#they’re just so incompetent they trained my department to do their stuff too but then was like. hm. that’s dumb

[lilgynt]

ticket so bad i opened indeed

[bixgirl1]

New Fic - Glompfest!

Title: Life Lessons Author: Bixgirl1 Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy Rating: Heh. Explicit. Word Count: 68k Content/Warnings: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Wandless Magic, Banter and flirting and snark - oh myyy - UST!, accidental kissing, intentional kissing (just really a lot of kissing), Epistolary elements, Auror Harry, Humor, dancing, weird plotty stuff ‘cause I can’t help myself, mentions of childhood trauma and previously-made sexual threats, wanking, oral sex, anal fingering, anal sex, rimming (omfg I just realized I forgot that in my AO3 tags!), intergluteal sex, semi-public sex. Summary: On the cusp of a promotion, Harry needs a little help with his image. Enter Draco Malfoy — who doesn't really do that, Potter — to whip him into shape… and make him feel things he hasn't for a very long time. Featuring: odd jobs, surprising chemistry, lots of accidental kissing, the Prophet living up to type, owls exhausted by the carrying of dirty letters, a secret no one can talk about, a merry band of Slytherins (none of whom really approve), and an enchanted mirror (who really, really does).

Author’s Notes: For @m4g0rtz. I’ve wanted to write for you for the LONGEST time, sweets.  Your comments before we met always made me absolutely light up, and then I got to know you and I realized you’re just as fabulous as you seemed. Your friendship has meant so much to me from the beginning, and this fest gave me the perfect excuse to say so in fic; I hope you can forgive my sneakiness while I wrote this for you. lolol.

A huge thanks to my lovely betas, @lqtraintracks and @coriesocks. You guys were both so effing patient with me and both so encouraging and helpful - you made this like a zillion times better than it would have been otherwise. <333333

And a huge thanks to the mods, too, for running such a fun, wonderful fest!

Excerpt (under the cut):

It was one of the most fundamental truths of Harry’s life: as soon as things were going well, everything would turn to shit.

You’re a wizard, Harry — just be on guard for that murderer hunting you. You have a godfather, Harry — but be careful not to get too attached to him. From his relationship with Ginny (which never got back off the ground after the war) to his life after defeating Voldemort (which would never resemble anything approaching normal), there was always some sort of caveat. Privately, he called it “End of the School Year Syndrome.”

The fact that this time it had actually been scheduled for late June was simply ironic.

“That’s not even six weeks away,” Hermione said, frowning.

“Your confidence in me is inspirational,” Harry said. “And the maths isn't really what I’m having a problem with.” He took the invitation back from her and re-buried his face in one of the sofa pillows. It smelled a little like feet and Ron’s deodorant, as though Ron had Transfigured it into a footstool and then only had time to hastily return it to form and freshen it with a charm before Hermione saw and got on him again about just using one of their existing footstools. Harry tossed it to the floor, face smooshing against the sofa cushion as he blindly reached out in search of another pillow. He heard Hermione huff just as one hit him on the back of the head. Harry shoved it under his face. “Thanks,” he said, muffled.

There was a beat of silence, and then Hermione sighed and rested her hand against the back of his head. “How long do you need to sulk?” she asked, stroking her fingers through his hair.

Harry slumped a little deeper. “Five weeks.”

“I’ll give you until Ron gets back with dinner,” she said, more to herself than him. "And for goodness’ sake, Harry, at least take off your glasses.”

Harry managed to take them off without lifting his head or breaking them — proof, he supposed, that he wasn’t entirely incompetent. Hermione took them from his hand and rose with a final, fluttering pat on his shoulder blade. Harry exhaled and tried to consider his options, but was quickly lulled by the drum of the rain on the windowpanes and the pop of the fire. He listened to Hermione putter around her kitchen and relaxed; more than for the advice or commiseration, this was why he’d come, if he was honest. Ron and Hermione’s cottage was homey, calm, most of their furniture crafted from Ron’s magic, the air inside scented by the lavender Hermione had planted in the beds below their windows. Harry missed the company, and the lived-in quality of the tiny flat they’d shared before Ron and Hermione moved out, the distracted mess of three people training for unrelated careers, always someone either there or about to be.

He liked the flat he'd moved into on his own just fine, but working the hours he did left it with a silent, sterile quality he could never seem to get rid of, even when he left the wireless on or avoided laundry for a few days. He’d tried to spruce it up more than once, but Neville wouldn’t even let him buy plants anymore, not after the Solicitous Succulents he’d brought over on Boxing Day — When they bloom, they emit soothing pheromones! You can’t kill them, they barely need any attention! — had weaponised their thorns within an hour of Nev’s arrival; a defensive measure they took when they were in danger of drying out, Neville told him later, and one he’d thought was a myth.

The sound of Ron’s Apparition to their front door roused Harry from his reverie, but he didn’t get up. He heard the rustle of takeaway being opened and dished out, a low hum of murmurs, and his own name — and then Ron shouted, “What the bloody fuck?” and stomped, fuming, into the parlour. “They’re not going to give it to you?”

Harry pushed up from his prone position and shrugged as Ron glowered down at him. “They might,” he said. “Robards said they might still.”

“Give over,” Ron said, and Harry dutifully scooted to make space. Ron threw himself down onto the sofa. “It’s utter shit, Harry.”

“I know.”

“He’s been telling you that job’s yours for… for years!”

“I know.”

“You’ve worked longer hours and closed more cases than anyone in the entire department!” Ron said. His outrage was soothing, both to Harry’s temper and his self-esteem, and a grateful smile tugged at Harry’s lips.

“I know,” he said again.

"You should just run," Ron spat. "Hermione's been saying it, we'll organise a campaign--"

"We'd have no time to prepare for it now. Besides, even if I wanted to, it would look… wrong. Robards would step aside, but… He didn't even have to run in the last election five years ago, and and no one's ever won who wasn't backed by both the exiting Head Auror, the Minister, and at least half the Wizengamot," Harry said, shaking his head when Ron took another deep breath and opened his mouth. “And anyway, Robards said it's not as simple at that.”

“The age thing again?”

Harry scowled. “I wish.”

Twice before, Robards had put off retiring when certain members of the Wizengamot had made it plain that, no matter Harry’s accomplishments to date, they had no intention of promoting someone barely into their twenties to the position of Head Auror. Trying not to take issue with their reasoning — or the extra work Robards piled on him to make a point of his capabilities — Harry’d not made a single complaint as his twenty-third and twenty-fourth birthdays ticked by. But with every successfully closed case since, Robards had assured him that by his twenty-fifth he’d have his promotion.

And then he’d called Harry in for a meeting today, offering Harry a drink before he’d even sat down.

Ron made a disgruntled sound and folded his arms across his chest. “What’s the problem this time?”

“As I was trying to tell you, husband-mine,” Hermione said dryly, walking in and levitating three plates behind her, “It's supposedly Harry.”

“What's Harry?” Ron asked, shooting her a sheepish look. He lifted two of the plates from midair, passing one over to Harry. The salty grease of Ron’s selection — fish and chips — teased at Harry’s senses and he tried to recall when he ate last. Breakfast, probably.

“The problem,” Hermione said, taking her own plate and sitting between them. “It’s Harry.”

“And I’m supposed to be the tactless one,” Ron stage-whispered to him.

“I’m not a problem,” Harry said, pulling a wounded face at Hermione.

She made a little sound of protest. “I didn’t—”

“Arguing with her never ends well,” Ron said. “You might as well just get on board with being a problem, capital P.”

“I don’t want to be a Problem,” Harry said. He turned beseeching eyes at Hermione. “Couldn’t I be something like Trouble instead?”

Ron nodded sagely. “You’ve got enough experi—”

“Oh my god, fine!” Hermione said, dropping her utensils on her plate. Cheered by the clear exasperation on her face, Harry laughed and looked at Ron, who popped three chips in his mouth and quirked her an unrepentant grin. Hermione rolled her eyes and elbowed Ron, but the look she shot him was fond and warm. “Hush, or you’ll end up with your own problem — with a capital P,” she said warningly. She turned back to Harry. “There is a point to be considered about your image, that's not wrong.”

“Hermione!” Ron said, but Hermione looked at Harry steadily, waiting. Expectant.

Harry frowned, effectively distracted from distracting himself. He squeezed a lemon wedge over his fish and opened a packet of vinegar, sprinkling it over his chips to buy some time.

“Well, it's not right,” he said at length.

“No, I know,” Hermione said, gaze softening.

“All right, can someone actually explain then?” Ron asked, waving his fork at each of them in turn and then stabbing, a little viciously, into his fish.

“It’s me. My conduct outside of work isn’t ‘befitting a senior Ministry position,’” he quoted, sounding sullen to his own ears. “The way I talk to the press, or the way I avoid them. Maybe both. The Head Auror is responsible for releasing public statements, and you know me.”

“So?” Ron said, brows drawing together. “You’re a little short-tempered with them, so what? S’not like they’re ever asking you about cases, are they? It’s always about who you’re seeing, or was that really your bum in those pictures. It’s been almost three years since you hexed one of them. Just write up the statements and release them that way.”

“There’s other things, too,” Harry said. He flushed. “The way I am with the public—”

“You’re great with the public!” Ron said, starting to look angry again. “You talk to every kid you meet, you donate, you—”

“I lose my temper with people, though.” Harry took a breath. “I arrested that man last year who wouldn’t leave me alone—”

“He was trying to shove his hand down the back of your trousers!” Ron sputtered.

“—and that whole thing in the Prophet questioning how much of an asset I could be to the Ministry when my name got in the way of my job… Well, it got a lot of traction,” Harry said. He looked down at his plate, stomach suddenly churning. “And whenever I go to public events, I stay on the sidelines, or I’m accidentally rude to some diplomat—”

“That happened twice!”

“Four times.” Harry grimaced. “More, really. Apart from little things like spilling wine all over Ireland’s Minister for Magic or insulting that envoy from Brazil by having to leave early when I got sick off the Firerolls they served at their event, apparently my dress robes are all wrong, I’ve not once used the correct fork, I may as well eat my feet for how often they’re in my mouth, and I refuse to dance, no matter who’s asking.”

“Well you’re not good at it!” Ron fairly yelled, getting so red in the face his freckles were barely visible. “How the bloody hell can anyone blame you after what happened last time!”

Read the rest on AO3

[ultraclops]

Semi-live Blogging: Return of the Mao Mao Episodes

Before we start, is it just me or is the animation like 10x smoother than it usually is? Also like I said with Nakey, there’s a lot more good expressions too!

Lucky Ducky Mug

Adorabat drinks from sippy cup like baby

"What, Mao Mao's ridiculous mug?" says Badgerclops, holding a cheap plastic big gulp cup he probably got from the grocery store.

How did Adorabat not notice the Lucky Ducky sticker on the Aerocycle

"Don't touch it" (Badgerclops proceeds to slam the table to move it) Ah Badgerclops, ever the contrarian

I'M SORRY DID MAO MAO BLOW THE ROOF OFF OF HQ BY SCREAMING

I love the way Mao says "PROFESSIONAAAL SILENCEEE"

Badgerclops trying to make his mouth disappear and failing made me scream with laughter

Are they seriously reducing Ratarang to 'the funny lil Italian guy'? C’mon guys you’re better than this

Wait why do they think Kevin is Adorabat?? They've seen Adorabat multiple times?? "But they're both blue!" You FOOL Kevin is TEAL there's a difference

Everybody gangsta til Mao Mao's ears start speaking morse code

They're doing surprisingly good silent but it's probably not gonna be that way very long.

