#uber a theories

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Lies, damned lies, and Uber

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 10-11), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

Uber lies about everything, especially money. Oh, and labour. Especially labour. And geometry. Especially geometry! But especially especially money. They constantly lie about money.

Uber are virtuosos of mendacity, but in Toronto, the company has attained a heretofore unseen hat-trick: they told a single lie that is dramatically, materially untruthful about money, labour and geometry! It's an achievement for the ages.

Here's how they did it.

For several decades, Toronto has been clobbered by the misrule of a series of far-right, clownish mayors. This was the result of former Ontario Premier Mike Harris's great gerrymander of 1998, when the city of Toronto was amalgamated with its car-dependent suburbs. This set the tone for the next quarter-century, as these outlying regions – utterly dependent on Toronto for core economic activity and massive subsidies to pay the unsustainable utility and infrastructure bills for sprawling neighborhoods of single-family homes – proceeded to gut the city they relied on.

These "conservative" mayors – the philanderer, the crackhead, the sexual predator – turned the city into a corporate playground, swapping public housing and rent controls for out-of-control real-estate speculation and trading out some of the world's best transit for total car-dependency. As part of that decay, the city rolled out the red carpet for Uber, allowing the company to put as many unlicensed taxis as they wanted on the city's streets.

Now, it's hard to overstate the dire traffic situation in Toronto. Years of neglect and underinvestment in both the roads and the transit system have left both in a state of near collapse and it's not uncommon for multiple, consecutive main arteries to shut down without notice for weeks, months, or, in a few cases, years. The proliferation of Ubers on the road – driven by desperate people trying to survive the city's cost-of-living catastrophe – has only exacerbated this problem.

Uber, of course, would dispute this. The company insists – despite all common sense and peer-reviewed research – that adding more cars to the streets alleviates traffic. This is easily disproved: there just isn't any way to swap buses, streetcars, and subways for cars. The road space needed for all those single-occupancy cars pushes everything further apart, which means we need more cars, which means more roads, which means more distance between things, and so on.

It is an undeniable fact that geometry hates cars. But geometry loathes Uber. Because Ubers have all the problems of single-occupancy vehicles, and then they have the separate problem that they just end up circling idly around the city's streets, waiting for a rider. The more Ubers there are on the road, the longer each car ends up waiting for a passenger:

https://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Uber-Lyft-San-Francisco-pros-cons-ride-hailing-13841277.php

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. After years of bumbling-to-sinister municipal rule, Toronto finally reclaimed its political power and voted in a new mayor, Olivia Chow, a progressive of long tenure and great standing (I used to ring doorbells for her when she was campaigning for her city council seat). Mayor Chow announced that she was going to reclaim the city's prerogative to limit the number of Ubers on the road, ending the period of Uber's "self-regulation."

Uber, naturally, lost its shit. The company claims to be more than a (geometrically impossible) provider of convenient transportation for Torontonians, but also a provider of good jobs for working people. And to prove it, the company has promised to pay its drivers "120% of minimum wage." As I write for Ricochet, that's a whopper, even by Uber's standards:

https://ricochet.media/en/4039/uber-is-lying-again-the-company-has-no-intention-of-paying-drivers-a-living-wage

Here's the thing: Uber is only proposing to pay 120% of the minimum wage while drivers have a passenger in the vehicle. And with the number of vehicles Uber wants on the road, most drivers will be earning nothing most of the time. Factor in that unpaid time, as well as expenses for vehicles, and the average Toronto Uber driver stands to make $2.50 per hour (Canadian):

https://ridefair.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Legislated-Poverty.pdf

Now, Uber's told a lot of lies over the years. Right from the start, the company implicitly lied about what it cost to provide an Uber. For its first 12 years, Uber lost $0.41 on every dollar it brought in, lighting tens of billions in investment capital provided by the Saudi royals on fire in an effort to bankrupt rival transportation firms and disinvestment in municipal transit.

Uber then lied to retail investors about the business-case for buying its stock so that the House of Saud and other early investors could unload their stock. Uber claimed that they were on the verge of producing a self-driving car that would allow them to get rid of drivers, zero out their wage bill, and finally turn a profit. The company spent $2.5b on this, making it the most expensive Big Store in the history of cons:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/infighting-busywork-missed-warnings-how-uber-wasted-2-5-billion-on-self-driving-cars

After years, Uber produced a "self-driving car" that could travel one half of one American mile before experiencing a potentially lethal collision. Uber quietly paid another company $400m to take this disaster off its hands:

https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/10/why-is-uber-selling-its-autonomous-vehicle-division

The self-driving car lie was tied up in another lie – that somehow, automation could triumph over geometry. Robocabs, we were told, would travel in formations so tight that they would finally end the Red Queen's Race of more cars – more roads – more distance – more cars. That lie wormed its way into the company's IPO prospectus, which promised retail investors that profitability lay in replacing every journey – by car, cab, bike, bus, tram or train – with an Uber ride:

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1RN2SK/

The company has been bleeding out money ever since – though you wouldn't know it by looking at its investor disclosures. Every quarter, Uber trumpets that it has finally become profitable, and every quarter, Hubert Horan dissects its balance sheets to find the accounting trick the company thought of this time. There was one quarter where Uber declared profitability by marking up the value of stock it held in Uber-like companies in other countries.

How did it get this stock? Well, Uber tried to run a business in those countries and it was such a total disaster that they had to flee the country, selling their business to a failing domestic competitor in exchange for stock in its collapsing business. Naturally, there's no market for this stock, which, in Uber-land, means you can assign any value you want to it. So that one quarter, Uber just asserted that the stock had shot up in value and voila, profit!

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-nine-despite-massive-price-increases-uber-losses-top-31-billion.html

But all of those lies are as nothing to the whopper that Uber is trying to sell to Torontonians by blanketing the city in ads: the lie that by paying drivers $2.50/hour to fill the streets with more single-occupancy cars, they will turn a profit, reduce the city's traffic, and provide good jobs. Uber says it can vanquish geometry, economics and working poverty with the awesome power of narrative.

In other words, it's taking Toronto for a bunch of suckers.

