#CD Howe institute

[melondecarabia]

clingy boyfriend sho. i beg. orz

⋆˙⟡ superglue 

sho haizono x gn!reader 

fluff, sfw

minors and ageless blogs dni! 

authors note: started writing this like a few days after the request came and then just forgor bruh BUT I FINISHED IT!!!! 

tw: idk i guess he has some possessive thoughts, justice for the pillow it doesn't deserve this

summary: Lovestruck Sho wakes up next to you. 

He's already realized it long ago, but he still revels in the feeling daily: Sho has won at life. 

How many people in the history of humanity get to wake up next to you? One singular person, and that's him motherfuckers. He truly has to hold himself back from laying a million and more kisses on your adorable sleeping face, and the seam of the pillow he has a chokehold on rips slightly, but he doesn't even notice due to the loud rushing of blood coloring his cheeks. 

Every day he wakes up, sees your face (whether next to him or on his lockscreen), and the feeling of victory returns. On some days he nearly grabs the current customer telling their order to scream in their face about how great you are, but then he remembers: he doesn't want anyone else even imagining you with themselves. Also, it would probably get him sent into some institution. You stir in your sleep, nudging closer to his body, and he sinks his teeth deep into the already abused pillow in order to keep quiet. Physically at least, because his mental voice could deafen everyone in Darkwick and the greater Tokyo area. 

"…mhm? You're already awake…" Sho schools his expression back from a Cupid-struck dumbass, posing to subtly flex a well-defined arm by supporting his head. "Morning, babe. Did you dream of me?" The image of you quietly laughing between the striped sheets has already been burned in his mind like a CD. Despite trying his best, he can't help the hitch of breath when your sleep-hazy eyes meet his. 

"Are you tired? Because you ran through my mind all night." A lovestruck, ecstatic grin breaks the mask of coolness he tried to upkeep. Damn, even the most cliché of pickup lines sound like divine poetry when it's your voice saying them. "What kinds of dreams? I'll have to one-up your fantasy of me, it's a part of boyfriend responsibilities y'know." A yawn from you infects him, and Sho stretches his arms just to wrap them around your torso, pulling the two of you chest-to-chest. 

"Can't remember that, but I always remember you." And that's how his self-control snaps like dry spaghetti. A kiss on your nose, cheek, forehead, other cheek, and finally your lips with an overexaggerated smooch. 

"You better. It's only fair 'cause you're always on my mind." And it's true. He thinks of your happy smile when plating an order of your favorite dish. When feeding Bonnie, he does mental math on how much he'll have to bribe her to take the two of you to a nice new date spot. All of his socks have silly patterns, because you always compliment them. He counts down hours and minutes until he sees you again, and each time you have to leave his side he'd like to superglue your hands together. For now, he'll have to settle for cuddling. 

[avaxbacot]

i’ve seen some parallel of luffy and law being compared to garp and sengoku, and yeah their interactions and dynamics were pretty similar. you can say sengoku treated rosinante like his son (he said it himself), and even though it doesn’t make him a “grandfather” for law (not that rosinante himself was a “father figure” for law, law referred corazon as his benefactor/savior only, not someone that he looked up as a father), there’s still a connection between law and sengoku through rosinante.

and now i’m thinking “wow sengoku was such a fraud”

i’ve seen garp getting his slander enough and he deserved it, i think sengoku deserved his lashing too because i wasn’t seeing enough, not helping that i’ve been seeing a lot of marine propaganda on twitter lately for some weird reasons (i can understand if people like some marine characters but the tweets sound like actual world government propaganda, i don’t know if it’s a satire or what but yeah some people are actually serious lol)

from the doffy-law-cora flashback, we learned that sengoku found rosinante as a kid and he adopted him, and later rosinante turned into becoming a marine. i’ve seen some takes about how rosinante should be a revolutionary instead, the reason i’ve seen is because he’s the opposite of his brother that obviously loved being a celestial dragon and wanted to gain all that glory back, but in the end of the day rosinante became a marine, an opposite of doflamingo who was a pirate. 

and it got me thinking…. i feel like there’s no scene where rosinante even said or thought that the celestial dragon was in the wrong side of history, he never acknowledged “yeah i was born a celestial dragon and they’re all monsters��, he only ever referred doffy as THE monster specifically, he even said that his parents were kind people (i mean he’s not wrong), and don’t get me wrong, rosinante was a good person (okay hot take here, he’s indeed a good person but he’s not the kindest either, he’s pretty fucked in the head too lol), but the only time he made a reference to his CD root was when he mentioned about the will of D being the enemies of gods, and that’s it—and to note law himself wasn’t aware that the “gods” were meant to be the CD, he just found out doflamingo and rosinante were one 13 years later.

so yeah, rosinante was a marine commander, sengoku claimed that rosinante had a strong sense in justice so then he became a marine, but i mean we didn’t even know the details of it, like in the end rosinante still worked under the government that served the CD, the group he was a part of but then abandoned him. rosinante sure was not like doflamingo and definitely grew up to have compassion to others, but he never explicitly said he was completely against the CD as a whole either, most of his anger towards doflamingo was personal, he was younger than doflamingo that he might understand less about what’s  going on in their childhood, he was just sure that he didn’t want to be like his brother and chose a different path. i can see that he still had a little bias, but i didn’t mean in it in a way that rosinante still thought it was okay to have slave when he grew up, he just believed becoming a marine was the right path because he grew up seeing sengoku as his role model, it never really came through him that the marine was still the institution that worked under the CD.

i am also 100% sure that sengoku was the one who actually convinced rosinante to take a path as a marine like he was because he believed it was the true “justice”, just like how garp did to his son and grandsons. remember that garp, sengoku, and tsuru were the legends of the marine, the three of them were long time friends who had been through so much together and you could see they tried to get their family into the marine: garp tried but he failed, tsuru was confirmed to have a granddaughter who was a marine (maybe her child was also a marine), and sengoku had rosinante as a marine. sengoku taught rosinante his views and as a kid rosinante believed the marine was the justice, why not? sengoku saved him and raised him like a son, it was a noble job, unlike his brother, he would also become one because sengoku made him believe it was the right choice.

then we learned that garp didn’t like the CD, he didn’t even want to be an admiral because if he did he would have to work directly under them. it got me thinking, since garp and sengoku (also tsuru) were friends and it seemed like they actually shared the same views and values, it meant that sengoku didn’t really like the CD either right? like who the hell in their right mind—especially with how prideful they were about the true justice—seeing a slavery in front of their eyes and thought “oh yeah it wasn’t a problem since the ones who did the slavery was the noble i worked for”? be for real. but sengoku actually took the admiral position and then became a fleet admiral, so he did work under the CD directly. we never knew how he actually felt about it, but if he also shared the same values and beliefs as garp, was he not a bit ashamed? he might have conflicted feelings about it too maybe?

ooppss, sorry forget that he never questioned the government wrongdoings lmao.

all those decades working as a marine and even reached the highest position, he never thought to change the system at all, just followed orders that were given, and the conclusion he got before retiring was “yeah i’m tired of this shit, i’m out”. but he….. didn’t completely out, did he? he was still working under the marine as what… some senior inspector general or something like that. if i were him i would be just completely out tbh especially on that age, like there’s no reason for me to still be connected with the marine, and don’t tell me someone as influential as him couldn’t escape the marine because the world government wouldn’t let him, if kuzan could do that i thought it wasn’t a problem, sengoku could definitely retire and be out of the marine for good. did he still think he might have a chance to change it ? he couldn’t even do that as FLEET ADMIRAL. or maybe he just liked still being involved with them? you are near the graveyard just fucking retire old man, go to some nice island in south blue, get a new hobby that is not war crime.

then i remember about rosinante again. rosinante had told sengoku about his mission to cure law’s disease and it made him to stop spying the donquixote family in awhile. we already know what happened next, with the ope ope no mi, doflamingo killed rosinante, and law ran away.

i believed the event of the ope ope no mi was the turning point for rosinante. when law asked him if he was a marine, he lied “I’M NOT A DAMN MARINE” for the reason that we learned later he didn’t want law to hate him. he was also aware that he would be an enemy of everyone if he stole the ope ope no mi, including the marine, the institution he worked for, the institution he once believed was justice. but in the end he chose to betray it for a sick annoying kid he didn’t even get along with, just because he cared about law, and of course rosinante grew to love law. i also believe, at this moment, rosinante finally realized how flawed and unfair the system was, after 6 months trying to find a cure for a sick child, seeing he got rejected and even insulted because the propaganda about the amber lead that was spread by the world government, he genuinely felt hurt for the kid, he’s ready to betray not only doflamingo but also the marine, because he knew both sides had failed law, and he didn’t hesitate to do the right thing after he realized he wasn’t actually on the “right” side as he always thought he was.

but even after that event, sengoku, who seemed to be really sad over his son’s death,  didn’t even do anything regarding that? if he actually cared and loved rosinante, wouldn’t he search for a kid that rosinante tried to save? he was an admiral at that point, he had the power and the connection to do that. but nope, he did nothing. and then i think maybe it was for the best because if sengoku actually found law and raised him, he would also make him a marine, especially with having that ope ope no mi power, there’s no way the world government would let go of law. but still, it just made sengoku look like he didn’t even try to do something as what he valued for.

and don’t get me started with how the hell he couldn’t do anything about doflamingo being a warlord. okay maybe he really couldn’t do anything since all those secrets doffy knew about mary geoise, but really? after all that he still kept working in that corrupt institution without even trying to change a bit of it? rosinante, his son, whom he raised, didn’t even hesitate to leave the marine and indirectly disobeying his dad’s wishes just to do the right thing, but why it was so hard for sengoku to do the same thing? maybe sengoku was right, rosinante indeed had the true justice in him but it wasn’t just about being a damn marine. 

i would give sengoku a credit that he didn’t capture law and let him free, he also told law about how he didn’t need to find a reason why rosinante loved him, i still think it was the most beautiful thing to say and law needed that. but beside that, he’s just as fraudulent as garp, maybe that’s why they are besties. i know i know, these characterization was actually not unrealistic, it is actually very realistic for garp and sengoku, a lot of people in authority thought they did something right or tried to change the system from the inside just to end up doing nothing, and it what makes them interesting as characters. but i will still call them a fraud because i can, this is what agenda piece for right?

[ekebolou]

I get that people have complicated relationships with higher education, and that's 100% reasonable, but there's something I want to point out.

when you hear a popular podcast or youtuber or history show or see a popular history book or article say it's 'revealing' or 'uncovering' or 'bringing to light' or 'reevaluating' some story of the past, it's usually doing so off of academic history work done by people in academia.

