#surveillance in Mexico

[textless]

Aerostat. Cochise County, Arizona, July 2024.

[plethoraworldatlas]

Chihuahua state officials and a notorious Mexican security contractor broke ground last summer on the Torre Centinela (Sentinel Tower), an ominous, 20-story high-rise in downtown Ciudad Juarez that will serve as the central node of a new AI-enhanced surveillance regime. With tentacles reaching into 13 Mexican cities and a data pipeline that will channel intelligence all the way to Austin, Texas, the monstrous project will be unlike anything seen before along the U.S.-Mexico border.

And that's saying a lot, considering the last 30-plus years of surging technology on the U.S side of the border.

The Torre Centinela will stand in a former parking lot next to the city's famous bullring, a mere half-mile south of where migrants and asylum seekers have camped and protested at the Paso del Norte International Bridge leading to El Paso. But its reach goes much further: the Torre Centinela is just one piece of the Plataforma Centinela (Sentinel Platform), an aggressive new technology strategy developed by Chihuahua's Secretaria de Seguridad Pública Estatal (Secretary of State Public Security or SSPE) in collaboration with the company Seguritech.

With its sprawling infrastructure, the Plataforma Centinela will create an atmosphere of surveillance and data-streams blanketing the entire region. The plan calls for nearly every cutting-edge technology system marketed at law enforcement: 10,000 surveillance cameras, face recognition, automated license plate recognition, real-time crime analytics, a fleet of mobile surveillance vehicles, drone teams and counter-drone teams, and more.

If the project comes together as advertised in the Avengers-style trailer that SSPE released to influence public opinion, law enforcement personnel on site will be surrounded by wall-to-wall monitors (140 meters of screens per floor), while 2,000 officers in the field will be able to access live intelligence through handheld tablets.

Texas law enforcement will also have "eyes on this side of the border" via the Plataforma Centinela, Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos publicly stated last year. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a memorandum of understanding confirming the partnership.

[nando161mando]

The surveillance technology at the US-Mexico border is coming from Israeli companies.

[makingcontact]

Borders: What are they good for?

White text reading “Borders: What are they good for?” superimposed on top of a greyscale background showing the jagged border between two sides of a sand dune. Credit: Original photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash. Digitally altered by Lucy Kang. What are borders, and why do we have them? And how is violent border enforcement at the US-Mexico border connected to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza?…

[probablyasocialecologist]

In place of blanks on the map, we’re now able to see highly cultivated landscapes with massive infrastructure stretching back to the early centuries BCE. Road networks, terraces, ceremonial earthworks, planned residential neighbourhoods, and regional settlement systems ordered into patterns of geometrical precision can be traced across Amazonia, from Brazil to Bolivia, as far as the eastern foothills of the Andes. In certain parts of Amazonia, the forest itself turns out to be a product of past human interaction with the soil. Over time, this generated the rich ‘anthropogenic’ earths called terra preta de índio (‘black earth of the Indians’), with levels of fertility far in excess of ordinary tropical soils. Scientists now believe that between 10,000 and 20,000 large-scale sites remain to be discovered across Amazonia. Similarly startling finds are emerging from Southeast Asia, and we might reasonably expect them from the forested parts of the African continent too. Of course, the same procedures are changing our picture of tropical landscapes that did witness the rise and fall of great kingdoms, and even empires. Archaeologists now believe that in the year 500 CE, between 10 and 15 million people lived in the Maya lowlands of Yucatán and northern Guatemala. For comparison, the Atlas offers a figure of just 2 million for all of Mexico in the same era, including the Indigenous cities of the Altiplano (at least some of which, we now know, were organised not as empires or even kingdoms, but fiercely autonomous republics, long before the Spanish conquest). It is easy, encouraged by works such as the Atlas, to imagine ancient history as a chequerboard of kingdoms and empires. But it is also very misleading. Ancient polities in the Maya lowlands and Southeast Asia had porous boundaries, constantly shifting, and open to contestation. Authority waned with distance from the centre. Warfare and tribute were largely seasonal affairs, after which coercive power shrank back behind the walls of the capital. As the archaeologist Monica Smith points out, only the most naive historian would assume that the claims inscribed on imperial monuments are a simple reflection of political reality on the ground. Of course ancient rulers loved to present themselves as ‘sovereigns of the four quarters’, ‘masters of the known world’, and so on. Yet no ancient world emperor could even have imagined powers of surveillance, such as those now enjoyed by any minor dictator or oligarch. On a global scale, we are witnessing a revolution in our understanding of ancient demography. To ignore it, these days, is to indulge in a cruel sort of intellectual prank, by which the genocide of Indigenous populations – a direct consequence of the planetary revolt against freedom, in the past 500 years – is naturalised as a perennial absence of people. Nor can we just assume that if we want to understand the prospects for our modern world, the only ‘big’ stories worth telling are those of empire.

5 July 2024

[ultraviolet-divergence]

Miller is also a lead architect of the president-elect’s plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. He has said that a second Trump administration would seek a tenfold increase in the number of deportations to more than 1 million per year. In an interview on Fox News last week, Miller expressed eagerness at the prospect of beginning mass deportations as soon as possible.

“They begin on Inauguration Day, as soon as he takes the oath of office,” he said.

Homan, a former police officer and Border Patrol agent, has worked under six presidents during his three decades in law enforcement. He was executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Obama. During that administration, ICE carried out a record number of deportations.

Homan was one of the architects behind its controversial family separation policy. More than 5,500 children of immigrants were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018 under the administration's short-lived "Zero Tolerance" policy. According to the Department of Homeland Security, as of April, there were still 1,401 children without confirmed reunification.

They’re doing it. Know what you should do in an encounter with ICE, whether in your workplace, at your door, or outdoors. Expect an intensification of surveillance in both rural and urban areas, especially, but not limited to, within 100 miles of the national border, where ICE can conduct warrantless stops.

[mariacallous]

Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing dozens of new allegations of sexual assault in a series of civil lawsuits set to be filed.

At a press conference held on Tuesday, Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee said he is representing 120 accusers with allegations against the entertainment mogul that occurred over 20 years.

“We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors. We will pursue this matter no matter who the evidence implicates,” Buzbee said during the press conference.

“Many powerful people ... many dirty secrets,” the lawyer said of the allegations. He added that his team has “collected pictures, video, texts.”

Buzbee added that the allegations will include: “violent sexual assault or rape, facilitated sex with a controlled substance, dissemination of video recordings, sexual abuse of minors.”

“It’s a long list already, but because of the nature of this case, we are going to make sure damn sure we are right before we do that,” Buzbee continued. “These names will shock you.”

