. There's a direct line from this phenomenon to nurses whose paychecks go down when they can't pay their credit-card bills.

So competition is dead, regulation is dead, and companies aren't disciplined by markets or by states.

But there are four forces that discipline firms, contributing to an inhospitable environment for the reproduction of sociopathic. enshittifying monsters.

So let's talk about those other two forces. The first is interoperability, the principle of two or more things working together. Like, you can put anyone's shoelaces in your shoes, anyone's gas in your gas tank, and anyone's lightbulbs in your light-socket. In the non-digital world, interop takes a lot of work, you have to agree on the direction, pitch, diameter, voltage, amperage and wattage for that light socket, or someone's gonna get their hand blown off.

But in the digital world, interop is built in, because there's only one kind of computer we know how to make, the Turing-complete, universal, von Neumann machine, a computing machine capable of executing every valid program.

Which means that for any enshittifying program, there's a counterenshittificatory program waiting to be run. When HP writes a program to ensure that its printers reject third-party ink, someone else can write a program to disable that checking.

For gig workers, antienshittificatory apps can do yeoman duty. For example, Indonesian gig drivers formed co-ops, that commission hackers to write modifications for their dispatch apps. For example, the taxi app won't book a driver to pick someone up at a train station, unless they're right outside, but when the big trains pull in that's a nightmare scene of total, lethal chaos.

So drivers have an app that lets them spoof their GPS, which lets them park up around the corner, but have the app tell their bosses that they're right out front of the station. When a fare arrives, they can zip around and pick them up, without contributing to the stationside mishegas.

In the USA, a company called Para shipped an app to help Doordash drivers get paid more. You see, Doordash drivers make most of their money on tips, and the Doordash driver app hides the tip amount until you accept a job, meaning you don't know whether you're accepting a job that pays $1.50 or $11.50 with tip, until you agree to take it. So Para made an app that extracted the tip amount and showed it to drivers before they clocked on.

But Doordash shut it down, because in America, apps like Para are illegal. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and section 1201 of the DMCA makes is a felony to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work," with penalties of $500k and a 5-year prison sentence for a first offense. So just the act of reverse-engineering an app like the Doordash app is a potential felony, which is why companies are so desperately horny to get you to use their apps rather than their websites.

The web is open, apps are closed. The majority of web users have installed an ad blocker (which is also a privacy blocker). But no one installs an ad blocker for an app, because it's a felony to distribute that tool, because you have to reverse-engineer the app to make it. An app is just a website wrapped in enough IP so that the company that made it can send you to prison if you dare to modify it so that it serves your interests rather than theirs.

Around the world, we have enacted a thicket of laws, we call “IP laws,” that make it illegal to modify services, products, and devices, so that they serve your interests, rather than the interests of the shareholders.

Like I said, these laws were enacted in living memory, by people who are among us, who were warned about the obvious, eminently foreseeable consequences of their reckless plans, who did it anyway.

Back in 2010, two ministers from Stephen Harper's government decided to copy-paste America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act into Canadian law. They consulted on the proposal to make it illegal to reverse engineer and modify services, products and devices, and they got an earful! 6,138 Canadians sent in negative comments on the consultation. They warned that making it illegal to bypass digital locks would interfere with repair of devices as diverse as tractors, cars, and medical equipment, from ventilators to insulin pumps.

These Canadians warned that laws banning tampering with digital locks would let American tech giants corner digital markets, forcing us to buy our apps and games from American app stores, that could cream off any commission they chose to levy. They warned that these laws were a gift to monopolists who wanted to jack up the price of ink; that these copyright laws, far from serving Canadian artists would lock us to American platforms. Because every time someone in our audience bought a book, a song, a game, a video, that was locked to an American app, it could never be unlocked.

So if we, the creative workers of Canada, tried to migrate to a Canadian store, our audience couldn't come with us. They couldn't move their purchases from the US app to a Canadian one.

6,138 Canadians told them this, while just 54 respondents sided with Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement. Then, James Moore gave a speech, at the International Chamber of Commerce meeting here in Toronto, where he said he would only be listening to the 54 cranks who supported his terrible ideas, on the grounds that the 6,138 people who disagreed with him were "babyish…radical extremists."

So in 2012, we copied America's terrible digital locks law into the Canadian statute book, and now we live in James Moore and Tony Clement's world, where it is illegal to tamper with a digital lock. So if a company puts a digital lock on its product they can do anything behind that lock, and it's a crime to undo it.

For example, if HP puts a digital lock on its printers that verifies that you're not using third party ink cartridges, or refilling an HP cartridge, it's a crime to bypass that lock and use third party ink. Which is how HP has gotten away with ratcheting the price of ink up, and up, and up.

Printer ink is now the most expensive fluid that a civilian can purchase without a special permit. It's colored water that costs $10k/gallon, which means that you print out your grocery lists with liquid that costs more than the semen of a Kentucky Derby-winning stallion.

That's the world we got from Clement and Moore, in living memory, after they were warned, and did it anyway. The world where farmers can't fix their tractors, where independent mechanics can't fix your car, where hospitals during the pandemic lockdowns couldn't service their failing ventilators, where every time a Canadian iPhone user buys an app from a Canadian software author, every dollar they spend takes a round trip through Apple HQ in Cupertino, California and comes back 30 cents lighter.

Let me remind you this is the world where a nurse can't get a counter-app, a plug-in, for the “Uber for nurses” app they have to use to get work, that lets them coordinate with other nurses to refuse shifts until the wages on offer rise to a common level or to block surveillance of their movements and activity.

Interoperability was a major disciplining force on tech firms. After all, if you make the ads on your website sufficiently obnoxious, some fraction of your users will install an ad-blocker, and you will never earn another penny from them. Because no one in the history of ad-blockers has ever uninstalled an ad-blocker. But once it's illegal to make an ad-blocker, there's no reason not to make the ads as disgusting, invasive, obnoxious as you can, to shift all the value from the end user to shareholders and executives.

So we get monopolies and monopolies capture their regulators, and they can ignore the laws they don't like, and prevent laws that might interfere with their predatory conduct – like privacy laws – from being passed. They get new laws passed, laws that let them wield governmental power to prevent other companies from entering the market.

So three of the four forces are neutralized: competition, regulation, and interoperability. That left just one disciplining force holding enshittification at bay: labor.

Tech workers are a strange sort of workforce, because they have historically been very powerful, able to command high wages and respect, but they did it without joining unions. Union density in tech is abysmal, almost undetectable. Tech workers' power didn't come from solidarity, it came from scarcity. There weren't enough workers to fill the jobs going begging, and tech workers are unfathomnably productive. Even with the sky-high salaries tech workers commanded, every hour of labor they put in generated far more value for their employers.

Faced with a tight labor market, and the ability to turn every hour of tech worker overtime into gold, tech bosses pulled out all the stops to motivate that workforce. They appealed to workers' sense of mission, convinced them they were holy warriors, ushering in a new digital age. Google promised them they would "organize the world's information and make it useful.” Facebook promised them they would “make the world more open and connected."

There's a name for this tactic: the librarian Fobazi Ettarh calls it "vocational awe." That’s where an appeal to a sense of mission and pride is used to motivate workers to work for longer hours and worse pay.

There are all kinds of professions that run on vocational awe: teaching, daycares and eldercare, and, of course, nursing.

Techies are different from those other workers though, because they've historically been incredibly scarce, which meant that while bosses could motivate them to work on projects they believed in, for endless hours, the minute bosses ordered them to enshittify the projects they'd missed their mothers' funerals to ship on deadline these workers would tell their bosses to fuck off.

If their bosses persisted in these demands, the techies would walk off the job, cross the street, and get a better job the same day.

So for many years, tech workers were the fourth and final constraint, holding the line after the constraints of competition, regulation and interop slipped away. But then came the mass tech layoffs. 260,000 in 2023; 150,000 in 2024; tens of thousands this year, with Facebook planning a 5% headcount massacre while doubling its executive bonuses.

Tech workers can't tell their bosses to go fuck themselves anymore, because there's ten other workers waiting to take their jobs.

Now, I promised I wouldn't talk about AI, but I have to break that promise a little, just to point out that the reason tech bosses are so horny for AI Is because they think it'll let them fire tech workers and replace them with pliant chatbots who'll never tell them to fuck off.

So that's where enshittification comes from: multiple changes to the environment. The fourfold collapse of competition, regulation, interoperability and worker power creates an enshittogenic environment, where the greediest, most sociopathic elements in the body corporate thrive at the expense of those elements that act as moderators of their enshittificatory impulses.

We can try to cure these corporations. We can use antitrust law to break them up, fine them, force strictures upon them. But until we fix the environment, other the contagion will spread to other firms.

So let's talk about how we create a hostile environment for enshittifiers, so the population and importance of enshittifying agents in companies dwindles to 1990s levels. We won't get rid of these elements. So long as the profit motive is intact, there will be people whose pursuit of profit is pathological, unmoderated by shame or decency. But we can change the environment so that these don't dominate our lives.

Let's talk about antitrust. After 40 years of antitrust decline, this decade has seen a massive, global resurgence of antitrust vigor, one that comes in both left- and right-wing flavors.

Over the past four years, the Biden administration’s trustbusters at the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau did more antitrust enforcement than all their predecessors for the past 40 years combined.

There's certainly factions of the Trump administration that are hostile to this agenda but Trump's antitrust enforcers at the DoJ and FTC now say that they'll preserve and enforce Biden's new merger guidelines, which stop companies from buying each other up, and they've already filed suit to block a giant tech merger.

Of course, last summer a judge found Google guilty of monopolization, and now they're facing a breakup, which explains why they've been so generous and friendly to the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, in Canada, our toothless Competition Bureau's got fitted for a set of titanium dentures last June, when Bill C59 passed Parliament, granting sweeping new powers to our antitrust regulator.

It's true that UK PM Keir Starmer just fired the head of the UK Competition and Markets Authority and replaced him with the ex-boss of Amazon UK boss.But the thing that makes that so tragic is that the UK CMA had been doing astonishingly great work under various conservative governments.

In the EU, they've passed the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, and they're going after Big Tech with both barrels. Other countries around the world – Australia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and China (yes, China!) – have passed new antitrust laws, and launched major antitrust enforcement actions, often collaborating with each other.

So you have the UK Competition and Markets Authority using its investigatory powers to research and publish a deep market study on Apple's abusive 30% app tax, and then the EU uses that report as a roadmap for fining Apple, and then banning Apple's payments monopoly under new regulations.Then South Korea and Japan trustbusters translate the EU's case and win nearly identical cases in their courts

What about regulatory capture? Well, we're starting to see regulators get smarter about reining in Big Tech. For example, the EU's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act were designed to bypass the national courts of EU member states, especially Ireland, the tax-haven where US tech companies pretend to have their EU headquarters.

The thing about tax havens is that they always turn into crime havens, because if Apple can pretend to be Irish this week, it can pretend to be Maltese or Cypriot or Luxembourgeois next week. So Ireland has to let US Big Tech companies ignore EU privacy laws and other regulations, or it'll lose them to sleazier, more biddable competitor nations.

So from now on, EU tech regulation is getting enforced in the EU's federal courts, not in national courts, treating the captured Irish courts as damage and routing around them.

