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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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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

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gunsandspaceships · 1 year ago

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Proof that Tony Stark is bisexual in the MCU

It is known that 616 Tony is bisexual. If you didn’t know – here’s the page from “Tony Stark: Iron Man (2018) #4”.

But is MCU Tony also bisexual? Let’s find out.

The Avengers:

0:43:10 - seems that Tony watched Rogers' movements at the end of his fight with Loki and liked what he saw.

1:10:08 - “Back off”.

2:08:30 – Sleeping Beauty.

Age of Ultron:

1:52:35 – Rhodey and Tony being a “couple”.

2:10:30 – Nat’s remark.

Civil War:

0:59:50 – huh?

Infinity War:

0:14:35 - Tony didn't know that was Levi.

0:17:08 – Tony noticed Strange’s hair moving.

0:19:15 - Strange's flirting and Tony's reaction.

1:18:50 – Tony and Strange are gazing into each other’s eyes and holding hands.

1:23:45 – again.

Endgame:

0:09:25 – Rogers’ face btw. Is he jealous here?

1:16:30 - Tony is staring at the America’s ass.

1:17:30 – Tony flicks Scott's butt.

1:20:00 – Tony is 100% okay with having a man inside him. Literally.

So what do we have?

He is comfortable touching men and being touched, even if he barely knows them. Even if it’s very gay.

He openly jokes about “gay” things.

He gazes into the eyes of both Steves, and Steves gaze back. Like, pretty often. Even Nat noticed this little habit.

He looks at men. Body, hair, ass. And he doesn’t hide it. That’s not so straight, I’d say.

Conclusion: Tony is bi. He is not latent, not really hidden one, just already in an established relationship with a woman and is faithful to her. He seems to be attracted to some guys though (we can see this towards Rogers and Strange).

Marvel shows it to us, and that’s actually the best we could get here. Because, unfortunately, the real international movie business is not yet ready for Iron Man to have a boyfriend. At least we can say he is canonically bisexual.

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thealieninhiding · 1 year ago

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The Katie McGrath Archives (WIP)

A repository of my ongoing digital archeology & archival work please contact me if you have anything to contribute and buy me a coffee if you value my content

Updates

(last updated 2025-01-14)

2025-01-14

Scans:

2008-10 InStyle (LQ)

2009 DRAMA Magazine (LQ)

2009-10 The Sunday Times Style (Ireland)

2010-10 Tatler

2010-12 InStyle

2011-02 Instyle (LQ)

2011-07 Tatler (LQ)

2011-10 Sunday Independent

2012-03-14 Sci-FiNow

2012-03-23 The Lady Magazine

2024-07-03

Scans:

2014-02-07 London Times - Dracula sets

Audio:

(Un)likeminded 2x02 How to Survive The Apocalypse

2024-05-24

Video:

2017 Katie McGrath interview [CW|KMcGsource]

2017 Supergirl Season 3 Sweet dreams (are made of this) Music Video

2017 CW SDCC Promo Supergirl and Arrow

2019-01-01 The CW Promo Open To All

2021-04-25 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Lena Luthor

2021-09-15 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Reflecting on Supergirl

2024-05-22

Audio:

Interview - 2009-07-17 Katie McGrath Mr Media interview

Interview - 2009-10-15 Geek Syndicate Merlin BTS special

Video:

BTS - 2008-10-08 Blue Peter Merlin BTS

Events - 2009 TV Choice Awards Digital Spy interview

Events - Getty Videos of 2009 TV Choice Awards, 2010 Merlin Series 3 launch, 2011 W.E. premiere, 2017 King Arthur Premiere

2024-05-17

Archived interviews

2008-12-07 Tribune Magazine - What Katie Did

2011-10-14 What's on TV - Merlin's Katie McGrath- 'Bad girls have more fun!'

2012-12-03 Fanhattan Blog - Colin Morgan, Katie McGrath and Bradley James on Season 5 and The Series Finale

2018-08-01 The TV Junkies - Supergirl SDCC 2018 Interviews- Lena’s Impractical Lab Outfits, the Return of Reporter Kara and a More Grounded Season 4

Audio

HHush samples

Interview - 2009-2011 Sci-fi Talk rewind merlin the series specials episode 1

Interview - 2011? Merlin S4 Sci-fi talk byte katie mcgrath on morgana

Interview - 2013 BBC Radio 1xtra part 1 & part 2

(Un)likeminded 1x02 While You Were Dreaming

Trees a crowd- Irish folklore segment

Magazine scans

2008-09-20 Radio Times

2009-06-08 TV Week (Aus)

2010-09-05 Sunday Express

2010-09-30 Totally Merlin Magazine

2011-12 Total Film

2012-03-14 Sci-Fi Now

2012-10-06 Radio Times

2013-04-06 Irish independent

2013-09-02 Marie-Claire (UK)

2013-12 Instyle

2013-12 Total Film

Video:

Fans - 2012-04-16 Merlin4 [carlospyrrhus]

Fans - 2017-08-30 Supergirl cast together on set [Joyce Law]

Interview - 2009-09-?? Merlin S2 audio interview with Katie McGrath [BJsRealm] part 1

Interview - 2010-09-06 Merlin Series 3 - BBC Radio 1xtra Interview with Angel Coulby & Katie McGrath [BJsrealm]

