Tumgik
#earth 82
dykerachelsummers · 26 days
Text
would it be totally insane if i started making content for e82 again after two years?
5 notes · View notes
lonestarflight · 2 months
Text
Tumblr media
"The sun sets on Space Shuttle Discovery's almost empty cargo bay at the successful conclusion of the mission, as the seven astronauts inside the crew cabin approach one of the final mission chores--that of closing the cargo bay doors."
Date: February 20, 1997
NASA ID: sts082-765-007
35 notes · View notes
dailydccomics · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
they! are so! special! to ! me!!!!!
163 notes · View notes
guideaus · 1 year
Text
i need to go outside more, not in a "touch grass" way, but it is so fucking humid today, and its barely spring. if i wanna do anything in the summer i need to get used to it i think
2 notes · View notes
fallroute · 2 years
Text
Because of S.O.N.G’s existence in Earth-82 (Melanie’s world), it is difficult for Melanie to even touch Gungnir there as she knows of the inner workings of S.O.N.G and how they’d be able to narrow down the gear’s Aufwachen Waveform. They’d be on her almost immediately if she were to ever activate it.
This also means that Melanie’s world is accessible by Gjallarhorn.
I’ll write about how Melanie, Nimue, Esther, Nova and Rani get embroiled in the conflicts on this world after their respective journeys. There’s a bit more info under the cut about... well, some of S.O.N.G and the new relics introduced in this world.
However, unlike canon, there are separate sections of S.O.N.G across the world and are all headed by a former antagonist (with the exception of Finé, who died in the climax of S1). The Alca-Noise are still in use by someone else, though they haven’t shown themselves outside of a cloaked silhouette. The attacks of Noise are almost completely isolated to Japan, which has ceased travel there unless it is absolutely necessary.
There are five new Gear as well.
Balmung - A sword used by Siegfried to slay a dragon. It is also said to have been King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur. Turned into a relic by Finé before the events of S1 and held in S.O.N.G’s headquarters, it is later wielded by Nova Rainsworth. It’s designation is SG-i04 BALMUNG
Rhongomiant - A spear wielded by King Arthur himself. It is said that Rhongomiant was actually a sword used as a spear, giving it the ability to swap between spear and sword forms as a Gear. Turned into a relic by Finé before the events of S1 and held in S.O.N.G’s headquarters , it is later wielded by Esther Roselynn. Its designation is SG-r04 RHONGOMIANT
Kalis - A special-made relic using a piece of an otherworldly weapon. This relic was made by Elfnein instead of Finé, and is specifically tailored to its only wielder. This relic is wielded by Nimue Edenwood. Its designation is SG-x01 KALIS
Fragrach - A long-range relic made using a piece of an otherworldly weapon. This relic was made by Elfnein. It has One Ignite Usage Left before it breaks. This relic is wielded by Rani Starrett. Its designation is SG-x02 FRAGRACH
Siegfried - A long-range relic made using a piece of an otherworldly weapon. This relic was made to replace Fragrach and uses both whip-like weaponry and gun weaponry. It’s also wielded by Rani Starrett. It shares the SG-x02 designation with Fragrach, making it SG-x02 SIEGFRIED
3 notes · View notes
granonine · 10 months
Text
Hopeless and Helpless
Psalm 82: 3-5. Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. This is an interesting psalm. Asaph sees destruction and devastation all around him, and even seems somewhat angry…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
0 notes
mrm101 · 1 year
Text
youtube
0 notes
tanglepelt · 10 months
Text
Dc x dp idea 82
Bernard has a new online conspiracy theorist friend.
Tim is at least happy bernard has less conspiracy theories about the bats. However him going off about a whole branch of the government deemed as guys in white is a bit much.
Now. He sure the two are just feeding off one another.
But it gets a tad too specific at times. Bernard going into detailed accounts of different ghost then ways they may have died?
A tiny ghost in a suit of armor. He is even claiming that his online friend is actually king of an entire dimension of elite ghost warriors? But his friend hadn’t realized it yet.
