#customer care fraud

[kbc-headoffice]

the Truth about KBC Head Office: Real or Fake?

Introduction:

Kaun Banega Crorepati has been a beloved Indian game show that not only entertains its viewers but also gives them a chance to win big. With its popularity, however, come rumors and questions about the authenticity of its head office and contact numbers. In this article, we will dig deeper into the matter and reveal the truth behind KBC Head Office in Mumbai and its associated numbers.

KBC Office Mumbai: A Gateway to Million-Dollar Dreams

Located in the bustling city of Mumbai, the KBC Head Office serves as the nerve center of this iconic game show. It is responsible for managing participant registrations, conducting auditions, and overseeing the overall production of the show. With its distinct address, the KBC Office in Mumbai stands tall as the platform that can turn ordinary individuals into millionaires.

KBC Office Number: Sorting Fact from Fiction

Numerous contact numbers linked to the KBC Head Office have circulated both online and offline. While some are genuine, others are malicious attempts to deceive innocent people and exploit their dreams of becoming rich overnight. To clarify the truth, it is crucial to only rely on the official and verified KBC helpline numbers, such as the KBC Live Contact Number and KBC Toll-Free Number, provided on the official KBC website and promotions.

Beware of KBC Fraud: Protecting Yourself from Scammers

Unfortunately, scammers often try to take advantage of KBC's popularity by impersonating KBC representatives and asking unsuspecting individuals for their personal and financial details. To ensure your safety, it is vital to be cautious and vigilant. Remember, the KBC Head Office will never ask you to deposit money or share sensitive information. If you receive any suspicious calls or messages, report them immediately to the authorities.

Who is the KBC Manager? Unraveling the Mystery

One intriguing question that arises is, who is the mastermind behind Kaun Banega Crorepati? The KBC Manager, whose identity remains a secret, holds the power to transform the show into a life-changing experience for contestants. While the manager's identity remains unknown to the public, their dedication to maintaining the integrity of KBC is unquestionable.

Verifying KBC's Authenticity: Seeking Clarity

The uncertainty surrounding KBC's authenticity and the rise of fraudulent activities are understandable concerns. To address these doubts, KBC has taken steps to bolster its credibility. Apart from broadcasting the show nationwide, KBC has embraced digital platforms, including WhatsApp and Imo, to keep participants informed. However, it is always recommended to cross-check information with official sources to ensure your security.

Conclusion:

As Kaun Banega Crorepati continues to inspire millions, it is important to separate fact from fiction. The KBC Head Office in Mumbai is undeniably real, but one must remain cautious of fraudulent activities and scammers attempting to exploit innocent individuals. By relying on authorized contact numbers and reporting suspicious incidents promptly, participants can protect themselves from falling victim to KBC fraud. Remember, if you receive a call claiming to be from the KBC Head Office, conduct proper verification before sharing any personal or financial details. Stay alert, chase your dreams, and participate responsibly in this thrilling game show.

#kbc head office #kbc office mumbai #kbc office number #real kbc helpline number #kbc contact number #kbc registration fees #kbc head office number #kbc helpline number #jio kbc head office number #kbc live contact number #how do i contact kbc? #how do i send a message to kbc? #kbc toll free number #k b c head office number #who is the kbc manager? #kaun banega crorepati whatsapp number #kaun banega crorepati customer care number #kaun banega crorepati contact number #kbc fraud #kbc is real or fake show? #kbc is a real show #kbc head office whatsapp number mumbai #kbc fake caller #kbc fraud caller #where is kbc located #imo kbc head office

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What kind of bubble is AI?

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "What Kind of Bubble is AI?" All economic bubbles are hugely destructive, but some of them leave behind wreckage that can be salvaged for useful purposes, while others leave nothing behind but ashes:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Think about some 21st century bubbles. The dotcom bubble was a terrible tragedy, one that drained the coffers of pension funds and other institutional investors and wiped out retail investors who were gulled by Superbowl Ads. But there was a lot left behind after the dotcoms were wiped out: cheap servers, office furniture and space, but far more importantly, a generation of young people who'd been trained as web makers, leaving nontechnical degree programs to learn HTML, perl and python. This created a whole cohort of technologists from non-technical backgrounds, a first in technological history. Many of these people became the vanguard of a more inclusive and humane tech development movement, and they were able to make interesting and useful services and products in an environment where raw materials – compute, bandwidth, space and talent – were available at firesale prices.

Contrast this with the crypto bubble. It, too, destroyed the fortunes of institutional and individual investors through fraud and Superbowl Ads. It, too, lured in nontechnical people to learn esoteric disciplines at investor expense. But apart from a smattering of Rust programmers, the main residue of crypto is bad digital art and worse Austrian economics.

Or think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.

AI is definitely a bubble. As I write in the column, if you fly into SFO and rent a car and drive north to San Francisco or south to Silicon Valley, every single billboard is advertising an "AI" startup, many of which are not even using anything that can be remotely characterized as AI. That's amazing, considering what a meaningless buzzword AI already is.

So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? To be sure, there's a legion of technologists who are learning Tensorflow and Pytorch. These nominally open source tools are bound, respectively, to Google and Facebook's AI environments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed – collecting, labeling and processing training data – but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There's a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be).

Charging teenaged D&D players $10 month for an image generator that creates epic illustrations of their characters fighting monsters is low value and very risk tolerant (teenagers aren't overly worried about six-fingered swordspeople with three pupils in each eye). Charging scammy spamfarms $500/month for a text generator that spits out dull, search-algorithm-pleasing narratives to appear over recipes is likewise low-value and highly risk tolerant (your customer doesn't care if the text is nonsense). Charging visually impaired people $100 month for an app that plays a text-to-speech description of anything they point their cameras at is low-value and moderately risk tolerant ("that's your blue shirt" when it's green is not a big deal, while "the street is safe to cross" when it's not is a much bigger one).

Morganstanley doesn't talk about the trillions the AI industry will be worth some day because of these applications. These are just spinoffs from the main event, a collection of extremely high-value applications. Think of self-driving cars or radiology bots that analyze chest x-rays and characterize masses as cancerous or noncancerous.

These are high value – but only if they are also risk-tolerant. The pitch for self-driving cars is "fire most drivers and replace them with 'humans in the loop' who intervene at critical junctures." That's the risk-tolerant version of self-driving cars, and it's a failure. More than $100b has been incinerated chasing self-driving cars, and cars are nowhere near driving themselves:

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

Quite the reverse, in fact. Cruise was just forced to quit the field after one of their cars maimed a woman – a pedestrian who had not opted into being part of a high-risk AI experiment – and dragged her body 20 feet through the streets of San Francisco. Afterwards, it emerged that Cruise had replaced the single low-waged driver who would normally be paid to operate a taxi with 1.5 high-waged skilled technicians who remotely oversaw each of its vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html

The self-driving pitch isn't that your car will correct your own human errors (like an alarm that sounds when you activate your turn signal while someone is in your blind-spot). Self-driving isn't about using automation to augment human skill – it's about replacing humans. There's no business case for spending hundreds of billions on better safety systems for cars (there's a human case for it, though!). The only way the price-tag justifies itself is if paid drivers can be fired and replaced with software that costs less than their wages.

