#private law

[mbrainspaz]

Since I work for a mega HOA (against my will [thanks capitalist hellscape]) I had to go to the community meeting tonight and boy was that an experience. I brought my ipad hoping I could doodle to pass some of the 2 hour time block but who should sit next to me in the back corner but the queen. That's what all us maintenance peasants call her. She owns the biggest of the big properties and is famous for getting her way. I'd never met her but she just spent 2 hours giggling in my ear. I actually feel like we'd get along if she wasn't terrifying.

Anyway, rich people scare the shit out of me. I spent the whole two hours masking the hardest I can mask. Shoulders straight. Brain on screensaver mode. Responsive 'active listening' smile plastered on my face. The big boss CEO was there so I saw him for the first time. He really said the quiet parts out loud when it came to local politics and land development, but it was a room full of other rich republican capitalists and me, a simple peasant, so why not.

There was one ruddy guy in board shorts in the back who kept derailing the whole meeting to remind everyone that he had a 3 year old daughter. The disruption salvaged some shreds of my sanity, I'll give him that. Naturally he's distraught about her safety in this gated mansion neighborhood with private law enforcement. Gosh. And here I was not even locking my house most days because this is the safest place I've lived since I left Germany 20 years ago. I bet he's seen me driving my poor person car through the gates after dark and had a conniption about it at least once. What's up bud? Heavens. The other day I was out picking blackberries and saw the cops lurking on the road, keeping an eye on me. Checking to make sure I looked white enough no doubt.

#what is reality #life of a texan peasant #personal problems #things that happened #police state #private law #ugh rich people #capitalist hellscape #corporate american hellscape #us politics #if you know me irl no you don't

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me WEDNESDAY (Apr 11) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Audre Lorde counsels us that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," while MLK said "the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me." Somewhere between replacing the system and using the system lies a pragmatic – if easily derailed – course.

Lorde is telling us that a rotten system can't be redeemed by using its own chosen reform mechanisms. King's telling us that unless we live, we can't fight – so anything within the system that makes it easier for your comrades to fight on can hasten the end of the system.

Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.

In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.

All of this was grossly exacerbated by tech monopolies. Tech barons aren't smarter or more evil than newspaper barons, but they have better tools, and so now they take 51 cents out of every ad dollar and 30 cents out of ever subscriber dollar and they refuse to deliver the news to users who explicitly requested it, unless the news company pays them a bribe to "boost" their posts:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The news is important, and people sign up to make, digest, and discuss the news for many non-economic reasons, which means that the news continues to struggle along, despite all the economic impediments and the vulture capitalists and tech monopolists who fight one another for which one will get to take the biggest bite out of the press. We've got outstanding nonprofit news outlets like Propublica, journalist-owned outlets like 404 Media, and crowdfunded reporters like Molly White (and winner-take-all outlets like the New York Times).

But as Hamilton Nolan points out, "that pot of money…is only large enough to produce a small fraction of the journalism that was being produced in past generations":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-will-replace-advertising-revenue

For Nolan, "public funding of journalism is the only way to fix this…If we accept that journalism is not just a business or a form of entertainment but a public good, then funding it with public money makes perfect sense":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-funding-of-journalism-is-the

Having grown up in Canada – under the CBC – and then lived for a quarter of my life in the UK – under the BBC – I am very enthusiastic about Nolan's solution. There are obvious problems with publicly funded journalism, like the politicization of news coverage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor

And the transformation of the funding into a cheap political football:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-defund-cbc-change-law-1.6810434

But the worst version of those problems is still better than the best version of the private-equity-funded model of news production.

But Nolan notes the emergence of a new form of hedge fund news, one that is awfully promising, and also terribly fraught: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet owned by short-sellers who pay journalists to research and publish damning reports on companies they hold a short position on:

https://hntrbrk.com/

For those of you who are blissfully distant from the machinations of the financial markets, "short selling" is a wager that a company's stock price will go down. A gambler who takes a short position on a company's stock can make a lot of money if the company stumbles or fails altogether (but if the company does well, the short can suffer literally unlimited losses).