Buzbee said he’s had more than 3,000 individuals come forward to his office with accusations against Combs and that he plans to begin filing lawsuits in various states within the next 30 days. He added that they will name the other defendants at a later date.

Among this new group of accusers, Buzbee said, 62 % identify as African American, and that they hail from more than 25 states, with the majority from New York, California, Georgia and Florida.

Buzbee said that 25 of the accusers were minors at the time of the incidents occurring as early as 1991. Buzbee said that the events occurred at parties hosted by Combs, as well as auditions for people hoping to “break into the industry.”

NBC News has reached out Combs’ legal team for comment.

Combs is currently being detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York after prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged Combs with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution in an indictment unsealed last month.

Combs was denied bail twice, but on Monday his legal team, which now includes attorney Alexandra Shapiro alongside Teny Geragos and Marc Agnifilo, filed the first paperwork ahead of an appeal of the bail decision.

Buzbee has represented victims in several other high-profile lawsuits, including against BP in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He also represented individuals accusing NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual misconduct in 2021. That same year, he filed a 750-million dollar lawsuit against Travis Scott after a fatal crowd crush at the rapper’s Astroworld Festival.

Combs’ legal issues have been mounting since his ex-girlfriend, Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura, filed an explosive civil suit against him last year, accusing him of assault and sex trafficking over the course of their relationship. Combs, who has vehemently denied the accusations, settled with Ventura for an undisclosed amount. Several months later, surveillance video showing Combs brutally beating Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel leaked, and the mogul apologized for his actions.

Since Ventura’s lawsuit, multiple other civil lawsuits have been filed against Combs — most recently one from Dawn Richard, a former member of the girl group Danity Kane who alleges Combs groped, assaulted, imprisoned and threatened her life. Combs has denied all claims against him, calling them “sickening allegations” from people looking for “a quick payday.”

Many of the lawsuits against Combs were filed in New York City, which has the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law allowing people to file lawsuits alleging sexual abuse even after the statute of limitations had passed.

[fatehbaz]

Goldstein and Mahmoudi point to what, on appearance, is a relatively new phenomenon: namely the use of digital technologies in contemporary forms of surveillance and policing, and the way in which they turn the body into the border. [...] [T]he datafication of human life becomes an industry in its own right [...] [with the concept of] “surveillance capitalism” - a system based on capturing behavioral data and using it for commercial purposes [...] [which] emerged in the early 2000s [...].

In contrast, scholarship on colonialism, slavery, and plantation capitalism enables us to understand how racial surveillance capitalism has existed since the grid cities of sixteenth-century Spanish Mexico (Mirzoeff 2020). In short, and as Simone Browne (2015, 10) has shown, “surveillance is nothing new to black folks.” [...]

[S]urveillance in the service of racial capitalism has historically aided three interconnected goals: (1) the control of movement of certain - predominantly racialized - bodies through means of identification; (2) the control of labor to increase productivity and output; and (3) the generation of knowledge about the colony and its native inhabitants in order to “maintain” the colonies [...].

---

Identification documents and practices can, like so many other surveillance technologies, be traced back to the Middle Passage [...]. [T]he movement of captives was controlled through [...] slave passes, slave patrols [...]. Similar strategies of using wanted posters and passes were put in place to control the movement of indentured white laborers from England and Ireland. [...]

Fingerprinting, for example, was developed in India because colonial officials could not tell people apart [...].

In Algeria, the French dominated the colonized population by issuing internal passports, creating internal limits on movement for certain groups, and establishing camps for landless peasants [...]. In South Africa, meanwhile, the movement of the Black population was controlled through the “pass laws”: an internal passport system designed to confine Black South Africans into Bantustans and ensure a steady supply of super-exploitable labor [...].

On the plantation itself, two forms of surveillance emerged - both with the underlying aim of increasing productivity and output. One was in the form of daily notetaking by plantation and slave owners. [...] Second, [...] a combination of surveillance, accounting, and violence was used to make slave labor in the cotton fields more “efficient.” [...] [S]imilar logics of quotas and surveillance still reverberate in today's labor management systems. Finally, surveillance was also essential to the management of the colonies. It occurred through [...] practices like fingerprinting and the passport [...]. [P]hotographs were used after colonial rebellions, in 1857 in India and in 1865 in Jamaica, to better identify the local population and identify “racial types.” To control different Indian communities deemed criminal and vagrant, the British instituted a system of registration where [...] [particular people] were not allowed to sleep away from their villages without prior permission [...].

---

In sum, when thinking about so-called surveillance capitalism today, it is essential to recognize that the logics that underpin these technologies are not new, but were developed and tested in the management of racialized minorities during the colonial era with a similar end goal, namely to control, order, and undermine the poor, colonized, enslaved, and indentured; to create a vulnerable and super-exploitable workforce; and to increase efficiency in production and foster accumulation. Consequently, while the (digital) technologies used for surveillance might have changed, the logics underpinning them have not.

---

All text above by: Sabrina Axster and Ida Danewid. In a section from an article co-authored by Sabrina Axster, Ida Danewid, Asher Goldstein, Matt Mahmoudi, Cemal Burak Tansel, and Lauren Wilcox. "Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State". International Political Sociology Volume 15, Issue 3, September 2021, pages 415-439. Published June 2021. At: doi dot org slash 10.1093/ips/olabo013. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[cryptidcircuswrites]

LEAD ME UP THE GARDEN PATH

! - dubious consent in the beginning, monsterfucking, mentions of teeth and claws, drool, pollen as an aphrodisiac, rutting, non-consensual aphrodisiac, consensual sex, t4t, PIV sex, dom bottom // sub top, mild degradation and mild pet play, jack has multiple tongues and eats pussy, Brian has a vulva and it is referred to primarily as such (clit, pussy, etc)

“Seriously, what is this?”

“It’s literally just a flower,” Toby lies, voice muffled slightly through the gas mask he’d strapped on.

“Then why are you wearing that?” Jack asks, ducking away from the flower that Toby keeps thrusting in his direction.

“Just touch the damn flower!” Toby finally gets the pink pollen-painted petals close enough to Jack’s face for them to be inhaled.

The beast coughs, sneezing. “What is that, Tobias?!” it shrieked. The human laughs.

“You’ll find out.”

•••

Brian has been stewing the entire mission. He’s been moody for days, which means he isn’t getting laid. Tim knows him too well.

The target has been taking down the cameras the two had put up for surveillance. Brian is sick of it. There’s not only the lack of eyes on the target, but also the looming threat of the Operator getting mad that the job isn’t done.

Brian slams a camera against the cement wall nearby, the device already useless. He swears under his breath.

