#the premise of this one may or may not be completely evident from the snippet but that's what's fun about it

[astriiformes]

Writer asks: 3 and 19! 💖

3 - What is your favorite fic you've written?

Answered here!

19 - Give us a small teaser from one of your WIPs.

From the draft of the first Bad Things Happen Bingo fic I've been working on, for the prompt "Outnumbered in a Fight" (with the caveat, of course, that this is very much still the rough draft)

“Oh,” said Marty, sounding more than a little dazed. “Of course it’s you guys.” “Marty, what happened?” asked Lorraine. “Biff’s friends weren’t real happy with me,” he said, blood dribbling from his lip when he tried to talk. “Those jerks!” she exclaimed. “But oh, just look at you—Marty, you need a doctor! George, we ought to take him to a doctor.” Personally, George was grappling with the sinking feeling that he was going to come to regret his own actions tonight—or, well, not regret them. Standing up for Lorraine had still been the right thing to do. He was just, you know, completely rationally and a little nauseously wondering if there were going to be consequences. But doing the right thing hadn’t gotten him into trouble yet, and besides, Marty was his friend. A strange friend, who had showed up out of nowhere about a week ago, but still a friend. “You really don’t look so good,” he told Marty. “I think… I think Lorraine is right.”

[blarrghe]

Tell me about "Enemies to Lovers"! I don't think I've heard or seen anything from that before!

I have only talked about it a little, but Enemies to Lovers is the fic I'm working on to post only when completely finished. I'm enjoying the process of really solidly building my story but it's been slow going. Happy to share a little though!

The basic premise is a canon-divergent "Inquisition/The Rift never happened AU" featuring a Dorian Pavus who stayed home and eventually became a Magister and a Taren Lavellan who stayed home and stayed First to his clan. They meet when Dorian's party of Tevinter adventurers, who are looking for a last-ditch effort cure for Felix in the Free Marches wilderness, inadvertantly stumble into a clan of Dalish elves and make them mad. Taren winds up helping/escorting Dorian's people on their quest to an ancient temple because his Keeper said he had to. He actually has some motive to go investigate the temple, and it gets Dorian's people out of his woods faster and keeps an eye on them, but he doesn't want to travel with the haughty Magister and really fuckin' hates his guts (at first!)

I'm having fun with the character stuff as well as the more minor worldbuilding/politics stuff because I'm keeping really close to canon and trying to harness some classic DA vibes. In particular I am trying to get kind of an Origins feel and am hellbent on giving Dorian some actual necromancy spells such as the skeleton summon from DAO

Now I've rambled, here's a tiny snippet of Taren Hating Dorian's Guts ^_^

--

He was not tall, but stood in towering regalness over Dorian all the same. His posture was straight, his shoulders strongly set and covered with a heavy green cloak woven through with threads of blue and gold. He wore his deep auburn hair in a long, thick braid hung over one shoulder, and he held his carved, spiralling wooden staff in both hands, emanating power. 

“You are Master Pavus,” said the standing elf, speaking down to him. 

“Master Pavus was my father,” Dorian replied, flashing the man a winning smile, “as I am evidently your prisoner, it seems only fitting that you simply call me Dorian.” 

“Dorian Pavus,” the elf muttered, voice still low and brimming with frustration, “three of our hunters return with lightning burns across their bodies, one is unable to walk. Two of your kind have escaped into the woods, setting a blaze that you followed with deadly frost. You've destroyed our paths, scared away our hunters' prey, and your displays of power may yet bring the attention of beasts or unfriendly men to our clan." Dorian found himself without argument. He swallowed hard through a nervous dryness which had invaded his throat. "When our scouts find the men who fled, they will be executed for the destruction they have caused," the elf went on, "tell me why I should not do the same to you, here and now.” 

“Right, well, as I’ve been trying to say,” Dorian began, coughing to clear his throat and forcing some hopeful easiness into his tone, “all of this has really been just a terrible misunderstanding.”

[luthien-under-bough]

❔Choose a random WIP and talk about it (!!!!)

thank you for the ask! 🫶

I'm going to talk a little bit about my Daemyra gothic romance au since that is the WIP occupying approx. 95% of my brain space. My current challenge with this fic is the worldbuilding involved in creating an alternate history for a "Victorian" era Westeros. I drafted the majority of the story during NaNoWriMo, but left myself a lotttt of placeholders for filling in worldbuilding details. The main point of divergence is that there was no Aegon's Conquest, and subsequently the Targaryens never became monarchs. I'm working off the premise that the Durrandons remained Storm Kings, and ultimately maintained control over what in canon would have become the Crownlands. The Targaryens established themselves as friends of the crown, and built up King's Landing (which I'm trying to figure out if I want to rename since no king will have, in fact, landed there in this version of history) as a prosperous port city, and were thus rewarded with a hereditary dukedom. In the present day, Viserys Targaryen is the Duke of Blackwater, and Rhaenyra is his only child. Dragons are also extinct at this point, which is a something that will come into play over the course of the story. I am determined not to start posting any of it until it is complete, but you can keep reading below for a little snippet I recently wrote for an in-world text on the dragon extinction.

II. 

Excerpted from Archmaester Jorrel’s Living Among Giants: A Study of Terrestrial Megafauna in Westeros:

The draconic extinction event is unusual in that it primarily affected a single species. Other observed extinction events indicate severe, rapid, planet-wide collapse, eliminating a vast number of species (see Chapter VI - the Arborean Collapse). 

