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punkshort · 4 months ago

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Roommates | 8. forever

Pairing: pornstar!joel x f!reader

Chapter Summary: Tommy and Maria get married.

Chapter Warnings: language, angst, idiots in love, alcohol and food consumption, sexual tension, flirting, a wedding!

WC: 7.6K

Series Masterlist

"Oh, goddamnit," you muttered under your breath, pausing in your rush across the hot parking lot to tug your dress out from underneath your heel. You crouched down for a moment to examine the dress to make sure it wasn't damaged before you stood back up, this time bunching all the extra material in your fist before trotting as quickly as you could to the entrance of the restaurant.

"Slow down, you ain't missin' anythin', they haven't even sat down yet," Joel said, startling you from his post on a bench next to an ashtray.

"Oh, hey," you said breathlessly, then looked him up and down. "Were you smoking?"

He shook his head and stood up, dusting off his grey dress pants in the process. "Just gettin' some air. Tryin' to cut back."

"Good for you," you said, then nodded towards the door. "Ready? I need to get out of this heat."

"After you."

You thought for sure you would be in for Maria's wrath when you hit traffic and ended up being almost fifteen minutes late for the rehearsal dinner, but mercifully, Joel was right. The group was in the reserved banquet room but hardly anyone had sat down yet. Instead, people were mingling and laughing in small groups as the waitstaff filled up waters and placed open bottles of wine across the tables.

As you scanned around and looked for a seat, your eyes landed on someone familiar and a wide smile stretched across your face.

"Mrs. Miller!"

Joel and Tommy's mother beamed when she heard your voice and quickly abandoned the people she was talking to in favor of pulling you into a hug.

"Oh, honey, how are you?"

"Good! Late, but good," you laughed when she released you from her death grip. She kept her hands firmly planted on your shoulders and gave you a once over.

"Love that dress, my goodness. Doesn't she look beautiful in this dress, Joel?" she asked mischievously. You felt your cheeks warm and you looked down at the floor while Joel just rolled his eyes.

"Yes, Mama," he replied flatly.

"You'll sit with us, right, dear?" she asked.

"Of course," you said with a nod.

"Good, I want you to meet the man I've been seeing," she replied before wrapping her thin fingers around your arm to lead you to her table, which, of course, was shared with Tommy and Maria.

James seemed nice and he got along well with both Joel and Tommy, from what you could tell. Before he retired, he worked in construction, just like their own father before he passed away, and he seemed absolutely smitten with their mom. His arm was around the back of her chair or holding her hand the entire dinner and you could tell Mrs. Miller was adoring every second of it.

"Are you still seeing that lawyer, dear?" she asked right when dessert was placed in front of you. You felt your chest tighten as you stared down at your tiramisu and you focused on the skills you learned in therapy whenever you felt this type of feeling crop up. Take a few deep breaths, collect the data, put things in perspective. Just as you were about to answer, you felt Joel's hand on your knee and he cleared his throat.

"No, Mama. Didn't work out."

He must have given her a look when your gaze was still fixed on your plate because there was an awkward silence before she spoke again.

"No matter. Plenty of fish in the sea. Maybe you'll meet someone tomorrow at the wedding."

You forced yourself to meet her eye and smiled. "Yeah, maybe," you replied weakly. Joel's fingers tensed around your knee for half a second before he slowly pulled his hand away to pick up his fork. When she began to talk softly to James, you took the opportunity to shoot Joel a grateful smile, which he returned with a wink.

"Thank you," you whispered. "I could have handled it but... thank you."

"Welcome," he replied just as quietly. "And I know you coulda, but you don't gotta do everythin' by yourself."

Joel began to eat his dessert while you sat there, immobilized. For some reason, hearing him say those words knocked you on your ass for a moment. You were always the type to take on too much and rarely ask for help, another trait that contributed to your anxiety. The only thing that pulled you out of it was Tommy's voice aimed in your general direction. He was giving instructions to the wedding venue from the restaurant so you all knew where to go after dinner to do one quick walkthrough before the big day, so you nodded along and finally picked up your own fork.

"You wanna follow my truck?" Joel asked once dinner disbanded and everyone slowly filtered into the parking lot. You shook your head and pulled your keys out of your purse.

"No, I think I know where it is. It's not far from the hotel."

He nodded and glanced over his shoulder, checking on his mother. "You get settled in okay?"

You gave him a curious look. "In the hotel? Yeah."

The wedding wasn't too far away from home but most of the wedding party elected to stay in the hotel where the reception was being held so they wouldn't have to worry about getting a ride after drinking.

He nodded again and swiped his palm over his mouth. "Which room?"

You laughed and playfully shoved his shoulder, making him grin and stumble a bit over the asphalt. "What?" he asked innocently, but he didn't sell it. You rolled your eyes but couldn't stop smiling as you unlocked your car and opened your door, tossing your purse onto the passenger seat. As you were about to bunch up your dress and get into the car, Joel cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow, indicating he was still waiting for an answer.

"409," you said with a sigh. His tongue clicked against his teeth and he shoved his hands in his pockets.

"418. Right across the hall."

"What a coincidence." Propping one arm on your hip and the other on the roof of your car, you tapped your fingers on the hard plastic, waiting for him to say something else. His eyes drifted up and down your body before meeting your gaze once again, the corner of his mouth twitching in amusement. People streamed past you to their cars, heels clicking on the blacktop and soft chuckles floating in the air, but you kept your eyes pinned on each other, silently daring the other to say something more.

Against all odds, or maybe it was always inevitable, your relationship managed to mostly repair itself over the past few weeks. It was nice to have Joel back in your life again in any capacity he was willing to offer, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore your feelings for him. The morning you woke up on Tommy and Maria's couch with Joel's arms wrapped around you, holding you against his broad chest with his face buried in your hair felt like a literal wake up call. As you laid there listening to his deep, steady breaths, you tried to think back to a time when you fell asleep in his arms without sex preceding it, but you came up empty.

It felt really fucking nice, so you had closed your eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but it was impossible. You felt like yourself again. You spent months in therapy wondering where that feeling went when all along the answer was right there.

"See you at the country club," he finally said before tearing himself away and forcing his feet to move in the direction of his truck.

"Yep," you said softly, watching him longingly as he made his way through the cars until he disappeared from view. You took a deep breath and looked around the parking lot when your gaze unexpectedly met the deep brown eyes of Mrs. Miller, watching you from the passenger seat of James's SUV.

You felt something happen in that moment. Something unspoken passed between you through the glass and you had never felt more seen. Woman to woman, she held your gaze and you swallowed the lump in your throat, knowing your expression was betraying you by that point, but what could you do?

James pulled out of the parking spot and you blinked, snapping yourself out of your stupor. When the car passed, you could see the knowing look in her eye, one that told you you weren't fooling anyone, and then they were gone.

The event coordinator, Michelle, was a tiny little thing who also happened to be very bossy. She probably did at least one wedding a weekend the entire summer for god knows how many years, so she knew her shit, but considering the entire wedding party had just come from dinner with copious amounts of alcohol, her patience was wearing thin. She was barking orders at the first bridesmaid and groomsman at the front of the line while the four of you stood in the back snickering to yourselves.

"Goddamn, she ain't messin' around," Tommy said quietly with a grin.

"A woman after Maria's heart," you replied over your shoulder.

"I've never felt more calm in my life," Maria chuckled softly. "There's no way this isn't going off without a hitch."

On the actual day, it would just be you and Joel at the end of the line, but Tommy and Maria wanted to observe during the rehearsal.

