#dont talk to or about cory like that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

qualityrain · 1 year

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I too am cn dub truther, I play gi and hsr on cn, I'm chinese. I definitely prefer cn owl, ana and raven. I think their cn voices match their characters (that i made up mostly) more.

My backstories for ana and owl are kinda edgy and incredibly elaborate, especially owl's. So it's kinda embarrassing to talk about them.

I'll start off with some of my less unhinged hcs.

Ana's mother is cecilia's younger sister. Which makes her kiana's cousin.

Owl loves horror movies. He's also a massive gaming nerd, he's really good at it too. Ana also loves video games and has a natural talent for it.

Owl would never admit it out right, but he thinks of raven as a friend of sort. He knows about raven's probably dead brother and has told raven about his probably dead sister. But they never bring it up again.

This is less a hc and more me choosing to ignore canon. But I think that ana and owl should have been allowed to talk to each other. So I will just say that after manila, they didn't meet face to face until the coral arc. But they did kept in contact with one another, mostly cuz ana felt guilty but she still genuinely enjoys owl's company.

Also I think that both of them are kinda pathetic wet cats with tons of repression. On top of being a qpr, t4t, they are also girlfailure x boyloser.

A FELLOW CN DUB TRUTHER,,,,,and also a gi hsr player??????? i used to pray for times like this,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,when i found out childe(another character i like) and owl have the same va i lost my shit then when hsr leaked my friend messaged me to tell me that dh and owl sound the same 😭😭😭

ana and kiana being cousins!!!! so true funnier when their names rhyme w each other. I do not know if its ever mentioned in game but in honkai wiki it says kianas like 20? which means shes like 2 years older than ana so it would be cute if ana was named after kiana

the way that “did you know flareon is the only fire type pokemon that cannot use solar beam?” meme has been living in my head constantly for owl @ ana 😭😭 esp when that year was 2015 so gen 7 wasnt out yet but in 2017 gen 7 came out and flareon is now no longer the only fire type pokemon that cannot use solar beam!!

owl is a major gaming nerd so true!!!!i think owl and ana would play those 2 player fps games at the arcade. (cringe coincidence story is how i hc owl as a filipino and im a big mlbb esports fan esp to this one team and had a whole crack ws officer mlbb au and then last yr that esports team had a new rookie whose ign is owl)

OUGHHHH RAVEN AND OWL BEING SOMEWHAT FRIENDS,,,,,,,,,,i wish there was more screentime between them because i think their relationship is so interesting,,,,,,,,,like theres so many interesting commonality between them to explore,,,,,the whole probably dead sibling thing,,,,,,,(esp in er when its implied that owl met sakura,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,mhy u make the flamechaser w a dead little sister meet the ws officer w a dead little sister and not elaborate???????????(granted idt sakura knew her sister was dead at that point in time(probably???))) and the whole implication that owl and raven do talk outside missions with the whole “that S rank valk again?”,,,,,ik raven complains about rita to owl every time they meet,,,,,

ignoring canon is my hobby when it comes to ana and owl i havent rewatched chap 19 in a year and i like to think it doesnt exist other than rimestar because i think rimestar is cool (also actually really salty they couldve made a HoStars owl design!!!!!! ok cowards!!!(ik its too much effort for a side character)) you are so right ana and owl should be allowed to talk to each other more!!!!! imo i think they talked more when owl was at the hospital or smth because the dude was like buried under a building and ana only left after he was discharged or smth. but also them keeping in contact 🥺🥺 bet they had cute contact names for each other

you are soooo right ana and owl are a girl failure and boy loser ship!!! ana is the sole survivor of her squad twice and then the second time kills her squad and others (unintentionally) and owl is unable to protect the ppl he cares about twice and has to watch them die!!!! they are terrible at their roles and even worse at communicating mhy when will they be happy (they are not present in the da capo scene with everybody alive and happy)

