#this post is pertaining to my last one (where I said I was revisiting my fav fnf mods)

[lovinglin]

Soft mod amirite.

[fandangotales]

FANDANGO! FANDANGO! FANDANGO!!! I JUST HAD A WILD MF THOUGHT FROM THE LAST HORNY REVERSE ISEKAI AU ASK!!

what if you accidentally left your computer on when going out for a quick grocery shopping? and what if the characters accidentally stumble on your nsfw liked posts, arts or even worse! asmrs? as someone who has a good stash of sub genshin things i would be ready to yeet myself off of my balcony🤭

Warnings: NSFW mention/content, cult au, a pinch of yandere. <3

Pervious fic mentioned in the ask HERE

Characters: Albedo, Venti <3

A/n: As somebody who also has a good stash of sub genshin things, I would gladly join you… especially if they found my tumblr.

REBLOGS AND COMMENTS ARE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED! <3

Albedo:

You were casually sitting on the couch one day, scrolling through your phone. Another Qiqi meme, and another ad for “free” primogems…

You were getting rather bored, and a little creeped out at how much Albedo was staring at the “strange device” in your hands.

You decided to ignore his analytical stare, as the alchemist would often look at you for extended periods of time.

You shrugged it off, going back to your scrolling.

To anybody else, it would probably be seen as strange, but considering that you were The Creator…

Any opportunity to behold your holiness, to be in the same space as you, or to simply to bask in your presence…

It is an honor of the highest degree.

So please, don’t be too bothered by his unblinking stare.

Albedo observed the way you would always have it with you, and how you seemed to give it most of your attention. Perhaps you were revisiting the “Posts” in your “Saved Folder”?

The one time you showed him how to navigate this thing you called Instagram, he might’ve clicked on something he wasn’t supposed to see…

Now, it wasn’t his intention to snoop into your saved folder! But, Albedo’s curiosity was piqued. And with that curiosity, it becomes impossible for him ignore the subject of interest. Especially when that specific subject pertained to you.

53 saved posts, the screen read.

His eyes had widened, as he took in the contents of your screen.

53 posts of… him and some of your other acolytes, in questionable angles, often doing questionable activities, or wearing questionable articles of clothing… was this something you were into?

He’d need to document this new information, to know more about Teyvat’s Creator.

His memories were interrupted by your voice.

“…do you want something?” You asked, wondering what Albedo was thinking about.

You saw him nervously shift where he sat, as he cleared his throat.

“I… would like to ask you about the art you have saved on Instagram.”

You froze, immediately turning off your phone and shoving it underneath you.

“Oh! Hahah! Of course…!” You trailed, silently dying on the inside.

If he had saw THAT folder, you were in for quite a bit of explaining.

“Art! Y-yes…” You said, seeming to avoid eye contact.

“If that stuff can even be considered art-“ You half mumbled, indiscreetly shoving the phone into the depths of the couch cushions.

He could sense your obvious discomfort, so he decided to cut straight to his point, in an attempt to spare you some embarrassment.

“Your Grace.” The blonde started, in all seriousness, “Would it be pleasing to you if I were to wear cat ears?”

The room was dead silent, except for the occasional bird chirp from outside. Albedo was unnerved by your blank stare. He wasn’t being too presumptuous to assume that you wanted him in that way-

Or maybe you were disappointed in his lack of enthusiasm? He could assure you that he would be delighted to serve you in that way, to gain your favor, to be yours-

“I-if that’s not enough I could wear a collar too!-“ He blurted, sitting up completely straight.

The silence returned momentarily, as your mind whirled with ideas of what to say, how to even deal with this…

Before you could come up with a response, the image of Albedo in cat ears and a collar was conjured up into your mind.

His soft blonde hair and matching cat ears… a turquoise collar to match his eyes…

The way he might look up at you, not so innocently pawing at your body, desperately panting for your attention-

“Your Grace, are you alright?!” Albedo panicked, quickly approaching you with a cloth. “Why is your nose bleeding?”

Venti:

“Yeah, and there’s a ton of music that people from all over this world have recorded, and the best part…”

You trailed off, for a dramatic effect. You saw Venti’s aquamarine eyes follow your every move.

“You can either listen to music, or watch anything on this platform, as long as you have WiFi!” You gushed, going on and on about the wonders of “YouTube”

A chime sounded, interrupting your rant.

“Oh, the cookies are done!” You exclaimed, getting up from your spot on the bed. “I’ll be right back, feel free to browse YouTube for whatever you’d like to hear!”

“Ehe, ok!” He smiled, gleefully clicking into the “Library” section of the “app”.

The door of the room clicked shut, and the ex-archon was left by himself.

“Recently watched?” He said to himself, curiously tapping on the category.

A wide variety of videos pulled up on the screen of the phone.

He hummed, casually kicking his feet in time with the rhythm, as he scrolled through the videos.

“Daddy Diluc punishes you for not paying your bar tab? ASMR?”

He tapped the video, as the first hints of sound emit from the device.

“You’ve been naughty, kitten…” the voice trailed, sounding eerily similar, if not exactly the same as Diluc. “But I think you already know that… don’t you?”

Venti wheezed, doubling over laughing. To think that the Creator of Teyvat would watch and listen to something of this nature-

The door opened, as you finally returned from taking the cookies out of the oven.

Venti flinched, attempting to hide the phone behind his back. However, in his haste to move the object, it fell out of his hands.

You stared at the bard in confusion, still standing in the doorway. Before you could ask him about his flustered state, a loud clunk sounded throughout the room. The phone had fallen right between your desk and the wall.

You choked when you heard the oh-so-familiar voice coming from the phone.

“Since you’ve been so naughty, basically begging for my attention, I guess I’ll just have to punish you. Hm? You’d like that?”

“VENTI WHY DID YOU CLICK ON THAT?!” You screeched, immediately dropping to the ground, desperately reaching your hand into the crack between the wall and your desk. You failed to reach the device.

“I-“ he started, continuously being interrupted with laughter. “I-m sorry, y- Your Grace-“

You were mortified when the less appropriate part of the video started, the lewd noises echoing through the room.

“H-hah, kitten… you’re so tight- so perfect for me, bent over the bar like this…”

Your face went bright red, as you stood up, hastily grabbing Venti’s arm, proceeding to drag him out of the room.

You slammed the door shut, as Venti kept laughing.

“You. Heard. Nothing.” You said, your face turning bright red.

“Nothing.” He said, an innocent smile on his lips.

You sighed in relief, before seeing the mischievous expression on his face.

“Venti…” you warned, side eyeing him.

“I heard absolutely nothing, kitten.” He cackled, before he went dead silent. “Is…that my voice?”

From under the door, you heard a new video begin to play.

“A-ah- please-“ somebody said, imitating Venti’s voice.

“W-windblume- I’m- hAH~ g-going to c-cum!”

Your face somehow managed to get redder, as you slowly turned back toward him.

“I… I am so sorry you have to hear that.” You muttered, your eyes meeting his amused ones.

“Don’t worry about it! After all, I wouldn’t mind if we were to record our own video like that.” Venti grinned, taking your hands in his own.

You blushed even harder, as he continued his rant, excitedly detailing all he wants to do with you. His fanatical expression was making you a little nervous.

You just didn’t understand how euphoric this made him, to know that you were watching things of this nature about him- and that he was with you now, all alone…

“Anddd, maybe you could bend ME over a bar? That could make for a really interesting ballad, about the scandalous love between the Creator and the Anemo Ar-“

He was cut off by a particularly high pitched moan coming from behind the door.

You swiftly retracted your hands, running back inside of the room, thankful for the excuse to escape his tightening grip.

“I am turning this phone off, if it’s the very last thing I do!” You screamed, angrily attempting (and failing) to reach for the wretched device.

[inmyarmswrappedin]

DRUCK reactions - s4 ep1

Ages ago I said I wanted to write meta about Cris’ and Matteo’s seasons, so of course, when I finally sit down to write reactions to a Skam remake, it’s about Amira instead.

A few weeks back I was composing tumblr posts in bed before falling asleep (my number 1 hobby lol) when it struck me that the writing for Amira’s season was really… indefensibly bad. So let’s stroll down through memory lane and revisit Druck s4, or how to throw away your potential because you have to put out this season before summer is over!

CLIP 1: Dark clouds over Winterberg

Obviously I’m writing these with the benefit of hindsight, but I will try and incorporate what my initial reaction to a clip was whenever I can remember.

Sometime between the Abiball episode and episode 32, I argued (on twitter) that the Abiball special was the Abiball episode instead, the first episode of Amira’s season. It would thus introduce us to the conflicts and characters that would take place during Amira’s season. I thought that in addition to the obvious Amira/Mohammed, Carlos/Kiki/Essam would be important, Kiki’s family life would be important, Stefan would be important, and David/Matteo would probably not be important as they seemed to be doing just fine in their scenes.

I didn’t think Mia/Alex would be important because I didn’t actually watch their clip lol. The Winterberg stans on my twitter orbit thought the clip was cute and nothing to worry about. That should’ve been my first clue that the (twitter) stan habit of repeating the “we never lose” mantra doesn’t make for great viewing comprehension, because watching the clip, it’s so obvious that shit is gonna go down lol.

Mia moves from one of the flat share’s bathrooms to the other because they never really recreated Mia’s room in the s3 flat share.

I still haven’t watched Mia’s episode, so I don’t know how all this stuff is going to get resolved, but it seems like Mia doesn’t think they can handle a LDR, and Alex is picking up on those vibes hard. I guess I don’t really get why Mia is so pessimistic about it because at that age I kinda thought a few months break weren’t really an obstacle. (Not sure if it would help me to watch Mia’s season, because this seems like a wholly new conflict.)

Anyway, Alex acts sweet/reassuring (I really like how soft spoken everyone is in this episode), so Mia puts it out of her mind for now. But Idk, they haven’t really spoken about the elephant in the room.

CLIP 2: Don’t call them the chastest evak ever again

Tbh this clip comes across as a direct rebuttal to all the s3 commentary about David and Matteo seeming like they’re not into each other, or like they aren’t ~passionate~ like the other evaks.

It’s like, “these gremlins are horny on main, now shut up.”

But I like that they’re fully dressed, like yes, you can show physical intimacy without undressing your teen actors (shade fully intended).