Shorts have historically paid analysts to dig into companies and uncover the sins hidden on their balance-sheets, but as Matt Levine points out, journalists work for a fraction of the price of analysts and are at least as good at uncovering dirt as MBAs are:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper

What's more, shorts who discover dirt on a company still need to convince journalists to publicize their findings and trigger the sell-off that makes their short position pay off. Shorts who own a muckraking journalistic operation can skip this step: they are the journalists.

There's a way in which this is sheer genius. Well-funded shorts who don't care about the news per se can still be motivated into funding freely available, high-quality investigative journalism about corporate malfeasance (notoriously, one of the least attractive forms of journalism for advertisers). They can pay journalists top dollar – even bid against each other for the most talented journalists – and supply them with all the tools they need to ply their trade. A short won't ever try the kind of bullshit the owners of Vice pulled, paying themselves millions while their journalists lose access to Lexisnexis or the PACER database:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

The shorts whose journalists are best equipped stand to make the most money. What's not to like?

Well, the issue here is whether the ruling class's sense of solidarity is stronger than its greed. The wealthy have historically oscillated between real solidarity (think of the ultrawealthy lobbying to support bipartisan votes for tax cuts and bailouts) and "war of all against all" (as when wealthy colonizers dragged their countries into WWI after the supply of countries to steal ran out).

After all, the reason companies engage in the scams that shorts reveal is that they are profitable. "Behind every great fortune is a great crime," and that's just great. You don't win the game when you get into heaven, you win it when you get into the Forbes Rich List.

Take monopolies: investors like the upside of backing an upstart company that gobbles up some staid industry's margins – Amazon vs publishing, say, or Uber vs taxis. But while there's a lot of upside in that move, there's also a lot of risk: most companies that set out to "disrupt" an industry sink, taking their investors' capital down with them.

Contrast that with monopolies: backing a company that merges with its rivals and buys every small company that might someday grow large is a sure thing. Shriven of "wasteful competition," a company can lower quality, raise prices, capture its regulators, screw its workers and suppliers and laugh all the way to Davos. A big enough company can ignore the complaints of those workers, customers and regulators. They're not just too big to fail. They're not just too big to jail. They're too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Would-be monopolists are stuck in a high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate, they can screw over everyone else and get unimaginably rich. But if one party defects, they can raid the monopolist's margins, short its stock, and snitch to its regulators.

It's true that there's a clear incentive for hedge-fund managers to fund investigative journalism into other hedge-fund managers' portfolio companies. But it would be even more profitable for both of those hedgies to join forces and collude to screw the rest of us over. So long as they mistrust each other, we might see some benefit from that adversarial relationship. But the point of the 0.1% is that there aren't very many of them. The Aspen Institute can rent a hall that will hold an appreciable fraction of that crowd. They buy their private jets and bespoke suits and powdered rhino horn from the same exclusive sellers. Their kids go to the same elite schools. They know each other, and they have every opportunity to get drunk together at a charity ball or a society wedding and cook up a plan to join forces.

This is the problem at the core of "mechanism design" grounded in "rational self-interest." If you try to create a system where people do the right thing because they're selfish assholes, you normalize being a selfish asshole. Eventually, the selfish assholes form a cozy little League of Selfish Assholes and turn on the rest of us.

Appeals to morality don't work on unethical people, but appeals to immorality crowds out ethics. Take the ancient split between "free software" (software that is designed to maximize the freedom of the people who use it) and "open source software" (identical to free software, but promoted as a better way to make robust code through transparency and peer review).

