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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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Your car spies on you and rats you out to insurance companies

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Mar 13) in SAN FRANCISCO with ROBIN SLOAN, then Toronto, NYC, Anaheim, and more!

Another characteristically brilliant Kashmir Hill story for The New York Times reveals another characteristically terrible fact about modern life: your car secretly records fine-grained telemetry about your driving and sells it to data-brokers, who sell it to insurers, who use it as a pretext to gouge you on premiums:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html

Almost every car manufacturer does this: Hyundai, Nissan, Ford, Chrysler, etc etc:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2020/09/09/ford-state-farm-ford-metromile-honda-verisk-among-insurer-oem-telematics-connections/

This is true whether you own or lease the car, and it's separate from the "black box" your insurer might have offered to you in exchange for a discount on your premiums. In other words, even if you say no to the insurer's carrot – a surveillance-based discount – they've got a stick in reserve: buying your nonconsensually harvested data on the open market.

I've always hated that saying, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," the reason being that it posits decent treatment as a customer reward program, like the little ramekin warm nuts first class passengers get before takeoff. Companies don't treat you well when you pay them. Companies treat you well when they fear the consequences of treating you badly.

Take Apple. The company offers Ios users a one-tap opt-out from commercial surveillance, and more than 96% of users opted out. Presumably, the other 4% were either confused or on Facebook's payroll. Apple – and its army of cultists – insist that this proves that our world's woes can be traced to cheapskate "consumers" who expected to get something for nothing by using advertising-supported products.

But here's the kicker: right after Apple blocked all its rivals from spying on its customers, it began secretly spying on those customers! Apple has a rival surveillance ad network, and even if you opt out of commercial surveillance on your Iphone, Apple still secretly spies on you and uses the data to target you for ads:

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

Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product – provided the company can get away with treating you as the product. Apple can absolutely get away with treating you as the product, because it lacks the historical constraints that prevented Apple – and other companies – from treating you as the product.

As I described in my McLuhan lecture on enshittification, tech firms can be constrained by four forces:

I. Competition

II. Regulation

III. Self-help

IV. Labor

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

When companies have real competitors – when a sector is composed of dozens or hundreds of roughly evenly matched firms – they have to worry that a maltreated customer might move to a rival. 40 years of antitrust neglect means that corporations were able to buy their way to dominance with predatory mergers and pricing, producing today's inbred, Habsburg capitalism. Apple and Google are a mobile duopoly, Google is a search monopoly, etc. It's not just tech! Every sector looks like this:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Eliminating competition doesn't just deprive customers of alternatives, it also empowers corporations. Liberated from "wasteful competition," companies in concentrated industries can extract massive profits. Think of how both Apple and Google have "competitively" arrived at the same 30% app tax on app sales and transactions, a rate that's more than 1,000% higher than the transaction fees extracted by the (bloated, price-gouging) credit-card sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

But cartels' power goes beyond the size of their warchest. The real source of a cartel's power is the ease with which a small number of companies can arrive at – and stick to – a common lobbying position. That's where "regulatory capture" comes in: the mobile duopoly has an easier time of capturing its regulators because two companies have an easy time agreeing on how to spend their app-tax billions:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Apple – and Google, and Facebook, and your car company – can violate your privacy because they aren't constrained regulation, just as Uber can violate its drivers' labor rights and Amazon can violate your consumer rights. The tech cartels have captured their regulators and convinced them that the law doesn't apply if it's being broken via an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

In other words, Apple can spy on you because it's allowed to spy on you. America's last consumer privacy law was passed in 1988, and it bans video-store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history. Congress has taken no action on consumer privacy since the Reagan years:

https://www.eff.org/tags/video-privacy-protection-act

But tech has some special enshittification-resistant characteristics. The most important of these is interoperability: the fact that computers are universal digital machines that can run any program. HP can design a printer that rejects third-party ink and charge $10,000/gallon for its own colored water, but someone else can write a program that lets you jailbreak your printer so that it accepts any ink cartridge:

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

Tech companies that contemplated enshittifying their products always had to watch over their shoulders for a rival that might offer a disenshittification tool and use that as a wedge between the company and its customers. If you make your website's ads 20% more obnoxious in anticipation of a 2% increase in gross margins, you have to consider the possibility that 40% of your users will google "how do I block ads?" Because the revenue from a user who blocks ads doesn't stay at 100% of the current levels – it drops to zero, forever (no user ever googles "how do I stop blocking ads?").