Interview - 2011-10-14 Merlin S4 Colin Morgan, Eoin Macken Katie McGrath on The Late Late Show

Interview - 2012-07-15 Colin Morgan and Katie McGrath at SDCC 2012 - innerSPACE [merlinnetwork2]

Interview - 2012-07-18 Katie McGrath Talks Merlin At Comic Con 2012 [ThinkHeroTV]

Interview - 2012-10-25 BBC Radio 1 Breakfast - Colin & Katie part 1 & part 2 [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Merlin S5 Katie McGrath interview international press day [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Colin, Bradley, Katie phone interview [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2013-11-09 Katie McGrath on BBC One Saturday Kitchen [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2019-07-22 ENTREVISTA SUPERGIRL Elenco fala sobre a nova temporada [Warner Channel Brasil]

Interview - 2019-07-23 Melissa Benoist Teases Directing An Episode Of 'Supergirl' [ET Canada]

Interview - 2020-02-21 ‘Supergirl’ Celebrates 100th Episode [ET Canada]

Panels - 2011-07-28 Merlin Comic Con 2011 Panel [ThinkHeroTV]

#katie mcgrath #katie mcgrath interview #Katie McGrath archive #Katie McGrath filmography archive #wayback machine #media preservation

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staydandy · 6 months ago

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The Lost Tomb 2: Wrath of the Sea (2019) - 盗墓笔记2 - Whump List

List by StayDandy Synopsis : The group of heroes are pulled into another tomb-raiding expedition that takes them beneath the sea. In an ancient Ming Dynasty ship, they encounter monstrous creatures and puzzling traps. Wu Xie opens the box that he obtained from the Seven Star Coffins of Lu Wang's Palace to discover a snake-browed copper fish. Uncle Wu San Xing recounts the strange occurrences over ten years ago when they went on an archaeological expedition to Paracel Islands. Wu Xie leads a team down to the same place to explore a sunken ship where hidden dangers await. (MDL)

Whumpee : Wu Xie played by Neo Hou (center right) • Zhang Qi Ling played by Cheng Yi (center left) • Wang Pang Zi played by Zhang Bo Yu (2nd from right)

Country : 🇨🇳 China Genres : Action, Adventure, Mystery, Supernatural, Bromance

Notes : This is a Full Whump List • Adapted from books 2, 3 and some of 4 of "The Grave Robbers' Chronicles" (Daomu Biji) by Kennedy Xu • Suggested watch order of series (not including movies & spin-offs) : -- 1. Mystic Nine (2016) -- 2. The Lost Tomb (2015) >> 3. The Lost Tomb 2: Wrath of the Sea (2019) -- 4. The Lost Tomb 2: Explore with the Note (2021) -- 5. The Lost Tomb 3: Ultimate Note (2020) -- 6. Adventure Behind the Bronze Door (2024) -- 7. Tomb of the Sea (2018) -- 8. Reunion: Sound of the Providence (2020) -- 9. Reunion: Sound of the Providence 2 (2020)

Related Lists : The Lost Tomb (2015) - Full List • The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2021) - Full List • The Lost Tomb 3: Ultimate Note (2020) - Full List • Adventure Behind the Bronze Door (2024) - Full List

Episodes on List : 25 Total Episodes : 40

*Spoilers below*

01 : Wu Xie shocked awake, sweating, from a layered nightmare (nightmare within a nightmare within a nightmare) … Wang Pang Zi knocked out

02 : [nightmare] Wu Xie choked

05 : Unsteady … entrapped in a trance, strangled, broken out of it … Pang Zi knocked over from an explosion … Wu Xie attacked, thrown to the ground, Pang Zi thrown into a wall, Zhang Qi Ling fights; choked & lifted off the ground

06 : [flashback] Passes out

07 : Wu Xie dizzy, entranced … [flashback] head pain, pushed into water … [present] Zhang Qi Ling head pain, recalling forgotten memories … Wu Xie, Zhang Qi Ling, & Pang Zi escaping a collapsing underwater building, stuck on the way out.. Wu Xie unconscious, receives chest compressions, spits up water, knocked to the ground

08 : Recovering from fever (not really shown) … [flashback] cut his own hand

09 : Shocked awake, sweating, from nightmare

11 : (near end) Wu Xie & Pang Zi captured, tied up

12 : … continued from previous ep. ...Wu Xie still captured, tied up … imprisoned.. dehydrated, breathing hard, unsteady.. passes out.. helped to walk

17 : Pang Zi attacked, Wu Xie attacked.. attacked again, knocked out, drowning.. spitting up water … Pang Zi bit by insect

18 : Wu Xie Hit with the butt of a gun, knocked out.. wakes tied up … Pang Zi having a reaction to bug bite; unsteady, arm in hives & paralyzed, passes out … Wu Xie falls, nightmare; wakes trapped in a casket, choked

19 : Drugged, unsteady, passes out, arm nicked & blood taken

21 : Falls, knocked out briefly … Pang Zi entranced into almost killing himself … rolls down a slope

23 : Wu Xie cuts his own hand … dizzy

24 : … continued from previous ep. ... Dizzy … unsteady, holding his head … attacked, choked

