#superbowl was dope

[endcant]

working overnight at the gym on drinking holidays is pretty good bc theres barely anyone in here to work out

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Sympathy for the spammer

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers – not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate "retail investors" who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).

It's ever been thus. The California gold rush was a con, and nearly everyone who went west went broke. Famously, the only reliable way to cash out on the gold rush was to sell "picks and shovels" to the credulous, doomed and desperate. That's how Leland Stanford made his fortune, which he funneled into eugenics programs (and founding a university):

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/9780316592031/

That means that the people who try to con you are almost always getting conned themselves. Think of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) scams. My forthcoming novel The Bezzle opens with a baroque and improbable fast-food Ponzi in the town of Avalon on the island of Catalina, founded by the chicle monopolist William Wrigley Jr:

http://thebezzle.org

Wrigley found fast food declasse and banned it from the island, a rule that persists to this day. In The Bezzle, the forensic detective Martin Hench uncovers The Fry Guys, an MLM that flash-freezes contraband burgers and fries smuggled on-island from the mainland and sells them to islanders though an "affiliate marketing" scheme that is really about recruiting other affiliate markets to sell under you. As with every MLM, the value of the burgers and fries sold is dwarfed by the gigantic edifice of finance fraud built around it, with "points" being bought and sold for real cash, which is snaffled up and sucked out of the island by a greedy mainlander who is behind the scheme.

A "bezzle" is John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." In every scam, there's a period where everyone feels richer – but only the scammers are actually cleaning up. The wealth of the marks is illusory, but the longer the scammer can preserve the illusion, the more real money the marks will pump into the system.

MLMs are particularly ugly, because they target people who are shut out of economic opportunity – women, people of color, working people. These people necessarily rely on social ties for survival, looking after each others' kids, loaning each other money they can't afford, sharing what little they have when others have nothing.

It's this social cohesion that MLMs weaponize. Crypto "entrepreneurs" are encouraged to suck in their friends and family by telling them that they're "building Black wealth." Working women are exhorted to suck in their bffs by appealing to their sisterhood and the chance for "women to lift each other up."

The "sales people" trying to get you to buy crypto or leggings or supplements are engaged in predatory conduct that will make you financially and socially worse off, wrecking their communities' finances and shattering the mutual aid survival networks they rely on. But they're not getting rich on this – they're also being scammed:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4686468

This really hit home for me in the mid-2000s, when I was still editing Boing Boing. We had a submission form where our readers could submit links for us to look at for inclusion on the blog, and it was overwhelmed by spam. We'd add all kinds of antispam to it, and still, we'd get floods of hundreds or even thousands of spam submissions to it.

One night, I was lying in my bed in London and watching these spams roll in. They were all for small businesses in the rustbelt, handyman services, lawn-care, odd jobs, that kind of thing. They were 10 million miles from the kind of thing we'd ever post about on Boing Boing. They were coming in so thickly that I literally couldn't finish downloading my email – the POP session was dropping before I could get all the mail in the spool. I had to ssh into my mail server and delete them by hand. It was maddening.

Frustrated and furious, I started calling the phone numbers associated with these small businesses, demanding an explanation. I assumed that they'd hired some kind of sleazy marketing service and I wanted to know who it was so I could give them a piece of my mind.

But what I discovered when I got through was much weirder. These people had all been laid off from factories that were shuttering due to globalization. As part of their termination packages, their bosses had offered them "retraining" via "courses" in founding their own businesses.

The "courses" were the precursors to the current era's rise-and-grind hustle-culture scams (again, the only people getting rich from that stuff are the people selling the courses – the "students" finish the course poorer). They promised these laid-off workers, who'd given their lives to their former employers before being discarded, that they just needed to pull themselves up by their own boostraps:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/#solidarity-forever

After all, we had the internet now! There were so many new opportunities to be your own boss! The course came with a dreadful build-your-own-website service, complete with an overpriced domain sales portal, and a single form for submitting your new business to "thousands of search engines."

This was nearly 20 years ago, but even then, there was really only one search engine that mattered: Google. The "thousands of search engines" the scammers promised to submit these desperate peoples' websites to were just submission forms for directories, indexes, blogs, and mailing lists. The number of directories, indexes, blogs and mailing lists that would publish their submissions was either "zero" or "nearly zero." There was certainly no possibility that anyone at Boing Boing would ever press the wrong key and accidentally write a 500-word blog post about a leaf-raking service in a collapsing deindustrialized exurb in Kentucky or Ohio.

The people who were drowning me in spam weren't the scammers – they were the scammees.

But that's only half the story. Years later, I discovered how our submission form was getting included in this get-rich-quick's mass-submission system. It was a MLM! Coders in the former Soviet Union were getting work via darknet websites that promised them relative pittances for every submission form they reverse-engineered and submitted. The smart coders didn't crack the forms directly – they recruited other, less business-savvy coders to do that for them, and then often as not, ripped them off.

The scam economy runs on this kind of indirection, where scammees are turned into scammers, who flood useful and productive and nice spaces with useless dross that doesn't even make them any money. Take the submission queue at Clarkesworld, the great online science fiction magazine, which famously had to close after it was flooded with thousands of junk submission "written" by LLMs:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

There was a zero percent chance that Neil Clarke would accidentally accept one of these submissions. They were uniformly terrible. The people submitting these "stories" weren't frustrated sf writers who'd discovered a "life hack" that let them turn out more brilliant prose at scale.

