#remote attestation

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

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

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

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

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

#pluralistic #shitty technology adoption curve #unauthorized bread #automotive #arm-breakers #cars #big car #right to repair #rent-seeking #digital feudalism #neofeudalism #drm #wei #remote attestation #private access tokens #yannis varoufakis #web environment integrity #paternalism #war on general purpose computing #competitive compatibility #google #enshittification #interoperability #adversarial interoperability #comcom #the internet con #postcapitalism #ring zero #care #med-tech

[justporo]

Moonbathing

Even though he's nicely settled down with Staeve now there are these moments... Sitting under the bright moon, bathing in the pale silver light, pondering while the cold sinks in - until Staeve comes a long with a big blanket and an even bigger heart.

MASTERLIST | AO3

Author's Note: Ehm, surprise!? I wrote this for @velnna as a present. That request today made me think of it again so I figured I'd share it with you. Partially inspired by the epilogue where Astarion tells the player how the last six months made up for so much. Hope you enjoy! @velnna thanks for letting me steal Staeve again! Writing him and Staeve is super fun! <3 Pairing: Astarion/Staeve (You) Warnings: light mention of past trauma Wordcount: 3,5k ~~~

Your night had been spent almost entirely wrapped in each other’s arms. Just like almost every single one of them since most of your messes had been dealt with. No foes were waiting to hold a knife to your throat as soon as the sun climbed up on the horizon anymore (at least for a while you hoped).

The two of you had time now - and your time you would take.

You had enjoyed the moments and times spent with nothing but each other before too, before you’ve had what you considered your happy ending. And there was certainly something to be said about laying down in the arms of your lover when you didn’t know if the next sunrise might bring both of your demise, if not the end of the world altogether. Because - if the world was ending, who wouldn’t want to be held in its final moments?

You could definitely attest that always dancing on the edge of a blade certainly brought its own thrill and held its own intricate beauty.

But the same could be said about this right now: the less loud and less daunting moments. Falling into your soulmate’s embrace freely and of your own volition - nothing pushing you there but the deep desire to be with him and no one else and just revel in each other’s presence.

And the passion and love between Astarion and you was still burning as dangerously hot as it had in the beginning. Apparently, the spark that had been ignited had been incredibly powerful, surprising you both. High flames had sprung from it, all encasing. And you knew that even when the initial flames would settle, the embers would only burn that much hotter.

Never before in your life had you experienced something even remotely close to this. You were certain you would never again. You had found your place, picked the one to gift your heart to. You only had the one anyway.

But there was no need to dwell on such things now.

Blissful exhaustion had softly tugged you towards sleep and you had drifted off to dreamless, restful slumber while the sweat on your skin was still pearling down your neck and your breath and heart were still trying to find a sustainable rhythm again.

When you woke again the first thing you noticed was that the spot next to you was deserted. The second thing you noticed as you looked around while still in sleep drunk stupor was that it was still night. The light sneaking below the thick curtains was still brightly silver - it couldn’t have been that long.

You rolled out of bed lazily, tugged on nothing but pants and made to shuffle out of your joint bedroom in search of your missing vampire.

With your hand on the doorknob you hesitated and threw a look back to the bed. Your eyes wandered over the messed up sheets and bunched up blankets lying there all bunched up. And with a shrug you went back to take one of the blankets to snugly wrap it around your shoulders - the comfort and warmth of a shirt without having to make the effort to put one on. Then you dragged yourself out of the room to go looking for your partner while yawning repeatedly.

It didn’t take you long to find Astarion - you didn’t even have to think about where he might be. He was in the usual spot: the roof that was easily accessible through the attic.

There was a small shuttered window you could easily drag yourself out of and climb onto the shingles before you could enjoy an exquisite view of the city below. It had become a favoured spot for the two of you. Many a bottle of wine had been shared on the edge of this rooftop already.

You needed to be careful to step lightly and distribute your weight evenly to not slip but it was an easy feat for you or Astarion - you both were skilled and practised rogues after all. Effortlessly, you also made it this time even though you had to hold onto the blanket wrapped around you so it wouldn’t slip off your shoulders.

Once outside you were bathed in glistening silver light. The cold, pale hues illuminated everything relentlessly and allowed nearly no darkness during this full moon despite it being in the deep middle of the night.

You immediately spotted the vampire sitting there near the edge of the roof. Not having to worry about the cold at least from a survival standpoint, Astarion had also only put on pants to go and sit on the roof. His legs were dangling off the edge of it while he was leaning back on his arms, staring up at the big full moon in the night sky.

The scene almost reminded you of the times he’d been basking in the sunlight during your adventures. Every possible moment used to soak up the sun - strikingly similar to a cat.

The comparison also sprung to mind now: a lone hunter of the night enjoying a moment of calm at his favourite vantage point in solitude.

But these times were over now, at least as long as you had a say in it. At least for now, Astarion was very much just supposed to be a spoiled house cat, allowed to indulge in all the pleasures that presented themselves.

A smile crept onto your lips as the image crossed your mind. Especially since you knew that the vampire could also be as feisty and irrational as a feline.

Observing the form of your partner outlining against the bright moonlight, you slowly moved over to where he had settled down. You could make out the scars on his back although with no direct light source they almost seemed to blend in with the rest of Astarion’s smooth skin. But you had seen them, observed them so often that the image of the cruel lines on your lover’s back had been permanently burned into your head.

At first they had always startled you badly whenever you saw them despite your efforts to brush over them and not show that you had noticed. If not for your own sake then for Astarion’s. But you had seen them - felt them - frequently now and even though what they meant would always hurt, they were a part like any other of Astarion.

With a few more smooth steps you made your way over and stood next to your partner. You knew he heard you coming despite your roguish stealthiness by the way his head perked up even more. He didn’t even open his eyes though as you stepped up to him. The vampire knew it could only be you - and he trusted you fully. His reaction a testament of how far he’d come since you’d first met.

“Out here catching a cold all by yourself, handsome?”, you asked smugly.

Astarion snorted but you could see a smirk steal onto his face.

“Neither nor apparently, Staeve, my love”, he answered with an amused chuckle and opened his eyes to slowly look at you.

You remained silent, just cocked your head askingly with a raised eyebrow.

“Just - moonbathing”, Astarion continued with a little pause and let his gaze wander from you to the shining full moon again. The cold light was making even the vampire look more pale than usual. His skin and luscious curls almost seemed like they were made out of alabaster like this - a statue crafted out of smooth stone to forever showcase a perfect body and face.

Only his glinting crimson eyes were proof that he was in fact very much a living being - bringing all comparisons to lifeless and soulless figurines to shame. No stonemason could have ever captured his beauty fully anyways.

Astarion's tone had been playful but you knew him so well by now. You realised immediately something was weighing on the mind of your silly little vampire.

But you also knew that trying to coax it out of him would do you no good: he'd only hiss at you in his sassy manner and snap shut like a clam. You had to tread carefully - even more so than on the shingles of this old roof.

“So - maintaining the tan I see”, you took up his banter with a shit-eating grin and carefully sat down beside him now.

The vampire looked at you again and just rolled his eyes, clicking his tongue in disapproval: “You're such an idiot, Staeve.”

You chuckled while you tried to find a comfortable position on the edge of the roof while in the meantime fumbling with your blanket to also throw it around your partner's shoulders so you could comfortably snuggle up together.

“Well, I'd say it's clear you have a thing for idiots, Astarion babe. And now come here.”

That earned you another offended snort as Astarion crossed his arms over his naked chest - almost looking like a child throwing a temper tantrum. But he still willingly let himself be wrapped in one end of the blanket.

Softly you put your arm around him, dragged the pale elf closer until he was able to lean his head on your shoulder. Again he let it happen, this time with a silent sigh.

You could physically feel how the vampire relaxed into your touch and your warmth and how he even snuggled a bit deeper into your joint blanket once you were done fumbling around with it.

His smooth skin felt terribly cold from the frosty winter night. And even though you knew the cold couldn't hurt him you immediately asked yourself why he'd subject himself to this. Freezing temperatures were still very much unpleasant to the vampire as he'd once admitted himself.

Your brows furrowed thinking about why he kept insisting on making it hard on himself. Meanwhile silence stretched out between you as you leaned onto each other, each of you lost deep in thought.

A kind of sadness welled up inside of you while you looked down at Astarion’s head on your shoulder. His eyes were closed once more as he enjoyed the steadiness and peace of your body holding him up and warmth seeping into him.

It was that kind of sadness that was tenacious, that stuck to you, the one you could never fully shake.

You’d fought the necessary battles to both break free. But just as you had your own battles to fight still, so did Astarion. And moments like this one were when you realised it would be a long way still.

Ridding oneself of two centuries of torture and enslavement and all that had come with it was certainly no easy feat. Maybe some shreds would remain forever, stuck to him - just like the scars on his back always would.

Providing comfort, support and love while giving your soulmate all the time and space he needed to shake off the shackles still remaining from the chains that had bound him for so long, was the purpose you wanted to fulfil. As long as you were able to, you would do everything to overcome these other demons that still stayed behind - even if they might prove much more difficult to take down than the literal ones.

The two of you just sat there in silence while you felt how Astarion became warmer under your touch, the blanket providing a comfortable cocoon for the both of you.

You didn’t speak, just enjoyed the cosiness and let your partner dwell in the warmth until he was ready to speak his mind.

Leaning your head on Astarion’s, you enjoyed how his soft white curls tickled your face and neck. Then you closed your eyes as well and simply basked under the giant, radiant moon, the light easily shining even through your lids.

The silver moon beams were beautiful if not even magical. And sitting there, it was almost possible to mistake them for daylight.

But they would never be able to substitute for the golden warmth of sun rays because there was one determining thing missing: warmth.

Giving yourself to the illusion was nice though - even if it lasted only for a few moments.

And as you sat there, an arm around Astarion who was still relaxing more into your touch, you wanted nothing more but to be this source of comfort - to possibly provide but a fraction of what he’d been forced to give up.

The sadness from before was right there again - slowly closing up your throat as you silently opened your eyes and let them linger on the pale elf once more. The moon was still casting him in his unforgiving light, making him look almost translucent - something that might crack and break if you weren’t careful enough with it.

“You miss the sun”, you said. Not even a question. And what a stupid thing to even say you immediately realised after the words had left your lips.

You expected a snarky joke, a click of the tongue, maybe even a hurtful comment. But it didn’t come.

Instead, Astarion next to you straightened his back and took a deep breath in. His eyes were open now and a million miles away as he gazed off into the distance towards the city and somewhere far down the Chionthar glinting under the night sky.

“I do miss the sun”, he replied to what hadn’t been a question in the first place. His voice was surprisingly firm and somehow you felt slightly unsettled by that.

“But I lost that once before - how hard can the second time around be?”, Astarion continued and his red eyes snapped to yours.

You didn’t know what to answer so you just lightly squeezed his shoulder. The vampire’s eyes didn’t leave yours. His gaze was firm, maybe even proud. Your brows furrowed lightly - you had absolutely no idea where all this was going.

“Staeve”, Astarion began while looking you firmly in the eyes “the last six months with you have been the happiest of my life.”