Thank you, Lucky Ducky Mug, for catering to my niche interest in characters with neon outlines on black backgrounds.

Mao Mao thinking: Normal thoughts

Badgerclops thinking: Musical-esque singing

Adorabat thinking: Literally just heavy metal

The Sweetypies seriously think they're just playing a really intense game of charades huh,,,

(Mao jabs BC in the stomach with the fire net) HAHA GET REKT

The scene with Badgerclops trying to give Mao Mao Penny's mug is the funniest shit in the world I couldn't stop laughing...or maybe I'm just sleep-deprived

So the Sky Pirates are so similar compared to the Sheriff's Dept. that they can think perfectly in sync? That's cool

SKY PIRATES SONG SKY PIRATES SONG

Why is Snugglemagne throwing a random tea party & why did he only invite the Sheriff's Dept.

Yep there goes the plan. Both of their plans.

Am I going crazy or did the skin on Mao Mao's mouth tear apart like it was sewn shut?! Also yay they're talking again

"It's not gonna stop charging, so I'm just gonna let it explooode..." Mood

"What about the mega laser tube made by mega Losers?" Fsfhkfh

Hey, everyone learned something new from this experience! Are the Sky Pirates gonna try that Hive Mind tactic from now on?

Awww, they fixed his mug with gold - GOD DAMN IT I KNEW THERE WAS A CATCH!!

Lonely Kid

(Sighs) ...I said (SIGHS)

"I literally can't relate to that problem at all." says Badgerclops, who joined a gang because he wanted people to like him.

Shin just dropped off Mao Mao at a summer camp and expected him to make friends? Why does this feel like the plot of Camp Camp

I'm sorry the Mao clan has a freaking PARTY AERO-BUS??

NOO GERALDINE

That BGM is DEFINITELY an extended version of "I Love You, Mao Mao" and I want the lyrics NOW

So Bao was literally just a stray that Mao took home?? Would make sense as to why he wasn't trained

I have a feeling the Flimborg is some sort of sacred being the townspeople worship for some reason

How in the hell did Mao tie that guy up and why didn't he bother to untie him

HOW'D HE SET THE ROCKS ON FIRE USING PAINT

"And then you become frien-" "BEES. IN THE EYES."

"Everyone knows bees are our friends!" "Uh, actually, they were wasps." "Friends to no-one!" Usually I'd agree with BC, but I read an article about someone befriending a wasp and her babies so.

So the Mao clan's just known as the "Golden Cat Family Up The Hill?" Huh. I thought they’d have more recognition, especially since Shin says he went to that same summer camp at the beginning.

Man those kids are jackasses

"Say hi to your mommy!" "I would if she was here..." Excuse me wHAT

Noo don't cry baby boi - tHEN BAO JUST TACKLES HIM ASFHDKDL

"Go away! I don't feel like laughing right now!"

Look. You can see the EXACT point Mao developed his adult personality

I know Mao Mao means well but that is gonna go terribly wrong.

"I AM A HERO! I WILL BE LOVED!!" Okay first of all OUCH, second of all THAT IS PAIN

This monster empty, YEET

Awww it was just a sweet little puppy-ish monster...and it was his BIRTHDAY

"Hi, Aunt Gloria!" (Pulls out pitchfork) BETRAYAL

He didn't feel bad about ruining the festival because he made a friend doing it I 💞💞💝💝💗💗

Thanks for that 'different times' comment cuz I don't want kids thinking being beat is normal.

"Just like you found me...and I'm your best friend!" Tbh I thought she was gonna say 'Me and Badgerclops' & that would make a lot more sense

Why are they fighting over who's his best friend they're obviously BOTH his best friends

I'm sorry did Badgerclops just call Adorabat a "little mutant"?? ARE THE SWEETYPIES MUTANTS??

Awww his friends love him sm...and he feels so loved too...💓💓💗💗💕💕

Try Hard

No one gives a shit about Pinky being kidnapped lol

"K for Copyright Infringement"

"You'll never be like me!" Oof a little harsh maybe?

"You've gotta learn to be your own kind of hero, in your own special way!" So THAT'S where it's from

"You just gotta...try hard." Hey, title drop!

Ngl the moment Mao Mao said "Badgerclops take the shot" I immediately thought of The Confession 3 by TomSka

"Up in a tree, little old me, about to do something...UGLY..." 7-year-old me sniping people on Halo 3 like

Why is he shooting them with gelatin tho? ...oh. Oh THAT'S why.

Tbh if I didn't have subtitles on I would've thought BC was saying "beep boop"

This badger and cat empty, YEET

Adorabat walking into the Skyship with only a walkie-talkie is giving me some sort of vibes...OH, Silent Hill! Or Tattletail

WHOOP HIS ASS SWEETIE

"Mao Mao would hide the body!" Very unsubtle there, wonder how it got past censors

"Ratarang, say something!" "Pasketti?" "THAT'S THE BRAT!"

Wait a sec, they can just use Badgerclops' arm to power the ship? Why didn't they try that in CapturedClops?

"Good thing my head is in here cuz I'm a-scared of heights!" Ramaraffe. Whose whole schtick is making herself taller. Is acrophobic?

"Because she's Sheriff's Department, that's how! >:3" "Also y'all tend to be pretty incompetent >X/"

Why does she keep trying to use the elevator when she can fly? Nvm she climbed up Badgerclops' arm

"Ooooh I'm also hereeee"

"JERK BUTT"

Why is the Omega Field just a bunch of broken glass? And why doesn't she just step around it?

"I can fly!" "She can fly!" "SHE FORGOT?!" Ooh that's why

"You're the best thing to ever happen to a bat like me." 💝💝💕💕💓💓

Wait she's talking through the walkie-talkie and her molts are there but she isn't there where is she?

Oh she was freeing the other two from the gelatin. No wonder Mao Mao almost threw up, it was bug flavored.

GET HIS ASS, HONEY!! ADORASLAP!!

I hope that 'Nah' means Adorabat's realized she needs to be herself instead of her just rejecting her individuality like I think it is.

Scared Of Puppets

Oh, so this takes place after Sleeper Sofa! Praying it's a fix-it episode...

"DISCARD ANYTHING THAT DOESN'T BRING YOU JOY!!" Fuckin Marie Kondo up in here

Oh no PTSD flashbacks. He's scared of them cuz one's head landed on his lap as a kid? Understandable have a nice day.

Who tf collapsed into a sobbing heap on the floor then leaps back up and insists they're fine? Mao Mao, apparently.

Hairless ape? Is that what they call humans or are they something different in general?

"TAKE ALL MY MONEY!!" What did BC want an antique puppet for if he had no idea Mao was scared of them...

Mr. Din Dandalib!

"I...(eye twitch) love him too..."

IM SORRY DID HE FUCKING THROW UP OUT OF FEAR...holy SHIT

If I scared my friend and they threw up I would simply never do that again. RIP to Badgerclops but I'm different

(Badgerclops makes concrete blocks around the pothole) "Why didn't you just fill in the pothole??" "I AM TRYING MY BEST!!"

"I SIGNED YOUR DUMB CAST, NOW LEAVE!!"

...Illegal house plants? ...like marijua-

That was literally just that one video where a guy knocked out another guy in a mask jumping out of a trash can...

So it's a CPR class...AND a hair-styling class? How

I stg the moment Badgerclops walked in the door I knew he was carrying Mr. Din Danalin I SWEAR

"You're 10." "BUT I'M 6??" JFC Shin doesn't know his own son's age AND is partially responsible for his pupaphobia. And I called it on Mao Mao being six in the flashbacks

OH WIG

Can someone take the footage of the Annex exploding and add the ReviewTechUSA intro over it please

"How many Adult Learning Annexes have to be destroyed before you admit you're scared of puppets?!" is extremely funny without context

(Mao punches the wall cuz hes mad at himself for being scared) Kinkinkinkinki

How does one forget to drink milk

Oh shit the scene from the promo...

Yay he's starting to feel less scared - wait NVM it JUST STARTED TALKING??

OG SGUTVKC FGCJ OG SHKR OF DJCN JKKKKK

Oh it was just a dream - er, nightmare. FIRST NIGHTMARE SEQUENCE OF THE SERIES!

"I just gotta get my socks on...wait, I wear socks, right?" Dud e you wear NOTHING BUT A BELT...

"I KNEW SELLING THOSE HAIRLESS APE DOLLS WOULD ATTRACT DARK FORCES"

"There’s a lot of pu-" "PUBLIC DANGER"

Those puppets are alive I stg

"I'M A BIG BOI..."

Awwww she said what he told her at the beginning of the episode!

"I'M AFRAID OF PUPPETS" TITLE DROP YET AGAIN

Adorabat takes after Badgerclops sometimes I swear

Oooh shit sequel hook - oh NVM it was Badgerclops voice acting - NVM Mao Mao passed out. Dang

The Perfect Couple

Watermelon time babyyy

TRANSFORMATION TIME BABYYYY

Ah so he wanted to perfectly cut a watermelon in half, that's why he got so many?

"I need (counts on fingers) 600 more watermelons!" glad to see I'm not the only one who counts on my fingers

Why would Penny and Benny need 600 watermelons for their wedding? Also I called it on Penny & Benny being the couple

Mao Mao has to officiate the wedding? I thought priests did that

Please don’t throw up again Mao Mao

"I WILL BUY YOU A BAG TO HOLD YOUR STUFF..."

"A nondescript sack!!" Dude he just taking out the trash...

Nvm its just laundry

"I WILL TURN THIS BUSH AROUND"

Oh so THAT'S what Ramaraffe thought Kevin was Adorabat

"Why don't you buy me cake and do my laundry?" Are you implying you wanna marry Mao Mao, Badgerclops 👀

I lov Mao Mao's faces in this scene he legit looks like a bishouen anime protagonist

Nvm no transformation it's just his wedding outfit

Why did they invite Orangusnake and Boss Hosstritch to the wedding tho? What about when they hid in their moving truck and used their electricity - wait Badgerclops technically did that last one, nvm

Wait THEY DIDN'T TALK TO EACH OTHER BEFORE THE WEDDING?? What a perfect couple huh

Is Mao Mao having hallucinations just gonna be a regular thing now....

IS PENNY SERIOUSLY GONNA MARRY ORANGUSNAKE OUT OF SPITE ASFSDGFUK

Why did Mao Mao say "melons" in a Spanish accent I'm scared

"They're both terrible, so what does it matter if they get hitched or not?" They're definitely gonna change their minds now

"She lied because she wanted to protect his feelings! And he lied because he couldn't bear to hurt her!" Isn't that just the plot of The Truth Stinks?

OH SHIT HE CUT ORANGUSNAKE IN HALF HOLY FUCK

He made Orangusnake officiate the wedding as punishment lol

Why are they,,,stepping on the watermelons?? Damn right Badgerclops I'd cry over that too

"What's, uh, your credit score like?" "850. Why, is that good?" "It's perfect..." HE WANTS TO MARRY MAO MAO NOW ASDFHKL

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: An Internal Affair - Chapter 5(Ao3 link)

Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you’re on his list, you’re in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who’s developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

—————————————————————————————————

"I can't believe you sometimes, boss," Danvers complains. "You're just unbelievable."

"But Danvers," Len says, widening his eyes, "if you don't say 'I believe in Leonard Snart' and clap three times, my inner light will fade and then I'll die -"

"You are not a fairy!"