Journalists and your average YouTuber are generally the worst about not crediting this work,* but it's there in the background, nonetheless.

That work - academic research, particularly of this kind, and the articles, books, and other information it produces - doesn't get done without institutional support. That is, like with everything, sure some enthusiasts will keep at their particular interests hell or high water, and rich folks can peruse to their hearts' content - that's what fueled the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries' ever-increasing investigative output.

And that should be concerning, not comforting.

Not because all of that output was wrong or terrible or misguided - a lot was, but much of it is still essential, foundational, exceedingly rigorous and useful - but because much of modern history work, twentieth century on, has been a century-long battle to correct some of deeply culturally embedded beliefs an almost wholly dilettante pursuit of the past generated. It's kind of a joke in English-language scholarship that the Victorians ruined everything, but like, for real, y'all, the Victorians left us some BURDENS, from fake relics created for ~the aesthetic~ to defaced and destroyed historical documents.

Academic research in itself is not some kind of panacea. we're not shitting on dilettantes (I am very much a dilettante, in my way) and so-called 'amateurs', who are vital and excellent contributors to knowledge. We're also not saying institutions are always perfect and good and don't need to change. I'm saying that robust, diverse, in-depth, careful, broadly reaching, and most of all interesting and new scholarship requires something on the scale of institutional support.

This is not just because that's where your historians live, but because in a very practical sense, that's where your archives live. You do actually need a big building stuffed with Things Of The Past well-maintained and with a core of well-trained and extremely cool (like librarians, all archivists are extremely cool in my books, even if they're kind of assholes, as long as they are good archivists).

Archivists are currently doing a lot with very little support - like a lot of academics and librarians, really - because that's what people do. When they care about doing something, they get along, they scrape by, they suck it up. But they need buildings, they need climate control, they need continuing training and new people coming into the field - if the idea is that we have so many documents from the past extant today because archives DON'T need institutional-level support, then you are severely misinformed about how much of the past has survived to the present day. And if the idea is that we'll preserve the IMPORTANT bits of the past regardless then you're also sadly misinformed about how good we are at determining what's important, and how frequently (and with growing frequency) disasters of various kinds wipe places out (Lisbon 1755, for example), and how robust any of our documentation (often ESPECIALLY the 'important' stuff) is in terms of long-term survival.

There's a theory going around that THIS period - like the 2000s through today and into the future - will produce a 'dark age' for future historians because the digital infrastructure which not only underpins almost all of our day-to-day lives but is how we've decided to 'save space' - by preserving things digitally rather than in hard copy - is so unspeakably vulnerable and weak. Everyday folks have already, for the most part, lost access to things like CDs, which have a lifespan of something like 100 years at the most. Proprietary softwares, black box devices with irreplaceable parts, flimsy modern materials with difficult to preserve features mean a whole of information that drives our lives today will simply become inaccessible in, actually, a very short time.

Archives - vast storehouses under careful supervision full of well-organized stuff that might potentially be important one day - need institutional support, but also, on their own, are kind of... well, let's just say, Historians will also say shit like they 'uncovered' a 'hidden history' in a previously 'lost, unknown' document that some archivist put in a special box on a special shelf and carefully catalogued for prime findability. It's a symbiotic relationship that doesn't always get its due. An archive on its own can be very useful to a local community, an individual business, a specific family, all kinds of things - but to get History out of it, you need some Historians or suitably rabid individuals of other castes. You need both, or you end up with the pseudo-histories of nineteenth-century rich folk that then get to determine what we believe is possible for the future by what we are told of the past. It's a bad scene.

Again, there are further steps to take - not over here defending institutions as they stand. We were, at one point, on our way to accessible higher education, meaning everyone had a chance to go to pursue their interests, before we started seeing Universities not as a social good and social resource but as job training and profit centers and cut social funding as demanded by business ghouls. Higher education and academia as it functions now has done a lot of damage to people's lives.

But institutions are much harder to build than to change, and change is hard enough. Once an archive is defunded, its collections distributed or destroyed, you typically don't get it back. Like certain species of sea creatures with long gestational periods, once you destroy the mid-range of the population - the bit that raises up the next generation - your population collapses and its very hard to get things back on track (historians and other academics who require lots of investment and training and time and experience are like the sea creatures, you see).

You can, of course, start new. We've done that a lot, as a species. It's always possible. But it's a bit like running out of a fire empty-handed instead of grabbing your wallet as you go. Sometimes you just gotta go, and that's always safest - sometimes you just can't think or there's no time to think and you couldn't get to anything useful if you wanted to - but if it's matter of looking at the wallet in your pants pocket and dipping down to grab it (and maybe pants!) while you bolt then yeah, ought to try. Maybe the pants catch fire and you've got to abandon them anyway to save your life. That's reasonable. (This is just an analogy - fire safety generally says to get ye gone with your life and health intact ASAP, just for the record - don't stop for shit and don't go back in).

The point of this is that next time you're enjoying some popular history content (please save me from this word) or learn some cool fact about the past, think about the fact that none of that get down to you without a big chain of people all joined together doing different things. And that big chain needs nice big social supports to exist. The social supports are hard to change, but the chain is easy to lose without them. It's a group effort all the way, even that little fucker who didn't credit the work they used to make fun videos is important.

That content doesn't happen without the structure to support it - or even worse, that content lies to you. Makes stuff up. The stuff it makes up isn't going to be fantasies of freedom and equality, at least going by what's been made up before.

Hate the academy, want it to change, act to reform it - all very good, go for it, no desire to stop you (except maybe the hating part, try to hate more specifically, like individual actions or aspects of the academy, if you're going to hate on stuff, but, like, hate can be unhealthy, get some peace in your life if you can). Things are bad enough without also feeling like you have to take on a crusade to save archives or other institutions - though honestly just participating in your local history scene, giving them time and attention, is really valuable help - so that's not really the call to action here. The call is just asking you to notice the big structures that enable these small joys.

Don't let yourself be convinced that they somehow happen in a vacuum, that they'll just persist somehow like getting Deliveroo at your off-grid mountain cabin. A lot people helped make that stupid podcast about Marie Antoinette's toenail fungus happen - and there's way more than that waiting! If we can just keep letting people make archives, study stuff, fuck off on fruitless searches for things that were never there and instead find stuff we never KNEW was there. There's so much of that to be done! The more the merrier on who should be doing it! But if we want that, we got to figure out how to support it, to keep what we've got, build more of it, or it'll be the same shit about Marie Antoinette over and over and over and over and over because that'll all we'll have to build from.

Anyway, if you've never done it, take a ghost tour. Visit a museum nearby. Pop into an archive and just ask them some stuff. Get on these web pages that do things like recreate Angkor Wat as a virtual tour, go watch a Youtuber do a frothing-at-the-mouth defense of Charles Lightoller, or even better, read this reddit thread about whether Dua Lipa would have survived the Titanic sinking based on her music video. And just think - holy shit, isn't it cool that we have a society, a whole social structure, that could produce such a thing? And it's right here, at my fingertips, ready to disappear.

*there are reasons for this, some related to format and legibility/accessibility that still shouldn't eliminate the need to credit others' work and others cowardly excuses for parasitism

[cera-writes]

"Ma chère, you are mine."

🃏part One

pairing: Remy "Gambit" LeBeau x F!Reader Tags: slow burn, angst, jealousy

Remy never thought there'd be someone else besides Rogue who'd just waltz into his life, but there you were.

A/N: This fic is based on episode 5 of X-Men 97. I might make a playlist for this fanfic if ya'll want it!

Rogue had talked you into going, much to your disdain for parties.

The Genosha Gala was meant to be the biggest celebration for mutants of the year. You really didn't bother with going, since you'd originally made plans that weekend with Morph to just hang out on the couch at the Institute watching cheesy B rated movies together. But Rogue had a way of always talking you into things with that smooth southern drawl of hers.

Plus, you had never actually seen or been to Genosha yet. The thought of seeing it in person intrigued you.

"So lame. I bet you're really only going for a certain ragin' cajun. You know, one that looks like this," Morph teased you as they shapeshifted into an uncanny version of Gambit.

"Save it," you smirked, pressing a finger against Morph's lips as they leaned in for a kiss in true Remy fashion. "You know I don't care...obviously he's only going for Rogue and well, I guess I am too." you sighed, thinking of how awkward the ride to Genosha would be with Rogue, Gambit, and Magneto. Somehow, you really felt like a third wheel in all of this.

"He'd be crazy not to make at least one move on you at the gala. I mean look at you. You in that little black dress you packed in your bag would make anyone swoon." Morph confessed, changing back into their usual self as they eyed your duffel on the floor.

"Thanks, but can we drop this? The sooner this whole trip is over the sooner I can get back to watching cheesy horror movies with you in the meantime," you tucked a piece of stray hair away as you reapplied some pink gloss on your lips.

Morph simply shrugged. "I wouldn't blame you if you stayed out all night after the party with Remy. Go do your thing girl and get your man."

Morph tossed you a wink just as soon as Rogue stepped out of her room to meet you in the hallway. You could see a twinge of hurt in her features. Had she somehow overheard the two of you talking?

"Hey sugah, you ready? We best be leavin' now. Magneto is waitin' for us on the ship now. I promise I'll bring her back sooner than a hot knife through butter." Rogue quickly changed her tone as she approached you and Morph.

Rogue always looked so flawless. She could make a potato sack look good if she wanted to.

You gave a small wave to Morph as the two of you headed to the ship destined for Genosha. Gambit approached you as you neared the ship.

"Allow me," he smiled suavely as he took your duffel and swung it over his shoulder, allowing you to step inside the Blackbird.

"Always the gentleman," Rogue remarked, eyeing the two of you as she took her seat as pilot.

You and Gambit took the passenger seats in the back as Magneto and Rogue sat up front.

There always seemed to be some sort of tension whenever you, Rogue, and Gambit were in a room together. It was always somewhat stifling. Gambit had always confided you in but never as anything more than a friend. He was head over heels for Rogue and you knew that. That's why you respected his decision to pursue her.

Rogue was your friend as well. The two of you were inseparable when you first came to Xavier's School. You had the power of turning yourself into intangible energy, summoning your entire being as light or darkness that could burn or blind anything it touched, hence your mutant name, Eclipse.

You were happy for the distraction your headphones provided as you took out your cd player from your bag. 'Don't Speak' by No Doubt assaulted your ear drums as you sat next to Gambit. How ironic.