What about radiologists? Radiologists certainly make mistakes from time to time, and if there's a computer vision system that makes different mistakes than the sort that humans make, they could be a cheap way of generating second opinions that trigger re-examination by a human radiologist. But no AI investor thinks their return will come from selling hospitals that reduce the number of X-rays each radiologist processes every day, as a second-opinion-generating system would. Rather, the value of AI radiologists comes from firing most of your human radiologists and replacing them with software whose judgments are cursorily double-checked by a human whose "automation blindness" will turn them into an OK-button-mashing automaton:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

The profit-generating pitch for high-value AI applications lies in creating "reverse centaurs": humans who serve as appendages for automation that operates at a speed and scale that is unrelated to the capacity or needs of the worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

But unless these high-value applications are intrinsically risk-tolerant, they are poor candidates for automation. Cruise was able to nonconsensually enlist the population of San Francisco in an experimental murderbot development program thanks to the vast sums of money sloshing around the industry. Some of this money funds the inevitabilist narrative that self-driving cars are coming, it's only a matter of when, not if, and so SF had better get in the autonomous vehicle or get run over by the forces of history.

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren't, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn't matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn't matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn't even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites:

https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509

These applications are all riding on the coattails of the big AI models that are being built and operated at a loss in order to be profitable. If they remain unprofitable long enough, the private sector will no longer pay to operate them.

Now, there are smaller models, models that stand alone and run on commodity hardware. These would persist even after the AI bubble bursts, because most of their costs are setup costs that have already been borne by the well-funded companies who created them. These models are limited, of course, though the communities that have formed around them have pushed those limits in surprising ways, far beyond their original manufacturers' beliefs about their capacity. These communities will continue to push those limits for as long as they find the models useful.

These standalone, "toy" models are derived from the big models, though. When the AI bubble bursts and the private sector no longer subsidizes mass-scale model creation, it will cease to spin out more sophisticated models that run on commodity hardware (it's possible that Federated learning and other techniques for spreading out the work of making large-scale models will fill the gap).

So what kind of bubble is the AI bubble? What will we salvage from its wreckage? Perhaps the communities who've invested in becoming experts in Pytorch and Tensorflow will wrestle them away from their corporate masters and make them generally useful. Certainly, a lot of people will have gained skills in applying statistical techniques.

But there will also be a lot of unsalvageable wreckage. As big AI models get integrated into the processes of the productive economy, AI becomes a source of systemic risk. The only thing worse than having an automated process that is rendered dangerous or erratic based on AI integration is to have that process fail entirely because the AI suddenly disappeared, a collapse that is too precipitous for former AI customers to engineer a soft landing for their systems.

This is a blind spot in our policymakers debates about AI. The smart policymakers are asking questions about fairness, algorithmic bias, and fraud. The foolish policymakers are ensnared in fantasies about "AI safety," AKA "Will the chatbot become a superintelligence that turns the whole human race into paperclips?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

But no one is asking, "What will we do if" – when – "the AI bubble pops and most of this stuff disappears overnight?"

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/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

tom_bullock (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombullock/25173469495/

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

#pluralistic #ai #economics #business #hype #bubbles #bubblenomics #residue

[gothhabiba]

Rabat - A Lidl franchise in France has been marred in controversy following accusations from customers who suggested that the supermarket has been mislabeling Israeli products as Moroccan to mitigate the impact of boycotts against Israeli products.

Lidl, the German international discount retailer chain, is operating in many locations worldwide, notably in Europe and the US.

Many people have shared a video of a customer warning other clients to pay attention to the labels while shopping.

The video documents the customer showing avocado products labeled as “from Morocco.” Upon inspecting the box, the label shows that the product is actually from Israel.

Upon fact-checking, one of the videos was discovered to date back to February and older tweets from 2020 resurfaced, expressing similar concerns from customers.

Many other netizens have asserted that the issue is still persisting. 

“Same thing [happend to me] this morning at the Lidl in Vallauris in 06 - avocados from Morocco on the store label, and on the avocado, an Israeli label. These scammers, you really have to be careful before buying,” an X user wrote on November 8. “I think there are plenty of stores doing this to sell their stocks.”

Another X user also posted a video about the situation, calling on fellow customers to be “wary of false displays in Lidl ad Carrefour supermarkets.”

“The boycott is working so well that these supermarkets label products as coming from Africa or Morocco instead of Israel. Check the packaging and report it to fraud control authorities,” the user added.

(November 10, 2023)

#France #Palestine #israel #BDS

[teethrotter]

i sound like a used car salesman every time i have to introduce myself to the conservatory students

#*customer service voice* hi i'm the stage manager and i'm here to make your life a little bit easier ! #so just let me know if you need anything :) #meanwhile internally i'm just. 🕳️ #i work in the evening after already being on-campus for 12+ hours sometimes. probably have not eaten that day and dragging my corpse around. #extremely mentally ill and caring less + less about hiding it. etc. #it's really funny every time i'm just oh you fraud. they'll think you're some bubbly motherfucker #anyway it's time for work i'm so tired #🦷

[fraudaware1]

এয়ারটেল পেমেন্ট ব্যাঙ্ক একাউন্টে কেওয়াইসি আপডেটের নাম করে প্রতারকরা কাস্টমার কেয়ার সেজে ফোন করে এবং কাস্টমার এর ফোনে একটি ওটিপি পাঠায় এই ওটিপি প্রতারকরা জানতে চায় এবং একবার জেনে গেলেই ব্যাংক একাউন্ট ফাঁকা করে দেয়

#what is benefits of airtel payment bank #airtel payment bank frauds #airtel payment bank complaint #airtel payment bank customer care number #airtel payment bank aadhaar link #airtel payment bank near me

[best24news]

गूगल पर कस्टमर केयर का नंबर सर्च करना पडा महंगा..कर दिया खाता साफ

गूगल पर कस्टमर केयर का नंबर सर्च करना पडा महंगा..कर दिया खाता साफ

रेेवाडी: एक युवक को गूगल पर कस्टमर केयर का नंबर सर्च करना महंगा पड गया। कस्टकर केयर पर डाले नंबर किसी शामिर ठग का था। जिसने सहायता करने का झांसा उसके खाते से 47 हजार रूपए निकाल लिए। Haryana News: स्टाफ का अभाव स्कूल पर जडा ताला पुलिस को दी शिकायत में गांव मोहदीनपुर निवासी विनोद कुमार ने कुछ दिन पहले फ्लिपकार्ट से एक बैटरी ऑर्डर की थी, लेकिन कुछ दिनों बाद बैटरी खराब हो गई। इसकी शिकायत के लिए उसने…

View On WordPress

#Fraud news #कस्टमर केयर #CYBER CRIME #Searching the number of customer care on the street was expensive

[incorrectbatfam]

Can we please see Steph actually giving Margie a reverse discount.

Margie: I don't care about your stupid policy or if you're the assistant manager. I'm the customer and the customer is always right. Now honor my coupon or I'm calling Batman on you for fraud.

Steph: Okay.

Steph: *scans the coupon*

Steph: Your new total is $125, up 25% from the original $100.

Steph: That coupon was recalled for a reason.

#see previous posts #stephanie brown #spoiler #margie #batfamily #batfam #batgirls #batkids #batsiblings #batman #batman family #incorrect batfamily quotes #incorrect quotes #incorrect dc quotes #dc comics #wayne family adventures #webtoon #headcanon

[darkfictionjude]

They say that small towns hide the darkest secrets. At least that’s what your mother always said about this one. You thought she meant how Father Simmons has a well-known drinking problem, how Mrs. Gladstone’s son looks more like his uncle than his father or that the mayor has been in power for 15 years because of voting fraud. Things everyone knows. Human Things.

