#government scheme access

[townpostin]

Youth Congress Hosts Pension Camp in Bhuinyadih Jamshedpur

Rakesh Sahu Announces Upcoming Medical Camp with Comprehensive Services Youth Congress initiative aids locals with pension form filling and promises future health services in Shyam Nagar. JAMSHEDPUR – The Youth Congress organized a pension form filling camp at Ganesh Mandir in Shyam Nagar, Bhuinyadih, assisting residents with various welfare schemes. State Secretary Rakesh Sahu, leading the…

[insightfultake]

Understanding the Janaushadhi Scheme: Affordable Healthcare for All

The Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) has emerged as a transformative initiative aimed at ensuring affordable healthcare for the Indian population. In a country where medical expenses often become a burden for millions, this scheme provides a cost-effective alternative through generic medicines sold at dedicated outlets known as Janaushadhi Kendras. With rising healthcare costs and limited accessibility to affordable medicines, the government’s initiative plays a crucial role in bridging the healthcare gap. Despite its success, several challenges remain that need to be addressed for better implementation and widespread acceptance.

[buzzofnews234]

Kejriwal’s Sanjeevani & Mahila Samman Yojana in Delhi – Rs 2100 Monthly

Kejriwal’s Sanjeevani Yojana and Mahila Samman Yojana are excellent opportunities for women in Delhi to secure financial support, enhance their well-being, and promote gender equality. With Rs 2100 awarded every month, these schemes will help alleviate economic burdens, provide access to healthcare, and empower women to build better futures for themselves and their families. If you meet the eligibility criteria, don’t miss out on registering for these life-changing initiatives. Apply today and start benefiting from the government’s support for women in Delhi.

[sapphia]

USA please listen to me: the price of “teaching them a lesson” is too high. take it from New Zealand, who voted our Labour government out in the last election because they weren’t doing exactly what we wanted and got facism instead.

Trans rights are being attacked, public transport has been defunded, tax cuts issued for the wealthy, they've mass-defunded public services, cut and attacked the disability funding model, cut benefits, diverted transport funding to roads, cut all recent public transport subsidies, cancelled massive important infrastructure projects like damns and ferries (we are three ISLANDS), fast tracked mining, oil, and other massive environmentally detrimental projects and gave the power the to approve these projects singularly to three ministers who have been wined and dined by lobbyists of the companies that have put the bids in to approve them while one of the main minister infers he will not prioritise the protection of endangered species like the archeys frog over mining projects that do massive environmental harm. They have attacked indigenous rights in an attempt to negate the Treaty of Waitangi by “redefining it”; as a backup, they are also trying to remove all mentions of the treaty from legislation starting with our Child Protection laws no longer requiring social workers to consider the importance of Maori children’s culture when placing those children; when the Waitangi Tribunal who oversees indigenous matters sought to enquire about this, the Minister for Children blocked their enquiry in a breach of comity that was condemned in a ruling — too late to do anything — by our Supreme Court. They have repealed labour protections around pay and 90 day trials, reversed our smoking ban, cancelled our EV subsidy, cancelled our water infrastructure scheme that would have given Maori iwi a say in water asset management, cancelled our biggest city’s fuel tax, made our treasury and inland revenue departments less accountable, dispensed of our Productivity Commission, begun work on charter schools and military boot camps in an obvious push towards privatisation, cancelled grants for first home buyers, reduced access to emergency housing, allowed no cause evictions, cancelled our Maori health system that would have given Maori control over their own public medical care and funding, cut funding of services like budgeting advice and food banks, cancelled the consumer advocacy council, cancelled our medicine regulations, repealed free prescriptions, deferred multiple hospital builds, failed to deliver on pre-election medical promises, reversed a gun ban created in response to the mosque shootings, brought back three strikes = life sentence policy, increased minimum wage by half the recommended amount, cancelled fair pay for disabled workers, reduced wheelchair services, reversed our oil and gas exploration ban, cancelled our climate emergency fund, cut science research funding including climate research, removed limits on killing sea lions, cut funding for the climate change commission, weakened our methane targets, cancelled Significant National Areas protections, have begun reversing our ban on live exports. Much of this was passed under urgency.

It’s been six months.

[unteriors]

I assume you’ve probably answered this before, but what exactly is the underlying politics of this blog? I don’t quite understand the connection between neoliberal capitalism and pictures of desolate housing listings.

Thanks if you take the time to reply! -anon

We live in a bizarre intermediate period where capitalism appears to be eating itself. I originally came across the Gramsci quote in the header via Noam Chomsky in 2015/2016, when he was using it to refer to the pre-Trump lunacy that was taking over the Republican Party. In the US, this seems to have been a sort of cancerous outgrowth of decades of austerity and privatisation and deregulation that began with the end of Bretton Woods and took off in earnest in the 80s under Reagan. Similar processes have been at work to varying degrees across much of the world, throbbing occasionally with particular enthusiasm depending on the elected government, abating temporarily during other periods of Third Way-ite labour stagnation. Housing is at the core of these recent historical trends, and of the relationship between the government and its citizens. I don't know if it could exactly be called the main driving factor, but it plays an enormous role in how we work, how we form relationships, and how we interface with society generally. I remember reading a quote from a conservative politician in the UK in the 80s, responding to a question about why they didn't build more public housing to address the growing homelessness problem; he said something to the effect of 'that would just breed another generation of Labour voters.' I think the cannier politicians (and business leaders) are very aware of their capacity to shape our lives through housing like this.