“Brian, can you fucking relax?” Tim snaps. He lights a cigarette and slips his mask off.

“How am I supposed to relax when this fucker keeps taking down the cameras?” he steps towards Tim threateningly.

“You sound like Alex,” Tim mutters, taking a drag on his cigarette.

Brian goes to slap the cigarette out of Tim’s hand, but the stocky man stops him. “Don’t compare me to Alex, yeah, I got it. You’re still being a prick. Go home and figure out how to get Jack to fuck you, or rub one out, or whatever the fuck you need to do because I’m tired of your bitching.”

Brian stops, because he knows Tim is 100% right. He relaxes slightly, pulling away.

“Fine.”

•••

Jack is in agony.

Whatever Toby had put on that plant had shoved him dick-first into the worst rut the creature can remember. Jack can barely even think coherent thoughts. It just paces the cabin on all fours, claws clicking against the wood.

Everything is hot. Jack hasn’t felt too hot in decades, not since leaving Mexico. It pants, its back arches, desperate to alleviate any of the tension anywhere in its body. Nothing is helping.

Jack is in agony, but Brian is a quarter of a mile away, and the wind is at his back.

Jack can wait.

It is an ambush predator, after all.

Brian walks into the cabin six minutes and thirteen seconds later, kicking off his boots. Jack counted. Six minutes and thirteen seconds of agonized waiting, and only a few more as Brian shuts the door, walking further into Jack’s web.

A few more steps in, and then…

Jack pushes Brian into the wall, hard. The beast growls, saliva dripping from the corners of its lips.

Brian’s heart races. He knows Jack is dangerous, he knows what Jack is capable of. He’s seen it in action once or twice; long black claws glistening with blood as it ripped through flesh so easily, jaws swallowing chunks of meat without chewing…

Jack notices Brian’s apprehension. It rests its forehead to the human’s trilling slightly in between heavy gasps. It’s so desperately trying to convey what it can’t verbalize in this state—

Please help me. Please don’t deny me. I need you.

Brian’s lips curl into a sly grin. He relaxes, wrapping his arms around the monster’s neck and shoulders.

“Well hello to you too, mutt.”

The monster chitters, pushing against him. Grey-tinted saliva pools in its mouth, dripping down its chin. Brian presses back, bodies hot against each other.

They’ve always fit so well together. Jack slots itself between Brian’s legs, desperate for attention. It feels so right.

Brian gasps slightly at the sensation. Jack is painfully needy right now; he can feel it through everything, hot and hard and throbbing.

“What in the world has you so riled up, puppy?”

Jack twitches, hips jutting against Brian’s crotch. It whimpers. It’s practically begging like a dog for Brian to make the agony stop.

He hisses, nails digging into Jack’s shirt. “Easy baby, take it slow for me. I’ve had a rough day.”

It whimpers into his neck, then kisses up his jaw. He pulls it by the scalp up to his lips.

Jack is still too hot. Brian’s lips against its mouth is like blessed ice, something finally putting out the fire of agony raging in its very soul.

It needs more.

It grinds against the human desperately. Brian moans into the kiss, grabbing at Jack’s shirt. The kiss only breaks to pull the shirt from the monster’s body, revealing the lean and long and grey torso.

Jack goes in for another kiss, Brian stopping it.

“Uh uh. You’re not fucking me against a wall, we’re doing this on a bed.”

Jack huffs, but picks the human up anyway. It drops Brian onto the bed and continues its assault on his lips. It desperately pulls at his clothes, ripping holes with its careless desperation.

Doesn’t matter. It can be fixed later. Jack needs relief now.

And in order to do that, it needs to get Brian worked up too.

He moans deliciously as thick wet tendrils swipe over his clit and pussy. It lazily works him over, teasing his clit and flicking over his hole. He grips Jack’s scalp, grinding against its mouth. It complies, sliding a tongue just inside his wet heat. The other two tongues continue to tease and pulse around his tdick and lips. He begs and whimpers and wraps his legs around Jack’s head, begging for more.

The monstrous predator teases him, refusing the friction he so desperately needs until he breaks.

“Jack please! Fuck!”

He breaks sooner than expected.

Jack pulls its tongue out, but not away; it teases and licks to keep him going while it fumbles with its pants.

Brian gasps as Jack’s mouth presses to his skin, moving up his hips and chest and finally hovering over his mouth. Jack is still breathing heavily, but it waits for those magic words.

“Please, Jack,” he whispers.

The creature presses its lips to his, pushing its length slowly into his pussy. He moans into the kiss, both relishing the sudden relief the sensation afforded to them.

Jack is desperate again, rutting in and out of Brian like a dog in heat. Lips crash against each other, teeth find flesh, moans spill from both mouths, Brian clenches and hips roll in a needy, sloppy rhythm.

Neither lasts particularly long, Brian going first and then Jack, gushing deep inside its lover as it bites down on his throat.

•••

“Better?” Tim asks with a stupidly smug grin the next morning.

“Whatever the fuck you and Rogers pulled? Don’t do that without warning me next time,” Brian says with a mock firmness.

That mischievous glint is back in his eyes, and Tim is satisfied that his friend is back to normal.

[veganism]

The genocide is also experimentation on living beings

Israel is currently testing new weapons in Gaza, some of which will soon be sold globally as "battle-tested," according to Antony Loewenstein, an author who has written a widely acclaimed book on the issue.

For years, the Israeli defense sector has used Palestine as a laboratory for new weapons and surveillance tech, he told Anadolu, adding that this is also the case in the current ongoing war on Gaza.

One of the main reasons why "many nations, democracies and dictatorships support Israeli occupation" of Palestine is because it allows them to buy these "battle-tested" weapons, asserted Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.

Another aspect of Israel's war on Gaza has been the use of artificial intelligence technology, he said.

According to Loewenstein, AI has been one of the key targeting tools used by the Israeli military in its deadly campaign of airstrikes, leading to mass killings of Palestinians-now over 28,500-and damage on an unprecedented scale.

The current war on Gaza is "inarguably one of the most consequential and bloody," he said.

He described Israel's use of AI against Palestinians as "automated murder," stressing that this model "will be studied and copied by other nation-states" and Tel Aviv will sell them these technologies as tried and tested weapons.

In the last 50 years, Israel has exported hi-tech surveillance tools to at least 130 countries around the world.

To maintain its illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and blockade of the Gaza Strip, Israel has developed a range of tools and technologies that have made it the world's leading exporter of spyware and digital forensics tools.

But analysts say the intelligence failure during the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks casts doubts over Tel Avis's technological capabilities.