Canada needs to strengthen its own tech regulation enforcement, unwinding monopolistic mergers from the likes of Bell and Rogers, but most of all, Canada needs to pursue an interoperability agenda.

Last year, Canada passed two very exciting bills: Bill C244, a national Right to Repair law; and Bill C294, an interoperability law. Nominally, both of these laws allow Canadians to fix everything from tractors to insulin pumps, and to modify the software in their devices from games consoles to printers, so they will work with third party app stores, consumables and add-ons.

However, these bills are essentially useless, because these bills don’t permit Canadians to acquire tools to break digital locks. So you can modify your printer to accept third party ink, or interpret a car's diagnostic codes so any mechanic can fix it, but only if there isn't a digital lock stopping you from doing so, because giving someone a tool to break a digital lock remains illegal thanks to the law that James Moore and Tony Clement shoved down the nation's throat in 2012.

And every single printer, smart speaker, car, tractor, appliance, medical implant and hospital medical device has a digital lock that stops you from fixing it, modifying it, or using third party parts, software, or consumables in it.

Which means that these two landmark laws on repair and interop are useless. So why not get rid of the 2012 law that bans breaking digital locks? Because these laws are part of our trade agreement with the USA. This is a law needed to maintain tariff-free access to US markets.

I don’t know if you've heard, but Donald Trump is going to impose a 25%, across-the-board tariff against Canadian exports. Trudeau's response is to impose retaliatory tariffs, which will make every American product that Canadians buy 25% more expensive. This is a very weird way to punish America!

You know what would be better? Abolish the Canadian laws that protect US Big Tech companies from Canadian competition. Make it legal to reverse-engineer, jailbreak and modify American technology products and services. Don't ask Facebook to pay a link tax to Canadian newspapers, make it legal to jailbreak all of Meta's apps and block all the ads in them, so Mark Zuckerberg doesn't make a dime off of us.

Make it legal for Canadian mechanics to jailbreak your Tesla and unlock every subscription feature, like autopilot and full access to your battery, for one price, forever. So you get more out of your car, and when you sell it, then next owner continues to enjoy those features, meaning they'll pay more for your used car.

That's how you hurt Elon Musk: not by being performatively appalled at his Nazi salutes. That doesn't cost him a dime. He loves the attention. No! Strike at the rent-extracting, insanely high-margin aftermarket subscriptions he relies on for his Swastikar business. Kick that guy right in the dongle!

Let Canadians stand up a Canadian app store for Apple devices, one that charges 3% to process transactions, not 30%. Then, every Canadian news outlet that sells subscriptions through an app, and every Canadian software author, musician and writer who sells through a mobile platform gets a 25% increase in revenues overnight, without signing up a single new customer.

But we can sign up new customers, by selling jailbreaking software and access to Canadian app stores, for every mobile device and games console to everyone in the world, and by pitching every games publisher and app maker on selling in the Canadian app store to customers anywhere without paying a 30% vig to American big tech companies.

We could sell every mechanic in the world a $100/month subscription to a universal diagnostic tool. Every farmer in the world could buy a kit that would let them fix their own John Deere tractors without paying a $200 callout charge for a Deere technician who inspects the repair the farmer is expected to perform.

They'd beat a path to our door. Canada could become a tech export powerhouse, while making everything cheaper for Canadian tech users, while making everything more profitable for anyone who sells media or software in an online store. And – this is the best part – it’s a frontal assault on the largest, most profitable US companies, the companies that are single-handedly keeping the S&P 500 in the black, striking directly at their most profitable lines of business, taking the revenues from those ripoff scams from hundreds of billions to zero, overnight, globally.

We don't have to stop at exporting reasonably priced pharmaceuticals to Americans! We could export the extremely lucrative tools of technological liberation to our American friends, too.

That's how you win a trade-war.

What about workers? Here we have good news and bad news.

The good news is that public approval for unions is at a high mark last seen in the early 1970s, and more workers want to join a union than at any time in generations, and unions themselves are sitting on record-breaking cash reserves they could be using to organize those workers.

But here's the bad news. The unions spent the Biden years, when they had the most favorable regulatory environment since the Carter administration, when public support for unions was at an all-time high, when more workers than ever wanted to join a union, when they had more money than ever to spend on unionizing those workers, doing fuck all. They allocatid mere pittances to union organizing efforts with the result that we finished the Biden years with fewer unionized workers than we started them with.

Then we got Trump, who illegally fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB without a quorum and thus unable to act on unfair labor practices or to certify union elections.

This is terrible. But it’s not game over. Trump fired the referees, and he thinks that this means the game has ended. But here's the thing: firing the referee doesn't end the game, it just means we're throwing out the rules. Trump thinks that labor law creates unions, but he's wrong. Unions are why we have labor law. Long before unions were legal, we had unions, who fought goons and ginks and company finks in` pitched battles in the streets.

That illegal solidarity resulted in the passage of labor law, which legalized unions. Labor law is passed because workers build power through solidarity. Law doesn't create that solidarity, it merely gives it a formal basis in law. Strip away that formal basis, and the worker power remains.

Worker power is the answer to vocational awe. After all, it's good for you and your fellow workers to feel a sense of mission about your jobs. If you feel that sense of mission, if you feel the duty to protect your users, your patients, your patrons, your students, a union lets you fulfill that duty.

We saw that in 2023 when Doug Ford promised to destroy the power of Ontario's public workers. Workers across the province rose up, promising a general strike, and Doug Ford folded like one of his cheap suits. Workers kicked the shit out of him, and we'll do it again. Promises made, promises kept.

The unscheduled midair disassembly of American labor law means that workers can have each others' backs again. Tech workers need other workers' help, because tech workers aren't scarce anymore, not after a half-million layoffs. Which means tech bosses aren't afraid of them anymore.

We know how tech bosses treat workers they aren't afraid of. Look at Jeff Bezos: the workers in his warehouses are injured on the job at 3 times the national rate, his delivery drivers have to pee in bottles, and they are monitored by AI cameras that snitch on them if their eyeballs aren't in the proscribed orientation or if their mouth is open too often while they drive, because policy forbids singing along to the radio.

By contrast, Amazon coders get to show up for work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand. They get to pee whenever they want. Jeff Bezos isn't sentimental about tech workers, nor does he harbor a particularized hatred of warehouse workers and delivery drivers. He treats his workers as terribly as he can get away with. That means that the pee bottles are coming for the coders, too.

It's not just Amazon, of course. Take Apple. Tim Cook was elevated to CEO in 2011. Apple's board chose him to succeed founder Steve Jobs because he is the guy who figured out how to shift Apple's production to contract manufacturers in China, without skimping on quality assurance, or suffering leaks of product specifications ahead of the company's legendary showy launches.

Today, Apple's products are made in a gigantic Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou nicknamed "iPhone City.” Indeed, these devices arrive in shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles in a state of pristine perfection, manufactured to the finest tolerances, and free of any PR leaks.

To achieve this miraculous supply chain, all Tim Cook had to do was to make iPhone City a living hell, a place that is so horrific to work that they had to install suicide nets around the worker dorms to catch the plummeting bodies of workers who were so brutalized by Tim Cook's sweatshop that they attempted to take their own lives.

Tim Cook is also not sentimentally attached to tech workers, nor is he hostile to Chinese assembly line workers. He just treats his workers as badly as he can get away with, and with mass layoffs in the tech sector he can treat his coders much, much worse

How do tech workers get unions? Well, there are tech-specific organizations like Tech Solidarity and the Tech Workers Coalition. But tech workers will only get unions by having solidarity with other workers and receiving solidarity back from them. We all need to support every union. All workers need to have each other's backs.

We are entering a period of omnishambolic polycrisis.The ominous rumble of climate change, authoritarianism, genocide, xenophobia and transphobia has turned into an avalanche. The perpetrators of these crimes against humanity have weaponized the internet, colonizing the 21st century's digital nervous system, using it to attack its host, threatening civilization itself.

The enshitternet was purpose-built for this kind of apocalyptic co-option, organized around giant corporations who will trade a habitable planet and human rights for a three percent tax cut, who default us all into twiddle-friendly algorithmic feed, and block the interoperability that would let us escape their clutches with the backing of powerful governments whom they can call upon to "protect their IP rights."

It didn't have to be this way. The enshitternet was not inevitable. It was the product of specific policy choices, made in living memory, by named individuals.

No one came down off a mountain with two stone tablets, intoning Tony Clement, James Moore: Thou shalt make it a crime for Canadians to jailbreak their phones. Those guys chose enshittification, throwing away thousands of comments from Canadians who warned them what would come of it.

We don't have to be eternal prisoners of the catastrophic policy blunders of mediocre Tory ministers. As the omnicrisis polyshambles unfolds around us, we have the means, motive and opportunity to craft Canadian policies that bolster our sovereignty, protect our rights, and help us to set every technology user, in every country (including the USA) free.

The Trump presidency is an existential crisis but it also presents opportunities. When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. We once had an old, good internet, whose major defect was that it required too much technical expertise to use, so all our normie friends were excluded from that wondrous playground.

Web 2.0's online services had greased slides that made it easy for anyone to get online, but escaping from those Web 2.0 walled gardens meant was like climbing out of a greased pit. A new, good internet is possible, and necessary. We can build it, with all the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the ease of use of Web 2.0.

A place where we can find each other, coordinate and mobilize to resist and survive climate collapse, fascism, genocide and authoritarianism. We can build that new, good internet, and we must.

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/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/#enshittification-eh

[coochiequeens]

On the 35th anniversary of The École Polytechnique massacre never forget the 14 women who were killed for being women in science

The École Polytechnique massacre (French: tuerie de l'École polytechnique), also known as the Montreal massacre, was an antifeminist mass shooting that occurred on December 6, 1989 at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec. Fourteen women were murdered; another ten women and four men were injured.

Perpetrator Marc Lépine, armed with a legally obtained Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle and hunting knife, entered a mechanical engineering class at the École Polytechnique. He ordered the women to one side of the classroom, and instructed the men to leave. After claiming that he was "fighting feminism", he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. The shooter then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women, for just under 20 minutes. He killed eight more women before ending his own life. In total, 14 women were killed, and 14 others were injured.