#actually you know what im feeling insane about raven and owl having probably dead siblings rn #yk when raven tells mei she thought she saw her brother and didnt run after him………yeah……yeah…………..#i think if that happened to owl he woukd run after tianwen….#because i think. extremelt delusional moment but i think raven and owl r two sides of the same coin #and i think its so interesting!!!!!!!!#i want them to be friends so bad!!!!!!#i dont think they would ever be vulnerable and talk abt their backstories much so there would be no way they woukd b that close in canon…..#in my head if owl survived and knew abt the roost raven and owl would b friends #because its like a mei raven situstion where they both know things the each other cares abt and the only way #to not put that thing they care abt in danger is to be friends!!#unrelated another thing im insane about is the fact that owl met aponia in er and FOUGHT HER #fuck mhy for putting that in er my god i have it screenshotted and it never leaves my brain #i became a changed person the moment i read aponias boss desc #asks #cori-randomstuff

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supahstarrr · 7 months

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cory's video has aged SO well but its so telling that the focus is on the "FAVORISM" part more than the "RACISM" part—which is equally as important in cory's video—yet its less spoke about, downplayed, or even DISAGREED on?

#sunny's thoughts #see how that video is only pulled up or mentioned when people speak about favorism. its like barely anyone gives a shit that #cory was ALSO talking about youtube's racism which is so frustrating but haha oh well i guess!#i remember i looked at the comments and there were people saying that he was reaching and ''i dont think theres racism BUT-''#yes even other youtubers acted like this in the comments. im so sick of people downplaying and dismissing racism man #when people talk about that video they ALWAYS focus on favorism. acting like the commentary on youtube's racism doesn't exist. smh.#like of course the one thing people have to brush off. dismiss. DISAGREE on. in that video was YOUTUBE'S RACISM #and i love that people were saying ''theres no racism'' ''its not racism- BUT'' like you're disagreeing with a BLACK MAN'S experience #like its obvious that YOU wont see it because you ain't black or brown-skinned! and/or you don't pass as poc!#its SO obvious that you won't see the racism because you have a totally different perspective than a black man's perspective!!!#like im reminding yall that over half of the people disagreeing and dismissing the commentry on racism were WHITE PEOPLE.#WHITE YOUTUBERS TOO. like??? ANDDDDDD #these people don't surround themselves around other black youtubers and poc youtubers as much as CORY does!!!#so how the FUCK are you gonna be denying that youtube's racist and colorist when not a single one of your peers is black or brown-skinned #you wont personally see youtube's racism if you close yourself away and surround yourself with pasty ass white people #anti blackness #racism

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snowsinterlude · 3 months

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summary: snow was always ready to help you with your 'boy problems'. however, you didn't knew it would be with his fingers inside of you.

c.w: cheating, modern au, cuck!sejanus, fingering, squirting, coriolanus x reader, massage (hips, thighs, ass.), tear licking, forced kissing.

putting your phone to the side, you anxiously started to shake your leg, something you did ever since you were a child.

you were at your mom's best friend house, on the room of your long time best friend, coriolanus.

now, for more context: your boyfriend sejanus plinth was getting on your nerves. it isn't so hard to be a good boyfriend. was he cheating on you? god. that's the only plausible reason for him to be acting like a douchebag.

"cory," you called, and he hummed back in response, having him just left the bath, wearing a pair of grey sweatpants only. as he passed deodorant and you closed your eyes shut as you inhaled on the marvellous smell that you silently wished was of your boyfriend, you spoke again. "my thighs are hurting."

"stop shaking your leg then, maybe it will stop."

"or you can give me a massage? please. please please please, swear i'll do anything you want later." you said.

"okay." he sighed, sitting on the side of his bath as his hands started to work. "where does it hurt?" he asked, already massaging both your thighs.

"the right one, from the hip to the knee."

"you feel more pain than my grandma, god." he hummed, massaging your hips.

"fuck you" you answered, recieving a surprised look and a slap on the ass. "ouch! what the-"

"i'm giving you a massage, you can't 'fuck you' me." he said, massaging the place he slapped.

god, was he really massaging your ass?

he was. ah, he was! and it felt so good, his hands grabbing on your thighs and your ass, on your hips too. how could someone's hand feel so good?

the moment he massaged your inner thighs, you had to bite your lip back from moaning or laughing- you wish your boyfriend did those things like coryo did. you wish.

"sorry." you said, in a beeathy moan.

"ok. how's it going with the plinth boy?" he asked.

"what?"

"for you to be looking like a sad worm, he must've done something."