Your eyes widened in surprise. Of all the things that you could have expected you surely hadn’t expected something like this. The negative feelings that had been squeezing your heart in your ribcage immediately subsided and gave way to waves of gentle happiness flooding through you. And you couldn’t stop the small but growing smile that was spreading from left to right over your face.

But the vampire wasn’t even done.

“What was before - it’s already beginning to fade. It already feels like aeons ago - and that’s because of you”, Astarion continued and the way he looked at you with eyes so open and wide, genuine smile on his lips - it made your chest clench in a completely different way. Your eyes started burning dangerously at the edges and you had to press your lips into a line to keep them from quivering. But you forced yourself to keep gazing at your soulmate’s face.

But it was he who turned away after a few long moments. A sudden rush of guilt and sorrow glazing over the open admiration and vulnerability from before. His crimson eyes sought out the moon again.

“But I fear-”, Astarion’s voice almost broke as he spoke again. He lowered his gaze. Your heart took a leap - not eager on wanting to hear what he might have to add but also not wanting to stay unknowing.

The vampire sighed, then he cleared his throat, still not looking at you: “I’m not used to caring for the wellbeing of others. I mean, for centuries I didn’t even have my own.”

He stopped again, took in another breath - sharp this time. Then faced you again.

“I fear my own selfish happiness has taken away from yours”, Astarion spoke firmly again now. But you noticed the way he was straining his chin to hold it proudly. This was taking more out of him than he wanted you to notice.

You opened your mouth to protest but the pale elf shushed you with a sharp motion of his hand. He had to get it all out now or it might never be said.

“And I feel like - one of us having to give up the sun is more than enough. I don’t” - the words were hurting to get out, you realised, but they were also hurting while being uttered - “I don’t want to put another through that. Or - no! I don’t want to put you through it, Staeve.”

And with that Astarion’s hand sunk back down again and he looked up at the night sky again, closing his eyes once more with a small strained yelp. You could see his Adam's apple work hard in his throat as you took in his side profile while the words needed to register with you.

You paid close attention to his exquisite features while your brain tried desperately to make sense of what you had just heard: his straight, aristocratic nose, sharp cheekbones highlighted even more by sharp light, full, soft lips over which a tongue nervously flitted. You knew this face so well by now, probably better than your own. When you closed your eyes you could easily conjure up his image, down to the last little detail.

And while you let your gaze wander over his lashes and the vampire’s face was still lifted to the heavens with furrowed brows, his meaning clicked into place for you. And with horrifying clarity you realised what had been said: the bastard was trying to give you an out.

The mere idea was wild to you. No wonder it had taken you several heartbeats to even catch on. This hadn’t even been in your realm of possibilities. And you were sad that obviously it was for him.

There was pressure in your chest again - this night really took a toll on your emotions. But you wouldn’t let it end on a note like this.

“Astarion”, you said quickly after. The vampire didn’t move, his brows only furrowed deeper.

“Astarion, love, look at me”, you begged and stretched out your hand to hook your thumb on his chin and turn his head to you.

He only let it happen reluctantly but he looked at you, pain filling his eyes - and fear.

But there was absolutely no reason for that. You’d prove it to him. There wasn’t even a slither of doubt in your heart.

“I am here, Astarion, because I chose so. I am here, because I love you. Giving up the sun is nothing compared to what it would be like to give up you”, you said eagerly, your tongue almost stumbling over itself while trying to get this out as fast as possible, to bridge this gap and never look back on it again.

You tugged on the vampire’s face to press your forehead to his as you said the following words: “I love you, Astarion. Don’t ever dare to think you can get rid of me. You’re stuck with me now, idiot!”

And then you kissed him, forcefully, and hopefully drowning out all forms of question or protest. Positively smothering him with your love until there was no more doubt - at least for this night.

Only after what felt like forever did Astarion withdraw from your kiss. There was no more pain in his eyes although you still saw slithers of insecurity remain. You swore to yourself you’d get them another time. But at least you felt that things were firmly settled for the night.

A small sniffle from you broke the tender silence between you as you kept gazing at each other. It seemed like the burning in your eyes from before had been a little much to contain. Your nose felt overly stuffy all of a sudden.

But at least the delicate mood had turned again to something that felt more mundane - and less heartbreaking.

“Gods, you’re not crying are you?” Astarion commented teasingly, nose slightly scrunched up. But the smile that curled one side of his mouth quickly afterwards was still rather gentle.

You snorted while you quickly and grossly wiped at your eyes and your nose with a corner of the blanket. “No, the moon is just very bright”, you muttered with another sniffle then shook yourself - almost like an animal trying to get something off itself. Then you felt more like yourself again.

“Well, you better get used to it then, darling, if you’re so keen to be stuck with me”, was the last thing the vampire said before he snuggled himself up against you again, leaning his head onto your shoulder once more.

You had nothing to add. You were just happy that two of you were here in this moment. So you just tightened your hold on Astarion.

And together you watched the night sky, cuddled up in the blanket, until the edges of darkness started blushing in the lightest shades of pink and it was time for you to crawl into bed together again.

Taglist (DM if you want to be added please): @spacebarbarianweird @sunfire-ancunin @tragedybunny @dependsonthedream @tallymonster @magazzne @micropoe10 @aoirohi @my-bunny-prince @lumienyx @fayeriess @darlingxdragon @hereliesblackdragon @ayselluna @ajokeformur-ray @i-cant-get-into-my-other-account @rikuyrk06 @marina-and-the-memes

#astarion #astarion x tav #baldurs gate #baldurs gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #astarion x reader #astarion x mc #baldurs gate astarion #astarion x oc #astarion x you #fanfic #fanfiction #astarion ancunin #bg3 spoilers #bg3 #bg3 companions #staeve #astarion x staeve

[koboldfactory]

You may not realize it, but you are an amazing source of inspiration and motivation. However, it’s not your art i’m referring to (even thought it is inspirational); it’s your perseverance. You are living through an ordeal of anxiety, rent, health, etc., yet you’re still here willing to go on. Furthermore, you manage to find time to work on your projects, despite the stressful restraints of your predicament. As an indie game dev wannabe who will soon face the hardships of adult life, your dedication gives me hope. Thank you.

This means so much to hear! I know I am incredibly fortunate in many aspects of my life but I can definitely attest to the benefit of perseverance. The biggest recent example being the move I just made. Until a few months ago, it seemed utterly impossible for me to get out of Georgia any time soon and HRT seemed like a distant fantasy. I was ready to trudge through another few years before the prospect of transitioning seemed remotely safe and possible, but thanks to incredibly lucky circumstances and the kindness of friends, an opportunity presented itself that allowed me to shorten that timetable exponentially and put me in an environment where my goals were much more achievable.

Keep going and keep trying to find ways to achieve your goals, but you’ll never know when something unexpectedly good occurs outside of your plans.

#koboldasks

[estherdedlock]

  “As a matter of fact,” said Francis, “he was with you.” He glanced at Henry, and to my surprise the two of them began to laugh.   “What? What’s so funny?” I said, alarmed.   This sent them into fresh peals of laughter. “Nothing,” said Francis at last.   “Really, it is nothing,” said Henry, with a bemused little sigh. “The oddest things make me laugh these days.”

I would give anything to know if Donna Tartt herself had any idea what these two jokers were laughing about. Did she know? Or did she just throw this into the scene as an example of how Richard is never really part of the group?

People are always talking about Richard as an unreliable narrator and a clueless idiot and a liar. But I don’t think you can underestimate how much Richard is lied to and manipulated by the rest of them. And they are so, so good at it.

In a passage not long after the one above, Richard accompanies the gang (minus Bunny) on a drive in the country and dinner at an out-of-the-way restaurant frequented only by locals. It’s an odd interlude that seems to go on longer than it should, and not have much impact on anything that comes after it. But it’s the perfect example of why you need to read TSH more than once. It’s only after you know what’s going to happen that a section like this makes sense.

The drive takes place the day after Henry has told Richard about the bacchanal. Camilla goes to Richard’s room and asks him to take a ride with the rest of them. Richard, still burning off some tranquilizer or other, follows Camilla to Commons and finds the other four waiting for him. “The configuration struck me as significant,” he says, “everyone except for Bunny...”

It’s not the absence of Bunny that’s important here, it’s the presence of Richard. They’re at a crucial moment with him. He’s only known about the bacchanal for a few hours, and they can’t take a chance on what he’s going to do next.

Henry has a very sharp understanding of Richard’s insecurity and need to belong...I know he sees Richard more clearly than Richard can see himself. Henry knows that the most vital thing right now is for Richard to feel like one of them, and to begin thinking of Bunny as the outsider.

It’s no coincidence that Camilla is the one who comes to collect Richard for this little jaunt. I’m sure that Henry deliberately sent her up to his room, or she thought of it herself. They know that Richard’s infatuated with her, and so what better way to get his guard down? He’ll follow her anywhere, the poor sap.

After that, everything is very friendly and cozy, even as the countryside they’re driving through grows increasingly ominous:

I found it difficult to get my bearings, and it seemed as if we were heading into strange and unmarked territory...It was dark now. Around us, the countryside lay veiled and mysterious, silent in the night and fog. This was remote, untraveled land, rocky and thickly wooded, with none of the quaint appeal of Hampden and its rolling hills, its ski chalets and antique shops, but high and perilous and primitive, everything black and desolate even of billboards.

I’ve lived in northern New England, and I can attest to the fact that an ordinary drive can go from quaint to creepy in the space of a few miles, especially at dusk in the winter. Donna Tartt uses this real-life regional phenomenon to great effect. She removes Richard from the familiar environs of the campus and casts him into such a foreboding and lonely wilderness that Henry’s car, and the little group of friends inside, feels like a refuge of warmth and fellowship.

For the rest of this scene, Richard sees his friends (at least he thinks they’re his friends) as almost magical. Their elegant appearance arouses curiosity at the rundown inn where they have dinner, but not disapproval. They make a great impression on a young waiter and Richard is awed by Henry’s “genuine knack” with “simple, country folk” and his ability to chat comfortably with the waiter as an equal. The passage closes with Richard realizing that he feels “curiously happy, and at ease with the world.”

It’s notable that immediately after this section, we get page after page of Richard suddenly attuned to Bunny’s faults and transgressions. Eight pages after that dinner at the Housatonic Inn, Richard flatly states that he has grown to “abhor” Bunny. So as far as that little road trip is concerned...mission accomplished.

I’m often relieved that Donna Tartt became a writer, and not just because I love her books. Without such a positive creative outlet, heaven only knows what a mind this diabolical might have gotten up to.

#the secret history #donna tartt #richard papen #henry winter #camilla macaulay #dark academia

[akariamai]

Home

Part 2

Pairing: Joel Miller x reader

Word Count: 1401

You were luckier than most. A wealthy family contracted you to fix up the bus they bought and convert it into their dream home. You managed to construct every aspect the family wanted inside the double-decker bus then the apocalypse hit. The members of your small town, including the family who paid you, left without a single thought. They left with nothing but the clothes on their backs while heading out with military soldiers. You stayed behind, taking the bus with you, and becoming self-sufficient from then on.

You scavenged through the abandoned stores searching for anything remotely useful to survival. Stocking up the pantry to its fullest and filling the closet with ammunition, guns, medicine and general supplies. You began to work.