A single triggering incident is not clear; but records show that within one generation, all remaining dragons in Westeros perished. Evidence gathered from marine fossils and stratigraphic data, when compared with dragon skeletal remains uncovered on the island of Dragonstone from the same era, do not indicate any significant stress or shock to the biosphere. 

Therefore, it is likely the draconic extinction can be attributed to several interdependent factors: 

(1) Westeros lacked the necessary climate and habitat to sustain the creatures. 

Dragones are generally thought to have been born from the Fourteen Flames, and thus thrived in the very volcanoes that would come to spell doom for the Freehold. They required a certain temperature and humidity to maintain ideal health and condition.

The Dragonmont, being the only active volcano located within Westeros, could not possibly hope to accommodate the supposed hundreds of dragons that inhabited the Freehold at its height. Sources differ on precisely how many dragons made the journey across the Narrow Sea with Aenar Targaryen; however, evidence suggests there were not more than twenty dragons living during any given period.

Even so, it is likely there were simply too many dragons and not enough habitat to accommodate them. This would also account for the changes observed in the average size and overall health of each subsequent generation of dragons born natively to Westeros. 

(2) Cross-species transmission of a virulent pathogen among the common lizard population resulted in an outbreak of disease in the dragon population.

There is some causal evidence to suggest a distant relation between the great wyrms of Essos and the more common lizard endemic to Westeros. Regarded as some as a spurious claim by Septon Barth in his Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History, it has also been purported that the first dragons were created by the ancient Valyrians mages from wyvern stock.[3] Given the relation between dragons, wyrms, and wyverns, it can be extrapolated that the common lizard’s physiology may be used to apply a certain board understanding of dragon morphology.

Anecdotal evidence (see Appendix III - Supplementary Materials, Pre-Modern Era) suggests that sometime in the second century AC, there was a marked decline in lizard species on the isle of Dragonstone and other nearby coastal communities such as Dritmark, Sharp Point, Rook’s Rest, and Duskendale. If there was a disease that impacted the lizard population, it is reasonable to assume the dragons may have been subject to its effects as well. 

(3) A significant loss of Valyrian magical arts and cultural practices was a contributing cause to the extinction of the dragons. 

Somewhat controversially posited in Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History by Septon Barth, the dragonlords of Valyria controlled their mounts with binding spells and sorcerous horns.[5] As previously noted, Barth also theorised that dragons were first bred by mages via magical methods. Knowledge of this magic was either lost with the Doom, or simply lost over the generations after Aenar Targaryen and his kin settled on Dragonstone. 

Given that the creation and control of the creatures was heavily dependent upon sorcerous arts, it is possible — and likely — that other aspects of their care and maintenance depended upon such magical interventions as well. Lacking such knowledge, the ability of the dragons to successfully reproduce and generate robust offspring was significantly reduced.

[oumakokichi]

Hello ! Do you think it can be considered canon that Ouma has something for Saihara ? And if so, do you think it was really relevant to the story to hint at that ? (That one sentence about him not letting go of someone he fancies in Chapter 4 literaly came out of nowhere and was never mentioned again, but I might have missed something) I personally kinda ship it but do wonder if it was really important to make it a thing.

I’ve answered a bunch of questions along this line ofthought before but yes, I would say Ouma’s feelings for Saihara are canon.There are a bunch of characters with canonically confirmed one-sided feelingsin the DR franchise, so I wouldn’t consider this anything new. If anything, itwas a pleasant surprise to see yet another canonically confirmed gay characterin the franchise, and so soon after Juzo, too (before ndrv3 came out, I was personallyworried it was going to be a long, long time before we got another explicitlygay character).

Ouma’s confession in Chapter 4 isn’t something I would say “cameout of nowhere,” particularly as there are plenty of indications in him takinga much greater interest in Saihara ever since the start of Chapter 2. I thinkin Chapter 1, it’s fair to say that he wasn’t particularly interested though—especiallybecause Saihara was still very much acting the part that Tsumugi had intendedfor him, by being scared of everything, “weaker than anyone,” to put it in herwords.

It is particularly worth noting though that pretty much assoon as Saihara takes his hat off in Chapter 2 and begins deliberately actingin a different way than what was “pre-written” for his character, Ouma startstaking a much bigger interest in him. The “my beloved Saihara-chan” commentsalso start as early as Chapter 2, and teasing or not, I would say it’s stillnoteworthy that he begins expecting a lot more from Saihara as a detective andas an individual both.

There’s also his behavior towards Saihara in Chapter 3,which is arguably one of the chapters where Ouma interacts the most withSaihara by virtue of not yet having begun his own villain routine. Withoutacting so openly hostile and antagonistic the way that he does in Chapter 4,his interactions with Saihara are considerably more playful and even thoughtful.

One of the scenes that’s caught my interest for a while nowis one in which Ouma mentions that he doesn’t actually want to resurrect Amamifor the “transfer student” motive. Surprised, Saihara asks why not, and after abrief pause, Ouma explicitly says that it’s “because he’s thinking of hisbeloved Saihara-chan.” He says he’s pretty sure Saihara would rather resurrectKaede if he had a choice, and that he would rather do what makes Saihara happy—afterwhich, of course, he playfully tacks on a “that’s a lie, though!” But sincethere was no reason for him to bring up that particular conversation in thefirst place, and since he was acting quite serious for most of thatconversation, I firmly believe he was telling the truth.

