#Dotcom Secrets

[harmoniouslymindful]

Get Your Free Copy Of Russell Brunson's DOTCOM SECRETS Book To Maximise Your Business Success

How To Get Your FREE Copy Of Russell Brunson’s NEW Dot Com Secrets Book

Maximise Your Business Success With A Free Copy Of Russell Brunson’s NEW Dot Com Secrets Book Do you have your copy of DotCom Secrets? Did you know that having a good funnel is like having the best sales person on the planet working for you? Did you know that Russell Brunson, Co-Founder of Clickfunnels, has completely revised and republished his bestselling DOTCOM SECRETS book, which teaches…

[profunnelbuilder]

DotCom Secrets Summit is a virtual program arranged by Russell Brunson where top entrepreneurs come and teach their own idea and method of funnel secrets. Russell Brunson, the writer of the book DotCom Secrets, arranged this for the people who want to be more successful to promote their products and grow more sales. In this summit, the

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The AOC-Sanders anti-oligarch tour is all about organizing

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2, and in BLOOMINGTON on Apr 4. More tour dates here.

It's hard to imagine today, but Barack Obama ran as a populist outsider, buoyed into office by a grassroots organizing campaign that used an incredibly innovative online organizing tool called MyBarackObama.com, which directly connected rank-and-file supporters so they could self-organize, creating an unstoppable force.

But as far as Obama was concerned, MyBarackObama.com was a campaigning tool, not a governing tool. The last thing Obama wanted was a clamorous electorate jostling his elbow while he made the grand bargains that defined his presidency: secret drone killings, immunity for telcos that profited from in illegal NSA spying, impunity for CIA torturers, bailing out bankers, complicity in the foreclosure epidemic, and, of course, unlimited free money for health insurance companies through the ACA.

Obama ran like a populist, but governed like Chuck Schumer. Meanwhile, the GOP of his day was dominated by its own "grassroots" groups, the Tea Party movement that was funded and organized by the Kochs but who quickly slipped the leash and became an ungovernable force that conquered the party. It turns out that the kind of people who get really involved in party activism are, well, passionate (a less charitable term might be cranks – and I say this as a certified, grade-A crank). They really believe in the principles that bring them into party activism, and the only people they hate more than the other party are their own sellout leaders (oh, hi, Senator Fetterman!).

For a leader whose theory of governance involves a lot of back-room favor-trading and Extremely Grown Up compromising, an activated, organized base represents a powerful obstacle. Obama's seeming genius was his ability to awaken a grassroots campaigning force that he could then hit pause on once he attained office, then re-activate on demand (Obama "revived" MyBarackObama.com for his second presidential campaign):

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1532634/barack-obama-s-big-data-won-the-us-election-2.html

But ultimately, I think we have to conclude that Obama's strategy was a losing one. By putting his own organization into an induced coma between elections, Obama lost an important source of discipline and feedback that would have told him when his compromises overstepped the tolerance of the electorate – and the fact that Obama didn't have an organized base meant that his Democratic Party rivals and his Republican opponents could force him into bad compromises, as with the ACA.

Contrast Obama with another "populist outsider" in the Democratic Party: Bernie Sanders. Sanders has never been afraid of his own base or their passion. Members of his staff disproportionately come from community and union organizing backgrounds. Think of the difference between Sanders' "Not me, US" and "Our revolution" slogans and Obama's dotcom URL, "MyBarackObama.com." Sanders' presidential campaigns were always organizing campaigns, and he's kept those going in non-election years.

Since Trump/Musk's shock therapy assault on American democracy, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been made headlines with a series of gigantic rallies across the country. The two Democratic Socialists have turned out vast crowds in Republican strongholds: 11,000 in Greely, CO; 15,000 in Tempe, AZ – and even bigger crowds in traditional Democratic turf: 34,000 in Denver.

Writing for The American Prospect, Micah Sifry describes the larger strategy behind these rallies. According to Faiz Shakur, the Sanders staffer who's organizing the events, the point of these events is to build a massive, grassroots organization that gets shit done:

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-03-26-bernies-fighting-oligarchy-tour-organizing/

The campaign is hiring full-time organizers in "Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and several Western states," and they're already actively fighting in state-level battles, like a Colorado bill to make it easier to form a union:

https://www.cpr.org/2025/02/03/colorado-labor-peace-action-union-history/

These people-powered movements are mobilizing directly against Musk's dark money operation, like the Wisconsin Supreme Court election where Musk is paying people $100 each to vote against Susan Crawford, a progressive candidate:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-03-21-wisconsin-court-election-drawing-elon-musks-money/

The campaign is using online RSVPs to build out mailing lists. One interesting fact from Sifry's article: 65% of the signups are from people who are new to Sanders' mailing lists. 107,000 people have RSVPed so far. You can sign up here:

https://berniesanders.com/oligarchy/

Rationalization is easy to slip into and impossible to avoid. Politicians who make themselves beholden to organized supporters who really care about the issues are armoring themselves against the enormous pressure on elected representatives to make compromises. Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have made compromises in their careers that I disagree with. I don't support them because I think they're perfect or immune to self-serving justifications. I support them because they are deliberately putting themselves in a position where it's much harder for them to make excuses and get away with it.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/26/not-me-us/#the-people-no

Image: Matt A.J. (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sanders_rally_Council_Bluffs_IMG_4014_(49036624512).jpg

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

[alrightbuckaroo]

your need grows teeth

1/1 | 4.4k | E | A story inspired by this art by the wonderfully talented @whatsintheboxmh, and beta read by the always lovely @herefortarlos ♥️

It’s then he sees a man across the club looking at both of them, his hips unconsciously swiveling and his teeth treating his own bottom lip like last night’s dinner as he watches on. 

His features are indistinguishable, but it doesn’t matter because TK will forget him within an hour. TK feels his cock stir, and Carlos must feel it too.

“Baby?” Carlos questions, hands carding through TK’s hair slowly, growing slicked with sweat. TK continues to look past him, moving his hips in time with Carlos’ hands.

