#the temptation of law

[a-witch-in-endor]

Every time I reread Mighty Oaks, I revisit the temptation of law school. Obviously MO isn't what modern legal practice looks like, but Zuko's legal analysis and defense of people's rights is really encouraging to read.

Sokka and Zuko are, of course, always entertaining.

On my most recent reread (as of today, when I really should have been working 😩), the scene that I really loved was the process of getting Pakku to listen to Katara and teach her. Katara's such a good character and your depiction of her is so enjoyable - I'll be making time this weekend to reread the rest of your ATLA fics!

I initially misread this (on my phone, early in the morning) as: "Every time I reread Mighty Oaks, I revisit the temptation of law."

Thank you for a lovely comment and a slightly less lovely (albeit likely healthy) minor existential crisis!

#repeating my apology for not responding to all asks #they make me happy but I can't keep up #while mighty oaks do fall #fire sage zuko #the temptation of law #and also #the temptation of law school

[onaperduamedee]

For my part I have sought liberty more than power, and power only because it can lead to freedom. What interested me was not a philosophy of the free man (all who try that have proved tiresome), but a technique: I hoped to discover the hinge where our will meets and moves with destiny, and where discipline strengthens, instead of restraining, our nature.

— Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated from the French by Grace Frick

#the wheel of time #siuan sanche #wot edit #wot on prime #clever as a pike #mygifs #mine: wot #you know what I will stop fiddling with it #I wanted a certain vibe I think I achieved it #I picked the wrong copy of the book without my annotations so it took me ages to find the quote #ANYWAY #yes please talk to me about about Siuan and power #Siuan dreaming of a home like her father's hut #knowing it'll ever be just a dream because her power and stability depend on the appearance of power she conveys #she's a prisoner of the Tower but the world depends on her control on it #she's an heretic but her heresy hinges on her ability to follow the law #to be the law #yes I know someday I will stop making Yourcenar-inspired fandom gifsets and tearing my hair to find translations #but the temptation was too great to quote from this because she's such a political being at heart yet driven by such dedication to humanity

[debauched-descent]

“Cum on them, now fucker!

Do it before your skank wife or my tiny dick husband get back. I’ll give you fucking everything if you cum. Now”

She’s fucking unquenchable.

#temptation #cheating #huge bust #huge cleavage #huge titts #beautiful #sister in law #lilith

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.

- Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

#merton #thomas merton #quote #sin #temptation #pride #femme #beauty #apple #evil #goodness #moral law

[syntonylife]

Manifesting Mischief: A Playful Look at the 7 Deadly Sins through the Lens of the Law of Attraction

Unlocking Your Potential: Transforming Sins into Strengths with Self-Discovery and Manifestation Last week, while I was on a car journey with my friends while going to Porto, I was recounting how my hairdresser had decided to make me look ridiculous by giving me a dreadful fringe and miserably destroying my beautiful long hair. I complained to my friends, revealing to them that I am aware of…

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#abundance mindset #character development #dante #inferno #Inner Peace #Law of Attraction #manifestation #Mindfulness #moral exploration #overcoming obstacles #overcoming temptation #personal growth #positivity #Self-Discovery #Self-Reflection #sin analysis #spiritual development #spiritual growth #UBC #ultimate blog challange #virtue cultivation

[drgnbld]

@monterraverde replied: [txt:] Considering it looks like you're in Kitakami, Not hard, Johto's just south of it

[ text. Rika. ]: Fully aware of that, however, we take bringing in species of other pokémon very seriously in not just Johto, but the Clan as well. I'm unsure if I'd be able to wing my response about how they are too damn adorable to leave behind.

#lance vc: i am not the type of man to break many laws especially when it comes to protecting our ecosystem #however. the temptation is strong /j #monterraverde #LANCE. » ❪ IC ❫ i'm just searching for the sky I've lost.

