#captive audience

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Captive Audience

Artist: Dmitry Burmak TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

#mtg #magic the gathering #tcg #$2.97 #dmitry burmak #captive audience #ravnica allegiance #enchantment

[hyperfixated-writer]

Grasping for Safety Chapter 8 be like

Graye: Working with these incompetent scouts is just horrible, they’re to blame for everything, and literally none of this is my fault-

Gus: Please, I’ll tell you where the galderstones are, just let me go, I have a family-

Graye: QUIET. None of this is my fault, because (as we all know) I am the most talented person in all of existence-

#guess you could say he's a #CAPTIVE audience #the owl house #toh #incorrect quotes #kay's grasping for safety #kay's quotes #adrian graye vernworth #gus porter

[bunnies-and-sunshine]

A captive audience.

River looks all fluffy and innocent here, but make no mistake--she has my hand pinned under her chin with a surprising amount of strength for such a tiny bunny. This is her not so subtle request for thumb noogies!

#bunny #bun #captive audience #gimme noogies #river the bunny

[loonfromq]

CAPTIVE AUDIENCE CAPTICR AUDIENCE CAPFITVE AUIDEINCE!!!!!1!!!

Thats what I swzs thinking ov! I saw a playthrough by, idk, friggin markiplier a zillion years a go and it remindedd me of genloss a lot.

it has taken me. NEARLY THREE HOURS. to find that fuck8ng game.

it has a similar concept to genloss: you're stuck in an inhumane tv show and are trying to escape. there's a twist at the end that im not going to spoil, but its a really cool game.

this isn't really relevant to my genloss masterposting hyperfixation but its reminded me of g3nloss so mucj and trying to figire out what this game was INFURIATING.

thanks you for bearing with me!

#genloss #generation loss #ranboo #captive audience #video game #loons toons

[mightypamonster]

#flapjack #captain k'nuckles #captive audience #sales pitch #webinar #training #infosec #it services

[manyblinkinglights]

anyway I love interviews. FREE ATTENTION

#CAPTIVE AUDIENCE

[perpetuallyvvperplexed]

for anyone who like reylo dark fics or just dark fics in general, i suggest reading Captive Audience by @MurderofCrowss. it’s absolutely brilliant and well done! also they have made amazing fanart, check some out on twitter! ^^

#reylo #reylo fan art #reylo fanfic rec #kylo ren #ben solo #rey of nowhere #rey of jakku #rey #dark!reylo #star wars #kylo ren x rey #rey x kylo ren #rey x ben solo #reylo fandom #kylo x rey #captive audience #murderofcrowss

[sourkitsch]

there is literally nothing going on at work I explained the plot of The Name of The Rose to my equally as bored co-worker

#captive audience

[yamimichi]

There's a church that operates a food pantry here that gets super preachy at those who come in need. Oh they'll give you plenty of food -- after you sit and let this woman preach at you for awhile. And she'll ask you questions. If your answer isn't what she believes she will tell you that you are wrong.

I won't go there anymore. I don't care how good the food is. Besides it's too far away from where we live anyway. But that's not the point. I refuse to let that busy-body preachy woman talk to me again.

Oh she talks to Jesus every day. And he answers her.

If anyone else heard a voice that wasn't there, they'd be called psychotic.

To the best of my recollection, I thought Jesus taught his followers to feed the poor. Not feed the poor after you incessantly preach at them and tell them their own religious beliefs are wrong.

And then there was the church we (as homeless shelter residents) went to every Friday night for dinner. They wanted to "feed our souls" as well as our stomachs. So before dinner was served, they'd preach and play their Christian music etc. Our souls didn't need fed. Our souls were fine. Our stomachs needed fed.

#food pantry #churches who give food #preachy #if you don't believe the same thing you are wrong #i went to catholic school for 12 long years #i don't need you preaching at me #captive audience #just feed us

[turtleblogatlast]

AU where Leo is trapped in the Prison Dimension for months instead of minutes and the only way he gets by with his sanity intact is through recording himself talking to his wrist comm.

When they finally manage to get Leo back and make him rest up to heal, Donnie can’t help but listen to the recordings left behind.