“He’s watching,” TK whispers, as if he has to keep it secret. Carlos bites onto his earlobe and he lets out a moan. The man across the club hasn’t looked away once, and TK ignores the part of him that tells him he only knows that because he hasn’t looked away either.

“Do you want him to,” Carlos whispers back, nibbling on the ear he just ushered the words into.

TK goes quiet, the thought trickling through the crevices of his mind like a penny through a crack. He had one boyfriend, older, that liked to share, and TK found something about it intoxicating. Command over not just one man, but men. All he had to do was languidly blink and they’d fall to their knees.

“What if I said yes,” TK dares, taunts, and he holds back a devious laugh as the grip around his waist tightens.

or

A fic that explores the possessive sex that no doubt followed, "And his boyfriend's a cop."

Tag list under the cut (let me know if you ever want to be added or removed <3)

@ccgrizzy, @carlos-tk, @emsprovisions, @thisbuildinghasfeelings, @everlastingday @theghostofashton, @lemonlyman-dotcom, @eclectic-sassycoweyes, @mrs-corrections-78, @tellmegoodbye

@bonheur-cafe, @guardian-angle22, @orchidscript, @kkenz, @hereghostslive @ironheartwriter, @strandnreyes, @aiwihipm, @goldenskykaysani, @actual-sleeping-beauty,

@herefortarlos, @mikibwrites, @carlos-in-glasses, @paperstorm, @lyhrcyrianne, @freneticfloetry

@lightningboltreader, @firstprince-history-huh

and thanks to those that tagged me for WIP Wednesday, I can't wait to read your snippets <3

@heartstringsduet, @welcometololaland, @henrygrass, @carlossreaders and of course, @whatsintheboxmh 💕

[freneticfloetry]

How is it Sunday again? Have another bit from the very first Buck/Tommy bunny that flooded my brain, which has taken on a life of its own. (We won’t talk about how said brain has been busy purging a secret third thing since very early yesterday morning, because fuck my life.)

Thanks to @carlossreaders @lemonlyman-dotcom @strandnreyes and @heartstringsduet for the tags today.

"You asked how things were, in the bar that night. Remember? And I told you that Eddie had moved, that my sister was pregnant —" "Not to mention abducted." "Uh, right," Evan says, mouth twitching as he fights back a smile. "Can't forget that." Tommy hums. "Hell of a combo out of context."

Tagging in @liminalmemories21 @paperstorm @rmd-writes @never-blooms @herefortarlos @walkinginland @reyesstrand @ladytessa74 @carlos-in-glasses @carlos-tk @strandnreyes @lightningboltreader @alrightbuckaroo @bonheur-cafe @anincompletelist @firstprince-history-huh @whatsintheboxmh @afiendishthingynisba @cha-melodius @emsprovisions @firenati0n @chococara25 and @welcometololaland.

[carlos-in-glasses]

2024 Fic Round Up

I have posted 12 fics on Ao3 this year! I’m amazed. I truly thought I would post maybe half of what I did in 2023, which was 13! I’m going to go ahead and assume I won’t post as much as this next year as my work life continues to go hoo-ha bananas busy, but writing Tarlos fic is still my favourite thing. I’m super excited with the AU I’m working on currently, so that’s definitely one for 2025!

Something I’ve really enjoyed this year is writing fic because of gifts, organized exchanges, prompts and sparking ideas with friends. Fics that wouldn’t exist without others. It’s reinforced for me how this is a creative community and it’s wonderful to be part of it. Art begets art!

In order of most recent postings:

September – October- November - December

Fall On Your Knees (15k, E), my Secret Santa fic for @heartstringsduet

Read if you’re in the mood for: Tarlos breakup era angst, fun smut and family feels.

Rhythms (107k so far, still posting, E)

Read if you’re in the mood for: Carlos reflecting on his poet-jock closeted high school life and working on his vows for TK years later after fighting through writer’s block.

Tell Me How I’m Supposed to Breathe With No Heir (11k, E)

Read if you’re in the mood for: A 4x12 coda in which TK tries to figure out why he wants to be a dad.

Deeper than Breath, Closer than Air (5k, E)

Read if you’re in the mood for: The aftermath of TK saving the world with his little fan.

His Husband's Voice (1k, M)

Read if you’re in the mood for: Carlos crying with TK behind a bush.

June- July - August

Let Me Be The One Who Shines With You (13k) – a birthday fic for @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut

Read if you’re in the mood for: An origin story/love note for TK’s yellow hoodie.

Keep the Lights On (13k, E)

Read if you’re in the mood for: A chaotic 1x05 coda. One of my faves from this year. There's something about season 1 Tarlos.

The Wonder of It (30k words, E) – A birthday fic for @thisbuildinghasfeelings, written with @ladytessa74 and @lemonlyman-dotcom

Read if you’re in the mood for: Tarlos becoming dads and a mystery solved!

April-May

I Was Thinking About Your Mouth (31k words, E) – for @welcometololaland because a conversation with her inspired it!

Read if you’re in the mood for: Particularly stupid sex pertaining to TK accidentally proposing to Carlos during very good blow jobs.

January-February (nothing in March)

Search and Rescue (15k, E) – A Tarlos Secret Cupid fic for @honeybee-taskforce

Read if you’re in the mood for: Tarlos attempting to adopt a wise, retired service dog and ending up with a goofy golden retriever who turns their lives upside down.

Where All This Love Comes From (107k words, E)

Read if you're in the mood for: A journey through Carlos trying to figure out his relationship with his father, as well as who killed him, and TK opening up to Carlos about his addiction. Probably my personal favourite.

You Can Leave Your Hat On (6K, E)

Read if you’re in the mood for: Shivering, bickering guys who are super hot for each other and also the most absurd paragraph about ~self pleasure~ I could ever have dreamed of writing. Not that I dreamed of it ever really. But here we are. I was very proud to begin 2024 with this fic.