Michelle was making her way down the rows of bridesmaids and groomsmen, instructing each set how to stand, where their hands should be, and what their cue was to start walking.

"Slow!" she barked after a pair began walking. You saw the bridesmaid's shoulders flinch and you had to hide your grin by biting your lip and looking down at your feet.

When she got to you and Joel, you straightened up. Suddenly it felt like you were back in high school and the vice principal was about to chew you out for skipping class.

"Closer together, please," she told you, waving her perfectly manicured, blood red fingertips at the two of you. Immediately, you stepped to the side and apparently so did Joel because you bumped into each other.

"Okay, not that close," she scolded. You had to hold yourself back from kicking a foot at Maria when you heard her snickering.

Michelle took you by the shoulders and placed you exactly where she wanted, then did the same to Joel, leaving just a few inches between you. You could feel his fingers impatiently twitching at his side and you got the feeling Michelle made him nervous, too.

"Okay, crook your elbow, like this," she told him, yanking his arm up and bending it before she flattened his palm against his stomach. "Great. Don't move. Maid of honor, loop your arm through, place your fingers here, hold your bouquet at your bellybutton. Both of you, straighten your spines and begin a slow walk once they make it to the first set of chairs. Any questions?"

You both quickly shook your heads and you looped your arm through Joel's, just as she instructed, and pretended to hold a bouquet at your waist with your other hand.

When you saw your cue, you both began to walk, praying you were going slowly enough. You heard her voice begin talking to Tommy and Maria, asking if they had any questions or if anything was missed, and you breathed a sigh of relief.

"Fuck, she's scary."

You giggled and glanced up at him. He was staring straight ahead but he had a little amused smirk tugging across his face and you could see that damn dimple creasing his cheek. You tried not to think about how close you were to him, how long it had been since that night on the couch, or how comfortable it felt to touch him again, and instead focused on where you were supposed to stand once you got to the altar.

Joel dropped his arm and you went your separate ways, taking your places at the front of the bridal party, and waited for the next instructions. Tommy and Maria came down the aisle talking with Michelle and motioning towards the chairs while you all waited. You let your gaze drift over to the men and you caught Joel already looking your way. You gave him a little smile and you watched him swallow before taking a deep breath, dragging his eyes away from you.

Michelle's commanding voice cut through the air and you snapped your head back in her direction. She was explaining the bullet points of the ceremony to everybody while she pushed Tommy and Maria up on the altar between you and Joel.

"Next, the officiant will say you may kiss the bride, you two will kiss-"

Tommy took that moment to wrap his arm around Maria's waist and bend her backwards before planting a wet, sloppy kiss on her lips, causing the entire wedding party to break into fits of whooping and laughter. Michelle clapped her hands sharply and the noise instantly ceased. Tommy picked Maria back up, who was pressing her palms against her cheeks with a huge smile, and he shrugged.

"Sorry, thought we were rehearsin'."

She cleared her throat and raised a thin eyebrow at him before she continued, explaining the music would start and Tommy was to lead Maria down the aisle, which he did without goofing around.

"You two," she said, motioning towards you and Joel. You both stepped forward and stood where Tommy and Maria were just standing. "Same as before, hold onto his arm, keep your bouquet at your bellybutton, and don't begin walking until the bride and groom walk down the entire aisle, got it?"

You both nodded stiffly and, once Tommy and Maria reached the end, you started to walk. Michelle began to instruct the next couple and Joel picked up the pace a little once he knew she wasn't looking.

"You're gonna get us in trouble," you teased.

"Wouldn't be the first time."

You gasped and gave him a little hip check and then you heard Michelle calling after you to stop fooling around.

Joel chuckled as you felt your face flush with an embarrassing smile. A few months prior, a comment like that might have sent you spiraling into a pit of self despair just for simply being reminded of the camping trip, but that day you managed to let it roll off your shoulders.

You joined Tommy and Maria and watched as the rest of the bridal party practiced leaving the altar. Joel casually stretched his arm behind you, leaning on a railing so he could say something to Tommy behind you and Maria, but when they finished up and Tommy began talking with his groomsmen, Joel kept his arm on the railing. The fabric from his button down was brushing ever so slightly against the skin of your back, exposed by your dress. Your jaw was tight from the effort it took to not react when his thumb skimmed over your spine, sending tingles across your skin.

"Did I tell you this dress looks nice on you?"

His voice was warm and deep against your ear and it took everything you had not to lean back into his shoulder, it was so hypnotizing.

"Your mom kind of did that for you," you reminded him quietly, keeping your eyes on the rest of the wedding party as they began to cluster around Tommy and Maria, laughing at some story Tommy was telling them about his tux fitting.

"Well, it does. This's your color," he said lowly and you could practically feel his eyes dragging over your soft curves being hugged by the delicate material.

"Thank you," you replied a little breathier than you would have liked. You tilted your chin to risk a glance at him, finding yourself immediately getting lost in his eyes. You searched his face, trying to read him, trying to figure out what he was thinking but you kept getting hung up on all the little details about him that you loved. The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the patchiness in his beard, the little scar across the bridge of his nose.

Fuck, he was perfect. How did you ever let yourself take it for granted?

"What're you thinkin' 'bout?" he asked softly. Apparently he had been doing the same thing to you: trying to read your expression, see inside your head.

You swallowed and gave your head a little shake.

"How fucking stupid I was."

His eyebrows twitched up in surprise, his lips parted and you were certain he was about to say or ask something else when Tommy stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled so loud, the whole wedding party groaned and covered their ears.

"C'mon, let's all have one more drink back in our room, place is fuckin' huge," he announced, causing a ripple of laughter amongst the small group.

And just like that, the moment was gone.

Maria and another bridesmaid hooked their arms through yours, pulling you away from Joel and through the venue towards the parking lot, laughing and babbling suggestions for their hair the following day. You glanced once over your shoulder and caught his eye, clocking the tortured look he gave you. Even from a distance you could see the longing, the curiosity to learn what you meant, and the absolute frustration at having the opportunity ripped away.

Joel tapped lightly on your door the next morning but figured out pretty quickly he was too late. You had already left with the other bridesmaids and Maria to get ready at the country club, leaving Tommy and the groomsmen to get ready in the honeymoon suite at the hotel.

He tried to get you alone for just five fucking minutes the night before but the group was too small and it was impossible to tear you away without being obvious. He could tell you wanted to talk, too. He saw it in the way he caught your eye more than once in that measly little hour spent in Tommy's hotel room. Then he got caught in a painful conversation with another groomsman about golf and suddenly, you were nowhere to be found.

He excused himself and hurried back to his room, hoping to catch up with you, but it was no use. He hovered around your door, fingers carding anxiously through his hair, wondering if he should knock, debating over and over in his mind whether or not invading your space would scare you off until he heard an elevator chime and the doors slide open and he slipped into his room in a panic.

He should have just fucking knocked.

The next time he would see you would be at the ceremony. He wouldn't be able to talk to you til the reception, well after pictures and dinner and speeches were done.

It was going to be a very long day.

You up? We got breakfast here, get your ass going

Joel rolled his eyes as he continued to gather his things after his shower, wishing more than anything that you had just texted him instead of Tommy.

Be there in 10

He draped his tux over his shoulder, two fingers hooked through the hanger, and carried a small bag of toiletries in his other hand as he shuffled out the door, stealing one last glance at your room as he went.