The perishable meats and vegetables were going to go bad soon. Without constant refrigeration, they’ll rot swiftly. You thanked the heavens, the freezer the family wanted was large enough to stalk up. Shrimp, crayfish, lean fish, chicken and steaks were concealed in an airtight zip lock bag and left in the freezer. On the outside of the bags contained notes of the dates they’ll last within the freezer. All should last months and hopefully you’ll manage to stretch every bit of it.

Once the freezer was filled, it displeased you to see it all go to waste. Trimming off the fat of the meat, you made a marinade of spices that couldn’t fit in your pantry. You might as well not reduce your supplies before taking off. Your dehydrator was a god sent. You dehydrated jerky, salmon, fruit, and vegetables. They were your meals in the beginning of the apocalypse.

You were self-sufficient for a long time. Escaping from the dangers that lurked outside of your bus. You didn’t drive around often but it was necessary at times. While the infected were dangerous, it was arguable people were more of a danger to your well-being.

It was years before you found your way to Jackson, where the community welcomed you with open arms and bright smiles, your presence became well-known throughout the community. Your job was to dehydrate meat before winter hits. It was an easy job as you had the equipment and were given the meat from hunters. You never had to leave the safety of the community.

You were offered one of the available houses, but you declined. You were satisfied living on the bus. Instead, they gave you a plot of land to do as you wished. You proceeded to grow a garden and build a shed to hold gardening tools.

You were clearing the snow off the solar panels when you heard your name. Maria, a dear friend of yours, Tommy, her husband, and two strangers you had yet to meet slowly walked towards your small plot of land.

“Maria, Tommy.” You nodded as the couple and the strangers watched you work. Watching you collecting the snow into a canteen.  

“[Reader] this is Joel and Ellie. They’re new.” Maria introduced them.

“Welcome to Jackson.”

“[Reader] is one of the hardest workers here.” Tommy boasted, “They’ve helped build several houses and know how to make delicious jerky. Occasionally, you’ll see them helping around with the community garden. That is if they’re not working on their own garden.”

“You must be very bored.” She replied with a bit of snark.

“Ellie.” Joel scolded.

You laughed, “True.” You looked down on their figures. “The apocalypse does leave one bored out of their minds.” You could attest to that. Before Jackson, you had gardened your herbs, prepared and cooked meals, occasionally listened to music, and reread the books you’ve found along the way.

She agreed with your statement, having gone through her own mind-numbing activities while surviving, “You’re telling me. I’ve been stuck in a car with this asshole, reading directions and shit.” Joel maintained a pained look on his face, muttering something under his breath, before quieting down.

“[Reader],” Maria drew your attention to her, “We wanted to ask if you could watch Ellie for a bit.” She didn’t specify after that.

“Sure.” You nodded, “You can come right in Ellie, I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Thank you.” It was not Maria who thanked you but Joel. It was evident he didn’t particularly like being around crowds, probably an aftereffect of the world just beyond the walls of Jackson, it reminded you of yourself when you first walked into the community. Unsure if it was safe or not. A brief paradise before corrupt men or the infected came barreling through the gates.

You didn’t reply as Tommy and Maria began to leave. Joel slowly followed behind them, almost hesitant to leave Ellie in your care, but persisted forward. You climbed down the ladder and proceeded to gather a few items Ellie might need: clothing and hygiene products.

“Do you want to shower?” You asked, “I have hot water.”

“Hot water?” It must’ve been a long time since she enjoyed the luxury of hot water. You never had to know a life without it. The bus kept you sheltered from the horrors left in the wake of the outbreak.

“Plenty of it.” You handed her clean clothing. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Once you heard the water was on, you began to search for spare hygiene products the girl might need. A question lingered in the air as the decision to stay or leave was left uncertain.

“Ellie,” You called out, “Are you hungry? I can warm something up for you.”

“I’m starving.”

“Are you allergic to anything?”

“No.”

You left her alone to enjoy her shower and walked towards your kitchen. You were defrosting a portion of the vegetable soup for yourself, but Ellie needed it more. You proceeded to warm up the soup and searched for a bag of beef jerky you’ve made.

Ellie came down soon after and you motioned for her to have a seat. You pulled out the table and placed the warm soup in front of her. You offered her a smile, “Hope you like it.”

Ellie scarfed down the food as if it was going to disappear. You munched on bits and pieces of beef jerky, enjoying the sweet and spice, before Ellie called for your attention.

“So, you live here?” She looked over the bottom floor of your home. It was extremely organized and untouched.

“Yes.”

“Did they not give you a house?” Curiosity amplified as she awaited your response.

“They did.” You answered curtly, “But I refused.” You offered nothing else.

“Why not?”

“This is my home.” You didn’t want to mention you were waiting for the day the community would fall. It was a terrible thought, but you were a realist. Something or someone would come knocking and destroy everything that was built. It might not be today or tomorrow but someday it will happen. “It’s been my home since the beginning, and I won’t abandon it now.”

You gave Ellie the hygiene products you were willing to part with: a toothbrush, two bottles of toothpaste tablets, and a period cup with instructions. You know Maria would trade for other products she might need.

Ellie looked at the toothpaste tablets bizarrely. “This is toothpaste?”

You nodded, “Crush the tablet with your teeth. The tablet will mix with your saliva to create toothpaste.”

