#AI use declaration

[thisisgraeme]

🎓✍🏽 Learners using AI? No problem. Here’s a practical guide for educators: sample AI use declarations + rubrics that support integrity without stress. Scaffold smarter, assess better. #AIinEducation #AcademicIntegrity #AkoAotearoa #TeachingTools #ChatGPTInClass

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

still plagiarizin'!

Sorry but this thing keeps bugging me. Back when the "professional translation" was first published, they claimed that "unfortunately, the original text [of the epilogue] appears to not be available any more, all we had was a summary which we translated as well."

Their "translated summary" was a sentence-by-sentence rewording of my own epilogue summary, which has only ever existed in English to begin with. That's plagiarism, with some crass lying about it on top. Someone pointed out to them that they'd been found out, they apologized and took it down.

And yet there's still plagiarism in their files.

They added a glossary at the end meant to explain some terms and geographical correspondences (this is not part of the original book and is not marked as an addition. People have posted about it thinking it was penned by Kurvitz). It is also oftentimes wrong. And, as it turns out (thanks @smellslikegeraniums), it is also oftentimes taken straight from this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/comments/eprvi8/the_real_world_inspirations_of_the_countries_in/ without credit. It is particularly noticeable in some one-of-a-kind takes:

Sur-la-clef: "a French/Belgian blend being the seat for the Nato/Eu coalition." becomes "A France/Belgium blend and the seat for EPIS"

Yugo: "The balkans, former yugoslavia" becomes "The Balkans, former Yugoslavia" (this is notably lifted because "Yugo" by itself isn't a thing)

Vesper: "Czech Republic" in both

Graad: "Some kind of Russian/Polish blend (potatoes for spirits etc)." becomes "[...] also, Russia/Poland blend [...]" (have you even read the damn book. Is Tereesz minced meat to you)

Oranje: "A stronger, militarized capitalist netherlands." becomes "Version Netherlands that is larger/stronger/militarised"

etc.

Nobody's ever called it out and so nobody's ever taken it down? Got caught for plagiarism once and didn't even take down all the plagiarism in your work? Come on.

[wat3rm370n]

The Great Barrington Declaration set is injecting Palantir and the Kochtopus straight into the FDA.

Back in 2018 it was found that the Koch Foundation had a role in choosing faculty at George Mason Univ. Also home of, what a peach, Robin Hanson, ahead of even the Great Barrington Declaration in wanting to.. I guess Great Filter Americans into early graves in the pandemic.

https://bsky.app/profile/jennycohn.bsky.social/post/3ltfstq6g7k2n

And now along with the Great Barrington Declaration set who have taken over our federal health, they are injecting Palantir, the Kochtopus, and AI slop directly into the FDA.. What could possibly go wrong? (spoiler: the project 2025 is to have everything go wrong in govt)

https://bsky.app/profile/jennycohn.bsky.social/post/3ltfopkcx7k2l

[maramahan]

I see all these AI nonsense programs that aim to “summarize articles” and I’m a little offended because as the academic autistic of the friend group that’s MY JOB being stolen :/

[pissfizz]

Honestly I can’t believe some of yall have the audacity to post support for things like the animation guild and procreate and just overall declare yourself anti ai and also post about your stupid fucking c ai usage. The fact you use it at all is fucked up but to post about both? You just look like an idiot and a hypocrite. Put that shit away

[the-cocky-bitch]

As suggested in the notes, it's not likely to be beneficial to use this.

[sadbicth]

elon musk did a nazi salute twice at the inauguration, and republicans are defending him.

trump revoked executive order 11246, which prohibited discrimination.

trump put all dei employees on leave to be fired.

trump blamed the dc plane crash on dei.

trump banned all lgbtq+ flags from being hung in government buildings.

trump ordered the pentagon to cancel celebration of mlk jr. day, black history month, women's history month, holocaust remembrance day, asian american pacific islander heritage month, lgbtq+ pride month, juneteenth, women's equality day, national hispanic heritage month, national disability employment awarenessmonth, and national american indian heritage month.

trump proposed removing all palestinians from gaza, turning the area into a vacation resort called “riviera of the middle east”.

trump posted an ai generated video showing what he hopes to turn palestine into, with a large golden statue of himself in the middle of it.

trump rolled back biden’s executive order to lower prescription drug costs for people using medicare and medicaid.

trump rescinded the $35 cap on insulin, and prices are expected to rise to $1500 a month.

trump ordered the national institutes of health to cancel their review panels on cancer research.

trump ended the guidelines to prevent ai misuse. the guidelines prevent many things, but notably it prevents production of ai child pornography.

when sean hannity asked trump about the economy, he said “i don’t care”, after campaigning with the economy as his main talking point.

trump has withdrawn the us from the world health organization.

trump is ordering health agencies to stop reporting on bird flu and halt publications of scientific reports.

trump’s epa is reversing the ban on asbestos, which causes deadly and rapidly-spreading cancer if exposed.

trump has pardoned over 1500 people who stormed the capitol on january 6th.

trump changed denali back to mount mckinley.

trump signed an executive order to rename the gulf of mexico to gulf of america.

trump shut down cbp one, an app which granted legal entry to 1 million+ immigrants.

trump has discussed introducing a “gold card”, which would allow the wealthiest people to buy us citizenship for $5 million usd.

trump is allowing ice raids at churches and elementary schools.

trump announced plans to declare a national emergency at the us-mexico border.

trump signed an executive order to expand the use of the death penalty.

trump disbanded the school safety board that works to prevent school shootings. it was comprised of survivors, educators, and gun violence prevention advocates and formed after the school shooting in parkland.

trump has threatened to invade panama to claim the panama canal.

trump withdrew from the paris climate act.

trump revoked all protections for transgender troops in the us military.

trump rescinded executive orders made by biden that benefited and protected women, lgbtq+ people, black americans, hispanic americans, asian americans, native hawaiians, and pacific islanders.

trump bombed iran 3 times without congressional approval.

trump is attempting to make it legal to refuse to hire or fire pregnant women.

trump pardoned 23 individuals convicted under the freedom of access to clinic entrances (FACE) act for their anti-abortion activism, including oftentimes violent protests at abortion clinics.