Big love for the tags: @heartstringsduet @whatsintheboxmh @bonheur-cafe

@ladytessa74 @everlastingday @thisbuildinghasfeelings @futures-tense

@henrygrass @strandnreyes @alrightbuckaroo @lemonlyman-dotcom

@alrightbuckaroo

Open tag and tags below!:

@nisbanisba @sapphic--kiwi @emsprovisions @ironheartwriter

@hereghostslive @nancys-braids @captain-gillian

@butchreyes @literateowl @laelipoo @pimento-playing-hopscotch

@eclectic-sassycoweyes @tellmegoodbye @orchidscript

@herefortarlos @sugdenlovesdingle @theghostofashton @freneticfloetry

@chicgeekgirl89 @liminalmemories21 @carlossreaders

@freneticfloetry @welcometololaland @rmd-writes

@lightningboltreader @goodways @paperstorm @reyesstrand - If you want to share/haven't already! No pressure ever!

And @reasonandfaithinharmony and @lutavero for any gifs from this year if you want to do a gif round up!

[heartstringsduet]

Happy Wednesday ♥️ Have some food talk from the agent fic collab with @welcometololaland <3 thanks for the tags @tellmegoodbye @carlos-in-glasses @annoyingcloudearthquake

“Let me grab my breakfast at least,” TK says.

“Not just a hazelnut mint sugar-shock coffee today? I’m impressed.”

“Don’t worry, you will hate what I got anyway.”

TK gets up from the mattress, and swings his towel back around his hips to feel a sense of professionalism, though Carlos would argue that last part; but Carlos doesn’t see him right now, so who cares? 

There’s a pale paper bag on the wooden sideboard underneath the mounted TV. Feeling like he had finally outrun his own sense of danger, TK had slipped into a bakery in a side street toward the hotel with a window stuffed from top to bottom with sweets he couldn’t resist.

His lungs still tight, he pointed at the bottom row so he wouldn’t even have to lift his head below the cap. It didn’t matter much what it was as long as it was something. Mornings like these longed to have any craving filled, sugar a poor substitute but the only one he could allow himself.

“Well, what are you having?” TK asks as he fishes his breakfast out of the bag.

“It’s the middle of the night."

“You say that like it would stop you from having your first breakfast. Don’t pretend you’re not eating around the clock and like…constantly.”

Carlos is quiet for a moment, clearly caught. “Bit of an exaggeration.”

TK snorts and sits back cross legged on the corner of his bed. “It was at least six times the other day. Dude, you crunch right in my ear.”

“I have to keep on watch without a break,” Carlos defends. “My brain needs fuel.”

TK picks off the corner of his breakfast pastry, surprised to find it breaks off with more of a snap than a flake. Inside, it's filled with a near-black paste. Poppy seed, he finds as he licks against the edge.

“Come on, it can’t all be green juices and organic salads with you all day. You must snack too. You can tell me. You know I can keep a secret. It’s kind of my whole deal.”

“I know you can use it against me,” Carlos counters.

“So can you,” TK counters. “Come on. Sharing one guilty pleasure of yours won’t kill you. This is about food. I’m not trying to swipe your social security number, Carlos.”

As he digs his tongue in and waits Carlos out, he becomes overly aware how obscene it would be if Carlos would see him tongue fuck a weird croissant, especially as he becomes aware of Carlos’ breath again. As he imagines his lips.

“There is this bakery specializing in cronuts here,” Carlos says. “Might as well go big.” OPEN TAG &

@carlossreaders @annoyingcloudearthquake @carlos-in-glasses @carlos-tk @future-tense

@paperstorm @strandnreyes @henrygrass @lightningboltreader @eclectic-sassycoweyes

@lemonlyman-dotcom @theghostofashton @ladytessa74 @freneticfloetry

@liminalmemories21 @emsprovisions @sapphic--kiwi @neverblooms

@welcometololaland @rmd-writes @alrightbuckaroo @decafdino @liminalmemories21

@tellmegoodbye @ironheartwriter @literateowl @reyesstrand

@butchreyes @corsage @honeybee-taskforce @orchidscript

@never-blooms @irispurpurea @everlastingday @theghostofashton

@nisbanisba @bonheur-cafe @certifiedflower @firstprince-history-huh @denizoid

@nancys-braids @chicgeekgirl89 @ironheartwriter @pimento-playing-hopscotch

@rangersoup @the-126-family @carlos-tk @ladyknight1512 @onswiftshorses

@whatsintheboxmh @thisbuildinghasfeelings @neversleepuntilfive

[coatedinhoney]

Solana's Skin Care Routine | CC Showcase

Lana has uploaded for her followers her secret recipe to perfect skin! See the video here ~

vaniety planet facial brush 2. facial serum 3. balm dotcom

4. bunny stick 5. facial cleanser 6. facial mist

7. lotion 8. sheet masks 9. dropper face serum

~ all credit goes to the gorgeous cc creators ~

@aira-cc @dscombobulate @simkoos @leaf-motif

[emsprovisions]

Happy Wednesday! I’m happy to be sharing a little something from top secret au once again:

After work, Carlos goes to a bar he often frequents when he’s in the mood to forget about how hopeless his life feels. He’s a gay man that married a woman, and now she’s missing and most of the time, he isn’t sure if he’s relieved or ashamed of how it makes him feel to be free.

But he isn’t ever truly free. He’s too ashamed to admit that he hasn’t fully let go of her. He doesn’t want her to be his wife again, but their situation is one most people wouldn’t understand.

So he goes to bars where the men he hooks up with are nameless, their faces shrouded in darkness, and he never has to see them again. Never has to bare his soul and admit how much he hates one night stands. How they never really scratch the itch inside of him to love and be loved, a warm man in his bed every morning, and love that he can come home to and cook for every evening.

He pretends this is enough.

And he does a pretty damn good job at fooling himself too, most days.