They were scammers who'd been scammed into thinking that AIs were the key to a life of passive income, a 4-Hour Work-Week powered by an AI-based self-licking ice-cream cone:

https://pod.link/1651876897/episode/995c8a778ede17d2d7cff393e5203157

This is absolutely classic passive-income brainworms thinking. "I have a bot that can turn out plausible sentences. I will locate places where sentences can be exchanged for money, aim my bot at it, sit back, and count my winnings." It's MBA logic on meth: find a thing people pay for, then, without bothering to understand why they pay for that thing, find a way to generate something like it at scale and bombard them with it.

Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that "you can't con an honest man." But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn't their honesty – it's their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.

These people reason – correctly – that all the people getting really rich are scamming. If Amazon can make $38b/year selling "ads" that push worse products that cost more to the top of their search results, why should the mere fact that an "opportunity" is obviously predatory and fraudulent disqualify it?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

The quest for passive income is really the quest for a "greater fool," the economist's term for the person who relieves you of the useless crap you just overpaid for. It rots the mind, atomizes communities, shatters solidarity and breeds cynicism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The rise and rise of botshit cannot be separated from this phenomenon. The botshit in our search-results, our social media feeds, and our in-boxes isn't making money for the enshittifiers who send it – rather, they are being hustled by someone who's selling them the "picks and shovels" for the AI gold rush:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

That's the true cost of all the automation-driven unemployment criti-hype: while we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The manic "entrepreneurs" who've been stampeded into panic by the (correct) perception that the economy is a game of musical chairs where the number of chairs is decreasing at breakneck speed are easy marks for the Leland Stanfords of AI, who are creating generational wealth for themselves by promising that their bots will automate away all the tedious work that goes into creating value. Expect a lot more Amazon Marketplace products called "I'm sorry, I cannot fulfil this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/12/24036156/openai-policy-amazon-ai-listings

No one's going to buy these products, but the AI picks-and-shovels people will still reap a fortune from the attempt. And because history repeats itself, these newly minted billionaires are continuing Leland Stanford's love affair with eugenics:

https://www.truthdig.com/dig-series/eugenics/

The fact that AI spam doesn't pay is important to the fortunes of AI companies. Most high-value AI applications are very risk-intolerant (self-driving cars, radiology analysis, etc). An AI tool might help a human perform these tasks more accurately – by warning them of things that they've missed – but that's not how AI will turn a profit. There's no market for AI that makes your workers cost more but makes them better at their jobs:

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

Plenty of people think that spam might be the elusive high-value, low-risk AI application. But that's just not true. The point of AI spam is to get clicks from people who are looking for better content. It's SEO. No one reads 2000 words of algorithm-pleasing LLM garbage over an omelette recipe and then subscribes to that site's feed.

And the omelette recipe generates pennies for the spammer that posted it. They are doing massive volume in order to make those pennies into dollars. You don't make money by posting one spam. If every spammer had to pay the actual recovery costs (energy, chillers, capital amortization, wages) for their query, every AI spam would lose (lots of) money.

Hustle culture and passive income are about turning other peoples' dollars into your dimes. It is a negative-sum activity, a net drain on society. Behind every seemingly successful "passive income" is a con artist who's getting rich by promising – but not delivering – that elusive passive income, and then blaming the victims for not hustling hard enough:

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/12/blueprint-trouble

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

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

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

[sabakos]

In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers – not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate "retail investors" who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto). It's ever been thus. The California gold rush was a con, and nearly everyone who went west went broke. Famously, the only reliable way to cash out on the gold rush was to sell "picks and shovels" to the credulous, doomed and desperate.

Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that "you can't con an honest man." But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn't their honesty – it's their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.

The rise and rise of botshit cannot be separated from this phenomenon. The botshit in our search-results, our social media feeds, and our in-boxes isn't making money for the enshittifiers who send it – rather, they are being hustled by someone who's selling them the "picks and shovels" for the AI gold rush

Cory Doctorow - Sympathy for the Spammer

[supermaks]

i'm dying for the part 2 of the essential max verstappen races i've watched all the first 10 (teenage crime era) and now i need the rest!!

✨💘 part 1 💘✨💎🧨🌠part 3🗽🎯

Brazil, 2019 In part 1 I said Max always stunted in the US, but like both Americas have a crush on him. People like to yap about his 'luck' and how 'lucky' he is. Max bends luck to his favor with a crowbar if he has to and this race proves that. also shout out to Hannah she’s BEEN the best CS in F1 fr 🌻

Austria, 2019 yes honey, that Austria, 2019. First Honda powered win for red bull and it came on the back of a cracked out prancing horse. Lestappen had angry sex in front of 200000 orange shirts and we just let them

70th year anniversary GP, 2020 Set the scene: for 2020 mercedes has put thee most competent driver of all time behind the wheel of a Boeing 707. They say it's a car but its an airplane ok. So every race is basically like 2 hour long british orgasm ASMR. This one tho, this should've been the beans and toast equivalent to Beyoncé at the superbowl. This should've been their Homecoming. They got 2 races in the calendar for the 1st time, it's F1's birthday, Lewis is driving a commercial airplane, it's happening during peak covid because their prime minister is insane, period. They had it all. Except, it was kinda warm out. And Max Verstappen noticed. Whole british empire vs one man's inability to not be the moment. Guess who won