The majority of web users are running an ad-blocker:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Web operators made them an offer ("free website in exchange for unlimited surveillance and unfettered intrusions") and they made a counteroffer ("how about 'nah'?"):

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

Here's the thing: reverse-engineering an app – or any other IP-encumbered technology – is a legal minefield. Just decompiling an app exposes you to felony prosecution: a five year sentence and a $500k fine for violating Section 1201 of the DMCA. But it's not just the DMCA – modern products are surrounded with high-tech tripwires that allow companies to invoke IP law to prevent competitors from augmenting, recongifuring or adapting their products. When a business says it has "IP," it means that it has arranged its legal affairs to allow it to invoke the power of the state to control its customers, critics and competitors:

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

An "app" is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to add an ad-blocker to it. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model" and it's everywhere. When companies don't have to worry about users deploying self-help measures to disenshittify their products, they are freed from the constraint that prevents them indulging the impulse to shift value from their customers to themselves.

Apple owes its existence to interoperability – its ability to clone Microsoft Office's file formats for Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which saved the company in the early 2000s – and ever since, it has devoted its existence to making sure no one ever does to Apple what Apple did to Microsoft:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Regulatory capture cuts both ways: it's not just about powerful corporations being free to flout the law, it's also about their ability to enlist the law to punish competitors that might constrain their plans for exploiting their workers, customers, suppliers or other stakeholders.

The final historical constraint on tech companies was their own workers. Tech has very low union-density, but that's in part because individual tech workers enjoyed so much bargaining power due to their scarcity. This is why their bosses pampered them with whimsical campuses filled with gourmet cafeterias, fancy gyms and free massages: it allowed tech companies to convince tech workers to work like government mules by flattering them that they were partners on a mission to bring the world to its digital future:

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

For tech bosses, this gambit worked well, but failed badly. On the one hand, they were able to get otherwise powerful workers to consent to being "extremely hardcore" by invoking Fobazi Ettarh's spirit of "vocational awe":

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

On the other hand, when you motivate your workers by appealing to their sense of mission, the downside is that they feel a sense of mission. That means that when you demand that a tech worker enshittifies something they missed their mother's funeral to deliver, they will experience a profound sense of moral injury and refuse, and that worker's bargaining power means that they can make it stick.

Or at least, it did. In this era of mass tech layoffs, when Google can fire 12,000 workers after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years, tech workers are learning that the answer to "I won't do this and you can't make me" is "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" (AKA "sharpen your blades boys"):

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/

With competition, regulation, self-help and labor cleared away, tech firms – and firms that have wrapped their products around the pluripotently malleable core of digital tech, including automotive makers – are no longer constrained from enshittifying their products.

And that's why your car manufacturer has chosen to spy on you and sell your private information to data-brokers and anyone else who wants it. Not because you didn't pay for the product, so you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

Cars are enshittified. The dozens of chips that auto makers have shoveled into their car design are only incidentally related to delivering a better product. The primary use for those chips is autoenshittification – access to legal strictures ("IP") that allows them to block modifications and repairs that would interfere with the unfettered abuse of their own customers:

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

The fact that it's a felony to reverse-engineer and modify a car's software opens the floodgates to all kinds of shitty scams. Remember when Bay Staters were voting on a ballot measure to impose right-to-repair obligations on automakers in Massachusetts? The only reason they needed to have the law intervene to make right-to-repair viable is that Big Car has figured out that if it encrypts its diagnostic messages, it can felonize third-party diagnosis of a car, because decrypting the messages violates the DMCA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-consumers-crazy

Big Car figured out that VIN locking – DRM for engine components and subassemblies – can felonize the production and the installation of third-party spare parts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

The fact that you can't legally modify your car means that automakers can go back to their pre-2008 ways, when they transformed themselves into unregulated banks that incidentally manufactured the cars they sold subprime loans for. Subprime auto loans – over $1t worth! – absolutely relies on the fact that borrowers' cars can be remotely controlled by lenders. Miss a payment and your car's stereo turns itself on and blares threatening messages at top volume, which you can't turn off. Break the lease agreement that says you won't drive your car over the county line and it will immobilize itself. Try to change any of this software and you'll commit a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA:

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

Tesla, naturally, has the most advanced anti-features. Long before BMW tried to rent you your seat-heater and Mercedes tried to sell you a monthly subscription to your accelerator pedal, Teslas were demon-haunted nightmare cars. Miss a Tesla payment and the car will immobilize itself and lock you out until the repo man arrives, then it will blare its horn and back itself out of its parking spot. If you "buy" the right to fully charge your car's battery or use the features it came with, you don't own them – they're repossessed when your car changes hands, meaning you get less money on the used market because your car's next owner has to buy these features all over again:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

And all this DRM allows your car maker to install spyware that you're not allowed to remove. They really tipped their hand on this when the R2R ballot measure was steaming towards an 80% victory, with wall-to-wall scare ads that revealed that your car collects so much information about you that allowing third parties to access it could lead to your murder (no, really!):

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

That's why your car spies on you. Because it can. Because the company that made it lacks constraint, be it market-based, legal, technological or its own workforce's ethics.