I love Lukas von Horbatschewsky’s hair and I’m very jealous of Matteo in this sequence, lmao.

Luis Sepúlveda died of coronavirus this year, in Spain. You’re welcome for that bit of 2020 misery dripping onto this cute clip.

I do think David feels guilty that he may have caused Matteo to fail his Spanish exam because of David’s own issues, which I think is very on brand for David. Obviously it wasn’t his fault.

I really like how soft spoken everyone is in this episode, 2X.

And this has been said a million times by now, but David and Matteo are the one evak version where they’re the same age (Joana is in the same year as Cris, but is a year older, so she must’ve gotten held back at some point). So it’s funny, and possibly a reference to Isak and Even, to see David talking about what it’d be like if they had that age difference. Like, maybe David would be more like Even in behavior! And, going by Matteo’s reaction, he wouldn’t be into that.

This clip really feels like the ending to Matteo and David. They’ll go on a road trip, they’ll work on David’s movie, they’ll be around, but this clip is their conclusion. They both feel secure and content in their relationship, and ready for everything that’s to come.

Like I said on the post about Cris and Joana, I like that David and Matteo don’t have further issues. And while I have tons of issues with Druck s4, which I will be talking about forever in the following posts, I never had an issue with how they deployed Matteo or David. (Okay, self. Now say that again without crying about David’s season that should have been.)

Fucking David cutting their make out short only to then say such a highkey flirty, romantic thing to Matteo though. No wonder Matteo’s like, “STOP, I’M SUPPOSED TO STUDY.”

CLIP 3: A challenger appears!

I like the fanon that David is a healthy eater (or at least in comparison to Matteo), because all we ever see David eat of his own volition (i.e. not food that was made for him) is candy.

God, I love Kiki snatching David’s fruity gummies out of his hands. It makes me laugh every time, particularly how she demands to know if the candy is vegan.  

Hanna looks beautiful. ;_;

There’s a split second when Jonas is about to give Hanna that box where David looks alarmed in the background. In my mind he’s all, “Bro, no. Not a public proposal. Reel it back in, bro!”

And then, to the surprise of Jonas and all the viewers, we find out that not only are Jonas and Hanna not together, but Hanna is dating German Arthur. Again, in “fandom refuses to acknowledge storyline conflict until it’s staring right at them” news, Stefan had actually been introduced via an audio to Hanna the day before, but people were convinced it was Hanna’s dad. Whose actor they called just to record an audio. Clearly.

My belief at this point was that Stefan would be relevant to Amira’s storyline, but instead it was just a way to give Hanna her own episode. 🤡

Matteo’s transformation into Michi is complete by donning his grandpa hat.

He also makes to trip David for no real reason. Throwback to Unter Wasser.

Matteo saying Inshallalalah in a sing song voice is cute, but so annoying.

Matteo Florenzi: He’s a pain in the ass, but we love him.

CLIP 4: I guess Abdi and Axel picked up his grades at another point

I love the way Matteo grabs David’s head to pull him along. They’re so cute and I’m gonna enjoy every second.

Jonas also grabs Hanna along, because fans needed to be further confused as to what was happening with Hanna and Stefan and Jonas.

Thank you, Druck, for telling me Kiki’s and Amira’s grades, but as you can understand, that’s nowhere near enough to satisfy my curiosity and I will be needing to know everyone’s GPA because that is the kind of thing that’s important to me. What about it!!!

I think, going by how impressed Mia is, that Mia’s grade isn’t as good as Amira’s. Which I think is a neat detail, since the Nooras are kind of supposed to be the perfect girls. I like that Amira is even better than Mia at school.

I thought the concept of Carlos failing his final exam and maybe realizing school wasn’t his thing would’ve been an interesting storyline to explore, but I’m not mad that it didn’t happen. Hopefully Druck will touch on it with the next kids.

And we’re now treated to three reveals about Kiki. Kiki has a sister (now she has two), she likes the idea of moving out and living with Carlos, and her mom isn’t doing well.

The remakes trying to develop their Vildes past s4 make sense to me. By the end of Skam, Vilde clearly was the character who’d been the most robbed of a season, there were several potential storylines to do with her. Financial instability, alcoholic mom, eating disorders, plus it seemed obvious that any season taking place during the girls’ russetide should go to her. And that’s without getting into Vilde’s strong denial that she was a lesbian.

So the remakes are sitting on all these potential storylines, but as we now know, they can’t make their own Vilde season.

And from a European TV exec’s point of view, Vilde (who in every version is a white, skinny, ostensibly straight girl) is a very safe main after the gay and Muslim seasons.

Cue the LITTLE SISTER.  

I get why people are fed up with the Vildes’ prominence in the remakes that are in their latter stages, but at the same time we got 8 versions of Noora’s season, most of which are a limpdicked enemies to lovers story with a misguided sexual assault storyline tacked at the end. (And I say misguided because after a strong start, it’s mostly about what William will think, how William will react, I can’t tell William about this, etc.) So in my case, I’ve had quite enough Noora to last me a lifetime, but my Vilde thirst has only begun to be quenched.

Tangent over, Kiki lies that she’s not going to the lake because she’s going to check on Carlos. Bad form, Kiki.

CLIP 5: Graduation (Friends Forever).mp3

In clown news, I predicted there’d be a clip between the Kiki stuff and the actual dance (maybe a Sam clip), as it seemed to me there wasn’t much of a connection between Kiki looking sad on that ping pong table and PARTY TIME. Lol at me.

And speaking of clowning, while I thought the Abiball episode was part of s4, I also thought that was fine because it was just doing the multi POV episode in the beginning of the season rather than at the end, right? Wrong.

As much as it would’ve been great if Sam and Abdi had storylines pertaining to racism and islamophobia (whether Abdi is or isn’t a Muslim, people would probably assume he is), I also have to admit… This conversation is hilarious.

“I want to have intercourse with you.” [glass breaks in the background]

Abdi closing his speech with a wide smile gvvhvh.

The first hundred times I watched this scene, I thought Alex seemed a bit alarmed at the conversation taking place, but really… We’re back to stone-faced Alex lol.

Don’t kill me, but I feel a little bad for Abdi in this moment. He really put himself out there and Sam just leaves without giving him an answer, yikes. I actually got tired of Abdi’s sad sackiness during the season, but right now I feel for him. L

There’s this smile Jonas sometimes directs at dudes (like Alex here) that makes me think… Bi. He also directs it at Matteo in s3.

Ugh.

There’s a parallel universe where Stefan was the villain of Amira’s season, and it would’ve been a much more interesting season than the one we got.

Because Stefan is a bit of a Darth Jonas. He works for Greenpeace, but, at least in this scene, seems a bit full of himself, and like… twisting the knife in a way that feels like it has to be intentional. And it would’ve been so interesting if Druck had tackled the white dudes who seem like they’re not going to be assholes about Muslims, but then turn around and say some shocking garbage. I’m sure we’ve all met a guy like that before.

In my mind, Stefan would’ve driven a wedge between Hanna and Amira, which would’ve been way more compelling than what we got, but on the other hand, it probably would’ve made fandom people hate Hanna, and people outside of fandom hate Amira.

Anyway, tag teaming gays! I love how David and Matteo share a look and immediately take care of both Jonas and Stefan.

I also love it when David looks murderous. It looks good on him.

But I feel like this didn’t go anywhere? Like, Matteo always hated Stefan and continued hating Stefan until the finale. In this scene, David seems to dislike Stefan just as much, but it’s not a thread they bother following. It’s too bad because I think Matteo and David together sabotaging Stefan is a lot funnier than just Matteo doing it.

I love how soft spoken Amira is when telling Essam not to show up at her graduation party. I would’ve been a lot less polite lmao.

You know, I actually thought Kiki was genuine here when she said she wasn’t a fan of competitions. Obviously that’s not the Kiki we’ve known until this point, but like, I thought it was meant to show character development on her part, But we’ll talk about THAT more in the following episodes.

Matteo fully blames their win on David being so hot, mysterious and new, and it’s hilarious because that’s also what initially drew him to David. Like, “fuck you for being so hot!”

I thought it was such a nice detail that they brought back the girl from the refugee classes in s1. We’re saying goodbye to all these school people who are going on their own post high school journeys without us!

In my mind, Abdi and Alex are talking about something completely serious, like, I don’t know, Abdi’s dad wanting him to study business and Alex advising Abdi on the best business schools in Berlin or something.

I feel like Hanna is the one girl in the squad who really doesn’t feel ready for post high school life and I HATE the writers so much for how they wrapped her character up, but we’ll save that for later.

I could watch Matteo passing the tiara (=the main) to Amira forever. The way he tips his hat and looks like even he’s a little surprised that he (a character like him!) was ever the lead on a teen show, David’s voice asking Matteo if he’s coming, Matteo leaving with David to live happily ever after, the initial notes of Just Got Paid as Amira looks at nighttime Berlin. This meme is overdone by now, but THE POETIC CINEMA.

Jonas glaring at romantic rivals at end of year dances is iconic at this point.

Amira being tagteamed by an annoying little brother AND a well-meaning, embarrasing older brother. Choose your own nightmare.

I really love the set up for the Essam/Kiki/Carlos conflict. The emotional potential is SO good because on one hand you have Kiki, who wants to have a good time for once instead of parenting her own parent, then Carlos whose self-esteem is on the floor after having failed his final exam, and Essam, whose own sense of self-worth hinges upon whether white German girls find him attractive. Like, obviously Essam is never going to come between Kiki and Carlos who have been through some shit together, but with Carlos out of commission and Essam eager to please, you can see how the situation could so easily turn into a mess.

Amira and Mohammed have the most sexual tension out of any Yousana pair, period. They literally just said hi to each other and I already feel like I’m intruding gvhvhv.      

Social media

David saying of Matteo: “Er bekommt Auslauf.” (Something like, “he gets walkies” because he’s been good with revising) is the cutest shit ever.

Remember when Stefan sent Jonas a whole ass message and signed it “with sunny greetings”? Stefan was much more fun when we were supposed to find him unbearable.

Kiki creating a new Whatsapp group for every single thing is so true to life.

I’d forgotten that Amira also hated Stefan almost right away. The season that could’ve been, I tell you.