trump signed an executive order allowing deportation of foreign students who they believe express support for hamas or hezbollah.

trump announced that the us government will from here on out only recognize male and female as sexes. intersex is not legally recognized anymore.

trump is shutting down the lgbtq+ youth suicide hotline in july.

trump has told all schools and universities that they have two weeks to end all diversity initiatives, or he will cut federal funding. (as of feb 19, 2025)

trump told harvard to stop accepting immigrant students.

trump fired the staff of the federal aviation association after a deadly plane crash in dc.

trump has fired the heads of the tsa and coast guard, and gutted a key aviation safety advisory committee.

trump denied disaster relief funding for north carolina after tropical storm helene.

in georgia, a black woman named adriana smith is being kept alive on ventilators because she was 9 weeks pregnant when she died. she is legally brain dead. this was an exact plot in multiple episodes of the handmaid’s tale.

the state of louisiana just rolled back desegregation laws because of a petition from the department of justice.

the trump administration removed the federal government’s memorial to victims of gun violence. they took down 120 portraits of dead americans, including police officers and children.

the supreme court weakened the clean water act's limitations on raw sewage discharge into our water in a 5-4 ruling.

the official white house twitter account posted an “illegal alien deportation” asmr video where they did closeups of chains and the sound of ankle chains hitting the metal stairs of the airplanes deportees were being loaded onto.

on truth social, trump posted, “LONG LIVE THE KING!”.

at CPAC, a republican group called the “third term project” held a rally to support changing the constitution so trump can run for a third term. on their posters, they’re photoshopping his face onto julius caesar’s, seemingly forgetting what happened to julius caesar.

the trump administration paused health communications to prevent the fda from announcing food recalls.

the trump administration will not renew biden-era grants worth $1 billion that were aimed at boosting mental health services in schools.

the u.s. has surpassed 1,000 measles cases for the first time in five years, with 96% involving unvaccinated individuals or those with unknown vaccination status. rfk jr. has repeatedly claimed that measles can be treated with vitamin a.

republicans on tiktok are recreating elon’s salute to prove that it “wasn’t a nazi salute”, and they’re either doing it completely wrong because they know if they replicate it then it will actually be a salute, or they’re doing the proper salute and posting it online.

google and apple maps now display the gulf of mexico as “gulf of america”.

rfk jr. wants to ban SSRIs and put everyone on them into labor camps.

multiple state legislators are drafting bills to allow the punishment for abortion to be the death penalty.

andy ogles drafted a constitutional amendment to allow trump to be president for a third term.

the us senate confirmed russell vought, one of the main authors of project 2025, will lead the white house budget office.

nancy mace repeatedly used the t-slur during a congressional meeting, three times were out of spite.

andy biggs introduced a bill to abolish osha and completely eliminate federal workplace safety protections.

georgia republican congressman mike collins called for the deportation of new jersey born mariann budde, the bishop who urged trump to “have mercy” on the lgbtq+ community and immigrants during a service at the national cathedral.

florida republican anna paulina luna has introduced a bill to add trump to mount rushmore.

new york republican claudia tenney introduced a bill to make trump’s birthday a federal holiday.

west virginia republican delegate lisa white has introduced house bill 2712, which would remove rape and incest as exceptions for abortion, even for minors. you can call her at (304) 340- 3274 or email her at lisa.white@wvhouse.gov and let her know your opinion on that.

there is a bill named the SAVE act which would require americans to provide their birth certificate, passport, or other citizenship documents every time they vote, and would require the last name on their driver’s license to match that of their birth certificate. this would prevent married women who have changed their last name from voting.

the u.s. government is considering suspending habeas corpus, which protects people from unlawful detention and ensures you receive due process.

bill h.r.1161, which is available publicly on congress.gov, would authorize trump to enter into negotiations to acquire greenland and to rename it to "red, white, and blueland".

six states (arizona, idaho, iowa, kansas, mississippi, and north dakota) are planning on challenging obergefell v. hodges, which would end same-sex marriage nationwide. about a dozen more states have representatives are also considering filing similar resolutions.

a bill to ban the mRNA vaccine has passed out of the house committee.

amazon revoked protections for lgbtq+ and black employees.

the cdc has removed their hiv prevention page.

the united states state department has officially changed its “travelers with special conditions” page which previously said “lgbtqi+ travelers” to “lgb travelers”, completely getting rid of the tqi+.

every single republican told us we were overreacting. trump swore he had nothing to do with project 2025 yet continues implementing details outlined in it. not a single person has the right to tell us we’re being dramatic anymore.

hope “cheaper eggs and gas” was worth it.

EDIT: i removed the “trump refused to swear on the bible” point because it was being taken as me being an offended christian. i’m not christian, im agnostic. the reason i included it in the first place is because he’s the first president in history to ever refuse to swear on ANYTHING. meanwhile his “conservative christian” followers had no issue with this, and decided to continue to scramble for excuses instead of admitting he may not be as religious as he claims he is. i figured taking that point out entirely is probably better than filling this with an explanation in the middle of the other important issues.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Look, I'm not gonna pretend that I don't get it, when it comes to AI. But it's like this:

In most parts of the US, a residential electrician works only on houses and apartments. They use romex wire, that yellow cable stuff. You run it from the panel to wherever it's going, staple it to the studs, then make up both ends. You need to know basic electrical code but mostly it's pretty simple. A fast learner could be a decent residential electrician inside a month.

I, on the other hand, am a union industrial electrician. I work primarily in hospitals, factories, and research labs. Most of our wire is run in steel conduit that has to be hand bent on the job, which is an art form in and of itself. We work with much higher voltages, much heavier wire, much more complicated equipment, and we need to know much more of the code. Our apprenticeship is 4-5 years and that's only enough to scratch the surface of everything an industrial electrician might do.

And yes - I absolutely get a little defensive when unknowing people compare me to a residential electrician. There's absolutely a knee-jerk impulse to declare that they're not *real* electricians, that they're merely a pale imitation of what I do. But I fight that impulse because it's a *bad impulse*. Resi still takes skill and work, it's just different than mine. We're both electricians. And it's better for us to work together to improve working conditions for all workers than to get into pissing contests about whose job is more "real". And both our jobs are in increasing danger due to the proliferation of low voltage systems that the average homeowner can install and repair without hiring a professional.