That little exchange isn’t one I see brought up a lot, but Ido think it’s an excellent glimpse at the way Ouma works, always letting littlesnippets of the truth show before passing it off as a lie because he knows thatno one will believe him anyway as long as he makes the credibility of his ownwords go down. It also highlights the fact that he’s an extremely caringperson, no matter how much he pretends otherwise. Since we know that it’s canonthat Ouma hated the killing game, and hated death and murder in general, it makessense then to think that he was thinking long and hard about the “transferstudent” motive and how getting a chance to meet and talk with the deceasedagain might actually be a chance to bring some closure.

There are also, of course, his FTEs and bonus mode contentas well. While the bonus mode isn’t canon, the FTEs are at least deeply tied toboth his character and the story, and to dismiss those as “not canon” feelssomewhat hasty to me. His FTEs are filled with a considerable amount offoreshadowing for the whole game, and help to shed some light on just why it isthat he starts finding Saihara so incredibly interesting starting from Chapter2 and culminating with their blowout in Chapter 4.

One of the highest possible compliments someone like Oumacan pay to anyone else is to call them “interesting,” or “not boring.” Thereare many indications that he may actually have had some kind of SHSL Analysis.His script in Chapter 5 (which he wrote literally in the span of about twohours) is so incredibly detailed and lengthy that it’s, in my opinion,unexplainable without him having some talent that would allow him to predicthis classmates to that degree—and the only talents we’ve seen along those linesare Junko’s and Kamukura’s. Looking at it from that perspective, it makes sensewhy Ouma brings up words like “boring” and “interesting” so much, as well aswhy he constantly seeks out things that are fun or catch his interest.

This is exactly what he does in his FTEs, especially withSaihara. His first two FTEs with Kaede involve him mostly offering to team upwith her, pissing her off, and her shooting him down. In short, neither of themreally feels like they’re on the same wavelength with each other, and while Ithink he did respect her judging by his final send-off to her in Chapter 1, Ithink her inability to realize that he was posing her a mystery also frustratedhim. In his second FTE with her, he even tells her point-blank that it’s “nothis problem” if she keeps rejecting his offer, and looks disappointed and boredwhen she rejects him for the final time.

By contrast, his FTEs with Saihara are marked withexclamations of surprise and comments about how “interesting” Saihara’sreactions are. Certain dialogue options (especially the more forward andassertive ones) have him remarking “Huuuh, that was completely different fromwhat I thought you’d say!”

Even the entire premise for his FTEs is basically achallenge to someone as weak and timid as Saihara: by posing a “threat” that he’llhave to kill Saihara after a certain number of FTEs now that he knows about his“secret, evil organization,” the easier solution would certainly be for Saiharato just avoid him and never finish those FTEs. So each continuation and eachnew FTE requires Saihara to step forward out of his comfort zone and seek himout if he wants to know anything more about him.

Those small steps of progress and those surprisingly orunexpected comments are basically rewarded with Ouma messing around and playinggames with him for a number of FTEs, finally culminating in the last FTE wherehe loses the knife game that he proposes on purpose, let’s Saihara bandage himup, and then dramatically exclaims that “Oh nooo, I lost so I guess that meansSaihara-chan wins!” Not only is there a lot of excellent Chapter 6foreshadowing (about games that can be won without being played), but there’salso plenty of reason to believe that Ouma really, genuinely did enjoy his timewith Saihara.

He says outright that since Saihara’s been thinking abouthim so much, always wondering why he said certain things or acted a certainway, Saihara’s “heart is full of him,” and “since he has Saihara-chan’s heart,he doesn’t need his life anymore.” This perfectly meshes with his behavior inChapter 4 and other parts of the game: Ouma was clearly curious about Saiharaand wanted to know more about him while also teasing and playing with him, buthe also didn’t want to let him in too closely or allow him to know anythingabout himself.

Basically, Saihara’s ability to act in unpredictable orsurprising ways was the thing that Ouma found the most interesting andappealing about him. It’s undeniably canon that Ouma couldn’t figure him out—notonly do his FTEs suggest it, but Chapter 6 confirms it, with the whiteboard inOuma’s room. Saihara’s picture is set aside from the rest of the group, withthe words “Can’t figure him out?” beneath it. So his whiteboard is yet anotherpiece of evidence backing up the fact that he had feelings for Saihara.

He had feelings, andI think those feelings were something that surprised even himself—whichprobably wasn’t a feeling he was accustomed to considering how much he wascapable of predicting other people’s behavior and various outcomes andscenarios. He was interested in Saihara, clearly, but he also couldn’t fully,100% trust him, or anyone else in the killing game for that matter.

His attempt to force Saihara into joining forces with him inChapter 4 was spurred on not only by his interest in him, which had beendeveloping over the last few chapters, but also the fact that Saihara was (fromhis perspective) the only one who had actually been doing anything productivefor the group, saving everyone constantly in all the trials. Saihara was farmore skilled as a detective than he wanted to admit to himself, due to his owninsecurities, and Ouma saw that and recognized it. But he was also far tooparanoid want to team up with anyone else,which is why he tried to make Saihara cut all ties with the rest of the group.He wanted to work with him, specifically, and no one else.