He rode the elevator up to the top floor and stepped out, already hearing the men laughing and glasses clinking with the steady thumping of a deep bass line through the walls. Knowing he would have to be loud for them to hear, he made a fist and pounded on the wood, rattling the door in its frame. It swung open and Nick, the groomsman who monopolized his time last night talking about fucking golf, stood on the other side.

"Joel, mornin'. Come on in, got some catchin' up to do. We're already two drinks deep." Nick stepped aside with a friendly smile and allowed Joel to enter.

"Two drinks? Shit, might wanna slow down, gonna be a long fuckin' day at that rate."

Nick laughed and let the heavy door close, then patted him on the shoulder as he headed over to the little kitchen area. "We all put our shit in the spare room. Go ahead and I'll get you somethin' to drink. Got some food here, too."

"Alright," Joel replied, his eyes drifting around the living room as he walked towards the bedrooms. Tommy caught his eye and raised both arms in the air.

"I'm gettin' married!" he shouted excitedly. Joel grinned and kept walking.

He would have to be patient. As much as he couldn't get you off his mind, he had to be present for his brother. This was going to be one of the happiest days of his life and Joel would be damned if he messed that up for him.

Nick slid a glass of champagne in Joel's hand after he emerged from the spare room and he quirked an eyebrow.

"Pacin' ourselves," Nick explained with a shrug.

Joel nodded and took a sip, the flute looking comically small in his grip, before setting it down and forcing himself to join in the festivities. And he was doing a pretty good job at pushing you from his mind for once until a few hours later. All the men had gotten dressed and a hairdresser Maria hired was going around fixing loose pieces of hair on everyone when Tommy's phone pinged. He picked it up and a huge smile spread across his face.

"It's Maria."

He turned the screen around to show a picture she took. It was of the room where the girls were getting ready, a candid shot of bridesmaids in the background getting their makeup done or sipping on champagne. The main focus of the picture was Maria's left hand extended in front of her, her engagement ring sparkling in the light, but Joel hardly noticed the diamond when you were in the corner of the shot talking to another bridesmaid with a dazzling smile that always made him weak in the knees. You looked so fucking beautiful and you didn't even have your makeup done yet.

He wasn't the only one who noticed you, unfortunately.

"Hey, what's the deal with Maria's maid of honor?" Nick asked Tommy. "She's pretty and seems like fun."

If Joel had even a moment to think, he might have caught the way Tommy immediately looked in his direction, conflicted and unsure what to say. But it didn't matter because Joel set Nick straight instead.

"She's unavailable."

Nick swiveled to look at Joel. "Oh, damn. Figured as much."

Joel nodded and cleared his throat, trying to avoid the very obvious look his brother was giving him, and took a long sip of whiskey.

Once Nick wandered away, Tommy instantly sidled up to Joel and he knew he was in for it.

"Unavailable?" he repeated under his breath. "Got somethin' you wanna share?"

Joel shrugged, trying to look casual but he knew Tommy saw right through him. "It's the truth. She ain't interested in seein' anyone."

"Hm," Tommy said, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, loving the way his brother was squirming under his questioning. "How'd you find that out?"

"She told me."

"Told you."

"Yep."

"And under what circumstances did she... tell you?"

Joel frowned and finally dragged his gaze to meet Tommy's. "We're just friends now."

"Didn't exactly answer my question."

Joel scoffed. "Don't you got shit to worry 'bout, like vows or somethin'?"

Tommy shook his head. "Nah, got that all locked down. Would much rather hear 'bout your friend."

He groaned and rubbed his eyes. "Ain't nothin' to tell, I promise. Nothin's goin' on."

"Well, weddings are romantic. Drinkin'... dancin'... beautiful venue... dim lights. Might stir up some old feelin's."

Joel nodded and looked at his watch with a sigh. "Limo'll be here soon."

Tommy bit his cheek, wishing Joel would open up a bit more, but decided not to push it.

"Oughta wrangle everyone up. Almost show time."

"They're here!" a bridesmaid squealed when she saw the limo pull up to the front doors and the men slowly piling out, one by one.

"Well, guess he didn't get cold feet," Maria joked next to you as she fumbled with her earrings, but judging by the way her fingers shook, she was nervous.

You stood up to fuss with her hair, making sure the flowers that were carefully weaved in were still firmly in place.

"You look absolutely stunning," you told her warmly with a smile through the mirror. She took a deep breath and finally dropped her hands in her lap.

"Thank you. For everything. I know you got your own shit going on -"

"Nuh-uh, none of that. Today's not about me. It's about you and Tommy and I'm delighted you chose me to stand next to you today."

She smiled and reached behind her to squeeze your hand, which was curled around her shoulder. Tears welled up in her eyes and she nodded. Just one quick, definitive nod signaling the topic was closed, then stood up and brushed her hands over her dress.

"Well, let's go do this," she said, her voice wavering just a bit. The rest of the girls heard and cheered excitedly before scurrying around to check final touches on their makeup before filing out the door, where Michelle stood waiting.

"Ladies, the groomsmen just got in position and the groom is heading to the altar now. Maria, your father is waiting for you in the office. We'll hide you in there in case there's any late arrivals that might sneak a peek."

Once you all filed down to the foyer, you hung back to give Maria one last hug before she was whisked away into a small office where her father stood waiting with misty eyes.

When the door closed behind her, you gripped your pink and purple bouquet in one hand and gathered up the skirt of your peachy dress in the other and lightly jogged to catch up with the rest of the bridal party. When you turned the corner, everyone was finding their partner and whispering excitedly amongst themselves while Michelle walked around, making small adjustments to posture and checking everyone's teeth.

Joel turned around when he heard your heels clicking on the tile floor and couldn't stop his smile from spreading when he laid eyes on you.

"Sorry, just wanted to give her a quick hug," you said to him quietly as you took your place by his side. You were busy fixing your dress and batting pieces of hair out of your face so you didn't notice the way he was gazing down at you, temporarily spellbound.

"No problem," he finally managed to say, then caught Michelle making her way towards him so he quickly jut out his elbow for you to loop your hand through. After Michelle adjusted the placement of your bouquet and moved on, you finally glanced over, taking him in for the first time. He looked so fucking good, it was criminal. All the groomsmen were wearing the same tux, and all of them hand white button downs open at the collar with no tie, but Joel looked the best, by far.

Your mouth opened to tell him so, but at the last second you chickened out.

"Did you guys have a good morning?" you asked instead.

His eyes roamed leisurely over your face and the longer he took to answer, the faster your heart raced under his scrutiny.

"Yeah, it was alright," he finally said. Somewhere in the back of your mind you heard music begin to play and the first pair of the bridal party began to walk. "Wanted to catch you before you left this mornin' but you must've got an early start."

"Oh?"

He nodded slowly, eyes still trailing over you, admiring how beautiful you looked. He knew he was being obvious but he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Did you need something?" you asked, swallowing the lump in your throat. You knew you should have been paying attention, that you would miss your cue if you didn't, but you couldn't look away from his heated gaze.

"No, just..." he trailed off and took a deep breath, eyes momentarily fluttering closed before he reopened them. "You look really pretty."

Blood rushed to your cheeks and you smiled.

"T-thank you, you-"

"Best man, maid of honor, let's go!" Michelle whispered angrily, snapping you both out of your daze. Forcing a smile on your faces, you waited for your cue and began to walk up the aisle.

Aside from Maria, you two were the last to enter. The altar looked stunning. Not a single flower was out of place. The white rose petals the flower girl had scattered were evenly distributed along the deep red carpet that was laid over the grass to mark your way. You passed by rows and rows of friends and family, their faces lit up with excitement while the photographers bounced around in your peripheral vision, snapping pictures as you went.