26 : Blown back by an explosion, briefly knocked out … falls, hits head, blurry vision, unsteady … cuts his own hand … blown back by an explosion, drowning … wakes in hospital (comedic: with a high-pitched voice from concussion)

28 : Pang Zi's arm in a cast (tho I'm confused as to why)

30 : (near end) Wu Xie knocked out from an explosion … falls into a pit

31 : Pang Zi found unconscious

32 : Found unconscious, head sore from being knocked out

35 : Wu Xie & Pang Zi in a fight; Wu Xie coughs up blood … head pain from noise

36 : Digs out from being buried in snow, head pain.. [flashback] buried in rubble from collapsed tomb, unconscious … [present] rolls down hill, arm hurt.. exhausted, passes out.. headache, collapses … headache … drugged asleep … caught in a trap, hung upside down

37 : Headache … captured … Pang Zi captured, tied up, mouth gagged … Zhang Qi Ling head pain, drugged unconscious

38 : Drugged unconscious … Zhang Qi Ling & Pang Zi trapped in a net, both tied up & hooded

39 : (near end) Wu Xie exhausted, collapses, hypoxia (not enough oxygen), slaps himself, passes out … hallucinating

More Whump Lists for this show: love-me-a-lotta-whump

#whump #whump list #full whump list #Asian whump #China #The Lost Tomb 2 Wrath of the Sea #The Lost Tomb 2 #Wrath of the Sea #盗墓笔记2 #Wu Xie #Zhang Qi Ling #Wang Pang Zi #Neo Hou #Cheng Yi #Zhang Bo Yu

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ladygagaqueenedit · 9 months ago

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Lady Gaga + estrenos.

Lady Gaga en la premiere de “A Star Is Born” en Londres, Inglaterra (27/09/2018). Lady Gaga en la premiere de “House of Gucci” en Londres, Inglaterra (09/11/2021). Lady Gaga llegando a la alfombra roja de la premiere de la película “Joker: Folie à Deux” en Londres, Inglaterra (25/09/2024).

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quinny-trades · 4 months ago

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TRADE LIST

[Updated]

Dm me if you would like to trade!

[Will trade more than 1 boot at once =D ]

Video boots

Outsiders

Jordan Steve, Brody Pony [06/07]

La Jolla [??/??]

Preivew show [03/19]

Trevi Pony, Victor Soda, purple bev [10/01]

Trevi Pony [04/??]

Trevi Pony, Strobie Johnny [05/??]

OBC show [04/??] Mega

Full OBC [??/??] Mega

Strobie Pony [09/22]

Victor Darry [05/26]

Maggie Cherry [??/??]

Other

Parade (Brody Grant and Alex Grayson) [??/??]

Great Gatsby [??/??]

Alice by Heart [??/??]

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child [??/??]

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (West End Cast) [2018]

Newsies (West End) [??/??]

Beetlejuice [??/??]

Rent proshot [11/03]

Hadestown (Jordan Fisher) [11/24]

Little Shop of Horrors (Jeremy Jordan) [??/??]

Back to the Future (Daryl Tofa, Emma Pittman, Casey Likes) [??/??]

Cabaret (Eddie Redmayne) [01/??/22]

Audio Boots

Outsiders

Hailey Cherry [03/05]

Jpc Bob [02/28]

Barton Bob/Cop [01/14]

Cole Bob/Cop [02/21]

Daryl Dal [09/28]

Daryl Johnny [12/10]

Jpc Paul [01/19]

Jpc Soda [12/06]

Jpc Darry, Jordan Two-Bit [12/28]

Jpc Darry [12/27] Mega

Rj Bob/Cop [04/21]

Rj Paul [12/03] Mega

Kcso Paul [07/18]

Sg Cherry, Victor Soda [7/??]

Sg Cherry [??/??]

Wonza Dal, Maggie Cherry [06/29]

Henry Twobit, Daryl Dal, Strobie Johnny [08/16]

Trevi Pony [04/13]

Strobie Pony, Dan Soda, Ryo Paul, Andre Steve [10/13]

Strobie Pony, Victor Darry, Renni Twobit [??/??]

Melody Cherry [10/23]

Aramie Dallas [01/03]

Dan Soda, Victor Paul [05/11]

Maggie Cherry, Dan Soda [10/25]

Ryo Paul, Dan Soda [08/27]

Daryl Dally, Strobie Johnny [08/17]

Maggie Cherry [08/08]

Daryl Dallas, Jpc Soda [12/07]

Rj, Josh Boone, Maggie final show [01/26]

300th show, aramie booth [12/30]

OBC show [??/??] Mega

Unsure [06/20]

Aramie Dally, Victor Soda, Milena Ace, Jordan and Ryo Booth [02/16]

Davis Paul [02/19]

La Jolla [03/12]

Other

Hells Kitchen [??/??]

Dear Evan Hansen (Josh Strobl) [06/04]

Gypsy (Kevin Csolak) [02/21]

Scripts

Outsiders full play

Outsiders full musical

Outsiders full movie

Newsies full musical

West Side Story full musical

Tombstone 1993 full movie

TOPGUN 1986 full movie

TOPGUN Maverick full movie

Falsettos full musical

HPatCC full musical

The Lost Boys full movie

HPatPoA full movie

PLEASE DM ME FOR TRADES, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING I DON'T.