[1988-fiend]

….I will not buy this nutcracker

….I will not buy this nutcracker

…I will not buy this nutcracker so I can give him red glasses, a hair cut, a shave, and say proudly *he’s a really good lawyer* 🤣🤣🤣

#daredevil #matt murdock #avocados at law #marvel #nutcracker #the temptation is real #because I have a problem #I want to make everything into a version of my daredevil character #mine #random thoughts #1988-fiend

[grassbreads]

I need to stop reading Priest novels set in the present day bc she just cannot stop making her main characters cops or besties with cops

#I caved to temptation and started reading no pollution no public harm #I've been curious about it for a while #and like. even fuckin TS has characters that are more or less cops #that novel has a strange relationship to law enforcement #but it's less egregious than the novels set in straight-up real world china #invasion of the frogs

[singles-bar]

#45record #45records #45rpm #single #vinylcollection #vinylcommunity #7inch #the temptation #the temptations #law of the land #masterpiece #Tamla Motown #Motown #soul #funk #Turkey #Turkish #45 #1972 #black music

[tinkerbelldetective]

Covered in Gray

As the Sun began to peak over the Manhattan skyline, you began to stir, snuggling into the soft fabric that had fallen near your face. It smelled nice; freshly brewed Earl Grey and books.

Wait.

This wasn’t a blanket and it certainly wasn’t one of your sweaters. 

If you were more awake, you would have put more thought into the fact that not only was this Ben Stone’s sweater, the fact it was there meant that he had seen you sleeping and left you his cardigan. None of that mattered as the Sun rose. You just pulled the sweater into your arms, resting your head on it as if it were Ben himself.

#ben stone x reader #law and order #ben stone #my love #the temptation to just straight up make Ben giving reader his sweaters a whole series is strong #td Ben Stone #My Law and Order imagines

[bensonstablers]

I’m rewatching SVU and I’ve never been against the whole Olivia/Tucker relationship but seeing it all play out again... If the show had given the build up of their relationship more on-screen content we could have had such a great enemies-to-lovers storyline with them 😩

#law and order svu #tuckson #danielle talks #i've never once thought about writing a tuckson fic but the temptation to rewrite part of their story to involve more #of that transition is tempting lmao

[just-a-little-hater]

i can't with this fucker wearing his blue ass Phoenix Wright suit

#the lawyer who teaches law at my school keeps wearing this blue suit jaket and like how do you want me to pay attention and not think about #gay lawyers right now that's almost impossible #I mean deciding to teach when growing old is something Phoenix would do #also while looking for a suit for myself today I came across pants which were the exact shade of Miles' suit and like the temptation #ace attorney #phoenix wright

[debauched-descent]

My sister in-law loves my cock, we lust Lilith. Soon my wife is just gonna be writing checks while her sister and I debauch 24/7z

#temptation #cheating #sister in law #lilith

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@[email protected]/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

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

#pluralistic #playstation #sony #copyright #copyfight #drm #monopoly #enshittification #batgirl #road runner #financiazation #the end of ownership #ip

[nightmarist]

Genuinely thinking Haarlep was ordered by Raphael to tell us the passcode to his safe. Haarlep in the post game letter tells us they were sworn to secrecy and with devil contracts being as thorough as they are, I dont think Haarlep would have been physically capable of telling us unless they were allowed to. Plus, it could be why they’d be insistent of telling us even if we don’t ask/comment on Raphael’s sex instead.

We’re told Raphael knew we were there, let us trounce around the House, Haarlep’s power means Raphael knew someone was having sex with them. If our soul is stolen then technically the other party members could accomplish defeating the Absolute and Raphael would just keep us as a new toy. Or we could kill Haarlep which means no more distractions for Raphael.

I think it’s fit for the son of the Lord of Contradictions to purposely want us to go to the House of Hope and all but give us the key to our freedom while also Not wanting us to take it. He's playing cat and mouse just to see how far we would take things. He only gets upset if we steal the contract/hammer/Hope from him. The rest of the House, even the Archivist basically lets us unless we’re stupid enough to do it right in front of them without hiding at all in which they’d be forced to act.

#'why would he do that that doesnt make sense' correct. #the devil who says he hates children taking a shine to mol. the devil who says he hates kittens constantly saying a cat rhyme. #AND meows. hes my little meow meow. #as a devil hes upset/angry when Chaos occurs because devils are lawful #which is also why the devil/demon Blood War is waging - avernus used to be a temptational paradise before the war - demons are chaotic #he tells us hes angry we stole from him but he specifically points out our meddling caused the House to fall to chaos and disarray

[knowledgevariabledarcy]

#within temptation #the evil within #it lives within #i got a $115 ticket for parking next to an object that ‘didn’t even exist’ – i was completely within the law #the war within #Youtube