So yeah, I do get it. But it has been very, VERY insulting over the last year to hear people repeatedly say "AI was supposed to replace blue collar jobs, not *my* job! My job is ~special~ because it has ~humanity~!"

Your job is not special. It's not more important than my job and it's not more fulfilling to you than my job is to me. And I don't get to insist that everyone start building homes with steel conduit just so less skilled people can't be electricians, and I don't get to yell at people for hiring a handyman to replace an outlet for $50 when my time would be worth $200.

I absolutely understand the instinct that AI art can't be real art because people who use it didn't "earn" it, or that automating art is uniquely damaging in a way automating other jobs isn't because it's "supposed" to be about human expression. But please actually think about what you're implying and who you're throwing under the bus when you say shit like that, and whether it actually holds up to your other values or if it's just a knee-jerk reaction you need to examine.

[marvelsmostwanted]

Today in 🍂✨October surprises✨🍂

• Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Secretary of Labor Julie Su quietly assisted in winning labor rights for dockworkers, ending a strike that could have had catastrophic economic consequences. (10-4-24)

• In Springfield, Ohio, where Haitian migrants have been blamed for the disappearance of local animals with Trump claiming “‘migrants are walking off’ with geese in the town” and “they’re eating the dogs” - a lie also promoted by JD Vance, Ohio’s own sitting Senator, with no evidence - it turns out that the missing geese were actually the victims of a 64-year-old white man who was hunting illegally. (10-3-24)

• A Trump-appointed federal judge blocked Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan again after another judge reinstated it earlier this week. (10-3-24)

• Republicans and crazy Facebook uncles everywhere have spent this week spreading disinformation about the FEMA response to Hurricane Helene, including AI photos of Trump standing in floodwater and wild claims that Biden is sending money to undocumented immigrants. In reality, the Biden-Harris administration has provided substantial emergency assistance and both Biden and Harris have visited the region. Meanwhile, it turns out that Trump was the one who redirected money from disaster relief to send to ICE during his presidency. Shocker. (10-4-24)

• Seriously, though, Trump is not who you want to call in an emergency. Before allowing disaster relief to reach victims of wildfires in California, then-president Trump forced aides to show him an electoral map to see if he had voters there. He evidently intended to withhold the aid if he found out it was going to mostly Democratic voters. This would be a career-ending scandal in any other political era but alas, we are living in this one. (10-3-24)

• Finally, far-right extremist and Oklahoma superintendent of schools Ryan Walters intends to put Bibles in public schools, which is already disturbing, but in a stunning display of corruption, the only ones that meet his specifications are the so-called “Trump Bibles” that include the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. They go for $60 apiece and Trump gets fees from each one. (10-4-24)

No, wait, I’m going to say that one again:

In Oklahoma, taxpayers’ money will be used to put Trump Bibles in public schools. Their money will go directly to Trump. Not a joke!!! Not an exaggeration!!!

…Surely the voters who are still undecided are lying, right?? Right?!

30 days until Election Day.

Go to vote.org for a sample ballot, early voting dates, and more. Seriously, we have to win.

[jirzetta]

Time loop where you're stuck reliving three days over and over, but every different action creates a new timeline, and which date and timeline you wake up to is random

C A N E N D A R

[sunarryn]

DP X Marvel #14

It all started with a ghost. A very loud, very neon, very annoying ghost that thought it was a great idea to haunt Stark Tower. Danny Fenton—part-time student, full-time accidental hero, and perpetually exhausted teen—was just trying to track the damn thing through the Manhattan skyline when his portal malfunctioned (again), exploded in his face (again), and slingshotted him across the sky, straight through a window that turned out to be reinforced vibranium glass.

It should’ve stopped him. It didn’t.

Cue the alarms. Cue the dozens of defense drones locking onto his energy signature. Cue a 19-year-old Danny dangling upside down in the penthouse, surrounded by billion-dollar murder bots, trying to explain to a very confused AI that he was not, in fact, an alien invader.

But before FRIDAY could blast him into oblivion, a small voice piped up from behind a couch. “Are you a fairy?”

Danny blinked. Dangling upside down. Singed suit. Ectoplasm dripping from his hair. “Uh. Sure.”

The voice belonged to a tiny, curly-haired gremlin wearing a tutu, light-up sneakers, and what looked like Tony Stark’s old Iron Man helmet—three sizes too big and twice as chaotic. This was Morgan Stark. Age: five. Chaos level: eldritch god. She approached him like a cat approaches a new toy: equal parts curiosity and threat assessment.

“Can you do sparkles?” she asked.

Danny shot a tiny beam of ecto-energy at the ceiling light, which exploded into fireworks.

Morgan gasped. “OH MY GOD, YOU ARE A FAIRY.”

And that was how Danny Fenton became Morgan Stark’s official babysitter.

It wasn’t like he volunteered. Or got paid. Or even agreed. Tony Stark had been out of the country—something about a diplomatic mess in Wakanda and a golf game with T’Challa. Pepper had begged Steve Rogers to watch Morgan, but Steve’s idea of babysitting was forcing a child to recite the Constitution. So Pepper, desperate and very, very sleep-deprived, walked into her penthouse to find a teenage boy hovering in midair while her daughter screamed “FAIRY GODBRO” at him and decided, “Yeah. Sure. This’ll do.”

“Can you keep her alive?” Pepper asked, not even blinking at the glowing green eyes.

Danny shrugged. “Uh. I guess?”

“You get dental.”

Danny had no idea what that meant but was too scared to argue.

By Day Three, he was in hell. Not the Ghost Zone. Not some apocalyptic alternate timeline. Actual hell. Or what felt like it. Morgan had no concept of mortality. She once duct-taped kitchen knives to her arms and yelled “I’M WOLVERINE NOW.” Another time, she tried to feed their Roomba peanut butter and sobbed when it wouldn’t eat.

Danny tried to keep up. He really did.