Thank you for the tags @paperstorm @whatsintheboxmh @henrygrass @strandnreyes @annoyingcloudearthquake @heartstringsduet @tellmegoodbye @ironheartwriter I will rb y'alls throughout the day! No pressure tags @carlos-in-glasses @carlossreaders @alrightbuckaroo @butchreyes @reyesstrand @eclectic-sassycoweyes @lightningboltreader @everlastingday @rangersoup @bonheur-cafe @chicgeekgirl89 @decafdino @captain-gillian @lemonlyman-dotcom @nancys-braids @nisbanisba @welcometololaland @futures-tense @thisbuildinghasfeelings

[chicgeekgirl89]

Thanks to @whatsintheboxmh, @carlossreaders, @lemonlyman-dotcom, @heartstringsduet, @emsprovisions, and @pimento-playing-hopscotch for the tags! This is VERY fresh and idk where it's going...

“I found something,” Carlos says, unable to wait any longer. “At your dad’s house today.” “Found something? Like a dead body under the floorboards? Or like that my dad keeps a guilty pleasure stash of Werther’s hard candy under his bed that he thinks no one knows about?” “Your dad’s guilty pleasure is Werther’s?” “Yeah, so weird, right?” “That seems oddly right for him,” Carlos says. “But no, I didn’t find either of those things. I found out you’ve been keeping a secret.” T.K.’s face goes blank. “Um….a secret from myself? Because I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Carlos reaches behind one of the throw pillows and pulls out the calendar. “I had no idea that my husband was the NYC ASPCA’s Mr. July.” “Oh my god.” T.K. laughs and takes it from him. “I totally forgot about that. That dog was so cute. His name was Phil and he went to a family on the Upper East Side after the calendar came out.” “Of course you know where the dog ended up,” Carlos says, pressing his lips together into a fond smile as he takes the hat off of T.K.’s head and brushes his hair back. “Well I had to make sure someone took him. He was such a good boy.”

Tagging @rangersoup, @literateowl, @henrygrass, @carlos-in-glasses and anyone else who would like to share!

[tellmegoodbye]

Well, it's been about two months since my last proper wip wednesday. I apologize for that! College came and kicked my ass, but I finally have a few snippets to share today.

Thank you @ironheartwriter for tagging me!

---

First, I want to share a little something from a super secret project that me, @certifiedflower and @neversleepuntilfive have been working on... 👀

He can hear him pleading. Stay with me, TK. His voice echoes around him, bounding off of the walls of his makeshift tomb – as temporary as it may be. This is where he's going to die. So close, yet so far from the voice in his phone, from the face he aches to hold one last time before he closes his eyes for good. Stay with me, baby, he hears again. Stay with me. He sounds so far away, like he's calling to him from the opposite end of a crowded room. The floor is splitting beneath their feet and he's reaching out, desperate to clear that chasm and grasp onto TK before it's too late, but TK can't hold on anymore. He can feel his consciousness slipping away, no longer suspended by the strength his husband's voice gave him. He sucks in another breath, strangled and fear-stricken, and he exhales shakily. “I love you…Carlos.” The last of his energy siphons into his final words. He breathes through them slowly, his voice dripping with determination. Carlos is going to understand that the last thing he ever feels, the last thing he ever knows, is the love he has for him. He wants him to feel it exploding through the phone, forever woven into eternal existence, into the air his husband breathes, freed from the confines of his dying body.

Now I would like to share another snippet from my spicy fic. As is standard with anything from this fic, I am paging @heartstringsduet because I know you've been really interested in this one!

“Baby, breathe.” Carlos used to blush every time TK called him that. He'd switched from saying babe at some point without realizing, the subtle shift in vulnerability coming naturally for him as he started using a pet name only reserved for people he feels safe with. He could tell Carlos wasn't used to being showered with such a specific type of endearment, the kind that leaves no room for uncertainty about the way TK feels – a love so strong that it comes pouring out in the way he opens himself up to him, claiming him as his baby. Carlos seldom returns that particular affection, but when he does it's when he's feeling particularly protective, tender, or vulnerable. Or, alternatively, when he wants to ravish TK in bed. His voice drops an octave and he repeats the word in an almost-whisper, his lips ghosting just behind his ears and falling down to press a soft, wet kiss to shoulder. TK sighs, understanding exactly what Carlos is signaling to him right now. He wants to take care of him. Take him out of his head. And who is he to say no to that? "Do you want me to take care of you now, my love?"

Tagging: @strandnreyes @paperstorm @bonheur-cafe @lemonlyman-dotcom @carlos-in-glasses @emsprovisions @sapphic--kiwi @literateowl @eclectic-sassycoweyes @nancys-braids @captain-gillian @thisbuildinghasfeelings @alrightbuckaroo @theghostofashton @freneticfloetry @everlastingday @chicgeekgirl89 @morganaspendragons @carlos-tk @henrygrass @carlossreaders @rangersoup @futures-tense @heartstringsduet @goodways @whatsintheboxmh @decafdino @lightningboltreader @liminalmemories21 @reyesstrand @butchreyes @annoyingcloudearthquake @certifiedflower @neversleepuntilfive @the-126-family @nisbanisba + open tag

[reyesstrand]

wip wednesday

thanks for the tags @paperstorm @carlossreaders @literateowl @nisbanisba @strandnreyes @everlastingday @whatsintheboxmh @ironheartwriter @laelipoo @tellmegoodbye @lemonlyman-dotcom @carlos-in-glasses and happy holidays! here’s a little something from my posted secret santa fic before i run off to work :’(

“Yeah,” TK says, his voice rough as he stifles another groan. His hand curls around the back of Carlos’ head, fingers scratching through his hair, his thumb brushing the shell of his ear. “Mmph. Love you.”

It’s a quick peak after that, the two of them coming undone a breath apart. They curl around each other and slump over to the middle of the bed, stretching their legs out and murmuring their morning I love yous. The digital alarm clock across the room blinks 7:17 in faded green neon, a pressing reminder that they only have so much time tucked away in their own space.

“So, your dad’s at five?” Carlos asks, even as TK wiggles against his side and tries to nudge him to turn over. “Hey, I’m cuddling you here, dude.”