“Cool.” She stuffed everything in her backpack. “Thank you.”

~~~

Tommy knocked on your door early in the morning. He wanted to trade, for Joel and Ellie, for several bags of beef jerky to last a few weeks. Joel and Ellie stood right beside him, as they watched the transaction inquisitively.

You noticed they carried their bags, presumably the ones they arrived with, and knew they were leaving. You sighed, “Without refrigeration, the beef jerky is going to last about a week. I have a few bags of roasted nuts that can last within up to three months.”

“What do you want for them?” Tommy questioned. It was a matter of substance or labor.

“Nothing.” You didn’t have the need for anything, and they were leaving to a place where food was scarce. But nothing was unacceptable to Tommy. You walked back inside and brought back several bags for the two. “Take care of each other. Stay safe.”

You hoped to see them again. Alive and healthy. You wished for them to live long and happy lives wherever life spurred them too.

“Goodbye.”

Masterlist

#joel miller x reader #the last of us #the last of us tv series #the last of us show #joel miller #joel miller imagine #joel miller x you #joel miller fic #pedro pascal #joel miller tlou #ellie tlou #joel miller one shot

[thatrickmcginnis]

These photos of Robert Smith of The Cure sat forgotten in a negative binder for over 35 years until I rediscovered them last fall while looking for something else. I had, in fact, done my level best to forget about them, as they were evidence of what I remembered as a massive fail made during my earliest years working as a photographer. They were a major stumble on a steep learning curve, and I was sure all evidence had been lost. But let's start at the beginning, when I was assigned to interview Robert Smith and The Cure when they were passing through town on what was apparently called the Beach Party Tour, playing the Kingswood Music Theatre just outside Toronto on July 13, 1986 with 10,000 Maniacs opening.

Another writer at the magazine, Perry Stern, was a huge Cure fan and phoned begging me to let him do the interview; I agreed, provided I still got to take the photos. (I also asked if he could give me a ride to and from the venue.) I had an idea: I'd seen an article in a photography magazine showing how you could get interesting colour washes on your backgrounds by putting complimentary coloured filters in front of your lens and flash. This might have produced interesting results if I bothered doing a test shoot, but I was too cheap/rushed/arrogant for that sort of thing, so I showed up with green and red filters on my Pentax Spotmatic and my Vivitar flash and shot away in a fenced-off grassy area beside the stage.

It's worth talking about the unusual look Robert Smith was rocking during at least part of 1986 - trainers and golf shirts and jeans and short hair. If I still had the transparencies I shot that day including the rest of the band I'd be able to tell you if the Cure as a whole were taking a vacation from their Goth image and dressed down similarly, and if this was one of the few artifacts attesting to a brief sportswear period in the band's history. But the results were awful - overexposed, with a greenish tint, mostly because I had no clue what the ideal ratio between the bright sunlight and the flash strength should have been. The magazine might have reluctantly printed one remotely salvageable frame but my ambition had definitely overstripped my skill and I tried to forget about this shoot.

But at some point a few months after my disastrous Cure shoot I thought I might be able to salvage the results by converting the slides to black and white negatives. I either found someone who could produce an internegative or borrowed the gear to do it myself, but inexperience won again and the four portraits of Robert Smith that I produced were too overexposed for me to work with all those years ago, so I filed them at the bottom of a negative sheet and forgot about them.

Until last fall when I found them again and decided to see if they could be saved with scanning and the neural filters that were recently added to Photoshop. The film grain that was so hard to deal with back in 1986 suddenly became a feature, adding to the retro feel the shots had acquired either with time or in my own mind. With some judicious application of the restoration filter these frames cleaned up nicely, but I decided to push things one stop further by using the colorizing filter as well - making sure Smith's signature smeared lipstick wasn't just retained but highlighted. Now I like to imagine that these shots were taken in 1937 with an old Kodak folding camera like my Jiffy Six-20, and hand-coloured by some underpaid darkroom assistant working for a developing lab in a building down in the warehouse district of town. It's certainly a better story than the one about the kid photographer who screwed up on a big job nearly forty years ago.

#robert smith #the cure #1986 #portrait photography #portrait #photography #photographer #film photography #portraiture #black and white #old photos #early work #adobe photoshop #ai filter

[sing-you-fools]

what the FUCK is the POINT of product reviews if you're just gonna fuckin'

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "it doesn't work but it got here fast!"

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "it's a gift so I haven't opened looked at or touched it but it got here fast!"

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "the game itself doesn't actually work but kiddo likes playing with the pieces and it got here fast!"

you are reviewing the PRODUCT not the SHIPPING if the PRODUCT sucks you leave a BAD REVIEW not FIVE F U C K I N G STARS

if you buy something as a gift for someone else and cannot personally speak to the quality of the item DO NOT LEAVE A REVIEW. DO NOT. even if the person you gave it to says it's great DON'T unless you can PERSONALLY ATTEST TO IT because they MIGHT JUST NOT WANNA TELL YOU THE THING YOU GAVE THEM SUCKS

I am SICK TO DEATH of EVERY SINGLE REVIEW for ANYTHING just being "I got this for my grandkids so I have no fuckin clue if it works at all or is remotely fun but the box wasn't squished so five stars!"

YOU'RE NOT REVIEWING UPS. YOU'RE NOT REVIEWING THE STORE YOU GOT IT FROM. YOU'RE NOT REVIEWING THE BOX IT CAME IN. YOU'RE REVIEWING THE PRODUCT. I WANT TO LOOK AT THE REVIEWS AND KNOW IF THE PRODUCT IS WORTH PURCHASHING. I CANNOT DO THIS IF ALL YOU'RE REVIEWING IS THE MOTHERFUCKING SHIPPING TIME. ASSHOLES

#this too is enshittification #given that 90% of the time these reviews mention grandkids #this is the wrong platform for this rant #i know this #but i still need to say it #rant #product reviews #enshittification #sing-you-fools

[blueskittlesart]

do you have any tips on like, starting emulating? i was playing a version of wind waker ages ago on citra i think but i remember nothing about how i set it up or anything

i unfortunately can't give any tips on citra because my computer's graphics card is actually too low of a model to run it, but from what i've heard citra isn't really the best option for 3ds emulation anyway. it runs slowly if at all and has some intense framerate drop problems. in almost every other instance i recommend 3ds hacking, which allows you to take a regular 3ds and bypass the security locks that prevent it from loading and playing pirated ROMs. with a hacked 3ds you can play any 3ds game you can find as intended, with the original control scheme and configuration.

for DS game emulation, i will cautiously recommend desmume, although i have only ever used it for low-load visual novels that don't have complicated control schemes or timed elements, and even then i experienced some minor speed drops, so i can't attest to its usability for more complex games.

for gamecube/wii emulation, i once again recommend a hacked console. gamecube emulators can be loaded onto a hacked wii and function very well as long as you have a gamecube controller (i do NOT recommend using the reconfigured wii remote for these emulators) and, like a hacked 3ds, a hacked wii can load and play any compatible rom regardless of how it was obtained.

for consoles like playstation, gameboy, n64, etc, i personally have a retroid pocket 2, which is a console designed to emulate retro arcade games that can run emulators up to about an n64/psp level of processing power. i prefer this because i prefer physical buttons and joysticks to keyboard controls and, as previously mentioned, my graphics card isn't good enough for higher-load emulators, but most pc rigs will have enough processing power to run those emulators themselves, though depending on the emulator you may have to build the emulator yourself using visual studio or some other interface, which is something i'm still learning myself. the retroid runs on the MAME framework, which is a multi-purpose emulator that requires building to run on a home PC. this is also part of why i like the retroid, MAME comes pre-installed so I didn't have to build it myself! but it's definitely possible to learn to build it yourself, my skillset just isn't quite there yet lol

#i got my retroid on amazon for about $100 and it's a really good little emulator! i'm currently playing minish cap on it #and in terms of hacked consoles both wii and 3ds hacks are relatively safe and reversible if you want to sell the console later! #asks

[dckweed]

"..and you're going to fix it for me."

alec volturi smut!

warnings: 18+ minors dni, now don't get me wrong lowkey think alec is a super sweet and slow lover, but i give you, rough!alec. also slight choking, kinda demanding, slight over stimulation?

Please beware that i wrote this like almost four years ago okay? this was actually one of my firsts.

You had been teasing Alec all day, unintentionally of course, and he just couldn't take it anymore. The two of you were currently on a mission with Demetri, and you were close to finishing. One would have thought that the millennia old vampire could have expressed some self control in waiting, sadly however, one would have thought wrong. The three of you were meeting a witness that could attest (hopefully truthfully) to the goingson in the remote Grecian village you were currently visiting when your mates arms suddenly wrapped around your waist and tossed you over his shoulder as he turned on his heel and vampire sped away, without so much as a word to Demetri, who certainly could figure out why the two of you were missing on his own.

Alec wasn't sure what it was, he usually didn't have problems like this, but something about the way your black jeans hugged your hips and accentuated the curve of your ass had him going crazy. That, and the fact that you were walking in front of him, wearing those knee high boots that he just loved. Part of him wondered if you were doing this on purpose, but the shocked and confused expression on your face as he threw you onto the mattress of the bed in your shared hotel room told him that you definitely had no idea what you were doing to him.

"What the hell, Alec?!" You exclaimed, watching him go over to close and lock the door as you scrambled yourself into a leaning position on your elbows. You genuinely thought he was angry at you or something, or something was about to go wrong and he was trying to protect you. You realized the problem though as he turned around, and an uncomfortable and annoyed expression on his usually stony face. His hand was down below his waist, situating a rather prominent friend straining against his dress pants. 

"Do you see what you're doing to me?" He asks, his voice low and cool as he steps closer and closer to you, shedding his suit jacket (because the villagers probably would think something strange of their normal cloaks) and undoing his belt buckle as he came to a stop in front of you. "Hm? You're going to fix it, now." This got you excited because Alec was generally never so demanding or even spontaneous like this and instantly you moved yourself to the edge of the bed. 

"Yes, Sir." You replied, biting your lip as he finished undoing his belt. Normally you were the one in charge, so you figured this time you'd let him tell you what he wanted. There was nothing sexier to you than Alec in control, and if we're being honest, your panties were more like a wash rag from how wet you already were at this new found mannerism. That and the fact that the two of you were supposed to be helping Demetri right now, but weren't was also a turn on. 

Your eagerness to please him was more of a turn on than anything else in that moment (although the thought of your breasts came in at a close second) and he was unable to resist watching you as you sank to your knees in front of him. As you undid the button of his pants, and let the zipper down you looked up at him with innocent but devilish eyes, your fingertips creeping slowly into the waistband of his blue and white striped boxers. "Don't fucking tease, baby." He says lowly, his voice thick with emotion. 

Slowly you begin to pull his pants and underwear down, letting them go just past his balls before stopping. You wasted no time in capturing his now loose member with your mouth, not wanting to deny the man what he so obviously wanted. A long, loud groan expelled from his mouth as you slowly began to bob your head back and forth along his long, thick member. To tease him, you decided to use your gag reflex (or lack thereof) to your advantage. Placing your hands on each of his thighs, you slowly began to take him farther and farther into your mouth, looking up at him the whole time. The sight of you taking all of him into your mouth, and the feeling of you holding it there for a few seconds nearly made him cum almost instantly. He didn't though, as you began to pull back just as slowly as you had taken him in, the agonizing feeling was nearly too much and he threw his head back in a loud, whimpering moan. 

He felt your hand wrap around his base, and he knew that you were going to take your mouth away in favor of jerking him off some, but he wasn't ready for that yet, he wanted more of you. Before you could reach his tip, his hand found it's way the back of your head and bunched some of your hair up into a pony tail, and he used just enough pressure to ease back onto it further but gave enough freedom for you to pull away if needed. Slowly, he thrusts his hips forwards, feeling you hollow your cheeks around him to suck harder. Again, you had him on the edge of cumming, and he almost didn't stop you. 

Almost. 

Normally Alec was one for foreplay, he enjoyed eating you out and making you as sensitive as possible before he fucked you sensually, but the two of you didn't have enough time for that, you were on a mission after all. The sight of you on your knees before him, so eager to do whatever he said wasn't a normal sight either, and in all honesty he knew you probably weren't in the mood for your usual foreplay and sensualness either, but rather would prefer a rough and quick fucking so you could both go back to work and go home for a vacation. And in that case, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with you. 

After another second the vampire tugs lightly on your hair, letting your head come all the way back. You didn't have time to take off all of your clothes, and the boots were fucking sexy anyway, so he figured he'd do this the quickest, easiest and most pleasurable way possible. doggy style. "Pull your pants down and bend over the bed." He says gruffly, his voice thick and sultry. 

You didn't say no (why would you?) and jumped up almost instantly, biting your lip eagerly as you unbuttoned your jeans and pushed them and your panties down as quickly as possible. You lifted your top off as you turned around, letting out a small yelp as you felt his hand connect with your ass as you bent over, as he had requested. You looked over your shoulder at him, a knowing smirk on your face as you wiggled your butt for him. 