"he's a douchebag. he can be so dumb sometimes! seriously how can you prefer to play footbal than spend time with your girlfriend?" you said. "but i dont want to talk about it."

"you teased e lucky you know."

coryo let out a shaky breath. his cock felt tight on his pants as he massaged your hips and butt. so soft and — somehow — giggly. how could it be any better?

"wanna talk about how soft your ass is?" he asked, grabbing it into his whole hand.

you laughed, heartbeating fast as you looked at him.

you want to suck him so badly.

"i know my ass is soft." you hummed, as he kissed your shoulder and made you shiver. "don't need you to tell me."

"do i need to tell you your panties are drenched?" he whispered, a grin on his face. you shoved your head on the pillows as you hugged it.

"shut up. just do what you're doing now." you hummed back.

and he did. fingers pressing on your flesh, from the hips to your thighs. and then, his fingers teasing your pussy through your wet panties made you look at him as if begging him to stop- stop before you started acting like a bitch.

you were already acting like one, melting as his digit teased you.

"cory, stop-" you pleaded, tearing up. "sej is your friend. he adores you-"

"not my fault he can't be a good boyfriend for you. i'm just helping you, dear." he said. you sobbed quietly.

"but you're his best friend, i can't do that to him-"

"i'm just the only person he can call a friend. not my fault no one likes him."

"i like him."

"charity doesn't count."

"it isn't charity!"

"yeah, keep telling yourself that. dating the loser boy who doesn't know how to eat a pussy out and never had a girlfriend doesn't give you a good person pass, babe."

you pouted, feeling guilty. you knew he was right. yoy started hanging out with sejanus cause you knew he didn’t had any friends. then, you didn't know how to say "no" when he asked you on a date. nor when he asked you to be his girlfriend.

snow's free hand went to your face, holding it firmly as he licked your tear, kissing your shut closed lips- somehow you thought that kissing someone else just made the cheating worse.

then his finger entered you, and you had to open your mouth to gasp for air, enough for his tongue to enter your lips and for him to kiss you. it was so perverted, you just had to kiss him back.

telling yourself it was not your fault, you couldn't help but clench around his fingers when his thumb rubbed against your clit and his middle finger entered you. with your skirt rolled up for him to massage you, and your panties pulled aside for him to finger you, he was more than happy to say it wasn't your fault even if it was.

"i know it feels good, dear. you don't have to pretend it doesn't." he said, kissing your neck, sucking on your skin.

"s..shut up, snow."

"as you wish." he chuckled, fastening his fingers just enough for you to moan against his mattress.

"cory!" his mom called, it wasn't enough for him to stop fingering you though. "your friend is here!"

"who?" he asked, kissing your ass cheek. it felt tingly.

"the plinth's son!" if you could see the way snow grinned, you wouldn't be scared. god, with the way you were right now you would be on his dick in the bat of an eye.

snow smiled devilishly as he thought of being caught red-handed. with his eyes travelling your whole body, he knew what to do.

"tell him to come here." he yelled back, fastening his fingers and kissing you as he heard the wet sounds of your pussy.

"snow!" you cried out, your pussy clenching tight on his fingers. deep inside you, you were excited from the same thought of being caught.

it didn't took much for you to cum on his hand. unfortunately for you, you weren't as quiet as you should be, moaning against his lips as your cunt clenched tight on his fingers, squirting enough to let a stain in his sheets.

then, you heard the door opening, and the sight of your legs open for snow's hand as he tongue kissed you was enough for your poor, virgin, excuse of an boyfriend to have an erection.

then you looked at him, teary eyes from the orgasm and lips red from the kiss. god, it was the funniest sight for coriolanus.

who would know sejanus plinth would have an erection for being cheated on?

"hello, sejanus." he said. finally, he took his fingers out of you, only to taste them on his mouth. you cried out in humiliation and excitement. finally you had an excuse to break up with sejanus.

"hello."

#young coriolanus snow #coriolanus snow x reader #the hunger games the ballad of songbirds & snakes #young president snow #coriolanus snow fanfiction #tbosas smut #coriolanus x reader #coriolanus snow imagine #coriolanus x you #x reader

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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The moral injury of having your work enshittified

This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:

https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html

The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:

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

But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.