“Let me hold you,” TK says, sliding his arms around Carlos’ middle. “Come on, you had all of last night.”

“Babe, Jonah’s gonna be up in like, ten minutes,” Carlos laughs, even as he happily gives in to his husband’s whims and pout and turns over to his right side. “We should be up before then. You know he has no problems just busting in here.”

“Gimme five minutes,” TK says, properly spooning up against Carlos’ back and nuzzling his face against his throat. “M’kay, what were you saying? Dad’s at five?”

“That’s what he told you, right?” Carlos asks, tracing mindless shapes over TK’s forearm with his index finger. His blunt fingernail follows the lines of the honeybee, something he’s found himself able to do without even looking.

no pressure tagging @butchreyes @liminalmemories21 @theghostofashton @emsprovisions @alrightbuckaroo @pelorsdyke @captain-gillian @nancys-braids @heartstringsduet @bonheur-cafe @never-blooms @freneticfloetry @goodways & open tag!!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What’s a “public internet?”

I'm in the home stretch of my 24-city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in LONDON (July 1) with TRASHFUTURE'S RILEY QUINN and then a big finish in MANCHESTER on July 2.

The "Eurostack" is a (long overdue) project to publicly fund a European "stack" of technology that is independent from American Big Tech (as well as other powers' technology that has less hold in Europe, such as Chinese and Russian tech):

https://www.euro-stack.info/

But "technological soveriegnty" is a slippery and easily abused concept. Policies like "national firewalls" and "data localization" (where data on a country's population need to be kept on onshore servers) can be a means to different ends. Data localization is important if you want to keep an American company from funneling every digital fact about everyone in your country to the NSA. But it's also a way to make sure that your secret police can lay hands on population-scale data about anyone they might want to kidnap and torture:

https://doctorow.medium.com/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography-33aa668dc602

At its worst, "technological sovereignty" is a path to a shattered internet with a million dysfunctional borders that serve as checkpoints where thuggish customs inspectors can stop you from availing yourself of privacy-preserving technology and prevent you from communicating with exiled dissidents and diasporas.

But at its best, "technological sovereignty" is a way to create world-girding technology that can act as an impartial substrate on which all manner of domestic and international activities can play out, from a group of friends organizing a games night, to scientists organizing a symposium, to international volunteer corps organizing aid after a flood.

In other words, "technological sovereignty" can be a way to create a public internet that the whole public controls – not just governments, but also people, individuals who can exercise their own technological self-determination, controlling crucial aspects of their own technology usage, like "who will see this thing I'm saying?" and "whose communications will I see, and which ones can I block?"

A "public internet" isn't the same thing as "an internet that is operated by your government," but you can't get a public internet without government involvement, including funding, regulation, oversight and direct contributions.

Here's an example of different ways that governments can involve themselves in the management of one part of the internet, and the different ways in which this will create more or less "public" internet services: fiber optic lines.

Fiber is the platinum standard for internet service delivery. Nothing else comes even close to it. A plastic tube under the road that is stuffed with fiber optic strands can deliver billions of times more data than copper wires or any form of wireless, including satellite constellations like Starlink:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/30/fight-for-44/#slowpokes

(Starlink is the most antifuturistic technology imaginable – a vision of a global internet that gets slower and less reliable as more people sign up for it. It makes the dotcom joke of "we lose money on every sale but make it up in volume" look positively bankable.)

The private sector cannot deliver fiber. There's no economical way for a private entity to secure the rights of way to tear up every street in every city, to run wires into every basement or roof, to put poles on every street corner. Same goes for getting the rights of way to string fiber between city limits across unincorporated county land, or across the long hauls that cross national and provincial or state borders.

Fiber itself is cheap like borscht – it's literally made out of sand – but clearing the thicket of property rights and political boundaries needed to get wire everywhere is a feat that can only be accomplished through government intervention.

Fiber's opponents rarely acknowledge this. They claim, instead, that the physical act of stringing wires through space is somehow transcendentally hard, despite the fact that we've been doing this with phone lines and power cables for more than a century, through the busiest, densest cities and across the loneliest stretches of farmland. Wiring up a country is not the lost art of a fallen civilization, like building pyramids without power-tools or embalming pharoahs. It's something that even the poorest counties in America can manage, bringing fiber across forbidden mountain passes on the back of a mule named "Ole Bub":

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

When governments apply themselves to fiber provision, you get fiber. Don't take my word for it – ask Utah, a bastion of conservative, small-government orthodoxy, where 21 cities now have blazing fast 10gb internet service thanks to a public initiative called (appropriately enough) "Utopia":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

So government have to be involved in fiber, but how should they involve themselves in it? One model – the worst one – is for the government to intervene on behalf of a single company, creating the rights of way for that company to lay fiber in the ground or string it from poles. The company then owns the network, even though the fiber and the poles were the cheapest part of the system, worth an unmeasurably infinitesimal fraction of the value of all those rights of way.

In the worst of the worst, the company that owns this network can do anything they want with its fiber. They can deny coverage to customers, or charge thousands of dollars to connect each new homes to the system. They can gouge on monthly costs, starve their customer service departments or replace them with mindless AI chatbots. They can skimp on maintenance and keep you waiting for days or weeks when your internet goes out. They can lard your bill with junk fees, or force you to accept pointless services like landlines and cable TV as a condition of getting the internet.

They can also play favorites with local businesses: maybe they give great service to every Domino's pizza place at knock-down rates, and make up for it by charging extra to independent pizza parlors that want to accept internet orders and stream big sports matches on the TV over the bar.

They can violate Net Neutrality, slowing down your connection to sites unless their owners agree to pay bribes for "premium carriage." They can censor your internet any way they see fit. Remember, corporations – unlike governments – are not bound by the First Amendment, which means that when a corporation is your ISP, they can censor anything they feel like:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

Governments can improve on this situation by regulating a monopoly fiber company. They can require the company to assume a "universal service" mandate, meaning they must connect any home or business that wants it at a set rate. Governments can ban junk fees, set minimum standards for customer service and repair turnarounds, and demand neutral carriage. All of this can improve things, though its a lot of work to administer, and the city government may lack the resources and technical expertise to investigate every claim of corporate malfeasance, and to perform the technical analysis to evaluate corporate excuses for slow connections and bungled repairs.