Alec gave you a look, giving his cock one long, slow stroke as he stared at your ass and pussy, which was so wet by now that it was actually glistening. "You ready for me, baby?" He asks, walking closer to you slowly. You felt his hands on your hips, one of them sliding down to knead your ass before traveling farther, one of his fingers sliding along your glistening folds. 

"God, yes." You moaned out as his finger simply brushed against his clit. "Yes, Alec." You say, more than eager for what was about to happen. You hadn't even realized you were horny until he had started undoing his pants in all honesty, but fuck something about this rougher, demanding, Alec just got you going. "I'm ready for you to fuck me." 

Alec wasted no time in fulfilling you, literally. Without another word or warning he had slid himself into your tight hole, that was shaped almost perfectly to his dick, rougher than he ever had before. The motion and feeling elicited a less than human noise to rise from your throat as you braced yourself on the bed, propping yourself up with your elbows. "Fuck, you feel so good around me, sweetheart." He groans out, pulling out slowly before hammering back into you, repeatedly at more than human pace that had you nearly screaming and your whole body quaking. 

"Oh fuck," You moan out, throwing your head back. You pushed your hips back against him, wanting more of him. You wanted as much of the addictive pleasure he gave you as you could possible get in that moment, and you certainly didn't care who heard you as his hand wound it's way around your throat causing him to slightly be bent over you as an even louder, almost animalistic noise came out of you. He wasn't squeezing you, the pressure was light, like he was just holding you and you soon found out why. 

"You look so good bent over for me, taking my dick like the good girl you are." He says, and the praise in itself was nearly enough to make you cum on the spot. "But, i'd much rather have you in a position where you can feel all of me, so I can make you scream." He growls into your ear, gently easing you up by your neck so you were in a semi standing position. Your arms still braced you on the bed, but for the most part he was holding you up, one hand on your hip and the other gently around your neck as he dove into you at a deeper position and much, much harder pace than he had been before. 

In this new position, you could feel all of him. He brushed at spots you didn't even know you had and had you seeing blackspots from the intensity of the pleasure that came rolling over you. In no time at all Alec had your whole body trembling, and your throat going hoarse as you screamed out his name and a string of provocative words, and in the next moment you felt yourself reaching your climax, the knot in your stomach coming undone at such an intense rate that you felt like you were going to implode. 

"That's it babygirl, come all over me." He says, he continued his hard strokes until he knew you were finished. Once he felt your body sag against his own, he pulls out, turning you around slowly. He cups the back of your head in his hands, slowly leaning you backwards. "Think you've got one more in you, sweetheart?" He asks, giving you a deep, sloppy kiss as he pushes your pants down as far as he can, which wasn't very far with your boots in the way. 

You nod slowly, unable to find words, and let out a small noise as he slides into you once more, this time gentler than before. His eyes were trained on your breasts as he picked up a steady rythem, quick but not rough, sweet but not gentle, and with one hand he pulled your bra down, cupping one of your breasts in his hand before rolling a nipple between his thumb and forefinger. You arched your back up at the feeling, your eyes closing as your head went back. Alec smirked, taking the nipple into his mouth and gently biting at it with his teeth. 

"Oh, fuck Alec," You moaned out at the feeling, your voice was small and quiet, but he knew it held more pleasure than it had before. Your hips bucked up into his own, and he deepened his pace. He let out a loud groan, placing his forehead on your chest as you wound your fingers through his hair and gave the black locks a nice tug. That had always been a turn on for him. It wasn't long before you were cumming again, and the feeling of your walls quaking around him brought him to the edge just as fast, and one word from you was all it took for him to spill. "Come for me baby, come inside my pussy for me.." You groaned out, still in the midst of your own. His hips snapped into yours once, twice and his whole body twitched before getting stiff as he let out a long breath, your name rolling off of his tong breathlessly. 

The two of you stayed like that for a moment before he finally managed to gather the strength to roll off of you. He's silent for a moment, laying beside you half off the bed, before he bursts into laughter. "Demetri is going to kill us!" And at that, you can't help but let out an amused chuckle. 

♥️♥️♥️

hahahahahahahaha gosh this is always so embarrassing

#alec volturi smut #twilight smut #twilight imagines #twilight #the volturi #volturi smut #demetri volturi smut

[ms-scarletwings]

Out of all small mammals that have been domesticated as pets, hamsters are one of the most interesting varieties.

And when I say interesting, I mean because they’re so unique, and there is a lot of complexity to them that often goes overlooked even by the owners taking care of them. Naturally, they aren’t well understood by most people, and it’s a strange kind of scary how that misunderstanding can lead to a lot of pain and tragedy for both keeper and pet.

Out of everything there is to know, the most distinct thing about hamsters is probably how downright antisocial they are to other small animals.

When you take a look at other household rodents, you usually see incredibly social creatures which can actually suffer when kept alone. So much so that there are countries outlawing the keeping of single guinea pigs, under the scope of broad animal cruelty regulations.

Take rats, or mice, for another example. Very common subjects of study and experimentation, and renowned for their ability to form bonds and bustling communities.

It’s common knowledge to any rat or mouse owner worth their salt that these animals thrive best when kept in the company of their own, and they naturally prefer to live in groupings.

Your average hamster? Not so at all. In fact, the majority of hamster breeds harbor so much potential for aggression with their own that the previous husbandry advice goes completely out the window when caring for them. And all of this goes extra for anyone with a Syrian hamster on their hands.

The absolute largest of domestic breeds, Syrian hamsters (also referred to as golden hamsters) are an exemplary variety for demonstrating this point. Make any remote suggestion of cohabbing two of these and forums and experts alike will be quick to tell you stop, do not pass “Go”, do not collect $200, because failing to consider the risks might end well… gruesomely.

Some people get the wrong impression that two Syrian hamsters can share a space because, well, they see that pet shops are getting away with housing juveniles together for a time.

It is true that when they are still young and developing, they will tolerate cage-mates much easier, and it’s been shown that you have the best chances when pairing some hamsters with a same-sex sibling they have been raised together with.

Despite however swimmingly this situation seems to be going for now, it is ultimately not so sustainable in the long run. For see… Syrian hamsters eventually mature into highly territorial, solitary creatures by their nature.

Inevitably, that nature will bleed through, creating tensions of dominance struggle between the two that could escalate into more violent fighting.

And as some former pet owners can anecdotally attest to, these fights can and occasionally do end in serious injury for one or both of the animals. Often enough, the victor will turn to cannibalistic actions as well, killing (and eating) its cage-mate in the worst case scenario.

And what of those who are still surviving, and maybe even adapting to the presence of another hamster? Interestingly, when one of the Syrians doesn’t end up devouring the other, these lower stakes conflicts have a stark impact on the psychology and behavior of both combatants involved. After a fight is concluded for Syrian hamsters, something of a pecking order between the two begins to form when the loser cannot get away, where the winner actually adjusts to become more aggressive and dominant over the shared territory. Studies have shown that the hamster at the short end of the stick can start to lose its own willingness to behave dominantly following a hard social defeat. After repeated abuse of this fashion from a cage-mate, the submissive will become more docile and appeasing to the dominant partner over time- a phenomenon known as “conditioned defeat” which appears similar to a kind of learned helplessness.

All in all, the social inclinations of golden hamsters with same-species companions are, at best, quite unpredictable, but in a morbidly fascinating way, me thinks. End of the day, there’s still just something both extremely entertaining and endearing about them, and their quirks.

#adventure time #Earl lemongrab #lemongrab #cartoon network #favorite characters #I might have lied this is not actually about rodents at all #but the information included about them is true #scarlet talks about things #let me be silly #cannibalism mention

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Forcing your computer to rat you out

Powerful people imprisoned by the cluelessness of their own isolation, locked up with their own motivated reasoning: “It’s impossible to get a CEO to understand something when his quarterly earnings call depends on him not understanding it.”

Take Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg insists that anyone who wanted to use a pseudonym online is “two-faced,” engaged in dishonest social behavior. The Zuckerberg Doctrine claims that forcing people to use their own names is a way to ensure civility. This is an idea so radioactively wrong, it can be spotted from orbit.

From the very beginning, social scientists (both inside and outside Facebook) told Zuckerberg that he was wrong. People have lots of reasons to hide their identities online, both good and bad, but a Real Names Policy affects different people differently:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/01/22/social-scientists-have-warned-zuck-all-along-that-the-facebook-theory-of-interaction-would-make-people-angry-and-miserable/

For marginalized and at-risk people, there are plenty of reasons to want to have more than one online identity — say, because you are a #MeToo whistleblower hoping that Harvey Weinstein won’t sic his ex-Mossad mercenaries on you:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies

Or maybe you’re a Rohingya Muslim hoping to avoid the genocidal attentions of the troll army that used Facebook to organize — under their real, legal names — to rape and murder you and everyone you love:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

But even if no one is looking to destroy your life or kill you and your family, there are plenty of good reasons to present different facets of your identity to different people. No one talks to their lover, their boss and their toddler in exactly the same way, or reveals the same facts about their lives to those people. Maintaining different facets to your identity is normal and healthy — and the opposite, presenting the same face to everyone in your life, is a wildly terrible way to live.

None of this is controversial among social scientists, nor is it hard to grasp. But Zuckerberg stubbornly stuck to this anonymity-breeds-incivility doctrine, even as dictators used the fact that Facebook forced dissidents to use their real names to retain power through the threat (and reality) of arrest and torture:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#hun-sen

Why did Zuck cling to this dangerous and obvious fallacy? Because the more he could collapse your identity into one unitary whole, the better he could target you with ads. Truly, it is impossible to get a billionaire to understand something when his mega-yacht depends on his not understanding it.

This motivated reasoning ripples through all of Silicon Valley’s top brass, producing what Anil Dash calls “VC QAnon,” the collection of conspiratorial, debunked and absurd beliefs embraced by powerful people who hold the digital lives of billions of us in their quivering grasp:

https://www.anildash.com/2023/07/07/vc-qanon/

These fallacy-ridden autocrats like to disguise their demands as observations, as though wanting something to be true was the same as making it true. Think of when Eric Schmidt — then the CEO of Google — dismissed online privacy concerns, stating “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy

Schmidt was echoing the sentiments of his old co-conspirator, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it”:

https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/

Both men knew better. Schmidt, in particular, is very jealous of his own privacy. When Cnet reporters used Google to uncover and publish public (but intimate and personal) facts about Schmidt, Schmidt ordered Google PR to ignore all future requests for comment from Cnet reporters:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/how-cnet-got-banned-by-google/

(Like everything else he does, Elon Musk’s policy of responding to media questions about Twitter with a poop emoji is just him copying things other people thought up, making them worse, and taking credit for them:)

https://www.theverge.com/23815634/tesla-elon-musk-origin-founder-twitter-land-of-the-giants

Schmidt’s actions do not reflect an attitude of “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Rather, they are the normal response that we all have to getting doxed.

When Schmidt and McNealy and Zuck tell us that we don’t have privacy, or we don’t want privacy, or that privacy is bad for us, they’re disguising a demand as an observation. “Privacy is dead” actually means, “When privacy is dead, I will be richer than you can imagine, so stop trying to save it, goddamnit.”

We are all prone to believing our own bullshit, but when a tech baron gets high on his own supply, his mental contortions have broad implications for all of us. A couple years after Schmidt’s anti-privacy manifesto, Google launched Google Plus, a social network where everyone was required to use their “real name.”

This decision — justified as a means of ensuring civility and a transparent ruse to improve ad targeting — kicked off the Nym Wars:

https://epeus.blogspot.com/2011/08/google-plus-must-stop-this-identity.html

One of the best documents to come out of that ugly conflict is “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names,” a profound and surprising enumeration of all the ways that the experiences of tech bros in Silicon Valley are the real edge-cases, unreflective of the reality of billions of their users:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

This, in turn, spawned a whole genre of programmer-fallacy catalogs, falsehoods programmers believe about time, currency, birthdays, timezones, email addresses, national borders, nations, biometrics, gender, language, alphabets, phone numbers, addresses, systems of measurement, and, of course, families:

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

But humility is in short supply in tech. It’s impossible to get a programmer to understand something when their boss requires them not to understand it. A programmer will happily insist that ordering you to remove your “mask” is for your own good — and not even notice that they’re taking your skin off with it.