All the Abi Chaker Clan content reminds me of how I thought Jonas looked like, well, such a child, compared to Stefan, and I thought that was intentional. Like, here is Stefan with a Greenpeace job whereas Jonas doesn’t know what to do with his life, and he’s like, spray-painting abi chaker clan onto walls and posting pics to the abi chaker clan account. It’s not that I thought Jonas should’ve acted like a whole ass adult, of course he’s having fun with his high school friends, but I thought Jonas might feel inadequate in comparison to where Stefan is at this point of his life.

I can’t remember who revealed it, but Sara was supposed to end up with Toilet Sam and that was supposed to come out during the s3 finale (on that week, Sara posted a story with a guy whose face was obscured iirc). Since that was part of the clip where Hanna and Jonas also got back together, which they cut to make way for Hanna/Jonas/Stefan drama, Sara takes some other dude to the Abiball. And I think we’re supposed to think that’s the same dude she went on that date with.

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Out-of-context Twitter accounts keep your favorite shows alive online

The joy of Parks and Recreation will never leave me, not even in the dark corners of Twitter. It’s a strange yet reaffirming thought for me and the other 166,000 people who follow the "out of context parks" account.

As its name suggests, the account takes scenes from the beloved NBC comedy and posts them without any context, leaving it up to the reader to interpret the meaning. 

pic.twitter.com/J9LiNdUEFj

— out of context parks (@nocontextpawnee) January 30, 2019

While not affiliated with the network or the show officially, it is still part of a burgeoning trend on the social media platform. Pop culture-based out-of-context accounts have been popping up all over the place in the last few years. 

From iconic TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer to critical faves like The Good Place, from Marvel movies to recent Oscar nominee The Favourite, there are out-of-context pages devoted to all kinds of entertainment.

SEE ALSO: Crush Twitter proves that sometimes subtweets can be good

The basic principle boils down to the same thing: posting close captioned screenshots without additional comment. The jokes really just needs to be taken at face value and are actually the perfect buffer from a sullen cycle of bad news and bad tweets. 

Why wouldn’t I want to be interrupted by Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt in the middle of my mindless Twitter scroll? As a lover of obscure board games and Adam Scott being nerdy, Cones of Dunshire will always warrant my attention.

pic.twitter.com/sH1CZswCsx

— out of context parks (@nocontextpawnee) January 15, 2019

Kaysi Long created the Parks account in the summer of 2017. She told Mashable she was inspired by a similar account dedicated to cult favorite Buffy. 

"I thought it'd be fun to do the same thing for a TV show I love," she shared via email. She noticed the engagement started picking up heavily within the first 6 months. 

Long binged the show and took several screen caps along the way. "I have a ton saved up now so I haven’t had to spend too much time watching it again and again. How I decide what to post is usually pretty random," she said. The exception is when there's really something timely to share. 

pic.twitter.com/2Tr7K4xzys

— out of context parks (@nocontextpawnee) January 22, 2019

The allure of out-of-contexts as they pertain to movies, TV, games, comic books or even people (who can say no to even more ways of taking in John Mulaney's humor) stems from the need to consume content repeatedly and quickly.

It's also the simplest form of a throwback. 

When I discovered the out-of-context account for The Office, another all-time favorite, I spent a joyous 15 minutes laughing as I recalled the specific details of every post. This post got me so much that I immediately felt the need to revisit the opening of Season 4's "Money" and listen to the opening music, which is indeed very cheerful. 

pic.twitter.com/1XQxBykdqn

— out of context the office (@officecontexts) January 10, 2019

The concept of sharing a singular moment of dialogue goes way back. First it was posting quotes or even lyrics without any context on AIM or Facebook, and now it's as Instagram captions. It's ~cool~ and fun. 

Twitter out-of-context humor is a whole other ballgame. It can be fleeting and varied, taking the most basic lines and proclaiming them to be entertaining.

For example, @NYTMinusContext tweeted nothing but random verbatim phrases from various New York Times articles. It amassed 205,000 followers in it's almost 5 years of existence. It's easy to see why. 

seriously, I will tear my hair out and eat it. HA-HA-HA

— NYT Minus Context (@NYTMinusContext) February 23, 2018

everything on planet Earth is falling apart

— NYT Minus Context (@NYTMinusContext) March 10, 2018

In its more recent wave, this format gets a visual and cultural makeover. The image elevates the comedy, and it speaks to our need of dissecting pop culture at a minute level.

Twitter provides the means to do this easily. 

A scene stripped down to its barest form will still come off as amusing. Emma Stone's maniacal "Fuck! fuck! fuck! fuck!" is a real mood, regardless of whether or not you've seen The Favourite. 

pic.twitter.com/gsr7aaBRdx

— the favourite out of context (@tongueinsideme) February 14, 2019

Out-of-context accounts indirectly share a purpose: to reel you in. I started following "out of context bojack horseman" early last year without having ever seen BoJack Horseman. After liking enough tweets, I knew I had to prioritize checking this comedy off of my Netflix queue. 

If just the screenshots were enough to crack me up, the entire show would definitely win me over, right? Reader, it did. 

pic.twitter.com/h0Dgid7Cp7

— out of context bojack horseman (@nobojackcontext) October 13, 2018

It proves out-of-context humor can please anyone and doubles as a great way to lure you into learning more about its original source. 

This formula even got an official Netflix stamp of approval. To promote its original witty teen drama Sex Education, the streaming platform created a verified no context account for this extremely quotable show. 

They wanted the scenes to resonate with fans and to make the people who hadn't seen the show feel the FOMO. It's a great way to keep the fandom growing, as the account's 98,000 followers show.

I WAS W A I T I N G FOR THIS QUOTE URGHH ICONIC

— Anna ❤️💍 Charlie (@zahartovana_) February 4, 2019

Famed comic book writer Gail Simone, known for her work with Deadpool and Birds of Prey, is a Twitter aficionado who has created several "ridiculous" conversation-starter pop culture hashtags, including #lackofcontexttheater in 2017. 

"I love that you say something absurd, and soon, hundreds, maybe thousands of people who get the joke jump in and add to it," she told Mashable.

In this case, she wanted to point out the weird writing of comic books that, devoid of contextual panels around it, sometimes hint at mysterious psychosexual horrors and kinks. "There’s an entire 1940’s story where Batman and the Joker spend the entire issue talking about boners, and you can’t help but laugh."

@GailSimone can't forget this legend #lackofcontexttheater pic.twitter.com/L71O9hC66e

— jodi❗️❗️ (@AbyssalOdin) January 8, 2017

@GailSimone #LackOfContextTheater I don't think this scene will make it into Homecoming. pic.twitter.com/VFiB5ktVII

— Tomb Svalborg (@tombness) January 8, 2017

@GailSimone Found another good one for #LackofContextTheater pic.twitter.com/610TR8Dcu1

— Juan Carmona (@JDCarmona91) January 10, 2017

Simone didn't think her hashtag would blow up the way it did but even after a couple of years, the underlying trend holds up. "I went back and read all of the tweets and they made me laugh all over again," she shared. 

"It’s simply a matter of seeing something familiar and wholesome and imagining there's more to it." 

It is funny to imagine an unseen world where Batman is really obsessed with Joker’s constant boners. That's why folks are so involved with the hashtag. And that's why they're so involved with the entire trend of pop culture out-of-context accounts.  

Everyone gets to be in on and enjoy the joke, even if they're not fully familiar with its genesis.

WATCH: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is giving Twitter classes to fellow Democrats

[ephriza-dawnblade]

This is a long post pertaining many elements related to Ephriza's history. I appreciate you taking the time to read through it. Please enjoy.

“The Lady Dawnblade has taken ill. You are her only remaining heir so it is only fitting that you are there at her side in her final hours.”

The words played through her mind as she wrote a letter of her own. A scribbled message written with a shaky hand that belied her training.

Apologies, Captain, I have received urgent news regarding my family. I would not leave unless it was absolutely necessary and I fear that is the case. I will negotiate proper punishment when I return.

Sincerely,

Corporal Ephriza Dawnblade

She folded up the letter and cursed as she cut herself in her haste. The envelope sat upon the Captain's desk, awaiting retrieval as the void elf slipped out of the building.

---

The Dawnblade estate was a respectable compound in comparison to many but it hardly boasted the fervor and livelihood of other noble homes. The symbolism was not lost on Ephriza as she made her way up the main road to her old home.

A dying home for a dying family.

She thought, her eyes wandering the vacant fields. That wasn't to say the land was bereft of beauty, quite the opposite actually, the lack of attendants and workers left nature to reclaim much of the estate. The trees gave credence to the rumors of Eversong Woods, nearly shimmering in the sunlight. Hues of gold, orange, and red dotted the fields and a light autumn breeze kicked up the fallen leaves that had collected on the fine stone path.

It was a road she walked hundreds of times but one she had avoided for the past decade. The aged Dawnblade Manor say at the end of the path, an elaborate building with gorgeous architecture. The stone path circled around a fountain of brilliant marble, made to match the immaculate manor in its prime, now home to more if the same leaves that had swept across the land.

In the old days, when Ephriza was still a student, she would wander about the grounds, finding various secluded areas to complete her studies. She revisited the bench beneath the large tree that she read most of her books and then the pond in which she would skip rocks when she was bored. The memories flooded back to her; chasing her brother around the yard only to get scolded for doing so in her nice day dress. When she saw the old swing out by the pond it reminded her of her first kiss, her first love, and ultimately her first heartbreak.

There were many more as she passed by the stables on the side of the house but her reminiscing was interrupted by the sound of a throat clearing.

Ignatius. The family butler for as long as Ephriza had been alive. He was a serious, strict individual that didn't seem to like her.

“Madam Dawnblade. I am pleased to see you have arrived safely. The Lady is in the master suite, if you would be so kind.” He motioned for her to follow him into the house. He stared at her for a long moment and she felt his eyes wandering over her changed self.

“Hello, Ignatius. It has been a long time.”

“Do not worry, ma'am. I have taken the liberty of warning the Lady of your… condition.” He said in a matter of fact tone. “It is best that she does not experience too much of a shock in her current state.”