Israel's reliance on technology "is an illusion of safety, while imprisoning 2.3 million people under endless occupation," said Loewenstein, who is Jewish and holds Australian and German nationalities.

He described Israel's response in Gaza as "apocalyptic," stressing that the killings of Palestinian civilians, including children and women, is "on a scale of indiscriminate slaughter."

- 'BLOOD MONEY'

Loewenstein, who is also a journalist, said Israel has honed its weapons and technology expertise over decades as an occupying power, acting with increasing impunity in the Palestinian territories.

This led a small country like Israel to become one of the top 10 arms dealers in the world, he said, adding that Israeli arms sales in 2021 were "the highest on record, surging 55% over the previous two years to $11.3 billion."

In his book, Loewenstein explores thoroughly Israel's ties with autocracies and regimes engaged in mass displacement campaigns, and governments slinking their way into phones.

The Israeli NSO Group sold its well-known Pegasus software to numerous governments, a spyware tool for phones that gives access to the entire content, including conversations, text messages, emails and photos even when the device is switched off.

Israeli drones were first tested over Gaza, the besieged enclave that Loewenstein referred to as "the perfect laboratory for Israeli ingenuity in domination."

Surveillance technology developed in Israel has also been sold to the US in the form of watch towers now used on the border with Mexico.

The EU's border agency Frontex is known to have used Israeli drone technology to monitor refugees.

Loewenstein explains in his book that the EU has partnered with leading Israeli defense companies to use its drones, "and of course years of experience in Palestine is a key selling point."

"So again, one sees how there are so many examples of nations that are wanting to copy what Israel is doing in their own area in their own country on their own border," he said.

These technologies and "are sold by Israel as battle-tested," he said.

In other words, he contends that Palestinians essentially have become "guinea pigs," and despite some nations and the UN publicly criticizing the Israeli occupation, in reality "they're desperate for this technology for themselves for their own countries."

"And that's how in fact, the Palestine laboratory has been so successful for Israel for so long," he said.

In his exhaustive probe into Israel's dealings with arms sales around the world, he noted that the country has monetized the occupation of Palestine, by selling weapons, spyware tools and technologies to repressive regimes such as Rwanda during the genocide in 1994 and to Myanmar during its genocide against the Muslim Rohingya people in 2017.

"This to me is blood money. I mean, there's no other way to see that and again, as someone Jewish, who has spent many, many years reporting on this conflict, both within Israel and Palestine but also elsewhere, it's deeply shameful that Israel is making huge amounts of money from the misery of others," he said.

"This is not a legacy that I can be proud of."

- 'NO NATION ACTUALLY HOLDING ISRAEL TO ACCOUNT'

Profiting from misery is to some extent the nature of what capitalism has always been about, but Israel does this with a great deal of impunity, "because Israel does what it wants," said Loewenstein.

"There is no accountability, there is no transparency, there is no nation actually holding Israel to account," he added.

Israel's regime is shielded from any political backlash for years to come because nations are reliant on Israeli weapons and spyware, said the author.

Israel may not be the only player employing surveillance technology that leads to human rights violations, but it still plays a dominant role, which is why Loewenstein insists that it deserves singular attention.

Israel's foreign policy has always been "amoral and opportunistic," he said, calling on all nations to take a stand and hold Israel accountable, and acknowledge that the world is buying what Israel is selling.

[writeforfandoms]

Armor - pt 1

Find my CoD masterlist

Los Vaqueros borrow a CIA shifter to help them investigate a new drug in the streets of Las Almas. Of course, you can't keep your nose fully out of trouble… Fortunately Rodolfo is willing to help you out.

Welcome to my second offering for Fall4Rudy hosted by @glitterypirateduck - this part used the prompt "You don't know me."

This fic does take place in the same world as Born for Greatness, and ties into that story indirectly. However, you do not have to have read Born for Greatness to understand this one.

Warnings: shifter!reader, brief violence, canon typical violence, non graphic injury, minor character death, forced drug use, drug mention, cartel stuff.

Word count: 2.7k

Rodolfo Parra x f!reader

Technically, you weren't supposed to be in Mexico. You were supposed to be somewhere in Russia. 

But Laswell had pulled some strings and called in a favor, so. Here you were. Making your way to introduce yourself to the local alpha. 

Because Laswell had not only changed your assignment, but also sent you to deal with a pack. 

You were a little bit tempted to wring her neck. 

You stopped outside, taking a moment to eye the alpha, as he and his second in command eyed you. They were both good looking, with dark hair and dark eyes. 

But there was something about the second in command, hidden depths that intrigued you. 

"Alpha Vargas." You tipped your head to him. 

"Be welcome on my territory," he greeted, nodding to you. "Laswell said to expect you."

"She also said you'd give me more information on what you need help with." You smiled politely, tipping your chin. 

"Come inside." He nodded to the building behind him. "Have a drink with us." He clapped a hand to the other man's shoulder. 

"Rodolfo Parra," he introduced himself quietly. "Pack second." 

You nodded to him as well. "Pleasure." 

"Come," Alpha Vargas reiterated, leading the way inside. You followed quietly, observing the base with keen eyes. The pack here was not huge, only six members, but everyone on base had common shifter courtesy, from what you could see. 

The alpha's office was nice, and he waved you into a seat before he brought you a drink. He sat on the edge of his desk, his second sitting on the couch instead. 

"We need an unknown to do some surveillance," Vargas told you, tumbler dangling from his fingers. "All of my Vaqueros are known to the cartel here."

You nodded. This wasn't the first time you'd been thrown into a situation to gather intel. "Can do." 

He hummed, taking a sip of his drink. "Tomorrow," he decided. "For today, relax. Rudy will show you around." 

You blinked, a bit surprised, before you nodded. "Alright." You tossed the rest of your drink back, enjoying the brief burn, before setting your glass down. 

"This way." Rodolfo stood and waited for you to follow him. You did, of course, slinking after him with an easy confidence. 

Rodolfo was quiet as the two of you walked away from the alpha's office. He walked with the ease of someone not only used to having orders followed, but used to having some level of responsibility. Which made sense, as the pack second. 

"Have you been with your alpha long?" You tucked your hands in your pockets, looking around. The general hustle and bustle of a base was normal to hear, and the way nobody even tried to meet your eyes honestly felt nice. 

"You could say that." Rodolfo glanced back at you, amusement bright in his scent. "Twenty years."

You whistled lowly. "Damn," you muttered. "Impressive." 

“And you?” Rodolfo opened the door to another building, stepping inside and looking back at you. 

“Packless,” you informed him, easy as anything. It had been your own choice, after all. You didn’t need a pack. And you did better without yet another person keeping track of your movements. 