It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.

But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.

Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.

But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.

In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.

This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.

Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.

But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.

And they came up with mottoes.

Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:

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

And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.

My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.

There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.

Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."

The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.

Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.

Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html

Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.

It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":

Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.

I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.

But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:

https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome

My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.

This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.

What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11

Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.

As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.

His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.

Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.

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/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

#pluralistic #moral injury #enshittification #worker power #google #dont be evil #monopoly #sam altman #openai #vocational awe #making a dent in the universe

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whencartoonsruletheworld · 6 months

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explanations under the cut

Elizabeth Afton is actually the Youngest Sibling - as @birdsareblooming pointed out, when we see her room in fnaf4, she has a torn-apart mangle toy. mangle was stated to be made to entertain toddlers. would also explain why she's not in the gameplay, she's at daycare/with her mom

The Vengeful Spirit is Michael Afton - another one where cori convinced me and I might have an entire essay that I will publish after I finally sit down and edit through the Security Logbook section but until then here's a bullet point post

Mimic = Burntrap - i dont think i have to explain this we're all talking about it i just know people are gonna be mad at me for it

The Girl in Drowning is representative of Charlie, not Cassidy - She's literally got gray skin, black hair, gray clothes, and neon green lighting, much like a certain gray-skinned black-haired pixel girl with a green bracelet who died in the rain (water motif). Her dragging Kara down because she doesn't want to be alone could be seen as a metaphor for Charlie trying to give life but instead kinda sticking them all in robots

FNAF AR had some BANGIN re-skins - come on. look at them. Clockwork Ballora? Bangin. Broiler Baby? Bangin. Catrina Toy Chica? BANGIN. Springtrap as an actual fucking clown???? BANGIN.

Vanessa is an Afton in the Gameverse, too – Cori's workin on a whole explanation diagram for this but the most BASIC evidence is "her last name starts with 'a' and she's a nepo baby." I dont think she's William's DIRECT daughter cause man died in the 90s and she was 23 in the 2030s so. grandkid or smth

If Edwin/David is a metaphor for anything it's William/CC and not Henry/Charlie – listen i understand the whole "single dad building the robots and then breaking one in a rage" thing from TSE but also the mimic likes to mimic its creator and child before all else and who is it mimicking? afton and the little boy in sb who happens to look a shitton like cc. also game!charlie is never indicated as having a special plushie that followed her everywhere but cc very certainly did and hey if mimic can grow and shrink to fit in anything whos to say it didnt shrink into the fredbear to repeat stock phrases to cc such as "tomorrow is another day." also in the character encyclopedia art of cc he is holding his fredbear plush the same way burntrap positions his arm to imitate holding something. an

They're not gonna pull the Charliebot twist again. Nobody's a secret robot – first off from a writing perspective that's not the kinda twist you do twice. second off with the... less than stellar reception to the twist in the first place i dont think theyre gonna pull it again

"Cassidy" isn't the Golden Freddy Kid's name, it's Crying Child's – the logbook has Crying Child communicate through manipulating the text, while the spirit he's talking to speaks in faint writing; the second spirit never has a confirmed identity, but CC is most definite considering the stuff referenced around him. The "ITS ME CASSIDY" is revealed through.... manipulated text. The clues are in........ manipulated text. "It's Me" is CC calling out to Michael. The other spirit says "My name is..." a couple times BUT they also ask CC if he remembers his name just a few pages before. Granted this might just be us not understanding something but also if Cassidy is CC's name then who the fuck is Golden Freddy Kid. is Michael Brooks still canon

The nightmare gas didn't "ruin the lore" it's just kinda funny – look guys literally all of this lore is fucked, the fact they just threw in "also William Afton was doing nightmare gas experiments on kidnapped kids and then abandoned it for shits and giggles" in the eighth book of their second anthology series and then moving on like nothing happened while the fanbase collapses in on itself is like THE funniest thing they could've done

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #fnaf movie #fnaf spoilers #fnaf 2023 #mine

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inlovewhithafairytale · 6 months