A few hours passed before you finally neared your destination. You had shamelessly dozed off, headphones long since fallen from your head to your shoulders before Gambit startled you awake.

"ughhh, this is taking forever..."Gambit sighed. You pulled your headphones completely off before nudging his shoulder. "Sorry chérie," Gambit smiled sheepishly.

"Probably needed to get up anyway," you stretched your arms high above your head before Magneto spoke next.

"Gambit, please remember that should the new Blackbird suffer a malfunction, you are the only soul on board for whom gravity would most certainly be an issue."

Rogue let out a huff of vexation. "Can it, you roosters. Look-y ahead!"

You shuffled in your seat to get a better view of your destination.

There it was in all its glory.

Genosha.

"Keeyah...They been busy doing a bit of renovating since Gambit's last visit."

You peered out the window alongside Gambit. "It's even more beautiful in person!"

Your eyes took in the vast island settled in the middle of the ocean inside its own tropical paradise.

"Isn't it though?" magneto smiled.

The Blackbird landed with ease as you all started exiting the ship.

Madelyne was the first face you could spot as Rogue quickly flew down to greet her. She and Rogue made conversation as you walked out practically side by side with Gambit.

You couldn't help but catch Gambit's words as he mentioned something about two being better than one and far better than three when he struck up conversation alongside Rogue and Madelyne.

Heh. Wouldn't you know.

Then Magneto had said that Gambit insisted on coming. You knew damn well why. And here you were on the account that Rogue wanted to show you what Genosha truly was. Maybe a quick tour of the city would take your mind off of things.

It didn't take long at all for a most welcoming distraction as soon as you witnessed a puff of blue smoke and shadow engulf you.

"Kurt!" you grinned, wrapping your arms just as tightly around your best friend. Besides Gambit and Rogue, Kurt was your main squeeze, your other wing-man, if you didn't count Morph.

He was soon teleporting all three of you around Genosha like it was nothing. Apparently, Kurt was there on his own faithful business.

Either way, you were so happy to see another familiar face.

"Eclipse, how've you been? I assume the ride here was pleasant?" He grinned as he took a seat from the balcony to look out into the vast city.

"For the most part," you took a seat next to him. He was eager to show the three of you around.

You were all soon standing in a courtyard of sorts overlooking a fountain in the city's square. There were mutant children playing in the streets, so freely and carefree, that you couldn't help but notice the vast differences already between this place and the rest of the world.

Children were so free here of the biases and prejudices unlike back home. It made your heart swell and suddenly you didn't regret coming on this trip regardless of your feelings for Remy.

"Oh my, it's just like he said it would be," Rogue spoke up almost dreamily as she watched the same scene play out.

"Who? The professor?" Gambit inquired.

You knew exactly who she meant.

But in Rogue fashion, she played it off.

Magneto to Gambit was like Rogue to you. It was so nauseatingly ironic that you could almost laugh if it weren't so cruel.

Relationships were cruel. That's why you'd never pursued anything with anyone, not even when the opportunity flamboyantly displayed itself at your feet to have a drunken one night stand with Scott before he and Jean got too close. You just couldn't bring yourself to even have a fling with someone, not if it still meant there could be feelings involved.

But god did it eat you alive whenever you saw Gambit even look at Rogue with that same longing you looked at him with. It pained you because on one hand, Rogue was your best friend, but so was Gambit. Neither one of them knew you had deep feelings for him.

You planned to keep it that way. But every time Rogue slipped off to be with Magneto, you knew exactly how it affected Remy. You were no short of a friend when he'd come knocking at your door late at night just to start ranting and popping off to you about Rogue and how much it pained him to see her with Magneto. How it pained him that he'd never get to feel her touch. And you had to pretend like his words weren't tearing and ripping you apart piece by piece.

"Daddy's chargin' pretty high rent."

Gambit's nonchalant words pulled you from your thoughts.

"Ignore him. Fly can't help but ruin honey," Rogue retorted in defense.

Ugh, here we go again with the awkward tension between those two.

"Or maybe Gambit's willing to ask questions no one else will."

He took a bite of his apple that Rogue paid for.

"Like why is Magneto suddenly mutant MVP?"

Suddenly, a plethora of lively music and singing thrummed through the air and Rogue took this opportunity to fly you and her away from the guys for a moment.

"Geez, sorry bout him. He always seems to be a Debby Downer when it comes to Magneto. It's your first time in Genosha. Rogue's gotta make lil' Eclipse feel welcome, not have her feeling like she wants to run off." she spoke to you as soon as the two of you were way out of earshot.

Oh if she only knew the magnitude of it all.

"I'm having a great time. The music, the people, it's really wonderful here! Thank you for letting little old me tag along." You offered a smile.

"That's a relief. Just wait til we get all dolled up tonight for the Gala." she winked at you, nudging her hips against the side of yours in a playful way.

Meanwhile, Remy and Kurt were still hanging back.

"For a man named Gambit, your poker face is very poor," Kurt smirked as he leaned into Remy's ear.

"Hey, mind your beeswax furball. Didn't go ringin' for no priest."

You were caught up in the vibes, the music, and the dancing when you dared look back towards the guys, offering Remy a small smile as your eyes met.

"It does not take a priest to see you and Eclipse's souls touch in every gaze. You know, I had thought that you and Rogue might have had something but I'm starting to see that may indeed not be the case," Nightcrawler suggested.

"Ain't the touch she be lookin' for. Rogue is...what we have or don't have...it's complicated. And whatchu mean? It ain't like that with me an' Eclipse."

Nightcrawler let out a hysterical laugh as he pat Gambit's shoulder. "You Americans. So theatrical Life is violins und close-ups. I blame soap operas. Just marry the belle and be done. If it's meant to be, it will."

Kurt didn't exactly say marry who.

Gambit smirked, shaking his head. He knew deep down, he'd never deserve either of you. Not to him, anyway.

"Scoundrels like me, we don't get no white picket reward. We too busy for love. Too busy sinnin'."

Kurt paused before simply saying, "There is no love without sin. For love is best measured in what we forgive."

Gambit smiled softly at those words.

A/N: part 2 coming! Let me know if you loved it and leave me some comments! ♥️

[self-loving-vampire]

After playing a bit of a custom SC2 co-op campaign with my sisters I went through my memories of how I first got into Starcraft as a teenager and it really highlighted how completely alien the constant copyright bootlicking from USAmericans on here is after having grown in Latin America.

When I was a young teen I was sent to a tech institute after school for advanced learning, and the teacher there not only played the game but also gave me a pirated copy on a CD.

(And also made me into his strategic advisor for his duels against older students soon after, since I was clearly a genius.)

And that's not all. Back when my school's computer class was more than just writing essays on Microsoft Word or making PowerPoint presentations the computer teacher there, a completely different guy, installed SNES emulators on all the computers so after assignments we could play things like Mega Man X, Super Mario World, Killer Instinct, and more.

And it was common for kids to give each other pirated games as well.

Even my parents, who were rich conservatives who made being respectable and law-abiding into part of their image, used to buy pirated movies from street vendors all the time even though the quality was bad and some of them looked like they had been recorded at the movie theater.

I even recall one time the cops tried to crack down on this and there was a riot that ended with multiple police cars on fire.

In Latin America, pirating stuff is just part of what is considered "being kind of good at computers" and it's just considered normal (also read Video Games and the Global South).

[drdemonprince]

How to be anti capitalist and still invest in the stock market?

The Socially Conscious Mustachians group on Facebook is a great place to turn to, if you want to speak with other people contemplating these questions. There are some forums on the Mr Money Mustache site where people explore alternate options too.And I suppose I should mention that there are index funds that purposefully exclude stock in firearms, tobacco, fossil fuels, and other especially morally galling industries.

Personally, I wouldn't pretend that any investment method can be moral. Holding onto any resources within the imperial core is arguably immoral. I think if you've been around here a while, you might have noticed that my lens of analysis is not one of personal moralization. If someone thinks that me saving for an early retirement is immoral, I can't necessarily disagree with their value judgement, I certainly see the basis of it. My viewpoint is that not being dependent upon an employer for a wage means I can be far more selective in how I spend my time, and not take work that I view as morally compromising, and live more in alignment with my values in a variety of other ways while surviving as a disabled person and supporting my friends from time to time, none of which would be possible if I was dependent upon a full-time wage. But I can see why others would disagree. I would certainly welcome the collapse of capitalist society and lose all my savings if it meant not having to make these awful choices.

If you wish to invest without putting money in the stock market for moral reasons, then investing in a money market is really the only way to go. Bonds and CDs loan money to a genocidal government; investing in the stock market fuels (and allows you to profit from) capitalism. If you can find a banking institution or credit union that does not invest in oil pipelines and political lobbies and keep your money in a high-yield savings with them, that's the simplest, best, and likely more secure way to go.

[theboombutton]

Bad Fictional Data vs Fictional Bad Data

WARNING: This post will include discussion of a name that might be Alice Dyer's deadname. I won't be calling Alice by this name or using it in the context of that name being a pointer to Alice, but I will be using the name, uncensored, when talking about where and why the name appeared in chdb.xls .

----

You may know that as part of the ARG, the sleuths on Statement Remains uncovered a document called chdb.xls, allegedly a list that has something to do with The Magnus Institute. There's a list of names, ID numbers, first and last names, dates of birth, and information apparently related to each person's "score" in an assortment of psychological/personality tests. Three of the names in particular have stood out in a lot of analyses: Samama Khalid, Gerard Kaey [sic], and Connor Dyer.

You likely don't know that the commonly linked version of the spreadsheet, ported to Google Docs and linked in the TMAGP ARG Masterdoc, is presented out of order. (I'm guessing they didn't lock down editing until it was already all out of order from various people messing with it - totally understandable, this is not a callout post, thank you for making this easily accessible to people.)

But let me tell you about something I discovered by looking at the spreadsheet in its original order, and the almost certainly incorrect rabbit hole of theorizing it has sent me down.

Bad Fictional Data

Until episode 2 I had the same thought about the Dyer listed in the spreadsheet that I think most people did: that it was Alice's deadname, and that she had therefore been one of the Institute's young subjects. But after Alice had absolutely no reaction when Sam mentioned the Magnus Institute to her in episode 2, I now think this is significantly less likely.

Don't get me wrong: it's still reasonable to think that the Dyer listed in chdb.xls is Alice. Maybe she had some kind of supernatural experience that wiped her memory. (It probably wasn't that Alice was too young to remember, as the Dyer on the spreadsheet is listed as being at Piaget Stage 3, which occurs from 7-11 years old; but it's always possible that the Magnus Institute was using the names of legitimate psychological tests to hide their tracks when recording more esoteric data.) The point is, this isn't hard evidence that Alice has no connection to the Magnus Institute; it just made me go looking for more evidence.