A similar process has been at work in my country since World War II. We had a succession of two very good Labor Prime Ministers during the 1940s: John Curtin and Ben Chifley. They developed our version of the vast postwar public housing programs that most Western countries had. This provided stable, affordable (or often just free) housing for a huge chunk of the population who wouldn't have had access to it before the war. After Chifley, a conservative government under Robert Menzies came to power in a wave of anti-communist hysteria. Menzies appealed directly to a class of the population which he called the 'forgotten people': people in the middle strata of society who, in his characterisation, didn't get involved in trade unions or radical political organisations, didn't protest, and just wanted to get on with their lives in an apolitical solitude. In reality, this was less of a class of people that already existed and more one he set out to proactively create. He did this, in part, by altering the public housing scheme to give the baby boomers the right to buy the property the government had given them. This entrenched home ownership and, arguably, introduced a level of scarcity to the public housing stock in the long-run, and set the groundwork for later government support of housing as a financial asset, guaranteed to appreciate. It also, in a way, helped create that class of 'quiet' Australian: a solid middle 75-80% of the population that could be guaranteed a comfortable, suburban lifestyle, within an apolitical bubble quietly guaranteed by interventions into the economy by the government and regulation of the housing market in their favour. Over the years, this proportion of the population has gradually decreased, more markedly so since the overt financialisation of housing under John Howard in the early 2000s, and it's fallen off a cliff since COVID.

There's a tradition in art that I've been interested in for a while which involves broadening creative fields (in artmaking or criticism) through direct engagement with fields of work, of machine production, of lived experience or other symptoms of the oppressive political reality we live under (realism in the Linda Nochlin sense). You see it in the controversy around Courbet's paintings of manual workers, much of Andy Warhol's work and general contempt for the art world (his silkscreens of graphic photos of car crashes he found in the newspaper stand out to me), or more recently some of the controversy that came from Tracey Emin's installations. More broadly, there's something to be said about the conscious effort to make transparent and use aesthetically the machine behind the reproduction, or distribution, or amplification, etc., of art. The use of feedback in music seem to me to be an example of this. To use a couple of examples of a period of music I'm particularly interested in, grunge is one example, but so are reggae sound systems which use custom-made valve amps that give an enormous low-end to vinyls they would play, to the point of using the records as instruments to create a sort of rumbling distortion (Jah Shaka's sessions seem to have premediated alternative rock, operating on parallel tracks). These forms of creative production seem to organically emerge from the detritus of industrialisation, and seem to respond to its alienation and atomisation of human relations. I'm interested in breaking the functionality of illegitimate systems. At uni I took a series of photographs of the backs of shops. There was something comforting in identifying how a commercial entity wanted to be presented visually, and then representing it in the exact opposite way. Similarly, though I don't know if this could be considered an art project, I like an incompetent realtor. The aesthetic qualities of a real estate listing that completely fails in its intended purpose can be quite rich, in some ways liberating. An enormous amount of imagery is generated by the institutional machinery of commercial institutions, much of it ephemeral. If you rescue some visual artifacts from this increasingly engorged flood and look at them against their intended purpose you get a little window into the broader world, where advertising agencies and algorithms and real estate agents and SEI specialists, etc., aren't constantly grabbing your face and forcing you to look at the most boring and monetisable parts of the visual world. You have the opportunity to experience fear, hate, genuine nostalgia and melancholy, various other complex passionate experiences inaccessible in the neoliberal digital machine perversion of visual culture and creative experience.

This is a kind of a roundabout way of answering your question. Maybe part of my motivation has something to do with the relationship between art and work. If you reject the art as some higher, privileged category interpretation (i.e. this is just a photograph, but this other photograph is Art), then the boundaries of what constitutes art, or what can be read as art, are pretty porous. The machinery of industrialisation and capitalism took away the ability of people working in home workshops to have some control and creative involvement in their own working lives and turned them into atomised, specialised machine parts at the mercy of their employers and the market. The parts of work that could be considered contiguous with what we call art have been severed. Art and artists have suffered the same effects; contemporary artists seem to me not that different from other independent professionals. If you go to a dentist's office on Cambridge Street in Perth they'll often have a brochure with a blurb about their history and their mission as medical professionals, etc., on the front counter, and by the same token every artist in an exhibition is taught to provide their own little didactic overview of their niche interests, mostly independent from deeper, shared commitments (lumped together like a sack of potatoes, per Marx). I feel it makes sense to reach back out into other parts of the economy force art into them.

[purplepirate123]

Time for Citizens to Hit Elon with a Privacy Act Violation

Email Template

To: privacy@treasury.gov

Subject Line: Civil Liberties Complaint

Hello,

I am making a civil liberties complaint under the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C. § 552a. It has been brought to my attention that Elon Musk and his associates, under the guise of a directive of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) (an IT office in the White House), have acquired access to Treasury Department Records in Systems of Records as defined in the Act. As an individual covered by the Act, I believe that there may be records about me in these Treasury Department systems, and I am concerned for the following reasons:

Elon Musk is not an elected official.

Even if Musk were an elected official, the System of Records Notices (SORNs) governing the Treasury Department Privacy Act systems do not allow for disclosure to Musk and his associates per the Routine Uses.

Disclosure of personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive personally identifiable information (SPII) to Musk and his associates would be an unauthorized disclosure and therefore breach of information.