Over the years, open source – an appeal to your own selfish need for better code – triumphed over free software, and its appeal to the ethics of a world of "software freedom." But it turns out that while the difference between "open" and "free" was once mere semantics, it's fully possible to decouple the two. Today, we have lots of "open source": you can see the code that Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook uses, and even contribute your labor to it for free. But you can't actually decide how the software you write works, because it all takes a loop through Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook's servers, and only those trillion-dollar tech monopolists have the software freedom to determine how those servers work:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/04/which-side-are-you-on/#tivoization-and-beyond

That's ruling class solidarity. The Big Tech firms have hidden a myriad of sins beneath their bafflegab and balance-sheets. These (as yet) undiscovered scams constitute a "bezzle," which JK Galbraith defined as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

The purpose of Hunterbrook is to discover and destroy bezzles, hastening the moment of realization that the wealth we all feel in a world of seemingly orderly technology is really an illusion. Hunterbrook certainly has its pick of bezzles to choose from, because we are living in a Golden Age of the Bezzle.

Which is why I titled my new novel The Bezzle. It's a tale of high-tech finance scams, starring my two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench, and in this volume, Hench is called upon to unwind a predatory prison-tech scam that victimizes the most vulnerable people in America – our army of prisoners – and their families:

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

The scheme I fictionalize in The Bezzle is very real. Prison-tech monopolists like Securus and Viapath bribe prison officials to abolish calls, in-person visits, mail and parcels, then they supply prisoners with "free" tablets where they pay hugely inflated rates to receive mail, speak to their families, and access ebooks, distance education and other electronic media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

But a group of activists have cornered these high-tech predators, run them to ground and driven them to the brink of extinction, and they've done it using "the master's tools" – with appeals to regulators and the finance sector itself.

Writing for The Appeal, Dana Floberg and Morgan Duckett describe the campaign they waged with Worth Rises to bankrupt the prison-tech sector:

https://theappeal.org/securus-bankruptcy-prison-telecom-industry/

Here's the headline figure: Securus is $1.8 billion in debt, and it has eight months to find a financier or it will go bust. What's more, all the creditors it might reasonably approach have rejected its overtures, and its bonds have been downrated to junk status. It's a dead duck.

Even better is how this happened. Securus's debt problems started with its acquisition, a leveraged buyout by Platinum Equity, who borrowed heavily against the firm and then looted it with bogus "management fees" that meant that the debt continued to grow, despite Securus's $700m in annual revenue from America's prisoners. Platinum was just the last in a long line of PE companies that loaded up Securus with debt and merged it with its competitors, who were also mortgaged to make profits for other private equity funds.

For years, Securus and Platinum were able to service their debt and roll it over when it came due. But after Worth Rises got NYC to pass a law making jail calls free, creditors started to back away from Securus. It's one thing for Securus to charge $18 for a local call from a prison when it's splitting the money with the city jail system. But when that $18 needs to be paid by the city, they're going to demand much lower prices. To make things worse for Securus, prison reformers got similar laws passed in San Francisco and in Connecticut.

Securus tried to outrun its problems by gobbling up one of its major rivals, Icsolutions, but Worth Rises and its coalition convinced regulators at the FCC to block the merger. Securus abandoned the deal:

https://worthrises.org/blogpost/securusmerger

Then, Worth Rises targeted Platinum Equity, going after the pension funds and other investors whose capital Platinum used to keep Securus going. The massive negative press campaign led to eight-figure disinvestments:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-05/la-fi-tom-gores-securus-prison-phone-mass-incarceration

Now, Securus's debt became "distressed," trading at $0.47 on the dollar. A brief, covid-fueled reprieve gave Securus a temporary lifeline, as prisoners' families were barred from in-person visits and had to pay Securus's rates to talk to their incarcerated loved ones. But after lockdown, Securus's troubles picked up right where they left off.