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/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible

Image: Rob Sinclair (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Night_skyline_of_Toronto_May_2009.jpg

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

[bajablastflavoredsaxreed]

hey gang. i may or may not be trying to piece together a cohesive lore/universe for life in the world to come, a show which notoriously does Not Have Lore. i have a list of characters/facts that i can pull just from my head rn but im almost certainly missing so many things. if you’d like to help me out and tell me ur favorite characters/bits/tidbits that would be mad wicked awesome

The List

will can do a backflip from a standing position

will is literally neil cicirega

chris is a red belt in taekwondo but showing a lot of potential

mama doo wop

tommy lasagna

jordan peterson

tom waits

jeff bezos

bug woman

big carl

buffalo wild wings

bobby sugarbones

cinnamon pepper

beans mcsprout

strong + many arms

sun has a gun

fish will have boobs

manosphere guys will all be thrown into a grease pit to fight it out except for Jordan Peterson, who will will save from the pit and kidnap him to raise like a son/parrot

Leopard Planet will be the name of a band

Therapists will be birds

frogs will be physically indistinguishable from mountain lions four generations after the bombs

jordan peterson will be a hydra type beast who continues his 14 things you need to know about life

your parents are going to have a weird nightmare polycule with satan/a spider that involves your dad being cucked

do NOT accept the spider’s bargain

Don’t Trust It, It’s Not Your Dad

you will dream of the suffalo

last week before the apocalypse spider man will be here delivering pizza

jewish coming of age traditions will all involve bugs that hate you

will will die, become blind, become possessed by the ghost of a pirate (no specified order of events)

the sun’s gun will have a son

Gerard Way will become a many-headed many-armed Akira flesh beast who is also the US president

Reddit is a literal pit in the ground where people yell at each over to get the other stoned to death

will will not have fingers for a little while

there will be no books, but there will be a guy named book who shouts literature at the top of his lungs

italians will not exist

the air will become juice

jewish people will sail out to sea and befriend seagulls in order to evade geese

pringles cans will grow out of the ground like vegetables and will be reinforced with titanium

[mathematical-apprentice]

Barou has always been a star boy, at first I thought it was just because of his killer goal scoring ability (clinical finishing) but now, now I've been schooled. Barou presented a masterclass in goal scoring.

Getting past Isagi easily with his technical skill, a heel lift while the poor MC could only stand by and watch.

A killer double nutmeg to get past Kuon and this other guy (it seems what he did to Kaiser and Isagi is actually an old habit)

Look at where the line is when he's taking this shot.

Here's a picture of the penalty area from Wikipedia for context. You can clearly see the line marking both the penalty area and the goal area in the frame of Barou's shot

Meaning, not only did he take the ball from his half (since Isagi ran forward after kickoff it's safe to assume he didn't stay in team Z's half), heel lift past Isagi, deliver a deadly accurate double nutmeg, and score, he scored from outside the box. Do you know how crazy that is?

Given, at this point the teams aren't very organised and were easily exploited by him, but it doesn't take away from the impressiveness of the goal.

@miyamiwu

[jorrated]

My day so far:

Dislocated my right knee

Almost died In an uber

Finished the Umineko question arcs

[thenixkat]

20% of the global population is quirkless and we get 4 canon born quirkless characters

2% of the global population is blond and we get 49 (minimum not including white-haired characters who might be platinum blonde or characters with clearly artificially bleached hair) blonds in this piece

And yet the quirkless are a dying breed. Somehow.

[fromtheseventhhell]

HOTD stans are showing more attentiveness, understanding, empathy, and compassion to Aegon II, Aemond, and Criston, than they EVER did for Daenerys and Cersei. Irrelevant and forgotten footnotes in history essentially build off of headcanons, Greek mythology and biased sources VS complex and fully fleshed out female characters who are POV OF THE MAIN SERIES. Misogyny has completely rotted their brains.

No, but all of this. This fandom's obsession with propping up irrelevant side characters and treating them as equal (or sometimes greater) to main story POV characters needs to be studied. Unfortunately, that gets doubled when said character happens to be a shitty abusive man. HOTD stans are especially delusional cause they let the show trick them into thinking that their fave is more relevant than they ever were. They'll write essays on how brilliant Aegon/Aemond/Criston are that are just biased headcanons and then have the nerve to criticize Dany, Cersei, or other female POV characters. That level of delusion and audacity only ever comes from rampant misogyny 🥴

[alitheia]

forgot my professor identified as nonbinary and i turned in a paper with a whole paragraph on how anne fausto-sterling’s intersex “research” was debunked 22 years ago :P

[truecorvid]

i neeeeeed to go to the club i need it

[ubeerosophy]

"As You Are He"

[dreamertrilogys]

why am i so scared shaky nearveous <- asks the guy who j had midol even tho he specifically stopped taking it bc it does that to him. Also 0 sleep bombed a bio test & had 1/2 of my friend’s redbull in math class

[kxllerblond]

ON CAMBION -—or my weird fanon interpretation.

So I take a lot of inspo from everything from SPN to D&D to general myth to shit like fucking Teen Titans. My HCs are just a big Frankensteinian mess, needless to say. This is going to be a barely constructed word mess, so buckle up.

So to start, what is a Cambion is 'canon' terms and how do they come to be? Generally, it's going to involve a succubus and an incubus and the way in which they allegedly reproduced involved 4 beings. The typical "demon bangs a human" thing we see on this blog and in a lot of cambion-involved media is actually not possible according to the Malleus Maleficarum (which correct me if I'm wrong, but this is like the only widely known piece of media that talks about demons banging and or reproducing like in weird detail lmao). You would have a succubus yoink sperm from a human who then passed it off to an incubus to corrupt and then implant into a human with a womb and badabing badaboom. Cambion. In some other instances, there's said to be no human involvement at all and it's just a incubus and a succubus suckin' and fuckin' but I never really got that take, tbh.

But what aaaaare cambion in the 'canon' sense? They were apparently an interchangeable term with changelings and I guess their Latin name itself comes from a form of the word. They were these incredibly heavy infants that cried when touched and did not have a pulse or breath until they were like seven. Some texts say they never grew and were always hungry (these are often from the more changeling based interpretations that stated they replaced human babes to plague the parents etc). In some other instances, they were just said to be demons posing as babies to, again, plague god-fearing families.