The Treasury Department must (1) quickly investigate what Privacy Act records that Musk and his associates have unlawfully accessed, (2) reveal to the public what unauthorized disclosures were made, (3) stop further access, (4) force any files acquired by Musk and his associates to be returned and/or permanently destroyed, and (5) seek criminal penalties against Musk and his associates for violations of the Act.

Sincerely,

[INSERT NAME AND CONTACT INFORMATION]

Privacy Act of 1974

The spirit of this law is rooted in presidential drama and corruption. It was passed as a direct result of the Watergate Scandal which uncovered the federal government’s scheme of illegally investigating and maintaining records about individuals. So in an effort to provide transparency to the public and an assurance that the government would not misuse records about us all, the Privacy Act of 1974 was born.

Multiple unions have now filed a lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service under the Privacy Act as well as other privacy laws. They are seeking a civil remedy in the form of a restraining order to prevent DOGE from accessing records. But the Act also allows for criminal penalties to be assessed. The two that could apply to Musk and his associates include:

“Any person who knowingly and willfully requests or obtains any record concerning an individual from an agency under false pretenses shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined not more than $5,000.” 5 U.S.C. § 552a(i)(3).”

“Any officer or employee of any agency who willfully maintains a system of records without meeting the notice requirements of subsection (e)(4) of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined not more than $5,000.” 5 U.S.C. § 552a(i)(2).”

The first applies to Musk accessing Privacy Act records from the Treasury Department under false pretenses of carrying out official government duties.

The second could apply if Musk creates a system of records in the DOGE office without complying with the law. For example, if he began using his IT office role to create records about individuals in the government or who receive government assistance, that would be a violation. It is very likely we will need to demand an investigation into DOGE and what they have on US citizens, too.

Email the Treasury Department today with the template up above. We deserve to have our privacy protected, and some loser who isn’t even from this country shouldn’t be allowed to stomp all over our rights.

ELON MUSK IS STAGING A COUP AT THE US TREASURY!!! He has not right to be there, no authorization for what he's doing, no oversight. AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS INSTEAD FOCUSING ON DICKFACE'S INSANE GAZA COMMENTS.

Write emails. Call your senators. ALSO, TODAY, MARCH. Every Us capital city in every state. And if you can get to DC or are in DC, hit the streets.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

China hacked Verizon, AT&T and Lumen using the FBI’s backdoor

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

State-affiliated Chinese hackers penetrated AT&T, Verizon, Lumen and others; they entered their networks and spent months intercepting US traffic – from individuals, firms, government officials, etc – and they did it all without having to exploit any code vulnerabilities. Instead, they used the back door that the FBI requires every carrier to furnish:

https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/u-s-wiretap-systems-targeted-in-china-linked-hack-327fc63b?st=C5ywbp&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

In 1994, Bill Clinton signed CALEA into law. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act requires every US telecommunications network to be designed around facilitating access to law-enforcement wiretaps. Prior to CALEA, telecoms operators were often at pains to design their networks to resist infiltration and interception. Even if a telco didn't go that far, they were at the very least indifferent to the needs of law enforcement, and attuned instead to building efficient, robust networks.

Predictably, CALEA met stiff opposition from powerful telecoms companies as it worked its way through Congress, but the Clinton administration bought them off with hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to acquire wiretap-facilitation technologies. Immediately, a new industry sprang into being; companies that promised to help the carriers hack themselves, punching back doors into their networks. The pioneers of this dirty business were overwhelmingly founded by ex-Israeli signals intelligence personnel, though they often poached senior American military and intelligence officials to serve as the face of their operations and liase with their former colleagues in law enforcement and intelligence.

Telcos weren't the only opponents of CALEA, of course. Security experts – those who weren't hoping to cash in on government pork, anyways – warned that there was no way to make a back door that was only useful to the "good guys" but would keep the "bad guys" out.

These experts were – then as now – dismissed as neurotic worriers who simultaneously failed to understand the need to facilitate mass surveillance in order to keep the nation safe, and who lacked appropriate faith in American ingenuity. If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can build a security system that selectively fails when a cop needs it to, but stands up to every crook, bully, corporate snoop and foreign government. In other words: "We have faith in you! NERD HARDER!"

NERD HARDER! has been the answer ever since CALEA – and related Clinton-era initiatives, like the failed Clipper Chip program, which would have put a spy chip in every computer, and, eventually, every phone and gadget:

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

America may have invented NERD HARDER! but plenty of other countries have taken up the cause. The all-time champion is former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who, when informed that the laws of mathematics dictate that it is impossible to make an encryption scheme that only protects good secrets and not bad ones, replied, "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia":

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-laws-of-australia-will-trump-the-laws-of-mathematics-turnbull/

CALEA forced a redesign of the foundational, physical layer of the internet. Thankfully, encryption at the protocol layer – in the programs we use – partially counters this deliberately introduced brittleness in the security of all our communications. CALEA can be used to intercept your communications, but mostly what an attacker gets is "metadata" ("so-and-so sent a message of X bytes to such and such") because the data is scrambled and they can't unscramble it, because cryptography actually works, unlike back doors. Of course, that's why governments in the EU, the US, the UK and all over the world are still trying to ban working encryption, insisting that the back doors they'll install will only let the good guys in:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

Any back door can be exploited by your adversaries. The Chinese sponsored hacking group know as Salt Typhoon intercepted the communications of hundreds of millions of American residents, businesses, and institutions. From that position, they could do NSA-style metadata-analysis, malware injection, and interception of unencrypted traffic. And they didn't have to hack anything, because the US government insists that all networking gear ship pre-hacked so that cops can get into it.