One common critique of my enshittification hypothesis is that this is "kind of sensible and normal" because "there’s something off in the consumer mindset that we’ve come to believe that the internet should provide us with amazing products, which bring us joy and happiness and we spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return":

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-have-great-conversations/

What this criticism misses is that this isn't the companies bargaining to shift some value from us to them. Enshittification happens when a company can seize all that value, without having to bargain, exploiting law and technology and market power over buyers and sellers to unilaterally alter the way the products and services we rely on work.

A company that doesn't have to fear competitors, regulators, jailbreaking or workers' refusal to enshittify its products doesn't have to bargain, it can take. It's the first lesson they teach you in the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Your car spying on you isn't down to your belief that your carmaker "should provide you with amazing products, which brings your joy and happiness you spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return." It's not because you didn't pay for the product, so now you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

The consequences of this spying go much further than mere insurance premium hikes, too. Car telemetry sits at the top of the funnel that the unbelievably sleazy data broker industry uses to collect and sell our data. These are the same companies that sell the fact that you visited an abortion clinic to marketers, bounty hunters, advertisers, or vengeful family members pretending to be one of those:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

Decades of pro-monopoly policy led to widespread regulatory capture. Corporate cartels use the monopoly profits they extract from us to pay for regulatory inaction, allowing them to extract more profits.

But when it comes to privacy, that period of unchecked corporate power might be coming to an end. The lack of privacy regulation is at the root of so many problems that a pro-privacy movement has an unstoppable constituency working in its favor.

At EFF, we call this "privacy first." Whether you're worried about grifters targeting vulnerable people with conspiracy theories, or teens being targeted with media that harms their mental health, or Americans being spied on by foreign governments, or cops using commercial surveillance data to round up protesters, or your car selling your data to insurance companies, passing that long-overdue privacy legislation would turn off the taps for the data powering all these harms:

https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms

Traditional economics fails because it thinks about markets without thinking about power. Monopolies lead to more than market power: they produce regulatory capture, power over workers, and state capture, which felonizes competition through IP law. The story that our problems stem from the fact that we just don't spend enough money, or buy the wrong products, only makes sense if you willfully ignore the power that corporations exert over our lives. It's nice to think that you can shop your way out of a monopoly, because that's a lot easier than voting your way out of a monopoly, but no matter how many times you vote with your wallet, the cartels that control the market will always win:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

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

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

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mizelaneus · 6 months

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#cory doctorow #enshittification #twiddling

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sproutbox02 · 4 months

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my hero!

#splatoon #uuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh #twiddles thumbs #agent 24 #my art

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deathflare · 3 months

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some old sketches

#ffxiv #erenville #im erenvillepilled rn... twiddling my thumbs in dt waiting room......

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smiggles · 3 months

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You want one? Head over to my shop and pre order to help me fund their production

#smigglesart #twiddles fingies #wanna aheem heem #boost for smi?

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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months

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But HP is still in business. Apple is still in business. Google is still in business. Microsoft is still in business. IBM is still in business. Facebook is still in business.

We don’t have those controlled burns anymore. Yesterday’s giants tower over all, forming a thick canopy. The internet is “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four.”

These tech companies have produced a lot of fire-debt. Over and over, they erupt in flames—in this short decade alone, every one of our tech giants has experienced a privacy scandal that should have permanently disqualified it from continuing to enjoy our patronage (and I do mean every one of them, including the one that spends millions telling you that it’s the pro-privacy alternative to the others).

Privacy is just one way that these firms are enshittifying themselves. There are the ghastly moderation failures, the community betrayals, the frauds and the billions squandered on follies.

We hate these companies. We hate their products. They are always on fire. They can’t help it. It’s the curse of bigness.

Companies cannot unilaterally mediate the lives of hundreds of millions — or even billions — of people, speaking thousands of languages, living in hundreds of countries.