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I honestly think that Jeff Davis screwed up big time. He made the teen wolf movie into a total nightmare. He did NOT fallow the rules consisting in the ships. They forgot people like, where's Theo? Where's kira? Wheres Cory? Where is Thiam? Where is Stydia? Wheres Sterek? I honestly felt that i didn't get to 'meet' the characters again. I just saw them. I mean i dont know how Lydia feels, I cant get a glimpse of her thoughts. Or Liam, like he didn't even recognize Mason, he's best friend. And where is Scott and stiles friendship? I think Scott didn't even talk about him. And Scott would have obviously gone to beacon hills every single year. I really dont know how we are expected to be happy about the movie. The only good thing out of it all is Eli. Also where is Alec?! Scott and stiles child like really? They couldn't have just added him to take him away. I honestly am disappointed by this

#teen wolf #Sterek #Thiam #Teenwolf: the movie #theo reaken #liam dunbar #stiles stilinski #eli hale #lydia martin #mason hewitt #scott mccall

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bakersdaughter21 · 7 months

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FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S SPOILERS DONT READ PAST THE CUT IF YOU DONT WANT SPOILERS

I want to talk about the theatre experience because that MADE the movie man

First thing of note is there were three guys in full TUXEDOS leaving the theatre, and i’m 94% positive they were leaving a fnaf movie showing. That was fun, they looked very Classy.

Our theatre wasn’t PACKED full, it wasn’t the very first showing of the movie so probably the earlier showings were more packed. But it was a lot of young adults/teens and some kids with their families (also my mom went with us and despite not knowing any of the lore she really loved the movie so take that rotten tomatoes my mom knows better)

SPOILER: so the first theatre reaction happened with MATPAT. I was so distracted for a minute until i was like “wait, i know that voice” and everyone either gasped or laughed when he came on screen.

when those people were breaking into Freddy’s to ruin Mike’s job, I think there were some minor gasps and such with the first two kills BUT when the babysitter was BITTEN IN HALF EVERYONE WENT “OOOOOH”. That was fantastic.

Soon after that, when Mike was cleaning up and the second Balloon Boy Jumpscare happened (loved those btw) everyone laughed/jumped.

After that, when Abby asked if she could see the Massive Intimidating Animatronics again and Mike just stared Tiredly, EVERYONE laughed. He wanted to say “No????” so bad but he could only scream it in his eyes.

Everyone laughed/cheered when Cory got his scene! It was so good. Me and my sibs wore his merch for the movie so he was the real star for us

When Springtrap stepped out everyone was shrieking/gasping in excitement. When he took the helmet off a lot of people gasped loudly which- I guess people didn’t think Steve was William? (insert that one meme that average fnaf fans don’t know a deeply obscure fact but do know a different bonkers lore fact)

EVERYONE gasped when Vanessa was stabbed. i think there was a louder reaction for that than the “I always come back” line.

When the credits started to roll people CLAPPED. THERE WAS APPLAUSE IN THE THEATRE. IVE NEVER BEEN IN A THEATRE WHERE PEOPLE CLAPPED FOR A MOVIE. IT WAS GREAT. Also when The Living Tombstone started playing people started singing along and that was great.

The final Cory scene had people laughing and I’m so glad he got a second scene. Balloon Boy was the real villain of the movie.

#fnaf #fnaf movie #fnaf movie spoilers #spoilers in tags #five nights at freddy’s movie #this was such a great time #i’m so glad i went on premiere day #even tho i was feeling a little sick i wasn’t about to miss this #now i can suffer at home #five nights at freddy’s #coryxkenshin #matpat #vanessa afton

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just-some-random-blogger · 1 year

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I know this is late rn (it is here in my country lmao);;; but will you continue the Morpheus X Filipino!Reader???;;; I'm not really sure if there's a follow-up that I'm not aware of sorry... But I have an idea, after the drunk shenanigans, they get a massiiiiive hangover and question if what happened really happened but continue their day. Then after being kicked out, Morpheous just followed them like the lost puppy he is (in this case a lost sad wet cat lmao) like in a work/university(as a student or professor idk). LITERALLY everywhere (stalking but in a cute way if it makes sense?). And Cori visit now and then, for his own amusement lol, just to annoy Dream and make him jealous or watch his "Dad" suffer and be a pathetic love sick puppy LMAOOOOO Also, Matthew gives Morpheus some love and courting(?) tips is quite cute and funny at the same time lolololol

Anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyy have a great day or night~!!!! idk

Oh, Don't Be Like That

Dream of the Endless x Reader + Corinthian x Reader (except its mostly Dream & Cori duking it out AHHAHA)

Summary: There was a battle going inside your mind between a nightmare and the master of dreams... literally.