This isn't even the first time that CALEA back doors have been exploited by a hostile foreign power as a matter of geopolitical skullduggery. In 2004-2005, Greece's telecommunications were under mass surveillance by US spy agencies who wiretapped Greek officials, all the way up to the Prime Minister, in order to mess with the Greek Olympic bid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2%80%9305

This is a wild story in so many ways. For one thing, CALEA isn't law in Greece! You can totally sell working, secure networking gear in Greece, and in many other countries around the world where they have not passed a stupid CALEA-style law. However the US telecoms market is so fucking huge that all the manufacturers build CALEA back doors into their gear, no matter where it's destined for. So the US has effectively exported this deliberate insecurity to the whole planet – and used it to screw around with Olympic bids, the most penny-ante bullshit imaginable.

Now Chinese-sponsored hackers with cool names like "Salt Typhoon" are traipsing around inside US telecoms infrastructure, using the back doors the FBI insisted would be safe.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/07/foreseeable-outcomes/#calea

Image: Kris Duda, modified https://www.flickr.com/photos/ahorcado/5433669707/

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

[probablyasocialecologist]

There are 160,000 UK farm workers (as opposed to owners and managers). Of these, some of the most gruelling agricultural work is done by around 45,000 seasonal migrant workers, either in fields in all weather or in the sweltering heat of polytunnels. The UK attracts migrant farm workers with six-month temporary visas. A United Nations special rapporteur, Tomoya Obokata, an expert in human rights law and modern slavery, has suggested that the UK is breaking international law with its seasonal work scheme by failing to investigate instances of forced labour. Claims of exploitation and bullying on UK farms are also becoming more common. Meanwhile, in an effort to appease farm managers, the UK government recently announced a five-year extension of this scheme. Food and farming organisations have urged the UK to produce more fruit and vegetables as part of a wider shift towards a less carbon-intensive food system. To scale up domestic production will require more workers harvesting crops in poor conditions, especially migrant workers who don’t have the same legal rights as British citizens. Seasonal migrant workers, for example, cannot bring family members to the UK and have no access to benefits, while their visas are often tied to one place of work which typically includes accommodation which leaves them particularly vulnerable to abuse. A call for increased labour, without a call for improved conditions, could mean more exploitation on British farms. Exploitation is not limited to the allegations of a few bad apples either. It is so widespread that it threatens the resilience of the UK’s food system. A recent report found that more than half of migrants at risk of labour abuse work in the food system. A more resilient food supply will require better working conditions, pay and housing for workers in this sector, the report concludes.

25 February 2025

[townpostin]

Government Services Camp Draws 720 Residents in Jugsalai

MLA Mangal Kalindi inaugurates "Aapki Yojana Aapki Sarkar Aapke Dwar" event A government services camp in Jugsalai saw 720 attendees, with 426 applications received for various welfare schemes. JAMSHEDPUR – Jugsalai Municipal Council organized a government services camp at Naseem Marriage Hall, drawing 720 residents seeking access to welfare schemes. The "Aapki Yojana Aapki Sarkar Aapke Dwar"…

[nomsfaultau]

Bunnyblade's 5-Step Plan to World Dominance

(Ok ok first as a biologist I must do my due diligence to be like, there’s actually lots of rules regarding animal experimentation and their quality of life, animal testing greatly increases the safety of BOTH humans and the environment, etc etc IACUC is extensive and thought out. However. Whump :)

Tw: referenced animal abuse, trauma, blood

Lab Bunnyblade. Blood red eyes and sleek white fur that covers up his many scars. He’s level E under the USDA Pain and Distress category. No anesthesia, no rest. Little bun who always bites when he shouldn’t and kicks at scientists and doesn’t know anything but glass and iron and white and fear.

In his immense wisdom and many years of bunny experience (he is TWO (2) whole years), Bunnyblade resolves to topple the United States Government on the grounds of unethical treatment of its citizens (born on US soil! He should get rights!). But the only obstacle between him and the country descending into anarchy is escaping the lab.

As 2 in bunny years is well over 16 in human years, it’s probably not illegal for him to drive. What? Of course he knows how to drive. Bunnyblade only doesn’t know how to break, because he’s shoved a brick on the accelerator and his widdle legs can’t reach that far. He CAN use the turn signal. He doesn’t because he’s an anarchist.

So of course the greatest evil mastermind of the 21st century escapes the lab! Determined bun. Strong bun. But alone bun. All in the cold with no idea how survival works. Bunnyblade is well familiar with human lifestyles due to deciphering human languages and that one time he stole a phone and discovered the internet (with unlimited access for an entire night! THOSE FOOLS! Those moronic scientists scarcely comprehend the monster they’ve made!). But human society turns out to be very discriminatory towards rabbits with no income, and Bunnyblade is at the mercy of the elements.

Cue Philza finding what’s obviously someone’s pet trying to eat plastic turf grass. Cue him frantically chasing down a frightened bun across the neighbor hood so he can return it. (Blast! They’ve hired goons to catch him!) Except- what the hell, this rabbit seems to be evading him no matter what. And Phil starts getting tricky with trying to corner it, but it never seems to work. But in yet another desperate bid to outrun the determined little bun, he smacks into a small child, smelling his ice cream cone. After Tommy is done cursing the stranger to hell and back, he decides he’ll show up Phil by catching the rabbit cause he’s faster and smarter and handsomer!