Ephriza was a bit taken back by his words, they cut her deeper than she had expected but she did her best to keep it to herself. The trip through the manor continued to bring back memories, everything from running through the halls as a child to leaving out the front door with her pack and embracing her brother for the last time. He was only a few years younger than her but she had always treated him like her own child, taking care of him even when he didn’t want it and ordering him around always when he didn’t want it. They had both become rangers but he had perished in the Third War during the defense of Quel'thalas. It had been their last visit home before being sent off to the front lines, they were in separate companies, and their final interaction had taken place as Ephriza left home. An older sister telling her brother to be careful and the brother reassuring her that everything would be fine was a common scenario that often played out fine but this was the time when he hadn’t returned. The news had hurt her more than any of the others; more than her father passing and even now with her mother on her deathbed she could still only think of the pain of losing her brother.

Her focus shifted back to the house as they moved through it. A grand staircase greeted any who entered, curving off in two directions while a large balcony lined the walls. The sound of her boots resonated throughout the spacious foyer until they hit the lush red carpet that lay over the wood. Paintings and decorations littered the walls and her eyes took time to look at each of them, just as she remembered them, as her hand held the railing leading upward. Hanging on the wall above the landing was a massive portrait of the family with a small plaque: Dawnblade Family - Benicio, Aurora, Ephriza, and Rylen. The four of them were posed for the painting; her father in the back flanked by her mother with the children seated in chairs in front of them. The portrait had been done over a hundred years ago, Ephriza guessed she was probably around fourteen, and her father’s dark hair had not even started to grey yet. He stood proudly beside his family, chin up and a serious expression on his face. None of them were smiling though she had imagined that the painter had to be imaginative with Rylen whom was nearly always laughing it seemed. Ephriza nearly identical to her mother, being around the same age as her mother in the painting. The resemblance was striking and that is what pained her the most because it reminded her of the time before her change - before the exile. She looked down at her hands, the dark purple skin that now covered her was a stark contrast of what she had once been.

There was another throat clearing from Ignatius and she nodded to him, following closely behind. They made their way through the halls to the Master Suite, her parents private quarters. It was one she had not been in often but it was just as she had remembered it from her past. Old hunting trophies on display, fine curtains drawn out to display a large balconied window with one of the best views in the house, and her parents’ massive bed. The bed was occupied by her mother, or the sickly shell of what remained of her. It was a sight that Ephriza was not prepared for, one that rocked her where she stood. Her mother had always been a strong, albeit overbearing, figure. It was not like her to show weakness nor to allow others to but in this state, with handmaidens nearby, she was the most vulnerable Ephriza had ever seen her. She stepped further into the room and Ignatius introduced her.

“It is worse than I feared.” Her mother began shortly. “Come closer, Ephriza. I need to look upon you more clearly.” A shaky hand reached for some glasses, one of the handmaidens quickly helped her, and she looked back to her daughter.

She approached and the others crowding the bed shuffled back, their mouths agape as they looked upon her. Her mother gave her a scrutinizing look and shook her head. “Foolish girl. You tampered with things you had no business tampering with. Just like you. This is why you could never get anywhere in your studies or with any of the callers. You never listened wh-”

Ephriza interrupted her. “With all due respect, Mother, you have no say in what I do nor do you understand what happened. The Void is an enigmatic power that needs to be studied. We cannot simply accept its existence, to - to ignore the dangers it can pose. How are we supposed to protect ourselves from it if we know nothing about it?” She tried her best not to get flustered but her mother had a way with her.

“I do not care about your studies. I know what you do, what you’ve done. You lie, you cheat, you steal, you kill. You were exiled and now you come back to me looking like one of those Highborne that forced us into this life. What have you done for our family? What have you done for the Dawnblade name?”

“I have fought for our people in every war. I stuck it out through our turmoil with the Humans, when they kicked us out. I was there when our people started calling themselves ‘Blood’ Elves. I experienced the pain firsthand while you sat in your manor doubting me. Your husband is dead. Your son is dead. What have YOU done for the Dawnblade name?”

Her mother wore an expression of pure hatred as she talked, shaking her head at the girl. An accusatory finger, aged and withered, pointed at Ephriza. “Do not speak of your father. You were not there when he died nor did you come to the funeral. The same for your brother! Where have you been all this time, Ephriza? Why do you come back now? Just to claim your inheritance? You wish to have the manor for all the whores and con artists you made friends with along the way?”

“Perhaps the reason I haven’t returned is because of you, Mother! Did that ever cross your mind? You are never satisfied! Why can I not live my own life? Why must I live the life you picked out for me? I am not you! I do not wish to be paraded around and given everything on a silver platter! Take your money to your grave for all I care!” The heated argument left Ephriza clenching the bed frame, digging her nails into the fine wood.

Another shake of her mother’s head indicated that she wasn’t finished. “You were never going to live my life. You weren’t cut out for it. You couldn’t do it. I was a fool to think you could live up to the task. Every opportunity was given to you, Ephriza, and you threw it away. It is for the best that the Dawnblade name dies with you. You have shamed it.” Her words struck a chord in Ephriza and she lost her temper. A violent scream rang out as she stormed from the room, followed hurriedly by Ignatius.

“Ma’am, I do not wish to overstep my bounds but it is necessary that you stay. In case you were planning on leaving, for the matter of inheritance is true.” He said behind her, causing her to stop halfway down the stairs. She turned and looked at him, expecting more. “Yes, well, you see. Your father, in his will, left you all of the estate and its holdings. His wishes were that despite whatever disagreements were shared between you and your mother, you would still be the sole inheritor.”

She started to head back up the stairs, to the landing where he stood. “You’re telling me that no matter what she says, I still get everything?” He gave her a nod and she shook her head. “It means nothing to me. I’d much rather give it all away.”

He gave another nod. “That being said, what you do with it is up to you, but for the time being I would ask that you stay so that we can take care of things the proper way.” He gave an insincere smile and motioned towards the opposite staircase. “Now, if you’ll follow me to your quarters.”

(relevant: @blackbay-wra @quai-mason @brian-wellson @mycoronervinny @killerkyara @juniper-rose-blower @malodarstarstrike )

[yasbxxgie]

In the wake of Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the consequences of the 2016 election are settling in at a whole new level for white women. As a result, many are revisiting the post-election statistic that showed 53 percent of white women voted for the candidate who spewed racial vitriol and actively emboldened violence against people of color, tolerating his vile misogyny in the process.

We know Trump’s election only exposed more brazenly what’s always been true: White women have always sided with white supremacy.

Now we’re reckoning with another devastating truth, and this one pertains to all white women—including that other 47 percent of us. If we had ever collectively worked to create sustained solidarity with women of color, instead of consistently aligning with white men, we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. Why? Deep, robust multiracial women coalitions would be an unstoppable force.

Another report knocked the wind out of some us. Though swarms of white women rose up publicly enraged, it was only among women of color that a clear and strong majority believed Christine Blasey Ford. A Quinnipiac poll showed that white women only broke 46 percent for Ford (and 43 percent in favor of Kavanaugh, a statistically insignificant difference). On the question of whether Kavanaugh should be confirmed anyway, 45 percent of white women said “yes.” Wow.

Here we sit, with ever more evidence that massive racial failure on the part of white women is at the center of this political crisis. At the root of it all is our collective choice to not learn, prioritize, or consistently live in public antiracist solidarity with communities of color, and especially with women of color.

In short, we’ve never bothered to learn calculus.

(For clarity’s sake, please know I’m purposely not talking about white men — yes, the ultimate perpetrators — here. I am not blaming white women for white male violence. I am also not disparaging the incredible courage of all survivors, including Blasey Ford. I am simply focusing on what white women collectively do and do not do, have and have not done, when it comes to race, racism, and antiracism.)

This is where (one) peril sets in. The longstanding failure to choose calculus that allowed this crisis leaves us wholly unprepared for a political moment where nothing less than brilliant mathematical abilities are required.

For women of color, that cuts deeply.

As we reel, more white women seem to say, “Oh shit! I really do need to learn calculus.” But women of color don’t have the time, energy, or patience to teach us. They certainly can’t trust us. And while women of color have distinctly individual perspectives on and responses to white women in this current moment, it’s safe to say that collectively they’re beyond outraged and all but done with us. Why? Because they’ve been demonstrating the life-or-death urgency of white women learning calculus for decades now.

And yet here we are.

Ongoing apathy toward making the work of antiracism a central priority of our lives as white women has allowed the school building to burn.

My fellow white women, there is nothing not bad about this moment.

Calculus is hard to learn in a regular and relatively calm school situation. Now we need to learn calculus in a school building that’s on fire.

Even for the most willing and earnest student, there’s no way around it: It takes a long time to learn calculus. And, yes, so many of us are deeply hurting, furious, raw, triggered, and afraid. But the building’s still on fire.

Students, sometimes have to actually screw up math problems to actually learn calculus. Screw ups are part of any learning process. But, again, the building’s on fire. And every white woman’s mistake pours more gasoline on a blaze that’s consuming us all very quickly.

The task here is as essential as it is herculean. We need to stop pouring more gasoline on this fire at the same time that we get belatedly serious about the long, slow, mistake-laden work of learning calculus—and we have to do it at lightning speed.

From one white woman to another, here are 10 concrete steps to take right now if we hope to ever do math with women of color—which is not optional if there is any hope of calling into existence the deep, robust, multiracial coalitions all our lives depend on.

No particular order here. Some of these steps fall in the category of “for the love of god, stop pouring gasoline!” Some fall in the category of our long, slow work. None are adequate. All are critical.

1. Stop saying ‘women’ anything.

When the phrase “women must…” or “women are…” is about to come out of your mouth: Stop. Commit to the discipline of being racially specific in your speech. “White women must…,” “white women are…,” or “women of color and white women seem to be…”—at which moment you may notice, “Oh, wait. I really can’t say anything about women of color because I don’t know.”

You may not understand why this discipline is important. Do it anyway. It’s important because there is no non-racialized woman. Committing to this practice will make you more likely to notice gaps in your awareness. You’ll be more likely to notice the racial assumptions embedded in your own claims. This will help you gain clarity about where you need to focus as you do your homework. It will also necessarily rein in your claims about “generic” women, which is one small but critical way to stop pouring gasoline on this fire.

2. Do not participate in any public action called by white women with a reflexive ’yes.’

Stop, seek out, and then listen seriously to what women of color say about it first.