Emilia Romagna, 2021 emilianos first victory of his maiden title year , and a race I remember watching and thinking. oh okay. so it’s time. With Max, even as a baby fan of both him and Lewis, I was always kinda like, waiting for the dog fight. And finally, lil bro has the car. Everything else was already in place. If u do watch my dumb list in order, which I recommend u do, u can actually c him get ready for 2021 over the years. His starts, and especially this one, become flawless, he has somehow learned how to manage his tires and dominate races in lesser machinery ((we dont talk about it enough. max has won races every single season he's driven in f1. every rbr car he's ever had, he got it home. that's a shooting star fr. thats a once in a lifetime.)) , he's patient, and still uncompromising, still unflinching. He's ready. We were not tho lmfaooo

Zandvoort, 2021 baby boys first home gp win. a lovely lil watch to feel warm and fuzzy inside and also just like watch him be the best driver on the grid at home

Russia, 2021 p20 to p2. Max in the rain, u already know wtf is going ONNN. A race for the GP girlies. SOOO so dope to watch a driver and an engineer orchestrate a comeback of that level in real time. A true privilege and I mean it wholeheartedly. I think GP and Max are soulmates like professionally. Also literally the funniest thing in the world when they're pulling into their lil positions after the race and my fav old man Lewis does a double take like that better not be who I think it is 😭

USA, 2021 listennn. it's 2021. I can't mention Max without mentioning Lewis. They took each other to realms of racing that F1 didnt even remember existed. When I tell u these bitches were 40 seconds ahead of everybody else. 40 seconds. In 2021. But yuh, the blond one set a purple sector with like 100 lap old tires to defend that win. 2021 was just very kind to the Circuit. Sexy sexy race

Jeddah, 2021 well if he's just some guy why does his pussy pop so severely. 😐 No F1 driver will ever serve cunt the way Max served cunt in Jeddah. Driver of the day for no reason other than pure fucking headassery. They said u can't move the culture by losing and that white man said hold on. That quali lap almost put a child in me. I am so sorry

((lil bonus from Zandvoort, 2022 like shut up imagine doing this to lewis hamiltondfmsnfksdlkjf))

Japan, 2022 2nd title win. And fittingly so, he would've lapped the whole field if the race had been completed in its full distance. 1 second faster than everybody else, still improving at the end. But its his recovery at the start that I wanna highlight here. On a wet track, awful conditions, mf sent it outside of t1 around sharl, not because he had to, not because his championship was on the line, but because he could. He went for it, no hesitation. Nobody else would go for a move like that. First, because they wouldnt be able to do it. Its an overtake that requires a control of the car that is left to the Hamiltons and Verstappens of this world. U put a wheel wrong and you’re done. Second, it just wasnt worth it. Rb was a rocket anyway, he would've gotten the lead back eventually. But that is not who Max is. Max refused to give up the lead for even a second. It has nothing to do with having a dominant car, its about racing. Max will always, always go racing. And I love him for it.

ty for reading 💝 I hope that u can return to these races again and again and find joy in watching our fav public enemy number one do his thing. He’s very good at it

[dankxsinatra]

ok do 8, 13, 34, 74, and 87 for the top 3s??

8: Top 3 spices/herbs

I'm learning more and more about different spices and things so I'm kind of a novice on specifics

But Nutmeg is dope. I rarely use cinnamon without a dash of nutmeg or two with it.

13: Top 3 binge perfect tv shows

Better Call Saul

Peaky Blinders

Stargate SG-1/Atlantis

34: Top 3 ways to treat yourself

Gas Station snacks

Energy Drinks

Hope

74: Top 3 Cities you want to see

Miami

Tokyo

Venice

87: Top 3 spongebob episodes

Whichever one was the one with the superbowl song

[boinin]

Blue Lock Manga

After two weeks of creeping hysteria and stir-craziness redditors know what I mean, the scanlation for Chapter 222 (“Design”) has dropped. My usual new chapter rambling under the cut.

No mention of a break next week 🎉

Previous chapter analyses

1. Hiori finds his mojo (isagi. it's been isagi all along)

I had hoped best boi's ego would be linked to combating Ubers more so than Isagi, but alas, the harem of simps/rivals proved too compelling to pass on. This seems to be set-up for Noa to substitute Hiori on in place of Kurona once the three-minute star change is over. But until then...

It's been pointed out on the subreddit that Isagi looks particularly good in that first panel. I would like to raise that Hiori is going doki-doki for Himsagi-kun in the second.

Guys, they know who they're appealing to with this manga. On that point...

2. Soccer Dad Star Showdown

Blue Lock!! Where one half of the fandom are here for the world-class ball keeping techniques and the other half of the fandom are here for... the world-class ball keeping techniques 😏 Guess what camp I'm in?

The effect normal panels of Snuffy and Noa have on me. Guess I have a kink for competent football dads 🤷 /s Chris Prince and Lavinho could never.

Anyway, Snuffy hits the pitch hot and doesn't let BM catch a break. I really enjoyed his and Noa's face off. As much chaos as Lavinho and Prince caused during the two previous matches, Snuffy strikes me as a far bigger threat in terms of dismantling BM's defence (and showing up Noa). It takes BM's two most talented forwards to see off the shot Snuffy sets up for Barou. At the end of the chapter, as Ubers regroup to take on BM's defence again, I have a sinking feeling Snuffy's going to win this confrontation. And perhaps he should. What's rational exactly about a team at war?