He nodded and didn’t offer condolences, which was a welcome change. Far too often, other shifters met that with pity, and you hated it. 

“This is your room,” he said, opening another door for you. “You are free to explore.”

“Why do you think he’s waiting until tomorrow?” You stepped into the room, taking a quick look to find your bag already sitting at the foot of the bed. The room was even a little decorated, a far cry from the bland, soulless military rooms you were used to.

Rodolfo was silent for a few moments, and when you turned to look at him he was already watching you. “We were advised you were coming from a different time zone,” he answered slowly. “And this is not so time sensitive you must move immediately.”

You huffed but nodded, accepting that. Good enough. Kind of unusual for a colonel to not shove you straight back into the field, but you’d take it for today. “I see. Thank you.” 

He nodded once before looking away. “Let one of us know if you need anything.”

You nodded, watching him turn and stride away. You weren’t sure what he shifted into, but you were willing to lay even odds on a canine of some sort. You were curious, of course. You wanted to know. But you weren’t about to ask. That would be rude. 

Clearly, a little exploring was in order. So that’s exactly what you did, taking your time surveying the base. It was nice, had personality, different from what you were used to. But in a good way. Nobody met your gaze, instead looking at your chin or forehead, which was just fine with you. (Actually, you were impressed with how easy it was.) 

You’d definitely had worse places to stay before. 

It was easy to pick out the pack among the rest - the pack all circled up around their alpha at dinner time, chatting and laughing with an ease you were almost envious of. 

Rodolfo met your gaze across the distance between you for a moment and raised one eyebrow, looking back to the table. A silent invitation. You smiled gently and shook your head just a little when he looked back at you. You were fine by yourself.

You were always fine by yourself. 

The job, when you finally got the details, didn’t sound too bad. The Vaqueros were all too well known to go looking, but you could pose as a tourist and get in places they would be noticed. The local cartel didn’t know to look for you, and you could blend in. 

Rodolfo was to be your point of contact. Of course. 

“We’ve arranged a room for you,” he said as he walked you back to your room. “In the city, so you will not have to trek back out here. We have communications set up for you.”

“Think the cartel will be that curious?” You weren’t dismissive, simply curious.

“It is difficult to say.” Rodolfo shrugged. “But we are asking you to, hm, poke your nose into their business.”

You surprised yourself with your laugh, head tipping back a little. “That’s not a hardship for me,” you told him with a grin. “I do that all the time on my own.” 

He smiled, amused, and shook his head. “I’ll drive you out,” he murmured. “Is thirty minutes enough?”

“Plenty,” you assured him. “Thanks.” You nodded once to him as you stepped inside to gather enough to tide you over a few days. Fortunately you had a few civilian outfits with you. 

The drive out of the compound was quiet. It wasn’t until you got closer to town that you gave in to the curiosity clawing at your chest. 

“Is your pack really that well known here?”

“Yes.” He shot you an amused look. “This is surprising to you?” 

“It is.” You leaned back in your seat, contemplating how best to phrase your thoughts. “My family always kept quiet about it. Old town superstitions, nonsense like that.” 

He hummed his understanding, gaze flitting briefly to you again. “No place is perfect.”

Your laugh was soft this time, your lips stretching in a grin to show your teeth. “True enough.” The city grew closer slowly, and you shifted in your seat. You knew he’d drop you off on the outskirts, to avoid raising suspicion. “I’ll try not to contact you in the middle of the night.”

He paused, pulling over so he could twist to look at you head-on. “You contact me any time,” he said, holding your gaze. Not pulling rank, just keeping your attention firmly on him. “For any reason. Si?” 

You blinked at him, caught off guard. Not just by the eye contact, but the intensity. The sincerity in his words was palpable in his scent, too. He really meant it.

“Okay,” you agreed slowly. 

He held your gaze for another two long moments before he nodded once and started driving again. 

He left you in the arranged drop location, bag slung over your shoulder, sun warm against your skin. You had directions to the hotel memorized, and you set off at an easy walk.

Sure, you were looking for cartel and for their involvement in the city, but you were also looking for anything odd or out of place. Thus, taking your time walking around. 

Signs of the cartel were everywhere, as were signs of violence. It was clear to you that something had happened here fairly recently - the cartel people you saw were more vigilant, almost nervous. The civilians were as well, constantly on the lookout. 

Good thing you were just a dumb tourist, then. 

You didn’t check in until that night, and that first check in was short. You’d arrived, nobody followed you, you’d report back when you had more. Rodolfo wished you luck. 

You tried not to be touched by his care. 

Two more days brought nothing of use, just dead ends and being sworn at. Nothing new, really. Your curiosity came in handy here, giving you the patience to explore, even if you didn’t always have the wisdom to back off when you should. 

Some of your frustration must have leaked through that third night, though. 

“Estás bien,” Rodolfo murmured. “Cálmate.”

“I’m calm,” you shot back, a little annoyed. “I’m fine.”

“You do not sound it.”

“You don’t know me.” 

That gave him pause, silence sitting between you both for long moments. “Not yet,” he admitted. “But I would like to.”

You blinked, jaw dropping in surprise. “...What?” 

“You heard me.” 

“You are trying to distract me.”

His chuckle was soft. “Perhaps, but I am also telling the truth.”

“We’re putting a pin in that until I’m done,” you decided after a moment, shaking your head. “After I’m done, we can get food, if you’d like. How’s that?” 

“Acceptable.” His smile was clear in his voice. “Keep me updated.”

“WIll do.” You hung up and blew out a breath. He… wanted to get to know you. Even though you were on loan. Even though you were not part of his pack. 

Huh. Well. That definitely gave you some food for thought. 

It took two more days for you to find trouble. 

You poked your nose somewhere it didn’t belong, and ended up finding much more than you anticipated. 

Having four guns pointed at you was nothing new. Being tied up while this happened was nothing new. Being threatened with mysterious white powder, however, was new. 

You could just hear two of them arguing while the others kept their guns on you. Something about you being a spy (correct), trying to get the formula (incorrect), something something rival production group (so wrong it was laughable), if they wanted to find out so bad they could get a sample off your corpse… Huh. That sounded bad. 

You were still trying to twist your hands free when one of the men dumped a little baggy of white powder on you. 

Welp. You were dead for sure. 

But the burning sensation against your skin was new. Some of the powder got up your nose and the burning intensified, traveling from your nose up to the rest of your head, and down to the rest of your body. You breathed in, pressure building, until you couldn’t hold it in. 

You shifted, bones shifting and muscles changing, feeling every agonizing moment. It felt like it lasted forever, but could have only been seconds. 