The massacre is now widely regarded as an anti-feminist attack and representative of wider societal violence against women; the anniversary of the massacre is commemorated as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. After the attack, Canadians debated various interpretations of the events, their significance, and the shooter's motives. Other interpretations emphasized the shooter's abuse as a child or suggested that the massacre was the isolated act of a madman, unrelated to larger social issues

The incident led to more stringent gun control laws in Canada, and increased action to end violence against women. It also resulted in changes in emergency services protocols to shootings, including immediate, active intervention by police. These changes were later credited with minimizing casualties during incidents in Montreal and elsewhere. The massacre remained the deadliest mass shooting in Canada until the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks over 30 years later.[4]

Contents

Timeline

Sometime after 4 p.m. on December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine arrived at the building housing the École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal, armed with a Ruger Mini-14 rifle and a hunting knife.[5] He had purchased the gun less than a month earlier on November 21 in a Checkmate Sports store in Montreal. He had told the clerk that he was going to use it to hunt small game.[6] He had been in and around the École Polytechnique building at least seven times in the weeks leading up to December 6.[5]

The perpetrator first sat in the office of the registrar on the second floor for a while, where he was seen rummaging through a plastic bag. He did not speak to anyone, even when a staff member asked if she could help him.[2] He then left the office and was seen in other parts of the building before entering a second-floor mechanical engineering class of about sixty students at about 5:10 p.m.[7] After approaching the student giving a presentation, he asked everyone to stop everything and ordered the women and men to opposite sides of the classroom. No one moved at first, believing it to be a joke until he fired a shot into the ceiling.[8][9]

Lépine then separated the nine women from the approximately fifty men and ordered the men to leave.[10][9] He asked the women whether they knew why they were there; instead of replying, a student asked who he was. He answered that he was fighting feminism.[9][11] One of the students, Nathalie Provost, protested that they were women studying engineering, not feminists fighting against men or marching to prove that they were better. He responded by opening fire on the students from left to right, killing six—Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, and Annie St-Arneault—and wounding three others, including Provost.[9][11] Before leaving the room, he wrote the word "shit" twice on a student project.[10]

The gunman continued into the second-floor corridor and wounded three students before entering another room where he twice attempted to shoot a female student. When his weapon failed to fire, he entered the emergency staircase where he was seen reloading his gun. He returned to the room he had just left, but the students had locked the door; he failed to unlock it with three shots fired into the door. Moving along the corridor, he shot at others, wounding one, before moving towards the financial services office, where he shot and killed Maryse Laganière through the window of the door she had just locked.[12][11]

The perpetrator next went down to the first-floor cafeteria, in which about 100 people were gathered. He shot nursing student Barbara Maria Klucznick near the kitchens and wounded another student, and the crowd scattered. Entering an unlocked storage area at the end of the cafeteria, the gunman shot and killed Anne-Marie Edward and Geneviève Bergeron, who were hiding there. He told a male and female student to come out from under a table; they complied and were not shot.[13]: 30 [11]

The shooter then walked up an escalator to the third floor where he shot and wounded one female and two male students in the corridor. He entered another classroom and told the men to "get out", shooting and wounding Maryse Leclair, who was standing on the low platform at the front of the classroom, giving a presentation.[13]: 26–27  He fired on students in the front row and then killed Maud Haviernick and Michèle Richard who were trying to escape the room, while other students dived under their desks.[11][13]: 30–31  The killer moved towards some of the female students, wounding three of them and killing Annie Turcotte. He changed the magazine in his weapon and moved to the front of the class, shooting in all directions. At this point, the wounded Leclair asked for help; the gunman unsheathed his hunting knife and stabbed her three times, killing her. He took off his cap, wrapped his coat around his rifle, exclaimed, "Oh shit", and then killed himself with a shot to the head, 20 minutes after having begun his attack.[14][13]: 31–32  About 60 unfired cartridges remained in the boxes he carried with him.[14][13]: 26–27 

After briefing reporters outside, Montreal Police director of public relations Pierre Leclair entered the building and found his daughter Maryse's stabbed body.[15][16]

The Quebec and Montreal governments declared three days of mourning.[15] A joint funeral for nine of the women was held at Notre-Dame Basilica on December 11, 1989, and was attended by Governor General Jeanne Sauvé, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, and Montreal mayor Jean Doré, along with thousands of other mourners.

The Victims

Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student

Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student

Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student

Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student

Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student

Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student

Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department

Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student

Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student

Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student

Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student

Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student

Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student

Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student

[aziraphales-library]

I’m not looking for any specific fics, but Season 2, for some reason, has me itching for Really Rich Aziraphale and Escort!Crowley. Maybe Businessman!Aziraphale??

You can check our #sugar daddy au and #sex worker crowley tags for fics you'll enjoy. Here are more in which Aziraphale is a man of means...

The Hand That Feeds You by saretton & TawnyOwl95 (E)

1950s. When Dr Fell takes on queer sex worker Anthony Crowley to help with his illicit research on the physiological aspects of homosexuality, neither of them had imagined that things were about to get so personal. The things one does for science.

Prince and a Prostitute are so titled when chained together by Augenblickgotter (E)

Crowley is a smart streetwise and very attractive prostitute that had been working his trade in the commune of Tadfield. Life took a sharp turn for his line work and is even harder now that his chained in a dungeon with injuries. A naïve young high class man enter his life and may or may not be the key to escape, even if they can't seem to stand each other. Initially.

Love For Sale by ranguvar82 (E)

Baron Aziraphale Fell has no time nor inclination to form any sort of relationship. He simply wants sex. To that end, he routinely hires a monthly companion. This way, there's no strings, no feelings, and no problems. This routine has served him well. But then Madam Tracy, the owner of the brothel he frequents the most, sells him Anthony Crowley, and the Baron can't help but be fascinated by the fiery redhead. Anthony is a Rose, a highly trained and skilled escort. He knows just how to behave, how to be Baron Fell's perfect companion and lover. He just wishes he knew what to do about the fact that his heart races every time Baron Fell smiles at him. A tale of love for sale, love for rent, and how even the most jaded can still fall.

what i call life (what would you do?) by Vagabond (E)

Crowley lives a life of indentured servitude to Lucifer, a man who runs an escort and companion service. His life is one client after another, until a man named Aziraphale Fell hires him to be a companion at a sibling's wedding. Crowley had no idea that this chance encounter would put him on a path to freedom, and, just maybe, to finding love.

The Prince's Consort by IneffableToreshi (E)

Anthony Crowley has spent the majority of his life in Lucian's brothel, being specially trained and kept 'pure' for his eventual master. When he is finally purchased - despite Lucian's true wishes - he finds his world being very dramatically turned on its head. Not only has he been purchased for the man who will be the most powerful in the kingdom, but he also, unexpected, finds himself falling head over heels in love.

Temple of the Muses by AJ_Constantine (E)

It’s the start of the Season in 1841 Victorian England. Mr Anthony Crowley has left a life of working at a luxurious high end bordello in Paris behind him and is now a courtesan intent on climbing the social ladder in London to increase his status and social connections. After unexpectedly inheriting the title of the Earl of Eastgate, Aziraphale finds himself trying to navigate the complicated world of the aristocracy. Duke Gabriel purchases a month-long contract with Mr Crowley for Lord Fell as a surprise gift to Aziraphale’s astonishment and dismay. He declines to take full advantage of Crowley’s charms but agrees to an arrangement of pretending to be Crowley’s paramour in exchange for lessons on the etiquette and expectations of Society. It’s a practical arrangement, nothing more. Certainly no feelings will be involved...

- Mod D

[steadfastpetrel]

Worth Existing (or, Frank Webster Gives Keegan An Existential Crisis)

been busy this semester, but have a reflection comic I got away with making for an information history class! it's rambling, but i had some fun digesting my thoughts.

image descriptions from alt: The title page contains the title “Worth Existing, or: Frank Webster gives Keegan an existential crisis.” In front of a mirror, Keegan stands with their back facing the viewer as a reflection of them as a librarian looks back worriedly.

Page 1 features a sequential cartoonish sequence of Keegan’s head rolling and landing on his shoulders. He says: “Finding out how we’ve come to view our information society has been a ride. My pea brain can only fit so much, ideas only roll vaguely when I try to talk about what I’ve learned, but I’m at least seeing things from new eyes. More specifically…”

Dialogue continues on Page 2, 3 panels sequentially zoom in on a horrified Keegan. She says, “I’m seeing how much Frank Webster hates libraries.” The quote from the book she’s reading is as follows: “Moreover, library staff have benefited disproportionately from the establishment of these services, being provided with secure and pleasant (if not lavishly remunerated) employment. Why, one might ask, does the public purse need to support the likes of Agatha Christie and Jeremy Clarkson when their books are readily available for cheap purchase and their literary merit, still more their intellectual and uplifting qualities, are at best of minor significance. Such observations raise questions regarding the efficacy with which public libraries actually operate. It follows that a driving force behind their establishment and continued state support, the appeal to mitigate the inequalities of capitalism in the informational domain, seems to have been less than fully effective.” End quote.

Page 3 has Keegan looking with hands clasped, paused. They then look at the camera, asking “Did the dude just insult Agatha Christie?” The bottom has them lying on their bed, looking up at the ceiling in thought, saying “There’s something that just bugged me ever since I read that chapter. I never really understood the theory we talked about in class, it’s a skill I’m working on, but the weird beef he has with libraries at least gave me a vibe on ‘Hayekian Neoliberalism.’ And also how weird it is that capitalism got so far into deciding what’s worth existing. If the thing I wanna do with my life is worth existing.”

On Page 4, Keegan walks with his crutches as the dialogue continues. “I could go on for hours about all that sucks with Webster’s opinions! Of course I want the staff to ‘disproportionately’ benefit from their work. Unlike books, people have to eat! What’s ironic about Webster’s whole spiel about the efficacy of libraries is that he provides several examples of figures from his area heavily aided by libraries. Panels feature novelist John Banville, author Jeannette Winterson, and sociologist Richard Hoggart. Keegan continues and says, “And yet he goes on to be like…”

Page 5, a sock puppet speaks angrily: “People are getting free books and are hurting the poor bookseller! Libraries are stupid because it doesn’t miraculously fix the inequalities of capitalism!” To the side, the text says “Artist’s exaggeration. Don’t take this seriously.” Bottom panel contains Keegan pointing with her thumb at Frank Webster’s Wikipedia page. She says, “I wouldn’t be so hung up if this was some random guy, but considering this guy is so largely quoted and touted in my field of information sciences? Ouch obviously doesn’t cut how much all that stung.”

Page 6 contains an Asian man with a bun protesting banned books. The next panel contains a white woman with a turtleneck reading in a library as a winter storm brews outside. Keegan off-screen says, “While Webster calls libraries ‘censors of society,’ librarians are fighting vehemently against book bannings! And the way he says that public libraries are ‘captured by the better-off section of society?’ Like what, you’re going to ignore how libraries act as comfortable spaces for folks without housing during harsher months?”

On Page 7 a gavel bangs on a panel. “As if that’s not enough, publishers are suing libraries for distributing e-books, calling them ‘direct economic competitors’ when, if anything, they often support these publishers and their authors by buying multiple copies, hosting events and collaborating with local businesses.” As an example, the comic features a scene of a Black woman in a cardigan talking to a white cashier with a shaved head. She says to them, “I just read this at my library earlier and just needed to get my own copy! Can’t believe it took me this long to discover this author!” A panel below, a pair of hands scoops sand and watches it flow from their fingers. Keegan says, “I don’t know. Even in good company, it sometimes feels like the future is slipping through my fingers.”

Page 8 is a pillar of falling sand. Embedded in it is an Apple pencil, a floating feather, and a book. Keegan narrates, “As an artist and a writer, it’s wondering if I’ll be prioritized over a generative AI that doesn’t have to eat or sleep. As a birder, it’s wondering if the backyard visitors I always see at my feeder will end up as myths and taxidermied specimens. As a librarian, it’s wondering if the institutions I often called home will be felled by the swift axe that the invisible hand holds. It’s a weird feeling of perpetual free fall for a drop that is light years away.”

Page 9, Keegan is holding a book to the sky as they read it. They narrate “Learning is a language I’ve always used to make sense of the thoughts I’ve had swirling in my brain. Finding out ‘information capitalism’ was a thing was like learning about the leash that has pulled at my throat since I entered the schooling system. I am learning because I am not a person, but a tool to be put to a trade. The world around me whispers in my ear…”

“Feel wonder if you must, but don’t linger long enough to turn in something too late.” On page 10, Keegan lies on a grassy field looking up with the book on his chest. He narrates, “I can’t deny that’s a message hard to unhear. As of now, I don’t think I remember much before 2022 other than the grades I got.”