Currently looking for

1. January 5th Outsiders full audio / boot [Melody Cherry, Aramie Dally, Jordan Ace, Renni Twobit]

2. Outsiders Cole Paul full audio / boot

3. Outsiders Aramie Two-Bit [rip Curtis table] full audio / boot

5. Aramies Little Brother Acapella

6. The one boot of Josh Strobl absolutely eating it when Josh Boone pushes him off the tire in GGaH

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goalhofer · 7 months ago

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Longest tenured NHL player by team: 2024-25

Boston: Brad Marchand (2009-10) Buffalo: Rasmus Dahlin & Tage Thompson (2018-19) Detroit: Dylan Larkin (2015-16) Florida: Aleksandr Barkov (2013-14) Montreal: Brendan Gallagher (2012-13) Ottawa: Thomas Chabot (2016-17) Tampa Bay: Victor Hedman (2009-10) Toronto: Morgan Reilly (2013-14) Carolina: Jordan Staal (2012-13) Columbus: Boone Jenner (2013-14) New Jersey: Jesper Bratt & Nico Hischier (2017-18) New York Islanders: Casey Cizikas (2011-12) New York Rangers: Chris Kreider (2012-13) Philadelphia: Sean Couturier (2011-12) Pittsburgh: Sidney Crosby (2005-06) Washington: Alex Ovechkin (2005-06) Chicago: Connor Murphy (2017-18) Colorado: Gabriel Landeskog (2011-12) Dallas: Jamie Benn (2009-10) Minnesota: Jared Spurgeon (2010-11) Nashville: Roman Josi (2011-12) St. Louis: Jordan Binnington & Colton Parayko (2015-16) Utah Hockey Club: Lawson Crouse & Clayton Keller (2016-17) Winnipeg: Mark Scheifele (2012-13) Anaheim: Cam Fowler (2010-11) Calgary: Mikael Backlund (2008-09) Edmonton: Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (2011-12) Los Angeles: Anže Kopitar (2006-07) San José: Marc-Édouard Vlasic (2006-07) Seattle: Matty Beniers, Will Borgen, Joel Daccord, Vince Dunn, Jordan Eberle, Yanni Gourde, Philipp Grubauer, Nils Larsson, Jared McCann, Jamie Oleksiak, Jaden Schwartz & Brandon Tanev (2021-22) Vancouver: Brock Boeser (2016-17) Vegas: Lars Karlsson, Brayden McNabb & Shea Theodore (2017-18)

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zackthebrown2 · 9 months ago

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time for me to be your friendly neighborhood crypt keeper. here are some horror/horror adjacent short films arranged by run time to watch for halloween!

Ashes of Doom (1970) - dir. Grant Munro (2:09) Banshee (2021) - dir. Matt Ditko (5:25) Bone Mother (2018) - dir Sylvie Trouvé & Dale Hayward (8:24) Bad Peter (2018) - dir. Zach Strauss (8:56) NYGHIL (2023) - dir. Robin Zeeb (9:43) He Took His Skin Off for Me (2014) - dir. Ben Aston (11:31) Possibly in Michigan (1983) - dir. Cecilia Condit (11:46) My House Walk-Through (2016) - dir. PiroPito (12:00) Sweet Meats (2023) - dir. Rebecca Myshrall (12:26) O, Glory! (2022) - dir. Charlie Edwards-Moss & Joe Williams (15:36) Whitetail (2022) - dir. Josh Minyard (15:52) The Dumb Waiter (1979) - dir. Robert Bierman (17:36) Home Education (2016) - dir. Andrea Niada (23:25)

notes and comments below:

Ashes of Doom - This is actually a Canadian anti-smoking PSA, but I loved how campy it is.

Banshee - Not overly scary, but the last few moments are excellent.

Bone Mother - A nice little stop-motion short featuring Baba Yaga.

Bad Peter - This was made in 2018, but anything with rogue/malevolent AI seems especially prescient these days.

NYGHIL - This is actually the second in a series of three (so far) shorts that takes place in the same cosmic horror universe, but this one is my favorite. Very little narration/exposition, but the visuals are great.

He Took His Skin Off for Me - Have you ever watched a quirky indie romance and thought, "I wish someone in this relationship had the first layer of their skin removed so that their bloody muscles were continuously exposed?" If so, this short is for you.

Possibly in Michigan - It's a cliché description, but this has the vibe of an Adult Swim short except that it was made in the 80s.

My House Walk-Through - A bit of a slow burn, but incredibly well done.

Sweet Meats - Not to oversell it, but this short made me say, "What the fuck," several times out loud.

O, Glory! - Set in the 70s while also nailing the 70s film aesthetic.

White Tail - The pacing and increasing tension are great with the (almost) lack of a soundtrack really adding to the mood.

The Dumb Waiter - Directed by the guy who made Vampire's Kiss (starring Nicolas Cage), this short made 9 years earlier is a moody home apartment invasion drenched in 70s film grain.

Home Education - This short's premise is simple (How would a mother and daughter living in an EXTREMELY insular home schooled environment deal with the death of the father?), but how it goes about revealing the home life and the mother-daughter relationship is excellent.