Unfortunately, he was also being hunted by an interdimensional ghost warlord named Balthazar the Undying who decided Stark Tower was a great place to stage his declaration of conquest. So in between coloring pages and singing “Let It Go” for the 57th time (because Morgan said if he didn’t, she’d tell everyone he “pees ectoplasm”), Danny was banishing ancient horrors to the Shadow Realm.

“Why does the air taste like sadness?” Morgan asked one morning, sipping chocolate milk while a spectral hand clawed its way out of the floor behind her.

Danny shot it with a laser without looking. “That’s just the trauma, kid.”

She nodded like that made sense.

By Day Five, things got weirder.

Bruce Banner came over to “assess the babysitter.” What he found was a 19-year-old ghost hybrid making chicken nuggets with one hand while performing an exorcism on a sentient blender with the other. Bruce blinked. “You’re multitasking.”

Danny, dead-eyed and covered in slime: “You’re not my real dad.”

Bruce left after Morgan bit him.

Then Peter Parker dropped by. He took one look at Danny—haggard, twitching, wearing a tiara—and whispered, “Oh my god, he is a hot mess.”

“Shut up,” Danny snapped, using his foot to hold down a haunted Roomba. “Help me tie up the possessed dolls.”

Peter did not help. He just filmed everything for TikTok. The video went viral under the title “Me when I leave a random ghost fairy babysitter with Tony Stark’s child and come back to find him summoning the underworld during snack time.”

Nick Fury saw the video and sent a S.W.O.R.D. strike team to investigate.

Morgan beat them with a plastic lightsaber.

On Day Seven, Danny woke up to find Morgan riding a flying toaster around the living room like it was a dragon.

“WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?”

“I summoned it,” she said proudly.

“HOW.”

“I made a deal with your ghost friends.”

Danny’s left eye twitched so hard he saw the Ghost Zone.

Pepper walked in on him mid-breakdown. “You’ve been great with her,” she said, sipping her coffee. “We haven’t seen her this happy since… well, ever.”

Danny, clinging to the ceiling like a feral raccoon, wheezed, “I think she opened a portal to the Necroplane. There’s a demon named Craig living in the fridge.”

Pepper patted his arm. “All babysitters say that.”

Craig opened the fridge and waved. “Sup.”

By Week Two, Danny had stopped pretending to be normal. He phased through walls, levitated toys, vaporized anything that smelled like danger, and occasionally screamed “I’M TOO YOUNG TO BE HAVING A MID-LIFE CRISIS” into the void.

Tony finally came home. He blinked at the scene: Danny napping upside down like a bat while Morgan built a nuclear reactor out of old toaster parts and a Roomba named Kevin.

“Who the hell is that?” Tony asked.

Morgan didn’t even look up. “My fairy godbrother. He banished an evil frog ghost and helped me build an orbital laser.”

Tony stared. “Huh. Alright.”

And just like that, Danny Fenton became part of the Avengers.

He didn’t sign anything. He didn’t train. He didn’t even get a uniform. But every time something exploded or a portal opened or some ancient deity said “BEHOLD MY TRUE FORM,” Danny just floated into the air, cracked his back like an old man, and said, “Not in front of the child, you drama bitch.”

Morgan, from her juice box throne: “YEET HIM INTO THE VOID, DANNY.”

And he did.

It only got worse when the other Avengers got involved.

Natasha tried to teach Morgan how to do spy stuff. Morgan used the techniques to sneak into Tony’s wine cellar and replace the labels with glitter glue and threats.

Thor visited once. Morgan asked if she could ride his hammer. He said no. She cried. The hammer floated toward her on its own. Danny had to wrestle it away.

Clint brought over a bow and arrow set. Morgan hit Peter in the ass with a suction cup dart. Danny laughed so hard he choked on ectoplasm.

Wanda stared at Danny for a full ten minutes before whispering, “You’re not from this plane.”

Danny, deadpan: “Neither is your eyeliner.”

They became friends.

One night, Danny woke up to find Morgan drawing summoning circles on the walls in glitter glue.

“Whatcha doing, champ?”

“Trying to summon a unicorn for Auntie Yelena.”

Danny blinked. “Go back to bed.”

She glared. “You don’t support women in STEM.”

By Month One, SHIELD had officially labeled Danny as a “Class 7 Unexplainable Being with Babysitting Potential.” He had a badge. He had clearance. He had no idea what was happening anymore.

All he knew was that if Morgan Stark said “Danny, I wanna adopt a ghost puppy,” then by God, he was going to march into the Ghost Zone and wrestle a spectral hellhound into a leash.

And he did.

Its name is Toast.

Danny Fenton—ghost boy, half-dead teenager, babysitter of the year—accidentally became the most powerful figure in the universe. Not because of his powers. Not because of his knowledge. Not even because of his tragic backstory.

But because Morgan Stark liked him. And if you hurt Morgan Stark, you would be introduced to Craig, the fridge demon, and Kevin, the haunted Roomba, and Toast, the ghost puppy, and then, finally, the very angry, very tired, very over-it Danny Phantom who could—and would—yeet you into another dimension for interrupting nap time.

The Avengers knew better than to interfere.

Even Thanos came back to life once, took one look at Danny and Morgan, and said, “No thanks.”

He snapped himself back out of existence.

Danny didn’t even flinch.

Morgan dabbed.

And somewhere, in the vast multiverse of chaos and consequence, Tony Stark looked at his daughter, his haunted apartment, his glowing ghost babysitter eating fruit snacks while levitating a possessed microwave, and muttered to himself—

“Yeah. That tracks.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google’s enshittification memos

[Note, 9 October 2023: Google disputes the veracity of this claim, but has declined to provide the exhibits and testimony to support its claims. Read more about this here.]

When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.

Think about Unity President Marc Whitten's nonpology for his company's disastrous rug-pull, in which they declared that everyone who had paid good money to use their tool to make a game would have to keep paying, every time someone downloaded that game:

The most fundamental thing that we’re trying to do is we’re building a sustainable business for Unity. And for us, that means that we do need to have a model that includes some sort of balancing change, including shared success.

https://www.wired.com/story/unity-walks-back-policies-lost-trust/

"Shared success" is code for, "If you use our tool to make money, we should make money too." This is bullshit. It's like saying, "We just want to find a way to share the success of the painters who use our brushes, so every time you sell a painting, we want to tax that sale." Or "Every time you sell a house, the company that made the hammer gets to wet its beak."