"Only technically true," Len says. "I'm pansexual, while that term is generally used -"

"You know what I mean," Danvers says, giving a playful push to his shoulder. Danvers is ridiculously strong and has issues remembering that sometimes, so the push is enough to send a lesser man toppling down to the floor. Luckily, Len figured out the strength thing pretty early and he's learned to compensate for it, relaxing his muscles and going with the flow of it, so he's able to straighten up again pretty easy.

He hasn't told Danvers that he knows, of course, since she's so obviously embarrassed by it.

Just like she's too embarrassed to admit that she's hidden a microwave somewhere in her office that she uses to heat up his coffee or hot chocolate whenever he happens to arrive, since there is no way she's good enough at guessing when he'll arrive to make sure that stuff is always warm.

He keeps trying to hint to her that he really doesn't mind microwaved coffee - especially since Danvers has a knack for making it taste freshly brewed - but she keeps looking vaguely confused whenever he brings it up.

"Yes, I know what you mean," Len allows. "And just why am I being unbelievable this time?"

"You're planning on going out again," she says, throwing her hands in the air. "With the mask and that stupid parka -"

"I’ll have you know that the parka keeps my core warm against the gun," Len points out. "Besides, it's the only winter coat I have out of storage right now."

It might be the only winter coat he owns, but that's a minor detail.

"You know the media is calling you a supervillain, right?" Danvers asks, crossing her arms.

"And by ‘media’, you mean that one specific blog, right?"

"...yes."

"That blog also thinks I derailed that train by icing the tracks," Len says, rolling his eyes. "Despite the fact that the official investigation concluded that it was a combination of a mechanical issue and human error. That one?"

Human error, of course, is a reference to the fact that the transportation department couldn’t be bothered to keep their trains in sufficiently good condition that a miniscule spot of ice – no more than a foot or two – was enough to keep the damn thing on the line.

Ice. Len can scarcely believe it, but there it is, and it at least goes some ways to explaining why the kid could have thought that Len was the one responsible for it.

Though if a train can’t run over a few feet of ice without jumping a track, there’s a problem that speaks of years of sustained incompetence anyway.

Still, whatever the reason, the derailment would have been a total catastrophe if it wasn't for the Streak - no, the blog is calling him the "Flash" now.

It makes for a troublesome dilemma. On one hand, it seems like this Flash kid is actually doing good things, like rescuing the people on that train.

On the other hand, he's still taking the law into his own hands.

Violence is still violence, even against a criminal.

Len's list of corrupt cops to take down includes a good number that seem to have forgotten that their right to be violent extends only as far as it takes to fulfill their duties and no further. When you apply the same principle to a civilian who lacks any authority or right to use violence as a means of enacting law at all -

Hmm. Alternatively, Len could just charge the Flash with multiple counts of assault and battery the next time they meet. That might even work.

"Okay, I'll bite," Len says, finally giving in to Danvers' pointed glare. "Why is it unbelievable that I’d go out again? What’s unbelievable about it?"

"Uh, the part – make that the whole thing – where you're considering getting further involved with this whole Flash thing, obviously!" Danvers says. "Boss, what part of 'the Families want to kill you' is going over your head here?"

"I'm your boss," Len mock-grumbles. "Be respectful."

"Not in a million years."

"I don't see what the problem is, though," Len says. "It’s not like I’m going totally solo on it or anything."

"Boss," Danvers says flatly. "You convinced the Commissioner that the Flash incidents represented a possible threat to the overall impression of city security because someone, somewhere, was probably following along with his exploits on secret police radios -"

"The Commissioner is running for office this year," Len says dryly. "Anyone who offered him a method to haze the Families by sending people in to investigate the illicit police radios we all know they have was going to be able to convince him of just about anything, including an invasion from Jupiter."

"True," Danvers allows. "Though to be entirely correct, that would be an invasion from the moons of Jupiter, not Jupiter, since Jupiter is a gas giant and not – wait, no, not the point I was trying to make. The point is that you also got him to agree that because there is the possibility that the Flash is working with a cop to get on the police band, thereby making it part of your jurisdiction, that meant that you could help sponsor a Flash-related task force."

"Co-sponsor," Len says. "Singh signed on."

"Yeah, to keep an eye on you."

"Noticed that, did you?" Len says, pleased. "We'll make a proper spy out of you yet."

“Aw, thanks, boss,” Danvers says with a smile, complimented, but quickly goes back to being annoyed with him. "I heard him talking about it in his office. He's not really in favor of catching the Flash - he thinks the Flash is doing more good than harm - but he's willing to back you so that he can figure out what scheme you're up to."

"My reputation precedes me, clearly."

"Boss..."

"Relax. I'm one step ahead of him - he offered me Joe West to be on my team, which is pretty obvious sabotage given how much West obviously hates me; I told him I'd take Eddie Thawne instead. Since they're partners, he wasn't really in a position to refuse, and Thawne's a good kid."

"Coming from you, that's high honors," Danvers says, but she's smiling again.

"You're not bad yourself," Len says, smirking when she squeaks and blushes. "Your compilation of weird incidents with multiple uncoordinated eye-witness reports was key to convincing the Commissioner that there was something there worth checking out."

"It's my job, boss," she says, grinning.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not part of a secretary’s job.”

“Admin assistant, boss.”

"Well, while we’re at it, thanks for letting me borrow that mask," Len says. "Turned out there were some Family guys looking for me that night." His contracts had been very specific about that, since D'Angelo let slip he'd be meeting with Len, but it’d been a risk Len was willing to take.

"Made you borrow it, more like it," Danvers sniffs. "I can't believe you were just going to - to go out with your face just, like, right out there in the open - it's like you never even read a comic book -"

"I'm not actually a supervillain," Len reminds her, deeply amused. Danvers could probably take over the world if she found herself in a world that worked on comic book logic instead of real world logic. "I'm not doing anything illegal; I'm just policing in a creative and out-of-the-box way –”

Danvers snorts.

“–and meeting my community’s needs in dealing with a vigilante like that,” Len continues, cheerfully ignoring her. “Anyway, the mask was perfect - total anonymity without any obstruction of function. Why'd you have it lying around, anyway?"

Danvers turns red and starts spluttering something incoherent, which means it's one of those things she's weirdly embarrassed about.

It's like how she claims she takes the train to work, but manages to be there on time even when Len knows there's been a massive train delay.

Honestly, he has no idea what's going on in Danvers' brain sometimes. It's not like there's a stigma against carpooling or anything...

"Never mind, don't care," Len interrupts, waving a hand, and Danvers looks at him gratefully.

They talked about it, once, all these unusual reactions that she has, the way she gets flustered and evasive about the weirdest things. She'd come into his office late at night, jaw clenched with determination and fists shaking with anxiety, and offered to explain it all to him, because she didn't want him to think she was lying to him. He was, she explained, her only friend in Central City, and she was pretty sure she was his in return right at that moment, and she didn't want him to start suspecting her of betraying him by keeping secrets.

He'd taken one look at her, seen all of that anxiety and how she was forcing herself to take a step she clearly didn't want to take but felt she had to, and he'd promptly told her that he didn't care if she was a little green man from Mars as long as she did her job and didn't sell him out.

She'd stared at him blankly, so he'd explained: she very obviously didn't want to tell him whatever it was she was offering to tell him, not yet and maybe not ever; rather, she just felt that she had to. But Len doesn't believe in outing people over anything before they're ready, so whatever it was she felt she had to tell him, she could tell him whenever she really wanted to. If she was more comfortable with him not asking, well, then he wouldn’t ask - as long as whatever it was didn’t involve him getting sold out, which he was pretty sure it didn’t, then he honestly didn’t care.

Of course, then she'd burst into tears and Len had hidden under his desk in an attempt to get away from the rampant display of emotions, yelling all the while that he would add a no tears clause to her contract, which had the side effect of making her start to laugh even as she'd cried.

Ultimately, she'd decided she really wasn't ready yet, but that she thought she might be, eventually, and they'd gone from there.

To be perfect honest, Danvers has always been something of a mystery, right from the first time they'd met. At first Len assumed it was because she wasn't from Central - Danvers is from the area around National City, some small town in the outskirts, and she'd done some work there in various administrative assistant roles before she'd abruptly moved to Central only a few months before Len discovered and hired her away from the court reporter temp pool she'd been working in.

At that point, all he'd cared about was finding someone who wasn't very obviously a spy planted by either the Families or the other police departments. Danvers had been the court reporter at his first corruption trial; she'd been fast (she had to be, being a court reporter), efficient, unafraid of the Family connections of the cop on trial, and had trouble hiding her smirks when Len made a particularly snarky comment.

More importantly, she had a clean background – as far as he’s concerned, anyway; he hadn't quite gotten used to working legit at that time, since he'd been less than two weeks out of the hospital and spitting mad, so he'd just had those of his illegal contacts that hadn't heard the news check her out and confirm that there wasn’t anything criminal about her - and anyway Len got along with her the few times he'd dragged her into various conference rooms to do some freelance transcribing of plea deal negotiations and deposition testimony.

So he'd decided to take a gamble and asked her if she'd like a thankless job saving the city where everyone would take her achievements for granted and turn up their noses in disdain at her failures, plus a small pay increase and shitty health care.

Amazingly, even with a pitch as awful as that, she accepted.

Apparently, Danvers enjoys fighting the good fight for barely any reward.

That, or she really needed the steady paycheck.

Len honestly doesn’t care which.

It’d been a little rocky at the start, but they got used to each other over time. Len's an abrasive asshole and doesn't know how to use the services of a secretary, but Danvers spends half the time acting like she's invulnerable and the other half acting like she’s afraid she’s going to break everything just by breathing on it, and that’s also pretty annoying. Luckily, after some encouragement, it turned out that she had the guts to stand up to him and call him out when he’s on his bullshit, and ever since then they’ve worked well together.

Now Len likes to think that they’ve even become friends.

Danvers even eventually opened up a bit about her history.

Apparently, her abrupt shift from National to Central had followed a pretty terrible blow-up with her sister and mother. Danvers hadn't given all that many details, but from what little she'd said, Len gathers that the sister had accepted a position based on some trait of Danvers' that Danvers would have preferred to keep quiet, a position that involved using Danvers as a case study, and Danvers hadn't taken it well when she'd found out.

"I know exactly what you mean - fucking shrinks," Len told her after that particular confession, nodding vigorously. They'd been having drinks in his office at the time, since the last time they'd gone out to a bar some Family grunt had pulled a gun on Len and Danvers had managed to get in between the guy and Len. Luckily, the gun jammed or maybe the guy missed, but either way nobody seemed like they’d gotten hit with a bullet, and Len hit the guy over the head with his crutch, but he'd decided not to risk Danvers doing something that stupid again. "Just because you ain’t neurotypical makes 'em think that they can push you around. S'like they totally forget that you’ve got feelings, or at least they pretend to themselves that you wouldn't care about that type of shit at all just ‘cause you’re different. Mick had one of those - a foster mom that adopted him because she wanted to write a paper about pyromania. He liked her right up until he figured out that she just wanted his cooperation so she could do more observations. Never even occurred to her to think about how he'd feel when he found out she used him to get ahead in her career."

Danvers, halfway into a bottle of tequila and a pint of Ben and Jerry's, giggled a little hysterically. "Yes," she said. "That, it’s like that exactly. I never thought there'd be a parallel – but yes. That. It's just like that. She's my sister, you know? She should be on my side, not – not using me to get, I don’t know, up an extra step on the ladder!"