When you reached the end of the aisle, Joel dropped your arm and you stepped apart, each taking your rightful place, just as you practiced.

The music changed and the doors opened, finally revealing Maria and her father. You glanced over at Tommy so you could see his reaction but your gaze locked with Joel, instead. His face softened and he shot you a secretive wink before dragging his attention to the bride.

The ceremony was beautiful. The sun was shining but it wasn't too hot. Both of them remembered the vows they wrote, bringing out the occasional laugh or tear from the guests. It made your heart swell to see your best friend so unbelievably happy. And when Tommy dipped Maria backwards for a dramatic first kiss, even Michelle cracked a smile from her place in the back.

After the ceremony, the wedding party was whisked away to take pictures while the guests enjoyed a cocktail hour back at the hotel ballroom. If you weren't in the pictures, you spent most of your time with the rest of the bridesmaids and occasionally stealing glances in Joel's direction when he wasn't looking. Shit, you hadn't even drank anything since you had a mimosa earlier that morning and you still couldn't keep your mind off him.

It didn't help matters when, at one point, the photographer asked for a picture of just you and Joel. Under the warmth from the sun, he had began to sweat a little. You could see it from the way the exposed patch of chest glistened and when you got closer to pose for the picture, his natural scent mixed with the hotel soap he must have used that morning filled your nostrils, making it difficult to focus.

"You got your speech all ready?" he asked once the photographer moved on.

"I think so. You?"

He nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."

"We should probably do a couple shots first, loosen up," you joked, nervously twisting your hands together in front of you.

His face lit up and he unbuttoned his jacket. "Here," he said, handing you a small flask with his name engraved on it. "Gift from Tommy."

"Nice. All I got was this necklace," you said sarcastically with a laugh and a point to your neck before unscrewing the flask and taking a sip. The whiskey burned on the way down and you felt the warmth bloom in your stomach, your muscles instantly relaxing.

"Thank you," you told him, handing him the flask. His fingers brushed against yours briefly, sending sparks down your spine, and you quickly tugged your hand back, averting your gaze. "Oh, looks like your mom's up next. Might wanna head over."

He sighed and readjusted his jacket after pocketing the flask. "Duty calls, I reckon."

You nodded and pursed your lips, rocking back and forth on your heels. Why were you acting so weird? It was just Joel. But as you watched him stroll across the perfectly manicured lawn, you knew why.

After dinner and all the festivities were over, you were going to find the courage to finally tell him how you felt.

And you couldn't be more nervous.

It felt like dinner took forever. Michelle drilled into your head that your speeches would come after dinner and before the cake cutting, so naturally the entire time you were eating, you were a nervous wreck. Fortunately you were too nervous to even drink anything else past the small sip you had from Joel's flask, your stomach twisting in knots the longer it took for each table to get served. Tommy and Maria disappeared after they ate to greet each table and be back in their seats by the time dinner was finished, so you sat picking at your food with your heart hammering in your chest, scrolling the notes app on your phone, reviewing your speech.

"Nervous?"

You jumped at the sound of Joel's voice, who had somehow slid over to take Maria's chair without you noticing.

"That obvious?"

He shrugged and leaned back, surveying the ballroom.

"Your foot's tappin' so fast it's shakin' the damn table."

You giggled and dropped your face into your hands with a groan. He chuckled and took a sip from his glass of champagne, then paused when his eyes landed on an older woman at a nearby table looking in your direction.

"Who's that sittin' next to Maria's folks?"

You popped your head up and looked, then your face broke out with a wide grin. "That's my mom," you told him without taking your eyes off her, giving her a little wave. Joel looked back and forth between the two of you.

"You look alike, shoulda guessed."

"You think?" you asked, then your smile slipped when your mom pointed in Joel's direction and gave you a face before fanning herself with her open hand. You clenched your teeth and slashed your fingers in front of your throat, trying to tell her to knock it off, but she just laughed.

"Pretend you didn't see that."

"See what?" he replied innocently before giving your mom a charming smile and wave.

"Joel!" you exclaimed, smacking him in the leg. "Stop flirting with my mother!"

He threw his head back and laughed at that, his shoulders bobbing up and down and his hand clutching his stomach and just seeing him so happy and carefree made you smile and laugh, as well. Once he regained his composure he straightened up in his chair, his cheeks tinted pink and his eyes bright as he looked at you.

"Don't worry, baby, don't wanna make you jealous."

Your jaw dropped in shock and your brow furrowed but your heart fluttered excitedly in your chest at the term baby coming from his lips again. Before you even had a chance to formulate a response, he cleared his throat. "I'm just kiddin'. Tryin' to take your mind off the speech. Did it work?"

Did it work? This man had you spinning around in circles and he didn't even see it.

"Yes," you mumbled, mind still reeling. Baby, baby, baby.

"Good, 'cause we're up," he said, his eyes drifting over your shoulder, spotting the newlyweds heading your way. He stood and vacated the chair so Maria could sit back down.

You took a deep, shaky breath when the DJ cut the music and made the announcement that the speeches were to begin, and the whole ballroom fell silent, turning in their chairs to get a better look at the long table where you sat up front.

Joel went first, which initially you were relieved, but then about thirty seconds into his speech you realized you wish you could have just gone and gotten it over with because you could hardly focus on anything he was even saying. You faintly remembered him talking about growing up with Tommy and telling some embarrassing story that made everybody laugh but then ended up getting the guests teary eyed when he turned it around at the end, using the story as a sweet example of how Joel always looked out for him and he was now passing that torch onto Maria.

After a polite round of applause, Joel sat down and all eyes turned to you. The DJ told everybody your name, announcing you were the maid of honor, before walking over to hand you the microphone. You cleared your throat before standing on shaky legs and forcing a nervous smile for the room.

"Good evening," you began, then repeated your name. "I have not only the pleasure of being Maria's maid of honor, but also her best friend."

You stole a glance in her direction and you felt your nerves begin to subside when you saw the look in her eye and the warm smile stretched across her face.

With a deep breath, you confidently launched into your speech. You began by telling the guests how you met, how you bonded over one particularly painful meeting at work and afterwards got sushi together for lunch. Ordering the same dish by happenstance cemented your relationship and from then on you saw each other through countless breakups, illnesses, birthdays and even some vacations. After telling the room a silly story about a road trip the two of you took one year with no destination or goal in mind other than to have fun and live in the moment with the promise to stay close forever, you paused and looked down at Maria next to you.

"And then she met Tommy," you said, eyes drifting in his direction. "I knew from the day she came home and told me about him that he was different."

Tommy smiled and wrapped an arm around Maria's shoulders.

"I don't think I've ever seen two people more perfect for one another," you continued, turning your attention back to the room. "At the center of everything, they're best friends. They accept each other, faults and all." Tears began to well up in your eyes, trying not to draw comparisons to your own life as you pushed through. "And that's how I knew early on we would end up here today."

You looked back over at the newlyweds, Maria leaning into Tommy's shoulder, pure happiness radiating from them both as they gazed at one another.

Then you locked eyes with Joel and your throat went dry.

He was looking at you, hanging on your every word, and the expression on his face told you he must have been thinking the same thing as you. Unable to tear yourself away from the emotion behind his eyes, you continued your speech for the room, but it felt like you were talking directly to him.

"When two people love each other fiercely, when they're willing to do whatever it takes to make things work, when they learn to open their hearts and make sacrifices for the sake of that other person, their partner, their love... I believe that is what makes a relationship last." You dragged your eyes away from Joel and looked at Tommy and Maria once again. "And you've both proven time and time again you're more than capable of doing that for one another."