Word Count: 1k+

Warnings: gender neutral!reader, psychological mind fuckery, corinthian being the nightmare he is, brat!cori, jealous!dream, exasperated dad!dream, angst?, crackfic?, typos, etc.

A/N: hi nonnie, there is actually a next part to it, but lol sige na nga ahsf;lashf i'll write what you want (i hope you like it) only cos i love corinthian so much and i want them to bite each other (in a fight HAHHAHAH) i hope you enjoy it and yeah it was pretty late when you sent this i remember but that doesnt matter cos i got back to you 1000 years later lol This is technically a p4. [p1 "Thorn At My Side"] [p2 "Beer"] [p3 "Not Enough"] but you dont have to read them to understand lol. Tagging everyone from p3!: @cleverzonkwombatsludge @pinksirensong @lexi-anastasia @aralezinspace @emy635 @libra207 @secretdreamlandmentality @deniixlovezelda @shadow-pancake9 @laraackerman @reallystressedhoneybee @farintonorth @shining-yuu @ellooo0ooo i'll also tag @sloanexx even though this isn't the jealous!dream req i was talking to you about lol

I was running. I was running so fast that I was losing my breath. The halls were winding. I reach a split hallway and take a sharp turn right.

"Oh, little bug," the ominous voice calls, "why are you running from me? I thought we were friends?"

I run faster, skin crawling, rising with goosebumps, as I tread frantically down the hall.

I see light at the end. I run faster and faster towards it, as fast as my legs can take me.

All at once, the light is gone and I slam into a dead end. I fall to bottom and scramble. I push myself back into the corner, looking out into the darkness, awaiting my demise.

"Oh, pretty thing," he laughs, "how stupid of you."

My entire body is trembling. I break into an ear piercing, body curdling shriek when I see a figure. A grim, twisted, eerily grinning face comes into view from the shadows.

My head blares because of my screaming, and yet when the figure comes to light and doubles down in laughter. Tears in my eyes are clouding my vision, and I'm curled up in the corner for dear life.

He takes of his shades and leans on his knees. The teeth in his eyes wheeze with him. It takes me a good long while for me to realize just who in the nightmare this man was, with the aid of him introducing himself.

"It's me, doll," he chuckles, turning to me, "your boyfriend Cori."

I recoil, as this finally dawns onto me. Boyfriend my ass. I begin to heave as my frightened tears turn into bitter angry ones. I rise to my feet, chest rising and falling in anger. I point an accusing finger to the blonde, "you are NOT my boyfriend," I step forward each statement, "you stupid, annoying, evil little bitch-ass, rat!"

Corinthian raises his hands in defeat, chuckling once more, proceeding to wipe his glasses on his shirt, looking down as he snorts, "oh, but I am."

When he looks back up as he puts his glasses back on, the grin on his face disappears as he is faced with nothing but darkness.

Corinthian is no longer in the hall, he is only stood alone in the darkness.

"Deceiver."

Corinthian's blood runs still. His breath hitches when he turns and is faced with an imposing figure.

Dream of the Endless glares at his creation with a tense jaw. His eyes are lit with a fury. Corinthian can easily recognize the envy.

He feels a possessiveness, an irksome roll in his gut. What is he doing in my nightmare?

Corinthian grinds his teeth then exhales, adjusting his shades on the bridge of his nose. He feels ire rise up the artery in his neck, but he plays it off with an airy chuckle, "sounds like a whole lot of denial on your part, papa bear."

Dream's nostrils flare, he steps forward, not willing to lose to his spawn, "I have gotten my answer, nightmare. Bego-"

"You've been following us," Cori cuts in, not wanting to end the nightmare, not wanting to lose either. He watches the strangles expression on his maker tighten. The nightmare's gotten some good footing, "you've seen us walk together," he raises a brow, "laughing, holding hands."