If you ask me whether I think it was important to the storyor necessary to make it a thing… well, in my opinion, yes, I think it was.Because Ouma’s own emotions, and Saihara’s ability to surprise him, are twothings that Ouma can never fully predict or take into account. And in Chapter 4both of those things come back around to surprise him and to make him finallyshut his mouth when he’s acting horribly in the Chapter 4 post-trial.

One of the most important things about Ouma’s character isthe fact that no matter how infallible he acted, and no matter how convincinghis villain routine was, he was ultimately very, very human at heart. Irecently wrote a post explaining his empathy, and while that empathy helps toset him apart from characters on a much colder, more analytical scale likeJunko and Kamukura, it also makes him vulnerable in a way that those charactersare not.

Unlike Junko and Kamukura, Ouma understands other people’sfeelings perfectly well, and doesn’t enjoy the thought of hurting them. Were hetruly as evil or chaotic as he pretended to be, I’m sure it wouldn’t have beena problem for him to kill any, if not all, of his classmates, moresoconsidering how many tools he had that they never even knew about until thelater chapters. But he never did. His conscience is one of his most redeemingqualities, but it was also a hindrance at times when he wanted to be cold andcalculating and unfeeling. Chapter 4 is the coldest he gets, and Ouma at hismost morally grey—but it’s incredibly telling that even though he has a perfectopportunity to let Maki and Momota both die in his place in Chapter 5, justlike he did with Miu and Gonta, he’s unable to actually do so again.

Then there’s Komaeda, who Ouma still gets compared to quitea lot despite being relatively dissimilar to him in terms of his mindset andactions both. But one of the most notable differences that sets them apart isKomaeda’s inexplicable luck. While it’s true that his luck cycles between thegood and the bad, it’s still a trait that’s more like a force of nature, and itstill makes Komaeda into a larger-than-life figure whose luck would alwayscarry him through his schemes and plans for factors that were outside of hiscontrol.

Ouma, by contrast, has nothing like that to swing things inhis favor. He’s smart—very, very smart, incredibly so. But he has no luck tosway things for him, and so he leaves almost nothing to chance. He calculatesand plans—but he’s unable to make the hard sacrifices that he wants to, whichis ultimately why he chooses to go to his own death willingly rather than keepon sacrificing others. His chessmaster act is ultimately just that: an act. The fact is that Ouma wasn’t aSupreme Leader of anything but a bunch of harmless, silly pranksters, and whilehis bluff was incredible, he was very, very human and vulnerable at his core.And even though he himself might’ve liked to think he was actually someinfallible, ruthless, strategic chessmaster, his own emotions did, I think,catch him off guard.

His confession scene with Saihara shows how even though hewas clearly able to recognize that he had feelings, he also wasn’t able tofully account for how his shitty behavior might be making Saihara feel. Hethought if he kept pushing, Saihara would have to come around and join himsooner or later, and that that they could team up without him fully putting histrust in Saihara or opening up to him. What he didn’t expect was for Saihara to get pissed at him, put his footdown, and call him out on being pathetic and lonely because his actions weredriving everyone else away.

Despite having a comeback to everyone else’s angry remarksin the Chapter 4 post-trial, Saihara’s comment is the only one that leaves himunable to respond. He tries, then goes silent and blank, then finally says he’sgotten bored and walks off. And I think it’s because Saihara’s comment was one of the only ones that genuinelygot through to him. I think he was surprised to realize that Saihara’s comment actuallyhurt, and that he was torn between his own feelings of guilt (both over what hedid to Miu and Gonta, as well as how he began acting towards the rest of thegroup) and his incessant need to keep playing the villain and carrying out hisplan to strike back at the ringleader.

There are all of these reasons, plus the fact that, as I’vediscussed in a lot of other pieces of meta, Ouma’s confession scene iscompletely unskippable. Unlike his FTEs or the bonus mode, it was shown in acompletely story-related, plot-relevant scene. Not only was Saihara himself notaround, but no other characters were at all, meaning that Ouma was completelyalone in that scene. Without anyone else to overhear him, I think it’s safe tosay that there was no reason for him to lie.

His wording was also explicitly romantic. The phrase “sukini natta hito” is used almost exclusively for romantic situations (includingmany love songs and shoujo manga), and is even the exact same phrase Maki usesto describe herself falling in love with Momota in the Chapter 5 post-trial. Itdoesn’t make much sense to me to call it a “hint” when it’s Ouma saying it, buttake it explicitly at face value when Maki says it. Considering how much “love”itself is an extremely important motivating factor for many of the charactersin ndrv3, I think it’s very intentional that there are all these one-sidedconfirmed feelings in the game which drive the characters to do what they do.

Anyway, this has gotten really long so I’ll leave it at thisfor now, but I hope this answered your question! It was really fun to write aresponse to; I love looking in-depth with Saihara and Ouma’s dynamic. Thank youfor stopping by!