That's the worst model: governments clear the way for a private monopolist to set up your internet, offering them a literally priceless subsidy in the form of rights of way, and then, maybe, try to keep them honest.

Here's the other extreme: the government puts in the fiber itself, running conduit under all the streets (either with its own crews or with contract crews) and threading a fiber optic through a wall of your choice, terminating it with a box you can plug your wifi router into. The government builds a data-center with all the necessary switches for providing service to you and your neighbors, and hires people to offer you internet service at a reasonable price and with reasonable service guarantees.

This is a pretty good model! Over 750 towns and cities – mostly conservative towns in red states – have this model, and they're almost the only people in America who consistently describe themselves as happy with their internet service:

https://ilsr.org/articles/municipal-broadband-skyrocket-as-alternative-to-private-models/

(They are joined in their satisfaction by a smattering of towns served by companies like Ting, who bought out local cable companies and used their rights of way to bring fiber to households.)

This is a model that works very well, but can fail very badly. Municipal governments can be pretty darned kooky, as five years of MAGA takeovers of school boards, library boards and town councils have shown, to say nothing of wildly corrupt big-city monsters like Eric Adams (ten quintillion congratulations to Zohran Mamdani!). If there's one thing I've learned from the brilliant No Gods No Mayors podcast, it's that mayors are the weirdest people alive:

https://www.patreon.com/collection/869728?view=condensed

Remember: Sarah Palin got her start in politics as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Do you want to have to rely on Sarah Palin for your internet service?

https://www.patreon.com/posts/119567308?collection=869728

How about Rob Ford? Do you want the crack mayor answering your tech support calls? I didn't think so:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/rob-ford-part-1-111985831

But that's OK! A public fiber network doesn't have to be one in which the government is your only choice for ISP. In addition to laying fiber and building a data-center and operating a municipal ISP, governments can also do something called "essential facilities sharing":

https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Orders/1999/fcc99238.pdf

Governments all over the world did this in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and some do it still. Under an essential facilities system, the big phone company (BT in the UK, Bell in Canada, AT&T and the Baby Bells in the USA) were required to rent space to their competitors in their data centers. Anyone who wants to set up an ISP can install their own switching gear at a telephone company central office and provide service to any business or household in the country.

If the government lays fiber in your town, they can both operate a municipal fiber ISP and allow anyone else to set up their own ISP, renting them shelf-space at the data-center. That means that the town college can offer internet to all its faculty and students (not just the ones who live in campus housing), and your co-op can offer internet service to its members. Small businesses can offer specialized internet, and so can informal groups of friends. So can big companies. In this model, everyone is guaranteed both the right to get internet access and the right to provide internet access. It's a great system, and it means that when Mayor Sarah Palin decides to cut off your internet, you don't need to sue the city – you can just sign up with someone else, over the same fiber lines.

That's where essential facilities sharing starts, but that's not where it needs to stop. When the government puts conduit (plastic tubes) in the ground for fiber, they can leave space for more fiber to fished through, and rent space in the conduit itself. That means that an ISP that wants to set up its own data center can run physically separate lines to its subscribers. It means that a university can do a point-to-point connection between a remote scientific instrument like a radio telescope and the campus data-center. A business can run its own lines between branch offices, and a movie studio can run dedicated lines from remote sound-stages to the edit suites at its main facility.

This is a truly public internet service – one where there is a publicly owned ISP, but also where public infrastructure allows for lots of different kinds of entities to provide internet access. It's insulated from the risks of getting your tech support from city hall, but it also allows good local governments to provide best-in-class service to everyone in town, something that local governments have a pretty great track record with.

The Eurostack project isn't necessarily about fiber, though. Right now, Europeans are thinking about technological sovereignty through the lens of software and services. That's fair enough, though it does require some rethinking of the global fiber system, which has been designed so that the US government can spy on and disconnect every other country in the world:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/10/weaponized-interdependence/#the-other-swifties

Just as with the example of fiber, there are a lot of ways the EU and member states could achieve "technological sovereignty." They could just procure data-centers, server software, and the operation of social media, cloud hosting, mobile OSes, office software, and other components of Europeans' digital lives from the private sector – sort of like asking a commercial operator to run your town's internet service.

The EU has pretty advanced procurement rules, designed to allow European governments to buy from the private sector while minimizing corruption and kickbacks. For example, there's a rule that the lowest priced bid that conforms to all standards needs to win the contract. This sounds good (and it is, in many cases) but it's how Newag keeps selling trains in Poland, even after they were caught boobytrapping their trains so they would immobilize themselves if the operator took them for independent maintanance:

https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-we-ve-not-been-trained-for-this-life-after-the-newag-drm-disclosure

The EU doesn't have to use public-private partnerships to build the Eurostack. They could do it all themselves. The EU and/or member states could operate public data centers. They could develop their own social media platforms, mobile OSes, and apps. They could be the equivalent of the municipal ISP that offers fast fiber to everyone in town.

As with public monopoly ISPs, this is a system that works well, but fails badly. If you think Elon Musk is a shitty social media boss, wait'll you see the content moderation policies of Viktor Orban – or Emmanuel Macron:

https://jacobin.com/2025/06/france-solidarity-urgence-palestine-repression

Publicly owned data centers could be great, but also, remember that EU governments have never given up on their project of killing working encryption so that their security services can spy on everyone. Austria's doing it right now!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/austrian-government-agrees-plan-allow-150831232.html

Ever since Snowden, EU governments have talked a good line about the importance of digital privacy. Remember Angela Merkel's high dudgeon about how her girlhood in the GDR gave her a special horror of NSA surveillance?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24647268

Apparently, Merkel managed to get over her horror of mass surveillance and back total, unaccountable, continuous digital surveillance over all of Germany:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-surveillance-laws-raise-privacy-concerns

So there's good reasons to worry about having your data – and your apps – hosted in an EU cloud.