So tl;dr: the cambion I use on this blog and that we see a lot in media like SPN is really just sort of taking bits and pieces of the already small 'canon' lore and going full canon-diverg with it, lol.

What are 'MY' cambions?

Like I said, I take a lot of inspo from popular media takes on them. This blog was initially very SPN-based until I started branching out on my own with my own canon, etc.

Cambions are the offspring of a demon and human. Typically, a demon will possess a sperm-carrying human and impregnate a womb-havin' human. This is the most common, but the opposite can be true as well. The parent that delivers the cambion child more often than not will die during birth (be it the human parent or the human host the demon parent is possessing). Clark's mother lived through childbirth and it's to be noted this is not a common occurrence.

TYPES.

My cambions also extend beyond just incubi/succubi. Clark is a child of an incubus and a human but I HC cambion as to be an umbrella term for any sort of demon/human child. Crossroads demons, knights of hell, archdemons, etc. While I HC there to be some shared powers amongst cambion, their demon parents do contribute to a variety of different powers and lends to two cambion being capable of having very different abilities. This HC just made sense to me, but it also lets me have my own canon while still leaving room for other cambion ocs to exist and write with me as well. :')

ON BEING HYBRIDS.

I HC most cambion to be infertile. However, like the parent not surviving the childbirth, this is not a sealed in stone fact and there are cases of cambion being able to sire their own children. This is where you start to get dilution happening. A child of a cambion is going to be weaker than their parent and their demon blood will continue to get weaker the further down the line with each human added to the family tree.

I also like the take that they are not either of their parents but something NEW, something different. Between their variety of powers and general lack of information, it's a big reason why I HC them to be potentially mega powerful. This HC is aided by a lot of media portrayals of cambion kids more or less being able to kick their demon parent's asses or just being typically mega powerful under the right circumstances (Raven from Teen Titans, Hellboy, Merlin the fucking wizard is said to have been a cambion, Jesse from SPN, etc).

AGEING.

Cambions DO age and are said to live anywhere between 300-500 years but have extremely deaccelerated ageing. The only reason Clark is at an immortal status now is because he died and came back and now more or less continues his existence in the way a typical incubus would despite still not being an actual incubus.

BEING HUNTED, ETC.

Cambions, like Nephilim, are kinda big no-no's for everyone involved. Humans don't like 'em, demons don't like 'em, angels don't like 'em. Between often being involved in Apoc-prophesies or said to be eventual high-ranking officers of Hell once they get there...everyone kind of wants them dead. It's very rare for a cambion to make it past childhood as this is when they are easiest to kill and more vulnerable. Once a cambion's powers have kicked in and they have some semblance of control over them, it's incredibly hard to take them down.

And in the realm of no-no, it's to be noted it's super taboo to make a cambion. Clark's dad was some unnamed scumbag of a demon who wanted to IDK stick it to the man or be quirky and naughty and that's literally the only reason why he exists. In Hellboy, his demon dad is stripped of his title and imprisoned for making a lil' cambion baby.

Anti-Christ, Heaven killing, World-ending stuff.

Look, not every cambion can be the one to destroy heaven and bring on the Apoc but I do HC that every single one has the potential to be world/timeline eaters. Cambions' powers are emotion-based and I've said before that certain hyperstressful circumstances like mental illness, fear, etc can bring about these extreme powers in unstable ways. I have a whole other meta post on how I see Legion as the closest example to what I personally imagine a powerful cambion created via the worst circumstances. (i.e you have someone who can bend and warp reality brought up believing he's delusional)

Also to be noted the anti-christ is always depicted as Luci's kid which would be a nephil so like errrrm. I imagine cambion to just be like little appetizers or main events that go hand in hand with the anti-christ shit. Again, not every single cambion is going to be THE ONE but every single one has the potential to be out the ass powerful.

There's other stuff like weaknesses, feeding, immunities, etc but this is already long and I have a CAMBION HC page for that dfklgdnfg.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Venture predation

Tomorrow (May 20), I’ll be at the GAITHERSBURG Book Festival with my novel Red Team Blues; then on Monday (May 22), I’m keynoting Public Knowledge’s Emerging Tech conference in DC.

On Tuesday (May 23), I’ll be in TORONTO for a book launch that’s part of WEPFest, a benefit for the West End Phoenix, onstage with Dave Bidini (The Rheostatics), Ron Diebert (Citizen Lab) and the whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri.

They said it couldn’t happen. After decades of antitrust enforcement against Predatory Pricing — selling goods below cost to kill existing competitors and prevent new ones from arising — the Chicago School of neoliberal economists “proved” that predatory pricing didn’t exist and that the courts could stand down and stop busting companies for it.

Predatory pricing — the economists explained — may be illegal, but it was also imaginary. A mirage. No one would do predatory pricing, because it was “irrational.” And even if there was someone irrational enough to try it, they would fail. Stand down, judges of America — predatory pricing is solved.

Chicago School economists — whose job (to quote David Roth) is to find new ways to say “actually, your boss is right” — held enormous sway of the federal judiciary. The billionaire-backed Manne Seminars offered free “continuing education” junkets to judges — all-expense-paid luxury vacations salted with lengthy your-boss-is-right econ seminars. 40% of the US federal judiciary got their heads filled up at a Manne Seminar.

For monopolists and other predators, the Manne Seminar was an excellent return on investment. After attending a Manne Seminar, the average judge’s legal decisions tipped decidedly in favor of monopoly, operating on the Chicago bedrock assumption that monopolies are “efficient,” and, where we see them in nature, we should celebrate them as the visible manifestation of the entrepreneurial genius of some Ayn Rand hero in a corporate boardroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Even as post-Chicago economists showed that predatory pricing was both possible and rampant, a “rational” and effective strategy for cornering markets, suppressing competition, crushing innovation and gouging on price, judges continued to craft tortuous, unpassable tests that any predatory pricing case would have to satisfy to proceed. Economics moved on, but predatory pricing cases continued to fail the trial-by-ordeal constructed by Chicago-pilled judges.

Which is a shame, because there are at least three ways that predatory pricing can be effective:

Cost Signaling Predation: A predator tricks competitors into thinking they’ve found a new way to cut their costs, which allows them to drop prices. Competitors, fooled by the ruse, exit the market, not realizing that the predator is merely subsidizing their products’ costs to trick them.