But now as partially eaten bodies have been left in alarmingly rates all over this small town the world has no record of, you now know she meant something else.

Play as peculiar and disturbed individual surnamed Crown after the very town your ancestor founded, returning after a traumatic event two years prior that landed you in a psychiatric hospital. As your comeback coincides with a rapid increase of disappearances you find yourself embroiled in a town conspiracy, a past that’s more alive than ever and the ever shifting self interested motives of those who claim to be your allies.

Who can you trust? What’s the truth behind your family? What are things that you see in the dark?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what shapes monsters come in.

Customize your MC from looks to gender

Reveal your sister’s disappearance

Rely on a group of complimentary polar opposites to find out the mystery and save your life

Befriend or romance a choice of three from enemies to lovers, childhood friends or an eternal admirer

Rating: 18+

Crown - Playlist

You. A person with some personal issues, some family issues and some murder issues.

Imre Duran - Playlist

Quintessential good-boy-next-door. The most most-liked teenager in town. As son of the mayor and pageant queen, Imre has an image cultivated by him and maintained through his status which is why his back door activities are his cherished secrets. He is rather eager to help you… isn’t he?

Nia Mir - Playlist

In the very real and present high school hierarchy Nia would be one of the nobles. As a wannabe doctor with a loathed father and an absent mother her dream is to leave behind this backwater town and all it’s weird phenomena that she doesn’t care to know more of. She liked you, once.

Lorcan Stark - Playlist

Every town needs its bad boy and so Lorcan has aimed to be as every bit worthy of that title. The shunned son of a murderer and his victim, he is not really thought of as having a future beyond prison and petty crime especially in a town like this. You don’t remember a time when he didn’t hate you.

Salvatore Crown

Your brother. The heir to whatever fortune your family has left and the only one of the family who seems to like you.

Orla Crown - Playlist

Your sister. No one ever knew what she thinking, a closed box full of unknowns. You knew she kept things, especially from you.

Mayor Duran

Seems like every other politician. Oddly enough no one ever really sees him, an entity watching over the town.

Mother

She never acted like one to any of her children. She’s never sober anymore.

Mrs. Mir

Disappeared years ago without a trance. No one remembers her first name. Was thought to have been clinically insane.

Demo (updated 3/26) | Spotify | Patreon

Prologue, episodes 1, 2, 3

#twine #twine-if #twine wip #wip #if wip #cyoa #90s #romance #horror #supernatural #interactive fiction #interactive novel

[octuscle]

I want to turn myself into a twinky fuck toy for a wealthy man. Can chronviac help me with that?

Well, as they say, everything's bigger in Texas… I'm a junior partner in a large New York asset management firm. We take care of the high net worth clients. To get into our client file, you have to have over USD 100 million in free liquidity. Our clients are demanding. But we are the best. And we do everything for our customers. Really EVERYTHING!

When I took over the clients of a colleague who had retired a month ago, I thought Chuck Tex was a stage name. Until I had my first appointment with him. His record was more than impressive. Heir to old oil and cattle nobility. Classic career of the Texas oil barons. School in New England, studied in Paris, Oxford and Zurich, founded his first start-up company at the age of 20. And sold at 25 for USD 500 million. Now in his mid-30s, he had not yet inherited a cent from his family, but thanks to his excellent education and connections, he had already amassed a fortune on a par with that of his old man. I expected… Actually, I had no idea what I was expecting… But I certainly didn't expect this:

Chuck looked like a porn star. Or a marriage fraud. Or just like a man who I couldn't wait to throw me on the bed and fuck me mercilessly. His handshake was firm, but finely dosed just before the pain threshold. His gaze could certainly cut through steel plates. But I was a professional, I kept my composure. After I asked him what I could do for him, he got straight to the point. First of all, he needed some cash for his stay in New York. USD 10,000 would be enough. Gladly 100 dollar bills. But hot off the press, please. That was no problem. I sent a short memo to my assistant and she would take care of it. But the real reason for his visit was a project in Greenwich Village. He had bought a few buildings there that he was renovating. His aim was to restore the Village to its former charm. That's why he wanted to create cheap apartments, studios and stores and eliminate expensive office space. The whole thing was not intended as an investment, more as a hobby. A kind of gay and creative Disneyland. I briefly wondered why I wasn't actually a billionaire… And then I asked Chuck what my role was. Whether I could help with the financing or with saving taxes.

Chuck just grinned. No, saving taxes wouldn't fit in with his understanding of patriotism. And he would have financed it all with his last start-up exit. But he would need someone to take care of the real estate. Someone to ensure the right tenant mix. Someone to give his studio apartment the right finishing touches. I briefly went through my network in my mind. I had a gay acquaintance who owned a number of bars and restaurants. And I also knew a good project developer. And one of my school friends was a hip interior designer. I smiled and said I probably had just the people he needed. Chuck smiled back. It made my heart stop. He didn't want anyone from my network. He wanted me. I was about to say that I was flattered, but that I wasn't available for such projects right now. But instead I said "Of course, Daddy". Did I want to accompany him to the construction site? "If I may, Daddy!" At that moment, my assistant came in with a bundle of freshly pressed banknotes. Chuck smiled and said he needed me for the rest of the day. Please cancel all my appointments. I nodded to her and followed Chuck like a dog to its master.

In his limousine, Chuck asked me if I had ever been to Texas. I answered in the negative. But the boots I was wearing looked authentic. Yeah, they were my pride and joy. But I wouldn't have ridden a bull yet. I shook my head and giggled like a schoolgirl. Chuck kneaded the bulge in his pants and said that I would definitely be fucked by a bull today. I only got out a "Thank you, Daddy". Chuck let me sit on his lap. He undid another button of his silk shirt and exposed his right nipple. Like a puppy on its mother's teat, I began to suckle. Chuck kneaded my bulge and said that I was a good boy.

The car came to a halt in the second row in front of an old brick building. The walls were covered in high-quality graffiti. There was a closed table dance bar downstairs and some kind of jewelry store upstairs. Some kind of jewelry on display. Made of stainless steel. On closer inspection, piercing jewelry, cock rings and stainless steel dildos. I looked in the shop window like a child in the window of a candy store. Chuck took my hand, pulled me into the stairwell and told me that I could choose something later if I was good. He stroked the long hair on the back of my neck. I love my Mullet. I look a bit like the young cowboys on Daddy's Daddy's farm.

We had just arrived at Chuck's empty apartment when I got down on my knees in front of him and unbuttoned his pants. "First you strip for me, boy," Chuck ordered. He tossed me a cowboy hat that was in a closet. "Everything but your briefs, boots and hat!". Eagerly awaiting the reward, I did everything I was told to do. "And now lube yourself up". He threw me a bottle. And I did as I was told. I could feel my hard-earned muscles disappearing. I felt younger and younger. Although it was hard as steel, my cock was getting smaller and smaller. "I think you need a little more decoration, boy," Chuck said and put a chain on me. Satisfied, he looked at me as I sat on the floor and could hardly wait for my reward.

Chuck took his boner out of his pants. And I leaned back in anticipation. I wanted to be a good houseboy. And today was the housewarming party.