There are so many ways that tech executives could improve their profits if only we would abandon our stubborn attachment to being so goddamned complicated. Think of Netflix and its anti-passsword-sharing holy war, which is really a demand that we redefine “family” to be legible and profitable for Netflix:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

But despite the entreaties of tech companies to collapse our identities, our families, and our online lives into streamlined, computably hard-edged shapes that fit neatly into their database structures, we continue to live fuzzy, complicated lives that only glancingly resemble those of the executives seeking to shape them.

Now, the rich, powerful people making these demands don’t plan on being constrained by them. They are conservatives, in the tradition of #FrankWilhoit, believers in a system of “in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”:

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

As with Schmidt’s desire to spy on you from asshole to appetite for his own personal gain, and his violent aversion to having his own personal life made public, the tech millionaires and billionaires who made their fortune from the flexibility of general purpose computers would like to end that flexibility. They insist that the time for general purpose computers has passed, and that today, “consumers” crave the simplicity of appliances:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

It is in the War On General Purpose Computing that we find the cheapest and flimsiest rhetoric. Companies like Apple — and their apologists — insist that no one wants to use third-party app stores, or seek out independent repair depots — and then spend millions to make sure that it’s illegal to jailbreak your phone or get it fixed outside of their own official channel:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

The cognitive dissonance of “no one wants this,” and “we must make it illegal to get this” is powerful, but the motivated reasoning is more powerful still. It is impossible to get Tim Cook to understand something when his $49 million paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

The War on General Purpose Computing has been underway for decades. Computers, like the people who use them, stubbornly insist on being reality-based, and the reality of computers is that they are general purpose. Every computer is a Turing complete, universal Von Neumann machine, which means that it can run every valid program. There is no way to get a computer to be almost Turing Complete, only capable of running programs that don’t upset your shareholders’ fragile emotional state.

There is no such thing as a printer that will only run the “reject third-party ink” program. There is no such thing as a phone that will only run the “reject third-party apps” program. There are only laws, like the Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that make writing and distributing those programs a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine (for a first offense).

That is to say, the War On General Purpose Computing is only incidentally a technical fight: it is primarily a legal fight. When Apple says, “You can’t install a third party app store on your phone,” what they means is, “it’s illegal to install that third party app store.” It’s not a technical countermeasure that stands between you and technological self-determination, it’s a legal doctrine we can call “felony contempt of business model”:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

But the mighty US government will not step in to protect a company’s business model unless it at least gestures towards the technical. To invoke DMCA 1201, a company must first add the thinnest skin of digital rights management to their product. Since 1201 makes removing DRM illegal, a company can use this molecule-thick scrim of DRM to felonize any activity that the DRM prevents.

More than 20 years ago, technologists started to tinker with ways to combine the legal and technical to tame the wild general purpose computer. Starting with Microsoft’s Palladium project, they theorized a new “Secure Computing” model for allowing companies to reach into your computer long after you had paid for it and brought it home, in order to discipline you for using it in ways that undermined its shareholders’ interest.

Secure Computing began with the idea of shipping every computer with two CPUs. The first one was the normal CPU, the one you interacted with when you booted it up, loaded your OS, and ran programs. The second CPU would be a Trusted Platform Module, a brute-simple system-on-a-chip designed to be off-limits to modification, even by its owner (that is, you).

The TPM would ship with a limited suite of simple programs it could run, each thoroughly audited for bugs, as well as secret cryptographic signing keys that you were not permitted to extract. The original plan called for some truly exotic physical security measures for that TPM, like an acid-filled cavity that would melt the chip if you tried to decap it or run it through an electron-tunneling microscope:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

This second computer represented a crack in the otherwise perfectly smooth wall of a computer’s general purposeness; and Trusted Computing proposed to hammer a piton into that crack and use it to anchor a whole superstructure that could observe — and limited — the activity of your computer.

This would start with observation: the TPM would observe every step of your computer’s boot sequence, creating cryptographic hashes of each block of code as it loaded and executed. Each stage of the boot-up could be compared to “known good” versions of those programs. If your computer did something unexpected, the TPM could halt it in its tracks, blocking the boot cycle.

What kind of unexpected things do computers do during their boot cycle? Well, if your computer is infected with malware, it might load poisoned versions of its operating system. Once your OS is poisoned, it’s very hard to detect its malicious conduct, since normal antivirus programs rely on the OS to faithfully report what your computer is doing. When the AV program asks the OS to tell it which programs are running, or which files are on the drive, it has no choice but to trust the OS’s response. When the OS is compromised, it can feed a stream of lies to users’ programs, assuring these apps that everything is fine.

That’s a very beneficial use for a TPM, but there’s a sinister flipside: the TPM can also watch your boot sequence to make sure that there aren’t beneficial modifications present in your operating system. If you modify your OS to let you do things the manufacturer wants to prevent — like loading apps from a third-party app-store — the TPM can spot this and block it.

Now, these beneficial and sinister uses can be teased apart. When the Palladium team first presented its research, my colleague Seth Schoen proposed an “owner override”: a modification of Trusted Computing that would let the computer’s owner override the TPM:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021004125515/http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/2002-07-05.html

This override would introduce its own risks, of course. A user who was tricked into overriding the TPM might expose themselves to malicious software, which could harm that user, as well as attacking other computers on the user’s network and the other users whose data were on the compromised computer’s drive.

But an override would also provide serious benefits: it would rule out the monopolistic abuse of a TPM to force users to run malicious code that the manufacturer insisted on — code that prevented the user from doing things that benefited the user, even if it harmed the manufacturer’s shareholders. For example, with owner override, Microsoft couldn’t force you to use its official MS Office programs rather than third-party compatible programs like Apple’s iWork or Google Docs or LibreOffice.

Owner override also completely changed the calculus for another, even more dangerous part of Trusted Computing: remote attestation.

Remote Attestation is a way for third parties to request a reliable, cryptographically secured assurances about which operating system and programs your computer is running. In Remote Attestation, the TPM in your computer observes every stage of your computer’s boot, gathers information about all the programs you’re running, and cryptographically signs them, using the signing keys the manufacturer installed during fabrication.

You can send this “attestation” to other people on the internet. If they trust that your computer’s TPM is truly secure, then they know that you have sent them a true picture of your computer’s working (the actual protocol is a little more complicated and involves the remote party sending you a random number to cryptographically hash with the attestation, to prevent out-of-date attestations).

Now, this is also potentially beneficial. If you want to make sure that your technologically unsophisticated friend is running an uncompromised computer before you transmit sensitive data to it, you can ask them for an attestation that will tell you whether they’ve been infected with malware.

But it’s also potentially very sinister. Your government can require all the computers in its borders to send a daily attestation to confirm that you’re still running the mandatory spyware. Your abusive spouse — or abusive boss — can do the same for their own disciplinary technologies. Such a tool could prevent you from connecting to a service using a VPN, and make it impossible to use Tor Browser to protect your privacy when interacting with someone who wishes you harm.

The thing is, it’s completely normal and good for computers to lie to other computers on behalf of their owners. Like, if your IoT ebike’s manufacturer goes out of business and all their bikes get bricked because they can no longer talk to their servers, you can run an app that tricks the bike into thinking that it’s still talking to the mothership:

https://nltimes.nl/2023/07/15/alternative-app-can-unlock-vanmoof-bikes-popular-amid-bankruptcy-fears

Or if you’re connecting to a webserver that tries to track you by fingerprinting you based on your computer’s RAM, screen size, fonts, etc, you can order your browser to send random data about this stuff:

https://jshelter.org/fingerprinting/

Or if you’re connecting to a site that wants to track you and nonconsensually cram ads into your eyeballs, you can run an adblocker that doesn’t show you the ads, but tells the site that it did:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Owner override leaves some of the beneficial uses of remote attestation intact. If you’re asking a friend to remotely confirm that your computer is secure, you’re not going to use an override to send them bad data about about your computer’s configuration.

And owner override also sweeps all of the malicious uses of remote attestation off the board. With owner override, you can tell any lie about your computer to a webserver, a site, your boss, your abusive spouse, or your government, and they can’t spot the lie.

But owner override also eliminates some beneficial uses of remote attestation. For example, owner override rules out remote attestation as a way for strangers to play multiplayer video games while confirming that none of them are using cheat programs (like aimhack). It also means that you can’t use remote attestation to verify the configuration of a cloud server you’re renting in order to assure yourself that it’s not stealing your data or serving malware to your users.

This is a tradeoff, and it’s a tradeoff that’s similar to lots of other tradeoffs we make online, between the freedom to do something good and the freedom to do something bad. Participating anonymously, contributing to free software, distributing penetration testing tools, or providing a speech platform that’s open to the public all represent the same tradeoff.

We have lots of experience with making the tradeoff in favor of restrictions rather than freedom: powerful bad actors are happy to attach their names to their cruel speech and incitement to violence. Their victims are silenced for fear of that retaliation.

When we tell security researchers they can’t disclose defects in software without the manufacturer’s permission, the manufacturers use this as a club to silence their critics, not as a way to ensure orderly updates.

When we let corporations decide who is allowed to speak, they act with a mixture of carelessness and self-interest, becoming off-the-books deputies of authoritarian regimes and corrupt, powerful elites.

Alas, we made the wrong tradeoff with Trusted Computing. For the past twenty years, Trusted Computing has been creeping into our devices, albeit in somewhat denatured form. The original vision of acid-filled secondary processors has been replaced with less exotic (and expensive) alternatives, like “secure enclaves.” With a secure enclave, the manufacturer saves on the expense of installing a whole second computer, and instead, they draw a notional rectangle around a region of your computer’s main chip and try really hard to make sure that it can only perform a very constrained set of tasks.

This gives us the worst of all worlds. When secure enclaves are compromised, we not only lose the benefit of cryptographic certainty, knowing for sure that our computers are only booting up trusted, unalterted versions of the OS, but those compromised enclaves run malicious software that is essentially impossible to detect or remove:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

But while Trusted Computing has wormed its way into boot-restrictions — preventing you from jailbreaking your computer so it will run the OS and apps of your choosing — there’s been very little work on remote attestation…until now.

Web Environment Integrity is Google’s proposal to integrate remote attestation into everyday web-browsing. The idea is to allow web-servers to verify what OS, extensions, browser, and add-ons your computer is using before the server will communicate with you:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md

Even by the thin standards of the remote attestation imaginaries, there are precious few beneficial uses for this. The googlers behind the proposal have a couple of laughable suggestions, like, maybe if ad-supported sites can comprehensively refuse to serve ad-blocking browsers, they will invest the extra profits in making things you like. Or: letting websites block scriptable browsers will make it harder for bad people to auto-post fake reviews and comments, giving users more assurances about the products they buy.

But foundationally, WEI is about compelling you to disclose true facts about yourself to people who you want to keep those facts from. It is a Real Names Policy for your browser. Google wants to add a new capability to the internet: the ability of people who have the power to force you to tell them things to know for sure that you’re not lying.

The fact that the authors assume this will be beneficial is just another “falsehood programmers believe”: there is no good reason to hide the truth from other people. Squint a little and we’re back to McNealy’s “Privacy is dead, get over it.” Or Schmidt’s “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

And like those men, the programmers behind this harebrained scheme don’t imagine that it will ever apply to them. As Chris Palmer — who worked on Chromium — points out, this is not compatible with normal developer tools or debuggers, which are “incalculably valuable and not really negotiable”:

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_kGO22g/m/5Lt5cnkLCwAJ