Unashamed thirst screenshot of Snuff. This one is really cool, didn't have time to clean it, but it looks bomb ✨ He's so threatening yet friendly? Realest of the bunch.

3. Ness tries

...

...

That's it.

Like for real. He runs in, doesn't touch the ball, gets read to filth by a fifteen year old, and isn't seen again in this chapter.

When are we going to see some magic from the magician?

It's high time for Ness (as a professional player) to get his head in the game. This is the guy that outperformed everybody but Kaiser in the original BM stamina and technique test. He's subservient to his emperor, but even then, how is he this lacklustre?

Since Noa only cares about numbers, it seems like Ness is here to stay... but it sure is frustrating.

4. Superbowl: Kaiser V Barou V Isagi

This is my favourite panel this week. Clock the auras: puzzles, thorned vines and lightning collide at last. Dope. I'm still new to colouring, so I'm not touching this one, but I can't WAIT to see what someone with serious skill does with it 🔥🔥🔥

It's refreshing to see Kaiser get worked up over someone other than Isagi. Got to spread the frustration, right?

Prediction tracker

(alternatively: how wrong can one nerd be week to week?)

Last time, I predicted: I think Snuffy's MO will be to set up a goal for Barou, while knocking Kaiser and Isagi down a peg. I hope he synergises with Lorenzo! Noa will be man marking Snuffy, but might get time to do some Isagi coaching while he's out there, who knows?

So far so good, right? I think this prediction will carry over into the next chapter. I'll caveat one thing: Isagi and Kaiser's backs must ache from carrying both the offence and defence of Bastard Munchen. They're the only BM players that aren't part of the circus as of the end of this chapter. Raichi, Yukimiya, Mensah and Birkenstock found dead in a ditch /s

I predict Barou will score the next goal, with Lorenzo providing an assist. Then Noa will make a substitution with the aim of countering Lorenzo and Ubers in the final play of the game...

Four chapters ago (chp 218), I predicted: As for who’ll be the true game changer? Said it already, but if Hiori’s not getting subbed on for our newly christened royal trash!Ness in the next five chapters, I’ll eat my hat. 🐑

Have a funny feeling he'll get subbed in the chapter after next. If I'm decided a clown by chp 223, watch the egg on my face get cooked by chp 224. I don't think Ness is getting subbed out at this point.

Until next time! 😋👒

[contentment-of-cats]

Almost two years.

Superbowl Sunday of 2022, I was in the ER. That was the start of this whole journey. 19 days later, I'd be on my way to Cedars, four vicodin barely holding back the pain, and a few hours later I'd been in a hospital bed, doped to the gills for the pain, knowing only that I was being cared for.

What a long, strange trip it's been.

[tha1troy]

Good Morning,

Today is Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 9:25am. Here I am, just another day starting off at work, I have now been at work 7 days straight, 1 more to go.. I am feeling kinda tired and drained from working so much the past week, it’s not a bad thing, I love to work and you know I love money lol, but I would kinda like a little break. It gets more tiring just coming here every single day more than the work I have to do here.. The traffic in Las Vegas has been so bad lately, as they prepare for F1, MSG Sphere Opening, and the SuperBowl. Growing up in Vegas there was nothing as a kid, literally nothing. No sports, not many shows or anything for kids. But now it has changed so much, there is definitely a lot more to do.. It’s pretty cool to watch the world and the city grow and evolve but what it takes to get it all done like all this repaving and construction is annoying. It’s been taking me forever to get to and from work lately because of it.. Normally a 20 min drive has turned into a 40-45 min drive and having to take different routes.. But whatever. It is what it is. At least if I had a better car that I enjoyed and loved more I probably wouldn’t even care about sitting in traffic or driving a lot, but since that’s not the case anymore I hate driving and definitely hate sitting in traffic lol.. Anyways, yesterday at work I wrote another dope song, my lyrics are getting better & better.. I really love doing this music, it’s always been my love & passion ever since I was a kid. I’m definitely ready to start taking it to the next level & way more serious! I know I got this, it just sucks when you feel you don’t have any support or a team around you & like your doing everything on your own.. But these battles & struggles only are making me stronger, wiser, and believe me I’m going to get this done! I AM A STAR. IT IS MY TIME! 💫 Have an amazing day everybody. Let’s get this money, stay positive, and focus on the goals. LØVE

[goboymusic]

#TheLastofUs was moved to tonight because of the #SuperBowl on Sunday. #tlou

Released the final version of “#Rebecca (Song 122).” That song had a disastrous production process, but it turned out pretty dope.

After the production chaos of GoBoy 5, I took a well needed break from mixing natural vocals for the 1st track on GoBoy 6 and made a simple vocoder song called “Booty on Ice.” For the 2nd track of GoBoy 6, I felt rested enough to jump back into natural vocals and started working on “#Muffin Your Brains Out,” a song about fucking someone’s brains out.

Like most, the melodies for “Muffin Your Brains Out” arose while going about my daily life, with the chorus melody arising only a couple days before recording vocals. As soon as the idea of using the word “muffin” instead of “fucking” came to mind, the song was a go. That stupid gimmick would be memorable enough to warrant recording and mixing.