Financial Market Predation: A predator tricks the competitors’ creditors into thinking the predator has a new way to cut costs. The creditors refuse to loan the prey companies the money needed to survive the price war, and the prey drops out of the war.

Reputation Effect Predation: A predator subsidizes prices in one region or one line of goods in order to trick prey into thinking that they’ll do the same elsewhere: “Don’t try to compete with us in Cleveland, or we’ll drop prices like we did in Tampa.”

These models of successful predation are decades old, and have broad acceptance within economics — outside of Chicago-style ideologues — but they’ve yet to make much of a dent in minds of the judges who hear Predatory Pricing cases.

While judges continue to hit the snooze-bar on any awakening to this phenomenon, a new kind of predator has emerged, using a new kind of predation: the Venture Predator, a predatory company backed by venture capital funds, who make lots of high-risk bets they must cash out in ten years or less, ideally for a 100x+ return.

Writing in the Journal of Corporation Law Matthew Wansley and Samuel Weinstein — both of the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University — lay out a theory of Venture Predation in clear, irrefutable language, using it to explain the recent bubble we sometimes call the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4437360

What’s a Venture Predator? It’s “a startup that uses venture finance to price below its costs, chase its rivals out of the market, and grab market share.” The predator sets millions or billions of dollars on fire chasing “rapid, exponential growth” all in order to “create the impression that recoupment is possible” among future investors, such as blue-chip companies that might buy them out, or sucker retail investors who buy in at the IPO, anticipating years of monopoly pricing.

In other words, the Venture Predator constructs a pile of shit so large and impressive that investors are convinced that there must be a pony under there somewhere.

There’s another name for this kind of arrangement: a bezzle, which Galbraith described as “the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it.”

Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy companies are bezzles. Uber, annihilated tens of billions of dollars on its bezzle, destroying the taxi industry and laying waste to public transit investment, demolishing labor protections and convincing people that impossible self-driving robo-taxis were around the coner:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/16/ring-ring-lapd-calling/#uber-unter

But while Uber the company lost billions of dollars, Uber’s early investors and executives made out like bandits (or predators, I suppose). The founders were able to flog their shares on the secondary market long before the IPO. Same for the early investors, like Benchmark capital.

Since the company’s IPO, its finances have steadily worsened, and the company has resorted to increasingly sweaty balance-sheet manipulation tactics and PR offensives to make it seem like a viable business:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/05/a-lousy-taxi/#a-giant-asterisk

But Uber can’t ever recoup the billions it spent convincing the market that there was a pony beneath its pile of shit. The app Uber uses to connect riders with the employees it misclassifies as contractors isn’t hard to clone, and it’s not hard for drivers or riders to switch from one app to another:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

Nor can Uber prevent its rivals from taking advantage of the hundreds of millions of dollars it spent on “regulatory entrepreneurship” — changing the laws to make it easier to misclassify workers and operate unlicensed taxi services.

It’s not clear whether Uber ever believed in robo-taxis, or whether they were just part of the bezzle. In any event, Uber’s no longer in the robotaxi races: after blowing $2.5B on self-driving cars, Uber produced a vehicle whose mean-distance-between-fatal-crashes was 0.5 miles. Uber had to pay another company $400M to take its self-driving unit off its hands:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Uber’s prices rose 92% between 2018–21, while its driver compensation has plunged. The company is finding it increasingly difficult to passengers into cars, and drivers onto the road. They have invented algorithmic wage disrimination, an exciting new field of labor-law violations, in order to trick drivers into thinking there’s a pony under all that shit:

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

To Uber’s credit, they have been a wildly innovative company, inventing many new ways to make the pile of shit bigger and the pony more plausible. Back when Uber and Lyft were locked in head-to-head competition, Uber employees created huge pools of fake Lyft rider accounts, using them to set up and tear down rides in order to discover what Lyft was charging for rides in order to underprice them. Uber also covertly operated the microphones in its drivers’ phones to listen for the chimes the Lyft app made: drivers who had both Lyft and Uber installed on their devices were targeted for (strictly temporary) bonuses.

Uber won’t ever recoup, but that’s OK. The investors and execs made vast fortunes. Now, normally, you’d expect company founders and other managers with large piles of stocks in a VC-backed company to be committed to the business’s success, at least in the medium term, because their shares can’t be liquidated until well after the company goes public.

But the burgeoning “secondary market” for managers’ shares has turned investors and managers into co-conspirators in the Venture Predation bezzle: “half of Series A and B deals now have some secondary component for founders.” That means that founders can cash out before the bezzle ends.

The trick with any bezzle is to skip town while the mark is still energetically digging through the shit, before the pony is revealed for an illusion. That’s where crypto comes in: during the cryptocurrency bubble, VCs cashed out of their investments early through Initial Coin Offerings and other forms of securities fraud. The massive returns this generated were well worth the millions they sprinkled on Superbowl ads and bribes for Matt Damon.

But woe betide the VC who mistimes their exit. As Wework showed, it’s entirely possible for VCs to be left holding the bag if they get the timing wrong. Wework blew $12b on predatory pricing — promising tenants at rivals’ businesses moving bonuses or even a year’s free rent, all to make the pile of shit look larger and thus more apt to contain a pony. The company opened its co-working spaces as close as possible to existing shops, oversaturating hot markets and showing “growth” by poaching customers through deep subsidies, then pretending that those customers would stay when the subsidies evaporated. But Wework’s “product” was temporary hot-desks, occupied by people who could (and did) move at the drop of a hat.

To its competitors, its competitors’ creditors, and credulous investors, it appeared that Wework had developed some kind of “efficiency advantage” — a secret sauce that let it sell a product at a price that was far below its rivals’ costs. But once Wework filed for its IPO, its S-1 — the form that discloses the company’s finances — revealed the truth. Wework’s only “advantage” was the bafflegab of its cult-like leader and the torrent of cash supplied by its VCs.

Wework’s IPO was a disaster. After canceling a real IPO, the company eventually went public through a scammy SPAC, saw its shares immediately tank, and continue to fall, as its balance-sheet is still blood-red with losses.