This proposal is still obscure in the mainstream, but in tech circles, it has precipitated a flood of righteous fury:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/

As I wrote last week, giving manufacturers the power to decide how your computer is configured, overriding your own choices, is a bad tradeoff — the worst tradeoff, a greased slide into terminal enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

All of which leads to the question: what now? What should be done about WEI and remote attestation?

Let me start by saying: I don’t think it should be illegal for programmers to design and release these tools. Code is speech, and we can’t understand how this stuff works if we can’t study it.

But programmers shouldn’t deploy it in production code, in the same way that programmers should be allowed to make pen-testing tools, but shouldn’t use them to attack production systems and harm their users. Programmers who do this should be criticized and excluded from the society of their ethical, user-respecting peers.

Corporations that use remote attestation should face legal restrictions: privacy law should prevent the use of remote attestation to compel the production of true facts about users or the exclusion of users who refuse to produce those facts. Unfair competition law should prevent companies from using remote attestation to block interoperability or tie their products to related products and services.

Finally, we must withdraw the laws that prevent users and programmers from overriding TPMs, secure enclaves and remote attestations. You should have the right to study and modify your computer to produce false attestations, or run any code of your choosing. Felony contempt of business model is an outrage. We should alter or strike down DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and other laws (like contract law’s “tortious interference”) that stand between you and “sole and despotic dominion” over your own computer. All of that applies not just to users who want to reconfigure their own computers, but also toolsmiths who want to help them do so, by offering information, code, products or services to jailbreak and alter your devices.

Tech giants will squeal at this, insisting that they serve your interests when they prevent rivals from opening up their products. After all, those rivals might be bad guys who want to hurt you. That’s 100% true. What is likewise true is that no tech giant will defend you from its own bad impulses, and if you can’t alter your device, you are powerless to stop them:

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

Companies should be stopped from harming you, but the right place to decide whether a business is doing something nefarious isn’t in the boardroom of that company’s chief competitor: it’s in the halls of democratically accountable governments:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

So how do we get there? Well, that’s another matter. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I lay out a detailed program, describing which policies will disenshittify the internet, and how to get those policies:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

Predictably, there are challenges getting this kind of book out into the world via our concentrated tech sector. Amazon refuses to carry the audio edition on its monopoly audiobook platform, Audible, unless it is locked to Amazon forever with mandatory DRM. That’s left me self-financing my own DRM-free audio edition, which is currently available for pre-order via this Kickstarter:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

[Image ID: An anatomical drawing of a flayed human head; it has been altered to give it a wide-stretched mouth revealing a gadget nestled in the back of the figure's throat, connected by a probe whose two coiled wires stretch to an old fashioned electronic box. The head's eyes have been replaced by the red, menacing eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Behind the head is a code waterfall effect as seen in the credits of the Wachowskis' 'The Matrix.']

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

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

#pluralistic #chaffing #spoofing #remote attestation #rene descartes #adversarial interoperability #war on general purpose computing #canvas attacks #vpns #compelled speech #onion routing #owner override #stalkerware #ngscb #palladium #trusted computing #secure enclaves #tor #interop #net neutrality #taking the fifth #right to remain silent #real names policy #the zuckerberg doctrine #none of your business #the right to lie #right to repair #bossware #spyware #wei web environment integrity

[the-sparrow-lion]

little thing i wrote for @babybatterup​… i hope this is what u meant lol

Aemond knows he’s not perfect. But it still hurts to think about. He was born the second son of a king who refused to recognize his eldest son as heir, instead favoring his sister, thirteen years his elder, as alien to him as his father was. At least he could take solace in knowing his mother cared, but her love choked him. All he wanted was to please her, knowing trying to please his father was futile. He’d lost his eye to his sister’s bastard, who she stubbornly attempted to pass off as legitimate, and worse, his father hadn’t cared, only wanting to know how Aemond knew of his nephews’ true parentage. Worst of all was when his mother had come to his defense and been seen as a madwoman by everyone. He was born to lose out on life, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t at least try to reach the levels of power belonging to his brother and sisters. Vhagar could attest to that. And so could you. When Aemond met you, he was smitten. He knew you would much rather prefer Aegon, though, so he tried to reel you in by being the best at everything. That worked about as well as you would think. Not to mention that he was wrong about which brother had caught your eye. When you confessed to him, he was shocked. He hadn’t thought someone so beautiful, and of such high standing, would care about him. He tries his best to please you, like he did his mother. The difference is that this time, your love wasn’t conditional. Sometimes, he starts to think about how much better you deserve, and will overcompensate like hell to make you think you’d fallen in love with a better man. You, of course, know that Aemond is the best man you could ever wish for, and love him as he is, no matter what. Every time you remind him of that when he starts to spiral, he’ll suddenly “get something in his eye” and have to leave. He hates crying in front of people, since he tries to be the best in his family to compensate for always being the afterthought. And that, to him, means staying rational and not showing his true emotions. You’re the only one he trusts even remotely to see him cry, because he knows deep down that you’ll always be there for him in these moments of “weakness”. The only time Aemond Targaryen doesn’t feel like a walking second-place medal is when he’s with you, and for that he’ll never leave your side.

#aemond targaryen #aemond x reader #aemond imagine #aemond x you #hotd imagine

[fatehbaz]

On wishful thinking and the absence of megafauna beasts:

"We know that ancient Sumerians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc. were familiar with large charismatic megafauna that are now extinct in the region, because Asian elephants, Caspian tigers, Asiatic lions, Persian cheetahs, Syrian ostriches, and more creatures used to naturally live in Mesopotamia and Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent until historic times. But were rhinos and giraffes also living in Southwest Asia during the past 10,000 years?"

No. But, within the Holocene, the Sahara desert region used to be much wetter. The "Green Sahara" period allowed white rhinoceros and African elephants and giraffes to lives across North Africa within the past 8,000-ish years. Petroglyphs across the Sahara attest to the presence of rhinos and giraffes in modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt.

But this doesn't mean giraffes persisted in some hidden enclave in the Levant, unnoticed and unrecorded by Assyrians or Babylonians or something.

The record-keeping of states, even in the Bronze Age and Old Kingdom, were detailed and meticulous enough to account for landscape, environmental anomalies, large animals, etc.

When there is wishful thinking for the survival of extinct species, I think that people can struggle to understand the scale of ecological degradation, or people can struggle to comprehend the meticulous record-keeping of states. Today, with panoptic satellite technology and aerial imagery of remote corners of the planet, states and corporations poke and prod every physical space, searching for resources to capture, manipulate, sell, employ, etc. Big creatures do not go unnoticed. Even when unseen, they leave detectable ecological signs, hints, traces. This is, for example, how we’re sure Megalodon is extinct. We can hardly see or detect the vast majority of the undersea world(s), but we can still perceive these megafaunal absences.

Even in the ancient world(s) of the Fertile Crescent, states kept good records. In fact, the ancient Fertile Crescent is partially famous to us specifically because of their good record-keeping and story-telling regarding deforestation, agriculture, plants, rivers, floods, etc. Think Gilgamesh, the felling of the Lebanese cedars, the sea-derived purple dyes of the Phoenician textiles, Noah's Ark, the flooding of the Nile riverbanks, Assyrian kings hunting elephants, the display of tigers and lions for sport and pleasure, the elephant ivory paid in tribute to Memphis and Thebes, etc.

Ancient people of the region were so good at keeping records about landscape that it may surprise modern observers.

We (modern observers) have a pretty good idea of the landscape of the so-called Fertile Crescent from the time of Ur, Eridu, Lagash, and the Egyptian Old Kingdom onward. For example, we know which tropical animals, in certain quantities, were shipped by Punt northward through the Red Sea as tribute to Egypt. We know how many gazelles were hunted, elephants captured in pit-fall traps, and big cats ensnared by Assyrian royal hunting parties. And a creature as conspicuous as the giraffe would not go unnoticed in Egypt, Akkad, the Phoenician realm, Babylon, etc.

The giraffe is absent from all of these accounts of ancient Southwest Asia. Sad.

However, as a consolation, to provoke wonder, consider that, even in the Mediterranean, the sea so thoroughly manipulated by agriculturalists and seafaring traders and state-building empires over thousands of years, a few animal surprises could stay hidden, like treasure. There may have been a unique lineage of North African elephants, known to Carthage, in the Atlas mountains or interior Algeria, as late as 200 AD. And yet biologists, taxonomists, and historians argue to this day as to whether or not there was a unique subspecies of African elephant living on the Mediterranean coast when Rome destroyed Carthage, with convincing arguments for and against. How could an elephant of all creatures elude description by the record-keepers of such an empire? And yet, these creatures existed.

Lions prowled mainland Greece until at least 400 BC. Today, perhaps 400 endemic monk seals continue to swim in the Aegean Sea. Jackals continue to wander the Balkans. We may no longer live alongside woolly mammoths. But underground, in Croatian caves, the olm still survives swimming silently.

[pwlanier]

Artist: Alexander HutchisonScottish (1840 - 1924)

Title: St Kilda

Date created: About 1890

Materials:

Albumen print

Often described as the most remote part of the British Isles, St Kilda is an archi­pelago that lies some forty miles west of the Outer Hebrides in the North Atlantic Ocean. Across several centuries the inhab­itants of St Kilda lived mainly in isolation and self-sufficiency, harvesting the land and the abundant seabird population. The growth of tourism in the Victorian era brought increasing contact with the mainland with summer cruise steamers arriving regularly from the 1870s onwards. For those visitors who braved the often perilous landing on St Kilda, the seemingly primitive way of life of a tiny community at the very margins of their country and society would have aroused great curiosity.

This photograph was probably taken around 1890, by which time the St Kildans would have been used to the annual sum­mer intrusions and were presumably also accustomed to posing for photographs. Hutchison’s photograph gathers a sizeable proportion of the 100 or so inhabitants, with two outsiders – one male, one female – also shown in the group. The islanders are shown close to their village against the backdrop of a hillside dotted with cleits, the small stone constructions roofed with turf that were used for storing food and peat. The gaunt, pinched faces of the women attest to the harsh conditions of life on the island. Hutchison’s photograph is an intriguing record of an encounter between two different worlds and a record of a way of life that was increasingly under threat. By the end of the century, the combined impact of emigration, disease and hardship had led to a dwindling population, and in 1930 the remaining thirty-six inhabitants were evacuated from St Kilda at their own request.

National Galleries of Scotland

[shewhohangsoutincemeteries]

to ashes, reaction

Clint Barton x F!Reader

To Ashes, Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Summary: clint has finally decided it’s time to take out the big guy, and as always, you’re there to back him up. but this is different than the back-alley criminals you’ve helped him take out before; the men who work for kingpin are professionals... and one wrong step, one bad reaction could change everything.

Warnings: angst, violence (above canon-level), gore, death, trauma.

Word Count: 

follow my fanfiction blog

prologue - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21

Days Since the Decimation: One Year, Two Hundred and Forty-Four Days

“You know, we keep spending every waking minute here, and all the bad guys are going to start thinking that the Ronin has left town.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Clint attested over the loudspeaker of the phone sitting beside you, and you shifted against the freezing seat to focus the binoculars on the eastern corner of the building’s base. It took you a moment to pick him out of the crowd, his hood pulled up over the baseball cap he was wearing.

“I mean, it’s also possible that we’ll freeze to death out here, and in that case, they really won’t have to worry about us anymore.” you continued snidely, smirking to yourself as you saw him raise his chin, rolling his eyes pointedly skyward for you to see. His breath clouded above him, and he sidestepped a distracted woman without looking as she hurried past him.

“You don’t have to be here,” he pointed out, even as you watched him bounce slightly on the spot in an attempt to warm himself against the December chill. “I can handle this myself.”

“Oh, please. Like it’s any warmer in the RV.”

“At least you’re inside; it can’t be that bad.”

“The heating’s out on this floor.” you explained. “That would be why its closed.”

“Did you always talk this much?”

Your smirk widened slightly, and you flexed your fingers against the binoculars to try and stop them from tingling. Even with gloves, the air was starting to make them ache. “You’ve been living with me for over a year at this point, Clint. You really shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I swear you used to be quieter.”

“I used to be suffering from constant migraines,” you pointed out.

“…And we can’t get those back in rotation, huh?”