Chuck's pic found @mensuited, yours @hellishin

#male tf #muscle tf #reality change #age reduction #top to bottom #twink tf #redneck tf

[barsformars]

Lemonade

//

g - pure fluff

p - wooyoung x f! reader

w.c - 1023

t.w - none

c - you help out at wooyoung’s brother school carnival and get mistaken for his parents.

a.n - idk what inspired me to write this but i think its quite cute and i want a love like this frfr

//

it’s two in the afternoon on a saturday and you somehow find yourself in an indoor sports hall surrounded by parents and their elementary school children for their school induction carnival.

“so why am i here again?” you leaned back to whisper into wooyoung’s ears, smiling at the group of young teachers walking past your lemonade stand as they gushed about how they weren’t aware kyungmin parents were this young and beautiful.

“please give lots of love to kyungmin!” wooyoung waved at them with a bright smile which was reciprocated with even bigger smiles and head nods. “seems like kyungmin’s going to be popular,” wooyoung commented. the teachers weren’t the only ones, other parents seemed to share the same sentiment.

you pushed wooyoung’s fringe to the side, clearing his view as he sliced up more lemons. he surely is very handsome, and so you said, “i think you’re the one they care about.”

he laughed under his breath, creasing the corners of his eyes and revealing his dimples clearer than ever. “well, kyungmin is lucky to have such a good looking brother,” wooyoung added on.

you pouted upon hearing that as you pointed at the badge you had pinned on your shirt — ‘kyungmin’s mom’. wooyoung reasoned that they didn’t have time to get it reprinted since his parents had urgent matters to attend to. they felt bad pulling out last minute since it was also on volunteer basis and the school needed as much support as they could get. you had suggested writing over it but he whined that it would be ugly, and also harmless even if they mistook the both of you for his parents.

“i feel like i’m committing fraud,”you confessed softly, “this is the first time the parents are meeting each other, and we aren’t even actually them.”

wooyoung was about to lean in for a peck when a customer arrived at the stall with her daughter, ordering two cups of iced lemonade. he quickly puts on his million-dollar smile, his voice laced with honey as he sweetly makes small talk. “what class is our pretty jihyun in?” he asked, his gentle eyes shifting from her name tag to her little face.

you did your part by pouring the drinks and covering the lids before passing them to wooyoung, who very swiftly wrote a cute note on the cups while still holding the conversation.

“kyungmin eomma, your husband is so sweet, you’re so lucky!” the lady called out to you. you awkwardly thanked her and you can already see the weird faces wooyoung was making at you from the corner of your eyes.

once the lady and her daughter had walked away, you pushed his cheek towards the other side. you didn’t want him to notice how your own were starting to flush. you didn’t want to admit that you enjoyed having wooyoung being referred to as your husband, especially not when neither of you have ever brought up tying the knot yet.

“so i was going to say that you’re basically kyungmin’s honorary mother at this point,” wooyoung said softly from behind you, his hands resting on the side of your hips. he attempted to peek at your face but you shunned, flustered. you still turned to face him, reminded by the fact that this was not the best place for public displays of affection.

“why are you blushing so hard?” wooyoung questioned, genuinely surprised. he had started to think you were getting immune to his ways of affection.

you cupped your face with your hands, wanting to gauge just how red you were — you were burning hot. it did not help that wooyoung was guessing what exactly got you feeling this way, and getting it on the second try.

“you like it when people call me your husband?” he teased. wooyoung knew you long enough to tell that you meant a ‘yes’ despite you pushing him away again. “do you want to be referred to as my wife?”

you shot him a look. it doesn’t hit the same.

“alright, i’ll settle with a one-sided marriage then,” wooyoung joked. “you have yet to proposed though, by the way.”

“would you want to marry me?” your gaze locked with his. if he was serious about it, you would be down for it too.

“of course,” wooyoung replied without hesitation, reaching out to take your hands in his. “i was just kidding earlier on though, i want to be the one proposing,” he clarified.

he had been thinking about bringing this topic up for quite some time but the two of you have been too busy pursuing your own careers. but wooyoung realised that if he kept letting that excuse stop him, it would never happen till he retires. he’s not going to make you wait that long, even if you were willing.

you swiftly checked your surroundings before sneaking a peck on his lips, “thank you for always wanting me in your life, i feel very loved.” you may have refused his initial invitation to help out at the carnival with him but it didn’t mean that you didn’t appreciate it. you were always the first person on his mind, and always the person he chooses to go to regardless of the matter.

“and thank you for wanting to be with me, i love you, lots,” wooyoung replied before engulfing you in his arms. he couldn’t wait to live out the rest of his life with you, going on exciting adventures or staying at home accompanying each other in silence or doing simple things like slicing up and juicing lemons in an elementary school’s indoor sports hall.

“you know what they say about making lemonade when life throws you lemons,” wooyoung said as he suppressed a smirk.

“uhuh…”

“what do you do then when life gives you love?”

you slapped him on the shoulder and lightly shoved him to the side. “this is not the best place for that kind of jokes, woo!”

#ateez fluff #ateez fanfic #ateez imagines #ateez scenarios #ateez oneshots #ateez drabbles #ateez writings #ateez reactions #ateez #wooyoung fluff #ateez wooyoung

[hhayden222]

money, power, glory.

backstory: you and Ellie are frauds, you robbed a company bankrupt two years ago, but fooled the public to think that the two of you won the lottery. now the two of you are famous.

📼 = day

🎞️ = recordings / confessions you make

tw: toxic relationship, cruel language, drug mentions, anger issues (e), bad writing.

────────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────────

────────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────────

📼 1

“What the fuck were you thinking? Talking about our money to the press. You put that out there for the whole fucking world to see, are you a fucking idiot?” Ellie yells at you angrily as she paces back and forth in the living room.

“I didn’t know what to say… I’m sure that no one will find out it neither of us says anything…” you say to Ellie, trying to convince her that everything is going well.

“Let’s just… Go to sleep. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” You say as you get up from the couch and walk over to turn the lights off.

After you turn off the lights, and the living room is dim lit with the only source of light being the streetlights that slightly bypass the curtains, you start to make your way upstairs.

“Goodnight, I love you.” Ellie says in a flat tone as she lies down in bed.

“Wait, just give me a few minutes. I forgot to start the laundry.” you say as you get up from bed.

“Alright.” Ellie says quietly as she adjusts the position she’s laying in.

You start to make your way downstairs, and after you arrive at the bottom of the steps, you walk down to the basement.

As you walk into the basement, you turn the lights on, and pull your camera out of a box that is hidden in plain sight.

🎞️ 1

“A few years back, Ellie and I robbed a company bankrupt… I guess you could call it a scam, but either way, I’m scared of anyone finding out. If anyone found out, I’d be in prison for life… And so would Ellie.” you admit as you sit in front of your camera.

“When we robbed the company we were just stupid teenagers, and I know it doesn’t justify what we did… But we didn’t know what we were doing.” you explain with a guilty tone.

“We might have shit tons of money, but we’re fucking miserable. Overtime, all the guilt builds up until you can’t handle it anymore. That’s how Ellie and I got into drugs and alcohol. There’s really no going back.” you say.

“And, the drugs… Ellie and I also deal with them. But we make the customers sign an NDA before we can sell to them… We sell every drug you could ever imagine.” you admit, “We sell them at this abandoned mall that's a few miles away from our house. If we sold them closer, we'd have a higher chance of getting caught.” you explain.