Maria swiped a tear from the corner of her eye and you picked up your glass, watching as the rest of the room did the same.

"I'd like to wrap up with this quote I found online, so I can't take credit," you said with a ripple of soft laughter echoing through the ballroom. "'Love is a friendship that has caught fire. So may your love burn bright for years to come'. Here's to my best friend and her new best friend."

After the room collectively toasted to the new couple and rewarded you with a round of applause, you slumped down in your seat with a sigh of relief. Maria tugged your shoulders, pulling you in for a hug that squeezed all the air from your lungs, whispering her thanks in your ear, then Tommy followed up with the same and a kiss on your cheek.

You tossed back the rest of your champagne and immediately looked around for a server to ask for more. Now that your nerves were finally at ease, you wanted to enjoy the rest of the party and relax, temporarily pushing the conversation you planned to have with Joel from your mind.

Tommy and Maria stood to go cut the cake, diverting the guests's attention so you could slip away to the bar with your empty glass. As you were leaning up against the bar, waiting for the bartender to refill your glass, you felt a familiar presence sidle up next to you. When Joel brushed his palm against your lower back, you had to suppress the shiver that tried to make it's way down your spine.

"Can I get one of those?" he asked the bartender when she returned with your drink. She nodded and placed a cocktail napkin on the bar before disappearing.

Joel's shoulder nudged against yours and he tilted his face towards you. "Nice speech."

You smiled and continued to stare down at the tiny bubbles rising and popping in your drink. "Thanks. Yours was good, too."

"Here you go," the bartender said, placing an identical glass next to yours. Joel nodded his thanks and lifted it up, raising it between your bodies for a toast. You obliged, gently clinking your flutes together before taking a small sip and turning around to look out over the ballroom. Across the way, Tommy and Maria were posing with their cake while photographers and guests took pictures.

"I liked that quote. 'Bout friendship that turns to love," he said nonchalantly. You bit your lower lip and tried to tamp down the rise of emotion in your chest, your nerves in desperate need of some rest.

"Yeah, I thought it was fitting."

Your eyes flickered to his, those deep brown eyes you'd had the pleasure of seeing in every shade, then to his mouth, his soft looking lips so inviting, you wondered what they tasted like in that very moment. Probably champagne, but you were willing to bet you would get a hint of chocolate from the wedding favors that were placed at every seat because you knew him well enough to know he couldn't resist sweets.

"You ever have that?" he asked, and you thought you could hear a little tremor to his voice. "Friendship that turns into love?"

Your heart hammered wildly in your chest as you took a shaky sip from your champagne, eyes now pinned on the newlyweds but you were hardly absorbing a thing that was happening. Your mind was racing with the implication behind his loaded question and you could hardly remember your own name.

Taking a deep breath, you answered him.

"Once," you said softly, then slowly turned your head, gazing up at his side profile while he appeared to be taking in the party, but you could see his pulse thrumming fast in his neck, his tanned skin twitching with every nervous beat of his heart. "You?"

He hummed and finally tilted his head in your direction, eyes drifting up and down your face, tongue darting out to wet his lips. "Yeah. Once."

You felt yourself practically melt under his gaze, your muscles going lax, your body being pulled like a magnet towards him. Was it too late? Did you miss your chance? Or was it possible something was still there, something that could be salvaged? Joel murmured your name, his hand rising from his side, and you had a feeling you were about to get your answer when a familiar voice shattered the moment.

"Joel! C'mon, take pictures with my phone while I dance with your brother. James can't see in this lighting, he won't get it right."

As Mrs. Miller got closer, she noticed you next to him for the first time and it was impossible to miss the look of regret on her face when she realized she interrupted your conversation.

"Oh, nevermind, I'll find someone else," she said, clutching her phone to her chest, eyes sliding back and forth between you both. You cleared your throat and stepped away with a smile.

"No, you go on. I have to find my mom and say hi."

Before he had a chance to stop you, you slipped away, weaving through the crowd until you disappeared from view.

"I'm sorry, honey. I didn't mean to intrude."

Joel shrugged and tossed back the rest of his champagne. "It's alright, Ma. Go dance with Tommy, I got it," he said, holding a hand out for her phone. Hesitantly, she placed it in his palm, then reassuringly rubbed her hand up and down his arm.

"Will you save me a dance for later?"

Joel gave her a pained smile and nodded. "'Course, Mama."

She pressed her lips into a thin line, easily picking up on her eldest son's dismay once you left. Right when they were about to reach the dance floor, she stopped and cupped Joel's face with both hands, looking up at him with an adoring smile.

"It's all gonna work out, honey. I promise."

Joel almost feigned confusion, almost put up his walls so to protect his feelings. But in that moment, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead, he sighed and nodded.

"I hope so."

Please follow @punkshort-notifs and turn on notifications for fic updates ❤️

#joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x reader #joel miller fic #joel the last of us #joel miller fanfic #joel tlou #joel miller tlou #joel x reader #joel miller x you #the last of us hbo #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us #the last of us au #roommates fic

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littlealienproducts · 4 months ago

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AI and PDF Crochet Patterns

AI generated images can be great for inspiring projects, but most of the time it's used online to generate revenue for scammers and the like.

Just scrolling through Etsy rn looking for crochet patterns, I've come across several listings (some with false 5 star reviews to boost engagement/trust) where the patterns and images are clearly AI generated and people, unfortunately, have fallen for the listings.

Some of the images might look totally obvious to you, but to the untrained eye they can be convincing.

SOOO, how do you spot AI crochet patterns?

Look at the stitches. Are there pieces that don't seem to stitch into one another? Are the lengths and sizes inconsistent? Some are more obvious than others, but AI fails to replicate consistent textures.

Lighting and saturation. AI images often are vibrant and cartoon-ish. Especially the eyes of projects - usually this is a pretty good giveaway. Additionally, is the image smooth? What's in the background? Does it make sense?

Limited photos on listing. Most legitimate shops are going to have multiple photos of the finished project on the listing - AI is fairly advanced, but not the best at recreating exact images. Does the listing only have one photo? Does it have multiple but with variants between projects (that are meant to be the same)? Are there any videos?

Is it even possible? This can be tricky if you are new to crochet, but as above, take a moment to look at the stitches and the overall shape of the project. Does it look plausable? Especially if they projects say 'no sew'. Additionally, if you have already purchased the pattern - does it tell you how much material you need, and does it make sense? Does it tell you crochet hook size?

Legit photo but AI generated pattern. Sometimes the images are real - but they've been stolen from another creators account and the scam shop has simply asked AI (such as ChatGPT) to write up a crochet pattern. These are less obvious at a glance, but most reputable shops will have social media, consistent themes of crochet projects and reviews with pictures of finished products uploaded by customers.

6. Ok, but what if they use AI but the reviews seem legit? Crochet Baby Duck - this is an AI generated picture and pattern, and while the shop has posted several pictures of the finished project it is clear that it does not match up with the AI generated duck pictured in the listing. The hat, feet, and bill are all different sizes and this is even noted in some of the customer reviews. While this isn't as scammy as straight up using AI generated images/patterns without showing how the finished project looks - it is still taking away from legitimate pattern makers. Being able to design and execute good patterns is a skill, and the prices of legitimate patterns often reflect this. Why does the shop even use AI pictures if they post the real life projects anyway? Cus it drives traffic, and lets be real - the real life plush dolls look no where near as good as the AI images.