On page 11, a hand wipes a bathroom wall with a sponge. The bottom of the page is filled with floating bubbles. Keegan narrates, “This sounds silly, but I was in tears when I heard about the concept of degrowth this past week. It could’ve been the clorox I was using to clean my bathroom, but the toil of my body and mind must’ve come to some crashing conclusion when I listened past what we were assigned.” The quote goes, They’re essentially making the argument that if we stay on this growth path, the only end to that is, you know, our own extinction. They are not just saying it’s not possible. They’re also saying it’s not desirable. It’s the kind of life that you and I ultimately do not want. We don’t want to drown in just stuff. We want to have a life. We want to have time for each other. We want to have time for creative thinking and art and love and kindness.” The quote ends. It comes from Vox’s Blame Capitalism: Degrowing Pains and is spoken by Dirk Phillipsen.

On page 12, Keegan sits in the bathtub with a few tears. Narration goes, “It was just nice that someone smarter than me in this topic wants the same things I do. Time to live and space to breathe. I know it’s not a perfect solution, but it’s one of those moments that culminate to tears when you’re having a rough week. This time, it was the reminder that this doesn’t have to be all there is to it. That there were people echoing my heartfelt belief that the system that tears down those I love doesn’t have to stay.

Page 13. A frog and toad book. “One-sided beef with Frank Webster aside, this unit has bolstered my love for librarianship. As hastily made and rambling this comic went, I realize I feel this strongly because I love this field so much. Against all odds, even as the internet grew to commodify knowledge, libraries adapted to the best of their abilities for their patrons. Why should some British dude make me wonder if libraries will continue to exist? As depressing as learning about capitalism gets, it’s helpful to understand the hand that takes from you. To understand why and how I’ve always been hurt by the systems that be and make sure I can lighten the blow for those who come after. I’ve learned there’s a lot that can come out of being so sad and scared about the future. Sometimes drawing it out (even if you turn in a late assignment) reminds you that there’s still so much ahead. That, and the fact I should probably read Frog and Toad sometime. So, uh, I’m gonna do that now. Bye!"

The references page lists several sources: Frank Webster’s “Theories of the Information Society.” An article by Brewster Kahle called, “The US library system, once the best in the world, faces death by a thousand cuts.” An article by Rachel Kramer Bussel called, “How Libraries Help Authors Boost Book Sales.” And a podcast episode from Vox’s Today Explained hosted by Noel King, titled “Blame Capitalism: Degrowing Pains.” end descriptions.

[moontyger]

Last Tuesday, the Trump administration told agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services — including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — to pause all public communications until February 1, including weekly scientific reports, social media posts, and public health data releases. The next day, panicked researchers posted on Bluesky and Reddit about canceled meetings, rescinded job offers and grants, and travel bans, unsure whether these disruptions were part of the communications freeze.

Nearly all biomedical researchers in academia, and many working for private companies, rely in some way on money from the NIH. Labs are run like small businesses, with senior scientists constantly applying for grants to keep the lights on, buy supplies, and pay their salaries. NIH grants account for a large portion of academic research funding, and universities rely on the federal government to help pay for buildings, expensive equipment like microscopes and MRI scanners, and staff.

Once someone submits a grant application to the NIH, it goes to a “study section,” a panel of 20–30 scientists chosen to review a stack of applications in their area of expertise. (It’s kind of like jury duty for nerds.) Panelists assign each project proposal a score based on its scientific promise, then pass the graded projects on to a separate “advisory council,” a group of scientists, ethicists, public health experts, and laypeople, which chooses which projects to fund.

Wrangling two dozen scientists with packed schedules to do a bunch of barely paid work requires advanced planning and months of logistical preparation. Rescheduling a canceled meeting can take months, which can then delay awarded funds just as long. Freezing the grant system affects clinical trials, too — some people have already reported canceled appointments for potentially life-saving experimental cancer treatments. (A memo shared with agency leaders yesterday clarified that ongoing clinical trials should not be affected.) Jaime Seltzer, the scientific director at MEAction, a nonprofit serving people with infection-associated chronic illness, told me that despite working outside of academia, she’s worried that if she loses access to crucial NIH-affiliated staff and data repositories, their work on long Covid and chronic fatigue syndrome will be put on hold.

Scientists at the NIH were told that purchasing and equipment repairs are also on hold, which could prevent researchers from replacing basic supplies like gloves, medicine, and equipment. Many experiments hinge on precise timing: even a one-week delay in purchasing could derail an entire project, setting research back months. Because scientific institutions are powered by short-term grants and young, transient workers, an experiment delayed by a few months may never get done at all.

[nomellamocata]

¡Hola!🖐🏽 Soy Katherine, artista y arquitecta especialista en patrimonio y quiero contarte sobre mi trabajo 👇🏾

[ES]

Soy Magíster en Intervención del Patrimonio Arquitectónico por la Universidad de Chile. Vivo en Buenos Aires y actualmente soy estudiante avanzada de Conservación-Restauración de Bienes Culturales en la Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA).

Me dedico al trabajo interdisciplinario con artistas y profesionales de las ciencias sociales en temas de preservación patrimonial, DDHH y gestión cultural. Esto ha permeado mi producción artística, abordando la idea de lugar como repositorio de la memoria, la identidad, el pensamiento y las emociones.

Actualmente (2025) me encuentro elaborando mi primer cuerpo de obra llamado "¿Cómo una vida puede traspasar fronteras?” en @comounavida También realizo asesorías en proyectos de restauración en Chile. En este espacio podrás ver todos los proyectos en los que me encuentro trabajando en las más diversas áreas: #conservacion #restauracion #arte #arquitectura y #gestioncultural

Si buscas desarrollar un proyecto en estas áreas o adquirir algunas de mis obras, no dudes en contactarme ☀️

Derechos de autor

Mi obra está protegida bajo la modalidad de Reconocimiento-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Puedes ver más detalles en el siguiente enlace: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.es [EN]

Hi! 🖐🏽 I’m Katherine, an artist and architect specializing in heritage, and I’d love to tell you about my work 👇🏾

I hold a Master’s degree in Architectural Heritage Intervention from the University of Chile. I live in Buenos Aires and am currently an advanced student in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage at the National University of the Arts (UNA).

I specialize in interdisciplinary work with artists and social science professionals on topics related to heritage preservation, human rights, and cultural management. This has deeply influenced my artistic production, focusing on the idea of place as a repository of memory, identity, thought, and emotions.

Currently (2025), I am developing my first artwork titled "How Can a Life Cross Borders?" on @comounavida. I also provide consultancy services for restoration projects in Chile. In this space, you can find all the projects I’m currently involved in across diverse fields: conservation, restoration, art, architecture and culturalmanagement.

If you’re looking to develop a project in these areas or purchase one of my works, don’t hesitate to contact me ☀️

Copyright

My work is protected under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). You can find more details at the following link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en

[astonishinglegends]

Ep 297: The Ghost Ship Carroll A. Deering

"Like a ‘Flying Dutchman,’ the five-masted schooner Carroll A. Deering loomed through the mists about Diamond Shoals today, all sails set, but un-manned."  -- The Washington Herald, February 3, 1921

Description:

In 1921, a five-masted schooner emerged from the mists of North Carolina’s treacherous coast - a floating tomb devoid of life. Eleven souls had vanished without a trace, leaving behind an eerie tableau of abandonment. We delve into this chilling mystery tonight and attempt to unravel a web of bizarre clues: inexplicably damaged equipment, missing shore boats, and whispers of aberrant crew behavior from passing ships. Was it a bloodthirsty mutiny? Ruthless pirates? A clandestine rum-running operation gone awry? Or perhaps something far more sinister lurks in human nature’s depths - or beyond? The Carroll A. Deering is a haunting mystery, reminding us that some secrets of the sea may never be fully uncovered, leaving our imaginations to run wild with unsettling possibilities.

Reference Links:

“The Carroll A. Deering, Ghost Ship of Cape Hatteras” from the Historical Blindness podcast

“Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals: The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering” by Bland Simpson

Carroll A. Deering on Wikipedia

Diamond Shoals, NC

Outer Banks (OBX), NC

Salvage 1

Nitrocellulose, AKA “Gun Cotton”

“An Outer Banks Reader” edited by David Stick

Bland Simpson

The Red Clay Ramblers

The schooner Wyoming, the largest known wooden ship ever built

Coney Island Cyclone

Roy P. Disney’s “Pyewacket 70 takes Monohull Line Honours in the RORC Caribbean 600”

“Sailing Cargo Ships are Making a Genuine Comeback” from The Maritime Executive

Cape Hatteras entry from the National Park Service

Kitty Hawk from OuterBanks.org

Cape Hatteras Light Station entry from the National Park Service

Cutter ship Seminole, 1900

“The Ghost Ship of the Outer Banks” from the National Park Service

Binnacle

Yawl

Merritt-Chapman & Scott Corporation

Marine chronometer

John Harrison, inventor of the Marine Chronometer

“Patriarch of Maine Shipbuilding: The Life and Ships of Gardiner G. Deering” by Kenneth R. Martin

“Captain Willis B. Wormell” entry from the Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering blog

Senator Schröder (ship)

Hermann Knüfken

Lightship

Quarterdeck

Bridgetown, Barbados

Law of salvage

SS Hewitt

Cargo ship Lake Elon

Location:

Diamond Shoals, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where The Carroll A. Deering was spotted having run aground with no one onboard.

Suggested Listening:

The Why Files: Operation Podcast

Like many podcasts, the Why Files covers conspiracies, aliens, time travel, and ancient civilizations. Some people are very serious about this stuff. They believe every detail, even if the details don't quite add up. Others tear the stories apart. What fun is that? The Why Files is different. First, they explore the mystery, and then together, we separate fact from fiction and see what's left. Some legends can't be debunked. And those are their favorites. The Why Files is available on Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts. The X Files said the truth is out there, but the Why Files says the truth is right here. 

Suggested Merch:

CLICK HERE to purchase prints and merchandise from Star Wars’ first ship designer, Colin Cantwell, at ColinCantwell.com!

There are still nearly two dozen exclusive prints of his amazing work available for purchase. Head over to colincantwell.com, and use the Promo Code DROID for a 15% Holiday Discount! And here’s why it’s special — each purchase helps support the TSJ Foundation’s mission to inspire youth in STEAM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math.

Related Books:

Donate to the middleway conservancy!

Click HERE to donate and help keep the historic village that is the home of the wizard clip alive!

From the Astonishing Legends Network:

Find us on YouTube!

Click this text to find all Astonishing Legends episodes and more on our Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/Astonishinglegends

Join us on Patreon!

Click HERE or go to patreon.com/astonishinglegends to become one of our Patreon members and receive exclusive offerings, like our bonus Astonishing Junk Drawer episodes (posted every weekend the main show is dark) commercial-free episodes, and more!

SPECIAL OFFERS FROM OUR SPECIAL SPONSORS:

FIND OTHER GREAT DEALS FROM OUR SHOW’S SPONSORS BY CLICKING HERE!