[gdpr2-blog]

GDPR

A review of the new security and information assurance laws that go into the impact on May 25, 2018, and a couple of best practices towards GDPR consistency. The GDPR is the most important change in information protection control in decades. Organisations are attempting to actualise far-reaching developments to their frameworks and contracts, and those running on agreeable and security cognizant stages have a head begin. This guide plans to enable our clients to comprehend the GDPR's across the board results, the open door it stands to improve information preparing exercises, and how to end up and remain GDPR-agreeable. The fine print: This GDPR Guide is for instructive purposes as it were. It isn't legitimate counsel. It will be ideal if you contact your lawful direction to get custom fitted course on how the GDPR may affect your business. A review of the new security and information insurance laws that go into the impact on May 25, 2018, and a couple of best practices towards GDPR consistency

The GDPR is the essential change in information security control in decades. Organisations are attempting to actualise significant developments to their frameworks and contracts, and those running on agreeable and protection cognizant stages have a head begin. This guide means to enable our clients to comprehend the GDPR's broad outcomes, the open door it bears to improve information preparing exercises, and how to wind up and remain GDPR-consistent. 

https://seersco.com/articles/what-is-gdpr-and-why-is-it-so-important/

The fine print: This GDPR Guide is for educational purposes as it were. It isn't legitimate exhortation. If it's not too much trouble connecting with your right direction to get custom fitted course on how the GDPR may affect your business.

What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") is another, EU-wide security and information assurance law. It calls for progressively granular security guardrails in an association's frameworks, more nuanced information insurance understandings, and more buyer inviting and point by point exposures around an association's security and information assurance rehearses.

The GDPR replaces the EU's present information insurance legal structure from 1995 (generally known as the "Information Protection Directive"). The Data Protection Directive required transposition into EU Member national law, which prompted a divided EU information assurance law scene. The GDPR is an EU control that has a direct legitimate impact in all EU Member States, i.e., it shouldn't be transposed into an EU Member States' national law to end up official. This will improve consistency and amicable use of the law in the EU.

The GDPR can apply to associations situated outside the EU

In contrast to the Data Protection Directive, the GDPR is essential to any all-around working organisation, not merely those located in the EU. Under the GDPR, associations might be an extension on the off chance that.

(I) the association is built up in the EU

(ii) the association isn't set up in the EU, however, the information preparing exercises are with respect to EU people and identify with the offering of merchandise and enterprises to them or the checking of their conduct.

Handling individual information is a broad idea under the GDPR

The GDPR administers how associations might handle close to home information of EU people. "Individual information" and "handling" are frequently utilised terms in the enactment, and understanding their specific implications under the GDPR enlightens the good reach of this law:

• Personal information is any data identifying with a distinguished or recognisable person. This is an expansive idea since it incorporates any data that can be used alone, or in a blend with different snippets of data, to distinguish an individual. Individual information isn't only an individual's name or email address. It can likewise incorporate data, for example, financial data or even, now and again, an IP address. Additionally, certain classes of individual information are given a more elevated amount of information assurance due to their delicate nature. These classes of data will be data around a person's racial and ethnic inception, political sentiments, religious and philosophical convictions, worker's guild participation, genetic information, biometric information, wellbeing information, data about individual's sexual coexistence or original introduction, and criminal record data.

• Processing of individual data is the critical movement that triggers commitments under the GDPR. Handling implies any task or set of activities that are performed on close to home information or on sets of individual information, regardless of whether via robotized suggests, for example, accumulation, recording, association, organizing, capacity, adjustment or change, recovery, conference, use, exposure by transmission, dispersal or generally making accessible, arrangement or blend, limitation, deletion or devastation. In reasonable terms, this implies any procedure that stores or counsels individual information is viewed as preparing.

Key ideas: information controllers and information processors

In EU information insurance law, two kinds of substances can procedure individual information — the information controller and the information processor.

The information ("controller") is the substance which, alone or mutually with others, decides the reasons and methods for the preparing of individual information. The information processor ("processor") is the element which forms individual information for the benefit of the controller.

It is imperative to decide if the element preparing individual information for every datum handling movement is a controller or a processor. This mapping exercise empowers an association to comprehend what rights and commitments join to every one of its information handling activities.

Stripe has specific information handling exercises for which it goes about as an information controller and others for which it goes nearly as an information processor. A decent outline of this second job is when Stripe forms charge card exchanges. Encouraging an exchange requires the handling of individual information, for example, the cardholder's name, charge card number, the MasterCard expiry date, and CVC code. The cardholder's information is sent from the Stripe client to Stripe using the Stripe API (or by some other incorporation technique, for example, Stripe Elements). Stripe at that point utilises the information to finish the exchange inside the frameworks of the charge card systems, which is a capacity that Stripe executes as an information processor. Be that as it may, Stripe likewise utilises the information to consent to its administrative commitments, (for example, Know Your Customer ("KYC") and Anti Money Laundering ("AML"), and in this job Stripe is an information controller.

https://seersco.com/articles/articles/what-is-gdpr-audit/

Lawful reason for preparing individual information in the GDPR

The following thought is to decide if a specific handling movement is GDPR-consistent. Under the GDPR, each datum handling action, executed as a controller or processor, needs to depend on a legitimate premise. The GDPR perceives an aggregate of six legal bases for preparing EU people's close to home information (in the GDPR, EU people are alluded to as "information subjects"). Those six legal bases, in the request of Art. 6 (1) (a) to (f) GDPR, are:

1. The information subject has offered to agree to the preparing of his or her information for at least one explicit purposes;

2. The preparation is fundamental for the execution of an agreement to which the information subject is a gathering or to make strides in line with the information subject preceding going into a contract;

3. The preparing is fundamental for the consistency with a lawful commitment to which the controller is subject;

4. The preparation is essential to secure a crucial enthusiasm for the information subject;

5. The information preparing is fundamental for the execution of an errand completed in the open intrigue or the activity of authority specialist; or

6. The preparation is vital for the real interests sought after by the substance, aside from where such benefits are abolished by the benefits or essential rights and opportunities of the information subject which require personal information assurance.