And note that they're not talking about shared risk here – no one at Unity is saying, "If you try to make a game with our tools and you lose a million bucks, we're on the hook for ten percent of your losses." This isn't partnership, it's extortion.

How did a company like Unity – which became a market leader by making a tool that understood the needs of game developers and filled them – turn into a protection racket? One bad decision at a time. One rationalization and then another. Slowly, and then all at once.

When I think about this enshittification curve, I often think of Google, a company that had its users' backs for years, which created a genuinely innovative search engine that worked so well it seemed like *magic, a company whose employees often had their pick of jobs, but chose the "don't be evil" gig because that mattered to them.

People make fun of that "don't be evil" motto, but if your key employees took the gig because they didn't want to be evil, and then you ask them to be evil, they might just quit. Hell, they might make a stink on the way out the door, too:

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/

Google is a company whose founders started out by publishing a scientific paper describing their search methodology, in which they said, "Oh, and by the way, ads will inevitably turn your search engine into a pile of shit, so we're gonna stay the fuck away from them":

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Those same founders retained a controlling interest in the company after it went IPO, explaining to investors that they were going to run the business without having their elbows jostled by shortsighted Wall Street assholes, so they could keep it from turning into a pile of shit:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

And yet, it's turned into a pile of shit. Google search is so bad you might as well ask Jeeves. The company's big plan to fix it? Replace links to webpages with florid paragraphs of chatbot nonsense filled with a supremely confident lies:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/

How did the company get this bad? In part, this is the "curse of bigness." The company can't grow by attracting new users. When you have 90%+ of the market, there are no new customers to sign up. Hypothetically, they could grow by going into new lines of business, but Google is incapable of making a successful product in-house and also kills most of the products it buys from other, more innovative companies:

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Theoretically, the company could pursue new lines of business in-house, and indeed, the current leaders of companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are all execs who figured out how to get the whole company to do something new, and were elevated to the CEO's office, making each one a billionaire and sealing their place in history.

It is for this very reason that any exec at a large firm who tries to make a business-wide improvement gets immediately and repeatedly knifed by all their colleagues, who correctly reason that if someone else becomes CEO, then they won't become CEO. Machiavelli was an optimist:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, "growth" has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users.

Now, in theory, we might never know exactly what led to the enshittification of Google. In theory, all of compromises, debates and plots could be lost to history. But tech is not an oral culture, it's a written one, and techies write everything down and nothing is ever truly deleted.

Time and again, Big Tech tells on itself. Think of FTX's main conspirators all hanging out in a group chat called "Wirefraud." Amazon naming its program targeting weak, small publishers the "Gazelle Project" ("approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”). Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much. Think of Zuck emailing his CFO in the middle of the night to defend his outsized offer to buy Instagram on the basis that users like Insta better and Facebook couldn't compete with them on quality.

It's like every Big Tech schemer has a folder on their desktop called "Mens Rea" filled with files like "Copy_of_Premeditated_Murder.docx":

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself-f7f0eb6d215a?sk=351f8a54ab8e02d7340620e5eec5024d

Right now, Google's on trial for its sins against antitrust law. It's a hard case to make. To secure a win, the prosecutors at the DoJ Antitrust Division are going to have to prove what was going on in Google execs' minds when the took the actions that led to the company's dominance. They're going to have to show that the company deliberately undertook to harm its users and customers.

Of course, it helps that Google put it all in writing.

Last week, there was a huge kerfuffile over the DoJ's practice of posting its exhibits from the trial to a website each night. This is a totally normal thing to do – a practice that dates back to the Microsoft antitrust trial. But Google pitched a tantrum over this and said that the docs the DoJ were posting would be turned into "clickbait." Which is another way of saying, "the public would find these documents very interesting, and they would be damning to us and our case":

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/secrecy-is-systemic

After initially deferring to Google, Judge Amit Mehta finally gave the Justice Department the greenlight to post the document. It's up. It's wild:

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416692.pdf

The document is described as "notes for a course on communication" that Google VP for Finance Michael Roszak prepared. Roszak says he can't remember whether he ever gave the presentation, but insists that the remit for the course required him to tell students "things I didn't believe," and that's why the document is "full of hyperbole and exaggeration."

OK.

But here's what the document says: "search advertising is one of the world's greatest business models ever created…illicit businesses (cigarettes or drugs) could rival these economics…[W]e can mostly ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats and sales."

It goes on to say that this might be changing, and proposes a way to balance the interests of the search and ads teams, which are at odds, with search worrying that ads are pushing them to produce "unnatural search experiences to chase revenue."

"Unnatural search experiences to chase revenue" is a thinly veiled euphemism for the prophetic warnings in that 1998 Pagerank paper: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." Or, more plainly, "ads will turn our search engine into a pile of shit."

And, as Roszak writes, Google is "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand." That is, the company has become so dominant and cemented its position so thoroughly as the default search engine across every platforms and system that even if it makes its search terrible to goose revenues, users won't leave. As Lily Tomlin put it on SNL: "We don't have to care, we're the phone company."

In the enshittification cycle, companies first lure in users with surpluses – like providing the best search results rather than the most profitable ones – with an eye to locking them in. In Google's case, that lock-in has multiple facets, but the big one is spending billions of dollars – enough to buy a whole Twitter, every single year – to be the default search everywhere.

Google doesn't buy its way to dominance because it has the very best search results and it wants to shield you from inferior competitors. The economically rational case for buying default position is that preventing competition is more profitable than succeeding by outperforming competitors. The best reason to buy the default everywhere is that it lets you lower quality without losing business. You can "ignore the demand side, and only focus on advertisers."

For a lot of people, the analysis stops here. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Google locks in users and sells them to advertisers, who are their co-conspirators in a scheme to screw the rest of us.