That “women’s blackout” action? Serious douse of gasoline. Yes, a very small number of women of color in my life sent me the invitation, too. (Remember. People of color don’t speak in one voice on anything.) If more white women had slowed down and listened to what women of color had to say publicly about all the problems with that “black out,” well — I don’t need say more about its problems. Go read what feminists of color themselves said about it. They were clear.

3. If you didn’t take a knee during the anthem in support of Black lives for the last two years, don’t share the meme suggesting all women and girls should now take a knee (see item number 2).

Even better, invite other white women sharing this meme into public conversation about why this is a problem. Don’t yell at them. Ask them to talk it through.

But make sure some version of what’s wrong with this does get explained: If we haven’t been taking a knee for Black people already, then kneeling now exposes whose humanity we actually care about. Not to mention white people co-opting a Black people-led movement is a problem, along the lines of what happened to Tarana Burke. Gasoline.

4. Transfer the vast majority of the time you spend reading and engaging in media to reading and engaging with feminists of color.

Literally and almost exclusively read feminists of color (feminist men and other genders of color too) every single day as you try to figure out what the hell is going on in our country right now. Don’t worry, you’ll still get the news. But, you’ll get it through the analysis you’ll need if you want to move beyond basic addition. Do an audit of who is in your feed; choose to follow the many diverse and brilliant people of color who are public thinkers, writers, and activists. Engage their knowledge and wisdom (and their disagreements with each other). When you don’t understand what they’re saying or why they’re saying it—keep reading. Know that it’s going to take a while before the basic vocabulary of calculus makes sense to you. But it will come, if you stick with it.

5. When women of color write about white women, do not privately message them with questions or rebuttal…

…Unless they explicitly tell you they are cool with that.

If they invite public response and you decide to say or ask something, cool. But be ready then to just sit and listen deeply to the response, whatever it is. If the response makes you uncomfortable or isn’t in the tone you were hoping for, don’t proceed to tell them how it made you feel (more gasoline). Sit with those feelings and then keep reading, thinking, and engaging. If you need to talk about those feelings, cool. Find another white person who’s also trying to learn calculus—maybe someone who’s been at it for longer than you have—and talk it through with them. Then keep reading and listening and sitting with your feelings some more.

6. Don’t just sit there with your feelings. Take your actual physical self to an organization led by people of color who are working for justice—and show up in person.

(Assuming that organization welcomes white participation, of course; most do.)

Don’t say you’re too busy. If you volunteer at your kids’ school, do stuff for your church, are part of a book club, spend time on Facebook, whatever else—this is the moment to transfer hours in your given week from white people (even time spent at your own kids’ school; your kids are going to be fine) to people of color.

The obvious reason for this is to put more labor toward the disproportionate heavy-lifting people of color are already doing for justice. The added benefit is that you’ll start to learn calculus in a way that reading alone doesn’t make possible. Show up. Do what is asked of you. Listen carefully. Don’t overspeak. If you’re uncomfortable being one of the few white people in that space, good. Do it anyway. Don’t flake out.

(Join the NAACP—they’re doing voter mobilization all over right now. Put in volunteer hours to people of color groups working to decrease the presence of police in schools. Get active in a sanctuary network for which Latinx activists are calling the shots; white people with citizenship are needed desperately for all kinds of work. Show up. Wherever people of color live, they are organized and acting. Figure out where and go.)

7. Read ‘So You Want to Talk About Race’ by Ijeoma Oluo.

Seriously, do this right now. If you have the means, buy a copy for another white woman in your life; for all the white women you know. Read it alone. Read it together. Talk about it. This book is a crash course in calculus. It’s brilliant, truthful, funny, loving, difficult, nuanced, and more. Read it with your teenager. Ask your teenager what they think about it (start inviting them to learn calculus, too). See if your co-workers will talk about it with you over lunch.

8. Make a concrete commitment to reallocate resources to women of color organizations. Donate to women of color running for elected office.

Now I am talking about money. This part isn’t so much about you and calculus. It’s just the right thing to do. It also may be the best hope we have to save this “democracy.” I don’t mean that in a “women of color are going to save us” kind of way. But, seriously, we don’t get to just run around giving Facebook shoutouts to Black women voters in Alabama for saving us from predators like Roy Moore, and then not go all in for them. We owe women of color something, and this includes being all-in in terms of having their backs as they step up and out into leadership (taking huge risks as they do so). We owe actual time, energy, and resources. Get your white women friends (and the men) to give money too. Do it.

9. Some white women, white queer folks, and a handful of white feminist men have been working for a long time to learn calculus. Find and follow them, too.

They are imperfect and make mistakes. But being white and trying to learn calculus is different from being a person of color and learning calculus. There are unique challenges. Your learning will speed up if you engage some of the white people who have been on this learning journey for a while.

Be careful who you listen to. Vet those white people to be sure their calculus-learning is legitimate and on the right track. See who they’re in dialogue with. Notice what feminists of color say to and about them. (Hint: If mostly only other white people like their work, don’t learn to do math the way they’re doing it.) Find the white folks who are obviously in relationships of accountability with people of color—these people do exist. Get with them.

10. Take an inventory: Where do you shop? Who cuts your hair? Where do you take your kids to the dentist? Where do you eat out?

Find ways to move your personal participation in the economy over to Black, Latinx, and other businesses owned and operated by people of color. This includes medical offices, stores—as many establishments as you can. Urge others in your life to do so, too. This not only actively reallocates resources you are already expending to communities of color and their economies, it also brings you into more frequent contact with people who our deep and wide white-segregated enclaves typically prevent us from being in contact with.

That’s no quick math formula. But it is critical pre-context for calculus-learning.

***

Here we are.

When you’re in a burning building, every step you take must be purposeful. We’re not going to be collectively calculus-fluent anytime soon. We’re also going to have to live with the consequences of our collective behavior. Namely, we’re going to be divided from women of color for a very, very, very long time. And there are no guarantees here. When I said there is nothing not bad about this moment, I meant it.

But I also know this. Standing still in a burning school building isn’t an option. And I know there are lots of white women and white queer folks (and a few white feminist men) right now who want to take purposeful steps. As much as we don’t quite know what to do, don’t totally get it, are ourselves hurting, fear making mistakes that pour gasoline—there are many of us ready to roll up our sleeves and learn the math. Let’s get purposeful. Together.

If this is you (and I commit to you, it is also me), know you are not alone. I offer this essay in a spirit of love, anger, urgency, and partnership. Let’s pull out our pencil and paper now—and a shitload of erasers. And let’s get to work. [x]

[itbeatsbookmarks]

(Via: Hacker News)

Sam Lerner

Jun 5

I have one of those personal projects that I just can’t finish. I think most software developers can relate to this. You have some awesome idea but due to work and other responsibilities, it ends up being forgotten about or buried under other tasks.

Now this isn’t a success story of one of said projects being completed, but it is the story of a long-forgotten project being revived and given some new life. In fact, I’m hoping writing this forces me to eventually finish the project. But enough with introductions, let’s get into it.

The Project

The goal of the project is to build a Spotify client that learns from my listening habits and skips songs I would normally skip. Like many programs, the desire for this comes from laziness. I don’t want to have to create or find a playlist when I’m in the mood for certain music. I want to select a song in my library, shuffle the rest, and have the songs that don’t “flow” deleted from the queue.

To accomplish this, I will need to learn some sort of model that will be able to perform this task (maybe more on that in a future post). But to be able to train a model, I first need data to train it with.

The Data

I basically want my entire listening history, including what songs I skip. It is fairly straightforward to get my extended history. Even though the Spotify API only allows you to get the last 50 played songs, we can set up a cron job to repeatedly poll this endpoint, effectively keeping track of every listen. Code for this is posted here: https://gist.github.com/SamL98/c1200a30cdb19103138308f72de8d198

The hard part is tracking skips. The Spotify web API provides no endpoint for this. Now, in the past I created some services to control playback using the Spotify AppleScript API (the rest of this post will pertain to the MacOS Spotify client). I could just use these services to keep track of what is skipped, but that felt like shying away from the challenge. How else could I accomplish it?

Hooking

I recently learned about a process called hooking, where you can “intercept” function calls made from a target binary. I thought this would be the perfect way to track skips.

The most common type of hook is the interpose hook. This type of hook overwrites a relocation in the PLT but what exactly does this mean?

The PLT, or Procedure Linkage Table, allows your code to reference external functions (think libc) without knowing where that function is in memory, you just reference an entry in the PLT. The linker performs the “relocation” for each function or symbol in the PLT at runtime. One benefit of this approach is that if the external functions are loaded at different addresses only the relocation in the PLT needs to be changed, not every reference to that function in your code.

So when we create an interpose hook for say printf, whenever the process we are hooking calls printf, our implementation of printf will be called instead of libc’s (oftentimes our custom library will also call the standard implementation).

Now that we’ve got a little bit of background under our belts on hooking, we’re almost ready to try inserting a hook into Spotify. But first we need figure out what we want to hook.

Finding Where to Hook

As stated earlier, an interpose hook can only be created for an external function, so we’ll look for a function in the libc or in the Objective-C runtime.

While researching where to hook, I thought a good place to start looking would be where Spotify handles the “media control keys” or F7-F9 on my MacBook. It seemed safe to assume that the handlers for the these keys would call the functions that are called when, say the next button is clicked in the Spotify app. I eventually came across the SPMediaKeyTap library on: https://github.com/nevyn/SPMediaKeyTap. I figured I’d give it a shot and see whether or not Spotify copy and pasted the code from this library as that would make my life a whole lot easier.

In the SPMediaKeyTap library, there is a method startWatchingMediaKeys. I ran the strings command on the Spotify binary to see if they have this method, and sure enough:

Bingo! If we load the Spotify binary into IDA (free version of course) and search for this string, we find the corresponding method:

Partial disassembly for startWatchingMediaKeys

If we look at this corresponding source code for this function, we find the interesting parameter tapEventCallback to the CGEventTapCreate function:

Source code for startWatchingMediaKeys

If we look back at the disassembly, we can see that the sub_10010C230 subroutine is passed as the tapEventCallback parameter. If we look at either the source code or disassembly of this function, we see that only one library function, CGEventTapEnable is called:

CGEventTapEnable called in tapEventCallback

Let’s try to hook this function.