They targeted Platinum's founder, Tom Gores, who papered over his bloody fortune by styling himself as a philanthropist and sports-team owner. After a campaign by Worth Rises and Color of Change, Gores was kicked off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board. When Gores tried to flip Securus to a SPAC – the same scam Trump pulled with Truth Social – the negative publicity about Securus's unsound morals and financials killed the deal:

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1578034977828384769

Meanwhile, more states and cities are making prisoners' communications free, further worsening Securus's finances:

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

Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the FCC the power to regulate the price of federal prisoners' communications. Securus's debt prices tumbled further:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

Securus's debts were coming due: it owes $1.3b in 2024, and hundreds of millions more in 2025. Platinum has promised a $400m cash infusion, but that didn't sway S&P Global, a bond-rating agency that re-rated Securus's bonds as "CCC" (compare with "AAA"). Moody's concurred. Now, Securus is stuck selling junk-bonds:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

The company's creditors have given Securus an eight-month runway to find a new lender before they force it into bankruptcy. The company's debt is trading at $0.08 on the dollar.

Securus's major competitor is Viapath (prison tech is a duopoly). Viapath is also debt-burdened and desperate, thanks to a parallel campaign by Worth Rises, and has tried all of Securus's tricks, and failed:

https://pestakeholder.org/news/american-securities-fails-to-sell-prison-telecom-company-viapath/

Viapath's debts are due next year, and if Securus tanks, no one in their right mind will give Viapath a dime. They're the walking dead.

Worth Rise's brilliant guerrilla warfare against prison-tech and its private equity backers are a master class in using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. The finance sector isn't a friend of justice or working people, but sometimes it can be used tactically against financialization itself. To paraphrase MLK, "finance can't make a corporation love you, but it can stop a corporation from destroying you."

Yes, the ruling class finds solidarity at the most unexpected moments, and yes, it's easy for appeals to greed to institutionalize greediness. But whether it's funding unbezzling journalism through short selling, or freeing prisons by brandishing their cooked balance-sheets in the faces of bond-rating agencies, there's a lot of good we can do on the way to dismantling the system.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

Image: KMJ (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boerse_01_KMJ.jpg

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

#pluralistic #shorts #short sellers #news #private equity #private prisons #securus #prison profiteers #the bezzle #anything that cant go on forever eventually stop #steins law #hamilton nolan #Platinum Equity #American Securities #viapath #global tellink #debt #jpay #worth rises #insurance #spacs #fcc #bond rating #moodys #the appeal #saving the news from big tech #hunterbrook media #journalism

[attyattlaw]

its trad art weekend. have a law warm up before i go to zine dungeon

#my ass thought it would be relaxing to paint the flower patterns manually #trafalgar law #one piece #hiding this here but to the person who sent an ask yesterday and i gave a heart attack by replying: #dw abt it i answered privately (i think) #totally unrelated note i had a calout post against me a day ago for some pro/anti thing and if you saw that and are still here thank you ilu

[fairy-bard]

i just realized something. zepo (from pedro’s flashback with big mom) was definitely bepo’s older brother, who bepo originally left zou to search for. when bepo returned to zou with the heart pirates, he learned that his brother had died (although he had already decided to stay with law). law reaches zou and reunites with bepo and the hearts, and they all go on to fight kaido and big mom with the strawhats. law teams up with kidd to defeat big mom.

law literally killed the woman who murdered bepo’s brother. hell fucking yeah

#trafalgar law #trafalgardwaterlaw #law one piece #one piece #bepo one piece #bepo #heart pirates #wano arc #zou arc #one piece thoughts #idk i just feel like that would privately be very important to bepo #their friendship is really overlooked before 1081 i feel #also don’t talk to be about chapter 1081 my heart can’t handle it #one piece manga

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Militia groups from several states were plotting to send snipers to the border to shoot border patrol agents. The shootings would be then blamed on immigrants and Mexico with the hopes of starting a foreign war, civil war, or both.

So far the only reason we haven’t devolved into civil war is because MAGAts are dumb as a bag of rocks. We can’t count on it being that way forever. Sooner or later these deranged Trump supporters will assassinate a political rival, knock out a major power station, or cause a mass causality event.

We need federal anti-militia laws now. We can’t have oligarch warlords running around with right-wing agendas and private armies equipped with military hardware. This is a disaster waiting to happen and one that China, Russia, and bad actors in the Middle East are attempting to organize and fund.