But that's not right. For one thing, paying for a product doesn't mean you won't be the product. Apple charges a thousand bucks for an iPhone and then nonconsensually spies on every iOS user in order to target ads to them (and lies about it):

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

John Deere charges six figures for its tractors, then runs a grift that blocks farmers from fixing their own machines, and then uses their control over repair to silence farmers who complain about it:

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

Fair treatment from a corporation isn't a loyalty program that you earn by through sufficient spending. Companies that can sell you out, will sell you out, and then cry victim, insisting that they were only doing their fiduciary duty for their sacred shareholders. Companies are disciplined by fear of competition, regulation or – in the case of tech platforms – customers seizing the means of computation and installing ad-blockers, alternative clients, multiprotocol readers, etc:

https://doctorow.medium.com/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse-3cc01e7e4604?sk=85b3f5f7d051804521c3411711f0b554

Which is where the next stage of enshittification comes in: when the platform withdraws the surplus it had allocated to lure in – and then lock in – business customers (like advertisers) and reallocate it to the platform's shareholders.

For Google, there are several rackets that let it screw over advertisers as well as searchers (the advertisers are paying for the product, and they're also the product). Some of those rackets are well-known, like Jedi Blue, the market-rigging conspiracy that Google and Facebook colluded on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

But thanks to the antitrust trial, we're learning about more of these. Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – was in the courtroom last week when evidence was presented on Google execs' panic over a decline in "ad generating searches" and the sleazy gimmick they came up with to address it: manipulating the "semantic matching" on user queries:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

When you send a query to Google, it expands that query with terms that are similar – for example, if you search on "Weds" it might also search for "Wednesday." In the slides shown in the Google trial, we learned about another kind of semantic matching that Google performed, this one intended to turn your search results into "a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape."

Here's how that worked: when you ran a query like "children's clothing," Google secretly appended the brand name of a kids' clothing manufacturer to the query. This, in turn, triggered a ton of ads – because rival brands will have bought ads against their competitors' name (like Pepsi buying ads that are shown over queries for Coke).

Here we see surpluses being taken away from both end-users and business customers – that is, searchers and advertisers. For searchers, it doesn't matter how much you refine your query, you're still going to get crummy search results because there's an unkillable, hidden search term stuck to your query, like a piece of shit that Google keeps sticking to the sole of your shoe.

But for advertisers, this is also a scam. They're paying to be matched to users who search on a brand name, and you didn't search on that brand name. It's especially bad for the company whose name has been appended to your search, because Google has a protection racket where the company that matches your search has to pay extra in order to show up overtop of rivals who are worse matches. Both the matching company and those rivals have given Google a credit-card that Google gets to bill every time a user searches on the company's name, and Google is just running fraudulent charges through those cards.

And, of course, Google put this in writing. I mean, of course they did. As we learned from the documentary The Incredibles, supervillains can't stop themselves from monologuing, and in big, sprawling monopolists, these monologues have to transmitted electronically – and often indelibly – to far-flung co-cabalists.

As Gray points out, this is an incredibly blunt enshittification technique: "it hadn’t even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better." We don't know how long Google did this for or how frequently this bait-and-switch was deployed.

But if this is a blunt way of Google smashing its fist down on the scales that balance search quality against ad revenues, there's plenty of subtler ways the company could sneak a thumb on there. A Google exec at the trial rhapsodized about his company's "contract with the user" to deliver an "honest results policy," but given how bad Google search is these days, we're left to either believe he's lying or that Google sucks at search.

The paper trail offers a tantalizing look at how a company went from doing something that was so good it felt like a magic trick to being "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand," able to "ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers."

What's more, this is a system where everyone loses (except for Google): this isn't a grift run by Google and advertisers on users – it's a grift Google runs on everyone.

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/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[writingunderneathawillow]

tequila's fault (bucky barnes x reader)

- a hangxiety episode during which bucky can barely meet your eye content warnings: hangover (+ implied drinking), emetophobia tw, mutual pining, angst, hurt/comfort, painkillers mentioned  word count: 2k a/n: i saw on tiktok that ai tends to use “-“ a lot so i just wanna make sure to say that it’s actually my thing :( i just don’t want people to think that this is written with ai :(

Your throat was as dry as sandpaper when you woke up, your tongue heavy with dehydration and regret.  The light hurt before you even open your eyes, so you decided to keep them closed a little longer, keep the embarrassment at bay for as long as possible before having to let yourself be confronted with the consequences of alcohol induced ideas.

Fatigue crawled through your entire body despite the ten hours of sleep – which, as you suddenly realised, hadn’t been fully uninterrupted.  Two hours after Bucky had managed to get you into your bed, with soft whispers and promises that he’d stay until you fell asleep, you had woken up in a cold sweat, strands of hair sticking to your forehead.  Within seconds you had still managed to dart for the ensuite, only somewhat registering the warmth of a body in your bed, before your stomach contents – mostly liquid – ended up in the toilet.  You don’t remember how you made it back to the bed, but you do recall two hands. One cold as ice and the other warm as… Bucky.  Holding back your hair, rubbing soothing circles on your back, apparently not bothered by the sweat soaking your shirt. Well, his shirt. 