This is the same as the walrus - AI generated image and pattern, this is even endoresed by Etsy so you cannot rely on 'Etsy picks' being legitimate as they choose profits over morals.

These patterns are not just limited to Etsy, they are often on Pinterest or websites for 'free' to generate traffic and collect data (asking for your e-mail for the free pattern). Such as this Peacock Crochet IRL figure by u/Echo-o_0 on Reddit.

This is not just limited to crochet, I've seen it in sewing, knitting, and any other PDF downloads that you can purchase or get for free. Unfortunately, it is a simple way for people to make a quick but and face little to no consequences as their store *might* get deleted and even then, they can just start a new one up.

#ai pdf #ai generated #ai generated patterns #scam alert #spotting scams online

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probablyasocialecologist · 8 months ago

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The flotsam and jetsam of our digital queries and transactions, the flurry of electrons flitting about, warm the medium of air. Heat is the waste product of computation, and if left unchecked, it becomes a foil to the workings of digital civilization. Heat must therefore be relentlessly abated to keep the engine of the digital thrumming in a constant state, 24 hours a day, every day. To quell this thermodynamic threat, data centers overwhelmingly rely on air conditioning, a mechanical process that refrigerates the gaseous medium of air, so that it can displace or lift perilous heat away from computers. Today, power-hungry computer room air conditioners (CRACs) or computer room air handlers (CRAHs) are staples of even the most advanced data centers. In North America, most data centers draw power from “dirty” electricity grids, especially in Virginia’s “data center alley,” the site of 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic in 2019. To cool, the Cloud burns carbon, what Jeffrey Moro calls an “elemental irony.” In most data centers today, cooling accounts for greater than 40 percent of electricity usage.

[...]

The Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes. At 200 terawatt hours (TWh) annually, data centers collectively devour more energy than some nation-states. Today, the electricity utilized by data centers accounts for 0.3 percent of overall carbon emissions, and if we extend our accounting to include networked devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets, the total shifts to 2 percent of global carbon emissions. Why so much energy? Beyond cooling, the energy requirements of data centers are vast. To meet the pledge to customers that their data and cloud services will be available anytime, anywhere, data centers are designed to be hyper-redundant: If one system fails, another is ready to take its place at a moment’s notice, to prevent a disruption in user experiences. Like Tom’s air conditioners idling in a low-power state, ready to rev up when things get too hot, the data center is a Russian doll of redundancies: redundant power systems like diesel generators, redundant servers ready to take over computational processes should others become unexpectedly unavailable, and so forth. In some cases, only 6 to 12 percent of energy consumed is devoted to active computational processes. The remainder is allocated to cooling and maintaining chains upon chains of redundant fail-safes to prevent costly downtime.

#computers #cloud #data #cloud computing #climate change

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Pluralistic: Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic

I'm coming to Minneapolis! This Sunday (Oct 15): Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Monday (Oct 16): Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

Enshittification is the process by which a platform lures in and then captures end users (stage one), who serve as bait for business customers, who are also captured (stage two), whereupon the platform rug-pulls both groups and allocates all the value they generate and exchange to itself (stage three):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Enshittification isn't merely a form of rent-seeking – it is a uniquely digital phenomenon, because it relies on the inherent flexibility of digital systems. There are lots of intermediaries that want to extract surpluses from customers and suppliers – everyone from grocers to oil companies – but these can't be reconfigured in an eyeblink the that that purely digital services can.

A sleazy boss can hide their wage-theft with a bunch of confusing deductions to your paycheck. But when your boss is an app, it can engage in algorithmic wage discrimination, where your pay declines minutely every time you accept a job, but if you start to decline jobs, the app can raise the offer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

I call this process "twiddling": tech platforms are equipped with a million knobs on their back-ends, and platform operators can endlessly twiddle those knobs, altering the business logic from moment to moment, turning the system into an endlessly shifting quagmire where neither users nor business customers can ever be sure whether they're getting a fair deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Social media platforms are compulsive twiddlers. They use endless variation to lure in – and then lock in – publishers, with the goal of converting these standalone businesses into commodity suppliers who are dependent on the platform, who can then be charged rent to reach the users who asked to hear from them.

Facebook designed this playbook. First, it lured in end-users by promising them a good deal: "Unlike Myspace, which spies on you from asshole to appetite, Facebook is a privacy-respecting site that will never, ever spy on you. Simply sign up, tell us everyone who matters to you, and we'll populate a feed with everything they post for public consumption":

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

The users came, and locked themselves in: when people gather in social spaces, they inadvertently take one another hostage. You joined Facebook because you liked the people who were there, then others joined because they liked you. Facebook can now make life worse for all of you without losing your business. You might hate Facebook, but you like each other, and the collective action problem of deciding when and whether to go, and where you should go next, is so difficult to overcome, that you all stay in a place that's getting progressively worse.

Once its users were locked in, Facebook turned to advertisers and said, "Remember when we told these rubes we'd never spy on them? It was a lie. We spy on them with every hour that God sends, and we'll sell you access to that data in the form of dirt-cheap targeted ads."

Then Facebook went to the publishers and said, "Remember when we told these suckers that we'd only show them the things they asked to see? Total lie. Post short excerpts from your content and links back to your websites and we'll nonconsensually cram them into the eyeballs of people who never asked to see them. It's a free, high-value traffic funnel for your own site, bringing monetizable users right to your door."

Now, Facebook had to find a way to lock in those publishers. To do this, it had to twiddle. By tiny increments, Facebook deprioritized publishers' content, forcing them to make their excerpts grew progressively longer. As with gig workers, the digital flexibility of Facebook gave it lots of leeway here. Some publishers sensed the excerpts they were being asked to post were a substitute for visiting their sites – and not an enticement – and drew down their posting to Facebook.

When that happened, Facebook could twiddle in the publisher's favor, giving them broader distribution for shorter excerpts, then, once the publisher returned to the platform, Facebook drew down their traffic unless they started posting longer pieces. Twiddling lets platforms play users and business-customers like a fish on a line, giving them slack when they fight, then reeling them in when they tire.

Once Facebook converted a publisher to a commodity supplier to the platform, it reeled the publishers in. First, it deprioritized publishers' posts when they had links back to the publisher's site (under the pretext of policing "clickbait" and "malicious links"). Then, it stopped showing publishers' content to their own subscribers, extorting them to pay to "boost" their posts in order to reach people who had explicitly asked to hear from them.

For users, this meant that their feeds were increasingly populated with payola-boosted content from advertisers and pay-to-play publishers who paid Facebook's Danegeld to reach them. A user will only spend so much time on Facebook, and every post that Facebook feeds that user from someone they want to hear from is a missed opportunity to show them a post from someone who'll pay to reach them.

Here, too, twiddling lets Facebook fine-tune its approach. If a user starts to wean themself off Facebook, the algorithm (TM) can put more content the user has asked to see in the feed. When the user's participation returns to higher levels, Facebook can draw down the share of desirable content again, replacing it with monetizable content. This is done minutely, behind the scenes, automatically, and quickly. In any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye.

This is the final stage of enshittification: withdrawing surpluses from end-users and business customers, leaving behind the minimum homeopathic quantum of value for each needed to keep them locked to the platform, generating value that can be extracted and diverted to platform shareholders.

But this is a brittle equilibrium to maintain. The difference between "God, I hate this place but I just can't leave it" and "Holy shit, this sucks, I'm outta here" is razor-thin. All it takes is one privacy scandal, one livestreamed mass-shooting, one whistleblower dump, and people bolt for the exits. This kicks off a death-spiral: as users and business customers leave, the platform's shareholders demand that they squeeze the remaining population harder to make up for the loss.