Leaving you on the ground, the chair splintered under you, fur all on end. You shook your head, disoriented, trying to right yourself. 

The first gunshot skimmed your shoulder, and you yowled. You didn’t know where you were, and it didn’t matter. You weren’t safe. 

The first man fell to your claws, his screams echoing in your head, too loud. And he wasn’t the only threat. Nothing made sense but you knew you needed to defend yourself. 

Your jaws and paws were dripping by the time you felt safe, by the time the shouting and shooting had stopped. You turned a quick circle to make sure there were no other threats, but all was quiet. Your chest heaved with your panting, jaws parted, the burning under your skin urging you to move, to get out, to run. 

So you did. You left the room and managed to find your way out of the building. Outside was dark but that worked to your advantage, letting you slip away from humanity, taking to rooftops to get out faster. It wasn’t long until the city was behind you, leaving you in more open land. 

The burning finally faded from your skin and your mind, leaving you exhausted but yourself again. But you couldn’t shift back. Trying sent a jolt through you, causing you to hiss. 

Well. You were definitely late to check in with Rodolfo, but there was nothing you could do about that now. You could hardly waltz back into the city and climb up to your room, not as you were. 

Mountain lions weren’t exactly a common sight in Las Almas, after all. 

Growling softly to yourself, you finally huffed. You could find a spot to hang out until you could shift and then get back to the hotel. You could try to get back to the base. You could just find somewhere to chill for a while and hope a better idea came to you. 

Well. The base wasn’t that far from town. You could make it. 

So you started walking, keeping to the side of the road. Just in case. It was dark, but nothing your vision couldn’t handle. Thank goodness for that. 

Your tail swished in agitation as you recalled the drug they’d dumped on you. You had assumed something more run of the mill, but that had clearly been something worse. You were far from an expert, but you’d heard rumors of a drug that forced a shift. 

Having now experienced it first hand, you could definitely add that it was not pleasant. You’d shifted almost feral, had gone fully feral when shot at. (Not that you felt bad about that - they had been planning to kill you, so you had no sympathy for them.) 

If the cartel was making that shit, which it sounded like, you needed to make the Vaqueros aware. That could be very dangerous let loose on the pack. 

It had certainly done a number on you. 

The sun was just starting to rise when you got to base. You stopped a little ways away and yowled, hoping to attract attention without getting shot at. Again. Fortunately, your wound had stopped bleeding long ago. Unfortunately, you were half-covered in dry or drying blood, and you felt absolutely disgusting. 

The commotion of multiple soldiers coming up to the gate was clearly audible to you, and your tail flicked against the ground. 

But it wasn’t until you heard Rodolfo that you tried to approach, yowling again, looking for the sergeant major. 

He called your name, and you trotted closer, paws silent on the ground. The gate opened and Rodolfo walked out to meet you, crouching down near you. 

“Can you shift back?” he asked, keeping his voice low. He didn’t touch you, but his gaze caught on all the blood on your fur.

You huffed and settled down to focus. It took a few moments (including one moment of sheer panic) before you shifted back, still bloody and sticky and gross. Remnants of the white powder clung to your skin and hair. 

Rodolfo was quick to shuck his jacket, tossing it over your shoulders. “Need to get you back to medical,” he fussed, gaze sweeping over you again. 

“I can walk,” you assured him, though you didn’t move away from him. The helping hand at your elbow was, in fact, helping. And soothing. 

He shot off orders in Spanish to get the alpha and alert medical, staying close to your side. Your progress to medical was slow as your body protested the drugs and the hard use. 

But you got there in the end, near-collapsing onto a bed. Rodolfo hovered, refusing to leave. Which was kind of nice, honestly. You got to hold his hand while you got stitches. 

"Thank you," you murmured to him when the nurse stepped out. 

"Any time." He squeezed your hand, looking down at you with some emotion you didn't want to identify.

[nats-revival]

Not they tryna reenact KOSA… anyway yall, here’s why KOSA is bad!!

If you don’t already know, KOSA, or Kids Online Safety Act is a bill that was proposed to keep children safe on the internet. You might ask ‘why is this bill bad if it’s in favor of supporting the safety of children online’? Well, according to stopkosa.com, it puts pressure on platforms to add even MORE filters on anything they think is inappropriate for children. This is especially harmful for LBGTQIA+ youth because the knowledge about this topic would be censored, as well as knowledge on suicide prevention and LGBTQIA+ support groups. Do you see how this an issue? For those children who are wanting to learn more about these topics they’d be turned away because of this bill. It would also be likely that it’ll allow the shutdown of websites that allow them to learn about race, sexuality and gender.

This bill would also add more internet surveillance for all users across all social media platforms. It would expand the use of age verification and parental monitoring controls. These things in itself are already very invasive, but doesn’t take into consideration the children who live in unsafe environments where they are domestically abused and/or are trying to escape these situations. To add my two cents onto this, I strongly believe that the KOSA bill is an unnecessary violation of our first amendment rights (if you’re American), and doesn’t really make the internet any more safer. It actually makes it more unusable for youth. Hypothetically, if this bill were to be passed, then this would make social media unusable for literally anybody. To censor content from the youth about wanting to learn about their identity is extremely harmful. Blocking them from accessing resources that may prove as helpful in their scenarios is outlandish and unneeded. We try to shelter our youth so much to the point where we try to boil them down to only being with their parents want them to be and also not being able to let them learn and explore about other things that they may want to identify themselves with. This is very harmful.

This is a list of companies who are saying no to KOSA ..

• Access Now

• ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

• Black and Pink National

• Center for Democracy & Technology

• COLAGE

• Defending Rights & Dissent

• Don’t Delete Art

• EducateUS: SIECUS In Action

• Electronic Frontier Foundation

• Equality Arizona

• Equality California

• Equality Michigan

• Equality New Mexico

• Equality Texas

• Fair Wisconsin

• Fairness Campaign

• Fight for the Future

• Free Speech Coalition

• Freedom Network USA

• Indivisible Eastside

• Indivisible Plus Washington

• Internet Society

• Kairos

• Lexington Pride Center

• LGBT Technology Partnership

• Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition

• Media Justice

• National Coalition Against Censorship

• Open Technology Institute

• OutNebraska

• PDX Privacy

• Presente.org

• Reframe Health and Justice

• Restore The Fourth

• SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change

• SWOP Behind Bars 

• TAKE

• TechFreedom

• The 6:52 Project Foundation, Inc.