The blonde is excited by the involuntary reaction he gets from Dream. His dark form darkens even more. The king begins to contort into a thing of horror. His form is shifting into fear itself.

If a nightmare had a nightmare, it would be him.

And yet he does a good job of playing it off, Corinthian wills himself to, just before fear overtook him, "it'd be stupid of you not to realize the feelings we evidently share for each other."

Lord Morpheus' frightful and terror-inspiring form begins to dwindle, to lose its edge at the his words. Corinthian was, like the Lord of Dreams said, a deceiver, a master at that, but he was nonetheless true at a point though. That was why a paleness overtook Dream's face, dejected, cold.

Corinthian enjoys the fact he has the upper hand, "I've been spending all my time, frolicking with-"

"And yet," his voice cracks like thunder, "you were denied," Dream cuts, smashes with a sledgehammer. He nears Corinthian. His master feels his shudder, "enough of your games, child."

A shiver runs down his spine. The power of his words over Corinthian was absolute gospel. He felt like he was being drawn back into the depths by his ankles. Cori was not giving up without a fight however.

"I can hear your true intentions, Corinthian," Dream speaks, "cease your childish prods-"

"No," Corinthian snorts. He points a finger to the ground, "no, you're wrong. You can't make me!"

He watches Dream narrow his eyes and tilt his head. He gulps when he hears him say, "can't I?"

Corinthian feels his body vibrate in anger, in annoyance, in deviance.

At the same time, they both feel the stirring of the being's consciousness.

Corinthian heaves, forcing himself to laugh, "there's still something you still don't understand, pops."

Dream is done with him, and yet he decides to humor his Corinthian, "and what would that be?"

"Unlike you, we actually have a relationship, and I'm actually, at least, friends with t-"

I gasp awake, feeling a cold sweat down my neck. I squeal and snap my head to the side when I hear a voice from across my bedroom.

It's Corinthian, taunting me, a blanket on his form from where he was spending the night on my sofa chair, groaning as he shifted, lips curving upward, "nightmare?"

I catch my breath, scowling, grabbing the pillow beside me on my bed, "asshole!" I throw the pillow at him, "I knew it was a bad idea to let you sleep over!"

Corinthian is hit in the face by my unexpectedly good shot. The glasses he kept on slips from his nose and yet he is undeterred, and even chuckles, "that's what you get for playing good Samaritan."

"Rat!" I bark, "cretin! TROLL! GREMLIN-"

"I don't know why you're so angry," Cori laughs, "I'm sure you don't remember a thing."

"That doesn't mean I don't feel the fear in my body, moron! IMBECILE!"

Dream, on the other hand, who manifested his consciousness back in the Dreaming, alerts Matthew, who had been waiting for him, perched on his throne's backrest.

"So?" the raven crows.

Dream ignores him, standing from his throne, and walking off with a dark cloud over head.

Matthew watches him storm away. He sighs, "I told you to just ask if Corinthian was-"

"Silence, bird."

Matthew stops. He sighs. He'd roll his eyes if he could. He gently mocks, "ok then, boss. You're the boss, boss."

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anxiously-kk · 7 months

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can i be honest i think my cockydar is broke cause i just don’t see it with cory. his drs are arrogant i agree and i get finding them annoying but a huge complaint for newer seasons is how fake and scripted drs are. like prod makes them play up things (also since they refused to show cam as the villain i think they kinda scapegoated cory) but when he’s talking to people i dont think he’s that bad hes dry and some people dont get or like that and that’s fair but i also think he socializes differently very straight forward fact based logical to the point. and people dont like when others dont stick to the social script. they get extremely judgmental and rude and dont make any sort of effort to be accepting of differences. and not everyone clicks so i get it if it rubs you the wrong way but the extreme hatred for him because of it idk it feels over the top to me lol. like the way people talk about him you’d think he told everyone he’s gods gift to the world and the rest of them will never see heaven for being such shit players or whatever

#bb25 #it’s just i think some people out there are doing a bit too much #while being super nasty themselves #which is especially funny cause idk look in the mirror or something?#as someone who isn’t always an amazing peopler because of my anxiety it’s like ok let’s all chill for a second #and recognize we all have different conversational strengths and that’s ok #not that he has anxiety or anything im just saying like i relate to idk seeming abrupt at times