I went back to the spreadsheet to look for more clues about whether or not this was Alice's deadname. What I found instead was some extremely sloppy fake data at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

For context, here are first ten names in the spreadsheet:

Note how each ID begins with the name's first and last initial.

Now check out the last ten names:

Not only do these IDs no longer always match their subjects' names, they occur in order: CD, EF, GH, IJ, KL, MN, OP, QR, ST, UV. The first names of each pair match the first letter of each ID, but many, though not all, of the surnames don't match the second letter.

My first thought was that whoever Rusty Quill had contracted to generate these names had gotten sloppy at the end of the list, created the IDs all at once using this alphabetical pattern, and picked names to fill in that roughly matched the IDs. But hey, we could use this to our advantage! Any name that was filled in as part of a series of IDs with an alphabetical pattern like this could be removed from consideration for red string analysis - we'd know they were meaningless fakes added by a lazy contractor, and not clues or characters that might show up again later.

Scrolling back up the spreadsheet, we can see the person generating the data having more care the earlier we go. We find the beginning of the AA/BC/DE/FG/HI pattern at line 136, but at first, the names mostly conform to the initials they've been given. JK09874 "Josie Jordan" at line 154 is the first break from the "first two letters of the ID are their initials" pattern; and breaks occur more often the further you go down the sheet.

Scrolling up to before line 136 (AA09911 - Aaron Atkinson), while the pattern isn't yet at AB/CD/EF/GH levels of obviousness, the first initials are still in alphabetical order. Zoe Hart follows Yara Logan follows Xavier Freeman follows Wyatt Edwards. The data creator skips a few letters - for example Niamh Fenton is followed by Phoebe Emmett, and S and T are together in the same line in Skye Travers.

We can follow this less-obvious version of the alphabetical pattern up to an abrupt break right at line 118, above which the IDs don't follow an alphabetical pattern at all. (They might follow a different pattern, but it's not one that I've found yet.) So that means we can discount all the names in line 118 and below as purely fake, generated lazily by a contractor, and not worthy of our attention for the purposes of red-stringing. Right?

What the fuck?!

(highlight is my own, it is not present in the original document)

My first thought was that the sloppy data generator had done the funniest thing imaginable, sending everyone on a wild goose chase about Alice's deadname just by having the name "Dyer" on the brain while looking for a surname that started with D. This would be Very Funny. No plot relevance, no implications, just the brain fart that launched a thousand theories.

My second thought was that maybe Connor Dyer was the last legit name on the list, and whoever started filling the rest of the sheet in with alphabetical junk data was inspired by the "CD" initials in the first place - whoever it was went on from there.

These are both valid thoughts! But I prefer my third thought:

What if it's on purpose?

Fictional Bad Data

There is a very obvious break between the set of data that doesn't look obviously* fake, and the set of data that is immediately identifiable as such. If we assume that this was intentional - and I want to reiterate that it all being unintentional is still a very real possibility here - why would someone at Rusty Quill want the data to be structured like this?

If the sharp dividing line between reasonable-seeming data and obviously fake data is intentional on RQ's part, it would suggest that we should take the data above row 118 as in-universe real data, and the data below row 118 as in-universe falsified data. It suggests that someone, either at the Institute or after its demise, was adding nonexistent children to the roster of The Magnus Institute. Why would someone want to do that?

There are all kinds of possible reasons, but here are a few off the top of my and my theorizing buddies' heads:

Financial fraud (institutional edition). If the Magnus Institute received funding on a per-child basis, they'd have an incentive to inflate their numbers.

Financial fraud (researcher edition). One or more people on staff were blowing off their child-analysis sessions and recording fake numbers for fake children. This would be ballsy as hell if they could be fired for it, but it was the Magnus Institute, so there's decent odds they couldn't be.

Scientific fraud (faking conclusions edition). The Magnus Institute in the Protocolverse claimed to be doing research on giftedness in children, which is the kind of thing that you'd normally publish in a scientific journal. It's not unheard-of for dickhead academics to falsify data to generate statistically significant results, since statistically insignificant results aren't going to get you published.

Scientific fraud (obscuring paranormal bullshit edition). If the Magnus Institute was using legitimate psychological test names to record Fear-related test results, it's possible their results showed different patterns from what you would expect from the real tests. They could have added the fake children to balance out the dataset as a whole.

Pseudonyms. The children are all real, the Institute just started using fake names for them for privacy purposes. They couldn't go back and change the names they'd already written properly for some reason. Probably something paranormal.

Those are all pretty interesting possibilities, and if we could narrow them down, it might tell us something about what things were like at the Magnus Institute before it burned down!

And the other big question is: why did RQ make the dividing line between the two sections, the first likely-fake entry, Connor Dyer?

One straightforward reason could be as a troll, a red herring to watch fans get in a lather over. And once the community inevitably noticed all the obviously falsified entries, RQ could eat popcorn and watch us lose our minds over whether or not that's even a real entry! (That sounds really fun, I would absolutely do that.)

But let's dig a little deeper, and look at what Connor Dyer being on the border between the real and fake entries would mean in-universe. Because of its position as the border between real and fake, it would be very easy for that entry to be accidentally included in the wrong group - a real research subject discarded as fake, or perhaps more interestingly, a fake research subject accidentally reclassified as real.

Remember, if a name is fake in the context of the Magnus Institute's research, that doesn't mean that the name itself is made up. If I was trying to think of a name that fit the initials CD, and those were the initials of my next door neighbor's kid, I might just write their name in as a lark. Especially if it was my first time trying to get away with falsifying information: this is a kid that verifiably exists and lives in the area.

My theory, supported primarily by my love for The Implications instead of actual evidence

Twenty years on, after all institutional memory of the fraud was long gone, trans icon Alice Dyer applies to work for the OIAR - an institution that (according to this theory) has an unofficial preference for hiring former Magnus Institute kids.

They are very confused when Alice proceeds to act nothing like a former Magnus Institute kid. It doesn't occur to anyone that her entry might have been falsified. What reason would anyone have to do that?

----

* Of course people with a background in data analysis or statistics will see immediately that even above line 118 this is a wild-ass dataset that would raise red flags for falsification, but at least it's not "the alphabet over and over" levels of obvious.

[quads004]

Please Start Archiving in the US

With current events, I think it is prudent that everyone, that is able to, needs start archiving shit. I am a former library worker but I do not know much about cybersecurity. If you do want to go down that route please research and keep you and your archive safe :). The more copies that are preserved, then the more likely it is that the media will survive. Even if you save only 2 files that is still important!

First, I will list how to create an computer archive and best practices, then I will provide a list of known targets and suggested materials to add.

You need somewhere to store your data most people will use their computer's storage drive but you need to have backups! Do not rely on cloud storage solutions, they require internet connection are vulnerable to data breaches, and the companies that store that data must follow any laws that the government may decide to pass. USBs or external hardrives are best options. CDs can be used in a pinch, but are more likely to degrade as well as having lower storage capacity then the previous options. Use whatever you have lying around, you do not need to spend money if you don't want to.

When saving data use file formats that are common and able to be read without use of a special software. (that means no .docx) PDF/A is the gold standard for archiving. It is a subtype of pdf that contains metadata, such as typefaces and graphical info, that ensure the files are read properly in the future. Adobe Acrobat is able to save and convert documents into PDF/A. PDFTron, DocuPub, and Ghostscript are all free or have free versions that create pdf/a files. PNG, JPEG2000, .txt, MP3, wav, are other common file types that the Smithsonian recommends for data storage. For a full list of types to use and avoid, see the sources cited at the bottom.

What are we archiving?

Please gather both fiction and nonfiction resources. Nonfiction collection ideas: Current news clips, local history of marginalized communities, interviews, biographies, memoirs, zines, and art pieces. Saving scientific research is incredibly important! In 1933, one of the first places they targeted was the Institute of Sexual Science. Lots of what was stored there was never recovered. Environmental science, trans and intersex health, and minority history will likely be targeted first. For fiction, the most commonly challenged books last year were: 1) GenderQueer by Maia Kobabe 2) All Boys Aren't Blue by George Johnson 3) This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson 4) The of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 5) Flamer by Mike Curato 6) The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison 7) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews 8) Tricks by Ellen Hopkins 9) Let's Talk about it (Teen guide to sex, relationships, and being a human) by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan 10) Sold by Patricia McCormick I present this list so you have an idea of what is normally targeted. Books that describe racism and queer identities are most common, but other targets include any depictions of violence, drugs, sex. Use your personal archive to accumulate data that you personally are passionate about. The more niche a topic the more likely it is that other people will not have it in their storage.

Lastly, please remember as an archivist you are not there to determine if a piece is worthy of being saved. Just because you do not like or agree with the message does not mean it will be saved from being banned. All artworks amateur or professional are worthy of being archived.

Sources: ALA 2023 Banned Books https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

How to create a PDF/A file https://www.research.gov/common/attachment/Desktop/How_do_I_create_a_PDF-A_file.pdf

Smithsonian Data Management Best Practices and File Formats https://siarchives.si.edu/what-we-do/digital-curation/recommended-preservation-formats-electronic-records https://library.si.edu/research/best-practices-storing-archiving-and-preserving-data

[sneefsnorf]

THE CIPHER ARCHIVES!!! is this too niche

i feel like since the magnus archives and gravity falls both have a focus on monsters, uncovering mystery, the Eyepocalypse and deep interpersonal relationships, they would make a great crossover!

dipper is the archivist, attempting to organise the archives and investigate the mysterious "smirke's 13", catalogued by the tapes, journal and files left by the previous archivist, a man named stanford (i dont know how stanley plays into this crossover yet).

mabel is dipper's estranged twin, hired by Elias Bouchard (Bill Cipher) after she lied on her CV as an archival assistant, attempting to reconnect with her brother and pay the london rent. she takes on a role similar to martin (swapping out romantic love for familial obviously), and gets entangled in the lonely towards the end of the storyline.