Another Venture Predator is Bird, the company that flooded American cities with cheap, flimsy Chinese scooters, choking curbs and sidewalks. 25% of the gross revenues from each scooter ride had to be written off as depreciation on the scooter. As a Bird spokesperson told the LA Times: “There are very few unique companies for which you can build global scale really quickly and build a dominant market position before other people do, and for those rarefied companies scaling quickly matters more than short-term profits.”

Bird was another company that could never recoup, whose executives and investors could only cash out if they could maintain the faint hope of the pony underneath its pile of shitty scooters. It drove the company to some genuinely surreal lengths. For example, in 2018, I reported on the existence of a kit that let you buy an impounded Bird scooter for pennies and retrofit it to run without an app, so you could take it anywhere:

https://boingboing.net/2018/12/08/flipping-a-bird.html

Shortly thereafter, I got a legal threat from Linda Kwak, Bird’s Senior Corporate Counsel, claiming that publishing a link to a website that sells you a product you install by unscrewing one board and inserting another was a violation of Section 1201 of the DMCA, which was an astonishingly stupid claim:

https://www.eff.org/document/bird-rides-takedown-boing-boing-dec-20-2018

It was also an astonishingly stupid claim to make to me, a career activist with 20 years experience fighting DMCA1201, a decades-old professional affiliation with EFF, and a giant megaphone:

https://boingboing.net/2019/01/11/flipping-the-bird.html

But Bird was palpably desperate to keep its bezzle going, and Kwak — an employment lawyer with undeniable deficits in her understanding of copyright and cyber-law — was their champion

Fascinatingly, one thing Bird didn’t worry about was competition from Uber and Lyft, who piled into the e-scooter market. Bird circulated a (leaked) pitch-deck reassuring investors that Uber/Lyft weren’t gunning for them, because they ““won’t subsidize prices” as they prepared for their IPOs, which involved disclosing their finances to their investors.

Bird’s investors either lost money or made small-dollar returns, but they were outfoxed by Bird founder Travis VanderZanden, a superpredator who cashed out $44m in shares just as the VCs were piling in.

Venture Predation is another stinging rebuttal to the Chicago School’s blithe dismissal of Predatory Pricing as an illusion. Private firms — of the sort that VCs back — whose boards are made up of founders and VCs who stand to benefit from the pile-of-shit gambit are perfectly capable of spending huge fortunes to make Predatory Pricing work. VCs make a practice of repeatedly co-investing in businesses together, which fosters the kind of trust that allows for these gambits to be played again and again.

For later stage, pony-thirsty investors who get stuck holding the bag, the lure of monopoly profits is both powerful and plausible — after 40 years of antitrust neglect, monopolies are the kinds of things one can both attain and defend (think of Peter Thiel’s maxim, “competition is for losers,” or Warren Buffett’s terrifying priapisms induced by the mere thought of businesses with “wide, sustainable moats”).

In a world of Facebook and Google, dreaming of monopolies isn’t irrational — it’s aspirational.

VCs are ideally poised to play the Venture Predation gambit. They are risk-tolerant and need to cash out over short timescales. What’s more, VCs’ longstanding boasts of their ability to identify companies who have invented new, super-efficient ways to do boring things like “rent out office space” or “provide taxis” gives the pile-of-shit pony-pitch a plausible ring.

The Venture Predator gambit isn’t just a form of plute-on-plute violence in which billionaires fleece millionaires. Like any anticompetitive scam, Venture Predators are able to pick winners in the marketplace — rather than getting the taxi or the office rental service or the scooter that serves you best, you get the scammiest version.

Workers who are roped in by the scam also suffer — the authors raise the example of a cab driver who leases a car to drive for Uber, based on the early subsidies the company offered, only to find themselves unable to make payments once the bezzle ends and Uber starts clawing back the driver’s wages.

Then there’s the cost to society: during the decade-plus in which Uber was pissing away the Saudi royal family’s billions subsidizing rides, cities dismantled their public transit, even as residents made decisions about where to live and work based on the presumption that Uber was charging a fair, sustainable price for rides.

The authors propose a bunch of legislative fixes for this, but warn that none of them are likely to get through Congress or the Manne-pilled judiciary. But they do hold out hope for a proposed SEC rule “requiring large, private companies to make basic financial disclosures.” These disclosures would make it impossible for companies to pretend that they had built a better mousetrap when all they had was a bigger pile of shit.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

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/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

[Image ID: A giant pile of manure with a pony sticking out of it.]

Image: Eli Duke (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/elisfanclub/6834356283

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[stinkbeck]

😔 my beloved toaster makes everything taste like gasoline

[jessilynallendilla]

I wouldn’t say he “didn’t care” more like he was burnt out

He played the role since he was a child and now is in his what 30s? 40s?

He knew there was never any real danger with Megamind in charge so decided to pursue something that’s a passion and doesn’t come naturally easy to him

but it was still a dick move

the genius of megamind (beyond the obvious genius ofc) is that it's superman parody actually presents a genuinely unsettling depiction of the "hero" that I like wayyy better than "what if superman was evil" or "what if superman was wrong"... it's "what if superman didn't care"

[bet-on-me-13]

Bank Security Guard Danny AU

So, the People of Gotham are extremely desensitized to Rouge Attacks at this point. It got to the point that whenever a person gets a job at the Bank, they have a whole 1 Hour Training Video on how to deal with a Rouge Attack right.

So, when they hire a New Security Guard from a lesser known Security Company, they don't even bother showing him the Training Video. They assume that he'll either Die or Drop them within a Week.

Danny, for the record, did not know how bad the Rouge problem truly was. All he knew was that some random guy in a Ski Mask had just walked into the bank like he owned the place and started showing off a Gun telling everybody to get on the ground.

Danny did the sensible thing and Knocked him the Fuck Out.

Then, the same thing happened the very next day, but this time it was an entire group of people. Danny had them dealt with before the first person had gotten to the floor.

Then the same thing happened the Same Day!

By the end of the week he had become a Legend among the Citizens of Gotham. There was only a single Bank in all of Gotham that had avoided being robbed for a Whole Week, and it was all because of this one Security Guard who was freakishly good at his Job.

By the end of the Month, most criminals don't even bother trying that Bank anymore. It got worse when he got loaned out as Security for another Bank, and the same thing happened again.