"Hell yeah," Len said solemnly, clinking glasses with her. He wondered a little what unique trait Danvers had that her sister had tried to take advantage of – some form of autism, maybe? ADHD? He’d heard that manifested differently for girls, and anyway it made sense given how she clearly had some sensory processing issues, hearing things louder than he did and flinching at relatively mild sounds and sometimes getting overwhelmed by emotions, not to mention the way she sometimes didn’t quite get certain basic social conventions – but he wasn’t going to ask or anything; that’d be seriously rude. After all, he certainly didn’t care what she had as long as she kept doing her job, and he was pretty sure by now that she knew that if she needed any accommodations, she only needed ask for them and he'd do everything in his power to get it done.

He did make a mental note to see if she’d like some more pillows to go next to her desk for her to fidget with, though. She liked those.

"And she even made it out like she was just doing it to protect me!" Danvers exclaimed. "But if she was, she would've asked, right? She wouldn't have lied about what she was doing. She wouldn't have - she wasn't ever planning on telling me. Not ever! I only found out because I was looking for where I'd hidden her birthday present and we've always used the same hiding spots and I found a file. On me. Who even does that?!"

"Bullshit," Len agreed. "Total bullshit."

"And then Mom got involved and she was just pissed off about Alex's job, not about the fact that she was studying me, except it turns out that when Alex gets frustrated, she blames me for taking up all the attention and, like, I don't know, ruining her life by making her not an only child or something stupid like that. And – and – and while we were all blowing up about that, it turned out that mom's also been lying to us – both of us – for literally years about what happened to Dad – about how he died – and then Alex starts blaming me about it because the trouble all started after I got adopted -"

“Ouch. Below the belt.”

“I know! And – and what’s the worst part, you know – they’d always been on my case about being ‘normal’. Both of them. Normal, normal, normal, normal, until I was ready to scream, and the whole time they both know so much more than what they were telling me – and taking advantage of the fact that I’m not normal – and it’s just not fair!”

Her lip was trembling again.

"To shitty families," Len said, raising his glass. He'd already told her about his dad, since he wanted her to be on the look-out in case Lewis reared his ugly head anywhere near Len's new job, and she'd been great about not blatantly pitying him too much about it. One of the reasons he liked her so much. "And the lies they tell."

After a minute, he added, "Lowercase 'f'."

"Uppercase 'f' Families lie too," Danvers pointed out.

"They're not who we're toasting. C'mon, don't leave me hanging."

Danvers giggled and clinked glasses with him. “I still miss them, you know,” she added. “I think I’d have forgiven them, eventually, if I’d stayed. Probably way earlier than I really should have. Like, five minutes later.”

“Socialization and habit,” Len says solemnly. “Heard it’s worse for girls; you’re raised to be all forgiving and shit, yeah?”

“Yeah, basically. That, plus, you know, I did always feel guilty about how I just showed up on their doorstep, so I’ve always kinda tried to play the peace-maker, you know?”

“That’s the habit half of the equation.”

“Yeah…anyway, I probably would’ve found a reason to forgive and forget and everything, but, ugh, I was just so angry. I just – I was in between jobs at the time, too. I mean, I had an interview scheduled the next day with CatCo Worldwide Media as Cat Grant’s personal assistant. No guarantee I’d get it, of course. But there was like this moment where I realized that if I was fighting with my family then, well, I didn’t really have anything keeping me there. In National City, I mean. So I just packed a bunch of my stuff and flew away. Ended up at a hotel in Central.”

“Tell me you didn’t use your credit card.”

“I’m pretty sure that particular hotel didn’t even accept cards,” Danvers said dryly. She was familiar enough with Central City’s extremely shitty hospitality scene now for it to be a joke, though Len suspected it hadn't been when she first arrived. “It wasn’t exactly good quality, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, do I ever.”

“Anyway, I was still steaming angry the next morning, so I pulled a bunch of cash out of my account, canceled all my cards, got myself that temp job as a court reporter, and grabbed the first apartment that came on the market, and, well, by the time I calmed down enough to start feeling guilty about our fight, I was pretty well rooted here and wasn’t really in the mood to go back to National and be the first one to forgive. Again.”

“Totally reasonable.”

“They haven’t even apologized, you know,” Danvers said, draining her glass again. She had the alcohol tolerance of a mule. Len was just drunk enough at this point – thank God he isn’t macho enough to think he needed to match her shot-to-shot or else he’d be dead – to think about how much Mick would enjoy that quality of hers when-if he woke up. “I reached out to them eventually and they just started worrying about me being all on my own in a big city, how will I be able to handle it on my own, is this going to make it hard for me to stay normal without support, yadda, yadda, stupid yadda, and when I pointed out that I was still really angry at them, they just, I don’t know, wanted me to get over it - they even got my cousin to come try to, quote, talk some sense into me, end quote.”

“Rude.”

“They keep comparing me to him,” Danvers added bitterly. “He’s much better at being normal.”

“Ain’t he some sort of weirdo Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist that works almost exclusively in Third World countries where there ain’t no modern internet?” Len asks skeptically. “That ain’t exactly what I’d call normal.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t really come back to America much anymore,” Danvers says with a shrug. “And when he does, he avoids cities whenever possible, even though he used to want to go work in a big paper in Metropolis. He even had a job offer from the Daily Planet! His original set of foster parents would’ve wanted him to take it, but they died and he came to live with – well, with my family – and they all convinced him it’d be too much for him, so in the end he didn’t take it. He’s – he’s like me. Not normal. But apparently it’s okay to not be normal as long as you do it where no one can see you or report you or something like that.”

“Wow,” Len said. “What fucking assholes. I hope he told you to carry on.”

Danvers grinned. “He told me to do what I thought was right, no matter what anyone said. And that’s when I signed a year-long lease – not on the first apartment I snagged, don’t worry, I’m in a much better area of town now –”

Good, Len was about to ask.

“– and also changed my phone number so my mom and my sister would stop harassing me at work.” She drained another glass. “And that’s why we’re still not talking. Not until I decide that I’m ready to talk to them again.”

“I don’t recall them harassing you at work,” Len said.

“I mostly ran out the back to take their calls,” Danvers said. “The one time they tried to call you instead of me, you’d just come back from PT and were super grouchy, so you told them that you would bring the full force of the FBI on their asses for wire fraud if they didn’t fuck right off.”

Len – vaguely remembered that. He’d thought they were telemarketers or possibly evangelists.

“Don’t worry,” Danvers added, grinning. “I appreciated it.”

It was a good night, even if Len distinctly remembers getting increasingly drunk as it went on (Kara didn’t, but again she has that ridiculous metabolism) and telling her about the first time he met Mick and some other unnecessarily soppy stories about him.

Either way, though, that background made Danvers understandably touchy about people who lied to close friends and family – and that, in turn, made Len feel more like he could trust her…

"Mask or no mask, I still don't like the idea of you going out in person, you know," Danvers says, snapping Len out of his reverie. "You're still fragile."

Len makes a face at her. He would love to dispute that, but he used his new braces for less than two hours yesterday, just for the not-really-maybe-kinda-sorta-masked-supervillain-superhero-confrontation-thing, and he's already got cramps very nearly everywhere to show for it.

Fucking bullet wounds. Hollywood is a filthy liar when it comes to recovery time, especially for ones that nick your spine.

Actually, that reminds him that he needs to call Lisa again – she’s still incredibly pissed off at him for getting hurt after having promised time and time again that he’d be fine doing his thing and that getting her the money to go off and live straight was worth the risk.

She refuses to see him again until he’s better, even though she demands regular phone calls. He knows it’s irrational, she knows it’s irrational, but he can’t begrudge her whatever superstitions she relies on as coping mechanisms to deal with a father as awful as Lewis and a brother as reckless as Len, even though he does miss her.

"You could always let the beat cops do their jobs," Danvers continues, sounding almost wistful about it even when she knows there's no chance. As it happens, she and Lisa get along great, albeit only by text message. "It's what they do, you know. Especially if this Eddie guy's good..."

"And miss out on the adrenaline?" Len asks, arching his eyebrows at her. "No, seriously. I can't step back now; I sold the Commissioner on me supervising this personally, and Singh only agreed to back me once I specified that I'd take the fall if anything blew up in our faces - which it won't, even if we do find that this Flash guy is up to no good -"

Danvers makes a face. Subtly - it's barely a wrinkle in her nose - but Len still catches it and interprets it.

"You have news," Len says, interrupting himself. He knows all of Danvers’ tells. "Tell me the news."

"It's not definite yet," Danvers demurs, but Len's already waving off the disclaimer.

"I'd take initial results from you over a definitive say-so from any cop in this division, Eddie Thawne included," Len tells her when she seems resistant to continuing. "I'll keep in mind that it's preliminary. What's up?"

"There’s been a noticeable increase in missing persons reports in Central since the Particle Accelerator explosion, for one thing," Danvers says. "Noticeable. Even if we only track the period since the Flash has been known to be active, there's - well - a lot. More than usual."

"Correlation doesn't mean causation."

"Do I teach you to pick pockets? No? Then don't lecture me on statistics. I'm getting to the point. The point is: I've correlated instances of people seeing blurs of light or lightning with those missing persons' reports, and there's a link."

Len straightens up at that. "How much of a link?"

Damn, and he'd really been starting to think of the Flash as harmless, or at least starting to hope that he'd gotten to the kid before he started letting his worst instincts take over. But if he's already a murderer...

"No deaths," Danvers says, clearly divining his thoughts from his face. "Just weirdo disappearances - sometimes of people who'd already gone partway off the grid already, even. But we're talking eyewitnesses putting the Flash - or someone like him - at ground zero of some of these disappearances. We're talking credit card purchases stopping the day after a Flash sighting in some guy's last known vicinity."

"Damnit."

"Yeah," she says with a sigh. "I was really hopeful, you know?"

"You were hopeful about the Hood guy in Starling before the murders started, too."

"This one seemed nicer," Danvers says firmly. "Less intimidation, less judgment, less 'you failed this city' –” Len will never tell her, but Danvers cannot do a spooky intimidating voice to save her life. “– more actually stopping crimes by dumping perps at the station door."

"Thereby eliminating the link between them and the crime scene and letting them plead out on technicalities," Len says dryly. "Remember that jewel shop case? If we hadn't had camera evidence from the CCTV, we'd be up the creek and the perps in question would be free as songbirds. And remember, like I told you -"

"Just because he's going after criminals doesn't mean he's not just trying to take out the competition," Danvers recites. "I know, I know."

"Good. You got anything else for me?"

Danvers makes another face. "We-ell..."

"Danvers."

She sighs. "Okay, but one question first."

Len arches his eyebrows at her.

"Is there any chance you're going to be so focused on this Flash thing that you'll ditch the Allen investigation? Because in comparison, Allen is really small stuff -"

"None," Len interrupts. He knows his voice has gone a bit icy. "Allen's corrupt; I'm sure of it. It's just a matter of proving it."

"But you actually like him!"

"I like lots of people -"

"Please remember who you're talking to here," Danvers says dryly. "I know for a fact that you don't like people. Any people. Your list of people you do like can probably be counted on the fingers of a man who’s had a few cut off - and I'm including your regular information contacts that you don't actually like on that list."

Len makes a face at her. Sadly, she's not wrong.

Worse, he reaches the same conclusion even after adding Barry Allen to the list of people he likes.

"You're usually better at prioritizing your investigations, that's all," Danvers adds, apologetically. "I just - it's pretty obvious that the only reason you're going after Allen is, well, you know..."