While mixing vocals for “Muffin Your Brains Out,” I was smoking cigarettes on a rainy weekend in Metro Detroit while peripherally watching @jacksepticeye play #ResidentEvil Village in the background (I’ll smoke cigarettes every six or so months for the hell of it). It’s a very fond memory.

The original plan was to jump straight into the chorus without an intro, but that wasn’t working. Not only did the song need an intro to establish the key and tempo, the chorus instruments needed to be established before the vocals began. Without such an intro, it was difficult to fully comprehend what you were hearing the first time you listened to the song.

While working on the intro, the idea arose of having computer voices repeat the words “muffin your brains out.” They were placed during the section of the song where the chorus instruments are being established before the melodic vocals kick in, because that’s where it made the most sense to put them.

After the chorus, the original plan was to jump straight into the verse vocals, but that wasn’t working either. The verse melody needed some sort of introduction before the verse vocals kicked in, which was ultimately accomplished by playing the melody on a synthesizer before the vocals began. The same synthesizer would be used for “Dean Corll (Song 105)” a few months later.

After mixing was complete, 30 seconds of the song were cut out to make the song more concise, thus (hopefully) increasing replay value.

After this song was complete, I took a week-long break from music production, during which I had the idea of rebranding from “River Elder” to “#GoBoy,” and synchronizing the visual branding of the cover arts with a color theme (red), logo, and song count at the bottom right corner. I also decided to go with a clean shaven appearance in all of GoBoy’s cover arts after discovering that females (generally speaking) were not huge fans of the long beard in the cover arts of River Elder. Seeing as 50% of River Elder’s audience was female, the beard had to go.

A bass boost was added to songs 37-101 in Nov, 2021, while I was stuck at home with covid. As a result, this song feels more powerful. The bass boost isn’t a simple plugin nonchalantly added to each song. It’s a process that took about 3.5 hours per song, or one whole month to complete all songs. Admittedly, I pushed the bass boost a little too far for some of them. The bass in some songs sounds like a freaking earthquake (unnecessarily pronounced low frequencies 20 - 50 Hz). Might dial that back someday. The bass boost was also applied to every song on GoBoy 6 and beyond (excerpt from post 37).

[insomniamamma]

Thank you, Adira!!! Accidentally doped up Ezra was so fun to write. And his worry that he might have said something wrong while he was in Kevva's haze. And him wandering out of the house wrapped in a sheet and covered in pink goo!

There's just something really fun about rocking Ezra back on his heels a little, putting him in a situation where he's a little lost, a little over his head.

And also it was fun writing the reader character for this. Her whole attitude of I'm in charge here, space-boy was very fun.

I feel like they blunt each other's edges. Sigh. I may have to revisit these two at some point. I need another AU like a cat needs a ticket to the Superbowl but here we are.

Gravity: Ezra x f!reader

A/n: Written for my year of kisses. @yearofcreation2023 The prompt is a kiss on the eyelids, and I originally intended to write it for Boba Fett (which I may still do) but then I rewatched Prospect and gave myself the yearns. Title inspired by this song. This jumps around in time.

Warnings: Much flirting and fluff. Reader has unspecified medical condition that keeps her from going to space. Ezra needs his own warning. Medical treatment. References to sickness and medical procedures. References to sex but nothing explicit.

Ezra hums contentedly beneath your hands. Shirtless and tilted backwards over the deep sink, towel draped around his sun-freckled shoulders. He positively purrs as you smooth the conditioner through his curls, scratching lightly over his scalp, tugging, but just a little. Real shampoo and conditioner are an imported nicety, expensive and not often used. Seems a shame to so thoroughly clean his hair only to shear so much of it off.

Long hair is a pain in the ass when you’re doing suit work, a pain in the ass in microgravity. You can tie it back but if it comes lose, you have random threads sweat-plastered to your face or tickling your nose or nape or eyebrow without being able to fix it. You don’t know this from your own experience. Born sickly, you could not follow your brothers off world, never as strong as them, failed the g-tests and the orientation tests and the flight instructor took you aside, look, you get the right combo of meds and cautery and you might be able to work a tug or a yard-switcher up to the Bench, but you’re not gonna get out of this well.

So you stayed. Da long gone, died way out towards the end of the Great Arm. And your brothers faded out of your life one by one by one. Once in a while you’d get packet drops, grainy vids squirted between can-haulers and freighters, a game of telephone that stretched the length of the Great Arm, but those became less and less. Even after contact waned, the points would still accrue in the family account, remittance from Kevva knows where. Until they didn’t. Faded out of your lives like comets flaring bright before slinging out into the black. You stayed behind and made due.

Learned the herbalist’s trade from your Ma who learned it from her Ma as far back as your first kin who colonized here, who built the house you live in now, who planted the gardens that provide food and medicines. Leaves and flowers and roots all diagrammed out, with their varied dangers and uses recipes for salves and tinctures and dyes, soaps, meticulously drawn and copied out from Ma’s book into one that you stitched and bound yourself. A right of passage of sorts, preserve what’s come before and add your own knowledge. The last few entries of your Ma’s book near illegible, from when the Wandering Sickness took her ability to write, a hash of Central glyph-speak and her own short-hand.