To create a European public internet, it's neither necessary nor desirable to have your digital life operated by the EU and its member states, nor by its private contractors. Instead, the EU could make Eurostack a provider of technological public goods.

For example, the EU could work to improve federated social media systems, like Mastodon and Bluesky. EU coders could contribute to the server and client software for both. They could participate in future versions of the standard. They could provide maintenance code in response to bug reports, and administer bug bounties. They could create tooling for server administrators, including moderation tools, both for Mastodon and for Bluesky, whose "composable moderation" system allows users to have the final say over their moderation choices. The EU could perform and/or fund labelling work to help with moderation.

The EU could also provide tooling to help server administrators stand up their own independent Mastodon and Bluesky servers. Bluesky needs a lot of work on this, still. Bluesky's CTO has got a critical piece of server infrastructure to run on a Raspberry Pi for a few euros per month:

https://justingarrison.com/blog/2024-12-02-run-a-bluesky-pds-from-home/

Previously, this required a whole data center and cost millions to operate, so this is great. But this now needs to be systematized, so that would-be Bluesky administrators can download a package and quickly replicate the feat.

Ultimately, the choice of Mastodon or Bluesky shouldn't matter all that much to Europeans. These standards can and should evolve to the point where everyone on Bluesky can talk to everyone on Mastodon and vice-versa, and where you can easily move your account from one server to another, or one service to another. The EU already oversees systems for account porting and roaming on mobile networks – they can contribute to the technical hurdles that need to be overcome to bring this to social media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

In addition to improving federated social media, the EU and its member states can and should host their own servers, both for their own official accounts and for public use. Giving the public a digital home is great, especially if anyone who chafes at the public system's rules can hop onto a server run by a co-op, a friend group, a small business or a giant corporation with just a couple clicks, without losing any of their data or connections.

This is essential facilities sharing for services. Combine it with public data centers and tooling for migrating servers from and to the public server to a private, or nonprofit, or co-op data-center, and you've got the equivalent of publicly available conduit, data-centers, and fiber.

In addition to providing code, services and hardware, the EU can continue to provide regulation to facilitate the public internet. They can expand the very limited interoperability mandates in the Digital Markets Act, forcing legacy social media companies like Meta and Twitter to stand up APIs so that when a European quits their service for new, federated media, they can stay in touch with the friends they left behind (think of it as Schengen for social media, with guaranteed free movement):

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

With the Digital Service Act, the EU has done a lot of work to protect Europeans from fraud, harassment and other online horribles. But a public internet also requires protections for service providers – safe harbors and carve outs that allow you to host your community's data and conversations without being dragged into controversies when your users get into flamewars with each other. If we make the people who run servers liable for their users' bad speech acts, then the only entities that will be able to afford the lawyers and compliance personnel will be giant American tech companies run by billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#230

A "public internet" isn't an internet that's run by the government: it's a system of publicly subsidized, publicly managed public goods that are designed to allow everyone to participate in both using and providing internet services. The Eurostack is a brilliant idea whose time arrived a decade ago. Digital sovereignty projects are among the most important responses to Trumpism, a necessary step to build an independent digital nervous system the rest of the world can use to treat the USA as damage and route around it. We can't afford to have "digital soveriegnty" be "national firewalls 2.0" – we need a public internet, not 200+ national internets.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/25/eurostack/#viktor-orbans-isp

[iboatedhere]

Thank you @anincompletelist @liminalmemories21 @clottedcreamfudge @cha-melodius & @lemonlyman-dotcom for the tags♥️

Most of my words are either a secret (AWY event) or already posted (Ficlet Friday) and I’m swiftly running out of unshared words from my other WIPs BUT:

—

FirstPrince Reporter AU

He feels like he’s stuck in limbo. Not as young as he once was, but not old, either. Not lonely, but definitely alone. He’s simply floating through life, waiting for something big to happen.

He doesn’t really think it’s going to happen tonight, not at this club. The music is loud and the drinks are cheap but Grant, with stubble and green eyes, is cute and clearly into him. It’s not a life changing encounter, but it could be fun.

“You know my flat isn’t far from here,” Grant says as he leans in, his hand falling to Alex’s hip.

It would be nice but before Alex can accept the invitation, he glances over Grant’s shoulder and catches a flash of brown hair and a familiar face.

Maybe it’s the fact that he’s only one and a half drinks in while everyone else is at least four, or the low lighting, or that nobody here looks like they give a flying fuck about the monarchy but Princess Beatrice floats through the crowd without turning a head.

Since Alex has been covering the royals, he’s made a game of spotting their protection details. Some of them are obvious—dark suits and glasses, a flash of a handgun on one hip and a radio on the other. Sometimes they like to blend in, especially in large crowds, winding their way through the masses to stop a threat before it starts. But jeans and jumpers don’t hide the straight line of their shoulders or the way their heads are always on a swivel. Alex can spot them from a mile away.

Tonight he doesn’t see anyone.

There’s no one to stop her from plucking a drink out of a stranger's hand and downing it all in one go or for some random guy to grab her around the waist and pull her against him.

It’s concerning, given that she’s supposed to be at a wellness retreat for the next three weeks even though everyone knows that’s code for rehab.

“Fuck,” Alex says and Grant nods.

“Yes, that’s the plan.”

—

WolfNichols Grief Fic

Wolf’s never met Josh’s parents—at least not formally.

He’s answered Josh’s phone when they’ve called; when Josh was up to his elbows in soapy dishwater or just stepped into the shower, or stepped out to get the mail. Josh had told him to answer—that if it went to voicemail he’d just have to call them back and that’s more work than he wanted to put in.