Honestly if his friend whose username is d3as0rAliv3? wasn’t coming to visit Gotham. Which he has no idea why anyone would come here he’d be hunting him down right now.
He’ll still do his research of course. Tim will also accompanying Bernard for the meet up. Just to be on the safe side.
Now when they got to the library. He most certainly wasn’t expecting a kid their age with a black eye and bruising around the wrists.
Especially not that Danny actually had proof of this GIW and the fact they were actively hunting down beings from a dimension called the infinite realm.
Maybe it wasn’t all a conspiracy theory. How on earth did Bernard find the one person who could prove their was a secret government agency hell bent on breaking the meta protection acts.
1K notes · View notes
harringtown · 2 years
Text
wrap me up in all your—
Tumblr media
still not over that obscure friends to lovers prompt list so I did number 30 w Eddie!!!!
pairing: eddie munson x reader
summary: everyone forgets Eddie’s birthday except the reader (aka a cupcake, a joint, a gift, and a confession or two)
word count: 1.5k
warnings: cursing and weed/smoking mention
-
The trailer park is quiet. The autumn chill has settled over town like a blanket, unearthing winter jackets and beanies from closets and marking every breath with a plume of white air.
Eddie sits beside you on his front porch, and though the light swinging overhead flickers every few seconds, and the wooden stairs are halfway to rotted, it’s his favorite place in the world.
Anywhere that has you in it is his favorite place in the world.
He’d like to blame that sappy sentiment on the joint you surprised him with an hour ago and have been passing back and forth, but if he’s honest, Eddie feels that way sober.
You make him feel and think all that sappy shit he was sure only existed in movies.
You showed up, with a dorky birthday hat and a joint sticking out of a cupcake, and Eddie instantly felt high.  And so, even though his day started at crappy and only got worse from there, it’s looking to have a decent ending.
As far as birthdays go, this certainly isn’t the worst. It’s almost better that everyone forgot. No last-minute, hasty gifts or the off-key singing of some waitress and his uncle.
It doesn’t even matter that everyone else forgot. Because you didn’t.
“I got you a present,” you say eventually, jabbing out the last burning embers of the roach and tossing the filter into the tiny pile at the bottom of the steps. Other filters from other nights smoking on this porch, the best of them with you.
“I thought we just smoked the present,” Eddie says.
You snort a laugh and bump Eddie’s shoulder with your own.
“No, that was the candle,” you say. “It would have been better if you rolled it. You’ve got magic hands.” You lift your arms and do jazz hands, making Eddie laugh, and then cough, which makes you laugh, too. Then you’re just two high idiots giggling on a crumbling porch, but Eddie is happier than he has been in a long time.
“Not everyone has the magic touch,” Eddie says. He raises his own hands, and doesn’t miss the way your gaze falls and lingers on each finger, each ring and crooked knuckle and calloused fingertip. Eddie drops his hands. “So. What’s this present you speak of? It better be damn good, after all you’ve hyped it up.”
“I did no hyping,” you accuse. You tear your gaze from Eddie’s and drop it to your lap, where you’re worrying the hem of your hoodie between your fingers. “And it probably isn’t that good—”
Eddie blames the weed on his sudden confidence. He takes your chin in one hand, forcing you to look at him, and he doesn’t realize how close you are on the porch until he almost smashes your nose with his own.
“Whatever it is, sweetheart,” he says, gentler than he intends, “I’m sure I’ll love it.” Your eyes dip, dip to his mouth, and now Eddie is looking at your lips, and he can’t stop.
He clears his throat and sits back. “You’ve never gone wrong before. Christmas ‘82?” He shrugs his shoulders and flashes you a lopsided grin. “Alright, yeah, you kind of screwed future you, there. How the hell do you follow thatup?”
You roll your eyes, but Eddie can tell you’re pleased. He’s known you so long that nonactions are actions, too.
“You and that damn guitar,” you say.
“What can I say? You did good, kid,” Eddie says. He bumps your shoulder again. “C’mon. Quit stalling. Let’s see it.”