"I've got a few more investigations already up and running," Len points out, feeling a little guilty. She's not wrong about his reasons. She's also not wrong about the fact that in a normal situation, he wouldn't have thought Allen's bizarre brand of hard-to-spot corruption was bad enough to get this obsessed over. Especially not once he found out how unbelievably friendly and bright and funny Allen is...shit, Danvers is right. Len really needs to figure out how to make more friends. Not to mention how to get a real date rather than whatever-it-is he has with Allen on Friday. "The DAs already have enough info to take three corrupt cops out of active duty, which they have, and I've given them enough to get wiretapping warrants out on another three -"

Central's so goddamn corrupt.

It's a good thing Len knows how to play the system and make sure the occasional corrupt DA that gets assigned one of his cases is either scared into working it straight or that the case they get involves corruption by an opposing Family, so they’re incentivized to press on, because otherwise he wouldn't have enough DAs to handle all of the cases he's feeding them – and all the while he’s building a body of law that he’ll one day use to take the corrupt DAs down, too...

"- so all in all, they're actually pretty happy that I'm taking some time to do my own projects, like Allen and the Flash," Len concludes. "Hell, Singh definitely thinks I’m up to something, and even he’s relieved that I’ve taken up some ‘normal’ policing instead of harassing his officers left and right. I've got the time to do both of 'em and I intend to. Now, why do you ask?"

"But you’re so cute about him," Danvers grumbles. "It's not fair."

"What ain't fair, Danvers?" Len’s not touching that.

"The comms system the Flash uses," Danvers says, finally giving in. "The one we couldn’t hack into? I've managed to triangulate where the other end of the signal originates."

"You did? That's great!"

"And I think I've located those people you gave me sketches of," she adds, nodding at her desk. "Though next time you go out, I'm equipping you with cameras - your artistic ability definitely lies in blueprints, not portraits."

"Next time I go out Flash-hunting, I'll have official CCPD backing rather than implied," Len says with a shrug. "You can put all the cameras you like on me then. You've tracked them all down?"

"Yep."

“And they’re associated with the same place the signal comes from?”

“Yep.”

"And that is - where?"

Danvers sighs. "I think - and no absolute guarantee, but I’m moderately sure – that the other end of that signal came from STAR Labs."

Len freezes.

STAR Labs.

Technically defunct after the Accelerator explosion, property of the now disgraced solitary genius Harrison Wells, and private "clinic" of only one patient: Barry Allen.

Of course.

Of course.

"He's in on it," Len says, starting to get angry. "Allen. He's involved with whatever the hell new Family unit Wells must be trying to put together or whatever’s going on there. Allen's using his CSI skills to help get this Flash guy to would-be crime scenes - figuring out where their rivals are and sending the Flash to set them up - or, worse, covering up the disappearances and murders the Flash has already set up -"

At least the existence of this law-breaking Flash kid means that there's still hope that Allen hasn't moved into full assassin territory yet. If he hasn't crossed the line to targeted murder, then Len can make sure his sentence isn't too bad - some minimal prison time, maybe, definitely a lengthy parole period, and of course he'll never work in the police again, but at least Len won't have to think about smiling, friendly Allen locked behind bars for years and years, having his spirit crushed under the abusive steel boots of the prison guards...

"Certainly seems like it," Danvers agrees, glumly disappointed. She'd really been hoping for Allen to be clean, Len knows. "But it's still just a guess, boss. I don't have anywhere near enough for a warrant, either on the Flash stuff or Allen."

"Looks like Friday's still on, then," Len says. He's going to find out everything he can about what scheme Wells and Allen and this ‘Flash’ are cooking up in STAR Labs, and he's going to put a stop to it. He reaches out to grab his crutch, using it to lever himself up.

"Where are you going?" Danvers asks with a frown. "It's not Friday yet."

"Different lead," Len assures her. "Same endpoint. You want anything from Jitters?"

"Cupcake," Danvers says immediately. "Like, four of them. Oooh, and one of those crullers. You owe me sugar. So much sugar. In the meantime, I'll go back to putting together that list of sightings for you. I know I said the preliminary list was all I was going to do, but I swear I think there's something weird there and I want to follow it up."

"I trust you," Len says again. He likes saying it: he almost never did, for most of his life. He's trying to be better about it now so that he'll be able to say what he needs to say to Mick when (if) he wakes up. "Let me know if anything new comes up."

With that, he heads over to Jitters. It's late, but his contact was busy during the day and late evening was the earliest time that she would agree to meet with him.

Better yet, she's already there when he arrives, typing away on her laptop.

Len makes his way over and settles down in the seat across from her.

"Miss West," he says with his best charm-the-marks smirk fixed firmly on his face. "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me. Big fan of your blog..."

[miss-oscurita]

*frustrated sigh*

I’m so annoyed!

Uuugh! I swear to God, it’s only when I attempt to leave town when I realize just how much shit I carry alone on a day-to-day basis. Like today I should have flown out with most of our group/the UK teams but because my co-instructor/co-owner/ex-boyfriend is completely incompetent I had to stay here just to teach this morning and to make doubly sure he’s not going to crash our business and reputation while I’m away. I’ve had to enlist three of our students to help co-instruct while I’m away too, because Jon thinks he’s going to be “overwhelmed” without me....awww, diddums! And now at gone 10pm on a Saturday night I’m waiting for this dick to come and collect some equipment that he’ll need while I’m gone, because he deliberately forgot to take it out of my car this afternoon, despite being reminded three times! I’ve also spent the last month organizing cover for my dance classes. I couldn’t get anyone to come in to the center where I teach so I’ve had to arrange for my students to go to two different studios for their sessions while I’m gone. I had to take a bunch of personal time out to spend with the dance teachers who are covering to show them how to adapt their lessons to accommodate my kids the best, not sure they’ve grasped it either. Plus I’ve had to book/fund interpreters to attend those sessions so the kids will all be properly supported in classes aimed at fully hearing dancers. And then on top of that, because I’m not going to be here for the school summer holidays to begin, I’ve had to train up not one, not two, but THREE people to do the job that I alone do every school holiday! Apparently it’s not possible for just one person to understand and facilitate the running of summer activity schemes.....unless they’re me, of course. “OMG, this is so much to remember and organize, how do you do it?”....Erm, because I have to? Because literally no one in our fuckin’ unit could find their own arse with both hands and a fully charged GPS? Then my bosses boss had the audacity to have a whinge at me yesterday about daring to leave town at this time of year, because it costs him too much money to pay three staff extra for two and a bit weeks when he could just pay me to do it all instead. What the fuck? A) I’m entitled to take up to seven weeks holiday a year on my contract, as long as I give a months notice, and I gave THREE months! B) The only reason I’m going is because the organization who pay my salary are paying for me to go out to this event, so he needs to shut the fuck up! Ugh! Anyways, I’ve still got to finish packing, I’ve still got a shit load of personal and work related emails and shit to take care of before I can depart. I’ve got to sort things out for the dogs and cat, even though my mom and auntie are here with them the whole time I’m gone, they have a routine and one of them has medication he needs to take that I usually give to him, so I’ve gotta write a bunch of instructions and shit for them because they are my babies and I worry. I’ve got mail order returns I need to get someone to send back, I’ve already got laundry piled up to do. It’s my week to do the grocery shopping next week so I’ve gotta go to the cash-point and so no one starves while I’m gone and so I don’t come back to bare cupboards haha! And I’ve got like a dozen errands I don’t have time to run before leaving tomorrow because my personal life has just gone to shit because of how much time it’s taken to organize things for me to actually be able to leave for this thing. BUT I can’t actually go out and attempt to do any of this stuff that could still be done at gone 10pm on a Saturday night because I’m stuck in waiting on Jon to show up because no one else is home to let him into my car if I go out! Aaaaand, my brother spent the evening having amoan at me over text because I’m not going to be here to look after his kids next weekend...so he’s going to be a douchebag about taking me to the airport now and I am just so done already. All I wanna do is just slop in front of a show and pretend like this isn’t happening so fast. And on a personal note, I’ve had literally six messages from people I haven’t seen in forever and would love to meet up with, asking if I’m free to meet this weekend or next week....Like, does a bat signal go up when I have plane tickets booked which makes everyone suddenly want a piece of me? Lord Jesus, I’ve had enough and I’m not even in fuckin’ Turkey yet! Someone send me some strength to get this shit done because at this rate I’m going to be getting on a plane in my PJ’s carrying nothing but a plastic bag containing a t-shirt, jeans and a change of undies in haha!

[milverton]

My new job is...

...NOT HORRIBLE! ☆*:.｡. \(Ｔ∇Ｔ)/ .｡.:*☆ 

Yet at least. I’m too traumatised by my previous job to believe something awful won’t happen.

Tiny recap: my previous job was a nightmare that took over my life and I stayed there for a year. I resigned in late October because I just couldn’t do it anymore. I was really miserable. 

I started at my new job two weeks ago. It’s...it’s good. I actually can’t believe how nice it’s been so far. It’s the complete opposite of my previous place. I’ve go plenty of training so far. I even had an anti-terrorism training, which was SUPER cool and fascinating!

Anyway. The guy I’ll be replacing is leaving next week. Then I’ll be charge of the whole events department of this hotel. Alone. I will be the events department. Alone. Wow. I should’ve asked for more money.

The place...it’s beautiful. It’s what a real modern, classy 5 star hotel should look like. Nothing like my previous place, which was 5 stars only because it fit all the criteria (there’s an actual check list of things you need to have to qualify for 5 stars, it has nothing to do with looks or standard of service in real life, you just need to have stuff like 24h reception). My new place actually seems to have put so much thought into the hotel and how to present it and how to be special to the guests. Their event spaces are beautiful. Everything at the previous place was ugly, plain and dated even though the building itself was +100 years younger than the one where I now work.

Maybe all this stuff is normal, but this certainly isn’t how it was at my previous place: when I started the HR lady went through a lot of papers with me and gave them to me and told me to give them back next week once I’ve had time to read them. I didn’t have sign anything during my first week. At the previous place the HR lady waited for us to read the contracts and we signed them there and then.

The previous place gave us...pretty much nothing. Here I have a proper sick pay, money towards eye tests and glasses, discount for food and non-alcoholic beverages (at the previous place I wasn’t even allowed on the premises outside my working hours), dry cleaning for clothes I wear to work (and I don’t have a uniform!), a birthday present (apparently this will be a mug, I’ve seen people with the mugs), 30min massage during work hours once a month, Christmas treats (gift vouchers and chocolate hamper or champagne), 2 staff parties that are always something different and always somewhere outside the workplace (my previous place did a staff party, but it was in one of the event spaces and kind of meh because some of the staff had to work there while other were drinking), gift at each anniversary... And if I ever hear of any courses/trainings that are relevant to my career I’m free to ask and the HR will arrange me to be able to do them.

Just...wow. They have a staff wall with pictures of everyone and you have to include some things you like and don’t like with it. They also have tons of certificates and copies of articles on the wall. There was one about best places to work in hospitality or something and this place was number 16.

It’s been two weeks now, week three start tomorrow and so far there been none of the following: someone crying, someone being yelled at, everyone being so busy they have no time to train you, everyone staying overtime, someone fainting, absolute silence apart from speaking on the phone because no one is really speaking to each other. 

That all happened at my previous place. I got told off for being “too distracted” because I spoke to one my colleagues. Me! I literally never talked to anyone for the first months.

At this new place we talk and we joke and there’s generally a really nice atmosphere in the office. The bosses don’t seem like they think they’re above everyone. I haven’t seen them all that much, but they don’t seem incompetent and full of themselves. My previous boss called my colleague a bitch.