“Babe, when are you coming up to bed? What are you doing? Laundry doesn't take that long.” Ellie calls from upstairs.

“Uhm- nothing-nothing… I’ll be upstairs in a few seconds.” you say in a panicked voice as you quickly take the tape out of the camera and hide it in your pajama pants.

📼 2

“We gotta do one of those ‘73 questions’ interviews with vogue in a few hours. we’re letting some random dude with a camera in our house, don’t fucking do anything stupid, you understand me?” Ellie says harshly as the two of you sit down at the dining table eating breakfast, Ellie barely even touching her food.

“Yes… I understand.” you reply quietly as you take a sip of your orange juice. “Good, now let’s go get ready.” Ellie says as she starts to collect the dishes she used whilst eating. “But i’m still eati—“ you start but get cut off by Ellie “I don’t fucking care, go get ready.” Ellie replies, her empty but intense eyes piercing through yours.

-30 minutes later

“Hey, Ellie. Can you help me with my necklace?” you say in a chill-soft voice as you stand in front of your body-sized mirror. “Yeah, of course” Ellie says as she walks up behind you and helps you put on your necklace. “Y’look so pretty, baby.” Ellie says as she smiles at you through the mirror.

“Thanks, Els.” you say nervously as you blush at Ellies comment.

—

a/n: PART 2 OR WHAT? i have no much more to say except for what’s in the hashtags…. go check the hashtags babygirl…..

#this has been sitting in my drafts since like forever #and i barley post anymore… #so i’ll just leave this here………. #ellie williams #ellie the last of us #ellie tlou #the last of us #the last of us part 2 #tlou #tlou part 2 #ellie x reader #ellie williams tlou #tlou ellie #dealer ellie #ellie x fem reader #ellie williams hcs #ellie williams x reader #ellie williams headcanons #ellie williams smut #ellie x you

[faeskiss]

LONGING ༉‧₊˚.

synopsis: reader misses zaros on their birthday! a sad fic

The ballroom is alive and thriving with guests, music is blaring and reverberating throughout the hall, rampant sound of laughter and revelry is dancing in the air, the smell of wine and strawberries is thick and inviting

it’s my birthday, but I am cooped up in this absurd corner,next to the fondue table, a glass of switchel in my hand, I would go for a more riveting drink, but I really shouldn’t have alcohol, it’s very easy for me to lose myself if I have too much, and I am determined to not give these people an unwanted show and fuel their zeal for drama and gossip.

I certainly don’t want Zaros to have any reason to laugh or look down on me……even if he isn’t here physically, news travels fast, and if I make a spectacle of myself, there’s no way he wouldn’t hear about it.

My mother, the Queen, gives a long speech in my honour, it’s warm and wholesome, and I certainly don’t deserve to be praised the way she does, she paints me in such a way that I seem tenfold the incredible and dutiful person I am, when that’s far from reality, I dread the day people of my kingdom realise that I’m a fraud, that I hide behind my intelligence and wit, that I haven’t the slightest clue of what I’m doing, this fear, it eats me alive, every single day.

I’m not exactly the best person you’ll ever come across, I know that, and I know if Zaros were here he’d remind of the same every five minutes, even on my birthday

Nobles come and go, bringing in gifts and fake smiles, giving me their half hearted good wishes, all my fair weather friends are here too, this entire ordeal feels more like a desperate attempt to prove who is more loyal and dutiful to the future ruler rather than a birthday party, it all feels so very disingenuous.

No matter how rocky things were between me and Zaros, he had always been a veritable person, one of the very few people who truly saw me for who I was, no matter how unpleasant the “real me” is…

I still remember my 17th birthday, right before everything went wrong, back when he still had some amount of love for me in his soul, he had given me a heart shaped necklace with my initials, in his handwriting, engraved on it, it was custom made for me, he told me that as long as I had that necklace, I would have a piece of him with me at all times

we weren’t always incredibly affectionate with each other,but when we were it was real and almost intoxicating…

I’ve had uncountable pieces of jewellery gifted to me in the past, but none have meant so much to me as that necklace, I have it locked away, safely, my heart still aches every single time I accidentally come across it in my closet

it’s a reminder of how much he really loved and cared for me, and how he’ll never love me the way he used to, ever again, not even if I prayed to the heavens with every single speck of hope and optimism my body can muster…

tears start bubbling in my eyes, “oh god, I don’t want to cry on my birthday, especially not because of him” I think to myself ,I hurry out of the ballroom, leading my way to the balcony before anyone can see me in this state.

I quickly hang on to the railing for support as I feel the sadness seep into my knees making them go weak, I want to breakdown, I want to scream and cry, I want to feel the warmth of his embrace once more, just one more time, it’s the only birthday wish no one in the land can grant me.

A huge pit of longing starts to form in my stomach, as if it’s a black hole ready to engulf my very being right here and now, no matter how hard I try to deny it, I can’t anymore, I miss him so much it hurts, I miss Zaros SO much, he was everything to me, no matter how much we brawled, no matter the poisonous words that spewed out of our mouths when we fought, I still loved him and I know he loved me.

I haven’t seen his face or heard his voice in almost 3 years, my eyes and ears are starved, everything that went down between us, I regret it every day.

A sharp shooting pain stabs me in the chest, as his stupidly charming smile flashes before my eyes, I took it for granted, I still remember the last time he smiled at me like that, teeth and all, warm and comforting, little did I know it’d be the last time I’d ever see it.

Our relationship was always complicated but the one thing that none of us could deny was that we could share anything we wanted with each other, no matter how much he disapproved of my actions, he knew he could be himself around me, he had a way of seeing through my every word, every movement , every look, he knew me better than anyone, even my own mother….even my own self, I had never felt so alive as I did when I was with him, now I feel like an empty shell of a person, existing in vain, bitter and incomplete.

My tired gaze travels outside the balcony, the city looks beautiful, fireworks are ablaze in the sky, I can hear the excitement and chatter of the people outside as they relish the beautiful sight with their loved ones, I haven’t gotten to hear much about Zaros since he left, but I do know that he’s in town, and I know that right now we share the same twilight sky, I don’t care for the expensive clothing, the jewels, the meaningless luxuries that I have received tonight, the only thing I truly want is for him to look up at the sky, and think of me, of every single smile, every thoughtful glance we shared, all the times our laughter echoed through the walls of this palace, and smile, even if it is for a split second. ༉‧₊˚.

#zsakuva zaros #zsakuva #sakuverse #writers on tumblr #zaros

[mostlysignssomeportents]

SoCal Gas spent millions on astroturf ops to fight climate rules

Today (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

It's a breathtaking fraud: SoCal Gas, the largest gas company in America, spent millions secretly paying people to oppose California environmental regulations, then illegally stuck its customers with the bill. We Californians were forced to pay to lobby against our own survival:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277266828.html

The criminal scheme is spelled out in eye-watering detail in a superb investigative report by Joe Rubin and Ari Plachta for the Sacramento Bee, which names the law firms and individual lawyers involved in the scam.

Here's the situation: SoCal Gas is California's private, regulated gas monopoly. They are allowed to lobby, but are legally required to charge their lobbying activities to their shareholders, and are prohibited from raising customer rates to pay for lobbying.