And then stranger Kristin sees Phil making an absolute dorky fool of himself trying to save a frightened bunny and immediately thinks oh I can’t Not wife him she should help. So now they’re flirting in between absurdly elaborate schemes to trap the bun.

More and more goons are after Bunnyblade! This is TERRIBLE! They must know his secret plans to overthrow the government! It gets up to like 20 different people chasing him around the park. His heart is racing as fast as a rab- erm- okay immediately after he takes over the government he’ll rewrite all English idioms to be more rabbit inclusive, but until then- his heart is beating so fast it hurts, throbbing in painful desperation as more and more humans hunt him down in roaming packs. There’s so many he can’t ever stop running, knowing the second he’s caught he’ll be dragged back to the lab. It'll be so much harder to escape next time, maybe impossible. Never to see the outside world again. No warm sun tousling through his white fur. No soft grass beneath his feet, healing the lines scored into toe beans by wire cage floors. No. Bunnyblade can’t go back to the lab.

So he runs. And runs. Little body aching, unused to to wide open spaces but so desperate to become used to freedom.

Philza keeps being this close to capturing the bun. Mere whiskers off! Everyone is getting more and more invested in helping, feels like half the town is chipping in. There’s multiple teams competing for who captures him first. Philza isn’t sure how, but he’s somehow become the leader, coordinating groups and strategies since somehow the rabbit manages to get capture efforts tangled up in each other to thwart both teams. Tommy insists he’s in charge, though, and to appease the twerp a little Philza says the bunny’s name is ‘Technoblade’ when asked by the news crew. Tommy came up with it off of some kids show, seems to think it’s the raddest name ever.

The joke keeps getting tossed around that this is the reincarnation of Bugs Bunny, that this is a were-rabbit and they transform midday. But for the most part Philza really does this think is a normal, albeit insanely fast and lucky, rabbit. Until when he’s right on the bun’s tail, hurling himself at them in a desperate bid to finally catch them-

Concussion. Right. P-probably just a concussion haha! And after 20 million schemes 6 trips to the ER and enough carrots* to feed a small country, (*carrot thing is a myth but Phil is dumb he don’t know that),

...they catch Technoblade. Philza is cradling the bunny to his chest and -oh, oh he’s so small and soft. Could probably be held in one hand were he not thrashing so much. Philza pants in exhaustion, grinning triumphantly. Around him everyone erupts in the quietest cheers imaginable.

Technoblade is shaking badly. His fluttering heart never seems to calm even as Philza gently strokes them. His struggles are weak, poor thing worn out from fending off dozens of persistence predators. But he's safe now.

And elsewhere, a click of a spacebar on the live news story. The screen zooms in on a blurry glimpse of the escaped lab subjected. His large, terrified red eyes that almost seem to glow.

A long, long sigh, and a latex-gloved hand picks up a phone. “We found it. But it purposefully got as many eyes on it as possible.”

[fantazygirl-blog1]

I'd literally die for a fic where Light actually realizes that killing L is counterproductive to his goal as Kira.

Think about it, as he is, Light, while a genius with death note powers, is just a random university student after all. He doesn't have connections, or influence in powerful circles. He also lacks proper access to information abt the world's worst criminals who are still being investigated and may never even be brought on as a suspect on an ongoing case. And while Light's family isn't poor, they're comfortably middle class. Light doesn't really have that many resources, and if he had gone on with his plan to become a police officer, he wouldn't be able to get much more than that.

Meanwhile, L is literally a world renowned detective, clearly has connections and influence over very high up people. He has the trust of most world's governments. Being a detective so highly sought after, he obviously has access to a hella lot of classified information abt very dangerous criminals Light would LOVE to get rid of. L is also filthy rich, so that wouldn't be a problem either.

So clearly, Light working together with L would be the smartest, most efficient way to achieve Kira's initial goals. Light is supposed to be a master at manipulation, scheming and charismatically convince people to be on his side (and let's not forget that manipulation and scheming are Lawlight's brand of flirting) so why wouldn't he try to seduce L to see things from his perspective?

Like, I want to see Light aggressively scheming to get L on his side while L is just there like wtf is going on, why isn't he trying to kill me? I want canon-like intense mind games except L and Light are on totally different pages. I want L to immediately see through Light's attempts at manipulation and fall even more in love with the total evil asshole that makes L feel alive for the first time. I want them both one upping each other and annoying each other and finally working together as they should be.

Does anyone know ANY fic like this? Or if not, is anyone interested in picking up this idea?

[eternallyordinary]

“He Belongs to You” - Part 11

⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺ ˚ ༘ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺ ˚ ༘ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺ ˚ ༘ ⁺˚⋆｡

Series Masterlist<3

Summary: Homelander struggles between his instincts and emotions, forcing himself to maintain control—but he begins to unravel.

Warnings: smut, violence, harassment, language, graphic detail of violence, sexual assault trauma, alcohol, possessive behavior, yandere, (if i forgot any pls let me know<3)

⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺ ˚ ༘ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺ ˚ ༘ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺ ˚ ༘ ⁺˚⋆｡

Homelander had always been a man of action.

He was driven by impulse, ruled by instinct.

If he wanted something, he took it.

If someone crossed him, they didn’t get the luxury of a second thought—hell, they barely got a final breath.

He didn’t do patience.

He didn’t do restraint.