CREDITS:

Episode 297: The Ghost Ship Carroll A. Deering. Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess. Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound. Music and Sound Design by Allen Carrescia. Tess Pfeifle, Producer and Lead Researcher. Ed Voccola, Technical Producer. Research Support from The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2024 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

[fredfilmsblog]

Frederator Networks interns, autumn 2015, left to right: Fred, Sam Lee (University of Michigan), Josette Roberts (SVA), Jenny Brent (SUNY Purchase), Judy Tam (SVA), Lisa Franklin (Brown), Liz Chun (RISD), Danielle Ceneta (Syracuse), Peter Carlson (Ringling) Photo by Kirsten Wagstaff

Why I like interns. 

This post is from 2015 when I was running Frederator Networks, a much larger company than FredFilms. But most of the sentiments (we now pay interns, when we have them, which is NOT NOW) continue to be true.

And, I have to say, the part I find most unlikely but most true is... interns are our mentors. Seriously.

There’s been a lot of squabbling in the press this year about interns, especially in the media and technology businesses. And since I’ve had rookie programs in place for several decades, it seemed like a good time to weigh in.

Science? Or The Beatles?

For me, it’s personal. Back in the day (my day, that is), there were no organized apprenticeship programs that I knew of to prepare me for the work life I was seeking. But a lot of helpful people gave me guidance, and I want to pay it forward.

I grew up in a science family, knowing I’d be a scientist too. And then The Beatles came to America, and like a lot of other kids, my world got turned upside down. Eventually, I became determined to be in the recording business as a record producer. The problem was I knew no one who could help. And so I started to make my own way, in what to me was an underground, secret society. As full time, liberal arts college student it the 70s, there was no NYU Clive Davis Institute, Full Sail University. No Mix Magazine, noTape Op. I was totally on my own. I found one class taught by an RCA recording engineer and producer, and one highly technical publication. I stumbled into private recording sessions, asked anyone who knew anything, bullied my way into record companies.

There were no internships. I hadn’t even heard the term.

There were dozens of nice people who helped me and taught me things along the way. I worked in hundreds of circumstances for free, making mistakes and successes along the way, basically creating my own training path. I figured things out, started a record company, got a gig here and there. I rubbed shoulders with enough world class experts to figure out I had staked out the wrong direction for myself, and by the time I was 30, found myself in the television business. It all eventually worked out for me.

But, if there had been someplace for me to start fathoming what was going on, somewhere where I could smell what the scene was, I could have learned things a lot faster, and maybe cordoned off my path into the right direction a little sooner.

Interns aren’t easy.

For years it was hard for us to attract interns. Most of my companies have been startups, or below the radar service organizations, not famous ones at that. We really had to search, reaching out to local colleges and putting our best foot forward, hoping to attract minimally interested candidates. (Things have changed dramatically, ever since we produced Adventure Time and started Cartoon Hangover. Now we have to cut things off when we get 250 applications per semester, for less than 10 spots). Occasionally, an eager high school student would show up and ask to stick around, and despite the anxieties of our lawyers and insurance carriers, we worked things out.

I couldn’t tell you the exact criteria we’ve used to select contenders. But, I must say, our highly subjective process has resulted in some stellar colleagues and often, friends.

And intern programs aren’t easy to administer. We’re not heavily staffed, so whomever is responsible for the program is usually fitting it into an already over packed work day. And frankly, most of the students come into our place eager, but really rough around the edges. Many have no real work ethic, daily discipline, or much of an ability to actually interact with the adults in the workplace. I mean, they’re kids, after all.

On balance though, from my limited perspective, while internships sometimes put a burden on our small staff, our company has come out all the richer. Especially these days, as the way young people set the agenda for technology use and innovation, having the innocent perspective of new faces streaming in and out of our offices makes us sharper, smarter, and fresher.

And based on the long term relationship we have with many of our past candidates, the benefit has definitely been in both directions.

Interns are our mentors.

“No one hires interns,” says a disgruntled one in a recent New York Times story in the aftermath of some of the unpaid intern lawsuits.

I’m of two minds about the discontent. On the one hand, it’s clear that many companies are using interns as unpaid labor. Totally unjust. And, there’s a good argument that unpaid internships often favor well off students. But, it’s also true that internship programs can cost companies in real opportunity cost and productivity losses, as time spent away from daily workflow. Definitely, interns can be a double edged sword.

At my company, we don’t pay interns as a matter of policy. [The policy changed at Frederator, and now at FredFilms, we will pay interns.] As a start up we’re thinly resourced as it is, and any extra dollars are needed to keep the wheels on the bus. But, more importantly to me, I want people who actually want to be at Frederator, not someone who just wanted something cool to do for a while. Not for nothing, it’s the same criteria we use for employees. If someone comes into our offices with no clue about who we are, what we do, and what we stand for, we show them the door. We’re not a place for people who work to live, we live to work.

All that being said, we work super hard to be fair. If there’s an intern job in the house that we would pay a freelancer to do, the intern gets paid. We also limit their time at the office to two or three days a week. That gives a chance for more people to get exposure, and it encourages them to be out in the world rather than cooped up with us old working folk.

At the end of the day, some interns are good, and some are really bad. And, it’s true, not all good interns get hired. However, I can say with great assurance that my companies hired interns 30 years ago, and we hired interns 30 days ago. I think it’s safe to say that fully 25% of our current, full time team started in our internship programs.

And honestly, the former interns are some of my very favorite colleagues.

The interns in my shops remind me of why I wanted to get working the minute I was done with schooling (actually, before I finished, but that’s another essay). They’re intelligent, they’re fun, they know things I’ll never know. Sure, I can give them some benefits too, but the thing they don’t realize is that while we’re mentoring them, they’re actually mentoring us.

Fair trade, in my book. I really like interns.

[thesopwithcamel]

The Three Hat's AU: Large vehicles

The large Vehicles in A hat in Time take many large, in my au I want to give some more technical aspects about them or even make some pretty drastic changes to the lore about them.

These concern the Owl and science expresses, The Trains in the metro, Ol' Stella and the SS literally can't sink which has been abrieviated to LCS(and by extention its younger sister the SS Absolutely Will Not Sink or AWNS).

The Owl Express:

The railway the Owl Express travels on was built in 6478 ATB by an independant railway company in the Confederation of Avian States (C.A.S), the Owl Express isn't the only train in 1HT but it is the first and only mainline transcontinental service. Its quite a surprise how it hasn't been taken over by the goverment due to how many unautharised stops are made each journey, it is also a miracle that the locomotive and rolling stock are in peak condition especially with its use in films and regular incidents.

The Owl express runs on a 1435mm railway gauge and has a consist of around 5 wagons and a caboose being pulled by an oil-burning tank locomotive capable of reahing speeds of 75mph, The wagons pulled by the owl express are around 55.5 feet high and are around 10.7 feet wide albiet the interior is quite a bit larger than the exterior.

The locomotive is an oil burning 2-6-4t which can rumble at speeds of up to 120kph and with its rather sizable boiler can generate enough power to go at these consistant speeds, the reason why an electric horn was the original steam whistle was shot off during production of the 3rd Conductors 1st movie. The current conductor has been trying to recover it ever since. It was built at around the same time the railway was finishing construction

There have been 4 conductor's since the trains construction, including our current one.

The Science express:

Basically 2HT's version of the Owl Express but unlike the Owl express was more serious and made use of many advances in experimental technology, causing the Alice in Wonderland size shennaniganry. The science owls use this train for their experiments and also for transport.

The train is ran by Gregg, Walter and Redd as well as 2HT's version of the Conductor, externally the Science and Owl expresses are almost exactly the same but internally there are many differences which make both of them stand out.

The Science Express was the development location of New Earth's KL-11, an alternate version of the Korean K11 assault rifle , which was rejected by the Metro's police force because of its cost in favour of the KL-7 (K7) Submachine gun, Caitlyn recieves the original KL-11 prototype after she stops the Shapeshifter's rampage.

The external dimensions of the Science Express are the same as those on the owl express.

The locomotive of the Science express uses an experimental steam-Diesel hybrid system, it looks like it's working to since a more conventional locomotive hasn't replaced it yet. (the system exists irl look it up).

Shapeshifter is Natalie's shadow but had been originally contained in the Science express and experimented on for most of her life, when he escaped she decided to go on a murder spree before being kicked into the firebox of the Owl express.

The Metro Trains

Run on a hollowrail system, a system created in the metro seperate of the original railways, originally these rails were served by more conventional diesel-electric Multiple Units on more conventional rails but concerns about hygene and the carbon emmissions caused a full conversion to Hollowrail which started in 6544 ATB and ended in 6611 ATB but due to them being unable to purchase specially built rolling stock and lacking the material to make their own they instead removed the engines and genetically created these giant fuckoff cats to run them.

Can average the same speeds as your average London Tube train while being similar scale to the most up to date New York Subway units, the cat's aren't very fast when pulling the trains but can hit 100Kmh if pressed and without a burden.

The Empress has some say in what funding is put into the Metro since the Nyakuza was originally created by workers running the original Diesel Electric multiple unit's who grew disatsfied but due to several anti Union laws passed at the time they had to form this group to get their opinions and points across, violently.

The Metro's technology far outstrips the rest of the planet unless you count Caitlyn's ship as part of the rest of the planet.

Sirius Model yacht MK 14 conversion 'Ol' Stella'

The above is the full designation of Caitlyn's ship, since it is the 14th conversion of the Sirius Model Yacht.

Caitlyn built this out of a decommisioned Sirius Yacht and whatever shit she had lying around on hand to weild or bolt on which included starfighter engines and a bomb bay in the engine room, turned out to be surprisingly durable which was placed on full display when a prototype starfighter colided with it and Ol' Stella casually strolled away with little to no damage.

Stella's top speed in atmosphere is mach 54 and can has a 7 second accelaration from standing still to lightspeed.

Stella is armed with several pairs of plasma cannons and can be converted into probably the scariest close air support/ground attack platform ever due to Caitlyn's insistance that cluster munitions because they aren't forbidden by any intergalactic treaties.

Due to Stella making so many long distance high speed trips the Time Piece vault was expanded and modifed to feed into the core fragment tank in order to refill it without having to stop anywhere.

The events of A hat in Time were indirectly caused by Caitlyn neglecting proper maintenace on the vault door and the window due to her being far away from anywhere and hoping to get it fixed up at the next space station, while Stella has no interior defences it has an alarm system which can often be either too effective or next to useless. She got hell for it when it was discovered and was banned from flying for a whole Terran year while Stella was retrofitted with the newest technology.

Caitlyn dislodging her friends with a broom is a courtesy not given to many, if the system hadn't activated the emergancy stop the ship would have shot into hyperspace killing all those hanging off (except the Snatcher) in pretty nasty ways.

Low flyovers are not advised.

Literally Can't Sink class (SS LCS and SS AWNS).

The SS LCS was built in 6600 and was originally christned by the Walrus Captain's hero figure, the ship was 128.3 meters long and could carry up to 470 passangers on cruises up to the arctic circle, it weighed in at 6,690 tons and featured technology donated by the Metro. Both the SS LCS and its successor can reach 19 knots in a calm sea.