Eventually, he ends up rotating shifts in Every Bank in Gotham, and it becomes a Game for the Criminals to see if the Bank they try to Rob is the one Danny is in that night. And they can't even reasonably predict his next location, since he always moves around at Random!

No matter what Bank he is in, he always manages to beat the Crooks trying to Rob the Bank.

Then it gets weird. Due to a scheduling Mix Up, Danny ends up being scheduled for 2 different Banks on the same day, each across the city from the other.

One Bank reports that Danny stopped a gang from Robbing them at 6:00 PM, which really confuses the other Bank because Danny did the same thing in their Bank at the same time. Security Footage proves it, Danny was somehow in 2 places at once.

They decide not to confront him about it, but they do test a theory. They intentionally hire him at multiple different Banks at the same time for a week. He shows up to work every time without fail.

By now they have basically confirmed that he must be a Meta, but they don't really care anyways. Now he can protect multiple Banks at once with his usual perfect Efficiency, and he'll be payed accordingly as well. The Banks get protected well, and he gets payed Extreme Overtime by the Banks, everybody wins!

Well...except for the Crime Bosses of Gotham.

Before this, it was a Game for them to try and beat Danny. They didn't really care since a single Uber Competent Security Guard was still perfectly fine for business, sure they would fail a Job once in a while if they ran into him, but he could only be in 1 place at a time. It wasn't a Huge Loss.

But now it was too much. They needed to take care of him.

Assassination Attempts didn't work. He was just as competent Off the job as he was On it, so they could never get to him.

They tried attacking his Bosses, but then they hired themselves to protect...themselves. It was hard to kill his Bosses when he was constantly Bodyguarding all of them at once.

Attempts to get to him through his Family were...let's not talk about that...

It continued on like this for a while.

...

Soooo...I don't know how to end this one.

Go ahead and put your own spin on this Prompt! The basic idea is that Danny is using his Duplication Power to get to every shift on Time, and he is really annoying the Local Crime Bosses.

What do you think?

[tlou-reid]

Finishing Gifts ❤︎ Aaron Hotchner

from the river to the sea, palestine will be free 🇵🇸 READ: this account stands with palestine, and so— i require everyone who interacts to educate themselves, and support/donate. READ THESE; 1 and 2, HELP HERE, BOYCOTT. silence is complicity, do not scroll past this.

♡ SUMMARY: after a few days of ignoring him, Aaron makes an effort to get your behavior to return to normal

♡ WARNINGS: 18+ MDNI, smut, female and male masturbation, phone sex, mentions of watching porn, sex toys, drinking, small mentions of criminal minds-esque themes and violence, pretty much porn with very little plot, this is not edited like at all

♡ NOTE: something about writing aaron masturbating makes me go brrrrrr

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

You had thought you were keeping your cool. Honestly, truly, you had thought no one would notice the small changes in your behavior. You had tried to be subtle in dodging Hotch, doing it slowly and over time. It had started with piggybacking Spencer’s theories in the field, which led to pushing to go look at a crime scene rather than to the police department with Hotch. Then evolved into getting deep into conversation with JJ as you approached the jet, using it as an excuse to claim a seat next to her rather than your normal position between Hotch and the window.

These acts had gone unnoticed, or, at least, you’d thought. In your determination to avoid them, you hadn’t noticed the strange looks Derek and Morgan had thrown each other, and then Aaron, as you relaxed next to JJ. You missed Garcia questioning what had been up with you as you extended your time making coffee before a briefing, just so you didn’t have to walk behind Hotch into the room.

But, your latest change to avoid your unit chief definitely didn’t fly under the radar. This one was loud and clear, and absolutely threw off the entire BAU.

You’d just completed, by all possible metrics, a very successful case. It was a rare one, looking at terrorism in the DC area. A group of people who were planting explosives around the city, in unsuspecting areas. Instead of targeting political buildings or memorials, they focused on smaller-scale destruction. The team had been able to put the perpetrators away with no more casualties than those that were gone before the team landed. All in all, it was incredibly stressful, but a win for the team.

So, after Emily’s suggestion and Derek’s reminder that it was an extended weekend due to a government holiday, the team was getting ready to head to the bar. You had begged to go home to shower, promising you’d take an Uber (so you could, in Penelope’s words, “get fucked up with the girls”) and meet them at the bar in about an hour.

You put on your best outfit, showing an appropriate amount of cleavage, and did your makeup to the best of your abilities. After you’d cleaned up, you went to open your Uber app, excited to have a night to relax.

However, you were cut off when a phone call overtook your screen. “Aaron” the contact name read, indicating it was your unit chief, and that he was calling from his personal cellphone. You let ring a few times before picking up, not wanting to seem too eager to talk to your boss.

“Hellooo,” you practically sung into the phone, too excited to be worried about embarrassing yourself in front of him. He simply replied with a formal “hello,” followed by your name. “Please don’t tell me you’re ruining my longggg weekend,” You said to him, and he swore he could hear some of jewelry shaking. You couldn’t keep your excitement in, shaking your wrists, which made your bracelets make noise.

He chuckled a bit at your reaction to him calling, “No, no. I was just calling to see if you had left yet.” You smiled against the phone, knowing where this conversation was going. “Nope! I was actually ordering my Uber when you called,” you informed him. “So, you haven’t ordered it?” He questioned again, to which you replied with a “uh-uh”.

You couldn’t tell but your excitement about going out with your friends was essentially oozing through the phone, causing Aaron to maintain a bright smile on his face. You weren’t aware of how your vibe, your energy, was able to lift a weight off of Aaron’s shoulders that had been there for as long as he could remember.

“I also had to run home before meeting the team. If you’d like, I can pick you up.” Your smile, somehow, grew even bigger. Any excuse to see Aaron was a good one, you’d thought.

However, your face quickly fell when you reminded yourself that you were supposed to be avoiding him. You felt a pang in your heart as you said, “Thanks, but I have a few things to finish up here! I appreciate the offer, Hotch.”

With a quick, formal goodbye, the called ended. Aaron tried to ignore the fact that you lied to him as he drove the rest of the way. You had said you were about to call your Uber, and he heard your jewelry, meaning you were putting the finishing touches on your outfit. So why wouldn’t you accept his ride?