You scrunch your nose. “Technically, there’s not really anything to see. I mean, I have a piece of paper, like a written agreement, but—”
“Earth to y/n,” Eddie says in a singsongy voice, though honestly, he’d be content to watch you talk about nothing for hours.
You nod a few times. Clear your throat. Don’t look at him as you say, “I kind of… booked you a gig.”
And Eddie’s dry mouth becomes the Sahara desert.
“You—what?”
“And I don’t know if I’d really call it a gig. More of an… audition? That fancy new club, The Tunnel, is looking for a local band to play Friday nights, and they want something different, so I played them one of your tapes. The manager liked it. He said if you do well at the show in a few weeks, you could be in there every friday night—”
“Are you serious?” Eddie asks.
You stop. Meet his eyes. “Of course I’m serious.”
“Holy shit.” Eddie pushes off the porch steps, onto the dirt below, and shakes his head. “Holy shit.” He wraps his arms around his torso and turns to you, shaking his head again. “Are you serious?”
You laugh, and say, “For the second time, yeah, I’m serious.” You swipe at your nose and sniffle. “Not that your usual joint isn’t great, but I figured, maybe you and the guys wanted to change it up a bit¸—”
And Eddie can’t hold back anymore. He rushes you, throwing his arms around your waist, knees digging into the step below you, burying his face in your neck.
You laugh again, and hug him back, and when you dip your face against his, your cool lips graze his temples. His stomach lurches, and his pulse sings, and yeah, he’s definitely high, but it’s most certainly not all from the weed.
All his reservations fall away. Fall apart. Never fucking existed at all, and he’s just been kiding himself.
Eddie pulls back to look at you.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” he says. “I love you.”
You let out a little laugh. “I love you, too, dude.”
He shakes his head. Peels himself away from you and drops onto the step beside you. “No. I mean, I love you. I’m in love with you. And I have been since we were sixteen. I was doing a pretty good job of not doing anything about it, trying to maintain the friendship and all that, but then you show up here, and you tell me you booked my band a gig—”
“Technically not a gig!”
“—a gig,” Eddie says. “And suddenly, I don’t give a shit about maintaining anything. So, thanks for that. And I love you. I really fucking love you. Sorry if that screws things up.”
For a long second, you just look at him, and Eddie thinks he could die right there on that porch—which is ironic, considering he kind of almost did, if the grass near this porch in a parallel universe counts.
“Do you have any idea,” you ask, “how long I’ve been waiting for you to admit that?”
Eddie jerks back. “What are you—you knew?”
You tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear and look away, a sheepish smile on your face.
“I mean, of course I knew,” you say. “I’ve known you since we were ten. I know you. But time went on, and you still never said anything, and I wasn’t sure if I was wrong, or if you just had no goddamn clue how you felt, and then—“
“And how do you feel?” Eddie asks.
Your smile shifts. It shines like a thousand stars, brighter than anything in the night sky.
“I really fucking love you too,” you say. And then you kiss him, and you taste like frosting and weed and a thousand future kisses.
Eddie ends it sooner than he’d like—if he doesn’t, he’ll do something non-gentlemanly things on his porch, and he’s really trying to be a gentleman—and you drop your head onto his shoulder. You lace your fingers through his, fiddling with his rings with your free hand.
Sometime later, you lift your head, and say, “You never told me your wish.”
The cupcake with the joint. You instructed him to make a birthday wish on the first hit.
Eddie averts his gaze, swiping the hair from his eyes.
“My wish?” He shrugs. Meets your eyes. “You know the rules. Secret.” He draws his fingers across his lips and mimics throwing away a key.
You roll your eyes. “Humor me.”
Eddie inclines his head and considers a moment.
“You really want to know?”
“I want to know everything in that head,” you say, lifting two fingers to his temples.
Eddie knows he’s smiling like a dork, but he doesn’t care.
“It was you,” he says. “It’s always you.”
You press your lips together, but a smile tugs them up. You wind your arms around his neck and dip your forehead against him.