But for this?

For this, he would wait.

Because more than anything, he had to.

Not because of consequences—he had long since surpassed the need to fear any.

He held more power than the President of the United States, more influence than entire governments.

He could do whatever the fuck he wanted.

But this wasn’t about power.

This was about you.

He wanted this to be perfect.

Ceremonial.

A moment you would remember for the rest of your life.

The monsters who had taken your innocence, the filth who had burdened you with all that pain—they would finally be gone.

And it had to be done right.

So he had made it his mission to know everything about them.

Where they lived.

Where they worked.

What they ate for breakfast.

He put out feelers.

Quietly.

Subtly.

Vought Cyber Security had access to everything—military records, criminal files, social media, private emails, bank accounts.

With a simple command, they began tracking every move of the four men.

No one dared to ask Homelander why.

He knew no one would ask.

They just did what they were told.

The hunt had begun.

And those pathetic excuses for men had no fucking idea.

They were living their miserable little lives, clinking beer glasses, scrolling through their phones.

Breathing as if their past sins were dead and buried. As if they weren’t walking corpses.

He wanted them to think that.

Because when he finally came for them?

He wanted them begging for an end that wouldn’t come quick.

—

The Seven’s briefing room was silent except for the soft taps of Homelander scrolling on his tablet.

Seated at the round table, he scrolled through the extensive files Jerry from Cyber Security had compiled together.

Every detail of the four men laid bare before him.

Each swipe revealing another picture, another video, another piece of their insignificant little lives.

It was like Tinder, except instead of picking a date, he was choosing whose suffering would be the most satisfying to watch.

The anticipation made his blood hum, his fingers twitch.

He shifted in his seat, adjusting himself as a familiar heat coiled low in his stomach.

He would be your knight in shining armor.

He would fix this.

And the thought of it—you looking at him like he was your hero?

It was intoxicating.

The only other person in the room was Sage, sprawled lazily across the couch.

His right-hand woman.

His most trusted advisor.

Always there to steer him—whether he liked it or not.

And she did not like this.

She had been watching him all week, eyes sharp, assessing.

And for good reason.

He had changed.

It was like he had been born again. Like some normal fucking guy who had found salvation.

You had done that to him.

You had turned his world upside down.

And instead of feeling lost, he felt clear.

He knew he would never be normal, but with you… the human parts of himself—the ones he had spent a lifetime suppressing—felt real.

For the first time, he wasn’t scheming.

He wasn’t plotting.

He was just living.

And Sage hated that.

She finally broke the silence.

“What the hell has gotten into you?”

Homelander barely glanced up, ignoring her, his fingers still moving across the screen.

Sage scoffed, throwing her arms over the back of the couch.

“Jesus Christ, look at you. I’m over here coming up with new campaigns, ways to make you look stronger, and you’re acting like a goddamn high school kid with a crush.”

His grip on the tablet tightened, but he didn’t react. Just kept scrolling.

“What’s your problem?” His voice flat, detached.

Sage smirked. “You.”

She sat forward, elbows on her knees, studying him like a puzzle she couldn’t quite figure out.

“You’re pissing yourself over some girl, acting like a lovesick teenager. People are noticing.”

She tilted her head, eyes glinting.

“It makes you look weak.”

His jaw twitched. His fingers clenched. But his face remained impassive.

Because deep down, he knew she wasn’t wrong.

You had softened him. Wrapped him so tightly around your little fucking finger that even now, while he was planning to gut four men for you, all he could think about was how much he loved you.

And it had only been a week.

But Sage saying it out loud?

That was unacceptable.

“Careful,” he said smoothly, setting the tablet down. His voice calm, but dangerous.

“Your brain is all you have. I wouldn’t make me angry.”

“I’m just telling you the truth. When you asked me to join the Seven, you said you wanted someone who wouldn’t be afraid to tell you how it is.”

She leaned back, stretching her legs out.

“So, I’m telling you. You haven’t been the same since she crawled into your bed. Where’s the real you, huh? The man who doesn’t bow down to anyone?”

The words slithered into his brain like poison.

Because fuck, what if she was right?

Had he lost himself in you?

Had he—the greatest Supe to ever live—become less, just because he fell for you?

His teeth ground together.

He needed to fix this.

He needed to remind everyone who the fuck he was.

And then—

You walked in.

Your eyes met his, and your heart fluttered.

A week ago, he had been a myth to you. An untouchable force.

Now? He was yours—even if you were still waiting for him to ask the old fashioned way.

You smiled at him—that smile.

Innocent. Open. Trusting. God.

But when you reached for him—when you expected the touch he always gave you—

He didn’t move.

Didn’t smirk. Didn’t tease. Didn’t so much as lean in.

Just nodded. Cool. Detached.

“Busy,” he muttered.

Your stomach twisted.

The smile slipped from your lips.

“…Are you okay?” you asked softly.

Homelander shrugged. “Why don’t you just take a seat? If I wanted to talk to you, I’d shoot you a fucking text. Jesus fucking Christ.”

The words hit you like a slap.

Your breath caught in your throat, your skin went cold.

Oh.

Oh, God.

You had fucked up.

Telling him had been a mistake.

He thought you were disgusting.

That’s what this was.

You knew this would happen.

He had seen you bare.

He now knows every horrible, filthy, disgusting thing thats happened to you.

And now, he was disgusted too.

Tears burned the edges of your vision, but you swallowed them down, forcing yourself into a seat.