• The Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center

• Transgender Education Network of Texas

• TransOhio

• University of Michigan Dearborn – Muslim Student Association 

• URGE

• WA People’s Privacy

• Woodhull Freedom Foundation

There is something you can do to stop the KOSA bill from being passed! On the website I linked, there is a petition. All you have to do is fill out the information and it’ll send off an email for you. The email reads as follows:

I’m writing to urge you to reject the Kids Online Safety Act, a misguided bill that would put vulnerable young people at risk. KOSA would fail to address the root issues related to kid’s safety online. Instead, it would endanger some of the most vulnerable people in our society while undermining human rights and children’s privacy. The bill would result in widespread internet censorship by pressuring platforms to use incredibly broad “content filters” and giving state Attorneys General the power to decide what content kids should and shouldn’t have access to online. This power could be abused in a number of ways and be politicized to censor information and resources. KOSA would also likely lead to the greater surveillance of children online by requiring platforms to gather data to verify user identity. There is a way to protect kids and all people online from egregious data abuse and harmful content targeting: passing a strong Federal data privacy law that prevents tech companies from collecting so much sensitive data about all of us in the first place, and gives individuals the ability to sue companies that misuse their data. KOSA, although well-meaning, must not move forward. Please protect privacy and stop the spread of censorship online by opposing KOSA.

The website also gives you like a format of what you can say if you chose to call your representatives. If after reading this post, you feel inclined to do something then I would say just go ahead and do it. My first time learning about KOSA was today immediately after seeing the post I felt inclined to send my lawmakers an email. Please try to help when you can and this will only take a few minutes so I think this is something that you can consider. This post is getting a little long now, so I’ll stop here. There are more resources online if you would like to learn more about the cons of this KOSA bill, thank you for reading.

[saturnzskyzz]

𝙲𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚜𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚘𝚗𝚎: 𝙰 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚎

Word count: 2,009

Warning: Mature audiences only, you have been warned | inappropriate jokes and comments (you know how deadpool is) this is just fiction

𝙰/𝙽: 𝚍𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚏𝚒𝚌 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚜 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚖𝚢 𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚝 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚐𝚞𝚢𝚜 𝚖𝚊𝚢𝚋𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚒𝚝 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚊𝚍?? 𝙸 𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚞𝚙 𝚒𝚗 𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗 𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚛, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚝'𝚜 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚊 𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙴𝚁!! 𝙰𝙰𝙰𝙷𝙷𝙷!!! 𝙸𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚍𝚘𝚎𝚜 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝, 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸'𝚕𝚕 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚠𝚘.. 𝙸 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚐𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚊 𝚏𝚒𝚐𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚝 😟. 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 𝚗𝚘𝚗-𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚕𝚎 𝚏𝚒𝚌!! 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜, 𝚎𝚗𝚓𝚘𝚢!! 𝙴𝙰𝚃 𝚃𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝚄𝙿 𝙶𝙰𝙽𝙶!!!

Summary: Wade drags Logan along to a very long car ride followed to be his personal Uber, and best friend, to visit new Mexico for a week. Upon reading articles on the Google home page-wade- he realizes that a certain individual looks familiar from an article he read one time. So, he strikes a very interesting conversation with said individual, and finds something quite interesting and intriguing!

Divider credits

The sound of a new Honda Civic driving on an empty road could be thought of as two heroes sitting in the front seats of the driving vehicle. With the passenger jamming out to the music, and the driver peacefully in his thoughts while concentrating on the road; It was truly a cinematic experience if the two had thought about this exact moment in third person.

"Ow! Would you be mindful of where you're playing your imaginary drum set, bub?" As if the sound didn't come from Hugh Jackman himself, Logan Howlett was shown in third person, forgetting the whole "cinematic third person view" with the Honda Civic, which was what Wade- who hit the victim- had thought about.

"Oopsie daisy! It's like these drumsticks have a mind of its own, huh?" Wade huffed out a breath as he continued to slam his hands in the air to play what was heard on the radio.

Logan nodded his head disapprovingly like a father, and just continued on with the road. The peace continues.

It's not everyday that they have these peaceful drives like this. Other than when they were having to drive to where the facility of where their timelines were controlled and kept under surveillance as to not be disturbed by any high powerful GOD. Yeah, that may be pushing it. Anyway, The point is that Wade and Logan, though the claw handling mortal didn't want to admit it, they were glad they had this long drive again. The beauty of nature was an A+.

"You need to tell them why we're on the road, silly!" Wade blurted out as he was now turned, facing the back seats like he was talking to passengers.

"The fuck is you lookin' at back there, Wade?" Logan questioned, yet not really wanting to know the reason since he's trying to drive to- Oh,, right!

The reason why they were on the road is because Wade decided it would be a lovely idea to have the two take a break from their old apartment, and take a vacation over to New Mexico!

The beaches there looked lovely from the Google pictures Wade had pulled up once, just once, so that was all the good reason as to why he wanted to drive there.. Or, to sit there. He made Logan drive.

"Damn right I did!" Wade blurted out yet again, causing Logan to almost jump in his seat, but luckily for his own embarrassment, he only flinched. "Bub, what the fuck are you saying right now?" Logan asked, getting annoyed with him now.

"Oh, sorry peanut! Just reacting to this fic that's currently being typed up. Anyways, nice driving skills by the way! Oscar made sure to bring up the fact that I'm the passenger princess." Wade confidently said, pulling down the sunshade to look at himself in the mirror for some extra dramatics.

Logan glanced at him before looking back at the road in utter confusion. "Wade, you practically forced me to drive, you're not a,, Passenger- whatever you just fuckin' spurred up in your little head. And by the way, I don't trust you behind the wheel."

Wade did a dramatic gasp by that, clutching his imaginary pearls, he whipped his head to look at Logan with almost daggers for eyes. "How dare you not trust me! I am a veeeery trustworthy person, as a matter of fact."

Logan gave Wade a very interesting "oh yeah?" as to let the younger know he's allowed to rant.

"Yes, "oh yeah?"! I am such an oh yeah, trustworthy person: Yukio once left me alone in the X-Men building for half an hour to come back to the place all spiff and span! Not only that, Colossus let me hold one of his very expensive vases all because I wanted to look at it. He let me HOLD IT while looking at it, isn't that a whole lot of trust thrown into one basket?"

Logan chuckled at that. "First off, the only reason she came back to the X-Men building to a very clean interior is because you had trashed it before she even came back. And I don't mean a little trash; you had the whole place covered with things on the ground, broken, and even the walls looked terrible in the pictures you sent me. You had Colossus' help as well as mine and somehow blind Al's help to clean up the entire place in under 15 minutes- which you got scolded for by Colossus afterwards. And for the record, Yukio came back after 30 minutes because she was supposed to be gone for 2 hours helping her girlfriend with whatever they were doing, but I told her about the mess."