Ma had been gone for about a year when you met Ezra, or rather, when someone in town took pity on Ezra and sent him to your door. He was naked from the waist up skin blotched in swollen, crimson wheals. You shake your head. Off-worlders never learn. “I must apologize for my state of disarray,” he says, “The rubbing of my shirt seams became unbearable on my walk from town. I seem to have an allergy to the local flora.” He speaks a lilting off-world accent. One eye is red and puffed into a narrow slit, looks like he’s winking at you. “Humbleweed,” you say, “Looks like you rolled in the stuff. Come on in, spacer, lets get you fixed up.” “It’s called humbleweed because it puts people fool enough to touch it in their place?” “That’s right,” you say, leading him inside, “Wanna tell me how you got coated in it?” “Me and my crewmates are camped out along yonder lake. We were passing around a bottle of firewater and got to tussling. Not unfriendly like, but I took a bad step into some bushes. Didn’t think much of it at the time—“ “Please tell me none of you were stupid enough to throw any of that mess in a campfire.” “No, Ma’am, there was bone dry drift wood a-plenty.” “Good because the smoke would make your lungs do the same thing that’s happening with your skin, and we’d be calling for a dropper.” “That sounds most unpleasant,” he says, and you gesture towards the large, hammered metal tub. “Strip,” you say, “And hop in.” You say, fetching a rusty metal canister and a scrub brush from the shelf. You pull on some disposable gloves. An imported nicety, but you don’t want humbleweed resin getting under your own nails. “Ezra.” “What?” “My name is Ezra, and I’d like to know yours before you see my nether regions.” You laugh. This big, swaggering spacer with his odd, archaic way of speaking is shy. Damned if you don’t see his ears and cheeks going red. You tell him your name and rest a gloved hand on his upper arm. “You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen, okay? Unless they build men different further down the Arm. Give me your clothes. We’ll need to treat and wash them too.” Ezra reluctantly peels down. The worst of the rash is on his upper half, but there’s a particularly nasty line of welts around his waist, snaking down along the soft swell of his belly, telltale lines where he scratched at it in his sleep, got the sap under his nails and dragged it around, unthinking. He stands stone still while you run your gloved hands over him, checking places he wouldn’t think to check himself, armpits and the soles of his feet and juncture of hip and thigh, squirms under your touch. “I’m sorry—“ he says, red faced— “No need,” you say, “I once treated a man who was fool enough to wipe his ass with the leaves. He waited until it all blistered up to get help—“ You push the metal canister and scrub brush into his hands. “You sluice this over the red patches and scrub, clear? It’ll sting some—“ “This smells like engine degreaser.” “It is engine degreaser,” you say, “But it’ll do the job. Let me get your face though. Don’t want you getting this in your eyes. Get what you can reach and I’ll take care of your clothes, yeah?” His clothing goes in the deep sink, warm water and a generous pour of degreaser. You can’t help but look at him, his back to you, all broad freckled shoulders and red, puckered scars, tells of a spacer’s life, trying to reach over the curve of his own spine with the scrub brush. “Miss? Ma’am? I can’t quite—“ You find yourself smiling, take the scrub brush and canister from him, pour a cold rill down his spine and scrub, and he shudders. “Stings.” “I know.”

He flinches when you bring the degreaser soaked cloth to his face, draws back, his eye a puffed red slit leaking tears, his hands circle your wrists, stilling you. “Ezra. You need to let me do this.” “Perhaps this can wait for the Bench, this may be beyond what you can do here, not saying that I mistrust your skills or judgement but—“ “Look up. You see that bundle of Kind Sister? The star shaped flowers?” “Yes, but I don’t- “Look up and hold still. You keep your eyes right there.” You wipe the degreaser over the puffed skin below his eye, and you can feel the tension in him, thrumming beneath his skin. “Breathe, handsome, I’ve done this many times.” “It’s not that I don’t trust—“ “Just keep looking up.” “Burns a little.” “It will.” You dab the cloth over his skin, right up to the fringe of his lashes. “Close.” “I don’t think—“ “Don’t need you to think. Close your eyes.” He feels the chill on his eyelids and flinches away. “Sssshhhhh. Hold still. Not gonna hurt you.” He stills and lets you wipe his eyes with the degreaser, and you can’t help but admire the way his dark lashes fall against his cheeks.

“You’re unsettled.” “Maybe I don’t want to shear off these pretty curls.” You thread your fingers through his hair and raise the scissors to start cutting, but his hand curves around your wrist. “You’ve not been this unsettled before,” says Ezra, “Talk to me Gentle, tell me what’s bothering you.” And you can’t help but smile, his nickname for you always manages to make your chest tighten, someplace between swelling love and crippling fear, presses his lips to the soft skin of your wrist where the veins rest so close. “You’re going so far this time, and you know I can’t go after you if things go wrong—“ “The risk is greater, but the reward is….” he trails off, fingers tracing the landscape of your knuckles. Ezra has words for everything, three words when one will do, and to hear him go silent, to see him search for words feels wrong, like you’re witnessing something you shouldn’t. He draws inward for a beat and then those dark eyes find yours. “The reward is such that I could stop my rambling ways. If we find what we suspect is there.” “You’re saying you’ll stay.” “I am.” The shiny scissors in your hand tremble, sending little arcs of light across the rough hewn walls. “You’ll come down the well. For keeps.” “For keeps, Gentle Hands. My heart already resides here. I finish this job? You’ll have all of me. For as long as you can put up with my nonsense.” Your hands still. Dread replaced by spreading warmth. You smile. “You’d be surprised at how much of your nonsense I can tolerate.”