“Prick.” you smiled as you heard Clint snicker quietly into the phone. “Besides, what are you complaining about? I’m contributing to your very convincing performance as a slightly annoyed pedestrian on the phone minding his own business.”

“Much appreciated,” he said dryly. “Now get your sights back on target.”

“Alright, alright…”

Turning your attention towards the opposite end of the block, you pulled your jacket tighter around yourself. You were tucked into a deserted office halfway up the skyscraper opposite Fisk Towers, hunkered down in front of the window and dressed as maintenance worker. Your laptop pinged with an alert, and you turned it towards you, pulling up the highlighted tile.

“We’ve got the Big Guy’s car pulling into the garage,” you informed your partner, watching the bulky SUV glided through the security gates. “Who turns up for work at four in the afternoon?”

“He’s a criminal, Y/N.”

“And that means he can’t have work ethic?”

Among the supplies the two of you had kept from the stockpile Natasha had sent with you from the compound was a series of incredibly tiny surveillance cameras. Clint had spent an hour carefully disabling their remote trackers before finally turning them on, and he’d managed to plant one on every entrance Fisk Towers had over the last few days.

“Incoming,” you told him as you spotted the man you’d been waiting for exiting the subway down the block. “Navy peacoat. Black knit cap. Looks like he’s in a rush… I think he’s late for his shift.”

“By about two minutes; he’s supposed to be here before the Big Guy is.”

“Uh-oh. Someone’s gonna be in trouble…”

Clint hung up without answering, and you rolled your eyes as you watched Fisk’s second assistant Adrian Howell hurry to work, in as much as he could on the snow-slick pavement. If you hadn’t been looking for it, you might not have noticed the moment Clint passed him, his hand coming up in the second they crossed and leaving behind a pin camera stuck to the man’s tie. Howell didn’t even pause – oblivious to the interaction and to his new role -- and the impressed curve to your lips widened into a smile as your laptop pinged again, the signal now live.

You followed Howell’s actions on the screen as he went through the motions of stamping the ice from his shoes and scanning his I.D.. He was at his desk and opening his calendar by the time Clint finally joined you, and you handed him the laptop as he sat down.

“Nicely done; you’ve gotta teach me how to do that at some point.” you said, rescuing the thermos of coffee from the floor beside your seat. “That definitely wasn’t part of the training SHIELD offered me when I first joined the team.”

“That’s not a SHIELD trick. Circus folk don’t make a whole lot; we learn to pickpocket pretty young.” Clint said, accepting the coffee without looking up from the screen. He cleared his throat, the two of you watching a Howell had a conversation with Fisk’s other assistant. Unfortunately, with a camera this small, there was no audio bug attached. “Looks like we got lucky; calendar has the Big Guy pulling the night-shift… he’s got a ‘meeting with an independent consultant’ at eleven.”

“A consultant?”

“Most likely a lieutenant; someone running one of his operations.” Clint sighed, settling back more comfortably in his chair. “Security switch over is in four hours.”

“You want to go in tonight?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “This is what you wanted. Do you want to wait around and see if we can get another chance?”

You swallowed, watching as Howell approached Fisk’s office door. “So, what exactly is the plan?”

*              *              *

The familiar edge of adrenaline in your veins – an old friend thanks to your years with the Avengers – had a sickening edge to it as you moved down the hall, swallowing as you approached the security office. Clint had gone ahead, much more adept at avoiding the arrays of security cameras littered throughout the building, leaving you to disable them before joining him on the top floor.

As expected, the halls were almost completely empty – most of the security staff were too busy clocking out or lamenting with their coworkers about receiving the night shift to be roaming the corridors. And even without the same extensive SHIELD training as Clint, you could still manage slipping into an empty office whenever a member of the custodial staff entered the same hallway.

You found the door to the security room ajar; two men sat in front of the monitors that dominated the far wall. It was the picture of disarray that sat at odds with the modern furniture, spacious room and expensive tech – empty cans of energy drink and coffee-stained cups littered the spaces of the desktop not taken up by computer equipment. One had his feet up on the desk, dangerously close to his half-finished coffee, and a lonely string of dull gold tinsel hung crookedly above them as a paltry nod to the time of year. The fact that neither of them had spotted you on the displays was unsurprising; they’d dialed one of the screens to show a basketball game and were too busy arguing over the point guard’s apparent shortcomings.

Your eyes caught on the guns holstered at their sides, and you bit your lip, casting a glance back down the hall behind you. Eventually, someone was going to come down it, and you needed to be gone and the security cameras needed to be offline before that happened.

Turning your attention back to the room in front of you, you swallowed, teeth still digging painfully into the inside of your lip as you touched your fingertips to the edge of your mask. Exhaling slowly, you scanned the room again through the crack in the door, your attention drawn to the quiet snap and hiss of another can of some godawful energy drink being opened.

An idea quickly forming, you waited until he set the can down on the desk, your brow furrowing in concentration as you drew your gun, holding it low against your hip. Nerves still fluttering sickeningly in your belly, you exhaled, twitching the fingers of your other hand in a careful, practiced motion. Nothing happened for a moment, and your teeth dug further into your lip as you repeated the gesture.

The smallest of shields expanded beneath the can for a second, disappearing as soon as you closed your fist. The sudden displacement knocked the can on its side, looking as though the can had somehow jumped of its own accord, and its sickeningly sweet contents spilled out over the keyboard.

“Shit—"

“Marcus! What the fuck are you d—”

The guy with his feet on the table made move to push his chair backwards and stand to avoid the spill now pouring off the side of the desk, but you gestured again, another shield bubble forming under his tilted chair leg. You expanded it quickly before banishing it with a closed fist, knocking him off balance and sending him sprawling against the carpet.

Marcus, already on his feet and desperately trying to shake energy drink out of the keyboard, turned automatically, his eyes widening in surprise as you rushed into the room, cracking him over the side of his head with your gun before he could react. He crumpled immediately to the floor, unconscious. You turned on your heel, raising your weapon to aim it directly into his coworker’s face.

The man raised his hands in surrender, his next words cut short as your boot made contact with his temple.

“…Christ.”

You took in the two unconscious men on the floor in front of you, blindly tucking your gun back into its holster beneath your coat. A light beep and a second of static sounded in your ear as Clint opened the comms channel, his voice low and impatient.

“Y/N. You on schedule?”

“Security’s taken care of,” you replied, picking up the other man’s coffee and dumping it onto the computer towers under the desk. The live feeds went dark as a couple of sparks shot out of the machinery, and you straightened. “You’re free and clear.”

“You joining me?”

“On my way,” you said, stepping back out into the hall. You closed the door behind you, once again checking the hallway before turning back to the door. There was a window set into the wood, and you raised your hands again. After a moment’s struggle you managed to project another shield inside the room, expanding it until it pushed their bodies up against the door with a soft thud. It dissipated with an unsteady shudder as you closed your hands again, your head twinging painfully as you did. You ignored it. You might not be able to do much about the men eventually coming to, but hopefully their bodies against the door would make it harder for the next security staff to make the rounds down here to get in and do anything about the mess you just made. “I’ll see you upstairs.”

*              *              *

Riding in an elevator in a hood and a mask, armed with a gun and buzzing with anxiety and psychokinetic energy felt almost divorced from the reality of the situation in front of you, and you watched impatiently as the numbers above the door rose.

Clint had made your role clear; keep your distance, watch his back. Stay unseen. There was no need to tip your hand and reveal that the Ronin had a partner. Still, your fingers twitched against the holster on your hip, the contents of your stomach swirled uncomfortably.

The doors pinged open, and you stepped out into the hall that led to the Kingpin’s office, your eyes immediately finding the blood splattered on the wall to your left. A body was slumped beneath it, almost hidden by one of the ornate potted plants that lined the hall in an empty attempt to insert some semblance of warmth into the crime boss’ headquarters. One of the pots further along the hall was shattered – no doubt a casualty of a stray bullet – soil scattered on the carpet. Another body lay beyond it, blood still slowly seeping from the wound in his gut.

Gunfire sounded inr the office ahead of you, and you immediately moved forward, hand hovering over your holster. Someone shouted, and you caught sight of the scene through the half-open door.

Clint’s blade had just cut down his nearest target, blood and broken glass marring the carpet. A body slumped over a chair; another collapsed against the wall, a gun laying useless six inches from his hand. But Kingpin was nowhere to be seen.

Everything fell apart so quickly.

You saw Clint turn towards the three men left, half-crouched behind the desk at the end of the room.

Saw him move, as fast and as sure and as full of rage and fury and that all-consuming purpose as ever, his blade stained dark with blood.

Saw him somehow still too slow to possibly react in time to the three guns rising to aim towards him, held by the experienced killers Kingpin kept by his side. A thrown sword could stop one, maybe. With a bow in your partner’s hand, you wouldn’t have even blinked…

You saw the first man squeeze his trigger.

“NO!”

The psychic energy burning through you burst out in a wave, fueled by your fear and your panic. The force of it buckled the walls and cracked the ceiling, the expansive windows to the left of the door shattering completely. The power of it pulsed through you, scorching under your skin and through your outstretched hands.

The men were thrown back with the desk. There was a brief, terrible moment when you saw the shock, the fear… the realization cross their features. Then, a sickening, horrifying sound that clung to the inside of your skull, and they fell broken and limp as the shield dissipated.

For a second… for one fleeting second, everything was frozen.

Then comprehension of what you had just done took over, and a painful, desperate sob wracked through your chest and up into your throat.

Eyes wide, you felt your knees give way under the sheer weight of it, half-dried blood sticking to your suit as they met the carpet. Your hands shook, gaze falling to stare, mortified, at your palms.

Killed them.

You’d killed them.

“Y/N…” you felt Clint take hold of your shoulders, felt him try to pull you to your feet. “…Y/N, we’ve gotta go.”

You heard the words but didn’t register them over the pounding in your head.

You’d killed them.

“We’ve gotta go. The windows… more people are on their way…” you felt Clint’s hand on the side of your face, and he hauled you to your feet. “I’m so sorry, honey. But we need to go.”

.

.

.

.

tags: @lovely-dreamer19​ @wittyforachange​ @wefracturedmotivation​ @glossyloner​ @january-echoes​ @capitalnineteen​ @youclickedthislink​ @s0ftness​ @castieltrash1​ @absolutly-me @sara-ravenclaw @drakelover78​ @queenoftheunderdark​ @lol-you-thought​ @ruderavenclaw​ @startrekkingaroundasgard​ @notafraid-bitch-igot9lives @enna-core​ @akumune​ @xxboesefrauxx​ @hearmyharmony​ @katsies​ @lipstickandtanqueray @youralphawolf72​ @whovianayesha​ @fanofalltheficsx @bradfordbantams​ @alice-the-nerd​ @rimaries @ace-fandom-dumbass​ @kaelyn-lobrutto24​ @twsssmlmaa​ @earth-pig-fish​ @meeksmusic83​ @hallothankmas​ @multiyfandomgirl40 @fallinginlovewithqueue​ @justanothermagicalsara​ @fandomfangirl4ever

#clint barton #clint barton x reader #clint barton x you #clint barton x ofc #clint barton x oc #clint barton reader insert #clint barton imagine #clint barton fanfic #clint barton fanfiction #hawkeye #hawkeye reader insert #hawkeye x you #hawkeye x reader #hawkeye imagine #hawkeye fanfiction #hawkeye x ofc #hawkeye x oc #hawkeye fanfic #mcu #mcu fanfiction #mcu imagine #mcu reader insert #mcu fanfic #marvel #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic #marvel imagine #marvel reader insert #mine: fanfic

[nicklloydnow]

“All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight, by plane, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel. He now receives instant information, by radio, of events which he formerly learned about only years later, if at all. The germination and growth of plants, which remained hidden throughout the seasons, is now exhibited publicly in a minute, on film. Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today's street traffic. Moreover, the film attests to what it shows by presenting also the camera and its operators at work. The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication.

Man puts the longest distances behind him in the shortest time. He puts the greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before himself at the shortest range.

Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on the radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not in itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness.

What is nearness if it fails to come about despite the reduction of the longest distances to the shortest intervals? What is nearness if it is even repelled by the restless abolition of distances? What is nearness if, along with its failure to appear, remoteness also remains absent?

What is happening here when, as a result of the abolition of great distances, everything is equally far and equally near? What is this uniformity in which everything is neither far nor near - is, as it were, without distance?

Everything gets lumped together into uniform distancelessness. How? Is not this merging of everything into the distanceless more unearthly than everything bursting apart?

Man stares at what the explosion of the atom bomb could bring with it. He does not see that the atom bomb and its explosion are the mere final emission of what has long since taken place, has already happened. Not to mention the single hydrogen bomb, whose triggering, thought through to its utmost potential, might be enough to snuff out all life on earth. What is this helpless anxiety still waiting for, if the terrible has already happened?

The terrifying is unsettling; it places everything outside its own nature. What is it that unsettles and thus terrifies? It shows itself and hides itself in the way in which everything presences, namely, in the fact that despite all conquest of distances the nearness of things remains absent.” (p. 165, 166)

#heidegger #martin heidegger #the thing #atom bomb #hydrogen bomb #nearness #remoteness