He carried on the meeting like nothing had happened. Flipping through potential new Seven members, now that Firecracker was gone, only pointing out the attractive girls as candidates.

He didn’t even glance your way.

And as Sage smirked approvingly, Homelander felt something gnawing at him.

It should have felt like a win.

But it didn’t.

Not at all.

—

The second the meeting ended, you bolted.

You didn’t even wait for the others to file out. Didn’t pause to look at him one last time. You just shot up from your seat and practically ran out the door.

And he felt it.

Like a vacuum, like a black hole sucking all the air from the room.

You were gone.

His body tensed, fingers curling against the table.

His instinct was to follow, to grab you, to fix it—but he didn’t move. He couldn’t move.

Because Sage was still there.

Everyone else had left, but she stayed.

Lingering by the doorway with her arms crossed, that same smug little smirk stretching across her face.

“Well,” she mused, tilting her head.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Homelander didn’t respond.

She took a step closer, walking behind him as he stayed seated, fists clenched against his thighs.

“You needed that,” she continued, her voice smooth, coaxing.

“You were getting too soft. That girl? She had you whipped.”

She leaned in slightly, lowering her voice.

“And now? She knows where she stands. Just another toy. Nothing special.”

“Good job,” she said simply, patting his shoulder like he was some obedient dog.

“You needed to remind her who you are.”

And that was the moment something snapped.

So quick, so violent, he barely felt himself move.

One second, she was behind him.

Condescending, fucking gloating.

The next second?

He had her by the throat.

In a blink, slamming her against the wall.

Hard, the drywall cracking behind her.

She barely had time to gasp before his grip tightened.

The smugness vanished.

Her eyes went wide, lips parting as she struggled.

But Homelander wasn’t even looking at her.

He was breathing heavy, nostrils flaring, eyes distant—and suddenly, all he could see was you.

The way your face had fallen when he brushed you off.

The way your shoulders had curled in like you wanted to disappear.

The way your breath had hitched, the way your fucking eyes had welled up, the way you tried to hide it.

Tried to swallow it down.

His stomach churned, so his grip tightened.

A strangled choke rasped from Sage’s lips. Her hands clawed at his, struggling against his inhuman strength.

She tried to speak, but her throat was too crushed.

She was right.

And that made him fucking livid.

Not at you. Never at you.

At himself.

He had watched you shrink into yourself, and he did nothing.

He hurt you.

Him.

Not those men. Not the ones he was planning to gut for what they did to you.

Him.

Sage let out a small, desperate gasp.

Homelander blinked.

His grip loosened—just barely—before he let go, letting her crumple to the floor.

She coughed, gasping for breath, trembling hands bracing against the tile.

He didn’t look at her.

Didn’t say a fucking word.

Just turned on his heel, leaving the room in a blur, moving faster than human eyes could track.

Because he let the monster win today.

And he had to get rid of him.

⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺ ˚ ༘ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺ ˚ ༘ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺ ˚ ༘ ⁺˚⋆｡

tags: @lilyalone @raginginkedslut

[honeyncherry]

 

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Stuck thinking about a Rafe Cameron AU where the reader is the daughter of a high profile government agent. She's finally given the opportunity to prove herself, not only to her father, but to everyone who’s undermined her throughout her life.

The task? Infiltrate Ward Cameron’s world. Uncover evidence of his money laundering scheme and dismantle the empire he’s built.

The method? Become someone entirely new to get close to the one person with access to it all — the heir to the Cameron fortune, Rafe Cameron.

Building a relationship with Rafe turns out to be easy — too easy. What is perceived as a simple in and out mission, completed within the matter of a couple months, quickly turns into a passion-fueled bond where the lines between duty and desire blur. With every stolen moment and every shared secret, she’s pulled deeper into this irresistible connection. Before she knows it, Rafe Cameron has become her lifeline — she’s fallen for her mark.

Caught between lifelong loyalties and an enmeshed relationship, she doesn’t know her next move.

The only thing she doesn't see coming? Rafe knowing her true identity from the very beginning.

series link

   ── ࣪˖ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

[mariacallous]

Earlier this month, JD Vance claimed on Fox News that 40 percent of people calling the Social Security hotline are “actually committing fraud.”

This is a completely discredited lie, and it’s impossible to believe that Vance doesn’t know better. In fact, he admitted not so long ago that he likes “to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.” In other words, he thinks false propaganda is a good way to advance his reactionary agenda.

More, Vance’s Social Security balderdash is a lie with a long history. The right has for close to 150 years used charges of fraud and corruption to target social programs and disfavored groups.

These lies are effective because they leverage anti-government sentiment and prejudice. They also work because opposition politicians struggle to recognize and call out fascist bad faith.

If Democrats are going to defend Social Security, the social safety net, and even cancer research, though, we need to get accustomed to saying unequivocally that lies are lies, and comfortable recognizing them as a deliberate effort to confuse and demoralize people.

The MAGA war on “fraud”

Vance is hardly alone in his fraudulent attacks on “fraud” in the Social Security program.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, for example, made the outrageous claim recently that anyone who called Social Security to complain about a failure to receive a check should be suspected to be a “fraudster.” Trump’s billionaire Nazi-saluting co-president Elon Musk called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”. Trump himself has said that millions of dead people are receiving Social Security. This is, again, a lie.

In order to combat this fake fraud, Trump and Musk propose increasing administrative burdens. For example, the Trump administration was planning to make massive cuts to Social Security phone service. Reporting on the scheme and subsequent protest led Trump to abandon these plans.