“Oh, Kevva,” Ezra sighs and sags against you, “You are surely one of Her kind sisters. She has given you the touch, the blessing—“ You lightly slap his cheek with a gloved hand. “Don’t you go boneless on me, handsome.” You’ve been liberally coating the red wheals and rising blisters with a salve of kind sister, sersath and bird-eye berry. This salve counters the miserable itch of humbleweed, and triggers a kind of euphoric sedation in maybe one in five people you’ve treated. “You’re having a strong reaction. It’s not dangerous. Kevva’s just smiling on you. That’s all. You’ll feel right as rain in about a sixteenth. Hey! You go limp and I will not heave your ass off this floor.” “I will gladly spend the rest of my days gazing up in admiration.” “Hmmmm. Might hold you to that, pretty spacer.” “Would give my life into your gentle hands,” “Okay. Okay, let’s get you settled,” You steer Ezra naked and greasy towards a fresh-sheeted cot you keep against one wall, just in case. He’s not the first stray to rest there a spell and surely won’t be the last. He stretches himself out like a cat lounging in a sunbeam, yawning hugely, even covered in angry red wheals and pinkish goo he’s quite the sight. Pretty man, you think, too bad I’ll probably never see him again. “y’can look all you want, Gentle Hands,” he mumbles, and you feel your face go hot, “I don’t- I don’t mind.” “Here,” you say, pulling the top sheet up to his chest, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean--“ His hand finds yours, warm and enfolding. “Gentle Hands,” he says, but his eyes are already closed, his holding hand already letting go, dropping away from yours, arm dangling stiffly off the edge of the cot, “Kind heart.” And you know it’s the salve, maybe you’ve got the proportions wrong, the strength of the bird-eye berry varies depending on where it’s picked. Have to pay more attention next time, or maybe this pretty spacer just reacts stronger than most for a whole slew of reasons that have nothing to do with you. Ezra snores. You smile and lay his hand over his chest so his arm doesn’t fall asleep. And then go to fetch his clothes from the deep sink so you can rinse them out.

You thread your fingers through his hair and cut like you’ve done many times before. Always makes you a little sad, seeing the curls he’s grown in his time with you piled on the floor in front of the deep sink. Ezra luxuriates under your touch, relishes the feel of your hands carding through his curls, tugging, measuring with the width of your fingers, ruffling his hair this way and that, making sure things are even. You’ve done this for your brothers and now you do it for your lover. Brush the stray bits of hair from his shoulders, letting your hands wander the breadth of him, tuck yourself into the join of his shoulder and neck and his arms come up around you, cradling you against him, the two of you swaying together. I’ll be back before you know it.

Ezra finds you in the front garden says your name and snaps you out of your reverie, the muscle-memory motions of removing errant weeds and dead leaves. You stand and wipe the dirt on your pants and turn to look at him, feel yourself grin. He’s wrapped the top sheet around himself like a toga, shuffles along the walk like a newborn calf, a bit unsteady and blinking in the bright sunlight. The swelling around his eye has already gone down significantly. “Ezra. How you feeling?” “A little tingly,” he says, “A little foggy headed, truth be told, I don’t recall dozing off. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you-“ “You haven’t,” you walk the narrow path through the herb beds to where his clothes hang on the line. You frown. “Still damp. Come on. I think I’ve got something that might fit you. Don’t want to send you back into town with a wet ass.” You move to herd him back into the house, but he stops you, his hand curled gently around your wrist. “I, uh, I worry that I may have said something untoward,” says Ezra, “My mouth has a tendency to run along on it’s own and Kevva knows I have not experienced such gentle care in a whole heap of stand-months--“ “You flirted with me a little,” you say and feel yourself smile, he drops your wrist but you catch his hand in yours before he can pull away, “But I flirted right back.” “Did you now?” “Mmm-hmm.”

Ezra kisses you in that slow way of his, soft press of his lips to yours, his way of lingering, lips hovering over yours sharing breath between kisses, soft pecks and nuzzles, coaxing your lips apart so he can dip his tongue between them, his hands sliding warm beneath the hem of your shirt and when he breaks away so he can dip his face into the curve of your neck to nip at that tender place below your ear, you push him back, a firm hand on his chest. “No.” His brow knits, but his eyes are smiling. “No?” “Go shower off, Ezra. I don’t want all those little stray hairs in my nice clean sheets.” “Those sheets won’t be clean for long, Gentle Hands,” “Doesn’t mean I want to be all scratchy while we’re making a mess of them. Go on now.”

“This isn’t right,” you say, poking at the screen of your much repaired data-pad, “This is far more than what we agreed on.” “You’ve taken very good care of me,” says Ezra. He’s dressed in clothes your middle brother left behind, his own folded into a bundle and tucked under his arm. You reject the transaction. “I take very good care of everyone, Ezra, it’s my job.” “Still I spent a quarter cycle snoring away in your great room,” he says, “I expect most others would have roused me and sent me down the road. I wish to repay you for your kindness.” “I don’t need payment for that. Not with points anyway.” Ezra smirks, and cocks an eyebrow. “You got some other currency in mind?” “Maybe. You’re not boosting tonight are you?” “No,” he says, “We’re hopping the Magra-Tripoint line. Don’t need to hit the bench for three cycles and a little. You got something in mind, Gentle Hands?” You feel blood rise in your cheeks, something about his newly minted name for the you and the way he says it, lilt and rumble of his voice holding something that could be want, something that pulls on you, maybe a cycle or so of fun with a pretty man, but maybe something more. “There’s live music in the square tonight,” you say, “They usually start up around dusk--“ and you feel suddenly shy. Ezra’s a spacer, he’s been places you probably can’t imagine. “It’s not that weird twitchy shit coming out of Central these days is it?” You laugh. “No, nothing like that. What do you say? Take a girl dancing?” “I would be honored,” says Ezra, “But I’ll have you know that I am a terrible dancer.” “The steps are easy. I’ll show you.” “I look forward to it,” he says, “I’ll meet you in the square at sun-down.”