#republican assholes #crooked donald #traitor #traitor trump #right-wing militias #private armies #oligarch warlords #political assassination #southern border #civil war #assault weapons ban #anti-militia laws

[alumirp]

Roommaarriage

Luffy and Law live togheter.

They started living together after Luffy's older brother, Ace, decided to go on a trip around the world with his friends. Luffy was left alone and besides being terrible at taking care of himself, he hates loneliness.but none of his friends had space for him, already having their own roommates or living with their parents. So, Law proposes that they live together, he lives in a huge house and has a huge crush on Luffy, it doesn't hurt to help the guy he likes, even if it can cause a lot of headaches. and hes right, in less than a week everything is already a mess, Luffy's friends come to visit, everything is noisy and so chaotic in the house that used to always be quiet and peaceful.

Still, he persists, determined not to go back on his decision and simply kick Luffy out of the house. That's when everything gets confusing; Luffy was always clingy and honest with how he felt, but since he moved in with Law, this has become more frequent and more intense.He hugs Law in the morning when he wakes up, kisses him on the forehead to thank him for the food, he carries Law when he decides that Law has to sleep no matter what, he sits on Law's lap when they are watching TV, he goes to the hospital to remember Law of eating and worst of all: he often, all the time, at any time, in any place, on any occasion, tells Law that he loves him. And it just drives Law crazy. He knows it's not a lie, Luffy doesn't lie. Luffy loves him, it's just not the love Law wants it to be

All of their domesticity, all of their intimacy, all of it drives Law crazy. He wants all of it, but he also wants more. He is in love with Luffy and has no idea what to do, after all he doesn't want to just ruin their friendship and lose it all because of his greed. So, after months of freaking out about all this, he decides that what's best for everyone is if he puts some boundaries between them, draws a firm line between them, friendship, something less intimate and less...suggestive. something that allows him to sleep properly at night.

Meanwhile, Luffy is confused, Torao has been acting strangely, moving away from him, not letting him touch him or kiss him, almost like in the beginning, when he moved in and Law was still shy. Could this be what people call problems in paradise? WILL TORAO FILE FOR DIVORCE? And suddenly Law has Luffy's friends calling desperately wanting to know what happened? Why are they getting divorced so soon? Why is Luffy depressed about the end of their marriage? Why is the marriage ending in the first place???

#I present to you: law overthinking as usual #but this time with luffy misunderstanding things #Luffy thinks that living together (with someone you like) = marriage #hes not totally wrong but yeaah #he knows that he likes law and he knows that law likes him so he is convinced that they are married #he convinced everyone around him that he married law #nami: what do you mean by married law? you only live with him #Luffy: I went with him to sign papers and we ate yummy food after that. I kiss him. I take him to work. he makes food for me. we're married #nami: oh i can't argue with that #everyone thinks that because law is very private they had a really simple wedding at the registry office #the 'papers' that luffy signed were the rental agreement #they are totally unmarried #Luffy's idiocy + Law's anxiety #lawlu #one piece lulaw #lulaw #one piece #roommates

[cursedvibes]

That feeling when you want to have a nice spa day with your bestie, but your sister-in-law insists on tagging along

#poor Uraume has to suffer through this family drama when they just want a private moment with Sukuna #in-laws are the worst... #jjk spoilers #jjk leaks #kenjaku #uraume #ryomen sukuna

[socialjusticeinamerica]

There are tens of thousands of them, these figures cited are much too low. Further these groups often overlap; III%ers, Patriot Prayer, Proud Bois, Boogaloos, Klan, Atom Wagfen, Aryan Nation, Posse Comitatus, Sovereign Citizens, Hutaree, Idaho/Pensylvania/Texas, New York Light Foot Militias, Ohio Defense Force, Michigan/Montana/Missouri Militias, Army of God, and many, many more.