Bill Cipher is the head of the Cipher Institute (taking on the role of Jonah Magnus), an immortal patron of the All-Seeing, All-Knowing Eye. He masquerades as a mortal by posessing the body of Elias Bouchard.

im yet to figure out which other characters from gravity falls are part of this AU, but i think soos will take tim's role and wendy will take sasha's. other characters like basira and melanie might stay the same. i thought robbie would make a good gerard, and instead of being immortalised in a creepy skin book, he lives on inside the cursed cd from that one episode

yeah i really love the idea this au and i hope that there is at least one other person out there that also appreciates this. gravity falls x the magnus archives goes hard

[mariacallous]

Like countless other people around the globe, I stream music, and like more than six hundred million of them I mainly use Spotify. Streaming currently accounts for about eighty per cent of the American recording industry’s revenue, and in recent years Spotify’s health is often consulted as a measure for the health of the music business over all. Last spring, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reported global revenues of $28.6 billion, making for the ninth straight year of growth. All of this was unimaginable in the two-thousands, when the major record labels appeared poorly equipped to deal with piracy and the so-called death of physical media. On the consumer side, the story looks even rosier. Adjusted for inflation, a monthly subscription to an audio streaming service, allowing convenient access to a sizable chunk of the history of recorded music, costs much less than a single album once did. It can seem too good to be true.

Like considerably fewer people, I still buy a lot of CDs, records, and cassettes, mostly by independent artists, which is to say that I have a great deal of sympathy for how this immense reorganization in how we consume music has complicated the lives of artists trying to survive our on-demand, hyper-abundant present. Spotify divvies out some share of subscriber fees as royalties in proportion to an artist’s popularity on the platform. The service recently instituted a policy in which a track that registers fewer than a thousand streams in a twelve-month span earns no royalties at all. Some estimate that this applies to approximately two-thirds of its catalogue, or about sixty million songs. Meanwhile, during a twelve-month stretch from 2023 to 2024, Spotify announced new revenue highs, with estimates that the company is worth more than Universal and Warner combined. During the same period, its C.E.O., Daniel Ek, cashed out three hundred and forty million dollars in stock; his net worth, which fluctuates but is well into the billions, is thought to make him richer than any musician in history. Music has always been a perilous, impractical pursuit, and even sympathetic fans hope for the best value for their dollar. But if you think too deeply about what you’re paying for, and who benefits, the streaming economy can seem awfully crooked.

Although artists such as Taylor Swift and Neil Young have temporarily removed their music from Spotify—Swift pressed the company over its paltry royalty rates, while Young was protesting its nine-figure deal with the divisive podcaster Joe Rogan—defying the streamer comes with enormous risks. Spotify is a library, but it’s also a recommendation service, and its growth is fuelled by this second function, and by the company’s strategies for soundtracking the entirety of our days and nights. As a former Spotify employee once observed, the platform’s only real competitor is silence. In recent years, its attempts at studying and then adapting to our behavior have invited more than casual scrutiny among users: gripes about the constant tweaks and adjustments that make the interface more coldly opaque, stories about A.I.-generated songs and bots preying on the company’s algorithms, fatigue over “Spotify-core,” the shorthand for the limp, unobtrusive pop music that appears to be the service’s default aesthetic. Even Spotify’s popular Wrapped day, when users are given social-media-ready graphics detailing their listening habits from the past year, recently took its lumps. Where the previous year’s version assigned listeners a part of the world that most aligned with their favorites, the 2024 edition was highlighted by the introduction of personalized, A.I.-voiced recaps, striking some as the Spotify problem in a nutshell—a good thing that gets a little worse with all the desperate fine-tuning.

Just as we train Spotify’s algorithm with our likes and dislikes, the platform seems to be training us to become round-the-clock listeners. Most people don’t take issue with this—in fact, a major Spotify selling point is that it can offer you more of what you like. Liz Pelly’s new book, “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” is a comprehensive look at how the company’s dominance has profoundly changed the way we listen and what we listen to. A contributing editor to The Baffler, Pelly has covered the ascent of Spotify for years, and she was an early critic of how the streaming economy relies less on delivering hit tunes than on keeping us within a narrow gradient of chill vibes. Her approach is aggressively moralistic: she is strongly influenced, she explains, by D.I.Y. spaces that attempt to bring about alternate forms of “collective culture,” rather than accept the world’s inequities as a given. She sympathizes with the plight of artists who feel adrift in the winner-take-all world of the Internet, contending with superstars like Adele or Coldplay for placement on career-making playlists and, consequently, a share of streaming revenue. But her greatest concerns are for listeners, with our expectations for newness and convenience. Pelly is a romantic, but her book isn’t an exercise in nostalgia. It’s about how we have come to view art and creativity, what it means to be an individual, and what we learn when we first hum along to a beloved pop song.

A great many people over forty retain some memory of the first time they witnessed the awesome possibilities of Internet piracy—the sense of wonder that you could go to class and return a couple of hours later to a Paul Oakenfold track playing from somewhere inside your computer. In 1999, two teen-agers named Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker launched the file-sharing application Napster, effectively torching the music industry as it had existed for nearly a century. There had always been piracy and bootlegging, but Napster introduced the free exchange of music at a global scale. Rather than maintain a publicly accessible archive of recordings—which was clearly illegal—Napster provided a peer-to-peer service that essentially allowed users to pool their music libraries. After a year, Fanning and Parker’s app had twenty million users.

At first, anti-Napster sentiment echoed the hysteria of the nineteen-seventies and eighties around the prospect of home taping killing the record industry. Yet online piracy was far more serious, moving at unprecedented speed. One label executive argued that Fanning and Parker belonged in jail, but there was no uniform response. For example, the media conglomerate Bertelsmann made plans to invest in Napster even as it was suing the company for copyright infringement. Some artists embraced Napster as a promotional tool. Chuck D, of Public Enemy, published a Times Op-Ed in which he praised Napster as “a new kind of radio.” The punk band the Offspring expressed its admiration by selling bootleg merchandise with the company’s logo. On the other side was the heavy-metal band Metallica, which sued the platform for “trafficking in stolen goods,” and thereby became seen—by many of their fellow-musicians as well as by listeners—as an establishment villain. Faced with too many legal challenges, Napster shut down in July, 2001. But the desire to break from traditional means of disseminating culture remained, as casual consumers began imagining an alternative to brick-and-mortar shopping and, with it, physical media. Just four months after Napster’s closure, Apple came out with the iPod.

In Sweden, where citizens had enjoyed high-speed Internet since the late nineties, piracy took on a political edge. In 2001, after a major anti-globalization protest in Gothenburg was violently put down by the police, activists formed online communities. In 2003, Rasmus Fleischer helped found Piratbyrån, or the Pirate Bureau, a group committed to flouting copyright laws. “We were trying to make something political from the already existing practice of file-sharing,” Fleischer explained to Pelly. “What are the alternative ways to think about power over networks? What counts as art and what counts as legitimate ways of using it? Or distributing money?” That year, a group of programmers associated with Piratbyrån launched the Pirate Bay, a file-sharing site that felt like a more evolved version of Napster, allowing users to swap not only music but movies, software, and video games.

Alongside Pirate Bay, file-sharing applications like LimeWire, Kazaa, and Grokster emerged to fill Napster’s void and were summarily targeted by the recording industry. Meanwhile, the music business marched forward, absorbing losses and deferring any hard decisions. So long as fans still thought of music in terms of ownership, there were still things to sell them—if not physical media, at least song files meant to be downloaded onto your hard drive. The most common model in the United States was the highly successful iTunes Store, which allowed listeners to purchase both albums and single tracks, abiding by a rough dollar-per-song value inherited from the age of LPs and CDs. “People want to own their music,” Steve Jobs said, in 2007, claiming he’d seen no evidence that consumers wanted a subscription model. “There’s definitely a hurdle with subscription because it’s not an exact replica of the model people are used to in the physical world,” Rob Williams, an executive at Rhapsody, one of the largest early-two-thousands music-subscription services, observed, in 2008.

Daniel Ek, Spotify’s C.E.O., taught himself programming as a teen-ager in Stockholm and was financially secure by his mid-twenties, when he began looking for a new project to work on. Like many, he credits Napster for providing him with a musical education. While some of his countrymen saw piracy as anarchist, a strike against big business, Ek sensed a more moderate path. He and Martin Lorentzon, both well versed in search engines and online advertising, founded Spotify, in 2006, in the hope of working with the music industry, not against it. Ek explained to a reporter, in 2010, that it was impossible to “legislate away from piracy.” The solution was making an alternative that was just as convenient, if not more. The year he and Lorentzon launched Spotify, the census showed that thirteen per cent of Sweden’s citizens already participated in file-sharing. “I’m just interested in building a company that doesn’t necessarily change lives but adapts people’s behavior,” Ek said.

Spotify benefitted from the emergence of smartphones and cheap data plans. When we are basically never offline, it no longer matters where our files are situated. “We’re punks,” Ek said. “Not the punks that are up to no good. The punks that are against the establishment. We want to bring music to every person on the face of the planet.” (Olof Dreijer, of the Swedish electronic pop group the Knife, griped to Pelly that the involvement of tech companies in music streaming represented the “gentrification” of piracy.)

Spotify made headway in Europe in the twenty-tens, capitalizing on the major labels’ seeming apathy toward committing to an online presence. It began offering plans to U.S. users in 2011—two paid tiers with no ads and a free one that, as an analyst told the Times that year, was “solidifying a perception that music should be free.” Ek sought partnerships with major labels, some of which still own Spotify stock. Around this time, a source who was then close to the company told Pelly, Spotify commissioned a study tracking the listening habits of a small subset of users and concluded that it could offer a qualitatively different experience than a marketplace like iTunes. By tracking what people wanted to hear at certain hours—from an aggro morning-workout mix to mellow soundscapes for the evening—the service began understanding how listeners used music throughout the day. People even streamed music while they were sleeping.

With all this information, Spotify might be able to guess your mood based on what time it was and what you had been listening to. Pelly argues, in fact, that its greatest innovation has been its grasp of affect, how we turned to music to hype us up or calm us down, help us focus on our homework or simply dissociate. Unlike a record label, a tech company doesn’t care whether we’re hooked on the same hit on repeat or lost in a three-hour ambient loop, so long as we’re listening to something. (This helps explain its ambitious entry into the world of podcasting, lavishing nine-figure deals on Joe Rogan and on the Ringer, Bill Simmons’s media company, as well as its recent investment in audiobooks.) Spotify just wants as much of our time and attention as possible, and a steady stream of melodic, unobtrusive sounds could be the best way to appeal to a passive listener. You get tired of the hit song after a while, whereas you might stop noticing the ambient background music altogether.