Its sister ship the SS AWNS was built in 6628 and was originally going to be called the SS Hat Kid but evidence of Caitlyn being the one causing the sinking was found, fortunetally the company who ran the ship decided to cover up this actual reason because Caitlyn rescuing everyone and then saving their collective arses at Times End was enough of a repayment but even so extra security and safety measures were poured into the new ship. SS AWNS is bigger and heavier than SS LCS and has more to pack in its relatively small shell with it carrying an onboard motorboat for recovery of things like Time Pieces as well as two more lifeboats.

The name SS Hat Kid went to the most modern recovery ship built which ended up being a massive help when the calamity occured.

Both the LCS and the AWNS are used as junior crew training ships for younger crew.

The AWNS is famous for the infamous arctic flyover when a Time Piece spotted and collected by the seals as a present for the captain ended with Stella showing up and scaring the hell out of everyone.

The SS AWNS is the largest vehicle in this post while the metro trains are the smallest.

[willowybee]

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[hashiiiiisuniverse8]

Hello mga ka sheesh, my co- pre-service teachers and Pauliniatics. This is your newbie blogger Stephan Hashley Javier, 19 years old and not ready to be an adult huhu! I am currently taking a Bachelor of Secondary Education major in Science, and I believe that cram is the best way to finish your activities!

Come along with me and my journey in TTL promising you that this blog is full of sheshableness! :>

THESE ARE MY ANSWER IN OUR FIRST QUIZ IN TTL 1 UNDER MR. MARK FRANCIS ASTOM.

In this blog I will be tackling the different facets in Ict, and will be able to give real life scenarios in each of them. Sit back and read.

Before you start, here is some ice cream, to be more relaxed while reading. <3

____________________

Cloud Computing

Scenario:

It allows me and my fellow students to access updated learning tools from anywhere, making collaboration easier and saving time. Where we can view some digital notes and modules for us to be easy to access. The remote capacity of cloud platforms means that a more diverse range of students can also be reached by educational institutions while lowering costs.

Software

Scenario:

I use software to help me learn more efficiently. This can include games and simulators, flashcard apps, video conferencing, and some online learning apps for , online encyclopedias, or tools like calculators or spellcheckers. For me to make my learning easy. For the past 3 years we have been using some software in our daily life as students, like Microsoft 365 where it is really necessary in the learning process.

Transaction

Scenario:

We are in a transaction everyday we cannot just notice it sometimes, as a lazy person like me I like purchasing online that going to a mall to buy my necessities one of online platforms that I've been using is Tiktok shop, Shoppe, Lazada, Food Panda, and in paying them I am using gcash, gcash is very easy to use and safe also you don't need your wallet too.

Hardware

Scenario:

As an education student the first thing that we need is Gadgets like phones, laptop, printer, wifi, and etc. So it is easy for us to access some online learning access.

Digital Data

Scenario:

As a student I rely more on digital data to have more accuracy, because judgments and actions are made by computers rather than people, so it is greater accuracy in terms of assigned duties. Also it is faster and wider reached because the digital data can contact and provide data to many individuals simultaneously and at the one push of a button, it is really incredibly and considerably faster to use and to access with.

Internet Browsers

Scenario:

Web Browsers allow me to access websites, search for information, shop online, and connect with my friends worldwide. They can translate complex web code into user-friendly pages, making the internet accessible to everyone and easy to use too and it is also relevant to our journey as students and future educators.

Computers and Technology

Scenario:

Last semester in one of our subjects, the teacher required us to create our own research. We need to gather information on renewable energy sources. Computers and technology help us and guide me on how to use computers and technology effectively for our very own research. Computers and technology have really been a powerful tools for research. First, we begin by identifying reliable online sources. We also used search engines to find reputable websites, academic journals, and research papers related to renewable energy sources. We also made sure to evaluate the sources for credibility and relevance. From this scenario, we, student reallt needs to seeks guidance on using computers and technology in making research. Where even the teacher provides information on finding reliable online sources, the computers and technology still hits diff.

Online Access

Scenario;

I noticed this during the pandemic in 2020 where the pandemic started, the Philippines Local Government implemented the Digital Online Class where the students started to rely on Online sources. Then nowadays we noticed that the majority of the population relies heavily on the internet for various aspects of their lives. Country is known for its strong community spirit and commitment to progress. Where online access has become an integral part of everyday life, enabling the people to stay connected, access information, and even on conducting and relying on their businesses.

In the Philippines the local government has implemented a digital infrastructure plan to ensure that every school has access to high-speed internet. This initiative has transformed the country into a hub of digital innovation, attracting new businesses and entrepreneurs who appreciate the convenience and opportunities provided by online connectivity such as online sellings and etc.

The citizens in the Philippines and also all over the world have embraced the benefits of online access in their daily lives. Students can easily access educational resources and participate in online learning programs. Small business owners can reach a wider customer base through e-commercial platforms. Professionals and un-professionals can also work remotely, saving time and reducing commuting expenses. Even healthcare services have become more accessible through telemedicine, allowing people to consult doctors online without leaving their homes that's another benefit of online access.

The community has also leveraged online platforms to enhance social interactions and support local initiatives. Online forums and social media groups have become platforms for sharing ideas, organizing events, and fostering a sense of belonging. The students have been actively participating in virtual seminars because it is easy for them to access, they don't need to travel at all and it's less hassle, where they can freely voice their opinions and contribute to decision-making processes.

Online access has also played a crucial role ti us as we response to emergencies and natural disasters. The local government uses digital communication channels to provide real-time updates and instructions to residents, ensuring their safety and well-being. Also Online fundraising campaigns have been successful in mobilizing support during times of crisis, allowing the community to come together and help those in need.

Online access has become a lifeline for the people, empowering them to thrive in a digital age. The country serves as an example of how a strong digital infrastructure can enhance the quality of life, foster economic growth, and strengthen community bonds.

____________________________________________

Here I am emphasizing Learning process because all that I've mentioned was all interconnected w/ each other. Online access in the learning process, where the teachers can a make use of the internet by proving the students with extra study material and resources such as interactive lessons, educational quizzes as well as tutorials. Teachers can also record their lectures and provide it to the students for revisions which is better than reading from notes. We cannot deny the fact that every student always uses their gadgets so it is easy for them to access their notes when it is digital.

Online access can be applied in various ways in teaching learning in Virtual Classes Online access can be applied in teaching and learning in various ways to enhance the educational experience. Here are some examples is the Virtual Classes where Online access allows teachers and students to connect through video conferencing platforms, enabling live virtual classes, Online Learnings where we can utilize online learning platforms which the teachers can create and share educational resources such as lecture notes, videos, quizzes, and assignments, Collaborative Projects where nline access enables students to collaborate on projects and assignments, even when they are not physically present in the same location where they can also create group chats so they can communicate with each others, Multimedia Content with this the implementer can incorporate multimedia content into their lessons to make them more engaging and interactive, and also in Online Assessments where Online access allows for the administration of online assessments, including quizzes, tests, and exams or diagnostic exam trough google drives, and etc.

[vvatchword]

Metamorphosis

When Dr. Lamb published Metamorphosis, it was by her own hand. No publisher in Rapture would touch it.

“Why the hell did you come down here?” asked one, throwing the manuscript at her across his desk.

“It could not have been written had I not,” she said.

A simple cover in white linen. Embossed on the front, a jellyfish with its tentacles outflung, suggesting the shape of sun beaming down, and below, its larval stage, like a shining pearl.

“The chain of industry is characterized as a force outside of us,” wrote Dr. Lamb in her foreword, “but industry cannot and does not exist outside of human beings. Does industry form spontaneously from the earth? Does it emerge from any species other than our own? No. If it cannot exist outside of mankind, then mankind makes up its fabric, psychology, and utility, and it is foolish to ignore the donations of his time and body. Instead of representing the chain as a spiritual force above mankind, we are served better by imagining every link as an individual human life that exerts pressure on all its neighbors—a pressure which can be detected across the whole of the system itself.”

“Read at the Expense of Your Self!” wailed The Rapture Tribune.

“The Pinkos’ Little White Book!” howled The Rapture Daily Post.

“Eleanor Lamb’s Secret Father,” winked Do Tell!, which was, as always, ahead of the times.

Despite the cries of critics, the book was purchased in droves and ordered by bookstores all over Rapture. By the time the major publishers finally descended to beg forgiveness, Dr. Lamb had founded her own publisher and needed them no more. The little white building sat directly beside her own, churning out a hundred copies per day.

Most unconventional were the prices she exacted. For its wholesale price, she asked for $0.10 per book, well under market standards; from people, she asked what they would prefer to pay. “Free” was always an option.

“By demanding space between each other,” Dr. Lamb wrote, “we have only grown mad for human connection. Any promise of social interaction becomes as powerful as a drug; even the educated find themselves incapable of resisting the most questionable charlatans, and for such tawdry payment as ‘physical touch’ and ‘a listening ear.’ This physical need for touch, this psychological need for understanding, are basic requirements of every human body; not only do we ignore them at the peril of our individual emotional and physical wellbeings, we ignore them at the peril of our society’s.”

Andrew Ryan’s Sunday editorial spat acid.

“Beware the charlatan who rouges the words of science,” he wrote. “Prove that adult human beings require selflessness, Dr. Lamb: you will find a cash prize in your mailbox as soon as you do. Citizens: beware the morass of selfless living. Remember that to be selfless is to sell yourself to another’s service. And for what? The pitiful paycheck of social approbation? One must ask oneself: ‘What does Dr. Lamb gain from the sale of my soul?’”

Dr. Lamb’s editorial sprawled below his:

“Ryan is obsessed with the ‘tyrant.’ What is a tyrant? The tyrant is an individual who demands his wellbeing at the expense of all others; he suffers from the terror of victimization and the unpredictability of groups. When the tyrant views a world of plenty, he does not relax with the knowledge he shall be well; he glances aside at his fellow man and sees robbers. He fears he shall be excluded to the same extent that he would exclude them. Incapable of judging the true extent of his need and unwilling to try, he says, ‘All or nothing!’

“To the tyrant, selfishness is primarily viewed as a matter of survival: ‘If I have survived,’ he says, ‘it is because I have defeated others in order to perpetuate myself.’ Note that the tyrant describes his own manner of ascent; he does not explore alternative modes; he does not face down his own fears or heal his own psychological wounds. By fabricating a toxic environment where only he may prosper, he subjects a captive audience to his personal poison.”

In the first few weeks after the book was published, people could be seen wearing white hatbands or white ribbons on their arms—first by the handful; then the dozens; then the hundreds.

“All of us have dealt with the destructive nature of selflessness or we would not be here. Well do we understand the sacrifices demanded for the sakes of society, God, government, kings—always others, never ourselves. The erasure of our boundaries; strangers asking us to give and give and give even when we have nothing left; the theft of our time and our physical wellness and our labor with no acknowledgment or return. But if we can freely admit the failures of selflessness, we would be remiss if we did not examine those in selfishness. The true question is not which mode of thought is better; the question is, ‘In what context is it best utilized?’”

True Believers gathered on the street corners and watched her building, smoking cheap cigarettes.

“The astute reader will note that these beliefs are not limited to tyrants. Central to the philosophy is fear of attack and a citizenry at constant war with itself. But why should the philosophy fear attack in a modern society made up only of its constituents? Have we not invited only the best of mankind? Why, then, is it wrapped up in the terms of war? Who is fighting whom, and why? Why must all human interactions be defined by the brutality of battle? Why the expectation of destruction instead of that of diplomacy, friendship, communion, education, or art?