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ninthprime · 8 months

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post where i just talk about what im palisade shipping. because im bored.

bucci real. i like to think about how gucci ended up in this deep. how lonely are you that the fish who you know used to scam you and did war crimes is the one you’re falling in love with!! why are you having romantic thoughts about being great heroes and saving everyone with them!! brnine likes gucci of course but i truly don’t think they realized how deep it was until that pre-sun convo. and its like oh gucci is in deep with me. well i’m not gonna process that in my brain because i can’t connect to my own emotions. it’s toxic they’re not good for each other but its ok. care for each other anyway.

brnine/jesset is real too you know it is. but i also think that’s jesset occasionally wanting to make out with them and brnine would probably agree but is not processing it and is just thinking Jesset’s my best friend! ok brnine.

this does mean gucci/brnine/jesset is real i think. bucesset. as it has been dubbed. usually i dont think its romantic with gucci and jesset but it’s. A Relationship. what if we mind melded once and hated each other and what if we were currently each other’s ally on the terrorism council nonetheless and what if we were both in love with a pathetic war criminal. i want them to freak out about brnine being on the pact ship together. i want them to both be a little fucked up about how they nearly just had to give themselves up to the bilats. i want jesset to make gucci promise to not fail brnine like they both did valence.

you all know gurbalence is the forever ot3…for years i have thought of them every day…you know we will get it. ali is already providing us a steady stream of balence. and you KNOW we will get gurlence. you know dre and austin will make that happen. you know gur and brnine are going to have to exist around each other via figure proxy. and it will be awkward and bad. but they are associated forever by grief :) do you think brnine has opinions on the gur puppet. hey if they try to free gur do you think someone will have to make him another body. hey do you think brnine has thought about how they have the notes and tapes that are valence and gur’s legacy recently

i think figure/gur (figur) (you know we have to call it figur) could be real but i need to see it. i KNOW how much a dre pc loves a npc romance. but it could also be so bad for them in the wrong circumstances…them being tied together ties them to clem in many ways still…they have such similar hurts. it is probably not great to finally gain freedom and then have a spider bound to you. but also i think they could understand each other. figure will definitely project on them a little as is their habit. i have to see the flirty quotient…well sometimes gur is just naturally like that.

i did mention this recently in replies but secretly though the figure ship i have been thinking about a lot this season is figure/thisbe. honestly it may be my largest ship this season. but i have been nervous to talk about it because the best thing about thisbe is that she does not see things the way others see them so it is a hard sell while still true to her character. but im not seeing things right. they like to rush into action together. figure wanted to know if she was being treated well and seems to have picked up on how she sees the world differently and will defer to her judgement. thisbe made a clock just for getting them away from clem and prioritized it for multiple missions. they are like a plant to her and now they have plants growing from them!! i think figure will be very grateful and may try to make it up to her and it will be cute and funny. this is thisbe’s weird little crewmate and she is going to hook them up to the blue channel irrigation system and provide them beneficial nutrients. this will be satisfying to her and they will feel very safe.

cori/elle real. they will kiss i think. what i need to see is for them to talk about devotion more. what made you realize you didn’t believe elle. what happened to you as a double agent. can what you know cut through cori’s pain. can it cut through her devotion. how can you share this with her without her punching you again. do you care enough about her to share this. i want to see it all on screen

my friends are much better than me than talking about arbitred the hot new ship but it’s real. sending someone a digital ham slurper is real. when you don’t have a candidate because that’s so demeaning but you work closely with a weird little cyborg girl that’s not romance you know that’s just putting someone under a microscope and thinking they’re entertaining. it’s not like you feel the nonhuman equivalent of a satisfied rush when she sends you an emoji and talks about how successful the two of you are at selling contracts together. simply an incredibly beneficial business transaction. you are sending her five more ham slurpers and watching her say npc dialogue about this.

this isnt a big ship yet but i want to see more of the crusade squad because i miss ignadiah and ramondre the swordbearer rivals. i think hets are allowed if they are constantly trying to destroy one another. they are so much fun to me.

#fatt personal tag #palisade spoilers #yaaaay time to be embarassing yaaay

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