#the list isn't as long as last year's mostly because last year's was a cumulation of years of short watching lol

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autumnslance · 9 months ago

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LynMars's FFXIV Write 2024 Master Post

We're back again! The list and links for all of my completed prompts for this year's FFXIV Write. Stats and ramblings about writing will go under the Read More cut. Eventually these will be revised in some manner and tossed onto Ao3.

Asterisks again mean there's wolship nonsense happening.

01. Steer - Vignettes of less sociable times over Aeryn's life. 02. Horizon - WoL at the end of Ultima Thule, EW 6.0. 03. Tempest - WoL returns to Amaurot to contemplate, EW 6.4. 04. Reticent - C'oretta & Dark Autumn have a chat. Sort of. 05. Stamp - Aeryn finds a memento while cleaning, post-EW 6.0 06. Halcyon - Tanzel, Emelia, & understanding grief. Backstory. 07. Morsel - Zenos heading to Camp Broken Glass, EW 6.0. 08. Free Day! 09. Lend an Ear - Emperor Varis is very much alone. StB patches. 10. Stable - Hydaelyn as the avatar of Light. Endwalker. 11. Surrogate - Weird West AU. Unexpected new roles for the Strikers. 12. Quarry* - Dominants AU. Thavnair comes to Tural's aid. DT 7.0. 13. Butte - Dark Autumn versus seedkin in Xak Tural. DT 7.0. 14. Telling - WoL reflects on Emet-Selch's expected reaction. EW 6.0. 15. Free Day! 16. Third-Rate - Aeryn's annoyed by the Unbound. DT Role Quests. 17. Sally - Dark pays a final visit to a traitor, post-StB 4.1. 18. Hackneyed* - Aeryn, Thancred, & terrible literature. 19. Taken - A young wood warder tries to save his sibling. Backstory. 20. Duel - Wuk Lamat's challenge does not go as expected. DT 7.0. 21. Shade - WoL ruminates on some of their ghosts. Thru DT 7.0. 22. Free Day! 23. On Cloud Nine - A chocobo & her Warrior of Light. End ShB 5.0. 24. Bar - 2 different adventurers starting out. Legacy & ARR. 25. Perpetuity - Aeryn, Deryk, & questions of faith. EW 24man raid. 26. Zip - C'oretta helping out Hamon at the Coliseum. Technically DT. 27. Memory - In a future, music makes Iyna remember. EW Patches. 28. Deleterious - Aeryn & Shale discuss regulators & history. DT 7.0. 29. (Free) Deleterious 2* - Thancred & self-recrimination. ShB 5.0. 30. Two Heads are Better than One - Gulool Ja Ja muses. DT 7.0.

Previous years: 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Ended up a touch Aeryn-heavy this year, though Generic WoL, various NPCs, the other OCs, forays in the FC's AUs, and some supporting family cast members make appearances. There's even a callback to a previous FFXIV Write entry. Lots of Endwalker and Dawntrail due to recency bias, but it manages to span the spectrum from backstories through various expansions.

I only did 1 Free Day, due to having 2 solid ideas I ended up writing for that prompt. It was right at the end of my annual birthday vacation week, so I was pretty rested (may also be why they're among the longer entries!). Unusually, the rest of that week's works are not any longer than the others.

I'm also still working on some original writing, though, so that did cut into fanfiction time.

Below 500 words: #2 Horizon (347), #3 Tempest (415), #7 Morsel (499), #10 Stable (400), #13 Butte (477), #14 Telling (355), #17 Sally (464), #20 Duel (499), #24 Bar (462).

500 - 1,000 words: #1 Steer (944), #4 Reticent (581), #5 Stamp (588), #11 Surrogate (964), #12 Quarry (844), #16 Third-Rate (564), #18 Hackneyed (577), #19 Taken (915), #21 Shade (764), #23 On Cloud Nine (728), #25 Perpetuity (958), #26 Zip (592), #27 Memory (810), #30 Two Heads are Better than One (500).

Over 1,000 words: #6 Halcyon (2,479), #9 Lend an Ear (1,326), #28 Deleterious (1,099), #29 Deleterious 2 (1,231).

Shortest: #2 Horizon Longest: #6 Halcyon

Total: 20,382 words. Not my shortest but far from my longest. Comparing with the previous years, I can see a clear improvement in my grasp of both NPC and OC voices, and more confidence in general.

Even so, "Butte", "Sally", "Bar", and "Zip" were the hardest for me this year, and I may need to warm up to them. I love "Halcyon" for a lot of reasons, and am also fond of the lighter offerings in "Duel" and "On Cloud Nine." I like a lot of the others, particularly when trying to get into NPC heads (even if they're really weird places to be ffs, Zenos).

Not too many shippy entries this year, one of them for one of the AUs, one mostly talking about it rather than seeing it, but I like "Hackneyed" a lot as it's been awhile since I've written about Aeryn & Thancred's literary tastes (and opposite ways of treating their books).

These will eventually be revised and added to Ao3, and then we await next year!