“Well,” you say softly. “You’ve got me. Time to find a new wish.”
“I’ll figure it out later,” he says. “Now, I just really want to kiss you again. You cool with that?”
You laugh, and say, “Yeah, I’m cool with that.”
Then you kiss him again.
And Eddie thinks this might be the best birthday he’s ever had.
-
taglist (join here!): @milkiane​ @robiin-buckley​ @copycatkillerfics​  @robinbuckleyssgf​ @isshecrazyorissheclever
5K notes · View notes
inhonoredglory · 9 months
Note
I think it makes sense to say that angels as ethereal beings in heaven are sexless but if one or two spend 6000 years on earth BEING male-sexed human bodies it no longer makes sense. As people keep recognising, eating food, drinking and driving fast among other things are all deeply embodied experiences and these have fundamentally changed them as people. The whole Jesus story is the same deal, being embodied human is transformative. We live in a time when the concept of embodiment is deeply unfashionable and Cartesian dualism is entrenched, where endless body mods and casual drugs and careless manipulation of core human physiology is enacted with barely an afterthought for deep-reaching and irreversible consequences, but it's a deeply sick framework for seeing the world
(In response to this meta about ineffables and romance/asexuality)
First of all, they don’t have “male-sexed human bodies.” They are literally "sexless unless they really want to make an effort” (Good Omens, 1990).
Like all of Neil Gaiman’s angels and demons (see The Sandman), Aziraphale and Crowley have no set genitalia, don’t (by default) engage in sexual activity, and they don’t always present or dress as male through history (although they often do).
Tumblr media Tumblr media
critical-gemini-hero (excerpt): "Good Omens is the first big show I’ve seen to basically avoid transphobia all together when the opportunity presented itself, and even say fuck you to the gender binary as a bonus." Neil Gaiman (excerpt): "Thank you! That was definitely what we were going for." (source)
So no, they quite literally do not have “male-sexed human bodies” and they do not ascribe to human gender norms.
In addition, what you are suggesting is that “being in a male human body” equates to “feeling male” and “feeling sexual” because “the body dictates internal experience.”
There are literally millions of people, actual human beings living in physical bodies, who (despite living in culture) still DO NOT feel that the gender assigned to their bodies is reflective of their lived, internal experience. Merely having physical attributes does not mean you have a corresponding internal experience. You can be forced by your parents, teachers, elders, peers and everyone else to FEEL a certain way because of your “sexed human body” but it won’t make it true inside you.
If one's internal experience were so unimportant, then we wouldn't have 82% of transgender individuals consider suicide (source) because of the stigma of trying to get out of the norms assigned to them because of their "sexed human bodies."
Aziraphale and Crowley have lived in history long enough to know how varied and complicated the concepts of gender AND sex have been historically. As spiritual beings, I think seeing how much humanity has varied in its ideas on sex and gender only confirms to them how unlike humans they are (with humanity’s obsession with genitalia, sex, reproduction… food, shelter, warmth, breathing––all things that angels and demons do not need to survive).
They love humanity, they love its pleasures and inventions, but they are still very much detached from it. Looking like humans definitely doesn't help them feel like humans at all. (Look at how they talk about us!)
Tumblr media Tumblr media
What are we, sniffer dogs??? They don't know what we feel like on the inside or how our biology works (we sure ain't sniffer dogs) because despite some surface appearances, they don't have the same internal experiences as us. Despite being here since the dawn of time. Despite looking like us in many ways.
They can magic up clothing and sideburns and eldritch heads to scare trigger-happy corporate men, and yet somehow gender and sex (as specifically Western-binary concepts) are something they'd totally get down with?
Tumblr media
Also, your line of reasoning imagines people having no internal motivation or desire and suddenly get a tattoo and start to become a “bad person” or something. Yes, of course changing our bodies can affect our psychology, but our internal identity much more often influences our bodily choices than the other way around. I'm taking the drugs because I'm already depressed. I'm getting the tat because I want something cool on my body. I'm taking testosterone because I want my inner identity reflected in some ways on my physical body.