Last spring, a Swedish newspaper published a story about a little-known hitmaker named Johan Röhr, a specialist in tepid, soothing soundscapes. As of March, Röhr had used six hundred and fifty aliases (including Adelmar Borrego and Mingmei Hsueh) to release more than twenty-seven hundred songs on Spotify, where they had been streamed more than fifteen billion times. These numbers make him one of the most popular musicians in the world, even though he is not popular in any meaningful sense—it’s doubtful that many people who stream his music have any idea who he is. Spotify’s officially curated playlists seem to be a shortcut to success, akin to songs getting into heavy rotation on the radio or television. Röhr has benefitted from being featured on more than a hundred of them, with names like “Peaceful Piano” or “Stress Relief.” His ascent has raised a philosophical question about music in the streaming age: Does it even matter who is making this stuff? At least Röhr’s a real person. What about A.I.-generated music, which is increasingly popular on YouTube?

It’s tricky to make the argument that any of this is inherently bad for music fans; in our anti-élitist times, all taste is regarded as relative. Maybe Johan Röhr does, indeed, lower your stress levels. Who’s to say that A.I. Oasis is that much better or worse than the real thing? If you harbor no dreams of making money off your music, it’s never been easier to put your art out into the world. And even if we are constructing our playlists for friends under “data-tuned, ultra-surveilled” circumstances, feeding a machine data to more effectively sell things back to us, it’s a trade that most users don’t mind making. We’ve been conditioned to want hyper-personalization from our digital surroundings, with convenience and customizable environments the spoils of our age. For Pelly, it’s a problem less of taste than of autonomy—the question she asks is if we’re making actual decisions or simply letting the platform shape our behaviors. Decades ago, when you were listening to the radio or watching MTV, you might encounter something different and unknown, prompting some judgment as to whether you liked or loathed it. The collection of so much personalized data—around what time of day we turn to Sade or how many seconds of a NewJeans song we play—suggests a future without risk, one in which we will never be exposed to anything we may not want to hear.

Spotify recently projected that 2024 would be its first full year of profitability; one investment analyst told Axios that the company had “reached a level of scale and importance that we think the labels would be engaging in mutually-assured devastation if they tried to drive too hard a bargain.” Its success seems to have derived partly from cost-cutting measures: in December, 2023, it eliminated seventeen per cent of its employees, or about fifteen hundred jobs. Some music-industry groups also say that Spotify has found a way to pay less to rights holders by capitalizing on a 2022 ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board which allows services bundling different forms of content to pay lower rates.

I wonder if any of Pelly’s arguments will inspire readers to cancel their subscriptions. I remain on my family’s Spotify plan; it’s a necessary evil when part of your job involves listening to music. For all the service’s conveniences, one of my frustrations has always been the meagre amount of information displayed on each artist’s page, and Pelly’s criticisms made me think this might be by design—a way of rendering the labor of music-making invisible. Except for a brief biographical sketch, sounds float largely free of context or lineage. It’s harder than it should be to locate a piece of music in its original setting. Instead of a connection to history, we’re offered recommendations based on what other people listened to next. I’ve never heard so much music online as I have over the past few years yet felt so disconnected from its sources.

In 2020, Ek warned that “some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” Rather, he suggested, artists would have to adapt to the relentless rhythms of the streaming age. I’ve long been fascinated by musicians who explore the creative tension between their own vision and the demands of their corporate overlords, making music in playful, mocking resistance of the business. A personal favorite is R.A. the Rugged Man’s “Every Record Label Sucks Dick,” which has been streamed about a quarter of a million times. Although I’ve heard many artists lament Spotify’s effect on their livelihoods, it’s hard to imagine someone channelling that animosity into a diss track. For that matter, it’s a conversation I rarely hear on podcasts—the chances of finding an audience without being present on the world’s largest distributor are slim. Instead, artists make music about the constant pressures of fame, as Tyler, the Creator, did with 2024’s “Chromakopia.” Or they try in vain to protect themselves from it, as the singer Chappell Roan, known for her theatrical take on dance pop, did this past summer. One of the breakout stars of 2024, Roan had difficulty coping with the unyielding demands of her sudden superstardom, eventually posting a TikTok begging her fans to respect her personal boundaries. The targets within the industry were once varied and diffuse, but they were identifiable. Now the pressure comes from everywhere, leaving artists to exploit themselves.

Reading “Mood Machine,” I began to regard Spotify as an allegory for life this year—this feeling that everything has never been so convenient, or so utterly precarious. I’d seldom considered the speed at which food or merchandise is delivered to my house to be a problem that required a solution. But we acclimate to the new normal very quickly; that is why it’s hard to imagine an alternative to Spotify. Rival streaming services like Apple Music deliver slightly better royalties to artists, yet decamping from Spotify feels a bit like leaving Twitter for Bluesky in that you haven’t fully removed yourself from the problem. Digital marketplaces such as Bandcamp and Nina offer models for directly supporting artists, but their catalogues seem niche by comparison.

In the past few years, artists have been using the occasion of Spotify’s Wrapped to share how little they were paid for the year’s streams. The United Musicians and Allied Workers, a music-industry trade union, was formed in 2020 in part to lobby on behalf of those most affected by the large-scale changes of the past decade. Four years later, Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman introduced the Living Wage for Musicians Act, which would create a fund to pay artists a minimum of a penny per stream. With a royalty rate at around half a cent—slightly more than Spotify pays—it would take more than four hundred and eighty thousand streams per month to make the equivalent of a fifteen-dollar-an-hour job. But the bill hasn’t made any legislative playlists.

Earlier this year, responding to questions about Spotify’s effect on working musicians, Ek compared the music industry to professional sports: “If you take football, it’s played by hundreds of millions of people around the world. But there’s a very, very small number of people that can live off playing soccer full time.” The Internet was supposed to free artists from the monoculture, providing the conditions for music to circulate in a democratic, decentralized way. To some extent, this has happened: we have easy access to more novelty and obscure sounds than ever before. But we also have data-verified imperatives around song structure and how to keep listeners hooked, and that has created more pressure to craft aggressively catchy intros and to make songs with maximum “replay value.” Before, it was impossible to know how many times you listened to your favorite song; what mattered was that you’d chosen to buy it and bring it into your home. What we have now is a perverse, frictionless vision for art, where a song stays on repeat not because it’s our new favorite but because it’s just pleasant enough to ignore. The most meaningful songs of my life, though, aren’t always ones I can listen to over and over. They’re there when I need them.

Pelly writes of some artists, in search of viral fame, who surreptitiously use social media to effectively beta test melodies and motifs, basically putting together songs via crowdsourcing. Artists have always fretted about the pressure to conform, but the data-driven, music-as-content era feels different. “You are a Spotify employee at that point,” Daniel Lopatin, who makes abstract electronic music as Oneohtrix Point Never, told Pelly. “If your art practice is so ingrained in the brutal reality that Spotify has outlined for all of us, then what is the music that you’re not making? What does the music you’re not making sound like?” Listeners might wonder something similar. What does the music we’re not hearing sound like? 

[tia-amorosa]

Episode 75: No way back

After Alexander had taken Leni for a long walk, he took her for a break in the park and let her off the lead so that she could sniff around a bit. Meanwhile, he retreated to a swing. His thoughts turned to yesterday. He thought about Robin standing in front of him with tears in his eyes. And how they had become closer later. And the more he thought about it, the stronger the desire to see him again became. *beep“ / ”not now, sweetie, okay?".

Leni didn't stay alone for long. A raccoon is always a nice playmate for in between. And so these two different species chased each other through the park. If you keep moving a lot, you won't get cold so quickly.

Alexander was reluctantly pulled out of his thoughts, but when a young girl asked him with a nice smile if he could help her build a snowman, he couldn't refuse the request. “I'm sure it will be beautiful, thank you for helping me”/“I'm happy to, then I don't have to think so much”/“What are you thinking about?”/“Mh…lots of things”.

Of course it was a lie, he wanted to escape back into his world of thoughts immediately. Which he did… He wondered what it would be like for Robin at boarding school. Are there only boys there or girls too? Would it perhaps be like a prison, as one imagines these elite institutions to be? With strict rules… What if he's not allowed to use the phone at all? That would be terrible…

“hey, it turned out really great, where did you get the stick and the helmet?”/ "they're all old things I found once. I'm sorry about the nose“/ ”Oh, it's no big deal, real ice hockey players are sometimes broken everywhere". … He had to smile at the girl's statement. And he was happy that she was satisfied…… Then he looked for Leni and slowly walked home with her.

While Alexander was on his way home and her husband added some firewood to the fireplace, Bella tried her hand at a portrait of her son. From her thoughts, without a model. Perhaps he would have been embarrassed to be the model, she thought to herself. So she simply did it as a little challenge.

Cedric had done his work for the day. But there was one question on his mind. "I don't want to be impertinent or indiscreet, but… When I was working with another family earlier, they were talking about their son…"/"And what do they say?"/,,Well… He and his… They say he and his friend provided a lot of entertainment at the school event.“.

Mortimer looked at him silently and seriously for a moment. "And if it is, then it's only the boys' their business. I hope you don't bring it out into the open too much.“/”no, I've only heard about it. For many people, this … topic is still taboo“/ ”Yes, that's true.“/ ”Well then. I took a closer look at the dining table today, it's quite old, I'd recommend a new glaze“/”it is, indeed… I'll have a look at it.".

In the meantime, Alexander had returned home and immediately retired to the bathroom. His feet were cold, no wonder, after so many hours out in the snow. Nevertheless, he had a full bath straight away "On the way home, some people looked at me really funny, hnhn, I know why… Oh yes, and I would do it again and again". With a slight grin and his eyes closed, he thought about the evening at school. In front of his classmates and the teachers, he and Robin had kissed in the middle of the dance floor. And not just once

After he had finished bathing, Alexander retired to his room, put on a CD and let himself be carried away by the rhythm of the light bass. Then his cell phone rang. "Hey, I was afraid I wouldn't get to hear your voice again. “/ ”I'm sorry, I wanted to get in touch earlier. But I can't talk on the phone for long, we're eating in 10 minutes“/ ”mhm, o.k."….

“Have you been outside today?”/ "Yes, I went for a walk in the park with Leni. And I couldn't stop thinking about yesterday“/ ”hn, yes, my thoughts are always there too. And with you…you should have seen the fuss my father made earlier, luckily my mother was there, otherwise he would have hit me again". Alexander narrowed his eyes angrily when he heard these words… "hh, oh man. I hope he leaves me alone when you're gone"/"well, as long as you leave him alone".