One reason this gambit worked so well is that it was a long con. Platform operators and their investors have been willing to throw away billions convincing end-users and business customers to lock themselves in until it was time for the pig-butchering to begin. They financed expensive forays into additional features and complementary products meant to increase user lock-in, raising the switching costs for users who were tempted to leave.

For example, Facebook's product manager for its "photos" product wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to lay out a strategy of enticing users into uploading valuable family photos to the platform in order to "make switching costs very high for users," who would have to throw away their precious memories as the price for leaving Facebook:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

The platforms' patience paid off. Their slow ratchets operated so subtly that we barely noticed the squeeze, and when we did, they relaxed the pressure until we were lulled back into complacency. Long cons require a lot of prefrontal cortex, the executive function to exercise patience and restraint.

Which brings me to Elon Musk, a man who seems to have been born without a prefrontal cortex, who has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that he lacks any restraint, patience or planning. Elon Musk's prefrontal cortical deficit resulted in his being forced to buy Twitter, and his every action since has betrayed an even graver inability to stop tripping over his own dick.

Where Zuckerberg played enshittification as a long game, Musk is bent on speedrunning it. He doesn't slice his users up with a subtle scalpel, he hacks away at them with a hatchet.

Musk inaugurated his reign by nonconsensually flipping every user to an algorithmic feed which was crammed with ads and posts from "verified" users whose blue ticks verified solely that they had $8 ($11 for iOS users). Where Facebook deployed substantial effort to enticing users who tired of eyeball-cramming feed decay by temporarily improving their feeds, Musk's Twitter actually overrode users' choice to switch back to a chronological feed by repeatedly flipping them back to more monetizable, algorithmic feeds.

Then came the squeeze on publishers. Musk's Twitter rolled out a bewildering array of "verification" ticks, each priced higher than the last, and publishers who refused to pay found their subscribers taken hostage, with Twitter downranking or shadowbanning their content unless they paid.

(Musk also squeezed advertisers, keeping the same high prices but reducing the quality of the offer by killing programs that kept advertisers' content from being published along Holocaust denial and open calls for genocide.)

Today, Musk continues to squeeze advertisers, publishers and users, and his hamfisted enticements to make up for these depredations are spectacularly bad, and even illegal, like offering advertisers a new kind of ad that isn't associated with any Twitter account, can't be blocked, and is not labeled as an ad:

https://www.wired.com/story/xs-sneaky-new-ads-might-be-illegal/

Of course, Musk has a compulsive bullshitter's contempt for the press, so he has far fewer enticements for them to stay. Quite the reverse: first, Musk removed headlines from link previews, rendering posts by publishers that went to their own sites into stock-art enigmas that generated no traffic:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/05/x-twitter-strips-headlines-new-links-why-elon-musk

Then he jumped straight to the end-stage of enshittification by announcing that he would shadowban any newsmedia posts with links to sites other than Twitter, "because there is less time spent if people click away." Publishers were advised to "post content in long form on this platform":

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111183068362793821

Where a canny enshittifier would have gestured at a gaslighting explanation ("we're shadowbanning posts with links because they might be malicious"), Musk busts out the motto of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."

All this has the effect of highlighting just how little residual value there is on the platform for publishers, and tempts them to bolt for the exits. Six months ago, NPR lost all patience with Musk's shenanigans, and quit the service. Half a year later, they've revealed how low the switching cost for a major news outlet that leaves Twitter really are: NPR's traffic, post-Twitter, has declined by less than a single percentage point:

https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/

NPR's Twitter accounts had 8.7 million followers, but even six months ago, Musk's enshittification speedrun had drawn down NPR's ability to reach those users to a negligible level. The 8.7 million number was an illusion, a shell game Musk played on publishers like NPR in a bid to get them to buy a five-figure iridium checkmark or even a six-figure titanium one.

On Twitter, the true number of followers you have is effectively zero – not because Twitter users haven't explicitly instructed the service to show them your posts, but because every post in their feeds that they want to see is a post that no one can be charged to show them.

I've experienced this myself. Three and a half years ago, I left Boing Boing and started pluralistic.net, my cross-platform, open access, surveillance-free, daily newsletter and blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three

Boing Boing had the good fortune to have attracted a sizable audience before the advent of siloed platforms, and a large portion of that audience came to the site directly, rather than following us on social media. I knew that, starting a new platform from scratch, I wouldn't have that luxury. My audience would come from social media, and it would be up to me to convert readers into people who followed me on platforms I controlled – where neither they nor I could be held to ransom.

I embraced a strategy called POSSE: Post Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. With POSSE, the permalink and native habitat for your material is a site you control (in my case, a WordPress blog with all the telemetry, logging and surveillance disabled). Then you repost that content to other platforms – mostly social media – with links back to your own site:

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

There are a lot of automated tools to help you with this, but the platforms have gone to great lengths to break or neuter them. Musk's attack on Twitter's legendarily flexible and powerful API killed every automation tool that might help with this. I was lucky enough to have a reader – Loren Kohnfelder – who coded me some python scripts that automate much of the process, but POSSE remains a very labor-intensive and error-prone methodology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/#hfbd

And of all the feeds I produce – email, RSS, Discourse, Medium, Tumblr, Mastodon – none is as labor-intensive as Twitter's. It is an unforgiving medium to begin with, and Musk's drawdown of engineering support has made it wildly unreliable. Many's the time I've set up 20+ posts in a thread, only to have the browser tab reload itself and wipe out all my work.

But I stuck with Twitter, because I have a half-million followers, and to the extent that I reach them there, I can hope that they will follow the permalinks to Pluralistic proper and switch over to RSS, or email, or a daily visit to the blog.

But with each day, the case for using Twitter grows weaker. I get ten times as many replies and reposts on Mastodon, though my Mastodon follower count is a tenth the size of my (increasingly hypothetical) Twitter audience.

All this raises the question of what can or should be done about Twitter. One possible regulatory response would be to impose an "End-To-End" rule on the service, requiring that Twitter deliver posts from willing senders to willing receivers without interfering in them. End-To-end is the bedrock of the internet (one of its incarnations is Net Neutrality) and it's a proven counterenshittificatory force:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Despite what you may have heard, "freedom of reach" is freedom of speech: when a platform interposes itself between willing speakers and their willing audiences, it arrogates to itself the power to control what we're allowed to say and who is allowed to hear us:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

We have a wide variety of tools to make a rule like this stick. For one thing, Musk's Twitter has violated innumerable laws and consent decrees in the US, Canada and the EU, which creates a space for regulators to impose "conduct remedies" on the company.

But there's also existing regulatory authorities, like the FTC's Section Five powers, which enable the agency to act against companies that engage in "unfair and deceptive" acts. When Twitter asks you who you want to hear from, then refuses to deliver their posts to you unless they pay a bribe, that's both "unfair and deceptive":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

But that's only a stopgap. The problem with Twitter isn't that this important service is run by the wrong mercurial, mediocre billionaire: it's that hundreds of millions of people are at the mercy of any foolish corporate leader. While there's a short-term case for improving the platforms, our long-term strategy should be evacuating them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

To make that a reality, we could also impose a "Right To Exit" on the platforms. This would be an interoperability rule that would require Twitter to adopt Mastodon's approach to server-hopping: click a link to export the list of everyone who follows you on one server, click another link to upload that file to another server, and all your followers and followees are relocated to your new digs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

A Twitter with the Right To Exit would exert a powerful discipline even on the stunted self-regulatory centers of Elon Musk's brain. If he banned a reporter for publishing truthful coverage that cast him in a bad light, that reporter would have the legal right to move to another platform, and continue to reach the people who follow them on Twitter. Publishers aghast at having the headlines removed from their Twitter posts could go somewhere less slipshod and still reach the people who want to hear from them on Twitter.