He’s not sure what exactly he’s expecting, only that his subconscious is screaming at him that it has to be heartbreaking, that it has to be torturous.

Instead, what Donnie is subject to is a full thousand hours’ worth of Jupiter Jim and Lou Jitsu crossover fanfiction. More than one part in the series. Spanning well over a million words.

(The worst part is that it’s actually good.)

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt headcanons #donnie keeps the comms going on in the background as he works #when he gets to the end he’s like what the hell…where’s the rest #donnie: leo where’s part nine #leo barely cognizant after not needing sleep for months: whuh- #donnie: you can’t leave it at a cliffhanger. leo. leo where’s the next part. #listen leo has a great memory for his special interests this is CANON plus he’s a great talker so he would totally be able to do this frfr #whenever he needs to be quiet he’s SILENT but otherwise he’s regaling the exploits of his idols to the captive audience that is The Photo #sometimes Krang sneaks up on him and just listens to him talk like ???? #it starts both as leo trying to comfort himself with his favorite things PLUS comfort himself with thoughts of his father #as splinter makes his own crossover fanfiction when sick lol plus he’s Literally Lou Jitsu #and yes krang ALSO gets a bit invested #leo notices the reduction of Ouch but hey more time for rambling fanfic for him 👍 #idk leo’s a damn good actor/liar/planner/schemer and I genuinely think that can pivot into storytelling so well #the literal second mikey’s hands heal donnie zooms to his side with hand stabilizers and a request to draw ‘scene 82 from recording 3’ #mikey’s like what #so obvs now HE needs to listen as he works #he too gets invested #he comes across raph who mentions having trouble sleeping #mikey: have I got the podcast fanfic for you! #it only somewhat helps raph sleep #somewhat bc sometimes he forces himself to stay awake to hear the rest #yes these recordings go to the whole fam and leo is none the wiser #they don’t even mean to hide it it just never comes up lol #it’s only when donnie FINALLY makes it to the end of the recordings that he confronts leo to continue the story #leo: oH YOU HEARD ALL THAT HUH-

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.

The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.

Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":

a million-­armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.

But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.

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/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

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#pluralistic #prison #prison-tech #marty hench #the bezzle #securus #captive audiences #St Clair County #human rights #prisoners rights #viapath #gtl #global tellink #Genesee County #michigan #guillotine watch #carceral state #corruption

[martyrbat]

well maybe if you look at bernie wrightson's frankenstein art youll calm down!

#posts made with a target audience of only me (<- guy whos been admiring bernie's frankenstein art & finding rarer pieces for a few hours) #the amount of detail and emotion that captures the growing anguish of the story in each piece and how it was a passion project.... #no one was doing it like him! #also been looking at his swamp thing art and like. god i need to read it theres something so organic and captivating by it

[seo-changbinnies]

gifs of my sunshine (159/∞)

#stray kids #felix #lee felix #felixleenet #createskz #bystay #staysource #jypartists #yongbok #lee yongbok #stray kids gifs #stray kids felix #skz #my.gifs #mysunshine #if he was my doll i'd dress him just like this frfr #also i want these glasses #also my grandma came into my room to gossip about my second(?) cousin #and she knows i'm a captive audience bc i cannot move out of bed #yes grammie that's craaaazyyy now lemme gif my pixelated kpop boy

[movieposters1]

#captive audience

[starsinursa]

i've seen a lot of different ideas in fics where morpheus has innate knowledge of when hob is dreaming about him, or where he can always see the dreams, or where he's automatically summoned to dreams about himself, etc

but i think i prefer the idea of some poor long-suffering low-level schmuck of a dream who's been forced to take on the appearance of morpheus over and over again for the last 600 years because apparently that's what this particular human wants to dream about (and fuck humans don't typically live this long do they?) and they're too aggrieved and mortified to ever think of telling their literal king about it

#dreamling #the sandman #this poor dream has been captive audience to so so so many dreams #about cuddling in tavern beds and arguing in the rain and shakespeare getting punched and more unspeakable things #obvs i finally watched the sandman #don't mind me i'm just picking up new fandoms and hyperfixations don't mind if i do #apologies if this idea is already somewhere - i'm new here #hob gadling