“And think of the outcome: for it is one thing to destroy the parasite—but here we destroy paragons, those who believe everything we hold dear, who possess incredible abilities and knowledge that might uplift us all—who, left to their own devices on the surface, might have brought that Sodom to some greater understanding.”

The buildings beside Lamb’s went up in white, one by one by one.

“How many geniuses toil here in obscurity? Have we taken them from the surface only to destroy them? What use is a destroyed glory? Who knows how many beautiful things we have lured down here to die? What use is the philosophy if it only benefits a few, if it upholds the monochrome monolith over the multi-faceted glories of ten thousand teeming brains? What happens when an environment has been tooled to benefit the few over the many?”

A pamphlet began passing around the Drop, ripped from the book and printed rogue by some starry-eyed stranger:

“The philosophy’s intent is to glorify the best in humankind. But what is the reality? It is this: the powerful destroys the powerless. What is the powerful? He who retains the most material goods, social currency, or physical strength—none of which depend on the quality of the idea, but the transmission of it.

“If the idea could come alone, by itself, and be instantly understood, this would be one thing; but all ideas come couched in human beings. Will a Negro scientist with poor diction and no funds fare better than a white Adonis with a charismatic disposition and a tycoon father? In my position, I have met many of the former and none of the latter.

“Why do we expect that the most excellent idea comes couched in power? Perhaps it is to justify the powerful class. Perhaps it is to justify the philosophy’s existence, to soothe our wounded consciousnesses, a survivor’s bias—to reassure ourselves that we have overcome because we have simply tried harder, cared more, possessed fewer vices. But how often does progress come as the dissenting voice, the voice of the small, the evidence we would prefer not to notice and can afford not to?

“In short, the powerless is not destroyed because he is incapable—far from it! No, the best idea might just as soon fall to a glib speaker who only excels in matters of speechcraft, to the more handsome and charming, or he who knows the boardmembers he begs for aid, or to he who crouches upon masses of pre-existing capital. The best idea cannot win until the philosophy acknowledges the natural formation of groups among human beings and deals accordingly.

“The astute reader might notice this: the powerful utilize the group and its mechanisms even as it is derided; the group is formed even as its influence is ignored.

“Why does the philosophy ignore the impact of the group?

“What is the philosophy but a philosophy of tyrants?”

UPRISING: BLACK SCRAPBOOK HUB

[sharonsparda]

Boxed Flower Projects

An ongoing botanical industry trendy expression is "boxed flower program". This alludes to the act of offering flowers to the shopper in a container, regularly through this website circulation channels other than the conventional retail florist. A few boxed flowers come directly from growers, some come from order satisfaction focuses. In all cases, the flowers are delivered by a cargo service like Took care of ex.

Enormous players in the boxed flower program game are Proflowers, Growers Flowers, Flowers by Martha, and, maybe shockingly, FTD.

Customary florists and the organizations that help them, like conventional wholesale florists, are legitimately worried about the opposition they are receiving from merchants who sell flowers along these lines. They are additionally worried about the impact these flowers are having on the shopper flower market's view of significant worth.

That's what the trepidation is if unsatisfactory quality flowers and botanical services are being sold, the general interest for flowers will fall; that the boxed flower programs are giving flowers in everyday a terrible name. As per a FTD customer review, florists accept that buyers who receive enclosed flowers are disheartened the quality, cost and service. However, shoppers posed similar inquiries answer predominantly that they are more than happy with their flower purchasing and receiving experience through boxed flower programs.

Maybe, the florists are answering great science that shows that the absolute most significant calculate delaying the eventual jar life of flowers is the virus chain. At the end of the day, flowers kept cold from present gather on home will perform best. In boxed flower programs, flowers leave the homestead or order satisfaction focus through a transportation organization that doesn't have refrigeration. Flowers are for the most part out of the virus for 24 hours prior to arriving at the recipient. I would provoke florists to consider what number hours their flowers are out of the virus chain before the shopper receives them. Do their flowers sit in containers in their plan room? Do finished game plans sit in the carport ready to be delivered? Are their delivery vans, and the delivery vans of their providers refrigerated?

My statement flowers delivered in boxes and flowers delivered by florists have equivalent possibilities of good execution, gave everything works out positively at each stop along the circulation channel from ranch to home. Colossal exertion and pride is taken in the legitimate care and handling of flowers in the botanical business, however the more hands handling the flowers en route, the more opportunity there is for a break in the chain.

[oraclekleo]

Book a Tarot Reading (Paid)

Status:

(1 reading per request!)

!! Attention !!

The types of tarot readings I don’t do:

Aura Readings

Questions where there's only one correct answer (is someone dating, etc.)

What someone unknown to me thinks

Emergency readings (tarot is about long-term self-development and growth, it's not an emergency solution to your issues)

Readings about a relationship in between two people, when the querent isn't one of them

Time of death

Mental disorders, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, abuse

!! Rules and conditions !!

The querent has to be at least 15 years old or older (I can't check with anons but, please follow this rule)

For Celebrity tarot readings, the celebrity has to be 21 years old or older (I will check)

Before requesting a tarot reading, please, LIKE and REBLOG the Pinned Post (All you need to know)!

Feedback is mandatory from now on! If you want to request again next time, I'm gonna kindly ask you to give at least a short feedback. I take several hours to complete the readings, it's surely not too much to ask for you to take 2 minutes to write a feedback.

!! Disclaimer !!

Tarot isn’t an exact science. I can’t ever guarantee any of it. I don't meet any of my querents or celebrities in person. All the tarot readings have purely light-hearted or entertainment purpose. Don’t base important life decisions on tarot readings only. I’m not a therapist, physician, medical expert or psychiatrist. If you are facing serious mental or physical health issues, seek a professional and don’t rely on tarot readings only.

Book a Tarot Reading

Hello,

I offer a list of tarot reading services which you can see below.

Unless said otherwise, all tarot readings are only a digital content and no physical item is going to be shipped to you. For that reason refunds are not available.

Before requesting for any reading, please, read the instructions and if anything is unclear to you, reach me through my email oraclekleo@gmail.com before requesting so we prevent any misunderstanding on both sides.

The model for requesting a paid reading is always the same and it differs from the usual one online, so please make sure you read the full info.

How to request a paid reading:

Pick a reading from the offered list below.

Book your reading through a form linked to each type of reading

You don’t pay in advance! You will be announced through email that your reading is ready for download. I will try my best to deliver the reading within 2 weeks.

Once the reading is complete, you will receive a link leading to my ko-fi page where you can purchase it in a PDF form.

After you purchase the reading the celebrity ones are going to be posted on the website. The personal readings will only be posted if you have given your permission to it in the form. If you have ticked you want the reading to remain private, the reading will be deleted from the ko-fi page after payment and not posted publicly.

Special offer readings for FREE are going to be posted on Tumblr. The special offer FREE readings have no deadline. I will complete them as I feel like it and I have the right to reject the request if I feel uncomfortable vibe. You will be informed through email, if I can't complete your request.

List of Tarot Readings Available

Single Spreads 

Book a Single Tarot Reading

Relationship Role……$10

(Description of a person in different roles they play in life in regards to their relationships with other people.)

Questions:

Friend

Boyfriend

Lover

Husband

One-Night-Stand

Love is a Battlefield……$10

(A very specific hypothetical situation. This spread describes how a person would react in case they fall in love with someone but they don’t want to. It works with the idea that we are all defenceless when exposed to love.)

Questions:

Shining Armour (Their defence tactics)

Excalibur (Their contra attack tactics)

Achilles Heel (Their weak spot)

Abracadabra (The spell to crack their resistance)

Waterloo (How to defeat them)

Shadow of the Moon……$10

(Description of a person's darker aspects.)

Questions:

Darkness (Their worst quality)

Shadow (Their secret)

Reflection (Their loyalty)

Smoke (Their deepest desire)

Mirror (Effects on their lover)

BDSM - Dom Spread……$15

(Description of a person in a BDSM dynamics when they are the dom.)

Questions:

Master/Mistress (You as a dom)

Handcuffs (What’s holding you back from following your deepest desires)

Flogger (Why you should follow your deepest desire)

Whip (What makes you want to dominate)

Discipline (How do you assert discipline)

Reward (How do you reward your lover)

Blindfold (What is your favourite sense to play with)

Pleasure (What is your favourite kink)

Rope (What is it you can’t resist about your lover)

Safeword (When do you feel safe with your lover)

BDSM - Sub Spread……$15

(Description of a person in a BDSM dynamics when they are the sub.)

Questions:

Bad Boy/Girl (You as a sub)

Handcuffs (What’s holding you back from following your deepest desires)

Flogger (Why you should follow your deepest desire)

Collar & Leash (What makes you want to submit)

Obedience (How do you follow orders)

Punishment (What do you do to deserve a punishment)

Blindfold (What is your favourite sense to be played with)

Pleasure (What is your favourite kink)

Rope (What is it you can’t resist about your lover)

Safeword (When do you feel safe with your lover)

Ideal Partner……$10

(Description of your ideal partner at the moment. It’s not your ideal type, it describes a person that would be the best and most beneficial for you and your life at the moment.)

Questions:

Body

Heart

Spirit

Soul

Time 

Place

Dark Mansion……$15

(Description of your dark sides.)

Questions:

The Front Door (The dark thing about them people notice)

The Hallway (The bad thing people think about them but isn’t true)

The Drawing Room (What do they do to put people off?)

The Living Room (Their wild and untamed side)

The Kitchen (Their addiction)

The Staircase (Their bad habit)

The Bedroom (Their sexy / spicy side they don’t show)

The Attic (Their feature that makes them feel superior to others)

The Cellar (Their insecurity / fear / biggest failure)

The Greenhouse (Something dark growing within they are not aware of yet)

Secret Admirer (Romantic or Platonic)……$10

(A tarot reading to cast some light on your secret admirer.)

Questions:

Why do they admire you?

Why do they feel the need to keep it secret?

What are the characteristics of them which could hint you about their identity?

How can you encourage them to open up to you?

What is the possible outcome of them confessing to you?

Love Trap (How to attract a lover you want)……$10

(Advice on how to bring the lover you want into your life.)

Questions:

What do you need to improve about yourself to attract the lover you want?

What do you need to let go before the lover comes into your life?

How can you best set the love trap up (attract the lover to you)?

What is it about you that is going to get their attention first?

What is it about you that is going to motivate them to approach you?

What is it about you that is going to make them fall into your trap (in love with you)?

How can you best maintain the relationship with your desired lover to keep it a happy one?

Your Legend……$10

(This spread describes your life narrative and what are the possible outcomes of your current actions.)

Questions:

What is your backstory?

What shaped you in your life?

What motivates you to carry on?

What is your main life narrative?

What is your Nemesis in life?

What is your strength?

What is your weakness?

What characterises the path you’re on now?

What is the possible outcome?

Kissing Style……$10

(This tarot reading will reveal the manner and characteristics of a person’s kissing style - yours or of a celebrity.)

Having a Crush……$10

(This tarot reading will reveal how yours or celebrity’s behaviour changes when having a crush on someone)

Book a Single Tarot Reading

Couple Spreads 

Book a Couple Tarot Reading



Libido Spread……$10

(This spread describes the more spicy aspects of relationship dynamics.)