#never trump #oaf keepers #republican assholes #traitor trump #armed militias #private armies #Republican warlords #gun control #gun violence #crooked donald #oath keepers in government #assault weapons ban #anti-militia laws #anti government armed militias #unlawful rightwing paramilitary groups

[phantoids]

Okay fuck it I'm making this post.

So, we all know the dsmp fandom, especially on twitter, has a bit of a problem with leaktwt and often lots of controversy springing from stuff obtained by kiwifarms. I'd like to talk about this, because it's been pissing me off for months and it's getting ridiculous.

Please stop trusting information like this, or at the very least be cautious with how you interact with it, take it with a large grain of salt or maybe even a handful, don't take it at fucking face value and consider to yourself: why did they obtain this information and how did they obtain it.

Especially the how, because I've noticed the amount of illegally obtained data, from information unobtainable without some form of hacking to a lot of cases of spear phishing. Spear phishing, for those who don't know, is a targeted form of phishing against a specific person; phishing is often described as trying to obtain personal or sensitive information, and here the definition is applicable as digging through years worth of information otherwise inaccessible to the average user without purposefully searching everywhere for it, specifically information from or about a specific person.

This happens a lot, we see many cases, from the people who keep doxxing ccs, to the more recent things with certain information from Steam about Wilbur being made public despite the fact it's inaccessible without some sort of digging or manipulation, and now with (I believe, idk i've not really been looking at it for obvious reasons) the whole Tubbo thing and I believe that was leaked private messages of a friend, I could be wrong there. Either way, there's been so many cases of doxxing, leaked private messages, information inaccessible on the front end of things and it's getting to a genuinely worrying point.

And this isn't because I care about content creators, but I do care about upholding data privacy. Yes, even if they've said shit in the past, please don't go digging and digging because that does fall into spear phishing, and at the end of the day it is very dubiously legal at best. This is something we're taught about in fucking cyber security courses, for even further perspective on how bad it is. Not to mention, often this information is dug up by infamous leaktwt or kiwifarms, which are pretty known for bad faith digging up of shit.

These people dig it up for clout, they dig it up for attention, they do not care who gets fucking hurt and often bringing up old shit is going to harm more people than it fucking helps. It's even worse when you try to hold someone accountable for something someone else did, especially years in the past like it's their fault.

Just, please, stop supporting this, stop circulating this shit like morning gossip, because you're not only hurting people for no good reason, it's also often spreading illegally obtained information from people who commit cybercrimes on the regular. It breaks data protection laws, it breaks someone's fucking privacy.

Content creators are people. Respect their privacy, for fuck's sake, and stop egging on leaktwt/kiwifarms, because at the end of the day you're just telling them it's perfectly fine.

And their campaign of digging things up and harming people in bad faith doesn't end at your favourite cis white boy. They will harm minorities, and they already do, just for clout and fun. Stop it while you can before it gets out of hand, and make it clear they aren't welcome, because the fandom doesn't make it clear enough.

This isn't, of course, to say you cannot be critical of information found about ccs, but please don't allow a side effect to be encouraging or inadvertently making leaktwt/kiwifarms believe it's safe for them here, and that they are supported. Be critical when your fav is found to have said awful shit in the past, give them time to clarify, but also just... be a little critical about how accurate that info is, and who is supplying it. If you find yourself thinking 'now is this really legitimately obtained?' then maybe don't spread it, because it could be fake but a lot of the time it's already been addressed and is simply spread in bad faith.

And sure, they're exposing shitty stuff right now, but what happens when they doxx someone's address for fun?

Data privacy is important, it affects everyone, and even the worst people deserve to keep it. Sure, law enforcement and courts might be able to obtain this stuff, but you're not law enforcement nor a court and you're not entitled to personal data whenever.

#void echos #discourse #this just. has to be said I think. i'm sick of seeing this shit #not to mention how dehumanised ccs are often but that's a whole other thing #respect data privacy or die by my fucking hands for fuck's sake. #yes it's not normal or fucking good to dig up old discord messages and dear god is it not normally obtained to 'find' private messages #those are illegally obtained dear god have some critical thinking about this shit. #this took a lot of courage to post tbh hopefully i don't get clowned on for respecting the fucking law and being a cybersecurity shill.