He tried to ignore the blow to his chest when you called him Hotch. Something about the use of his last name made him feel as if he’d done something wrong. Not that it was unusual for you, or anyone really, to call him that. It was the emphasis you’d put on it. As if you were trying to make it known he was Hotch and not Aaron.

Aaron tried to turn off his profiling ability, but it was proving to be had as all of his thoughts were currently encompassed by you.

The night, and the whole weekend if you were being honest, went by in a blur. You could tell Aaron had noticed the change in your behavior. You were standoffish at the bar, pretty much avoiding any conversation with him. You just hoped by the end of the long weekend it would be forgotten, and you’d be able to continue work as normal.

This dream was quickly demolished as Aaron was summoning you into his office before you had the chance to even put your bag down and unpack your files.

The sound of calling your last name both frightened and intrigued you. You couldn’t help but be attracted to the authority in his voice, even if it could mean you were going to be in trouble.

As you stepped into the voice, Aaron didn’t even look up. He mumbled a “shut the door, please,” as he finished recording some notes on an opened file in front of him. You stood awkwardly by the door, waiting for some kind instruction or reasoning from him.

“Please,” he gestured to the seats in front of his desk. You nodded, clumsily making your way to them. “I didn’t mean to scare you or make you uncomfortable by calling you in here,” he began.

You weren’t sure if you were more scared by being called into his office, to have a conversation that required you to both sit down and shut the door, or the intense eye contact he was maintaining as he introduced whatever discussion you two were about to have.

“I just couldn’t help but notice,” he paused for a second, trying to find the right words to say, “a recent change in your behavior.” You hoped he didn’t notice the way your eyes went wide, knowing you’d been caught. You didn’t have to ask what he was talking about to know you’d been caught, but you did anyway, “What do you mean?” You thought you were playing your part well, furrowing your eyebrows to truly emphasis your fake confusion.

“It feels as though you’ve been avoiding me.” Aaron says. His tone isn’t angry or even authoritative, but rather, disappointed. There’s a slight huff in the way he spoke. He didn’t give you a chance to defend yourself before he continued, “Which is fine if you so choose to do so. I would just like to know if it was because of something I did and if I could fix it. I want the team to function as well as it can, and I feel as though it would not if there was conflict between you and I.”

Aaron had to find a professional spin to throw his statement, knowing the professionalism of this situation was debatable at best. “Oh, sir,” you blushed, not really knowing what to say, “I don’t believe there is any conflict between us.” Your voice was formal, too formal. It was obvious you were under pressure. “So, what is it then?” He questioned.

You could feel yourself growing small under his intense stare. You could also feel the wet patch growing between your legs, making you slightly uncomfortable.

“You, uh, you kind of make nervous.” With your quiet voice and stutter, and the way your thighs squeezed together, it was easy for Aaron to pick up on the reason he made you nervous. His cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink instantaneously. “Oh,” his voice trailed off, followed by your quiet, “yeah.”

There was a few beats of silence before he cleared his throat. “Well, I’m glad to hear there’s no issues between us.” You nodded with his words, growing even more nervous. Your mouth was moving before your brain could catch up, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to, it’s just been a minute since I’ve, ya know, and I know you’re boss but I will be completely professional and this will not effect my work in or out of the field.”

While you mean to be assuring your boss that your attraction to him was no detriment to your work, you just admitted that it’s been a minute since you’ve had an orgasm. You needed to end this conversation quickly.

“If that’s all,” You said as you stood, “I have a few more reports to finish.” Aaron simply nodded, dismissing you back into the bullpen. You made a break for the bathroom, hoping to have a few minutes to collect yourself before facing the race of the team. You felt exposed, knowing you were entering a room of profilers after since a painful experience. You needed some time alone.

After a mini-breakdown, and cleaning up your messed up mascara, you made your way to your desk. Calm and collected. That’s all you had to be. Calm and collected.

Serial killers and other criminals had quieted down for the week, in an unlikely turn of events. You’d only had to travel for one day, quickly solving a kidnapping case and the finding the perpetrator. The week flew by swimmingly. Nothing odd had happened.

Until you opened your door Saturday morning.

You hadn’t ordered anything, that much you were sure of. Even if you did, you tended to shop at places with bright packaging that made you feel like you were opening a gift when it was delivered. This unsuspecting, plain box was not here on your accord, yet it had your name and address on it.

The FBI agent side of you flipped into protection mode, racing to grab your phone and dial up the one person you knew that could tell you what to do if there happened to be a bomb inside of the box. Derek Morgan. “Pretty girl, why are you facetiming me at 8:27am on a Saturday?” He teased with a smile on his face. No matter what time it was, Derek was ready to listen.

“I got this box and I don’t know what it is. I just want someone to be around when I open it.” You informed him, sitting down next to the box. You should probably be standing, just in case you had to make a run for it but you were too worried about getting it open to think that far ahead.

“Alright,” He said, urging you to open it. You nodded to him, setting up the phone so he could you see and the box in the frame. You carefully tore off the tape, and let out a sigh of relief when nothing happened when it moved. You lifted the flaps slowly, taking a loud gasp when you saw it was. You hoped Derek didn’t see, and moved quickly to pick up your phone to hang up before he could.

“It’s not a bomb! I’m good, thanks Derek!” You rushed, hanging up before he could say anything. Your eyes didn’t leave the box as you let your arms fall to your sides. Sitting inside of it was a small, pink rose toy. A vibrator. That you definitely didn’t order.

You grabbed the box, hoping none of your neighbors saw it. It’s not that masturbation was wrong or immoral or that you didn’t partake, it was just weird if the people around you were aware of your toys.

So, you made sure your door was tightly closed before putting the box on the table and digging through it. There was all the normal things, the vibrator itself, large bubble wrap, and a paper receipt with the name of the product: Intimately GG Rose Suction Simulator from Pink Cherry.

However, there was another piece of paper at the bottom of the box. It was a typed note that read, “I hope this helps us go back to normal. A.H”. You knew exactly one person with the initials A.H. so it wasn’t rocket science to figure out who had ordered you this sex toy.

You weren’t sure if you were more turned on or embarrassed.