He’s had polite conversations, mostly with his mother. They’ve talked about the weather and the hospital—everything vague and impersonal. Wolf knows they know who he is and what he is to Josh. Josh has never made an excuse for him or took a call to another room. At some point, Josh must have told them that they were living together because the next Christmas card came addressed to both of them. Wolf had thought it was nice while Josh tossed it onto the counter with a grunt before dumping the junk mail into the trash.

That’s really the extent of it. Michael and Deborah Nichols, now just Deborah Nichols, who lives in Stonington, Connecticut, and gave birth to a son nearly fifty years ago who, inexplicably, has decided to love Wolf and who Wolf loves as easy as breathing in return.

It’s a lot to know, but it’s also nothing to know. For as open Josh is to talking about his feelings, his parents seem to be a major sticking point. Josh has had a three-sixty view of Wolf’s family drama for years. He has listened to Wolf rant and cry and comforted him when Wolf felt like he didn’t deserve it. He’s stood by him through his father’s sudden reintroduction into his life and during his slow and painful exit. Wolf has always wanted to ask what the deal is. He’s always wanted to be on the same page but he’s never wanted to push.

Now it feels like life is pushing back as they make their way through stop and go traffic on I-95, just outside of Milford.

—

Tagging: @porcelainmortal @bitbybitwrites @dizzymisslizzie @ericka--kinney @onthewaytosomewhere @suseagull5914 @sophie1973

[whatsintheboxmh]

The Moodboard 3D ART Your Fic or Faves Tag Game

The Railyard

written by Jen @strandnreyes

Summary:

One dead body, seven suspects, and two undercover detectives sent in to get to the bottom of it. It shouldn’t be too difficult—TK and Carlos are used to solving murders—but when the department decides the best cover is to go in as newlywed husbands, they’re forced to face some hard truths. As the case goes on, they struggle to remember what’s real and what’s fake, and they worry the suspects’ secrets may not be the only ones that are revealed.

ty @carlos-in-glasses for starting this!

and to @strandnreyes @heartstringsduet @carlossreaders @alrightbuckaroo @herefortarlos @carlos-in-glasses

@annoyingcloudearthquake for tagging

I don't make mood boards, but I join with art♡

The rules: Either: choose one of your published fics (or a WIP if you'd prefer), create a moodboard for it and share it along with a snippet. Or: Create a moodboard for your fave episode of the show, fave character, or a fic someone else has written that you love, and share it with some sentences about why it's a fave! (And tag people!)

no pressure tag!

@lightningboltreader @lemonlyman-dotcom @eclectic-sassycoweyes

@theghostofashton @fallout-mars

@herefortarlos @honeybee-taskforce @ladytessa74

@liminalmemories21 @freneticfloetry @chicgeekgirl89

@carlos-tk @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut

@never-blooms @reyesstrand

@rmd-writes @goodways @bonheur-cafe

@alrightbuckaroo @orchidscript @welcometololaland

@strandnreyes @tinyluminaryzombie

@thisbuildinghasfeelings @paperstorm @nancys-braids

@heartstringsduet @carlos-in-glasses @tellmegoodbye

@ironheartwriter @decafdino @literateowl

@emsprovisions @sapphic--kiwi

@corsage @goodways @henrygrass @carlossreaders

@carlos-tk @alrightbuckaroo @carlos-in-glasses

@orchidscript @the-126-family

@everlastingday @annoyingcloudearthquake

[carlos-in-glasses]

Thank you for the tag @whatsintheboxmh @annoyingcloudearthquake @heartstringsduet @strandnreyes and @thisbuildinghasfeelings🧡

This is a work is published Wednesday! I've been keeping this fic secret for Lemon's birthday, but I'm so happy to share Where You'll Find Me, a coda for 4x09, now on Ao3! 9k, M.

In which our two heroes get a little carried away:

“Babe. Come on. She’s alright.”

“She was going to die in the woods in a fucking pipe.”

“No, she wasn’t,” Carlos says firmly, taking TK’s cheeks in his hands and squishing with equal power to his tone. “She was never going to die there. Your dad and Judd and Paul – they were always going to find her and bring her home. That’s why you and Owen came to Austin, right? To save people. That includes all of us. It always has.”

TK blinks at Carlos with wet, furious eyes, his mouth smushed in a wobbly line that Carlos kisses. He releases TK’s cheeks a little then, kisses them, kisses TK’s nose, his forehead, his eyelids. TK finds Carlos’ lips properly and kisses him back, deep and long. Carlos has been so wonderful today. Truly a rock, but also something soft for people to vent to, cry on, sleep on. TK can’t believe how lucky he is. He gets to kiss this incredible man who is his person, his heart.

“Ahem!” An over-the-top coughy-grunt startles them apart.

TK and Carlos look over their shoulders to find Owen, Paul, Judd, Grace, Mateo, Nancy, Tommy, three nurses, two doctors, and about twenty other people trying to mind their own business, all staring at them.

“There’s a time and place, boys,” Owen says.

“Sorry,” TK mutters as Carlos clears his throat. All the kissing has managed to steam up Carlos’ glasses and he appears to be blushing to death.

“Go in and see her,” Owen tells them, “And try to stay out of trouble.”

Open tag and tags below:

@paperstorm @goodways @lightningboltreader

@bonheur-cafe @alrightbuckaroo @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut

@orchidscript @freneticfloetry @mikibwrites @theghostofashton

@reyesstrand @ladytessa74 @liminalmemories21 @lemonlyman-dotcom

@tellmegoodbye @welcometololaland @rmd-writes @chicgeekgirl89

@butchreyes @emsprovisions @sapphic--kiwi @ironheartwriter

@anactualcaseofthetruth @pimento-playing-hopscotch @eclectic-sassycoweyes

@hereghostslive @herefortarlos @henrygrass @everlastingday

@carlossreaders @futures-tense @the-126-family

@rangersoup @nisbanisba @nancys-braids @laelipoo @captain-gillian

@literateowl @kiwichaeng @carlos-tk @no-goodbyes-no-regrets - If you want to share/haven't already. No pressure ever! ❤️🩷🧡💛💚💙🩵💜