354 notes · View notes
dykerachelsummers · 26 days
Text
sgsjhsjsjsbsbsnsbsnsnsn it’s 4:14 in the morning and i’m thinking abt dc again (it’s all dick grayson’s fault that i’m in the trenches again),, if any of y’all still care maybe send me some earth-82 asks so i can get in the mindset again? feel free to ask basic level stuff i may have already explained!
4 notes · View notes
lonestarflight · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
Concept art of the Hubble Space Telescope being deployed by the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Painting by Ball Corporation artist B. Scott Kahler.
Mike Acs's Collection: link
70 notes · View notes
Text
How monopoly enshittified Amazon
Tumblr media
In Bezos’s original plan, the company called “Amazon” was called “Relentless,” due to its ambition to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” Today, Amazon is an enshittified endless scroll of paid results, where winning depends on ad budgets, not quality.
Writing in Jeff Bezos’s newspaper The Washington Post, veteran tech reporter Geoffrey Fowler reports on the state of his boss’s “relentless” commitment to customer service. The state is grim.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/
Search Amazon for “cat beds” and the entire first screen is ads. One of them is an ad for a dog carrier, which Amazon itself manufactures and sells, competing with the other sellers who bought that placement.
Scroll down one screen and you get some “organic” results — that is, results that represent Amazon’s best guess at the best products for your query. Scroll once more and yup, another entire screen of ads, these ones labeled “Highly rated.” One more scroll, and another screenful of ads, one for a dog product.
Keep scrolling, you’ll keep seeing ads, including ads you’ve already scrolled past. “On these first five screens, more than 50 percent of the space was dedicated to ads and Amazon touting its own products.” Amazon is a cesspit of ads: twice as many as Target, four times as many as Walmart.
How did we get here? We always knew that Amazon didn’t care about its suppliers, but being an Amazon customer has historically been a great deal — lots of selection, low prices, and a generous returns policy. How could “Earth’s most customer-centric” company become such a bad place to shop?
The answer is in Amazon’s $31b “ad” business. Amazon touts this widely, and analysts repeat it without any critical interrogation, proclaiming that Amazon is catching up with the Googbook ad-tech duopoly. But nearly all of that “ad” business isn’t ads at all — it’s payola.
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/not-an-ad/#shakedowns
Amazon charges its sellers billions of dollars a year through a gladiatorial combat where they compete to outspend each other to see who’ll get to the top of the search results. May the most margin-immolating, deep-pocketed spender win!
Why would sellers be willing to light billions of dollars on fire to get to the top of the Amazon search results?
Prime.
Most of us have Amazon Prime. Seriously — 82% of American households! Prime users only shop on Amazon. Seriously. More than 90% of Prime members start their search on Amazon, and if they find what they’re looking for, they stop there, too.
If you are a seller, you have to be on Amazon, otherwise no one will find your stuff and that means they won’t buy it. This is called a monopsony, the obscure inverse of monopoly, where a buyer has power over sellers.
But monopoly and monopsony are closely related phenomena. Monopsonies use control over buyers — the fact that we all have Prime — to exert control over sellers. This lets them force unfavorable terms onto sellers, like deeper discounts. In theory, this is good for use consumers, because prices go down. In practice, though…
Back in June 2021, DC Attorney General Karl Racine filed an antitrust suit against Amazon, because the company had used its monopoly over customers to force such unfavorable terms on sellers that prices were being driven up everywhere, not just on Amazon:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#prime-facie
Here’s how that works: one of the unfavorable terms Amazon forces on sellers is “most favored nation” status (MFN), which means that Amazon sellers have to offer their lowest price on Amazon — they can’t sell more cheaply anywhere else.
Then Amazon hits sellers with fees. Lots of fees:
Fees to be listed on Prime (without which, your search result is buried at the bottom of an endless scroll):
Fees for Amazon warehouse fulfillment (without which, your search result is buried at the bottom of an endless scroll)
And finally, there’s payola — the “ads” you have to buy to outcompete the other people who are buying ads to outcompete you.