There are likenesses between the GDPR allowed handling list and the rundown contained in the Data Protection Directive. Nonetheless, there are likewise huge divergences.

The most habitually talked about a change made by the GDPR, when contrasted with the Data Protection Directive, is the fixing of the assent necessities (thing 1 in the above rundown). The GDPR assent prerequisites incorporate components, for example, (I) the need that assent is evident, (ii) the demand for approval must be recognizable from different issues, and (iii) the information subjects must be educated of their entitlement to pull back assent. It is likewise essential to be careful that a significantly higher assent prerequisite ("unequivocal assent") is forced as for the preparing of touchy information.

Another vital thing to feature is the authentic intrigue (word 6 in the above rundown). While depending on "authentic enthusiasm" as supporting the handling of individual information, an association should know about the offsetting test prerequisite related to this lawful premise. To fulfil the Accountability Principle under the GDPR, an association must record its consistency with the adjusting test, which incorporates its methodology and the contentions that it considered preceding its reasoning that the adjusting test was achieved.

People's rights under the GDPR

Under the Data Protection Directive, people were ensured certain essential rights as to their information. People's rights keep on applying under the GDPR, subject to some elucidating corrections.

Worldwide information exchanges

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/feds-response-to-denvers-safe-use-site-plan-weak-toothless-mega-stupid-westword/

Feds' Response to Denver's Safe-Use Site Plan: Weak, Toothless, Mega-Stupid - Westword

After the release was made public, Westword reached out several times to Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for recently named U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn, a former member of Denver’s powerful Brownstein Hyatt law firm, but we have not yet received a reply. So we’ll let the text of the feds’ statement about the Denver proposition (which needs approval from the Colorado Legislature before it can take effect) speak for itself — and then take on the points one by one.

The Introduction: The Denver City Council recently passed an ordinance that proposes establishing supervised use sites, where drug users would be allowed to lawfully inject heroin and other illegal drugs in a facility operated by a governmental organization or a nonprofit. This proposal still has a number of steps to go before it becomes a reality. In the meantime, there are a few things Coloradans should know.

Our take: Nothing inherently false yet. But get ready.

Attack one: Foremost, the operation of such sites is illegal under federal law. 21 U.S.C. Sec. 856 prohibits the maintaining of any premises for the purpose of using any controlled substance. Potential penalties include forfeiture of the property, criminal fines, civil monetary penalties up to $250,000, and imprisonment up to 20 years in jail for anyone that knowingly opens, leases, rents, maintains, or anyone that manages or controls and knowingly and intentionally makes available such premises for use (whether compensated or otherwise). Other federal laws likely apply as well.

Our take: You know what else is against federal law? The possession, use and sale of marijuana. And unless we’re very much mistaken, all of those things are happening in Colorado and a slew of other states across the country right now, despite nearly identical warnings from various law enforcers in the administration of President Donald Trump. As for the use of the word “likely” in the last sentence: Don’t you guys know for sure? Couldn’t you have had an intern look it up for you?

U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn, during his days at Denver’s Brownstein Hyatt law firm.

Attack two: Second, there is no evidence that such sites actually reduce the number of drug-related deaths or make it more likely that users will seek help for their addiction or mental health issues. Indeed, a recent review of one facility in Vancouver found that the overdose death rate in the immediate vicinity of the facility was actually the highest in the city. This may be due in part to the fact that while these facilities are touted as being “safe” because of the availability of opioid antagonists (e.g., Naloxone or Narcan), these facilities are not actually limited to opioid users. Those injecting methamphetamine, cocaine, or other drugs for which there is no counteragent are also welcome to use the facility. The Denver facility likewise would welcome users of any drug, not just opioids.

Our take: There are so many whoppers in this paragraph that Burger King should sue for copyright infringement. As National Public Radio acknowledged in a September analysis, proof that safe-use sites work isn’t overwhelming, in part because of the difficulties inherent in studying this particular population. But to say there’s no evidence at all is a flat-out falsehood. For starters, scope this snippet from a report by the Journal of the American Medical Association, complete with original links:

Dozens of cities around the world host SIFs [Safe Injection Facilities], and 2 are planned in Seattle. A SIF that opened Vancouver, Canada, in September 2003, has been extensively researched. Studies have found the Vancouver SIF and its use were associated with safer injection techniques and practices, reduced syringe reuse and sharing, fewer injections in public and publicly discarded syringes, increased entry into drug detoxification programs, no overdose deaths, and no evidence of increases in drug-related crime.

Not enough for you? Eyeball this summary of findings in a study by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, helpfully labeled “evidence:”

• One high-quality cohort study examined overdose mortality before and after an SIS opened in Vancouver, BC.

— Of persons living within 500 m of the SIS (70% of SIS users), overdose deaths decreased from 253 to 165 per 100 000 PYs and the absolute risk difference was 88 deaths per 100 000 PYs; 1 overdose death was prevented annually for every 1137 users.

— There was no change in mortality in the rest of city.

• Before the SIS opened, 35% of 598 intravenous drug users were admitted to hospital in a 3-year period, 15% for skin infections.

— After the SIS opened, of 1083 SIS users over 4 years, 3 9% were admitted with cutaneous injection-related infections (including osteomyelitis and endocarditis).

— While SIS nurse “referral” to hospital increased the likelihood of admission, the average length of stay decreased by 8 days (from 12 to 4).