The company spent years secretly violating this rule, in the sleaziest way possible: working with corporate cartels like the California Restaurant Association and BizFed, the monopoly paid BigLaw white-shoe firms to procure people who posed as concerned citizens in order to oppose climate regulations that are essential to the state's very survival.

The bill topped $36 million – and it was illegally charged to its customers, the Californians whose immediate health and long-term survival these efforts opposed. SoCal Gas refuses to disclose the full extent of the spending, as do its lawyer-procurers, who cite legal confidentiality and a First Amendment right to secretly seek to influence policy in their refusal to disclose their profits from this illegal conduct.

The law firms involved are a who's-who of California's most prominent corporate fixers, including Reichman Jorgensen and Holland & Knight. The partners involved have a long rap sheet for anti-climate dirty tricking, most notably Jennifer Hernandez, notorious in climate justice history for an incident where activists claim she posed as one of them, infiltrating a campaign to force corporate despoilers to clean up their pollution in order to sabotage it, while secretly on a wealthy, prominent landowner's payroll.

Hernandez claims to care about the environment and says that her longstanding, corporate-funded, extensive campaigns and lawsuits against state environmental regulations are motivated by concern over their impact on working people. Her firm, Holland & Knight, denies serving SoCal Gas in opposing gas regulations, but it received $594k in ratepayer dollars, and submitted comments opposing the rules on its own behalf. Those comments were nearly identical to the comments submitted by SoCal Gas.

Hernandez also represents an obscure organization called The Two Hundred for Home Ownership in "a flurry of lawsuits" over California Air Resources Board rules on pollution, seeking to overturn the state's landmark climate change regulations.

Two Hundred for Home Ownership was founded by Robert Apodaca, who told the Bee that Hernandez's work for him is pro bono and not funded by SoCal Gas, but his entry into the fray occurred just as SoCalGas was founding an astroturf group called Californians for Fair and Balanced Energy (C4BES), which pretended to be an independent organization, disguising its relationship with SoCal Gas.

Apodaca is also founder of United Latinos Vote, an organization that had been largely dormant for seven years, not receiving any donations, until 2018, when the California Building Industry Association gave it $99k. The CBIA is a large-dollar recipient of donations from SoCal Gas, and its CEO insists that it was not acting on SoCal Gas's behalf when it made its unpredented donation to Apodaca.

The CBIA donation to United Latinos Vote was forerunner to a flood of corporate donations from the likes of Chevron, Marathon and Phillips 66. Shortly after receiving this cash, United Latinos Vote ran a full page ad in the LA Times, accusing the Sierra Club of pushing for anti-gas appliance rules that would harm working class Latino families.

This ad, in turn, featured prominently in advocacy by the SoCal Gas front group C4BES, funded with $29.1m in ratepayer money, which it then spent seeking to link clean appliance rules with anti-Latino racism. A quarter of California's carbon emissions come from home gas use.

SoCal Gas is regulated by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which tolerated this mounting illegal conduct for many years, even as the company circulated internal memos as early as 2015 discussing its plans to oppose electrification in the state on the basis that it constituted "a significant risk to our business."

But last year, CPUC fined SoCal Gas $10m. Now, CPUC's Public Advocate office has filed a damning, extensive report on SoCal Gas's unlawful conduct, seeking $80m in rate cuts to compensate Californians for the funds misappropriated to protect the company's shareholder interests:

https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M517/K407/517407314.PDF

Additionally, the Public Advocate is demanding $233m in fines for the company's refusal to allow investigators to audit its books and discover the full extent of the fraud.

SoCal Gas is the nation's largest utility, but (incredibly), it's not the dirtiest. That prize goes to Ohio's FirstEnergy, which handed $60m in ratepayer dollars to state politicians in illegal bribes in exchange for coal and nuclear subsidies and cancellation of state climate rules. That scandal led to GOP speaker of the Ohio House Larry Householder being sentenced to 20 years in prison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery_scandal

There is something extraordinarily sleazy about using ratepayers' own money to lobby against their interests. SoCal Gas and its Big Law enablers have funneled millions in Californian's money into campaigns to poison us and boil us alive, and they did it while using workers and racialized people as human shields.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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/2023/08/19/cooking-the-books-with-gas/#reichman-jorgensen

Image: Maryland GovPics (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdgovpics/6635539089/

Jackie (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/79874304@N00/197532792

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

#pluralistic #socal gas #california #climate emergency #climate denial #Reichman Jorgensen #california restaurant association #astroturf #Holland and Knight #puc #cpuc #california public utility company #fraud #Alice Walton #bribery #ohio #bizfed #Jennifer Hernandez #American Gas Association #The Two Hundred for Home Ownership #Robert Apodaca #Californians for Fair and Balanced Energy #C4BES #United Latinos Vote #Chevron #Marathon #Phillips 66 #sacramento bee #sacbee #Joe Rubin

[microcroft]

WEEWOO WEEWOO! IMPORTANT REMINDER: If you got a gift card over the holidays go and register it online now!

Gift card draining is a pretty big scamming industry (1/4 people have given or received a gift card with stolen funds) spanning all over the U.S.. I wont go all into the hows and whys because I don't want this post to be a whole novel but all you gotta know is they steal the numbers. Back in September 2022, I decided to use a $100 Visa gift card that had just been sitting in my room still in the packaging since Christmas. I opened it up and went on the site to register it, I found that it only had about $5 left on it, up at a Target in California in January 2022, while I was all the way across the country in coastal Virginia probably playing Minecraft.

There's probably more stuff I'm missing here but these are the most important bits, there's plenty of info out there on how to avoid it when your buying a gift card but its hard to find a good list of what to do if you are given a gift card and I didn't know what to do other than just calling the number on the back of the card when it happened to me.

Note: This only really applies to physical gift cards and is probably American-centric, digital gift cards are far more protected against this kind of fraud.

(In no particular order)

Get the receipt and keep it with the card.

2. Check the balance on whatever site is on the package/card. If it has already been used call the customer service number on the back of the card or listed here ASAP, within 60 days if possible (listen, I know calling anywhere, especially when you have to sit on hold sucks but this is unfortunately the only way to get that money back)

3. Contact the store it was bought from because keeping the gift cards untampered with and if it happened to one of them, there's probably others that were messed with too.

4. VISA has this policy (found at the bottom of the page, the physical card holder agreement):

"Zero Liability: In accordance with the network rules, if you are able to register your Card with us and you do so, you will not be held responsible for unauthorized transactions if: (i) you have used reasonable care in protecting your Card from loss or theft and (ii) you promptly reported to us when you knew that your Card was lost or stolen. Please note this zero liability protection does not apply to unregistered Cards."

Meaning if you register it on the site ASAP, once you do and if you you notice a charge you did not make, report it within 60 days and you are basically guaranteed to get that money back. Otherwise, find a Karen to argue with whichever customer service manager or supervisor is on duty until they relent (I do not typically endorse Karen behavior but I do believe it is possible to be a White Hat Karen).

5. if you are a victim of any sort of fraud report it to the FTC here: reportfraud.ftc.gov probably wont do anything for you but it may help them stop it from happening again in the long run which is important.

#scams #fraud #life #idk what else to tag this as #if i forgot to finish sentences no i didnt

[lets-try-some-writing]

So I read your fic of the transformers being like the cybermen and how they reproduce and could not get it out of my head. So I had this thought,

There are instances of cybermen and the like not realizing what they are or waking up to try and warn who’s next. Imagine it was one of the rescue bots like blades who desperately pulls Cody and the other humans aside and begs them to stop accepting his and the others gifts.