Aaron was your boss. Your kind, protective, strong, hot, sexy, boss. But still your boss. You wondered if this is something he would’ve done for someone like Emily or Penelope if they’d been in your predicament. It clicked quickly that it definitely wasn’t, and that made you special in Aaron Hotchner’s eyes.

So, you made a mental note to give him a call, after you tried out your toy. Luckily, you had your cleaning solution and an old bottle of lube from your past encounters. You made quick work of getting the toy clean and finding a video to help you get yourself off.

Of course, the man in the video was a white man who was bit older, with broad shoulders and black hair. No coincidence there.

You started with your boobs, taking time to massage each one before pulling on and pinching them to get yourself warmed up. Between the sounds coming from the video and the excitement of finally having time to yourself, your hands didn’t take long to move downwards, tracing along the length of your body. One hand continued caressing your side as the other made its way to your core.

The thought of Aaron going out of his way to help you get off and the visual of a man who looked similar to him getting his dick sucked had you borderline dripping on your bedsheets as you used your hand to start toying with your clit. You started with small circles, matching the speed of the girl sucking Aaron’s lookalike’s dick.

You stayed like this for a while, allowing yourself to go slow, really take your time pleasuring yourself. The guy in the video had already finished on the girl’s tits by the time you reached for your rose toy. You didn’t need the visual anymore, perfectly crafting dirty scenarios of your unit chief in your head.

You started on low. There was gentle sucking on your clit as you imagined the way Aaron would kiss. He’s experienced, you know that for sure. You could imagine the way he’d start gentle, maybe even cupping your face as he pulled you close. He’d let you feel like you were in charge, before his tongue made its way inside your mouth. His dominant side would take over, using his body to press you against whatever surface you were sat on.

As you fantasized about his dominant side, you cranked up the toy to the next level. You let out a loud moan at the new feeling. Your free hand moved back to your breast, squeezing, while you did your best to imagine Aaron’s large hands doing it instead.

You could feel the coil in your tummy getting tighter and tighter as you imagined Aaron slowly stripping your body, dragging his hand along each and every curve. With a sharp pinch to your nipple and a cry of Aaron’s name, you came undone all over your rose toy.

You could feel your slick dripping down your hand as you worked yourself through your orgasm, making sure to enjoy it for as long as you could. You wished you could savor this feeling. It was the strongest, best orgasm you’d ever had. Nothing could compare to the euphoria you felt right now.

You flicked the toy off and sat it to the side once the feeling became too much. You couldn’t bring yourself to move from your position. “Fuck,” you breathed out, trying to relax the hard rise and fall of your chest.

Once you were able to relax, you made your way to the shower. You knew you had to call Aaron, but you needed to be much more relaxed than you were right now to have that conversation. The sting from the hot water helped ground you, allowing you to clear your mind. After you cleaned yourself, you cleaned the toy and put everything in your nightstand drawer for future use.

Then, you reached for your cellphone. You quickly found Aaron’s personal number and hit the call button before you could overthink what you were doing. He picked up on the second ring. “Hotchner,” he said, probably out of habit. “Hello, Aaron,” you smiled. This is the conversation you’d had with him in a while that didn’t make you feel nervous. “Hello,” he echoed with your name. You didn’t know, but he was smirking on the other side of the phone. He’d been waiting for this call.

“You sent me a gift?” You asked. “I did. Have you received it?” He wasn’t sure what grew more, his smirk or his cock. “I have. I’ve opened it and took it for a test run as well.” The way you two were beating around the bush was a turn on, but the way he sounded so self-assured, as if he knew what you were going to say, had you clenching your thighs together.

“How did it perform?” Aaron questioned, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table in front of him. This tightened the dress pants he was wearing against his hardened cock. “Very well,” You smiled. “I’m happy to hear that. I hope this is the end of all of your weird behavior.” Aaron chuckles. Just the sound of his laugh has you reaching your hand to squeeze the fat of your thighs.

“What weird behavior, Aaron?” You questioned, teasingly. This conversation is very different than any you’d had before, and it was turning you. You didn’t think it was possible with the strong orgasm you’d maybe an hour ago. But, Aaron was a special individual. He had that effect on you.

“You were avoiding me,” He scoffed. “I don’t know if I was. I think it was self-control,” You smiled, knowing you were baiting him. Without missing a beat, he took the bait, “And why did you need to practice self-control?”

Aaron leaned back in his chair, opting to press his hand against his cock instead of using the soft fabric to provide some kind of friction. He needed more, that much he knew.

“Because I was trying not to jump your bones, Aaron.” You breathed out. Your words had him squeezing his bulge, feeling like he could bust just from knowing you were attracted to him. “Fuck,” Aaron groaned into the phone. You giggled at his reaction, moving to press your hand against your core, again.

“Tell me about your toy,” He demanded, finally using the authoritarian tone that helped you get into this situation in the first time. “So you can touch yourself while I do?” You questioned, assuming he was in the same position as you. “Is that okay?” He questioned. “Of course it is, Aaron.” You promised, and used your permission as an excuse to unbutton his pants, and shove his hand under the waistband of his boxers.

As you started talking, he spread the precum, that’s been oozing from his pretty pink tip since he saw your contact name, along the length of his dick. “It was so good, Aaron. That was the best orgasm I’ve ever had.”

“Yeah?” Aaron encouraged you to keep going as he started stroking his cock. “Yeah,” You whined out, “I wish you could’ve seen me. My legs were shaking and I was leaking so much.” You smirked as you heard him groan in to the phone. His strokes had quickened in length. All he could picture was you spread out on his bed, cumming around his cock.

“What did you think about while you came?” You were surprised he was able to get the question out, especially because he only stuttered once. You wished you could see the way he squeezed his eyes together as he tugged on his cock. “You, obviously. I was thinking about your lips and your hands. I finished before I could get to the good part. I wanted to picture you fucking me from behind, pressing my face into the mattress.”

You were going to continue describing your fantasy to him, but he cut you off with a “Fuck!” as he came down his hands.

The line was silent for a few minutes before you spoke, “Hey, Aaron?” He hummed out a “yeah?”, before you asked, “Do you want to come over?”

“Give me ten minutes,” He promised, “and have the toy out.”

Well, you couldn’t refuse that.