You have to go into town anyway. You sell your wares at the general store. Balms and salves and tinctures and teas, bird-eye berry gel for teething babies, kind sister and chamomile for sleepless nights. Callie takes her cut, but that’s the price of not having to man your own shop. Everyone in town knows to send the severe cases your way, and otherwise leave you be. There are always a few special orders, things not entirely above board, a powder made of bloodspot spores that will end a pregnancy, opium and bird eye berry dried and made into a tea that can ease someone’s passing with few questions. Giggle-weed infused syrup to help a man get hard, everything passed out in folded envelopes, dark glass jars,blank and innocuous. You do your rounds and make your way to the square, watch the first band set up. A cello imported from Kevva knows where, goatskin drums, a flute carved from a reaper-bird’s hind strut. Rough made guitars. You scan around the square and see the usual faces. There’s a couple of nightclubs closer to the docks, places where the spacers go and you imagine him there. Little prickling like a thorn inside your chest. Never going to see him again anyway so what does it matter?

“Well, there you are!” You turn from the pint of cider you’ve been nursing and smile. “Ezra! Wasn’t sure I’d see you!!” You stand and he pulls you into a strong embrace, and then holds you at arms length. “Wasn’t sure I’d see you either,” he says, “Pretty lady who soothed my hurts and listened to my yap and saw my pale and unimpressive ass? I’m surprised you didn’t run for the hills.” “I knew you’d be pretty once the swelling went down.” “You clean up nice, too.” You wonder for a second if he’s making fun, traded your usual workday clothes for your favorite dress, not fancy by off-world standards, river-linen dyed summer sky blue, but there’s no judgement in his eyes and widening smile, just warmth, slides his palms down your arms and squeezes your hands in his. The band plays and the caller names the steps, and people swing their partners and turn and Ezra’s face tightens. “This looks unduly complicated,” “Let’s get some cider in you. It won’t seem so complicated then.” “If you say so, Gentle Hands.” “I do say so. Just watch for a bit and then let me lead.”

Despite your best efforts, Ezra is truly a terrible dancer, the reels and jigs and square dances see him dazed, unable to tell his right from his left and after one particularly disastrous dance the two of you collapse into each other, laughing, clinging to each other and then the band starts a slow one, which means that the caller picks at his guitar and sings a song of lost love while the rest of the band hit the bar and give everyone else a chance to catch their breath. A handful of couples make their way to the floor, and Ezra holds his hand out to you. “This is a dance I know, if you’d do me the honor.”

You expect you’ll never see him again. You’ve come to regard the spacers you meet as spring-sprites, all sun glittered wings, pulling themselves out of the mud only to live a hand of cycles and then vanish. He’ll persist in your thoughts for a bit, this pretty man with his odd way of speaking and his lovely dark eyes, but once he leaves the well he’ll fade like they all do, become a tender memory and nothing more, but for now you ache pleasantly from his attentions. The dock is swarmed with clotted crews of spacers, stacks of luggage, piles of gear waiting to be loaded, low hiss of regulator-valves triggering along the snake-work of cable leading from the tanks to the transfer ship, a squat soot-stained wedge, plated in dingy heat-tiles like a fish’s scales. You suspect this craft is older than you. “This isn’t goodbye, you know,” says Ezra, and your heart squeezes. You’ve heard this before. A delirious hand of cycles, but they always go and they never come back and most times you are able to guard your heart, but not this time, not with him, and your usual glib response doesn’t come. “Ezra, I—we—it’s not?“ He reaches for you and cradles your face in his warm, rough hands, and you expect to feel his lips on yours, his mouth hungry and fever hot, but instead he stretches up and kisses your forehead, and something inside you tugs, pulls, cries out at this unexpected tenderness, tears sting your eyes so you close them, as his breath fans warm over your skin. Ezra kisses your closed eyes, right then left and then rests his forehead against yours. “I’ll see you again, Gentle Hands,” he says and pulls you into a crushing hug, and then the deck hand calls out a string of numbers over an intercom, balky speakers strung up on wooden poles all around the port and he’s gone into the surging crowd.

Ezra sings in the shower. He always does and Kevva have mercy that man can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Sweep his damp, shorn curls into a little pile to be scooped up and sprinkled into the garden beds, human scent revolting to the local fauna, but then it screams up at you, a little curl of starlight among the tangled dark, little twist of white hair cut from his temple that you so like to twine your fingers through, now discarded. You bend and pick the damp curl of hair from the floor and roll it between your fingers. You move almost without thinking, tuck that little curl into an envelope you usually use for dry herb blends, fold it closed and hold it in your hands a beat, press it to your chest, and then laugh at yourself. Ezra will come back.

He always comes back.

[jonzykid]

Jazmine Sullivan | Super Bowl LV

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