He tells them that he remembers fighting this but when he looks back he can’t remember why and often finds himself thinking it was silly to fight. He doesn’t know about the others. He was the last one their sire was able to make. He knows Optimus made Bumblebee and that Bumblebee had excitedly told him Optimus planned to give him siblings.

He feels like a fraud because this doesn’t feel like rescuing these humans.

Ohhohoho this is the good stuff right here. Don't mind me at all :)

Previous part here.

━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙ ━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙

The Rescue Bots had been given clear orders to not bring any into the fold when they were woken from stasis. Optimus had not cut any corners in explaining the delicate situation on Earth and with the war. The Rescue Bots were disappointed considering they could instinctually sense their low numbers and had all long since matured enough to bring more into the fold, but they obeyed. They did nothing to possibly even hint at bringing more into the fold as they interacted with their human companions and worked to protect the organics under their care. However, that certainly did not stop them from keeping their optics on those with potential. Of course that meant that their interest inevitably drifted toward their human companions, at least those young enough to potentially survive the process.

Blades was no different than his fellows. His interest drifted between Dani and Cody, the two most viable for folding and those which he cared for most amongst the organics. But unlike Heatwave who was focused on Cody as well, Boulder who took a liking to Graham, or Chase who held an appreciation for Kade despite the fact that they were not teamed up... Blades was uncertain. His fellows watched the viable humans eagerly, their optics bright with greater and greater instinctual desire with every feat their chosen performed. But Blades? While he most certainly felt the same pull toward Dani, there was something deep in his spark that remembered. He knew what folding looked like, he knew what it did to an organic to make them one of Primus's creations. However there was just something so very... wrong with the idea of turning the humans.

It wasn't really the idea of folding them that upset him. No, he had no issues with that. He wasn't exactly enthusiastic, but rather apathetic toward the concept as a whole. What bothered him was the fact that the humans were unaware of folding and what it entailed. It was custom to not tell the potentials of the folding process, largely to ease their minds and keep them from thinking hard. Stress was the most common killer of sparklings being taken into the fold. It couldn't be risked.... and yet despite that, Blades felt and all encompassing disgust toward the idea of the humans not knowing. His memory was not the greatest, but he recalled fighting against the folding process. He remembered screaming and trying to bite and flee when it came to his Sire. Why he did so was beyond his understanding. He was made stronger, he had his weak mortal flesh stripped away and was gifted a frame far superior to the organic material from which he originated. It was ridiculous for him to have fought. Yet, he remembered doing so and a small part of him felt that it was almost his moral obligation to give a warning.

He had no reason to worry about the humans and warning them for many long months. His life was too hectic to give it a lot of thought outside of his few moments of downtime, but that changed when Optimus Prime arrived at their base without warning.

Heatwave: Sir? What are you doing here?

Optimus: There has been a serious change of plans.

Chase: What does that mean?

Optimus: My team and I have been bringing three humans into the fold. However the Decepticons have infiltrated our efforts and have already placed joint claims on our wards.

Boulder: I am not liking where this is going.

Blades: Wait, you were folding humans? But you told us not to!

Optimus: Yes, now listen. Megatron now has leverage over me and my team, but in turn, so do we.

Heatwave: What do we need to do?

Optimus: You catch on quick.

Optimus: We will keep the Decepticons distracted for as long as possible. Your mission is to begin creating a folding order here on Earth. Bring as many into our ranks as you can feasibly manage. More Autobots will be stationed here to assist.

Boulder: This is a very... aggressive tactic.

Optimus: We are at war Boulder. Not only that, but the sparkling rearing laws have already been broken. Megatron has placed a claim on my sparkling without the proper rites being performed. It is only right that we too do what we must.

Chase: We can fold as many humans as we can, but how will we keep them safe from being similarly claimed?

Optimus: This island is all but totally cloaked. Those brought into the fold will remain here, and this is where we shall establish our stronghold. Autobot city, the place where our ranks shall be renewed and where we might have... leverage.

Heatwave: Sir you can't really be considering-!?

Optimus: The sparklings will be our ticket to ensuring we maintain the upper hand. Megatron is cruel, but his lieutenants wish for sparklings more than anything else. It will not be difficult to begin drawing more and more Decepticons to our side with the promise of sparklings, especially considering we have the resources to take hundreds of potential candidates at once.

The Rescue Bots were of course incredibly dubious about the plan. They all wanted sparklings, even Blades. But they were not exceptionally thrilled about the idea of said sparklings also playing the role of political tool. Well, that was until Optimus pulled a small being from within his carrying chamber. The Bots instantly fell silent, each watching as Optimus unwrapped his charge to reveal a human child, one about halfway through the folding process. For Blades it merely set a strange uncertainty ablaze in his spark, but for the others, it was not hard to see how it made all their reservations go flying out the window.

Their orders had been given. They were to begin the folding process with as many young as possible, and soon enough the plan was put into motion. Optimus pulled some strings and soon enough there were government agents bringing over young children, orphans who had been brought over under the guise of receiving special teaching from Autobot agents. It was not wrong by any means, but Blades only grew more and more unsettled as Autobots began arriving en mass. Blurr, Quickshadow, High Tide, and even Bumblebee were quickly deployed and were swift in beginning the correct rituals. All the while Blades could only watch on in discomfort as the island was changed, walls being put around the border, new Cybertronian structures taking root, and so much more.

The humans did panic as more and more Autobots arrived and began to build, but whatever Optimus said soothed them and it seemed the running lie was that the island was being fortified against possible Decepticon attacks. The poor humans believed it, hook, line, and sinker. There was nothing Blades could do as Kade, Dani, Cody, and Graham began accepting gifts and affection while Burns similarly took offerings with a smile. Blades had no problem with the folding on its own... but this felt wrong. They didn't know. They had no clue what they were getting into, and with orphans being brought to the island as more Autobots arrived, Blades felt the urge to at least do his due diligence.

Blades: Do you like this life you have?

Cody: Yeah?

Blades: Then stop accepting our gifts. The more you take, the more our rite progresses.

Dani: What does that mean?

Blades: I can't tell you much. It's not my job.

Kade: Spit it out Blades!

Blades: ...

Graham: What's going on?

Blades: We want you all to join us. Accepting what we offer only tells us that you wish to join the fold.

Blades did not tell them much, but it was enough to set the humans on edge. For weeks they were hesitant, but one by one, they seemed to think Blades was referring to joining the team fully or something of the like. He could only frown as the humans unknowingly started to accept energon from the Rescue Bots and other gathered Autobots. He felt a degree of guilt for not telling them outright, but this was going to happen whether he liked it or not. It was best that they were unburdened during the process.

And so he watched and took Dani under his wing, giving her his energon in small doses without her knowing as the quietly dubbed 'Autobot City' began to rise around them. The humans didn't know yet, they did not know that the Autobots were digging in roots. They were unaware of the fact that Bumblebee had given Optimus and his team full control over communications coming to and from the island. Already there were plans for unfortunate deaths to occur for the human children being brought to them, and Optimus had made all sorts of deals Blades was not privy to in order to ensure Burns stayed quiet once the changes began.