The first thing we will need to do is create a library to define our custom CGEventTapEnable. This is fairly simple with the following code:

#include <CoreFoundation/CoreFoundation.h> #include <dlfcn.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h>

void CGEventTapEnable(CFMachPortRef tap, bool enable) { typeof(CGEventTapEnable) *old_tap_enable; printf(“I'm hooked!\n”);

old_tap_enable = dlsym(RTLD_NEXT, “CGEventTapEnable”); (*old_tap_enable)(tap, enable); }

The dlsym function call gets the address of the actual library CGEventTapEnable function. We then call the old implementation so that we don’t accidentally break anything. Let’s compile our library like so (credit to https://ntvalk.blogspot.com/2013/11/hooking-explained-detouring-library.html):

gcc -fno-common -c <filename>.c gcc -dynamiclib -o <library name> <filename>.o

Great. Now let’s try running Spotify while inserting our hook: DYLD_FORCE_FLAT_NAMESPACE=1 DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES=<library name> /Applications/Spotify.app/Contents/MacOS/Spotify . Hit Enter, and uh oh:

Spotify opened fine but Apple’s System Integrity Protection (SIP) didn’t let us load our unsigned library :(.

There seems to be some sort of complaint about codesigning. Luckily, I am a member of Apple’s very reasonably priced developer program, so I can codesign the library. Crisis averted. Let’s sign our library with our $100 certificate, run the previous command, and…

fail. Not surprisingly, Apple won’t let you insert a library signed with any old identity, only the one used when signing the original binary. Looks like we’ll have to find another way to dig our hooks into Spotify.

As a side note, the astute reader might notice that the function we are hooking, CGEventTapEnable is only called when the media key event times out. So even if we could insert our hook, it would only be triggered on an edge case and we likely wouldn’t have seen any output. This section’s main purpose was to detail my initial fail (and oversight) and serve as a learning experience.

HookCase

After some digging, I came across the awesome library HookCase: https://github.com/steven-michaud/HookCase. HookCase lets us implement a much more powerful type of hook than the interpose hook, the patch hook.

Patch hooks are inserted by modifying the function you wish to hook to trigger an interrupt. This interrupt can then be handled by the kernel and then transfer execution to our personal code. For those interested, I highly recommend reading the HookCase documentation for it is much more detailed.

Patch hooks allow us to hook not only calls to external functions, but any function within the target binary (since it doesn’t rely on the PLT). HookCase provides us with a framework to insert patch and/or interpose hooks as well as a kernel extension to handle the interrupts generated by patch hooks and run our custom code. It is truly a great framework and invaluable for this project.

Finding sub_100CC2E20

Now that we have a way to hook into any function within the Spotify binary, there’s only one question remaining… Where?

Let’s revisit the SPMediaKeyTap source code to see how the media control keys are handled. In the callback function, we see that if F7, F8, or F9 (NX_KEYTYPE_PREVIOUS, NX_KEYTYPE_PLAY, etc.) is pressed, we execute the handleAndReleaseMediaKeyEvent selector:

And then the delegate is notified in said selector:

Let’s look at this delegate method in the repo:

Turns out it just lays out a template for handling the keys. Let’s search for the function receivedMediaKeyEvent in IDA and look at the graph view for the corresponding function:

Looks pretty similar, doesn’t it! We can see that one common function, sub_10006FE10, is called for each type of key, only an integer parameter is set to distinguish them. Let’s hook it and see if we can log what key is pressed.

We can see from the disassembly that sub_10006FE10 gets two parameters: 1) a pointer to the playerDelegate property of the SPTClientAppDelegate singleton, and 2) an integer specifying what type of event occurred (0 for pause/play, 3 for next, and 4 for previous).

Looking at sub_10006FE10 (I won’t include it here but I highly recommend you check it out for yourself), we can see that it is actually a wrapper for sub_10006DE40, which contains most of the meat:

Woah! That looks complex. Let’s try to break it down just a bit.

Looking at the structure of this graph, there is a single node towards the top that has many outgoing edges:

As IDA helpfully suggests, this is a switch statement on esi (the second integer parameter described earlier). It looks like Spotify’s handling a little more than just Previous, Pause/Play, and Next here though. Let’s focus on the block that handles Next, or 3:

Now admittedly, this took me some time to decipher but I want to draw your attention to the call r12 line fourth from the bottom. If you look at some of the other cases, you will find a very similar pattern of calling a register. This seems like a good function to look into but how do we know where it is?

Let’s crack open a new tool for this: the debugger. I had a lot of trouble when I was initially trying to debug Spotify. Now this could be due to me not being too masterful with the debugger, but I think I came up with a pretty clever solution.

We’ll first set a hook on sub_10006DE40 and then we will trigger a breakpoint from within our code. We can do this by executing the assembly instruction int 3 which is what debuggers like GDB and LLDB use to trigger breakpoints.

Here’s what that hook looks like in the HookCase framework:

After adding this to the HookCase template library, you also have to add it to the user_hooks array:

We can then compile this using the template Makefile HookCase provides (substituting filenames of course). The library can then be inserted into Spotify with the following command: HC_INSERT_LIBRARY=<full path to hook dylib> /Applications/Spotify.app/Contents/MacOS/Spotify.

We can then run LLDB and attach it to the running Spotify process like so:

After continuing past the initial trap, try pressing F9 (if Spotify is not the active window for the first press, it may open iTunes). The int $3 line in our hook should have triggered the debugger.

We can now step until we reach the entrypoint of sub_10006DE40. Notice that the PC will be at an offset address from the one shown in IDA (honestly, I don’t have the best grasp as to why this happens but I assume it’s due to where the process is loaded into memory). In my current process, the push r15 instruction is located at 0x10718ee44:

In IDA, the address of this instruction is 0x10006DE44 which gives us an offset of 0x7121000. In IDA, the address of the call r12 instruction is at 0x10006E234. We can then add our offset to this address and set a breakpoint accordingly, b -a 0x10718f234, and then continue.

When we hit our target instruction, we can print out the contents of register r12:

All we have to do is subtract the offset from this address, and voila, we get our titular address: 0x100CC2E20.

Hooking sub_100CC2E20

Let’s now hook this function to confirm our suspicions:

Add this to the user_hooks array, compile, run, and lo and behold: Any time we press F9 or click the next button in the Spotify app, our message is logged.

Now that we’ve hooked the skip function,

The Rest

I’ll post the rest of the code but I won’t go through the process of reverse engineering the rest because this post is already pretty long.

In short, I also hooked the previous function (a good exercise if you’re following along). Then in either of these hooks, I first check if I am past halfway in the current song. If I am, I don’t do anything, assuming I’ve just gotten bored with the song, not that it doesn’t fit. Then on backs (F7), I pop the last skip.

Where am I?

The way that I found out how to check if the current song is past halfway deserves a few words. My initial way was to actually call popen and then run the corresponding AppleScript commands but that just didn’t feel right.

I ran class-dump on the Spotify binary and found two classes: SPAppleScriptObjectModel and SPAppleScriptTrack. These methods expose the necessary properties we need for playback position, duration, and track id. I then hooked the getters for these properties and called them from with the next and back hooks (I think it makes more sense to swizzle but I was having trouble with getting that to work).

I use a file to keep track of skips where the first line holds the number of skips and on a skip, we increment this counter and write the track id and timestamp to the file on the line specified by the counter. On a back press, we simply decrement this counter. This way, when we press the back button, we just set the file to write new skips over the ones that were backtracked. Anyways, here’s the code: https://gist.github.com/SamL98/0cd20b00951b9a5cca6b5c9380ec5642

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this post and learned something, I know I learned a hell of a lot throughout the process. Let me know what you think and if you think I could’ve done anything better/differently. Thanks!

[twdmusicboxmystery]

2017 Re-Watch: 6x01 - First Time Again

Morning Everyone! Check out my 6x01 Re-watch post from last year HERE for extra thoughts and insights. My S6 posts were short last year bc I was in a hurry to squeeze them all in before S7 began. This year I have more time and, after S7, definitely more insight.

We start at the quarry with Rick and TF doing a dry run of Operation Lead the Walkers Away. Then one of the semi-trucks falls and them realize they must implement the plan right away. I’m side-eyeing the fact that  a semi-truck is a catalyst for the entire thing. We’ve seen something of a motif with trucks like this. Back in S4, Bob lay/hid atop one right before Daryl and Glenn found him. In 5x16, the whole wolf trap/how the harvest gets home thing centered around big trucks like this. And every scene is riddled with Beth symbolism.

Once everything gets into motion, Sasha calls out to Daryl, “we meet at red,” meaning the red balloons, which are the first phase of the operation. 

Perhaps the red balloons mean reunion? Remember in 5b we saw them tied to a model cruise liner, and we do think Beth is coming through Oceanside, which will lead to a reunion. Just a thought.

We have the flashback scene were Tara wakes up and Glenn and Nicholas make it back to Alexandria. I noticed Glenn tells Maggie he was “winged by a ricochet” bullet. We have Beth = Daryl’s Left Wing 

and could the bullet that hit Beth have been a ricochet?

Tara is a major proxy to Beth here. She sustained a head injury back in 5b and was unconscious for a time. This is her waking up. I notice she says, “I’m okay.” It’s a tie to Beth’s final dialogue (X). Before getting shot Beth says, “it’s not okay.” Now Tara, waking up says, “I’m okay.”

This is the beginning of Sashraham (though we didn’t know it until 6x06) and they’re proxies of Bethyl (X). One of the big reasons I thought we’d see Beth in S7 comes from this episode. Sasha’s car is going 70 mph, and the camera really focuses on it. Because they’re proxies for Beth and Daryl (and have about 10 dialogue parallels in this episode to prove it) I assumed it meant Beth would appear in S7. So what’s the 7 about?

It serves as a fulfillment of what is said here and a death omen. When it shows the gauge, Sasha says doing something as big as this is living, and they talk about it throughout 6a. Abraham’s big living moment came when he stood up to Negan, which technically did come in 6x16, but the Negan introduction carried over into 7x01. Sasha’s big living moment came when she sacrificed herself for TF, which happened in 7x16. What they were talking about here was fulfilled, and they’d both died by the end of S7.