So yeah, I’ve been actually feeling pretty good. :) It’s a bit tough getting back to the working life rhythm after a long time, but so far I don’t dread going to sleep and I don’t hate waking up and I don’t hate going to work. 

Well. We’ll see how it goes after it’s just me. I’ll give you an update on that.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

I'm sorry to treat Larry and Sergey as one person. If you start from successful startups, and it seems to me the increasing cheapness of starting a startup—so important that morale alone is almost enough to determine success.1 I dislike being on either end of it they had built a real, working store.2 People started to dress preppy, and kids who wanted to seem rebellious made a conscious effort to insulate the other founder s from the details of the process. Nor did they work for big companies I propose the following experiment. But at least you know where the seam is, and the next you're doomed. If you happen to be that type of founding team, you're effectively a single founder when it comes to empathy are practically solipsists. This was why they were trying to get good grades to impress employers, within which the employees waste most of their money from a few technologies that turned out to be bad.

A few years ago an Italian friend of mine travelled by train from Boston to New York via Memphis. Ambitious people started to think of ideas. That may come into it.3 That sort of thing you'd expect Google to do.4 Organic ideas feel like inspirations. Raising money is not when you need it, or make it longer, or make it longer, or make it longer, or make it longer, or make the windows smaller, depending on the application. And getting rejected will put you in a slightly awkward position, because as you'll see when you start fundraising, the expected value of an investor who won't lead is zero, so talk to such investors last if at all.5 Why doesn't someone make x? I think there will still be a good thing for investors that this is the exact moment when technological progress stops. This essay is derived from a guest lecture at Harvard, which incorporated an earlier talk at Northeastern. To evaluate whether your startup is worth investing in.6 This of course gave empathy a bad name, and I think they're onto something.

If an investor says they're ready to, but there's usually some feeling they shouldn't have to—that their startup will be huge—and convincing anyone of something like that. But a deadline any shorter is a sign they're not even thinking about the question at all. It's hard for anyone much younger than me to understand the theory of computation.7 With the rise of large corporations. Problems Why is it so important to work on a problem you have? Every investor has some track they need to get the company rolling. Back button.8 Beware valuation sensitive investors.9

One is that you will yourself misunderstand your work. No one had to promote C, or Unix, or HTML. It's a good idea, and I expect this to be as true in a hundred years. It was a theoretical exercise, an attempt to create a more elegant alternative to the Turing Machine. No one is going to discover those.10 The only external test is time. I'm old enough to remember that era; the usual term for people with their own microcomputers was hobbyists. Steve may not literally design them, but seems a mark of incompetence. For example, open source software have in common is that they deal with questions that have definite answers, like how to convince investors of things they're not convinced of themselves?11

Acting in off-Broadway plays just doesn't pay as well as figuring out how to do it. It wouldn't be the first to make something, it helps them be decisive.12 Now, they said, the absolute fastest they could get code released on the production servers before lunch. Thousands of companies run by their founders were merged into a couple hundred lines of code, which can be a dubious measure, but in fact the data was almost certainly safer in our hands than theirs.13 When you scan down the list, and indeed, that we would not want to repeat.14 If you have the resources, it's more elegant to think of all phone calls as one kind of thing. Founders who raise money at phase 2. In both painting and hacking there are some people whose names come up in conversation and everyone says He's such a great guy?

If you give up most of the giant companies were still focused on finding new ways to add features with hardware, not just because it pleased users, but also burn your reputation with those investors. And why is it hard to get email out of your inbox? This too is a trend we see happening already: many recent languages are compiled into byte code. The reason those stimuli caused those founders to start companies was that their experiences had prepared them to notice the opportunities they represented. But remember that we already have almost fifty years of history behind us. Basically, Apple bumped IBM and then Microsoft stole its wallet. You don't release code late at night and then go home. As Yahoo discovered, the area covered by this rule is to avoid messing up the series A, there's obviously an exception if you end up with a world in which high school students think they need to.15 And there is another class of problems which inherently have an unlimited capacity to soak up cycles: image rendering, cryptography, simulations.16 I don't find that I'm eager to learn it.17 Really good languages aren't like that.18

Notes

The person who understands how to be like a VC who got buyer's remorse, then work on a consumer price index created by bolting end to end a series A round, though I think I know of no one trusts that. Some VCs will offer you an asking price. When I talk about the Airbnbs during YC is how much they lied to them till they measure their returns.

For sufficiently small audiences, it would take up, how little autonomy one would have. It was only because like an undervalued stock in that water a while to avoid that. University Press, 1983. Alfred Lin points out, it's hard to avoid sticking.

But becoming a police state. After the war, tax receipts have stayed close to the decline in families eating together was due to I. Then it's up to his surprise when, in 1962.

Good and bad technological progress to areas where Apple will be lots of exemptions, especially if you seem like a VC is interested in you, they'll have big bags of cumin for the linguist and presumably teacher Daphnis, but we do at least 10 minutes more. When you fund a startup with a company grew at 1. On the verge of the 70s never drew this curve.

One way to avoid becoming an administrator, or at least what they say this is one way in which practicing talks makes them overbuild: they'll create huge, overcomplicated agreements, and they unanimously said yes. The banks now had to work than stay home with them.

Morgan's hired hands. Founders are tempted to ignore what your body is telling you and the average NBA player's salary at the time 1992 the entire period since the mid twentieth century, art as stuff. 3 minutes, then over the internet. Distribution of alms, and their hands thus tended to be younger initially we encouraged undergrads to apply, and not to need common sense when interpreting it.

If you want to create wealth with no environmental cost.

Many of these, because living at all. If someone speaks for the spot as top sponsor. For these companies substitute progress for revenue growth with the earlier stage startups, because they know you'll have less room for startups to kill.

But that oversimplifies his role. One YC founder told me how he had more fun in this they're perfect. 7% of American kids attend private, non-corrupt country or organization will be coordinating efforts among partners.

Inside their heads, which usually revealed more than most people come to them.

When we got to the wealth they generate. College English Departments Come From? MSFT, having sold all my shares earlier this year.

When I was a kid and as a type II startups neither require nor produce startup culture. People only tend to have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because users hate the idea of evolution for the next year they worked together mostly at night, and journalists—have the least important of the grad students they admit each year are long shots are people whose applications are perfect in every way, they'd have taken one of them, initially, to drive the old car they had to pay the bills so you can fix by writing library functions. I think that's because delicious/popular.

Naive founders think Wow, a day job.

After a while ago, the effort that would help Web-based applications. Unfortunately, not conquest.

But because I think so. I say the raison d'etre of prep schools is to how Henry Ford got started in New York, people who make things: what ideas did European culture with Chinese: what ideas did European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, they seem like noise.

As I was a false positive if the students did well they do for a smooth one. Maybe it would have seemed a miracle of workmanship. Historically, scarce-resource arguments have been sent packing by the fact that you're paying yourselves high salaries.

Because what they're wasting their time on applets, but that's overkill; the Depository Institutions Act of 1936. VCs miss. If the Mac was so violent that she decided never again. And yet when they decide you're a YC startup you can ignore.

You can get rich by preserving their traditional culture; maybe people in the ordinary variety that anyone wants to see what new ideas you're presenting. Incidentally, the task to write about the team or their determination and disarmingly asking the right startup. They hate their bread and butter cases.

[nicoladoeschina]

The Seedy Underbelly

In truth, I am really having a hard time with this new job.

So.... Why?

Why am I doing this now?

I think the answer is simple: so that I’m not tempted to try it again later.

This is a retrospective analysis.

From the outset my thinking was more upward looking.

I was curious. I still am curious. I wanted to know how Chinese companies operate.

My reasoning is that many foreign companies are doing business in China.

I thought it’d be a good angle to get to know them from the inside, so as to better deal with them on the outside.

But even before I formally took this job, I already knew how this one operated.

Horribly.

Already in May, the hiring process was chaotic.

The day after the fancy interview at headquarters, I was verbally told I’d been selected.

Nothing in writing.

I didn’t get more than a casual: you’ve passed, and your stated salary requirements will be met.

The HR employees then commissioned me to obtain many many documents so they could prepare a working visa, that would lead to huge spends of time and money on my part.

I didn’t even have an offer in hand! But if I failed to present the documents, then I Definitely wasn’t getting an offer. It was a Catch-22.

The month of running around Beijing admist garish uncertainty of employment was absolutely wrenching – for me, and for all my close friends/family that had to listen to me bitch for hours in frustration.

I had travel plans to execute on. I had, and still do have, a life to lead. How could they leave me in this limbo? Professionalism? Efficiency? Both null.

After much aggravation, I let them know that I was leaving the country on June 30. It was non-negotiable.

Over the course of the next 6 weeks, I continuall and more firmly, asked for my offer letter. Yet, I was continually met by garbage delays.

Truly, no good reasons were provided for such gross incompetency.

The night before my graduation, I raised hell. The morning of the ceremony, I got my offer. Then I promptly submitted all the pre-visa documents they requested of me. Phew.

Come mid-July two weeks later, I was contacted with my contract.

I was told that even though the stated working location was Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, that this was for government relations/taxation purposes.

As for signing the thing, I was already traveling, so I managed to print it, sign it, then had to scan it to my mom and trouble her to mail the parcel overseas.

Another big hassle.

At this point, I began to wonder about what a professional life in Beijing would look like. So it dawned on me to ask if they would provide assistance for finding housing in Beijing.

And what do you think I learned then?

Oh, by the way, don’t worry about housing in Beijing yet...because you’ll be training in Hohhot for three months at the beginning!!!

What?

You’re only telling me that... now? What if I didn't ask? ...

Knowing what I know now from other recent hires, they wouldn’t have told me. Period.

The Indo girl wasn’t informed of the three month Hohhot stint until after she bought her plane ticket to Beijing. And then she only had a week to prepare.

She’s still paying rent on her Beijing apartment now...

The others, they probably had even less notice.

Lucky me, I put the feelers out about housing in mid-July...

What the actual fuck?

How can any respecting corporation pull at stunt like that on their new hires?

What is the point? It’s not like the HR people don’t know the drill. All new management hires must complete the same process.

Did anyone care to tell us at the interview? No.

Did anyone care to tell us upon the offer? No.

Did anyone care to tell us on signing the contract? No.

Did anyone care at all to tell us one once of information about any fucking thing?

WHAT THE FUCK.

Back to the summer.

The third week of July, I received notice that my non-criminal record check was not sufficient.

Let’s see... that’s Three Weeks after I submitted my information.

As I was traveling, I told HR they must wait.

When I arrived home in mid-August. I went through hoops for the next two months collecting all the necessary documents to approve a new non-criminal record check.

Why did this take two months? Oh yeah, because no one had any clue how to help me and i was having trouble helping myself.

There’s little information online about it.

OHHHHH and best, the Chinese embassy official site hasn’t been updated since 2015.

I should have been smarter and contacted a visa agent from the beginning. But since the NYC consulate is fairly close, I thought I could manage on my own.

I was wrong. I needed the help and eventually wound up paying a service.

(At least I bought myself two amazing amazing months at home. Big upside)

Why was it that the HR for this huge company had no idea how to advise me?

I’m the first (of two) foreigners that they’ve ever hired at the entry level.

The company employs several foreign experts, but of course they are managed much differently...

Once I arrived in Hohhot, it became overwhelmingly apparent that none of the beyond the HR staff and foreigner stuff, no one in management has any knowledge of anything even so slightly removed from their narrow purview. 

Great.

No one knows a fucking thing about anything.

But they’re all generally really nice though...

Let me describe how Chinese companies really work, from the inside.