Things were progressing, and while his spark flared in growing joy at seeing so many being brought into the fold, an echo of guilt followed him. These little ones may not survive, and they were going to be taken from their families. It was the way of Cybertronians, but a small part of Blades, a piece of him that failed to fully change... it wept as Bumblebee gleefully brought three small sparklings with him to the island.

"These are my newest siblings! The little one is Atlas, the femme is Terra, and the biggest is Cronos!"

"They were given... Earth names?"

"They were the first. Optimus and the others wanted to honor that!"

"Oh, I see."

Three young sparklings. Their frames still appeared very human, but their sparks were there. They were the first. Three children, three small humans taken from all they knew to become part of a dying race. Blades could not help but be grieved, especially when Burns was silenced with hush money and his children taken from him.

#transformers #maccadam #transformers prime #rescue bots #optimus prime #bumblebee #blades #heatwave #boulder #chase #cody burns #kade burns #dani burns #graham burns #charlie burns #vampire au #alternate universe #angst #these fragging robots #I love making them lowkey horrifying #i will never cease to have fun with it

[misfitwashere]

If You Don't Know Medicare Advantage Is a Scam, You're Not Paying Attention

We’re on the edge of the open enrollment period for Medicare, and the Advantage scammers will be carpet-bombing America with advertisements over the next few months. Don't be fooled about what it is—and who is profiting.

Thom Hartmann

Oct 07, 2023

Common Dreams

President George W. Bush and Republicans (and a handful of on-the-take Democrats) in Congress created the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 as a way of routing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies.

Those companies, and their executives, then recycle some of that profit back into politicians’ pockets via the Citizens United legalized bribery loophole created by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court.

Just the overcharges happening right now in that scam are costing Americans over $140 billion a year: more than the entire budget for the Medicare Part B or Part D programs. These ripoffs — that our federal government seems to have no interest in stopping — are draining the Medicare trust fund while ensnaring gullible seniors in private insurance programs where they’re often denied life-saving care.

Real Medicare pays bills when they’re presented. Medicare Advantage insurance companies, on the other hand, get a fixed dollar amount every year for each of the people enrolled in their programs, regardless of how much they spent on each customer.

As a result, Medicare Advantage programs make the greatest profits for their CEOs and shareholders when they actively refuse to pay for care, something that happens frequently. It’s a safe bet that nearly 100 percent of the people who sign up for Advantage programs don’t know this and don’t have any idea how badly screwed they could be if they get seriously ill.

Not only that, when people do figure out they’ve been duped and try to get back on real Medicare, the same insurance companies often punish them by refusing to write Medigap plans (that fill in the 20% hole in real Medicare). They can’t do that when you first sign up when you turn 65, but if you “leave” real Medicare for privatized Medicare Advantage, it can be damn hard to get back on it.

The doctors’ group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) just published a shocking report on the extent of the Medicare Advantage ripoffs — both to individual customers and to Medicare itself — that every American should know about.

The report, titled Our Payments, Their Profits, opens with this shocking exposé:

“By our estimate, and based on 2022 spending, Medicare Advantage overcharges taxpayers by a minimum of 22% or $88 billion per year, and potentially by up to 35% or $140 billion. By comparison, Part B premiums in 2022 totaled approximately $131 billion, and overall federal spending on Part D drug benefits cost approximately $126 billion. Either of these — or other crucial aspects of Medicare and Medicaid — could be funded entirely by eliminating overcharges in the Medicare Advantage program. “Medicare Advantage, also known as MA or Medicare Part C, is a privately administered insurance program that uses a capitated payment structure, as opposed to the fee-for-service (FFS) structure of Traditional Medicare or TM. Instead of paying directly for the health care of beneficiaries, the federal government gives a lump sum of money to a third party (generally a commercial insurer) to ‘manage’ patient care.”

With real Medicare and a Medigap plan, you talk with your physician or hospital and decide on your treatment, they bill Medicare, and you never see or hear about the bill. There is nobody between you and your physician or hospital and Medicare only goes after the payment they’ve made if they sniff out a fraud.

With Medicare Advantage, on the other hand, your insurance company gets a lump-sum payment from Medicare every year and keeps the difference between what they get and what they pay out. They then insert themselves between you and your doctor or hospital to avoid paying for whatever they can.

Whatever you decide on regarding treatment, many Advantage insurance company will regularly second-guess and do everything they can to intimidate you into paying yourself out-of-pocket. Often, they simply refuse payment and wait for you to file a complaint against them; for people seriously ill the cumbersome “appeals” process is often more than they can handle.

As a result, hospitals and doctor groups across the nation are beginning to refuse to take Medicare Advantage patients. California-based Scripps Health, for example, cares for around 30,000 people on Medicare Advantage and recently notified all of them that Scripps will no longer offer medical services to them unless they pay out-of-pocket or revert back to real Medicare.

They made this decision because over $75 million worth of services and procedures their physicians had recommended to their patients were turned down by Medicare Advantage insurance companies. In many cases, Scripps had already provided the care and is now stuck with the bills that the Advantage companies refuse to pay.

Scripps CEO Chris Van Gorder told MedPage Today:

“We are a patient care organization and not a patient denial organization and, in many ways, the model of managed care has always been about denying or delaying care – at least economically. That is why denials, [prior] authorizations and administrative processes have become a very big issue for physicians and hospitals...”

Similarly, the Mayo Clinic has warned its customers in Florida and Arizona that they won’t accept Medicare Advantage any more, either. Increasing numbers of physician groups and hospitals are simply over being ripped off by Advantage insurance companies.

Not only is the Medicare Advantage scam a screw job for healthcare providers and people who are on the programs and are unfortunate enough to get sick, it’s also preventing Americans from getting expanded benefits from real Medicare.

As the PNHP report notes, for real Medicare to provide comprehensive vision, dental, and hearing benefits to all Medicare recipients would cost the system around $84 billion a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Instead, though, the Medicare system is burdened with at least that amount of money in over-payments to Medicare Advantage providers — over-payments that have no health benefit whatsoever and merely inflate the companies’ profits.

A hundred billion dollars in excess profits can be put to a lot of uses, and the health insurance industry is quite good at it. The former CEO of UnitedHealth, “Dollar” Bill McGuire, for example, made off with over $1.5 billion dollars for his efforts.

And, because five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision, some of these companies allocate millions every year (a mere drop in the bucket) to pay off loyal members of Congress and to dangle high-paying future jobs to high-level employees of CMS who have the power to keep the gravy train going and thwart prosecutions.

As PNHP noted:

“Medicare Advantage is just another example of the endless greed of the insurance industry poisoning American health care, siphoning money from vulnerable patients while delaying and denying necessary and often life-saving treatment. While there is obvious reason to fix these issues in MA and to expand Traditional Medicare for the sake of all beneficiaries, the deep structural problems with our health care system will only be fixed when we achieve improved Medicare for All.”

We’re on the edge of the open enrollment period for Medicare, and the Advantage scammers will be carpet-bombing America with advertisements over the next few months. Representatives Pocan, Khanna, and Schakowsky have introduced the “Save Medicare Act” that would ban Advantage companies from using the word Medicare in their advertising.

They made a video about it that’s well worth sharing with friends and family:

As Schakowsky, Khanna, and Pocan note, “Only Medicare is Medicare.” Don’t be fooled by the Medicare Advantage scam.

And now that you know, pass it on and save somebody else’s health!

#Medicare #health insurance #Youtube