And both Right To Exit and End-To-End satisfy the two prime tests for sound internet regulation: first, they are easy to administer. If you want to know whether Musk is permitting harassment on his platform, you have to agree on a definition of harassment, determine whether a given act meets that definition, and then investigate whether Twitter took reasonable steps to prevent it.

By contrast, administering End-To-End merely requires that you post something and see if your followers receive it. Administering Right To Exit is as simple as saying, "OK, Twitter, I know you say you gave Cory his follower and followee file, but he says he never got it. Just send him another copy, and this time, CC the regulator so we can verify that it arrived."

Beyond administration, there's the cost of compliance. Requiring Twitter to police its users' conduct also requires it to hire an army of moderators – something that Elon Musk might be able to afford, but community-supported, small federated servers couldn't. A tech regulation can easily become a barrier to entry, blocking better competitors who might replace the company whose conduct spurred the regulation in the first place.

End-to-End does not present this kind of barrier. The default state for a social media platform is to deliver posts from accounts to their followers. Interfering with End-To-End costs more than delivering the messages users want to have. Likewise, a Right To Exit is a solved problem, built into the open Mastodon protocol, itself built atop the open ActivityPub standard.

It's not just Twitter. Every platform is consuming itself in an orgy of enshittification. This is the Great Enshittening, a moment of universal, end-stage platform decay. As the platforms burn, calls to address the fires grow louder and harder for policymakers to resist. But not all solutions to platform decay are created equal. Some solutions will perversely enshrine the dominance of platforms, help make them both too big to fail and too big to jail.

Musk has flagrantly violated so many rules, laws and consent decrees that he has accidentally turned Twitter into the perfect starting point for a program of platform reform and platform evacuation.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/14/freedom-of-reach/#ex

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: JD Lasica (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_%283018710552%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #twitter #posse #elon musk #x #social media #graceful failure modes #end-to-end principle #administratable remedies #good regulation #ads #privacy #benevolent dictatorships #freedom of reach #journalism #enshittification #switching costs

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tektronixtechnology · 1 year ago

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otterandterrier · 1 year ago

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An explanation:

In 2022, Common Crawl scrapped Ao3 to train AI. In December of the same year, Ao3 added code to stop it from happening again. However, as they explain, "Putting systems in place that attempt to block all scraping would be difficult or impossible without also blocking legitimate uses of the site." This means that individual scrapers can still collect data, even on a large scale, although they're working to find a solution to this. They're also, at the moment, not banning AI-generated works.

In the meantime, they recommend restricting works to registered users only. However, and as they know, this isn't an ideal or ultimate solution.

First, because it would add a barrier to legitimate users who want to access the site without an account for different reasons.

Second, because real registered users who think they're entitled to your work can still steal it and feed it to AI for personal use, which is something people are already bragging about.

And third, because bots can still create accounts for mass scraping--in fact, there's a concerning wave of obvious bot comments happening right now, and speculation is that it's related to making AI tools come off as legitimate traffic.

Personally, I'm very concerned and considering restricting my works. But I also hate that we're being put in this position, I don't think it's fair to me or my readers, and I'm reluctant of gatekeeping my fic from legitimate readers.

So I wanted to see where other writers stand right now, and I also wanted to show readers who might be considering stealing fic with AI "because it was abandoned" or whatever your shitty excuse is the damage that you're contributing to. Fandom is not a market. You're not entitled to our work, even if it's abandoned.

I might hate myself for this later, but please reblog for a larger sample size!! You're welcome to add alternative solutions, thoughts, etc., but if you add any obnoxious comments about how stealing people's art with AI is good, actually, and fandom creators are meanies, I will break into your house and bite you.

#ao3 #archive of our own #fanfiction #writers #anti ai art #anti ai writing #my polls

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globosetechnologysolution · 8 months ago

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At Globose Technology Solutions, we are at the forefront of this transformational journey, empowering businesses and organizations to harness the full potential of video datasets for AI-powered applications. Through our commitment to excellence, innovation, and customer satisfaction, we are redefining the boundaries of possibility and shaping a future We strive to create a vision where AI enriches lives, enhances experiences, and drives progress.

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sag-dab-sar · 3 months ago

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Clarification: Generative AI does not equal all AI

💭 "Artificial Intelligence"

AI is machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, and more that I'm not smart enough to know. It can be extremely useful in many different fields and technologies. One of my information & emergency management courses described the usage of AI as being a "human centaur". Part human part machine; meaning AI can assist in all the things we already do and supplement our work by doing what we can't.

💭 Examples of AI Benefits

AI can help advance things in all sorts of fields, here are some examples:

Emergency Healthcare & Disaster Risk X

Disaster Response X

Crisis Resilience Management X

Medical Imaging Technology X

Commercial Flying X

Air Traffic Control X

Railroad Transportation X

Ship Transportation X

Geology X

Water Conservation X

Can AI technology be used maliciously? Yeh. Thats a matter of developing ethics and working to teach people how to see red flags just like people see red flags in already existing technology.

AI isn't evil. Its not the insane sentient shit that wants to kill us in movies. And it is not synonymous with generative AI.

💭 Generative AI

Generative AI does use these technologies, but it uses them unethically. Its scraps data from all art, all writing, all videos, all games, all audio anything it's developers give it access to WITHOUT PERMISSION, which is basically free reign over the internet. Sometimes with certain restrictions, often generative AI engineers—who CAN choose to exclude things—may exclude extremist sites or explicit materials usually using black lists.

AI can create images of real individuals without permission, including revenge porn. Create music using someones voice without their permission and then sell that music. It can spread disinformation faster than it can be fact checked, and create false evidence that our court systems are not ready to handle.

AI bros eat it up without question: "it makes art more accessible" , "it'll make entertainment production cheaper" , "its the future, evolve!!!"

💭 AI is not similar to human thinking

When faced with the argument "a human didn't make it" the come back is "AI learns based on already existing information, which is exactly what humans do when producing art! We ALSO learn from others and see thousands of other artworks"

Lets make something clear: generative AI isn't making anything original. It is true that human beings process all the information we come across. We observe that information, learn from it, process it then ADD our own understanding of the world, our unique lived experiences. Through that information collection, understanding, and our own personalities we then create new original things.

💭 Generative AI doesn't create things: it mimics things

Take an analogy:

Consider an infant unable to talk but old enough to engage with their caregivers, some point in between 6-8 months old.

Mom: a bird flaps its wings to fly!!! *makes a flapping motion with arm and hands*

Infant: *giggles and makes a flapping motion with arms and hands*

The infant does not understand what a bird is, what wings are, or the concept of flight. But she still fully mimicked the flapping of the hands and arms because her mother did it first to show her. She doesn't cognitively understand what on earth any of it means, but she was still able to do it.

In the same way, generative AI is the infant that copies what humans have done— mimicry. Without understanding anything about the works it has stolen.

Its not original, it doesn't have a world view, it doesn't understand emotions that go into the different work it is stealing, it's creations have no meaning, it doesn't have any motivation to create things it only does so because it was told to.

Why read a book someone isn't even bothered to write?