All told, these fees add up to 45% of the price you pay Amazon — sometimes more. Companies just don’t have 45% margins, because they exist in competitive markets. If I’m selling a bottle of detergent at a 45% markup, my rival will sell it at 40%, and then I have to drop to 35%, and so on.
But everyone has to sell on Amazon, and Amazon takes their 45% cut, which means that all these sellers have to raise prices. And, thanks to MFN, the sellers then have to charge the same price at Walmart, Target, and your local mom-and-pop shop.
Amazon’s monopoly (control over buyers) gives it a monopsony (control over sellers), which lets it raise prices everywhere, at Amazon and at every other retailer, even as it drives the companies that supply it into bankruptcy.
Amazon is no longer a place where a scrappy independent seller can find an audience for its products. In order to navigate the minefield Amazon lays for its sellers (who have no choice but to sell there), these indie companies are forced to sell out to gators (aggregators), which are now multi-billion-dollar businesses in their own right:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#gator-ade
This brings me back to the enshittification of Amazon search, AKA late-stage (platform) capitalism. Amazon’s dominance means that many products are now solely available on the platform. With the collapse of both physical and online retail, Prime isn’t so much a choice as a necessity.
Amazon has produced a planned economy run as capriciously as a Soviet smelting plant, but Party Secretary Bezos doesn’t even pretend to be a servant of the people. From his lordly seat aboard his penis-rocket, Bezos decides which products live and which ones die.
Remember that one of those search-results for a cat-bed was a product for dogs? Remember that Amazon made that dog product? How did that end up there? Well, if you’re a seller trying to make a living from cat-beds, your ad-spending is limited by your profit margin. Guess how much it costs Amazon to advertise on Amazon? Amazon is playing with its own chips, and it can always outbid the other players at the table.
Those Amazon own-brand products? They didn’t come out of a vacuum. Amazon monitors its own sellers’ performance, and creams off the best of them, cloning them and then putting its knockoffs above of the original product in search results (Bezos lied to Congress about this, then admitted it was true):
https://nypost.com/2021/10/18/jeff-bezos-may-have-lied-to-congress-about-amazon-practices-reps/
If you’ve read Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin’s and my new book about market concentration in the entertainment industry, this story will be a familiar one. You’ll recall that Amazon actually boasts about this process, calling it “the flywheel”:
https://twitter.com/rgibli/status/1561761732108107777
Everything that Amazon is doing to platform sellers, other platforms are doing to creators. You know how Amazon knocks off its sellers’ best products and then replaces them with its clones? That’s exactly what Spotify does to the ambient artists in its most popular playlists, replacing them with work-for-hire soundalikes who aren’t entitled to royalties.
You can learn more about how Spotify rips off its performers in the Chokepoint Capitalism chapter on Spotify; we made the audiobook version of that chapter a Spotify exclusive (it’s the only part of the book you can get on Spotify):
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing
Entertainment and tech companies all want to be the only game in town for their creative labor force, because that lets them turn the screws to those workers, moving value from labor to shareholders.
Amazon is also the poster-child for this dynamic. For example, its Audible audiobook monopoly means that audiobook creators must sell on Audible, even though the #AudibleGate scandal revealed that the company has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from these creators. (Our chapter on Audiblegate is the only part of our audiobook on Audible!)
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate
Then there’s its Twitch division, where the company just admitted that it had been secretly paying its A-listers 70% of the total take for their streams. The company declared this to be unfair when the plebs were having half their wages clawed back by Amazon, so they fixed it by cutting the A-listers’ pay.
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/22/amazon-vs-amazon/#pray-i-dont-alter-it-further
Twitch blamed the cut on the high cost of bandwidth for streaming. If that sounds reasonable to you, remember: Twitch buys its bandwidth from Amazon. As Sam Biddle wrote, “Amazon is charging Amazon so much money to run the business via Amazon that it has no choice but to take more money from streamers.”
https://twitter.com/samfbiddle/status/1572667269284777984
As Bezos suns himself aboard his yacht-so-big-it-has-a-smaller-yacht, we ask him to referee a game where he also owns one of the teams. Over and over again, he proves that he is not up to the task. Either his “relentless” customer focus was a sham, or the benefits of cheating are too tempting to ignore.