Within the softness of your duvet, you feel a spark of bravery, just a tiny flame of it, which encouraged you to reach out to the other side of the bed. There you found a cool blanket, folded and draped neatly over your mattress.  A heavy sigh escaped your lips, and you finally dared to open your eyes, dreading the disappointment that would surely crack your heart in hundreds of pieces once you took in the abandoned side of the bed. Bucky had never promised to be there when you woke up, but you had wished he would.  However, once your sight had adjusted to the brightness in your room, you had to come to terms with the fact that things rarely went the way you wanted. You didn’t mean to be ungrateful. Sure, you had a roof over your head, a stable job and a best friend that would die for you, even if you really didn’t want him to do any of the sorts. But your hunger for happiness wasn’t stilled. Best friend was not what you wanted to call him.  After a few more minutes of drowning in self-pity and misery, you found it within yourself to get up and at least fix yourself up a little. Before slipping out of bed, you registered the water bottle and a pack of painkillers resting on your nightstand, a post it note on it declaring: “drink up – b”. After following the simple instruction, you managed to rid yourself of your blanket and leave the sweet comfort of your bed.  Your bathroom window was opened and it smelt faintly of cleaning products – a theoretically lovely sentiment but it made you want to jump out of said window at the idea of Bucky cleaning up your mess.  For a few desperate seconds your fingers rested against the frame, wondering if you could escape through there instead of facing Bucky.  If he was even still there. Why were you so sure that he was?  You shook your head as if to get rid of the thoughts, regretting the movement instantly as it worsened your already pounding headache. Slowly, you grabbed your toothbrush, held it under water and then applied some toothpaste.  In your tiredness, you sat down on the edge of the bathtub and scrubbed your teeth until your gums hurt.  Only once you washed your face, you caught a proper glimpse of yourself and cringed a little. Deep undereye circles, ashy skin and a little bit of leftover makeup met you in the mirror, and to your surprise, one of your own shirts. Wrecking your brain to piece together the events of the last night in proper order, you distinctly remember Bucky pulling one of his shirts over your heated body before you went to bed (the first time). Then the bathroom incident. Then, a faint memory post throwing up, where Bucky – who had looked at you like a kicked puppy – exchanged your/his thoroughly sweated through shirt with a new one from your own supply. While nervously fumbling with its hem, you made your way into the kitchen. You heard him before you saw him. The soft shuffling of his feet over your floorboards, the squeak of your faucet and then the sound of him sinking into a chair. The smell of coffee made the world seem a little brighter, despite the lingering queasiness in your stomach, and you stepped in through the door.  “Morning.” Your voice was hoarse and came out quieter than you had intended but Bucky heard you nonetheless. You saw it in the way his shoulders tensed up and the slight cock of his head. Despite the motion, he didn’t look up at you as you passed him. Instead, he kept his eyes glued to his newspaper. “Morning,” he replied, intensely starring at the words in front of him. Your eyes lingered on him for a few seconds and a certain heaviness placed itself onto your chest. If there was one thing Bucky absolutely excelled in, it was eye contact. The lack of it put the fear of God in you, because now you were sure you must have truly upset him.  While figuring out a game plan to earn his forgiveness – whatever for, you weren’t sure – you brewed a cup of coffee and added a splash of milk. As you were attempting to come up with a way to break up the heavy quiet, Bucky cleared his throat and took the burden upon himself.

“How are you feeling?” His voice was different, thick with something you couldn’t quite place and weighed down as if talking to you was physically exhausting. The newspaper covered most of his face and you wished to rip it away from him. You looked at him, breathless despite doing nothing, before you caught yourself and replied: “Good.”

He hummed a noncommittal sound and moved on to the next page. The air was thick with things left unsaid, decisions regretted and you really wished you could remember whatever you had done to upset him. Your focus remained on Bucky, while you chewed on your lower lip in an attempt to soothe yourself.  After a few moments of silence, broken up by the occasional bristling of a page turning, you collected all the courage you had to offer and made your way to the breakfast table to sit opposite Bucky.

He didn’t look up but you still felt the way he tracked your movements, tension running through his shoulders as if he was on the battlefield and not in your kitchen.  The wood of your chair was cold against your bare legs as you sat down carefully, and you put down your cup. A quick glance betrayed Bucky’s attempt to not meet your eyes as he straightened up ever so slightly. He seemed like he was bracing himself, eyebrows furrowed, and fingers smashed against the paper.  “Buck?” You asked cautiously, letting his name glide from your tongue slowly.  Again, he replied with something less than an answer and more of a grunt. Your teeth found your lip again as you scraped together the last bit of bravery you had to offer to ask him the burning question.

“Why are you upset with me?”  If Bucky had been tense before, he was now seconds away from spontaneously combusting. You practically heard his teeth grind against each other and a soft sound tumbled from his throat before he could stop himself. “I’m- I’m not upset with you,” he murmured and you raised your eyebrows, even as he didn’t look up to take in your disbelieving expression.

“You seem upset,” you insisted and for a second you thought you heard Bucky wince. “I’m not upset with you,” he repeated, his voice strained and tight. “Then why won’t you look at me?” 

He lowered the newspaper and closed his eyes for a few seconds before meeting your gaze. Worry furrowed itself throughout his face, deepening the lines across his forehead as he regarded you nervously. “Doll, I’m sorry.” You didn’t know what to do with his apology, so you stared at him expressionlessly.  “What?”

The look on his face turned from pleading to desperate.  “I’m really sorry for last night,” he continued, “I didn’t mean to… well, um, to do what I did.” “What do you… what? What do you mean?” Your confusion seemed to increase his worry, and he ran a hand over his face. “God, I… I knew how drunk you were but… now you can’t even remember it and that is so much worse. I’m really, really sorry,” he began to ramble, seemingly sinking deeper into his panic. “Well, Bucky, I’ll forgive you if you tell me what for,” you said, trying to keep your tone as light as possible and you sent him a soft smile.  That was apparently the tipping point for him as he stood up, chest heaving and eyes erratically darting over your face. You followed him upwards and walked around the table to reach out for him. 

“It’s okay, Buck, whatever you did, it’s fine. The apartment’s still standing so it can’t be that bad,” you declared, attempting to get him to lighten up. There were another thirty seconds of complete silence as Bucky stood before you and seemingly searched for words.  “I kissed you back.” The world in your head went quiet. Bucky had just turned on a vacuum and sucked in all thoughts that had occupied your brain.  A dumb smile twitched on your lips and the only words that left them were: “What?” “I kissed you back. Last night. I’m so sorry,” he whispered. Despite his refusal to meet your eyes, you saw the wetness on his waterline and the way shame burned a soft pink onto his cheeks.  He focused on the ground, fingers – both metal and flesh – nervously fumbling with the hem of his sweater.  He looked like a third grader after admitting to breaking his favourite toy, with his downturned gaze and flushed face, desperately looking for a way to turn back time in order to save what he held precious in his heart. “Oh, Bucky,” you murmured and took a step closer to him.  He recoiled, as if you had hit him and brought a few feet of distance between himself and you.  “I’m really, really sorry. I kissed you back and I shouldn’t have done that- I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you like that, it wasn-,” he rambled like a waterfall and shrunk into himself before your eyes. He wouldn’t have stopped talking, cursing himself out if you hadn’t walked over to him, leaving him no room to escape from you. “Bucky, listen,” you began, “It’s okay.”