- Let the Platforms Burn: The Opposite of Good Fires is Wildfires

#platform decay #fire debt #good fire #threads #interoperability #privacy without monopoly #fediverse #zuck's empire of oily rags #wildland–urban interface #network effects #switching costs #network effects vs switching costs #adversarial interoperability #comcom #competitive compatibility #enshittification #twiddling

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tr85n · 5 months

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MORDECAI AND RIGBY IF YOU DON'T CUT THE POETRY YOU'RE FIRED!!!

#*thumb twiddling waiting*

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blimbosworlddd · 10 months

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virgin y/n biting off more than they can chew, boasting to Toji that you’re gonna “fucking ruin him” when you ride his dick. But even after a good two hours worth of prep, he’s not even halfway in. As soon as his fat leaking head stretches open your drooling cunt, the tip nudging that hidden bundle of nerves, your plush thighs are already shaking at the pulse. Eyebrows knitted together with your hands fisting on his chest. Toji quirks half a smile at your clearly struggling form, knowing exactly why it’s taking you so long to sit all the way down on his cock.

“What’s wrong, bunny?” The raspy bass of his voice hardened your nipples and engorged your clit. Folding his arms behind his head to rest on, he looks up at you with those relaxed eyes and that fucking smirk. His condescension makes your pussy clench in pathetic need. He’s dangling exactly what you crave just above your pretty little head, waiting for you to try and hop up and take it- laughing in your face when you eat your own words.

You gnaw on your lip to distract yourself from the heavy knot of tension in your lower belly, knowing that he knows you will make a bigger mess on his dick if you move another inch. Toji is eating up your crumbling facade, chuckling at your quivering form and shallow panting, pussy already creaming around that thick cock. He decides to finish your initiative with a tantalizingly slow roll of his hips- following with a swift and hard thrust that’s strong enough to make your tits jiggle.

A high pitched whine rips from your throat, melting hot pleasure exploding through you like a shockwave. your orgasm already got you convulsing on top of him- breathing loud and shit.

“F-F-Fuck!” You quietly wail in frustration, lowering your sweaty head to rest just below his chin, your back already straining to keep you up.

“Awwwww,” Toji purrs. “Cumming already n’ you ain’t even fuck me yet? Disappointing.” You hide your face beside his neck in embarrassment.

Toji unravels his arms before gripping the supple fat of your ass cheeks, allowing you some leeway to breathe while massaging the plush brown skin with his rough fingers. He roams his palms along the squishy rolls that adorn your waist, squeezing them before planting his feet on the bed.

“You think we’re done, dontchu?’’ It was more of a statement than a question.

He presses a sweet kiss against your ear, spanking your ass cheek at the way you moan “no” while grinding your clit on his pelvis.

“Then you better keep up, babydoll.”

Want a part 2? Comment or reblog!💗

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bahrmp3 · 1 year

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[id: 14 gifs from season 3, episode 7 “civil defense” from the tv series “star trek: deep space nine”, the gifs show gul dukat, kira nerys, elim garak, julian bashir, jadzia dax in ops in various places.

1st gif: a wide shot showing everyone, gul dukat is attempting to teleport off the station, “i'll be back... in, say, 25 minutes. dukat. one to transport. energize.“ nothing happens, he fails to transport.

2nd gif: close up of gul dukat, “energize.“ he tries to transport off again.

3rd gif: the camera cuts to show everyone minus dukat, a recorded message starts playing, “dukat, if you are seeing this recording,“ everyone turns to watch the screens in front of them as.

4th gif: the camera shows the recorded message playing on screen, it features a seated cardassian, “it means you tried to abandon your post while the station's self-destruct sequence was engaged.”

5th gif: the camera comes back to dukat, “that will not be permitted.“ the recorded message continues. “this is outrageous!” dukat exclaims in shock.

6th gif: the camera cuts to show kira, she looks at dukat then return to continue watching the recorded message. “you have lost control of terok nor,”

7th gif: the camera cuts to garak, his attention is on the screen, “disgracing yourself and cardassia.“

8th gif: the camera returns to the recorded message playing on screen, “your attempt to escape is no doubt a final act of cowardice.”

9th gif: the camera comes back to dukat, he looks shocked as he hears the cardassian relaying, “all fail-safes have been eliminated.“

10th gif: the camera cuts to show kira, she looks up from the screen, to look at dukat “ your personal access codes have been rescinded.”