— Indirect comparison of different cohorts is a limitation.

• Near one SIS, average monthly ambulance calls with naloxone treatment for suspected opioid overdose decreased from 27 to 9 (relative risk reduction of 67%).

• About 6 to 57 HIV infections per year are prevented by the SIS according to mathematical modeling.

— Limitations include assumptions made about drug use and injecting practices, and might include benefit from needle exchange programs.

Against this, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the DEA offer an unspecified “review” and a single vague negative reference. That’s really going the extra mile.

Denver City Council member Albus Brooks embraces Harm Reduction Action Center executive director Lisa Raville after the pilot program was approved.

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Attack three: Third, these facilities actually increase public safety risks. Just like so-called crack houses, these facilities will attract drug dealers, sexual predators, and other criminals, ultimately destroying the surrounding community. More importantly, the government-sanctioned operation of these facilities serves only to normalize serious drug usage — teaching adults and children alike that so-called “safe” drug usage is somehow appropriate or can actually be done ‘safely.’ The type of drug use contemplated here is always life-threatening behavior.

Our take: Speaking of evidence, not even the flimsiest sort is mentioned here. Instead, the authors fall back on fear-mongering tropes intended to reinforce dubious stereotypes rather than debunking them. Come on, guys! Try a little harder!

Attack four: Finally, we note that nothing in this statement should be read as casting aspersions on the laudable motives of those seeking to improve our communities and free Coloradans from the scourge of drug addiction. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Denver Field Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration support all methods of legal intervention to address the opioid and methamphetamine crisis in Colorado, and in fact work hard to facilitate them every day.

Our take: The feds believe that the opioid crisis is a bad thing — but they want to tie the hands of local authorities interested in addressing it in new and innovative ways. That’ll fix it!

The coda: But these efforts must comply with federal law. Efforts that do not comply with federal law risk action by the U.S. Attorney’s Office using any and all federal remedies available.

Our take: This falls well short of a crackdown promise; it’s more of a flimsy threat of the sort for which Denver officials have long been prepared. When we spoke to Denver City Council member Albus Brooks about his advocacy of supervised-use sites back in October, we pointed out that Trump administration officials had previously warned other cities about possible legal action should they open such facilities.

His response? “As you know, Colorado was the first state in the country to legalize [recreational] marijuana, which the federal government did not condone. There are many instances in our policies where we have had a different perspective than the federal government. So that’s not a concern.”

Brooks’s reply to the feds’ finger-wagging seems similarly unbothered; we’ve reproduced it below in its entirety. And Mayor Michael Hancock, who waited until Denver City Council had passed the safe-use bill to confirm that he plans to sign it, wasted no time standing up for the concept, as seen in this interview clip tweeted by Fox31 reporter Joe St. George:

Granted, such sites are controversial, as witnessed by the varied reactions to the measure’s passage from Westword readers. But both Brooks and Hancock will only enhance their reputations by standing up to the feds on this issue — and the tepid push-back from Trump’s minions has made doing so a snap.

Here’s the aforementioned statement from Brooks:

Assorted supplies available to participants at the Harm Reduction Action Center.

Photo by Michael Roberts

Ordinance 1292 to Create Supervised Use Sites will Help Prevent Overdose Deaths

The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado and the Denver Field Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a joint statement in response to the passage of ordinance 1292, sponsored by Councilman Albus Brooks. This ordinance creates a supervised use site pilot program in Denver. Supervised use sites provide a safe space for injection that is monitored by trained staff, helping prevent overdose deaths and the transfer of preventable diseases. These sites also help connect drug users with treatment and healthcare support.

Councilman Brooks provided the following response to the joint statement:

“Last year, more than 1,000 of our neighbors in Colorado died of an overdose. As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has continued to affirm, we are facing a national public health emergency, and cities are on the front lines. While we recognize the role of the federal government, we cannot wait for federal action while the death toll rises. These people are not simply addicts. They are our neighbors, friends, and family members who are experiencing addiction. As a designated local public health department, the city through the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment has the authority under law to address and regulate this type of emergency. Extensive research and global precedent demonstrate that supervised use sites save lives. Choosing not to save the lives of our neighbors is an injustice that threatens to destabilize the very foundation of our society. This is a piece of a larger plan to address this epidemic, and as leaders we know that saving lives takes precedent over politics. Now is the time to act.”

Cities across the nation are considering opening supervised use sites to combat the growing overdose epidemic. It is estimated that emergency services in the city are responding to almost three overdoses per day. Studies have shown that supervised use sites not only save lives, they do not increase crime in the areas where they are located, and save money by reducing the number of 911 calls, ambulance responses, hospital stays, and treatment for transferable diseases.

The ordinance designates one pilot supervised use site in the city that would be monitored for two years. In order to implement the supervised use site pilot program, a bill will also have to pass through the state legislature in the 2019 session.