#final fantasy xiv #FFXIVWrite2024 #Lyn Writing #Fanfiction #Prompts #Warrior of Light #Aeryn Striker #Dark Autumn #C'oretta Khell #Iyna Cauld

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nattanoora · 7 months ago

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12 NOVEMBER, 2015 ✦ TORSDAG, 13:20

13 MARS, 2018 ✧ MARDI, 09:00

10 MAGGIO, 2018 ✦ GIOVEDÌ, 14:40

16 MAI, 2018 ✧ MITTWOCH, 11:29

01 JUNE, 2018 ✦ THURSDAY, 3:34PM

25 OKTOBER, 2018 ✧ DONDERDAG, 12:34

27 OCTUBRE, 2018 ✦ SÁBADO, 21:17

16 NOVEMBER, 2018 ✧ VRIJDAG, 10:11

04 PROSINAC, 2024 ✦ SRIJEDA, 15:56

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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Biden wants to ban ripoff “financial advisors”

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library on Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

Once, American workers had "defined benefits pensions," where their employers promised to pay them a certain amount every year from their retirement to their death. Jimmy Carter swapped that out for 401(k)s, "market" pensions where you have to guess which stocks will be valuable or starve in your old age:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

The initial 401(k) rollout had all kinds of pot-sweeteners that made them seem like a good deal, like heavy employer matching that doubled or even tripled the value of every dollar you put into the market for your retirement. But over the years, as Reaganomics took hold and workers' power ebbed away, all these goodies were clawed back. In the end, the market-based pension makes you the sucker at the poker table, flushing your savings into a rigged casino that is firmly tilted in favor of finance barons and other eminently guillotineable plutocrats.

Neoliberalism is many things, but most of all it is a cult of individualism. The fact that three generations of workers are nows facing down retirement without pensions that will provide them with secure housing and food – let alone money to see the odd movie, buy birthday gifts for their grandkids, or enjoy a meal out now and then – is framed as millions of individual failures, not a systemic one.

In other words, if you are facing food insecurity and homelessness after a lifetime of hard work, it's because you saved wrong. Perhaps you didn't save enough (through a 40-year run of wage stagnation and skyrocketing housing, health and education costs). Or perhaps you saved wrong, making the wrong bets on the stock market. If you can't afford to run your air conditioner during a heat dome, that's on you: you should have been better at stocks.

Apologists for this system will say that you don't have to be good at stocks – you just have to pay an Independent Financial Advisor to pick the stocks for you and you'll be fine. But IFAs don't work for free! What if you can't afford one?

Enter "predatory inclusion" – the practice of offering scammy, overpriced and substandard products to poor people and declaring it to be a good deed, because otherwise, those poor people would have to do without. The crypto bubble relied heavily on this: think of Spike Lee and others shilling for pump-and-dump scams as a way of "building Black wealth":

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/business/media/cryptocurrency-seeks-the-spotlight-with-spike-lees-help.html

More recently, Intuit and other scammy tax-prep services have argued against the IRS's plan to offer free tax preparation as bad for Black and brown people, because it will deny them the chance to be deceived and ripped off with TurboTax:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

Back in 2018, Trump won the predatory inclusion Olympics, when his Department of Labor let the Fifth Circuit abolish the "Fiduciary Rule" for Independent Financial Advisors:

https://www.investopedia.com/updates/dol-fiduciary-rule/

What was the Fiduciary Rule? It said that your IFN had to put your interests ahead of their own. Like, if there were two different funds you could bet on, and one would pay your IFN a big commission, while the other would be a better bet for you, the IFN couldn't put your retirement savings into the fund that offered them a bribe.

When Trump killed the Fiduciary Rule, he proclaimed it a victory for poor people, especially Black and brown people. After all, if IFNs weren't allowed to accept bribes for giving you bad financial advice, then they would have to make up the difference by charging you for good advice. If you couldn't afford that advice, well, you'd have to make bad retirement investments on your own, without the benefit of their sleazy self-dealing.

The Biden Administration wants to change that. Biden's Acting Labor Secretary is Julie Su, and she's very good at her job. Last spring, she forced west coast dockworkers' bosses to cough up the contract they'd stalled on for a year, with 8-10% raises for every worker, owed retroactively:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

Su has proposed a way to reinstate the Fiduciary Rule, as part of the Biden Administration's war on junk fees, estimating that this will increase retirees' net savings by 20%:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-11-07-julie-su-labor-retirement-savers/

The new rule will force advisors who cheat their clients to pay restitution, and will require them to deliver all their advice in writing so that this cheating can be detected and punished.

The industry is furious, of course. They claim that "The Market (TM)" will solve this: if you get bad retirement savings advice and end up homeless and starving, then you will choose a different advisor in your next life, after you are reincarnated (I guess?).

And of course, they're also claiming that forcing IFNs to stop cheating their clients will deny poor people access to expert (bad) advice. As the Financial Services Institute's Dale Brown says, this will have a "negative impact on Main Street Americans’ access to financial advice":

https://www.fa-mag.com/news/legal-challenge-predicted-for-new-dol-fiduciary-proposal-75257.html

Here's that rule – read it for yourself, then submit a comment expressing your views on it. The government wants to hear from you, and administrative law requires them to act on the comments they receive:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/03/2023-23782/proposed-amendment-to-prohibited-transaction-exemptions-75-1-77-4-80-83-83-1-and-86-128

Su is part of a wave of progressive, technically skilled regulators in the Biden administration that resulted from a horse-trading exercise called the Unity Task Force, which divvied up access to top appointments among the progressive wing and the finance wing of the Democratic Party. The progressive appointments are nothing short of incredible – the most competent and principled agency leaders America has seen in half a century:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

But then there's the finance wing's appointments, like Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who ruled against Lina Khan's attempt to block the rotten Microsoft/Activision merger (don't worry, Khan's appealing):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

Perhaps the worst, though, is Biden's Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, a private equity ghoul who did a stint for the notorious wreckers Bain Capital before founding her own firm. Raimondo has stuffed her department full of Goldman Sachs alums, and has sidelined labor and civil society groups as she sets out to administer everything from the CHIPS Act to regulating ChatGPT.