Again, Wade had gasped by the betrayal. He was going to bark back in retaliation but Logan had cut him off.

"I'm not done, bub. for the vase, I found that ugly thing in the trash two weeks after the fact that you had had a small obsession with it; which tell me Wade, why was it in the trash all broken up in various sizes of pieces?" Logan asked with a smug look on his face meaning "gotcha" which knowingly pissed Wade off.

"The only reason it was broken in the trash is because Mary Puppins knocked it over when she visited the place with me one morning. Colossus somehow doesn't know about that yet." Wade explained defeatedly. He crossed his arms to emphasize his defeat and frustration.

"No. He knows." Logan corrected. Still with that fucking smug look on his face, like who is this guy?

"How does he know?!" Wade looked at him in shock, desperately waiting for an answer.

"Cuz I told him, you wuss puss."

Damn, was that a jaw to the ground in betrayal². "You mother fucking, cock sucking, animal hating, snitch bitch!" Wade couldn't believe it. Like seriously, who snitches on their best friends?!

"Another thing, those examples were not what I was looking for. I said trustworthy in driving, not just whatever popped into that small skull of yours you call a brain." Logan emphasized that with a finger to Wade's temple, pushing at his head slightly to get his comedic relief friend to be even more ticked off.

"I can't believe you.. How do you go and snitch on your best friend? I'm your homeboy- we're like this!" Wade stuttered out as he crossed his pointer and middle finger to shove it in Logan's face.

"Wade, you're not my- get your hand out of my face, I'm driving here!" Logan said quickly, as he pushed at the offending hand that butted in his personal space.

"What were you gonna say, sweet cheeks? Were you gonna say that I'm not your best friend?" Wade looked at Logan all sad now.

"No, that's not what I.. Friend is a stretch in itself, pal. I appreciate the offer of me moving in with you and Al, but it's been a few years. you know..? Give it some time." Logan explained the best he could. As embarrassing as he worded it, which most likely ruined a bit of his ego, but he had trust issues.

"Just like the author said, you have trust issues, peanut." Wade said in a not-so-sad tone now. He went for crossing his arms again and looked out the window this time.

The car goes silent for a moment, much to Logan's relief since he's driving, and because he wanted to ignore his comment. They got a little over an hour left before getting into New Mexico, so hopefully the car ride ends up being dead silent until then.

. . .

"So about you not trusting my driving-" Wade was about to go on another unimportant rant before he got smacked over the mouth.

"Not. A. Word." Logan said carefully, never once keeping his eyes off the road again.

Wade had wanted to bite back with a sexual comment, but decided not to as he quite wanted his mouth open and not stapled. Yes, his mouth was stapled shut by Logan before.

. . .

Eh, on second thought.

"I'll have you know that my driving skills are immaculate!" Wade said through muffled lips.

"Oh yeah? Then take the fuckin' wheel." Logan said, letting go of the wheel as he was turning. This caused Wade to panic, and roughly took the wheel to make a sharp turn, almost hitting a tree when by passing, but successfully missed it by a smidge.

"What the fuck?!" Wade shouted, looking at Logan then quickly retreating his eyes back on the road.

Logan crossed his arms this time, pulling off his smug face as he looked down at Wade. "We almost hit that tree back there."

"Oh, you think?! You decided to let your masculinity be free while I'm over here trying to not get hit- by the way, it's very hard keeping an eye on the road while in this position.. You sure you didn't just do this because you wanted me to take a whiff of your dick? Because it smells atrocious, you should shower when we get to New Mexico."

Logan uncrossed his arms at that comment and violently pushed Wade out of the way so he could continue on with driving. "Nope. You're way too anxious, and you don't fully concentrate while driving: Remember that one time you drove into town and almost swerved into a pole all because a bird hit your side of the window?"

Wade chuckled at the memory even if it wasn't the best thing to ever happen. "Look, I get jumpy when I'm not expecting things like birds when driving. It's the animal's fault for bumping into my window. Honestly, if I had hit that pole, it should be that fuck ass pigeon who would pay for our expenses." Wade argued.

"Yeah, like that's a possibility. Don't forget the time you looked at a building for more than 5 seconds causing us to pass a red light." Logan said with a growl. That memory still pissed the Wolverine off.

"Oh yeah, ha! How could I forget you being generous to me for once?" Wade awed at the memory.

Logan was not pleased by that answer. "I had to pay for your ticket so then Al wouldn't have had to pay for it herself. I didn't do it for you, I did it for her. God knows how much money she has left with how much you steal from her. And I'm not talking about the money." Logan pointed at Wade then, almost instantly catching him pulling out a small bag of white powder with letters written on it.

"Wade.. Don't fuckin' tell me you stole her cocaine again?! As soon as I say something about you stealing, you just casually pull it out?!" Logan shouted.

"I can casually pull out something else if you really want me to." When Wade looked at Logan expecting an annoyed comment, all that Logan did was look at him with disgust. "Look, I only pulled this out to gain a reaction from you for the viewers who's reading right now. Hey viewers!" Wade turned to face the back seat once again. This caused Logan to look back twice, only to be met with empty seats.

"Jesus- Wade, you make no sense whatsoever whenever I'm with you. It drives me insane sometimes." Logan breathed out, exhausted by all the talking suddenly. (Ahh, don't you just love a social battery?)

Wade looked at Logan and then out the car window to see a sign that says "Welcome to New Mexico!"

"Hey look! We made it, honey. Time to go visit the kids, huh?" Wade said excitedly, earning a scoff from Logan.

Once again, Wade is picturing the car in third person view, as he imagines the car drifting away from the camera, as the welcome sign appears in front. After a while, the screen will start to fade and soon it all goes black, waiting for a new chapter to come.

"This is going to be a fun vacation."

[apricitystudies]

favourite investigative/long-form journalism pieces

a collation of from previous reading lists! enjoy :)

bold = favourite. * = interactive.

red river women* (canada)

the race to build the world’s first sex robot

singapore’s tech-utopia dream is turning into a surveillance state nightmare

how 7-eleven is ripping off its workers* (australia)

the secretive prisons that keep migrants out of europe* (eu)

hunting the men who kill women: mexico’s femicide detective

dead white man’s clothes* (ghana)

inside racism hq: how home-grown neo-nazis are plotting a white revolution (australia)

the night raids* (usa/afghanistan)

how the us stitched up the honduras garment industry

behind the smiles at amazon*

the secret irs files (usa)

pandora papers: from temples to offshore trusts, a hunt for cambodia’s looted heritage leads to top museums

the barcelona lifeguards defying europe to save migrants on the open sea*

welcome to the monkey house (south korea/usa)