“I'm certainly not going to mess with him, Robin, even if I'd like to”/ "but it wouldn't do any good, huh? But at least I know where I'm going to spend the next six months…“/ ”and where are you going?“/ ”To Moonlight Falls. It's about 5 hours by car“/ ”really?.I would have thought even further away…"/ ,,nope… Well, it's supposed to be somewhere near the forest".

"At a forest? O.k., I'll have to have a look on the internet.“/ ”mhm…". Alexander noticed that Robin on the other end of the phone was getting a little calmer. “Are you OK?”/ “I'm only doing all this for my old man and for you…”/ "I know… I wish it were different too… I can't really have an operation to turn me into a woman," said Alexander amused. “hahaha, don't you dare”/,,hehe… You can do it, okay?“ / ”hmhm…“/ ”When do you go?“/ ”Tomorrow morning sometime…"..

,O.k….hhh, oh man,…"/ ,yeah… Oh man. Hey, I��� I have to stop now, okay? As soon as I get a chance, I'll get back to you. They might confiscate my cell phone, I have no idea how things will go there.“/ ”is o.k…. What about Christmas?“/ ”I think we might be in luck there, because these institutions let the kids stay with their parents on holidays." / “hn, o.k. keep your chin up”/ yes, you too"… It was hard to end the call, but they both knew there was no way back.

@greenplumbboblover , @solorisims , @honeywinesims ⭐

[curlsabroad]

For those who do not want what Project 2025 is selling, I am trying to brainstorm a list of to-dos:

Stockpile hormonal therapies and birth control.

Decide if you want to risk having kids.

Make a will.

Make sure you have legal documentation that shows you have a right to make medical decisions for your same sex partners, adopted kids, etc.

Try to create a physical mailing list of queer folk you know, as in addresses. Make sure you write it down in an address book and make sure it is circumspect.

Remove online information that could be used against you if laws become more restrictive, such as anything about planning an abortion.

If you have art that is "objectionable," have a plan for storage that protects a physical copy of it.

Visit the national parks.

Go to the coastline and view it, remember it.

Look into food safety practices.

Consider doing some homesteading projects like quail or chickens, vegetable and herb garden, safe canning.

Try to find a co-op or small farm that you can buy into and buy local.

Buy a mask that can filter out small particulates. Look for ones that can stand up to serious air pollution.

If you are considering a divorce, consider faster. You may only have a few months to be able to get a no-fault divorce.

Make sure you have access to your own private accounts with money. Maybe have a stash of cash somewhere.

If you are in an abusive relationship, please consider using the resources that currently exist to help you.

Get into filtered water.

Swim in the lakes and go fishing.

Go your public institutions.

Try to make any major purchases of goods sourced from China before January to avoid tariffs.

Get on your local committees.

Visit your library.

Save analog media like CDs and such.

Apply for all the grants and resources you can, right now.

If you are on the Affordable Act insurance, look into any jobs or assistance that could get you reasonable private healthcare.

Cut back on unnecessary purchases and budget wisely.

Look into homeschooling resources that are not overly religious.

Consider buying banned books and storing them in a private location.

Plant as many native trees and plants as you can, wherever you can.

Invest some money in the stock market.

Research your local laws.

Research how to protest safely and don't leave said research on your phone.

Don't take your phone to a protest. Buy a burner or get an old Nokia.

Learn how to fix things in your home.

Join a union or start a union.

Look into jobs that would enable you to move abroad.

Finish any degrees as soon as possible.

Research international colleges.

Prepare yourself for how to deal with hate-crimes and aggression.

Take self defense classes.

Get gun safety training.

Take first aid courses.

Have a stockpile of medicine, food, and water in case of hazardous weather.

Weather-proof your home.

Plan for high temperatures. PLAN FOR DROUGHTS. Plan for wildfires. Plan for smog.

Learn techniques used in dry climates to maximize water retention in soil.

[superlinguo]

Research Data Management. Or, How I made multiple backups and still almost lost my honours thesis.

This is a story I used to tell while teaching fieldworkers and other researchers about how to manage their data. It’s a moderately improbable story, but it happened to me and others have benefited from my misadventures. I haven't had reason to tell it much lately, and I thought it might be useful to put into writing. This is a story from before cloud storage was common - back when you could, and often would, run out of online email storage space. Content note: this story includes some unpleasant things that happened to me, including multiple stories of theft (cf. moderately improbable). Also, because it's stressful for most of the story, I want to reassure you that it does have a happy conclusion. It explains a lot of my enthusiasm for good research data management. In Australia, 'honours' is an optional fourth year for a three year degree. It's a chance to do some more advanced coursework and try your hand at research, with a small thesis project. Of course, it doesn't feel small when it's the first time you've done a project that takes a whole year and is five times bigger than anything you’ve ever written. I've written briefly about my honours story (here, and here in a longer post about my late honours supervisor Barb Kelly) . While I did finish my project, it all ended a bit weirdly when my supervisor Barb got ill and left during the analysis/writing crunch. The year after finishing honours I got an office job. I hoped to maybe do something more with my honours work, but I wasn't sure what, and figured I would wait until Barb was better. During that year, my sharehouse flat was broken into and the thief walked out with the laptop I'd used to do my honours project. The computer had all my university files on it, including my data and the Word version of my thesis. I lost interview video files, transcriptions, drafts, notes and everything except the PDF version I had uploaded to the University's online portal. Uploading was optional at the time, if I didn't do that I probably would have just been left with a single printed copy. I also lost all my jewellery and my brother’s base guitar, but I was most sad about the data (sorry bro). Thankfully, I made a backup of my data and files on a USB drive that I kept in my handbag. This was back when a 4GB thumb drive was an investment. That Friday, feeling sorry for myself after losing so many things I couldn't replace, I decided to go dancing to cheer myself up. While out with a group of friends, my bag was stolen. It was the first time I had a nice handbag, and I still miss it. Thankfully, I knew to make more than one back up. I had an older USB that I'd tucked down the back of the books on my shelf (a vintage 256MB drive my dad kindly got for me in undergrad after a very bad week when I lost an essay to a corrupted floppy disk). When I went to retrieve the files, the drive was (also) corrupted. This happens with hard drives sometimes. My three different copies in three different locations were now lost to me.

Thankfully, my computer had a CD/DVD burner. This was a very cool feature in the mid-tens, and I used to make a lot of mixed CDs for my friends. During my honours project I had burned backed up files on some discs and left them at my parents house. It was this third backup, kept off site, which became the only copy of my project. I very quickly made more copies. When Barb was back at work, and I rejoined her as a PhD student, it meant we could return to the data and all my notes. The thesis went through a complete rewrite and many years later was published as a journal article (Gawne & Kelly 2014). It would have probably never happened if I didn’t have those project files. I continued with the same cautious approach to my research data ever since, including sending home SD cards while on field trips, making use of online storage, and archiving data with institutional repositories while a project is ongoing.

I’m glad that I made enough copies that I learnt a good lesson from a terrible series of events. Hopefully this will prompt you, too, to think about how many copies you have, where they’re located, and what would happen if you lost access to your online storage.

[btsofim]

Park Jimin: Soaring Success Against the HYBE Current (part 1/english version)

Trad: ChatGPT, Manus and me

In the effervescent landscape of K-pop, where agencies largely dictate the destiny of their artists, the solo trajectory of Park Jimin, a member of the supergroup BTS, emerges as a fascinating paradox. Despite tremendous success with his solo releases, such as the albums "FACE" and "MUSE," and the single "Like Crazy," the widespread perception among his fanbase is that this success was achieved despite, rather than because of, the support from his agency, HYBE. This article explores this narrative, delving into the nuances of Jimin's success, his fans' yearning for an independent career, and the complexities of an artist in a "golden cage."

Jimin's Solo Ascent: An Organic Phenomenon

The release of "FACE" in 2023 marked Jimin's official solo debut, culminating in the single "Like Crazy" reaching number one on the coveted Billboard Hot 100. This historic achievement not only solidified Jimin's position as a formidable soloist but also made him the first South Korean solo artist to top the chart. However, the euphoria of success was quickly overshadowed by questions regarding HYBE's promotional strategy. Fans and analysts noted an abrupt drop in promotion after the debut week, with the separation of song versions on the charts, which resulted in one of the biggest drops in chart history.

The pattern repeated with the announcement of his second album, "MUSE." Promotion was described as abrupt and lacking the usual build-up of anticipation for releases of such magnitude. The initial lack of physical CD versions for the American market, crucial for Billboard sales, led to a massive mobilization of fans, who pressured HYBE to correct the oversight. These incidents, coupled with the scarcity of inclusion on important Spotify playlists and the perception of a lower marketing budget compared to other group members, fueled the narrative of institutional neglect, bordering on a boycott.

In contrast, an analysis of the Circle Retail Album Chart in 2023 revealed that Jimin's "FACE" had the smallest disparity between company-reported shipments and actual retail sales, indicating a more "organic" success driven by genuine fan demand. This suggests that, even with limited agency support, Jimin's solo fanbase is incredibly solid and dedicated, capable of driving his success autonomously.

The "Golden Cage" and the longing for freedom

The situation of Jimin and other BTS members is complex, shaped by the "artist-shareholder" structure implemented by HYBE. In 2020, Big Hit Entertainment (now HYBE) granted company shares to BTS members. While presented as empowerment, this can be seen as a "golden cage." By becoming shareholders, the artists' financial interests became intrinsically linked to the company's, creating a powerful disincentive for any form of dissent or pursuit of total autonomy. Criticizing the company or considering an exit would negatively impact their own assets.

This merger of corporate and artistic interests raises questions about the true autonomy of artists in the K-pop industry. A study on the Korean pop industry and "360-degree contracts" (which cover all revenue sources of the artist) highlights how Korean agencies, like SM Entertainment, have historically exerted comprehensive control over their artists' careers, from training to managing all entertainment activities. Although the article is from 2013, the dynamic of control and the pursuit of profit maximization by agencies remain relevant, even with the evolution to models like HYBE's.

For Jimin's fanbase, the desire to see him pursue a solo career outside HYBE is palpable. They long for an environment where his talent is fully recognized and promoted without the apparent restrictions or perceived favoritism. However, the departure of a K-pop group member, especially one with BTS's status, is a process fraught with difficulties. In addition to contractual and financial implications (such as the sale of shares), there is the risk of negative media campaigns, possibly secretly funded by the agency itself, aimed at discrediting the artist and discouraging others from following the same path.

This constant battle against their own company can lead to fan fatigue, as they find themselves in a continuous struggle to ensure the recognition and promotion they believe their artist deserves. The perception that Jimin is in a "golden cage" – with wealth and status, but without complete freedom – is a shared sentiment among many.