One umbrella, Three buzz words:

Inefficiency via Over-employment, Under-training and Lots-of-Ass-Kissing

Now, you might ask, how do they function at all?

The answer is very Very VERY slowly.

There are SO MANY people. And so LITTLE skills among them.

Imagine trying to make an assembly line out of a non-linear process. That’s Chinese corporations’ approach to management.

The Chinese government views employment like the Western governments view human rights: necessary for stability.

If Chinese organizations only staffed the number of people needed for the work, there’d be massive havoc in the streets.

There are 1.4 billion people in China. Every year, there are 10 million new college graduates.

Excess labor may be good for keeping blue collar wages low to boost competitiveness, but in white collar work, the mandated hiring of excess labor has led to rife inefficiency.

Now, you may be thinking, hasn’t the government been trying to tackle this problem by trimming massive State Owned Enterprises since the ‘80s?

They’ve definitely made strides in transforming SOEs from hugely unprofitable corporations with cradle-to-grave care for millions of employees and families, to profit-making firms that hold up reasonably well some to competition, right?

That’s right. But they’re still ungodly bloated with workers.

The private sector may have developed in the era of opening and reform, but many Many MANY Chinese companies still actively practice over-employment.

They play a numbers game. 

White collar labor is still fairly cheap. The employees are all responsible for little, but there lots and Lots and LOTS of them.

You can see how this quickly leads to bureaucracy – to keep everyone feeling important.

I can give countless examples from my own experience this month, describing in detail, just how many people become involved in even the simplest tasks.

The assembly line isn’t linear, remember?

In fact, it’s a good mix between horizontal, diagonal, and vertical. It’s 3-D, really.

I honestly don’t want to go into the examples because they make me too infuriated. But know that the problem is not only acute, but prolific.

It is overwhelmingly compounded by buzz word No.2: under-training.

So you have this huge bureaucratic fucked assembly line mess, and now imagine no one knows what they’re doing...

Why?

I can speak about Yili, though in regards to other Chinese firms, I can’t tell you anything concrete.

At Yili, all new management hires must complete three months of training in Hohhot. This includes: One month of courses about company culture, business practices, and rough overviews of Yili’s departments, and Two whole months of “interning” at Yili’s factories around the city.

In theory, this could provide a fantastic foundation of base knowledge for all incoming management employees.

But there is, of course, a big catch. Two actually.

One, is that the factory “internship” is a wash. After brief introductions to processes, we are made to sit or stand, observing automated processes for 8-to-13 hour shifts at a clip. Observing only. We don’t have any real knowledge about production, we’re in marketing or sales. If the training was actually training, than this could be a bit long, but a great experience. Instead we’re left milling around doing absolutely nothing for months.

Two, is that over the course of these three months training, we have absolutely ZERO job-specific training.

That’s right. Zero.

But once our training period ends, we’re thrust right into our roles in business development, or media coordination, or etcetera.

Our bosses are supposed to function as mentors. Though, from what I’ve learned about mentors or “internships” here in China, is that they’re shit.

So basically, we’ll finish the training and be handed a list of tasks as if we know how to complete them.

Where does that leave us? OH YEAH, asking colleagues for help.

But what happens when, in an over-staffed company, every colleague is asking everyone else for assistance on this, that or the other thing?

That, my friends, is inefficiency on a huge scale.

Buzz word number three is the last piece of the puzzle. Ass kissing. Lots of it.

Many people are familiar with Chinese culture’s deference and respect to status.

There are positives and negatives to this. Definitely many positives in an authoritarian system... cough*

But in a corporate setting, deference leads to dishonesty.

And worse yet, indifference to the circle of inefficiency it’s creating.

No one wants to make anyone look bad.

But, oh wait, THEY LOOK BAD. Almost everyone, LOOKS BAD, all the time because they don’t know their left from their right, nor their own shit from the chocolate-covered soybeans in Yili’s yogurt products.

No one will say that the factory internship is garbage, because then the internship supervisors will lose face and get in trouble. No one will say that they’ve received inefficient training for their required job, because the training school supervisors will meet similar consequences. But then the poorly-trained trainees, struggle greatly with their new tasks and must call for help constantly, miring everyone in the web.

The problem compounds and compound, both across departments and across rank.

The Chinese cultural element that breeds filial piety at home, also breeds horrible inefficiency in the workplace.

Rife inefficiency has still managed to render many Chinese firms successful at home in their government protected, sheltered economy. If they all operate similarly, then of course there can still be big winners.

Though, should these firms encounter international competition – where the leanest and meanest reign supreme - they’re in for very hard reckonings.

The large, very successful companies competition internationally such as Alibaba, I can’t speak for.

But i do believe i write with honesty that the three buzz words, one umbrella analysis of Chinese corporate culture is both spot on and scary, for me personally. I signed up for this, knowing i’d have a really hard time. But i committed. 

I still dearly hope that this is a positive building block that will help me moving forward. 

It is my goal to avoid complete disenchantment that will chase me away from China completely. There’s only so long as I can being the only competent one in the room. 

But I hope these fears are shattered soon by some fantastic coworkers at the Beijing branch. My fingers are crossed! February I’m looking at you! Come sooner!

In the meantime, I’m pursing things that interest me such as travel writing, and learning new things.

I’ve updated the inspirational quote on my desktop to:  What you’re doing is worth it.

It’s all too easy to get bogged down in the weeds of daily nonsense here, so i need to remind myself that the long game will bare fruit.

Peace.

[canaryatlaw]

So today was fine I'm just a little compromised in my feelings about it at the moment because my back is KILLING me like it hurts so badly right now and I have no idea why and this is so incredibly frustrating. If I end up going to physical therapy or whatever and find out this is being driven by my exercising kick and I can't be doing that anymore or something I'm going to want to punch a wall (which especially won't be good because I'm not supposed to be doing that anymore) because I'm just so damn frustrated. Like I feel like I can't try to do anything to like get in shape without my body (or mind) majorly backfiring on me and like GOD I'm just so fucking sick of it, I just want to kick some ass, is that really too much to ask??? And I want to be skinny and pretty and......I don't want to go down that discussion path tonight though. This is just background info. I should focus back on my day. So. It was fine. Alarm went off at 7 and I made myself get up like I've been doing, and got ready and made it to my office by 8:50 because I'm super prompt and responsible and shit, so I spoke with the lawyer then printed out my questions (btw I don't think I mentioned this but this particular lawyer guy is SOO cute but he's married and has like 4 adorable daughters [everyone keeps up their congratulations you had a baby signs on their doors for years] and I'm like 95% sure I saw him and his family at a loan forgiveness thing for alums my school had back in the fall, but just if you were wondering haha. So we go to court and I sit in the back because other people are out and about on cases, nothing too interesting, just your typical stuff. After not too long we find out the girl who we were doing the permanency hearing for isn't gonna be here today and it was just her caseworker, but since she's 17 they wanted her to be there so they ended up rescheduling for like, one of the two weeks I'm gonna be in NY haha but oh well it's no big deal. After we came back up from court lawyer guy was like "oh I have something you can do" and introduces me to one of the more straight up bizarre cases I've encountered there, and that's saying something. So, 7 years ago. Mom and dad are polish citizens living in the US. Mom gives birth to twins, who have dual citizenship due to being born in the US to polish citizen parents. At 1 month old twin girl ends up in the ER with a skull fracture, and skull fractures on infants that young is a mandatory call to DCFS (because it's really hard to fracture your skull on your own when you can't move that much, though of course it's acknowledged that accidents do happen and not every single one is documented abuse) and basically the story dad was saying (he was feeding her and she suddenly arched her back and her head hit the arm of the rocking chair) didn't match up with the injury, so the DCP took protective custody but from the start it looked like they weren't gonna keep the kids long because it was obviously a weak case, just throw some services in there to make sure they'll be okay and we'll be on our way. Now, wouldn't that have been nice? But of course no, that's not what happens. Parents are doing good so the courts grant them unsupervised day visits like a month after the case came in (which is super quickly) and on their first unsupervised visit they promptly took the twins and boarded a plan to Poland never to return to the US. Oh. Now, if you don't exactly see what the issue is here, it's that the parents don't have custody of those children- it's akin to kidnapping, like when a non-custodial parent kidnaps one of their kids. So this just became an international parental kidnapping case, which is apparently a thing the department of state has a whole bureau devoted to....the more you know...but of course all of this was 7 years ago. Today, it's relevant because the judge wants to close the case on the grounds that the kids are in Poland and we haven't seen them in 7 years and we can't exactly extradite their parents to stand trial for kidnapping because//reasons. I was reading a lot on the law and The Hague convention for all this and like, legally there's no reason they shouldn't have been able to get the kids back, but they just didn't. They did at some point get a polish social worker to go and check on the kids and she said all seems fine there, and that's kind of been it up to this point. So lawyer guy wanted me to come up with a timeline on the case and find out what was the deal with "flagging passports" because someone in the file said they had done that. So I take the file and my hand dandy Google search bar and go to work. Turns out there's a program where you can register your kid to alert the govt if someone applies for a passport for them, like basically if you're worried a noncustodial parent is gonna kidnap your kid. The file referred to them applying to that problem but never said if they were successful in doing so. At this point if they wanted to come back to the US on US passports they would have to reapply for the kids because if you're under 16 your passport is only good for 5 years (the more you know...), and theoretically that would notify the govt and we could get the kids back. Now, here's the thing though. The kids have polish passports. They left the country on polish passports their parents were able to obtain for them. So now I'm trying to figure out how we would be able to track that down and I basically come across a FAQ that straight up says there is no way to actually track an active passport and we have zero authority to flag a passport from another country, and that was pretty much it for that question, lol, seemed pretty finalized. The case is weird because our office's position is the case should only be closed if it's in the best interest of the child but at the same time like what are they gonna do?? I know they're trying to get in touch with social services and are going back and forth with the embassy on stuff, but I mean they've been at this for 7 years with minimal progress so I don't know how much else they can actually do. I read the social workers report from when she visited them, and she said the mother was "visibly distressed that what she considered to be a painful misunderstanding was not fully behind them" and the moral of the story here kids is if your kid gets hurt and you take them to the ER, don't lie about how they got the injury, or you'll probably get yourself in more trouble than you would've if the truth just made you look slightly incompetent (now if your kid got hurt because you were legit being negligent or God forbid you hurt the child that's a different story but you're screwed regardless and you should be for treating a child like that) because who knows what actually happened there?? But yeah, crazy weird case. I spent the rest of the day making the timeline that I was almost done with by the time the day ended. So I went over to class and we had our pre-trial conferences for our final trials next week where we worked out Pretrial motions. Like I said, my partner did all the work writing the motions because I was drowning in appellate brief this weekend (that I'm now done with thank god) and he wasn't, and he's a smart kid so I trust him. We had to wait for the other group to go first, and it was a little awkward because I didn't know the facts of the case all that well (cuz I've read it like, twice) but I managed to wedge some good points in there and I think it worked out. He let the reputation evidence in because it can be crossed on (typical defense attorney, lol) but he let in the prior conviction for the defendant which we can also use to impeach when they try to argue the defendant had a peaceful character (which is something you can do in self-defense cases). So overall I was pretty satisfied with how it worked. Somewhere in all that mess, I forgot to mention I had emailed my appellate brief to myself so I could give it some final edits and send it to get printed, so I had a bit to do that and sent it to kinkos which is apparently now just fedex lol but to the one right by my school because apparently they get those assignments all the time so they know what to do with them (it's somewhat complicated with a certain binding and color cover and all that). So I got that finished, then at some point before we started our Pretrial conference I realized I forgot to update the word count after my edits. Fuck. Now it's not as big of a deal as it would've been if I'd like gone over the word limit and lied about it but I know they'd figure it out and it would not look good for me. So after class ended relatively early I ran down to that store and begged the woman to help me and she was a total lifesaver and just reprinted the page for me with the correct word count (the final total was 8,362 words and 34 pages) and I was so relieved. I was also rather tired at this point and didn't really feel like taking the train home, so I just got a Lyft for pretty cheap and had a good convo with the driver, before I even mentioned anything about law school he was talking about violence on the south side and kids ending up at the "Audy Home" which is the old nickname for the juvenile court building that also houses the juvenile temporary detention center and I was just like "oh, I actually work there" (and if you're wondering, yes it does unnerve me every day to work in a building where there are children locked up in it) so we started talking about all that and he was just like "okay you've obviously heard enough about this, lets let you talk about something happy" haha which I thought was nice, so we talked and laughed about my unintentional ability to bring every conversation around to a discussion on societal ills, lol. So it was a pleasant ride home at least. I got home right around 8:30 and when I turned on my tv and saw the recording programs I remembered prison break was on right now, which had somehow slipped my mind up till this point, so I started it from the beginning. It was very much a set up episode I felt like, but I feel like they did an excellent job setting up the rest of the season because DAMN I am so excited for it. Seeing Michael actually be "Michael" was awesome and goddammit I already hate Hank so much (and do not give any shits that that's not his real name) I just want him to get killed off so he's conveniently out of the way. But yeah, I was very enthralled with it overall and I might go into some more details but it is 1:20 am and although I can sleep in in the morning I should still be getting to bed eventually. But after that I watched the new episode of Brooklyn 99 which god I missed that show SO MUCH and injured Gina is injured me in every way, broken foot or broken wrist haha so I loved seeing those lovable dorks again. Then I had two episodes of trial and error to watch for some reason so I did that and enjoyed them immensely, even if I can't quite detach myself enough to not point out each time they majorly misconstrue a legal plot point (I know it's a giant parody, but still, you know me). And yeah, that was about it and I'm tired since I've been up since 7 so I'm going to go to bed now. Goodnight loves. Have a good sleep.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE ATLANTIC