[korpuskat]

I am not sure if omnics and humans can actually get married, but I like to think that Ramattra would want to make you his partner «officially». Maybe without the wedding, the papers etc, he would just silently kneel and slip a ring on your finger that he (of course) made himself, just for you. Oh, that’s why he was touching, holding, squeezing your hands more often lately - he was trying to figure out your size, you think. Later on you would notice little engraving on his finger, imitating the ring that humans wear and robots don’t. You are a family.

HIM SIZING YOUR RING HIMSELF...... ENGRAVING A RING ON HIS OWN HAND AAAAAAAAAH?????????????????

What I love so much about Ramattra is that... I think fairly soon after he acknowledges his feelings for you is he would realize you are everything. He's all or nothing, if you crack that shell you are a part of him and he would know so, so early on that you are reshaping his future just by existing... and as such he will have been thinking about this for so long, debating what he could do that wouldn't endanger you or himself, but something that was... meaningful.

#i imagine omnic/human marriage is pretty regional #or a sort of 'technically legal but good luck finding a judge to sign it' #so he could in theory just. take you somewhere where it IS legal and get it done but. #i think hes also so... private and- secretly- scared that he'd much prefer just to have something just for you. it doesn't need to be legal #hes not very interested in human laws anyway- so long as you know that he's yours. as long as you want him. as long as he operates. forever #kat answers #ramattra #ramattra x reader

[useless-catalanfacts]

Btw if you come on holidays and stay at an AirBnb instead of an actual registered hotel I hate you personally. Not "I hate the gentrification and touristic massification and the way we can't live in our homes and are forced to move away because of tourism" in an abstract way- No, not just that. I hate you.

#I'm from a seaside town that has become popular with tourists who come for the beach and the mediterranean climate #and the typical whitewashed walls of mediterranean coastal towns #in just a few years the average rent has gone up so much that now the average rent id #*is over 1000€ per month #one thousand! #that's a whole salary! #in the past 2 years they've been building a new neighbourhood. they've destroyed the vinyeards to make a new neighbourhood that will make #the town 1/3 bigger than it is. that's a lot. but all those houses are luxury houses with private swimming pools for rich foreigners (we #already have 2 private British schools high schools and college(in the british sense)/baccalaureate where their kids go and never have to #interact with locals. I teach some of those kids and they're very prejudiced against locals and very bigoted against the catalan language #(which ofc they never bother to learn) #there's a law in catalonia that says that for every certain amount of houses you build you are obligated to build a certain percentage of #affordable housing. so in this new neighborhood they built the bare minumum affordable housing which is still too expensive for us #and since there's so few of them everyone is competing to get them. the city hall and the bank have had to make an official competition for #them but you only classify if the renr would not be more than 1/3rd of your salary which is impossible. my cousins who are in their mid 30s #and have been working a good qualified job for 15 years (and their partners too) are considered too poor to be considered for the #affordable housing #everyone is having to move out to other cities away from their friends and family and current jobs. the only jobs left here soon will be #mostly directed at tourists #and the only way to continue living here if you're a normal person and not rich is if you're an only child who one day might inherit the #parents' house #but we look around at what's happening in nearby cities and we see the next step which will be airbnb taking the houses that are left #in many places (I've posted about thia before) there aren't any flats for rent or sell anymore that isn't an airbnb #I'm still lucky in my town when compared to other places like Barcelona which are already full of the airbnb plague #actualitat #airbnb #tourism #touristic massification #gentrification

[pepperpixel]

More petrigrof!!! First a set of pics I didn’t fully finish of these 2 in sexy sweaters. And secondly!!!! The last / bonus picture of a set of nsfw petrigrof I posted on my nsfw twitter! The rest of that art… is here. If you want to see it lol