11th gif: the camera comes back to dukat, he is twiddling his thumbs as he hears the cardassian relaying, “the destruct sequence can no longer be halted.“

12th gif: the camera returns to the recorded message playing on screen, “all you can do now is contemplate the depth of your disgrace,”

13th & 14th gif: a wide shot showing everyone, the recorded message ends with “and try to die like a cardassian.“, everyone turns to look at dukat/end id]

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lunarmoves · 4 months

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mentions: horror themes, some blood :)

it was supposed to be a fun game of marco polo.

your hand—clammy and stiff—was clamped solidly against your mouth as you stuttered through breathing via your nose. the space you had crammed yourself into was small—barely able to hold yourself inside of it. your back was pressed against a wall, your legs were folded so that your thighs were flush against your chest. every small shift you made sounded like a gunshot in the stagnant air.

perspiration slid down the side of your face as you closed your eyes and listened carefully over the sound of your rampant heart. th-thump th-thump th-thump. it wanted to encompass everything and leave you to rely on your other senses—senses you could not use right now. not with the darkness of your hidey hole or the numbness of your hand. pain was starting to cloud your mind. you gave your head a small shake to snap yourself out of it.

you had to focus and listen.

everything was still. everything was quiet.

and then—distantly—you heard it.

"maaaarco."

a voice, disembodied and devastatingly low, rasped through the air.

you swallowed heavily, but did not respond. you didn't know what had triggered them this time. you just knew that you could not be caught. time was what you needed and even that you were not certain you had much of.

there was more silence. then, footsteps. clank clank... clank. careful and deliberate. your lips tensed together and you tried your utmost hardest to make yourself as small as possible. you made the mistake of moving your free hand—the one not clamped over your mouth. it burned something fierce up your elbow. you bit at the inside of your cheek and hoped it wasn't as bad as it felt.

clank clank clank. the footsteps grew louder. each one made you tense even further until you felt like a rubber band about to snap. "marco?!" the voice called again—this time in a higher pitched, frantic manner. "friend! marco??!!" it paused for the shortest of moments. then it took on a dangerous tone, poison lancing each and every word. "you do not seem to be f-following the rules of this game, friend."

the voice lowered. "and you know what we do to rulebreakers."

you wanted, more than anything, to be anywhere other than here at this very moment. you were starting to get woozy, and you weren't sure if it was from the lack of air in such a confined space, or the dark liquid that stained your shirt and pants. you could feel something warm trace its way down the curve of your arm—all the way to your wrist, where it dropped off with a small plip.

the footsteps—that'd been steadily getting louder—halted.

you dared not breathe.

it was a moment that felt like a century—too quiet and too nerve wracking. it put you on edge, made you dart your eyes around as though it would let you somehow pierce through the emptiness to see what was going on around you. a cold, cold feeling had long started to spread throughout your limbs, originating from the pit that'd formed in your stomach.

you waited.

and when they spoke once more, it sounded like it was coming from directly above you.

"marco," they whispered with all the danger of a lion stalking its prey. it made all the hairs on your body stand erect and a foreboding feeling to slide its way down your spine.

it was supposed to be, you thought to yourself devastatingly with a wetness lining your lashes, a fun game of marco polo.

you weren't given any time to react.

hands—as cold and unforgiving as death itself—wrapped around your arms and tugged. you were yanked out of your hiding spot with a yelp, eyes widening as mismatched lights flooded your vision abruptly and without mercy. it hurt, it hurt. and you could do nothing but hang there—withdrawing into yourself—as they crowded over your small body with a grin stretched uncomfortably wide and unnervingly thin.

"found you! we found you!" they beamed. something manic lined the edges of their smile. "f-found you, you little rulebreaker. time for—"

their voice cut off suddenly. you opened your eyes—you had not realized when you'd shut them—and stared up in surprise at their face. but they were not looking at you. they were looking at one of their hands—that'd been wrapped around your injured arm and had gotten coated with something that appeared black in the limited lighting.

you swallowed thickly. something indecipherable that'd been discoloring their optics seemed to vanish. their face seemed to slacken from its strained expression and took on something akin to... fright. and you dared to speak in a small, hesitant voice. "...guys?"

they went limp at the sound—slumping forwards onto you like a puppet cut from its strings.

"i— we're sorry," they whispered in a pained voice. clutching tightly onto you like you were the only thing keeping them rooted to the earth. "we're sorry. we're sorry. we're sorry." it was chanted with their head bowed to rest against your abdomen. as though in remorseful prayer.

you closed your eyes and clenched your jaw.

and you— well... you didn't say a thing.

you didn't say... a thing.