As Henry Burke writes for the Revolving Door Project and The American Prospect, Raimondo's history as a corporate raider, her deference to the finance sector, and she and her husband's conflicts of interest from their massive stakes in companies she's regulating all serve to undermine Biden's agenda:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-11-08-commerce-secretary-gina-raimondo-undercutting-bidenomics/

When the administration inevitably complains that its popular economic programs aren’t breaking through the media coverage, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

The Unity Task Force gave us generationally important policymakers, but ultimately, it's a classic "pizzaburger." If half your family wants pizza, and the other half wants burgers, and you serve them something halfway in between that makes none of them happy, you haven't made a wise compromise – you've just made an inedible mess:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/

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/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs

#pluralistic #julie su #fiduciary rule #intergenerational warfare #aging #retirement #401ks #old age #pensions #finance #pizzaburgers #Gina Raimondo

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inapixelbloom · 6 months ago

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My Archive of Our Own Wrap-up

I wanted to put together a thank you to all the fanfic writers who have gotten me through this year.

This wrap-up is me going through my history month by month to see which fics I’d visited the most (because you can be damn sure I read through them over several days, again and again).

So this is a celebration of the wide variety of fics I’ve read and/or bookmarked and/or subscribed to. Thank you to every writer on this list for keeping me entertained.

To every fanfic writer I've had the pleasure of reading the words of, and there are so many more of you than just this list of people, I want to thank you so very much of trusting your creativity to us readers. You are my rock, my joy, my comfort, and so many other supporting adjectives that I just want to give you all hugs and money for the holidays.

My first fic of 2024: dismantle the sun by StarryCleric

Summary:

Beau shudders and holds Caleb's hand, which he squeezes back tentatively. She can feel how it shakes in her grip. She does her best to steady him, despite the fact that she wants to shake apart herself and completely fall to pieces. “I am going to hazard a guess here,” Caleb says softly, “that we may have been drugged.” --- Tonight was supposed to be a fun night off. Unfortunately for Beau and Caleb, the universe has other plans.

2024 fics I kept returning to

January

Winter Song by @proantagonista

Yuri!!! on Ice, rated E. Completed 2018-03-25.

The set of Yuuri’s mouth softened into a private smile as Victor squeezed his knee beneath the table. His hands were bare, free from the gloves he so often wore when they were together on the rink, and the heat of his palm burned straight through the denim of Yuuri’s jeans. He slipped his own hand beneath the table and found Victor’s. Hidden from sight, their fingers began to flirt and play. A secret conversation all their own that needed no words. Yuuri was aware that at some point—a moment in time he couldn’t quite place—Victor had become his boyfriend. There wasn’t a single instant when it happened. It was a slow awareness, as if Victor had silently been asking the question for months now, and Yuuri had been giving him the answer a little more with each passing day.

February

blink by @frockbot

Persona 5, rated M. Completed 2020-11-13.

Summary:

Do you want kids? Ren asked Akechi two years ago, the night they decided to get married. Yes. He did. They do. So when they’re given the chance to adopt a pair of sisters, ten-year-old Maya and two-year-old Sai, they take it. They’re prepared for a rough transition: for arguments, and upset, and struggle. That, they can handle, or find ways to handle. They are not prepared for the resurgence of an old and familiar evil that threatens to destroy the tenuous family they’ve built. They probably should have expected it, though. After all, this always happens to them. [Takes place 17 years post-game and 16 years post-Doomsday. You don't have to have read my other fics to start here, but maybe you should?]

March

In Calm Waters by @dracosollicitus

Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, rated E. Completed 2024-03-04.

Summary:

Rey Smith, an Omega who presented late, meets Poe Dameron, an Alpha unlike anyone she's ever met. Sparks fly, they fall in love — and fight against societal expectations. The two work together to build a relationship built on mutual trust and respect in a world that claims they should be nothing more than their biologies.

April

Investigation Check by @percivalium

Critical Role (Vox Machina), rated E. Completed 2022-10-09.

Summary:

She’s hot. She’s not usually hot. Blankets can be kicked off, but not this time. She’s also sore. She’s not usually sore, either. Muscles can be tender after battle, but not this time. Vex prys one bleary eye open, attempting to take in her surroundings. It’s her bed: check. Her room: check. Her blanket: check. A warm body next to her: check? A heavy arm draped over her belly: check?! Both eyes open now (literally and figuratively), she slowly rotates her head on the pillow to look at the foreign body next to her, smiling when she sees a floof of light-colored hair tucked carefully next to her shoulder. She can’t help herself and sighs contently, making some strands of his unruly tufts wave and ruffle. Her Percy: BIG check with a heart drawn around it.