#petrigrof #doodles #finally unprivating my n s fw twitter to post petrigrof p o rn…. #pls don’t go over there if ur under 18 I will be very upset #anyway… here’s wonderwall gHG #the sexy sweaters… are because… I mean…. they’re nerds I had to draw them in the sexy sweaters ghghg #it’s the law #suggestive #if u follow the link it’s more than suggestive lol but I think the preview pic can just be tagged suggestive #ghgh I’ve never posted anything like this on internet without being privated shit is NERVE WRACKING #but I couldn’t… I couldn’t help it… I had to draw sexy petrigrof stuff…. I couldn’t stop gGHG #edit: ​added spaces between some words cuz…. I don’t wanna get killed by tumblr for writing the word p o rn gGHG #adventure time #betty grof #simon petrikov

[thedemises]

imagine an au where corazón lives and has law (oh, and reader, who's his spouse) escape from the clutches of doflamingo but he has to lie about law and reader's existence to him-

aka, corazón has law and reader escape after finding the cure for law's disease sooner than usual and he tries to make up a cover story for their “disappearance” before that crazy mingo bitch finds out

DURING A MEETING... doflamingo: how's the spouse? 😊 corazón: ..divorced 😓 doflamingo: how's the kid? 😅 corazón: gone 😔 doflamingo: doflamingo: ... it's hard to talk to you 😃

#former dsmp fans *knock knock knock knock* i know yOU'RE IN THERE- #if you were a (former) dsmp fan you might know this reference #thedemises; one piece #thedemises; dreamsmp #one piece #donquixote rosinante #trafalgar law #reader insert #this wouldn't make sense bc we know damn well that doflamingo would kill cora for losing law but fuck that #one piece corazón lives au #donquixote rosinante lives au #au #tales of the smp #dsmp #this was my favorite scene in the tales of the smp #the masquerade #totsmp the masquerade #edit on jan. 16: also in this au doflamingo knows that corazón /can/ speak verbally and the two talk to each other in private only #(doflamingo probably thinks he's the only one who knows corazón well) #(not really)

[vox-monstera]

“I think we’re gonna have to kill this guy, River.”

“Damn.”

Chubby Buffalo’s, The Glen

Night City, 2077

#needed a little shit post #though I’ve been clear from day 1 that Vox would absolutely shoot Han #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk2077 #cp2077 #cyberpunk 2077 oc #oc: vox #river ward #virtual photography #cyberpunk 2077 photomode #otp: private eyes #I fought the law

[tooruuwuu]

ace saying he's leaving space for god while sitting on the other end of the couch when visiting law's apartment for the first time (he's nervous) vs law who said fuck said space and straddles his lap seconds later (he's impatient)

#ace teased law on text too much and then chickened out #“since we'll be in a private space for the very first time we should-” proceeds to leave space for god #law is just ??? #takes it in his own hands #acelaw #lawace #trafalgar water d law #trafalgar law #portgas d ace #ace #one piece

[eliias-bouchard]

so tired of people saying elias would be gay and homophobic..... that man lived through the death penalty for homosexuality. even just a letter expressing affection could be enough to get someone imprisoned. he was over a century old when it stopped being completely illegal to be gay and it was still illegal to talk about being gay until he was over 2 centuries and gay marriage wasnt even legal at that point. come the fuck on

#i KNOW its a silly little joke but like most of the other silly little jokes in this fandom i despise it #elias bouchard #jonah magnus #tma spoilers #death penalty for sodomy was rolled back in 1861 and it was still 10yrs minimum punishment #(rolled back after around 300 years of the death penalty. By The Way) #criminal law amendment act 1885 made any male homosexual act illegal #in 1967 the wolfenden report's recommendations were implemented #and it partially legalised private same sex acts between men over the age of 21 #PARTIALLY. #section 28 - which banned 'promoting homosexuality' and prohibited education or projects percieved to do so was rolled back in 2003 #15 years after its introduction. #and it was 10 years later that gay marriage (as opposed to 'civil partnerships') was legalised. #come the FUCK on