We have lots of callbacks in this episode to when Rick and Morgan met in S1. Interesting because we already know we’ll have callbacks to S1 in 8x01 (Rick at the gas station). You could argue the 2-season rule here. Morgan talked about when they met in 6x01. We’ll see even more throwbacks to that in 8x01.

When Heath arrives at Alexandria, we have the numbers issue here. I talked about this when 7x13 aired, because of the 12 melons. (X) 

Here, Heath asks how many are in Eugene’s group and he answers thirteen, then corrects himself to twelve. It’s because Noah has died recently. The thirteen people would be Rick, Michonne, Daryl, Carol, Abraham, Tara, Sasha, Rosita, Eugene, Noah, Glenn, Maggie and Father Gabriel. I’m assuming he didn’t count Judith because she’s not a contributing member of the group.

Later, when they talk about the quarry, Heath says he’d been there once before and saw twelve people camped there. They’re probably the ones who blocked the exits with the semi-trucks, but they were all dead by the time he arrived. He said he’d never want to revisit the camp that “ate itself.”

We have a repeated instance of the number 12. Because of the melons in 7x13, we’re still seeing it in S7. It’s an important number in Christian numerology, appearing 187 times in the bible.

(We hear it a third time in this episode at the tractor store with Glenn, Heath and Nicholas. Nicholas says, “there’s something like a dozen of them in there,” meaning walkers.)

The whole “camp that ate itself” reminds me of Terminus. Beyond these, I’m not sure what to make of all this. Will definitely watch for it in S8.

Something about Morgan and Michonne’s humorous conversation jumped out at me. Remember Morgan asks if Michonne ate one of his protein bars? 

The thing I totally didn’t connect before is he asks if she ate a peanut butter protein bar. Peanut Butter is a Beth symbol. She ate it at the funeral home in Alone, and Daryl ate it just before escaping the Sanctuary in 7x08.

I remember people saying this thing with Michonne and Morgan was a discontinuity because if you watch Clear in S3, she appears to be eating potato chips. She truly does, but they don’t focus on it, so tptb could totally change it if they wanted to. Minor detail. I don’t even think that’s the important issue here. They specifically brought peanut butter into it, and Morgan is probably the one who found Beth and took her back to Grady (which parallels Daryl’s imprisonment at the Sanctuary). See? It all works together.

Also in talking about the walkers exiting the quarry, they say the exit sends them East. More of the East theme.

Rick and Morgan take Pete’s body outside the walls to bury him. Once there, Rick suggests maybe they don’t bury him and simply leave his body. Morgan says, “That’s not who you are. I know.”

Two things here: Yet another confirmation that Beth should have been buried. TF always buries their loved ones. Even Morgan knows that about Rick.

This could also explain why Morgan has never felt the need to talk about Beth, if indeed he did take her back to Grady. He saw she’d been left behind, and he knows TF wouldn’t do that. He specifically thinks she couldn’t have been part of their group. He says it right here.

Later on the porch, he tells Rick, “that’s you.” He’s talking about Rick sparing Carter’s life. More of the identity theme. I talked about it yesterday. We hear it between Rick and Carl in 4x16 and 5x16. The way Morgan says it here sounded like what Rick says to Daryl in 4x16. Rick says biting Joe’s throat out is what Rick had to do, but it wasn’t him. Rick then says, “No, that was me. You saw what I did to Tyreese…” etc. More of the identity/who he is theme.

We see evidence he’s come out of his brutality arc because of Carter. We actually have a parallel to Coda. Remember when they captured Lecari, Rick almost killed him. Daryl put out his arm and said, “Rick.” Rick stopped, but you could tell if Daryl hadn’t been there, he would have killed Lecari. In this episode, the same thing happens. He has a gun trained on Carter, and Daryl says, “Rick.” Rick shrugs and says, “Naw, I’m good,” and chooses not to shoot him. He’s past his brutality arc in this season and has learned to have a little more hope.

Other small details:

Morgan looks at the quarry through binoculars. (Beth’s Blindness post) At the tractor store, where Glenn, Heath and Nicholas kill walkers, there’s a prominent green tractor, which looks exactly like the one Maggie used to run over the Gremlin/Music Box in 7x05.

Also in this scene at the tractor store, something really interesting happens. (vid) They shoot the glass and all the walkers come at them. They successfully kill them all. Then, after all the rest are dead, they look over and a blond walker stands up. Glenn tells Nicholas to “get it” and he does. Here’s what’s interesting. I watched this sequence many times looking for details. We don’t see this blond walker come out of the shop. Other female, blond-ish walkers come out and are shot, but not this one. 

This walker appears as if from nowhere. It’s possible we simply didn’t see her come out. The camera didn’t show us. The point is, Glenn/Heath/Nicholas didn’t either. She appears as if from nowhere, which is suspicious to me. Plus, but she didn’t come staggering out of the building after the other walkers, as Sophia did out of the barn. She’s already on the ground and rises to her feet. She “rises up.” Like resurrection? And she’s very blond and very Beth-ish.

Then there’s this: 

I’ve always suspected it’s symbolic. In terms of numbers, something occurred to me. They say one, and show Rick with the flare. Two, and show Daryl and Sashraham, and three, and show the blond walker leading the horde. While it’s hard to pin down what events link to each of those beats, I always figured “three” and the blond walker would be Beth reappearing.

This is 6x01. If we begin here and count to three, we land on S8. 1=S6, 2=S7, 3=S8. Also, the sequence itself seems to indicate that Sashraham needs to happen (and perhaps end) before the blond walker appears. As of 7x16, that’s definitely the case.

This is the beginning of Morgan and Carol’s entanglement arcs, which I’m still really enjoying. I think their interactions are very interesting and compelling. It’s no accident that Morgan goes looking for her in 6x16 and they both end up at the Kingdom.

Let’s talk 8s. I’m going to try and do a post this weekend where I point out all the 8s I’ve found in re-watches. IF I can get it finished in time. Wish me luck. ;D

During S7, I did THIS POST about Eugene’s 8-Ball reference, which comes from this episode. As you can see, I thought it pertained to Beth. We’d seen lots of 8s around Beth and this suggests she’s the end game, which is perfectly in line with all of TD’s theories, especially where Negan is concerned. Back then, I didn’t think it showed her return in S8. Now I do.

And check this out. @wdway pointed this out to me. When we first see this map of the area and they’re planning where they’re going to turn the walker horde, there are tons of little 800s on the map. 

They aren’t on roads or major thoroughfares. They seem to be out in the woods. I’m not a map expert so I asked my dad what he thought of them. He said the only thing he could think of is maybe it was part of the scale. Each little square encompasses 800 feet or something. He said there should be a key somewhere on the map explaining. Maybe there is and we don’t see it. Or maybe the 800s don’t mean anything for the map and are a symbolic number put there by the writers.

We see 800s here, there’s Eugene’s 8-Ball reference, and then we also see the Alexandria sign in a big way at the end of this episodes, which says the mansions start in the $800,000 range. Yeah, I think they’re trying to tell us something, don’t you?

Carter, questioning whether the plan would work, says the line of cars won’t hold. He says, “They’re just gonna be bouncing off some sedans?” The sedan part caught my attention because of the Lecari’s car thing we figured out recently. His car, which we saw focused on a TON in and around Coda, and which they probably left Beth in, was a sedan.

Other random details I noticed:

When Eugene accidentally listens in on Carter’s insurrection plans, he’s holding a box of “water crackers.” Another water/ocean reference.

Carter is dressed almost entirely in red flannel, which means he was always marked for death. Notice how no one else running around in the woods is wearing red.

Sasha, Abraham and Daryl are supposed to lead the walkers for 20 more miles after they hit the green station. When this aired, we tried hard to make this about Beth. Most of us hoped it meant she’d show up 2 episodes later. Or 20 episodes later. Yeah nada.

If we look at this in terms of seasons, and 20 miles = 2 seasons later, it still adds up to S8.

Finally, there’s the horn. Again, when this aired I saw theories about the horn that is supposed to precede Christ’s second coming. They thought maybe this horn would symbolically usher Beth back into the story.

That didn’t happen, but I’m not sure the theory was wrong. It could have always been a foreshadow of what would eventually happen. And it came from the wolves arriving at Alexandria, which I think could very well happen again when Beth arrives. We’ll have to wait and see.  

Relevant Posts:

6x01: First Thoughts 10/12/2015

6x01: Structure of the Flashbacks 10/12/2015

6x01: Biggest Foreshadow I Saw of Beth (Balloons) 10/13/2015

6x01: Recap 10/13/2015

Changes in S6 Credits 10/13/2015

6x01: Possible Biblical Symbolism 10/14/2015

6x01: Parallels to 5x01, 4x01 10/15/2015

6x01: Random Symbolisms 10/15/2015

6x01: Red Car Parallels 10/16/2015

6x01: Controlling Walkers 10/17/2015

[moneyinvestingideas]

Business Trends, Job Applications, Money investment ideas post two Monday July 10, 2017