Source: https://www.westword.com/news/feds-response-to-denvers-safe-use-site-plan-weak-toothless-mega-stupid-11044976

[edibleflowerseu]

WORDS

John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van (2014)

A lil thing I wrote half-awake after binge-reading this book over two days:

i'm having trouble being articulate lately, or more accurately, forever. there's an endless source of frustration that comes from knowing very strongly how you feel and what you think about something, how it affects you, the formless form it takes in your psyche, but being unable to bring it to the surface in any recognizable form to how you know it.

the thought is perfect for a moment, but collapses in on itself before i can capture it, and i'm left struggling to describe an after image of an emotion. struggling to prove it was there at all.

a burst and then it's gone. photograph of a hummingbird.

writing a blog, or whatever, is a fun little exercise in organization and the most basic level of pondering how you feel about something, but it's not something i necessarily want to get good at. i see no place for myself as a god's gift angel of content criticism. it's bare bone thoughts farted onto a page for pleasure.

so i'm in a strange place feeling compelled to understand and write about wolf in white van, but also not wanting to commit to anything serious. something serious and fine tuned seems beyond me right now. it would go nowhere, serve no purpose. a written artifact of a mass of thoughts and feelings that doesn't come close to capturing the real thing. i know how i feel and what i think, why throw so much into explaining it. just to have evidence that i am pondering something profound?

even as i write this - immediately after finishing the book - i can feel the sense of spine tingling starting to fade. i'm at a loss what to say because everything i thought about came in a flash and won't come back, as if someone dynamited the mine shaft permanently closed.

i've long been a fan of the mountain goats, but as john darnielle becomes steadily more coopted into the mainstream, morphed willingly or otherwise into a brand, i start to question how i feel about his work. to me, unquestioned love of the mountain goats says you like books and have emotions and think your life is full of white hardship. that therapy and trauma in itself is something unubiquitous. that you feel you understand some dark part of the human soul that really isn't that hard to find.

i want to talk about john darnielle - and frankly any art or anything - not in terms of an infallible godsend of dark-shit-happens-but-we-gonna-get-out-fine, but as a human whose work should be pulled apart and measured in critical terms. i get a lot of solidarity and comfort from talking about what works and doesn't work in art. what resonates with one person but is eye rolling for another. ripping apart something that touches you and putting a part of yourself inside of it. the nuances of experiencing art, and the thousands of ways you can approach it. i do not need validation or comfort from art on such a basic level as "i get this and not everyone does!". i need something more, and i'm unsure what that looks like.

but it's hard to talk about that shit without feeling like you're tearing down something important to someone in front of their face. there's no joy to be had in cheapening someone's genuine connection and comfort from something. often, your probing for meaning looks a lot like condescension.

i don't see myself in the crowds singing along to "this year". i don't see people who i relate to, or a community that makes me feel anything but alienated. i wish i could get lost in it all, alongside everyone else who is hurt or lost, or has been hurt or lost, but there's a jarring dissonant chord struck somewhere in that scene that no one else seems to be able to hear. a profound sense of the medicine not taking effect. something's off and unexplainably wrong.

on countless occasions, i've asked my friends from home how they think we would have ended up if we didn't have the internet growing up. if we stayed in the same nowhere town in new hampshire and could only consume what was played on the radio, or what was sold at the local shops. no one answers the question as anything profound, and neither do i at the time.

but what if we never sought out something more. what if i never found people who resonated with me. completed the chord. what if i kept playing RPGs, writing bad fantasy stories, studying serial killer lore. what if in my nowhere town there was nowhere to go but inwards. i've never empathized with the people who hated high school and didn't fit in because i fell into with a crowd who saw past the bullshit but never made a deal of it.

but what if a depressed tween me never moved past the need for that type of escapism. what if i made the wrong move in life and was left with an unremarkable future and a handful of people who blurred the line between friend and acquaintance. what if i never figured it out and there was no one to turn to who knew how i felt.

there's lots to unpack in wolf in white van, and i breezed through it in two days. alongside a nuanced portrait of living with trauma, at the center seems to be a story about not just the power of escapism, but the danger too. the book is fraught with the sense of purpose and comfort fantasy games and books can bring, as well as what happens when you let fantasy take you away from reality.

i pondered the meaning of the title after it is dropped about midway through the book. it's a reference to a song by a christian rock artist which, if played backwards, at one point seems to say "wolf in white van", a phrase cited as satanic by fanatical christians. the image conjures up something vague, but otherworldly menacing. the sense of sheer terror in a dream that's about to become a nightmare.

the fear of things like metal music and books and video games about violence and satan corrupting teens is insanely 80s, and i guess 90s. as a troubled teen who loved that shit, darnielle is very connected to the subject matter. but even tho the arguments that satanic music was corrupting teens have been dismissed as absurd, darnielle here seems to be suggesting there's some grain of truth to the fears. fantasy books and films and games about violence and the dark arts in themselves do not deliver evil upon the hearts of teens, but their potential to completely consume the mind of one who is hurt and alienated is it's own kind of danger. the wolf in white van is not the devil come to corrupt you, but the darkness you encounter when you slide too deeply into your own escapist fantasies.

some scattered thoughts:

there's a lot to be said about trace italian and what the fortress of safety represents on a greater scale and why a kid died seeking it out in the real world, but i ain't got shit on that

i like how the parents are humanized; not abusive robots, merely distant to some degree and struggling with their own battles in the wake of their sons horrible "accident"; they don't know how to express how they feel anymore than anyone else

you get bits and pieces of sean's life but nothing really gets fully fleshed out, merely snippets of information; characters who you wanna know so much more about (what happens to lance, what happens to chris) are left open ended

so many seemingly meaningless and mundane instances in sean's life that may or may not contain greater meaning, as too does life go

the prose was very standard, nothing shockingly beautiful on its own but it was deliberate and enjoyable; i'm struck by how unique the premise is and how much can be explored

here's some good shit i read:

ooo

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