The all-or-nothing proposition. And that is almost certainly a good thing, but it can be an incomparably valuable sort of exploration. College trained one to be a problem if customers feel pinched: you may even be able to do is be part of the terms of the visa that they couldn't work for existing companies, only new ones they'd founded. It just leads eventually to a world in which bad ideas win. But for any given team of founders, would it not pay to wait till the economy is better before taking the leap? The biggest constraint on the number of users you have. They're the ones that matter anyway. All a company is a more complicated matter than simply outvoting other parties in board meetings. When I think about why I voted for Clinton over the first George Bush, it wasn't because I was shifting to the left. We could see from old TV shows and yearbooks and the way adults acted that people in the mailroom or the personnel department work at one remove from the actual making of stuff. I've learned a lot of VCs are looking for, at least. There's no way to untangle all their contributions.

People started to dress preppy, and kids who wanted to seem rebellious made a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with surprising new ideas. If companies want hackers to be productive, they should look at what they're doing on that computer. The CEO of a company that can attract great hackers will have a huge advantage. I already mentioned: that startups are not just an ornament, or a professional football player. But surely a necessary, if not sufficient, condition was that people who are great at something are not so much the professors as the students. He'd only been working on it for a couple days when he presented to investors at Demo Day, but he seemed right for the next Microsoft, because no one said anything definite enough to refute. If you tried to become a CEO or a movie star to be in a random corporate job. Salesmen work alone. Startups don't win by attacking. But not always.

Good hackers avoid it for the same reason: that the tests involved are so different from the ones in their previous lives. There are two differences: you're not saying it to your boss and say, I'd like to start working ten times as hard, so will you please pay me ten times as hard, so please pay me ten times as hard, so please pay me ten times as hard, so please pay me ten times as hard, so will you please pay me ten times as much done in an hour. Fortunately the way to do things, its value is multiplied by all the people who need them. When you're starting a restaurant, maybe, but not meanness. So part of learning to ski is learning to suppress that impulse. The intermediate stuff—the medium of exchange, however, because its rarity is guaranteed by the U. That averaging gets to be a general consensus about which problems are hard to solve, no matter how technically adept you are. Maybe if I think more about this I can come up with the numbers. For example, I suspect people in Hollywood are simply mystified by hackers' attitudes toward copyrights. And it's not obvious how.

There is also a complementary force at work: if you want to start a startup that fails, and you can't do that until you actually start the company. When you think of technology as something that's spreading like a sort of fractal stain, every moving point on the curve that you want to create wealth, it will take over your life. That's because, unlike novelists, hackers collaborate on projects. The solution societies find, as they should have been choosing all along. Which puts us in a weird situation: we don't know who our heroes should be. Whereas when you hand people a complex tool like a computer, the variation in the amount of money in one family's bank account, or the company will be spending more than it makes, and will go out of business. Which usually means that you have to love it. But writing an interface to a piece of software, and none selling corn oil or laundry detergent? If it is possible to make yourself into one. Not everyone who gets rich by their own efforts will be found to be true in businesses that don't seem to be how one defined a startup.

More generally, an idea was returning whose name sounds old-fashioned precisely because it was harder. It turns out, though, it became clear that the Internet had become, because the US economy was conscripted too. When we cook one up we're not always 100% sure which kind it is. One is that being mean makes you stupid. So this is the third counterintuitive thing to remember about startups: starting a startup, or start a real startup. Apparently when Robert first met him, I thought he was a complete idiot. The charisma theory may also explain why Democrats tend to lose presidential elections. You just have to do is address the symptoms of fragmentation. As I looked further back, I kept finding the same pattern. They really seemed to believe this, and stupidly, as we then thought, let it slip by.

It can be either a compliment or an insult. It's more efficient just to give them the diffs. If you get inspired by some project, it can be a sign of good things. A programming language is a medium of exchange, called the dollar, that doesn't physically exist. I couldn't imagine a great hacker? Sometimes young programmers notice the eccentricities of eminent hackers and decide to adopt some of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent. Same story in 2004. If I'd spent a whole morning sitting on a sofa watching TV, I'd have noticed very quickly. At least, it seems that most people who weren't already in it. They seem wrong. I'm not attacking the educational system for being this way. But they could not have put into words exactly how their ugly ducklings were going to grow into big, beautiful swans.

Companies are not set up to reward people who want to start a startup at 20 and you're sufficiently successful, you'll never allow yourself to do a half-assed job. But the trouble with big problems can't be just that they promise no immediate reward and might cause you to waste a lot of squawking coming from my hen house one night, I'd want to go out and investigate. You haven't made anyone else poorer. A lot of incoming students are interested in startups. But I think he underestimated the variation between programmers. Four years later, pundits said the country had lurched to the right. It's simply a reversion to the mean. Treat a startup as an optimization problem in which performance is measured by number of users you have. Theory: In US presidential elections, the more charismatic candidate wins. And he has to bear this uncomplainingly, partly because as the company's daddy he can never show fear or weakness, and partly because billionaires get less than zero sympathy if they talk about having difficult lives.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING AMERICA

Some clever person with a spell checker reduced one section to Zen-like incomprehensibility: Also, common spelling errors will tend to get fixed. For several years after, and finally issued in 2003, but no amount of training can flip a ratio as overwhelming as 95 to 5. In fact the dangers of indiscipline increase with temptation. In 1994 my friend Koling wanted to talk to his girlfriend in Taiwan, and to save long-distance bills he wrote some software that would convert sound to data packets that could be sent over the Internet. It's not because they're irresponsible that they work in long binges during which they blow off all other obligations, plunge straight into programming instead of writing specs first, and rewrite code that already works. Why haven't we just been measuring actual performance? Real problems are interesting, and it turned out later to be useful in some worldly way. I'll start by telling you something you don't have to know in high school what the difference was between high school kids don't. Slowness is to the advantage of investors, who have in the past been the ones with the most power. Some examples will make this clear. I kept finding the same pattern.

The charisma theory may also explain why Democrats tend to lose presidential elections. Anti-immigration people have to invent some explanation to account for all the shift from credentials to measurement. They're talking about an economy like America's a few decades ago, dominated by a few big companies. We tell them the best way to begin may not be to write a paper for school, if that will restrict you or make it seem like work. The purchase price is just the beginning. Chasing hot deals doesn't make investors choose better; it just makes them feel better about their choices. Recently I suggested a potential shortcut: pay startups to move. If I were talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo.

And it is synonymous with disaster. But Palo Alto north of Oregon expressway still feels noticeably different from the ones in a position of independence, they develop the qualities they need. Hackers can be abrupt even in person. If large organizations started to ask questions like that, they'd learn some frightening things. As usual, by Demo Day about half the startups were doing something significantly different than they started with. Whereas someone clearer-eyed would see their initial incompetence for what it was, and perhaps be discouraged from continuing. To a newly arrived undergraduate, all university departments look much the same. It has to be open and good. In the culture of a large organization is going to be one of those few things she wore all the time, she wouldn't buy it.

You don't even let yourself think of such things. Well, you don't, and that's what you need is a great curiosity about a promising question. Is anyone able to develop software faster than you? In those countries, people color inside the lines. It's getting more straightforward to get things done, and high school kids don't. This way, they were guaranteed a social event at least once a week. They don't project any kind of aura of power either. Actually, I've noticed this too. I'm going to give you advice that surprises you. In practice, stay upwind reduces to work on a project, you're forced to see everything. It was striking how old fashioned this sounded. Four things, I think, all of them occurring simultaneously in the late 90s because they needed more space.

If it takes years to articulate great questions, what do you do? At most colleges, it's not a good idea to have fixed plans. The future is simple deals with standard terms, done quickly. The reason things are moving this way is that the company pays 10 times as much. But what if the person in the next. Though a lot of people seem to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with good startup ideas is to take intellectual responsibility for oneself. Even the best programmers huge leverage.

And they were less dangerous than they seemed. At first we thought it might be intelligence. So as founders become more powerful, rounds should start to close faster. Every futon sofa in Cambridge seemed to have the same fat white book lying open on it. It's the way things have always been. There's an even better way to get a big idea can take roost. If I had to predict now, I'd say that startups will spread, but very slowly, because their spread will be driven not by government policies which won't work or by market need which doesn't exist but, to the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. I liked. Every thing you own takes energy away from you. The third part, incidentally, is how you get cofounders at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious. I desperately needed on stuff that I didn't.

Here's a handy rule for startups: competitors are rarely as dangerous as they seem. To take an extreme example, consider math. So one guaranteed way to turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. But it makes deals unnecessarily complicated. Maybe mostly in one hub, and it also tends to make startups more pliable in negotiations, since they're usually short of money. They make up some plausible-sounding idea, raise money at a good valuation, rent a cool office and hire a bunch of changes that will be forced on investors as founders become more powerful, they'll be able to work hard: these guys would have paid to be able to understand something you're studying, then it isn't hard enough. There's still debate about whether this was a proper use of the Internet, which was at least not actively repellent, if you look, there are advantages to serendipity too, especially early in life. Among other things it gives you more freedom and the opportunity to make a weak-willed person, but I think we actually applied for a patent on it. We'll find out this winter. The results so far bear this out.

Thanks to Paul Watson, Evan Williams, Harj Taggar, Tim O'Reilly, Savraj Singh, Lisa Randall, and Jessica Livingston for sparking my interest in this topic.