July 10, 2017Business Trends, Job Applications, Money investment ideas post two Monday July 10, 2017 affirmation from Directing Your Destiny book by Jennifer Grace Each day, more love fills my lifeI am confident and like who I am. I believe I have the power to create my world.I am intelligent and have important things to communicate.I transform my life by changing my beliefs.I always have more than enough to share with others.My intuition leads me to create opportunity.Money flows to me effortlesslyMy income is constantly increasing. Maryland employment benefits number for Monday July 10, 2017; 1912345 jobs applied to from last week 2 jobs affiliated with Stamp Student union and related to my current food service job, I attempted to check the status on both jobs this past Friday July 7, 2017 some jobs applied to so far this week as of 1147 pm Monday July 10, 2017Panera Bread in Wheaton Maryland Monday July 10, 2017 Lotsa Job Pizza place crew member job College Park Maryland Monday July 10, 2017 Blaze Pizza College Park Maryland Monday July 10, 2017 some career/business related articles/money investment ideas articles for this week I feel that the July 12, 2019 release date for Top Gun 2 is a brilliant idea as it is going to give Tom Cruise plenty of time to communicate with other military people and writers to create a superb Top Gun sequel film. I would have been concerned if the projected year was 2018. However, July 12, 2019 also gives Tom Cruise both plenty of acting/actress casting options and writing options when it comes to how many people to use from Hollywood California/the Los Angeles Area and how many people to use who also write yet may live outside of the Hollywood area and live more in U.S. military concentrated areas. I wonder if Tom Cruise plans on using both military writers outside of Hollywood as well as writers/screenwriters within Hollywood to create the story for the Top Gun sequel. Additionally, I wonder what the written story outcome is going to be from the love story that Tom Cruise's character had with the civilian female training instructor-Charlotte Blackwood played by Kelly McGillis- who worked with the naval aviator pilots in the first Top Gun film. It's Official: The 'Top Gun' Sequel Has a Release Date https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/b6e05c66-e699-3484-a77f-f020fc0779c2/it%27s-official%3A-the-%27top-gun%27.html Truthfully, I would definitely apply for the cleaner job if I was living in England. I also think that it is nice of the Queen to make the positions available to men and women who may yet to build up their experience in this cleaning field, yet just need teamwork skills which is more than understandable. This advertisement also proves to me that the Queen of England is most likely a down to earth person who has compassion for people from various backgrounds and socio-economic classes. This is a big deal to someone like me because even when I were live and for entry level minimum wage jobs some employers are allowed to openly subtly discriminate by using the experience excuse even for positions related to my current job where it is obvious even to someone like me that the person giving the excuse reason probably only applied that rule to select people. Naturally, I have given up for now applying for positions related to the company I am working for in my pursuit of going from temporary seasonal work to year round employment. However, it has strengthened my resolve to continue job searching and this article gives me career ideas and goals to expand on. I confess that I am career obsessed and any family members, friends, andor critics who call me career obsessed are more than correct, but I have to be so for essential and justified reasons. On a positive note, my experiences only strengthen my resolve/intent to get a second bachelor's degree online and pursue my dream of eventually placing myself in an employment position where I am in service to other people affiliated with the military (either as civilians, military, andor former military). This article also reminds me and gives me some creative ideas. No, it does not pertain to me all of a sudden leaving the U.S. tomorrow and heading for Europe without taking into account my husband. I am the type of woman who would bravely relocate to another state within the United States of my choosing even without a guaranteed job offer regardless of what others thought of me for doing so if I felt it necessary andor more financially beneficial to do so in the long term. However, I would only entertain the idea of moving to another country of my choosing if the job offer was already in place and I doublechecked with my husband. I do have dreams and intentions to travel to various parts of Canada, Europe, parts of Asia (such as revisiting Japan where my husband and I met and Singapore where I got to enjoy my 21st birthday at), and Australia by the year 2025 or sooner. However, I logically and intuitively sense that my destiny is to maintain a home base on the eastern part of the United States in close proximity to both government and military regardless of whether I am a private sector employee, a civilian government employee, andor a military employee(I understand it is obvious to some where I am going to live long term but I exercise my right to keep the timeleine secret). Last, but not least, whoever gets this cleaner job is someone who I sense is going to be there for long-term and probably is going to move up professionally with ease (due to the cleaner job sounding like something that is both a year round opportunity and a job opportunity offering much room for professional and financial growth). The Queen is hiring people to keep her royal homes 'spotless' and care for 'historic vases and irreplaceable paintings'Lindsay DodgsonBusiness Insider UK3 July 2017https://uk.news.yahoo.com/queen-looking-people-keep-her-090500543.html I am keeping this article on this California lottery winner Rosa Dominguez winning $555,555 because it is a very happy and upbeat type of story. California teen wins the lottery twice in one week https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/0944ec07-50b9-31ec-99d3-0470f8a83170/california-teen-wins-the.html It is obvious that this article writer Liz Weston is doing financially well and is probably a millionaire with a paid for home and car so I will avoid criticizing. However, this well-meaning article is classist in the sense that it assumes that everyone that wants to quit their jobs are doing so without having done their homework first. First off, I do not believe in personally quitting another job without another job lined up unless you are completely relocating to another state. Additionally, I am intuitively aware enough to understand that it is important to give your boss at least a 2-3 week notice before you quit your job with the understanding that if they allow you to work those final 2 or 3 weeks then it is privilege and it is at their discretion if they want to allow you to do soeven after you give your notice. I voluntarily left a very comfortable U.S. Navy Career as a supply storekeeper back in 2009 where I was making at least $3,000dollars a month after taxes plus I have voluntarily gave notice in quitting before with my current employer so I know what I am talking about. With that said, it is evident that Liz Weston means well and is highly accomplished probably both money and career wise but she overlooks that a woman such as myself has actually set her sights "realistically" when it comes to minimum wage jobs. However during this summer alone, I have either been told that I need the experience for certain minimum wage jobs that were obvious even to me that the hiring manager already chose someone else or when I did pursue jobs related to my experience I have mainly been toldthey were not yet hiring and there was one instance where the hiring manager was at least more polite to me but admitted they filled the job previously with someone else. My point; my career dreams, although probably deemed too big by others, are more forpractical money reasons, not to metaphorically give the finger to my any of my managers or coworkers. Additionally, my plan to eventually relocate to another area close enough to the Washington D.C. area is once again not to metaphorically give the finger to any of my current managers or coworkers. Rather, for me it is all about money and how even a woman like me sees the financial benefits of relocating to an area outside of the Washington D.C. area that I enjoy living but still close enough to where I can visit the Washington D.C. area at least a once andor twice a month or more. I understand that Weston is not trying to come across as classist but to tell a womanlike me to just be happy with competing for minimum wage jobs and to try not to better her career prospects in life with more college actually makes me more determined to pursue the schooling of my dreams to improve my career and money prospects. Weston may mean well when she gives this advice but this well meaning article of hers ignores the fact that some hiring managers, both male and female are human and are influenced by physical appearance, personality, demeanor as well as qualifications when deciding which women to hire. My point; you can line up at least three other women my age but with different physical appearances, marital statuses, bodyweight etc and try to be well-meaning by giving them to hiring managers who are open minded when it comes to both race and gender when hiring but each women is going to have a different experience depending on the hiring manager even if all of the women are the same ethnicity. So please Liz Weston take into account that I see that you are trying to help but your advice overlooks the fact that a woman such as myself is making her decisions from a monetary standpoint, taking into account the challenging decision of eventually relocating despite having fair managersand coworkers who are fairly reasonable to get along with. I intend to stay in the Washington D.C. area for the rest of this yearregardless of my career and money situation and regardless of what other people think for practical reasons. However, I reserve the rightto use the three week notification rule even before I relocate. Whoever said that an employee needs to give six months notice must havebeen close friends with their managers andor popular with almost all of their coworkers. There is nothing wrong with that, but I am just statingthat it is dangerous to tell your managers when you plan on relocating unless you are close friends with any of them, even if your managersare nice people and treat people fairly. Additionally, waiting until three weeks before is better because you want to be more than 100 percent surethat you are moving before giving such lifechanging notice, even if there is a chance that some of your managers andor coworkers may eventuallyfollow you to the new area that you relocate to. Liz Weston: Chasing a dream? Fix your finances first https://www.yahoo.com/news/liz-weston-chasing-dream-fix-finances-first-142000919--finance.html?.tsrc=fauxdal Liz Weston: Chasing a dream? Fix your finances first https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/liz-weston-chasing-a-dream-fix-your-finances-first/2017/07/10/51619a34-657b-11e7-94ab-5b1f0ff459df_story.html?utm_term=.b62a8b0b6a09#comments Obviously, this link is of particular interest to me because of my intent to repay my student loans by the year 2035 or sooner regardless of my career and money situation. Once again, I truly believe that there are a lot of college graduates such as myself who intend to repay their student loans. I am fortunate in the fact that both Navient (tied to Sallie Mae) and Great Lakes (federal student loans) were more compassionate about my situation than I expected when I recently told them the truth about my career and money situation. The case also catches my attention because I have seen online sources that tie some of Betsy Davos’s wealth into student loan companies. I wish to avoid playing devil’s advocate and I truly believe that it is possible to create heaven on earth for myself and those who surround me when I say this yet even someone like me can naturally understand that Betsy Davos is naturally taking measures to protect her wealth tied to student loans when she announced a reset of the borrower defense to repayment rule. Another article from website prwatch.org titled Betsy Davos Ethics Report Reveals Ties to Student Debt Collection Firm by Mary Bottari from January 25, 2017 http://www.prwatch.org/news/2017/01/13207/betsy-devos-ethics-report-reveals-ties-student-debt-collection-firm and another article from Washington Post by Danielle Douglas Gabriel Grade Point Dems raise concern about possible links between DeVos and student debt collection agency https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/01/17/dems-raise-concern-about-possible-links-between-devos-and-student-debt-collection-agency/?utm_term=.d4db53b9f1e5 Both of these articles tie part of Davos’s wealth into Performant. Additionally, she is listed to have never taken out a student loan before. It is obvious even to someone like me that Davos is probably going to look after taking measures that are going to indirectly help Performant before helping students eligible for eventual forgiveness programs. As I said a few days ago, I do believe that the 18 states going after Davos are going to win but Betsy Davos’s wealth is most likely going to only grow and still last the rest of her current lifetime regardless if she wins or less the this lawsuit. However, I am glad that this article lists information on why the 18 states are suing Education Secretary Betsy Davos. I already see from some online comments thinking that what the 18 states are doing is purely political, and I truly believe that the suing goes much deeper than that and is partially meant to help protect the interests of men and women of various ages who would be eventually eligible for undergraduate and graduate student loan forgiveness.Why 18 States Are Suing Education Secretary Betsy DeVoshttps://www.yahoo.com/news/m/b4b158e0-3cae-34a6-b9e4-4e03091cace4/why-18-states-are-suing.html 30+ Freshwater Swimming Holes https://blog.virginia.org/2014/07/swimmingholes/?utm_campaign=FB0617&utm_content=swimmingholes http://www.hugoboss.com/us/dyfera-cotton-blend-embroidered-dress/791725710182.html?gclid=CKewuJ-3gNUCFZCPswod9LkPrA songs for me to keep in mind How to Save a Life by Fray Counting Stars by One Republic, Good Life by One Republic, That's What I Like by Bruno Mars, This is What You Came For by Calvin Harris and Rihanna, You Spin Me Round Like A Record by Dead or Alive, Slide by Goo Goo Dolls, Sugar by Tonic