The uncertain future, yet full of possibilities

Despite the challenges and the complexity of the situation, Park Jimin's future as a solo artist remains full of possibilities. The music industry is dynamic, and what seems impossible today may become reality tomorrow. As the saying goes, "nothing is impossible, there are things that can happen that we don't even expect." This phrase serves as a beacon of hope for fans and as a bridge to the discussion in the next article, where we will explore scenarios and examples of how artistic autonomy can be achieved, even in a controlled environment like K-pop. While I haven’t written the next article yet, I’ll leave here an important question — one no one has answered: Does Park Jimin want to pursue a solo career with another company?

[unpluggedfinancial]

Life in a Bubble: How Technological Revolutions Shape Society

Once upon a time, owning a television was an extraordinary luxury. Families gathered around small, grainy screens, captivated by black-and-white broadcasts that seemed magical at the time. Fast-forward to today, and we laugh at the thought of having just one screen—let alone one without color, HD, or streaming capabilities. Ever notice how every significant technological breakthrough feels monumental, only to become obsolete as soon as the next innovation arrives?

Understanding the Technological Bubble

Technological bubbles occur when groundbreaking innovations redefine societal norms, behaviors, and expectations. Each advancement creates its own bubble of influence—initially expanding as adoption grows, then ultimately bursting when a newer technology emerges.

Consider the evolution of televisions:

First Bubble: Black-and-white TVs revolutionized entertainment, bringing the world into living rooms for the first time.

Second Bubble: Color TVs popped the original bubble, making monochrome obsolete and setting a new standard.

Third Bubble: Flat-screen and HD televisions burst the color-TV bubble, making bulky sets feel like relics of the past.

Each bubble transformed society, influencing consumer behaviors, shifting economic landscapes, and altering our perception of normalcy.

Historical Echoes

Technological bubbles aren’t exclusive to televisions. They repeat throughout history, reshaping reality each time:

Communication: Letters → telephones → smartphones.

Music: Vinyl → cassettes → CDs → MP3 → streaming.

Internet: Dial-up → broadband → Wi-Fi → mobile connectivity.

Every bubble expanded rapidly, enveloping society in its new standards before bursting and being replaced by something even more revolutionary.

The Mother of All Bubbles

Today, we're living inside perhaps the largest technological bubble humanity has ever known: the global fiat monetary system and traditional finance. Like previous bubbles, this system feels unshakeable, inevitable, and everlasting. But like every bubble before it, it's ripe for disruption—this time, by decentralized technologies like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin isn't just a new type of money; it’s a radical departure from centralized financial control:

Decentralization vs. Centralization: Bitcoin puts financial power back into the hands of individuals.

Transparency vs. Secrecy: Blockchain technology makes financial transactions visible, verifiable, and resistant to manipulation.

Scarcity vs. Inflation: Unlike fiat currencies, Bitcoin has a capped supply, protecting against endless monetary inflation.

This next bubble is growing, quietly expanding in the shadows of mainstream finance, and it has the potential to burst the financial bubble we've lived in for generations.

What Happens When the Biggest Bubble Pops?

Imagine a world where financial control no longer rests in the hands of governments and banks, but with the people. When the fiat bubble bursts:

Financial Sovereignty: Individuals gain unprecedented financial autonomy and responsibility.

Power Redistribution: Central banks and financial institutions must adapt or risk obsolescence.

Societal Shifts: Our collective understanding of money, value, and community could be entirely redefined.

This transition won’t be without challenges. Initial instability and fierce resistance from established systems are inevitable. Yet, the opportunity for increased transparency, fairness, and efficiency makes this burst not just likely but necessary.

Preparing for the Pop

Every technological bubble eventually bursts. The question isn't if, but when. Understanding and recognizing this process enables us to position ourselves advantageously for the inevitable shift. Embracing the next technological wave means stepping beyond comfort zones and preparing to thrive in an evolved landscape.

Tick Tock Next Block.

Take Action Towards Financial Independence

If this article has sparked your interest in the transformative potential of Bitcoin, there’s so much more to explore! Dive deeper into the world of financial independence and revolutionize your understanding of money by following my blog and subscribing to my YouTube channel.

🌐 Blog: Unplugged Financial Blog Stay updated with insightful articles, detailed analyses, and practical advice on navigating the evolving financial landscape. Learn about the history of money, the flaws in our current financial systems, and how Bitcoin can offer a path to a more secure and independent financial future.

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[navstuffs]

Friday night dinner

Pairing: Carmen Berzatto x Sydney Adamu

Summary: Carmen Berzatto has dinner with Sydney and her dad.

Trigger warnings: none, they are already dating, domesticity with syd's dad

Author's Notes: hiii! launching this one month before the show comes back and i had this idea since last year?? lol im an embarrassment. OH, i personally didnt like the alternative ending i gave this fic but left in there, you can read it if you want to :) also the name of the fic comes from a british show. anyway, enjoy your reading!

Carmy arrives at the apartment, knocking precisely three times and holding the wine bottle in his hands. No sweaty hands, which was good. Years of cooking probably stopped that side of him, at least. Deep down, he can feel the tingling sensation of nervousness and anxiety, and it just grows when it is Mr. Adamu who opens the door, cloth on his shoulder, apron on his hips. Mr. Adamu doesn't say anything as Carmy, standing there like an idiot, greets, "Good night, sir."

"Hey, come in, she's in the kitchen."

Not off to a good start, but at least Mr. Adamu had given him a slight smirk, not one that Carmy had noticed, looking down as he entered. It is his first time in their apartment after they started what he doesn't know yet how to call, two months ago. Richie explains, "going out, getting to know each other," what Fak calls "being utterly in love," and Sugar pinches his arm, stating, "If he loses Syd, I'm going to kill you."

Carmy tries to erase the thoughts in his head as he follows Mr. Adamu into the kitchen. The recognizable smell of food, Syd's food, welcomes him and slightly calms his nerves. When Carmy finally sees Syd in the middle of boiling pots and sizzling pans, he feels like he is home.

"Look who I found at our doorstep. Didn't have a choice but to let him in."

"Dad!" Syd sounds scandalized as Carmy nods. 

"Hey, I-mhm, I brought wine." He hands the wine bottle to Sydney, who thanks him. Then, Carmy stands there, hands in his pockets. "Can I help?"

Before Sydney can even reply, her dad shakes his head. "Please, like any of my guests would ever work in my kitchen. Go relax, Carmen. Syd and I will take care of this. We are almost done anyway."

Well, great. At least, while cooking, Carmy would not have to think about what to say to Mr. Adamu during dinner without sounding like a fool. Now? Carmy nods, giving another smile in their direction, before leaving the kitchen. He could sit on the sofa, but that would sound like he took more liberty than he should. Or he could hang between the space from the kitchen to the living room, looking like a piece of furniture that no one actually knew how exactly got there. You know, in case they needed help.

Carmy decides on the middle ground: the living room, but without sitting on the sofa. With one last look to Syd's back, he steps into the living room, his eyes working the space. Smooth jazz plays in the background, but it is low enough that he has to pay attention. CD’s, books, even DVD’s. Carmy feels like invading space, invading somewhere he shouldn't be yet. 

He turns his eyes to the books: some mysteries, science, and cooking—tons of cooking books. Carmy gives a small chuckle, some of which he had himself. He then turns his eyes to the pictures across the bookshelf: Syd and her dad, his arm squeezing her shoulders on probably the day of her graduation from the Culinary Institute of America. Mr. Adamu looks proud, pulling her into a half-hug as Syd smirks back at the camera.

The other picture shows an eight-year-old Sydney playing in a backyard, running after a woman he couldn't see. The next one shows the same eight-year-old Sydney with a woman who looks exactly like her, smiling at the camera. 

"My mom." 

Carmy turns to find Sydney at his side, a glass of wine in her hands. "Oh, yeah. She was a pretty woman."

"Yeah." Syd hands him the glass of wine, but Carmy doesn't drink it. She also looks nervous, not as in the day we re-opened The Bear together, but you are here now, and this is getting more real.

"Hey, you good?" Carmy asks, squeezing her arm. She takes a deep breath and nods. 

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Didn't think it would be this nerve-wrecking, and it's just, you know, my dad!"

"Wait until you meet my family," Carmy replies before he can stop himself. He realizes what he said and quickly tries to correct it. "Not, not that we would be going there. If we went there, I meant. We don't have to."

Syd looks at him, her face opening into a smile. "We shouldn't -"

"Hey, Sydney, I think the pie is almost done." Her dad calls her from the kitchen, and Sydney startles, asking for one second before leaving. Carmy follows her, glass of wine still secured in his hand. 

He watches Mr. Adamu and Sydney work for a while. They barely look at each other, but there isn't no animosity. No screaming, shouting, nothing like that. Mr. Adamu tries to explain to his daughter that he didn't know if the pie was good, and Sydney gestures that it was nothing. He goes back on finishing the salad, humming to the tune it was playing; how he could hear it, Carmy had no idea. Carmy just stands there, observing their work. What a contrast with his family.

"Oh, could you put the plates, please, Carmen?"

"On it, Sir. Where are they?" 

"Upper cabinet to my right. Forks and knives will be on the first drawer down here."

Carmen takes the task seriously, trying to impress Mr. Adamu with his ability to place the plates, forks, and knives on their dining table. But hey, you try to impress when you can, right? 

Soon, they are seated at the table. Carmen waits until Mr. Adamu is properly seated on the head of the table to sit himself, looking straight into Syd's eyes. He has a good feeling about this.

"I hope you enjoy the food, Carmen. I was responsible for the salad preparation."

"Which looks good, Sir."

Mr. Adamu doesn't correct the "Sir" but gives him a satisfied smile. Carmy then feels a slight nudge on his foot, Sydney's brown eyes smirking. She was probably having a blast, watching him all nervous and shit. But Carmy realizes he doesn't seem to mind, not this time, as he smirks at her back.

extra/alternative ending:

It is not later that night, after saying goodbye to Emmanuel, that Carmy asks Syd how well he did. Syd, who is walking him to the door, stops her hand on the door's handle.

"I don't think he hates you," she replies, face serious.

"Yeah, but, but, do you think he liked me? Like actually liked me? Because I feel like now, I shouldn't told that stupid joke Richie suggested, or I shouldn't have -" Before he can continue, Syd's lips are on his, silencing him. His hands immediately go towards her hips, pulling Syd close to him. After they break apart, Syd taps his chest, "You did great. He let you call him Emmanuel."