Oh, it was more than okay to you.  “I might not remember it, to be honest I don’t even remember kissing you in the first place,” your words made him wince, but he finally looked up at you, “but it wasn’t a lapse of judgment or… a drunken mistake. I’ve wanted to kiss you for months.” His mouth was a little agape as he stood frozen in front of you, processing your words. Hoarsely, he replied: “You… what?” A small giggle broke forth from your lips as you reached out for him. “I’ve liked you for such a long time. But I wasn’t sure if you liked me back,” you elaborated and, finally, he reciprocated a small hopeful smile. “You… you did? Really?” Almost instantly, he relaxed as you nodded and placed your hands softly on his forearms. “Are you sure?” His question hung in the room and made you laugh.  “Yes, of course, I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” “You threw up two hours after we kissed,” he murmured, cheeks even redder than before but a tiny smirk danced around his mouth. “Oh, Buck, I’m sorry. It was not because of that. That was the tequila’s fault, not yours.”

thank you for reading :) gentle reminder that likes are more than appreciated but comments and reblogs make the dream work

[leidensygdom]

WOTC is hiring a "Principal AI Engineer"

After multiple scandals of them trying to "covertly" using AI (and denying it, when found out, up until the evidence was too big to deny), declarations from Hasbro's CEO, Chris Cocks, saying how much he loves AI, after their empty promises with dubiously worded "No, we won't use AI (in our final products)", Wizards of The Coast is now hiring a "Principal AI Engineer".

And as highlighted (the highlighted version was posted by @/SpicyEncounters on Twitter), this does include AI usage for all sorts of things- Including writing, audio, and art. (Which is an incredibly broad amount of subjects, but the wonders of AI is being able to have a single guy hitting the keyboard 'til the plagiarism machine pukes something decent)

This is no surprise to most people, I think, but it's still a great time to just boycott WOTC, and make noise about this everywhere: Social media, on your way out for your DnD Beyond subscription, amidst many others. Don't give them the money. The cents they save from not hiring artists shouldn't be worth much amidst many users refusing to use their products and bringing their money elsewhere. They already had massive layoffs- Which of course heavily hurt their artists, and this was the "natural", greedy next step.

I keep thinking about getting sent death threats over bringing up this in the past with people who were too deep in on the corporate bootlicking. Who would've thought that the same company that threw their creators under the bus with the OGL would now be looking forward to keep running them over for a measly profit.

[cece693]

Hii, I just wanted to say that I really enjoy your writing <3. And I also have a request for a Tony Stark x M!reader, where they're kind of opposites (?? Like, Tony knows math, physics, and stuff, and reader likes literature, sociology, etc. Maybe they're rivals, or Tony is just interested in the reader, so he learns about classics just to impress him.

LITERATURE IS OUR (ENEMY) FRIEND

pairing: tony stark x male reader synopsis: Tony Stark didn't do subtle. He was grand gestures, loud declarations, and endless charisma bundled up in tailored suits and tech brilliance. But this time, the genius billionaire found himself feeling spectacularly out of his depth—falling for a man who spoke literature as he did with technology.

Tony Stark didn't do subtle. He was grand gestures, loud declarations, and endless charisma bundled up in tailored suits and tech brilliance. But this time, the genius billionaire found himself feeling spectacularly out of his depth—and Pepper was living for it.

The reason was simple, infuriating, and utterly captivating: you.

You, who preferred Hemingway over holograms, Shakespeare instead of circuit boards, and Freud rather than fusion reactors. Pepper had introduced you at a charity gala, her old college friend who had carved a career out of teaching literature and sociology at Columbia. Tony had initially dismissed you as just another academic type, but when you'd effortlessly quoted Whitman during a conversation about morality and technology, he'd been hooked.

Now, Pepper had the dubious pleasure of watching Tony Stark, inventor and superhero, nervously pacing around his lab, muttering lines from The Great Gatsby. "I can do this, Pepper," Tony insisted, waving a dog-eared copy of the classic novel. "'So we beat on, boats against the current…' see? I've got it! He'll love this stuff."

Pepper raised an eyebrow, hiding her amusement behind a cup of coffee. "You realize he's going to know you memorized a random Gatsby quote off the internet, right?"

Tony paused, visibly deflated. "You think?"

"Absolutely," Pepper chuckled softly, shaking her head. "Look, just be genuine. Admit you're learning. He'll appreciate the effort."

"Effort?" Tony scoffed lightly, trying to regain his bravado. "Effort is me building an AI in two days. Literature, sociology…That's basically another language, Pep."

"And he's fluent," she reminded gently. "Just talk to him. Ask him to teach you something."

When Tony arrived at your office later that afternoon, you looked up, surprised to see him clutching a copy of Gatsby like it was his lifeline. "Stark," you smiled warmly, leaning back comfortably in your chair. "I didn't peg you for a Fitzgerald fan."

"Well," Tony hesitated, then sheepishly admitted, "I'm not. But you are, and I figured—well, I mean, Pepper figured—it might be my way to convince you to go out with me." You laughed—a sound so genuine and light that Tony felt his heart leap in a way no reactor could replicate.

"Tony Stark, using literature as his pick-up line?" you teased gently, eyes sparkling. "That's…actually pretty adorable."

"Adorable?" Tony feigned offense, though his relieved grin gave him away. "I was going for impressive."

You stood, stepping around your desk to stand closer, causing Tony's pulse to quicken. "Trust me," you assured, voice softer, "adorable is better."

"So…" Tony cleared his throat, heart hammering as your proximity made him dizzy in the best possible way. "Dinner?"

"Dinner," you agreed, taking the novel from his hand with gentle amusement. "And I'll help you with Fitzgerald."

"I'd like that," Tony admitted softly, realizing for once that being out of his depth was exactly where he wanted to be—at least with you.

[air-of-the-waterfall]

“Significant”

In honour of the Radch AIs declaring themselves significant and Breq tripping face first into an unplanned coup d’état <3

(Embroidery by me using the Ancillary trilogy title font and Nicole Thayer’s emanation Vahn design)