Historically, we understood that businesses couldn’t be trusted to be on both sides of a transaction. The “structural separation” doctrine is one of the vital pieces of policy we’ve lost over 40 years of antitrust neglect. It says that important platforms can’t compete with their users.
https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/
For example, banks couldn’t own businesses that competed with their commercial borrowers. If you own Joe’s Pizza and your competitor is Citibank Pizza and you both have a hard month and can’t make your payment, will you trust that Citi called in your loan but not Citibank Pizza’s because they had a more promising business?
Today, all kinds of businesses have been credibly accused of self-preferencing: Google and Apple via their App Stores, Spotify via its playlists, consoles via their game stores, etc. Legislators have decided that the best way to fix this isn’t structural separation, but rather, rules against self-preferencing.
Under these rules, companies will have to put “the best” results at the top of their listings. This is doomed. When Apple says it put its own ebook store ahead of Bookshop.org’s app because it sincerely believes Apple Books is “better,” how will we argue with this? Maybe Apple really does believe that. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it does, but only because of motivated reasoning (“It is difficult to get a product manager to understand something, when their bonus depends on them not understanding it”).
The irony here is that these companies’ own lawyers know that a sincere promise of fairness is no assurance that your counterparty will act honorably. If the judge in Apple v. Epic was a major shareholder in Epic, or the brother-in-law of Epic’s CEO, Apple’s lawyers would bring down the roof demanding a new judge — even if the judge promised really sincerely to be neutral.
https://marker.medium.com/moral-hazard-and-monopoly-42e30eb159a8
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if Amazon’s enshittification is because Bezos was a cynic or because he sold out. Once Amazon could make more money by screwing its customers, that screw-job became a fait accompli. That’s why it’s so important that the FTC win its bid to block the Activision-Microsoft merger:
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/23/exclusive-feds-likely-to-challenge-microsofts-69-billion-activision-takeover-00070787
The best time to prevent monopoly formation was 40 years ago. The second best time is now.
Anti-monopoly measures are slow and ponderous tools, but when it comes to tech companies, we have faster, more nimble ones. If we want to make it easy to compete with Amazon, we could — for example — use Adversarial Interoperability to turn it into a dumb pipe:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/01/dumb-pipes/#original-asin
That is, we could let local merchants use Amazon’s ASIN system to tag their own inventory and produce a realtime database. Customers could browse Amazon to find the things they wanted, with a browser plugin that turned “Buy It Now” into “Buy It Now at Joe’s Hardware”:
https://doctorow.medium.com/view-a-sku-32721d623aee
But this only works to the extent that Amazon’s search isn’t totally enshittified. To that end, Fowler has a few modest proposals of his own, like requiring that at least 50% of the first six screens be given over to real results, not ads.
“Perhaps 50 percent sounds like a lot to you? But even that rule would force Amazon to show us at least some of the most-relevant results on the first screen of our device…Amazon wouldn’t comment on this suggestion.”
2K notes · View notes
arty-cakes · 6 months
Note
Ooh how about #82: one driving one passenger with bretta and zote 👁👁
Tumblr media
he'd be changing the radio station every two seconds. and cursing out cars for overtaking him. hell on earth
173 notes · View notes
fallroute · 2 years
Text
THE REISIJA
Information about the race is under the cut.
A race found in both Lys Waylas and Melanie’s own storyline. The Reisija (known as either Passengers or Travelers) are ancient beings from across time and space, having existed long, long before the creation of the Universe. The first Reisija, whose name was only written down as “God” in Earthen texts and was known as the “All-Father” in Terran texts, integrated well into a prehistoric society, learning their ways and helping them learn before moving on.