Questions:

My position

Their position

My libido

Their libido

Chemistry

Kink

The Path of the Dragon……$15

(This spread will tell you the hypothetical scenarios describing the stages of development in a relationship.)

Questions:

The Offering (First Meeting)

The Sacrifice (Dating)

The Fox (Kissing)

The Punishment (Making Out)

The Purifying Fire (First Night)

The Death (Sexual Chemistry)

The Dragon (Wedding)

The Power of the Dragon [Them = Dragon]……$15

(This spread describes a specific dynamic during the seduction game.)

Questions:

First Bite of the Dragon (How would they seduce you)

Hunger of the Dragon (Their desire you would feed)

Order of the Dragon (How would they wrap you around their finger)

Shadow of the Dragon (In what way this relationship weakens them)

Fire of the Dragon (In what way this relationship empowers them)

Whispering of the Dragon (Dragon's Relationship Advice)

The Power of the Dragon [You = Dragon]……$15

(This spread describes a specific dynamic during the seduction game.)

Questions:

First Bite of the Dragon (How would you seduce them)

Hunger of the Dragon (Your desire they would feed)

Order of the Dragon (How would you wrap them around your finger)

Shadow of the Dragon (In what way this relationship weakens you)

Fire of the Dragon (In what way this relationship empowers you)

Whispering of the Dragon (Dragon's Relationship Advice)

Sweet Romance……$10

(This cute tarot reading will tell you how you can charm the person in your mind and affect them in the most romantic ways.)

Questions:

The eyes meet across the room… (What captivates them about you)

Sweet scent lingering in the air… (What pulls them closer to you)

Only the brave ones… (What motivates them to approach you)

Words as sweet as honey… (What enchants them about you)

Lips like petals of a rose… (What makes them kiss you)

Love is a form of insanity… (What makes them fall in love with you)

Writer’s Wisdom……$10

(In this spread you will reveal the ability to get along with the person in your mind.)

Questions:

Pride & Prejudice (The way you empower each other)

Sense & Sensibility (The way you balance each other)

Persuasion (The way you fight with each other)

Mansfield Park (The way you cherish each other)

Emma (The way you communicate)

Northanger Abbey (The way you fall in love with each other)

Book a Couple Tarot Reading

Special Tarot Readings



Book a Special Tarot Reading

Pick-a-Pile……$10

(I’m going to post Pick-a-Pile readings once in a while for free, but if you have a specific idea in mind for which you want me to make this type of reading, you can request for it)

MTL……$10

(Most to Least type of tarot reading. You select a group or give me a list of up to 10 individual celebrities you want me to do the MTL reading for and a prompt and I will perform the reading.)

Example: Most to Least likely member of Monsta X to wear no underwear to the stage. OR! Most to Least moody Korean actors from the list: Lee Dong Wook, Lee Jae Hwan, Park Bo Gum, Hong Jong Hyun and Woo Do Hwan.

Tarotscope……$10

(Tarot prediction for your Western or Chinese zodiac sign for the upcoming week, month or year.)

Western Astrology Signs Spread……$10

(Each sign of the zodiac has a ‘super power’ of theirs. And while we can’t change under which sign we have been born, we can certainly do our best to unlock all the ‘super powers’ within us. How to become as fearless as Aries? How to unlock the wit super power of Gemini? How to boost your inner intensive Scorpio? This spread will reveal to you the ways how to acquire the superpowers of each sign.)

Questions:

Aries (Fearless)

Taurus (Persistent)

Gemini (Quick-witted)

Cancer (Empathic)

Leo (Confident)

Virgo (Organized)

Libra (Balanced)

Scorpio (Powerful)

Sagittarius (Enthusiastic)

Capricorn (Goal-oriented)

Aquarius (Eccentric)

Pisces (Wise)

Chinese Astrology Signs Spread……$10

(Each sign of the Chinese zodiac has a ‘super power’ of theirs. And while we can’t change under which sign we have been born, we can certainly do our best to unlock all the ‘super powers’ within us. How to become as popular as Horse? How to unlock the innovative super power of Dragon? How to boost your inner charismatic Monkey? This spread will reveal to you the ways how to acquire the superpowers of each sign.)

Questions:

Rat (Charming)

Ox (Patient)

Tiger (Brave)

Rabbit (Kind-hearted)

Dragon (Innovative)

Snake (Attractive)

Horse (Popular)

Sheep (Imaginative)

Monkey (Charismatic)

Rooster (Disciplined)

Dog (Responsible)

Pig (Easygoing)

Live Session……$25

In this case I strongly urge you to reach out to me through email oraclekleo@gmail.com first so we can discuss the details thoroughly. I have a regular job and my schedule is pretty full most of the time but I’m willing to sit down for an hour or two to do a live session with you if you feel like you need it. Please consider the possibility of different time zones. We will have to agree on a comfortable time for both or all of us (in case of a group live session).



Book a Special Tarot Reading

Custom or Individual Tarot Readings

Of course it’s possible to ask for any type of tarot reading as long as it follows the rules. Please understand, that these may be charged depending on the complexity of your question(s) and the time needed for me to give you answers. I will always consult with you beforehand and let you know whether your request is free of charge or not so you can decide.

Some of the non-listed readings I also do:

Relationships

Career

Wealth

Self-care

Self-love

Self-development

Progress

Healing

Inner child communication

Feminine or masculine aspects

Journey clarification

Future child

Dream meaning / analysis

Communication with the subconscious or higher self

+ more

I use multiple decks of tarot, oracle, Lenormand, kipper and rune cards in my practice. I’m also able to use a pendulum. I can assemble a person's numerological profile. I’m familiar with Chinese zodiac, Blood Type, MBTI, Numerology and Western Zodiac Compatibility calculations.

I’m more than happy to consult, brainstorm and help with tarot interpretations.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me through my inbox or email oraclekleo@gmail.com!

[tiredsalaryman]

11/22 (Wed) TS blog #1

Good morning. 🌞

This is Tired Salaryman Tim.🕴

Welcome to my journal series where I talk about points of the day related to my fortune. Sometimes, I may say beyond that.

Today's ranking: 12

When it comes to love, I seem inexperienced. I have been told before I hold myself in a very practical and rational manner. Because of this, I am also told I can be very cold and intimidating. These are qualities I do not think are so bad. My personality gives me peace and space from others who may think to try funny business. 😑

I think I love people affably and show kindness and respect to everyone at first, then whoever decides to reciprocate will realize I can offer more. There is no big science to it for me. 🤔

My best friend and I were speaking via SNS last night. I am sick with a cold, so my cognition is not very good. I think they were joking? 🤡

For this season, they are in a lovey dovey phase, and it is strange to be on the receiving end sometimes. 🤨

I am uncomfortable being referred to as "baby" or "daddy." I almost said something I would regret when they started calling me pet names. Feelings can be volatile if one does not concentrate but I remembered my fortune advice in time.

I erased my message and made my request to them in a comedic manner instead. "Do I look like I enjoy taking care of infants? Also, I am an old man. Don't call me baby or daddy. Call me grandpa." 👴

I am setting my boundaries as an old man that I do not want to be anyone's father. Ocassionally, I am called in for babysitting services, and that is as much as I am willing to do. 🤷

I said, it is strange to be called daddy anyway. My mother is still alive and my father is deceased. I love them both dearly and I have no desire to be called anything similarly, especially from someone only a few years younger than me. 😩

I have read manhwa and seen media where this can be sexy or like a meme joke, but I do not think it is personally to my taste. I want to vomit a little every time someone thinks I should have paternal responsibility in a relationship. I just want to take care of my friends without the romantic affiliation, thank you. 💔

Moving to the other portion of my fortune. Cleaning the kitchen is my task for today. Even if I am sick, I should be able to do as much as I can. I had moved to a new apartment recently and I use the kitchen a lot. Because of this, it has also become a dumping ground... 💀

There are boxes everywhere, clean dishes drying on the counter and dishwasher, the floors need to be swept and mopped, and miscellaneous items not for the kitchen should be put away. 🗑

I am slowly starting to lose my mind from the disorderly mess. Hopefully, will save myself in time. 🫠

【Credits】

Illustration by Amy Wong @tofu.pants on Instagram.

They offered to illustrate some entries of my blog and I am grateful for their support. We have formed a mutually accountable relationship in that they wish to draw daily and I wish to journal daily.

I am hoping to illustrate my own works as well and recently purchased a graphics tablet to start me on this habit of daily doodles.

I will not promise to be consistent because life just makes me tired sometimes.

TS Radio random song of the day:

[plantbreedingandgenetics123]

Beekeeping: An Introduction to the Art and Science of Beekeeping

Introduction:

Beekeeping, also known as apiculture, is an ancient practice that involves the management and care of honeybees for their valuable products and services. It is an art, a science, and a rewarding hobby that has captivated humans for centuries. This article serves as an introduction to the captivating world of beekeeping, exploring its historical significance, the fascinating life of honeybees, and the basic components of starting a beekeeping venture.

Historical Significance:

Beekeeping has a rich and storied history that dates back thousands of years. Ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, recognized the importance of bees and their honey. Honey was not only a prized sweetener but also held symbolic, medicinal, and culinary value. Throughout history, beekeeping methods and techniques have evolved, and different cultures have contributed their knowledge and practices to this timeless tradition.

The Life of Honeybees:

To understand beekeeping, it is essential to delve into the intricate lives of honeybees. Honeybees live in highly organized and complex social structures within their colonies. Each colony consists of a queen bee, worker bees, and male drones. The queen is responsible for laying eggs, while the female worker bees perform various tasks, such as foraging for nectar and pollen, nursing the brood, and building and maintaining the hive. The male drones' primary role is to mate with a queen from another colony.

Honeybees' remarkable ability to communicate through a dance-like movement known as the "waggle dance" is fascinating. This dance conveys information about the location and quality of food sources, enabling other worker bees to navigate and collect nectar and pollen efficiently.

Starting a Beekeeping Venture:

Embarking on a beekeeping journey requires careful planning, knowledge, and dedication. Here are some basic components to consider when starting a beekeeping venture:

Research and Education: Begin by educating yourself about honeybees, their behavior, and the fundamentals of beekeeping. Read books, attend workshops, and seek guidance from experienced beekeepers. Local beekeeping associations and online resources can provide valuable information to help you get started.

Hive Selection and Equipment: Choose the appropriate type of beehive for your needs. Common types include Langstroth, Top Bar, and Warre hives. Acquire essential equipment such as hive bodies, frames, foundation sheets, a smoker, a beekeeping suit, gloves, and hive tools.

Bee Colony Acquisition: Obtain bees for your hive. You can purchase a package of bees, which includes a queen and worker bees, or acquire a nucleus colony (nuc) consisting of a small, established bee colony with a queen.

Hive Placement and Management: Select a suitable location for your beehive, considering factors such as sunlight, shelter from the wind, and a water source nearby. Regular hive inspections and management tasks, such as monitoring for diseases, pests, and ensuring a sufficient supply of food, are essential for maintaining healthy colonies.

Safety and Beekeeping Practices: Beekeeping requires proper safety precautions. Be familiar with bee stings and allergy management. Wear protective gear when working with bees, and handle the bees with care and respect. Follow sustainable and ethical beekeeping practices, including avoiding unnecessary pesticide use near the hive and promoting biodiversity by providing a variety of forage sources.