May

Nightmares by @roninreverie

Star Wars Rebels, rated G. Completed 2016-01-01.

Summary:

After the events of the planet Gorse, Kanan and Hera adapt to living together as a crew, but things get off to a bumpy start.

June

three years, three rules by @akihmorn

Persona 5, rated E. Completed 2020-11-18.

“The truth is, I hate all alphas,” he stares at Akira coldly. “And that includes you.” Three years after getting married, Akira and Goro face an unexpected challenge. shuake week day 3: comfort

July

The Mind and The Maladay by @saltytothecore

Critical Role (The Mighty Nein), rated T. Completed 2022-04-06.

Of all the ways Essek thought he might find himself staring down mortality, his magic making a cancer of his lonely heart never even entered his consideration. But then, his calculus has never been able to account for the Mighty Nein. There is a remedy for his illness, of course. There is always a way to unwind magic, but there is always a price. The cost of Essek’s life, now that he’s contracted Hanahaki’s disease, can be paid two ways—one is higher than Essek can bear and the other, well. The other can only be paid by someone else. And if Essek could ask that, then he wouldn’t be sick at all, would he?

August

Witch Ways by @aliquistis

Baldur's Gate, rated M. Last Updated 2024-02-16.

Echo has lived her life tucked away in the forests of Tethir, learning magic through the pulse of nature and the songs of creation. She's good with magic, but not people, which isn't really a problem until she's scooped up by mind flayers and has to get along with six strangers lest they all share a tentacle-y doom. And she manages to get along with most of them -- but then there's Gale of Waterdeep. Despite a terrible first impression, she finds he is actually much kinder than all the mansplaining would suggest. This is a series of relationship scenes about my weird little mushroom hermit, a wizard who shows compassion and arrogance really can coexist, and how academic rivalry is like first base for wizards. Spoilers up to Act 2 for main plot and Gale's romance.

(image source)

September

Pacts and Bargains at Night by @feynwiddershins

Critical Role (Vox Machina), rated E. Completed 2023-03-04.

What passes while the sun is set is often the most revealing.

October

Filling the Hourglass by makkachincrossing

Critical Role (Mighty Nein), rated E. Last Updated 2021-10-27.

Every 25 years, omega Drows enter their period of fertility. The time is rapidly approaching for Essek as summer only grows hotter, and his husband grows older with no way to stop it. But he hopes Caleb can leave a piece of himself behind.

November

Learning to Listen by @fivedayslater

One Piece, rated T. Completed 2018-08-14.

For as long as Zoro's felt his soulmate echoes he's hated them. He doesn't know why Sanji, or the rest of his crew mates, care so damn much.

I'm finishing the year with

and on toward the edge of night by @j-plash

Critical Role (Bells Hells), rated E. Last Updated 2024-11-26.

Ashton would love every fucking alpha in Jrusar to take a long walk off a fucking cliff. Orym just knows it's not right that Dorian has to be so careful walking down the street at night. ("There you go, sweetheart, keep breathing for me.” Ashton doesn’t think he could stop breathing that in if he tried.)

Bookmarks (and notes) of 2024

These are the fics I've bookmarked (saved), and the summaries I add for my own understanding of what each one is, so I can come back it it faster.

even darkness must pass by dare_to_do_our_duty

The one where Caleb has a fever and Caduceus is tired.

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart) by @notaficwriter

The one where Vex and Percy don't start of as soulmates.

come morning light (you and i'll be safe and sound) by @chaseyesterdays

The one where Percy is a dad. Good wholesome cure for depression.

the mist upon the hill by BucketofWater

The one where Mollymauk's blood hunter skills are actively harming his soulmate, but Caleb is too frightened to admit it to him.

The Courage Or The Fall by Rowyndodendron

The one where Caleb should huddle with Mollymauk for warmth.

feverish, burning up inside by @ivelostmyspectacles

The one where Caleb goes into heat in the back of their wagon and Mollymauk assists.

burning out, helpless by @ivelostmyspectacles

The one where Mollymauk is forced into a heat and Caleb does his best to assist.

Ship to Wreck by Snailsnol

The one where Gale courts a prickly Drow.

The Wonderful Life of Caleb de Rolo by @historia-gloria

The one where Percy and Vex adopt the kid tortured with Whitestone residuum.

Strong Enough to Bend by @catgirlthecrazy

The one where Essek doesn't really have the drive for sex he expects himself to.

Blackbird by @okadiah

The one where Kanan's weapon possesses him in an AU where he's not exactly a Jedi.

Exit Wounds by @seti-fan

The one where Percy has bullets left over under the skin.

Feathers and Smoke by @feynwiddershins

The one where it's a canon character study of Percy and Vex and it's fucking amazing how detailed it is.

From a Swell in the Ocean by @goose-smoothie

The one where Vox Machina is a pirate ship and Percy was rescued by "privateer" Captain Vex'ahlia.

In Bloom, With You by @nekosd43

The one where Caduceus has a season and Fjord offers to assist.

Perceived Impressions by @acinonyx1

The one where Astarion shares a cell with a bear and angst happens.

As I end 2024, thank you again to the writers who've provided me with much comfort in a ridiculously tumultuous year.

It would have been a very low year without each and every one of you.

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