Their physiology is powerful, so much so that they generally only create Reisija with few exceptions (One known exception is Esther Roselynn) as their DNA overtakes the shared DNA of their spouse or mate. This means that most of the population may or may not know that they are Reisija and not ordinary people.
The latent abilities they have differ among each person, but there are a few general abilities they all share. They are as follows:
They can shapeshift at will, turning their forms into whatever they so please. This includes being capable of changing their voices, but some just want to look different and forgo that.
They are indestructable, meaning that they cannot be destroyed. The only exception to this is if Sylphie or Zen-Oh decide to erase them completely from existence.
They are immortal. Absolute immortality is rare among Reisija and can only be found among the ones that have greatness planned later on in life after a long bout of suffering.
Every Reisija can regenerate 100 times quicker than an average person, meaning all wounds are superficial to them and will heal within seconds of being dealt.
All Reisija have Panmesia/an Eidetic Memory but most pretend not to have it or be as dumb as their peers.
Due to the above abilities, many find themselves able to survive falls and fatal injuries that would kill normal people. This is generally a sign that the Reisija’s latent abilities are coming to the forefront, and at thirteen years old MOST Reisijas have come into their abilities. The exceptions are Niali Trey (who came into them at eight years old) and Melanie Sinclair (who came into them at nineteen years old after cultivating her Cruxis Crystal).
Many Reisija share traits with one another unless they shapeshift and hide the outward traits. The traits they all share are as follows:
Hair that’s white as snow. Many Reisija find themselves going “prematurely grey” before they turn thirteen, with some being born with white hair.
Bleeding black-coloured blood. Even Reisija who have yet to reach thirteen will bleed black instead of red, giving away that they are not human. It has the same smell and consistency as regular blood, and clots the same way... but it’s just a different colour.
All Reisija are sexless, meaning they do NOT have sex organs. This is remedied when a Reisija desires to be known as Male, Female or Nonbinary, when they can shapeshift properly. The only known exception to this is Melanie Sinclair, who was born as a female despite her Reisija DNA.
Pale skin tone, almost like a ghost.
Due to how many Reisija exist in Earth-82 and in the Lys Wayalas universe, many doctors have the parents assign a gender to their Reisija child with rare exceptions. This is so a Reisija can give themselves an identity and integrate with a human society much, much better than if they were not given a gender identity as they were raised. Much like a human society, Reisija can also choose what gender they identify as later on in life.
Although a lot of Reisija history is shrouded in mystery, one thing is for sure. The first Reisija was given a lofty name and heralded as the Creator of their worlds (Rina as the “All-Father” and Rika as “God”).
All Reisija have an innate wanderlust, and never stay in one place for long. This is how many of them end up travelling the world, or dreaming of it until they do. A few can even traverse the multiverse with ease and integrate themselves perfectly into any society with little effort.
All in all, the Reisija are a strange race of beings who have been there since the beginning of time. There is much still to be uncovered about them, information that none of them truly understand themselves.
1 note · View note
vidavalor · 8 months
Text
I realized earlier that when Crowley says "the last few years-- not really" about them not pretending they aren't a team/group of the two of them/the word is 'couple', Crowley... he doesn't mean "few years" the way we think of them. He's not just talking about since S1.
If we, as humans whose lifespans average 80-100 years, proposed in the same way as Crowley, the "few years" to us would be what we consider to be "a few"-- a handful. More than a couple (2) but not a larger amount (less than 10). The time between S1 and S2 is "a few years" to us... but to Crowley and Aziraphale, who have been on earth for *6,000* years... "a few years" can be a lot longer than that. So everyone who thinks the events of 1941 made it impossible to pretend anymore and that 1967 is a relatively open (for them) relationship discussion are correct. 82 years is "a few years" to Crowley and Aziraphale-- a drop in the bucket of the six millennia they've been on Earth, let alone anything before that. Most of what we've seen is actually them *not* pretending... we've seen more of that then the thousands of years of them pretending.
Because this scene really needed to be more heart-breaking lol...
Tumblr media
269 notes · View notes