But as Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan explain, there are many other ways that the administration can and is planning to make Social Security less effective and less accessible. Staffing cuts have already caused chaos and website crashes.

“Other proposed policies, such as requiring work-authorized non-citizens to visit field offices will further overwhelm the system,” Herd and Moynihan write.

Nor is Social Security the only program or agency that the administration has singled out in this way. Musk, through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), targeted the vital foreign aid program USAID for destruction by falsely claiming, with no evidence, that officials at the agency were stealing funds. The elimination of USAID is expected to lead to 2 to 3 million entirely preventable excess deaths every year.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt provided an unintentionally frank explanation of how Trump and his hench-thugs use lies for their own ends. When asked by a reporter to provide examples of fraud, Leavitt pointed to, among other things, a diversity, equity, and inclusion program at US Citizenship and Immigration Services and a program to fight climate change in Sri Lanka.

“I would argue that all of these things are fraudulent,” she said. “They are wasteful and they are an abuse of the American taxpayers dollar.”

Leavitt made no effort to argue that anyone had stolen money from the programs; she did not argue that any crime had been committed. She simply said that she (and the president) thought the programs, which Congress had funded, were unworthy.

In short, “waste, fraud, and abuse” for the Trump administration simply means, “money is going to programs and people we don’t like.”

Fascism and corruption

This misleading, mendacious definition of “fraud” as “money for things we don’t like” didn’t originate with MAGA.

In his 2018 book How Fascism Works, philosopher Jason Stanley noted that “publicizing false charges of corruption while engaging in corrupt practices is typical of fascist politics, and anticorruption campaigns are frequently at the heart of fascist political movements.”

Stanley continues:

Corruption, to the fascist politician, is really about the corruption of purity rather than of law. Officially, the fascist politician’s denunciations of corruption sound like a denunciation of political corruption. But such talk is intended to evoke corruption in the sense of the usurpation of traditional order.

In other words, when Trump and Musk say that USAID is “corrupt” what they mean is that it is a violation of racial hierarchy to spend money to save the lives of millions of non-white poor people. When they say that Social Security is “wasteful,” what they mean is that it is wrong to spend money to protect the elderly poor.

Stanley notes that false charges of corruption were at the core of Southern ideological attacks on Reconstruction. Former Confederates and white supremacists lied that the interracial Reconstruction state governments established after the Civil War were riddled with graft and theft, proving that Black people were unfit to hold office.

Historian and civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois explained in his pioneering work Black Reconstruction that “the center of the corruption charge … was in fact that poor men were ruling and taxing rich men.” He added:

The south, finally, with almost complete unity, named the negro as the main cause of southern corruption. They said, and reiterated this charge, until it became history: that the cause of dishonesty during reconstruction was the fact that 4,000,000 disfranchised black laborers, after 250 years of exploitation, had been given a legal right to have some voice in their own government, in the kinds of goods they would make and the sort of work they would do, and in the distribution of the wealth which they created.

The myths of Reconstruction corruption were thoroughly debunked, but they never really died. They reappeared again in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when President Ronald Reagan (and then-Sen. Joe Biden) claimed that “welfare queens” — that is, Black single mothers — were defrauding the system by deliberately having children to increase welfare payments.

These claims were lies — there was no widespread welfare fraud. But they were an effective propaganda tool, and eventually resulted in Bill Clinton’s welfare “reform” that significantly damaged the safety net.

Racist corruption charges surfaced again in the Obama era. They fueled the birther lie that Obama had not been born in the US and was therefore an illegitimate president. Trump of course embraced this racist conspiracy theory enthusiastically and spent years suggesting Obama did not have a valid US birth certificate.

Calling out the lies

Looking at this history, and at the rank corruption of Trump in office, it’s very clear how much projection there is in the MAGA charges of waste, fraud, and abuse.

Yet Democrats have struggled to reject the administration’s lies forcefully and consistently. For example, when DOGE was first proposed before Trump’s inauguration, Bernie Sanders claimed “Elon Musk is right” about waste and corruption, then suggested Musk should target the Pentagon for budget cuts. (Musk was never going to target the Pentagon for budget cuts.) Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz and other House Democrats also initially expressed interest in working with DOGE to cut spending and fraud.

But as the full extent of the DOGE assault on the social safety net, the Constitution, and on Congress’s spending authority became clear, Democrats backed off their Musk-curious approach. Sanders has attacked Musk ferociously. Moskowitz has been engaged in a good bit of backpedaling.

It’s good that Democrats eventually recognized DOGE for what it is. But swallowing the bait was unwise. It gave Musk unnecessary legitimacy and credibility.

Democrats don’t need to pretend that Trumpworld’s purported concern with corruption is in good faith; they don’t need to waffle and mutter about how of course they are opposed to government waste. The record of the right, in the US and abroad, is clear. Fascists are corrupt liars, and they lie about corruption in order to crush their enemies and subjugate marginalized people.

Musk is not at war with corruption; he’s at war with equality and liberty. And he sees equality and liberty as corrupt because they undermine the pure, untrammeled, rule of billionaires, fascists, and kings.

[ashenhartkrie]

The Australian Federal Government is considering adding gender affirming surgeries for transgender adults to the medicare benefits scheme thanks to an application made by the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons.

the president of the ASPA, Dr Nicola Dean, chatted with me about the need for improved access to gender affirming healthcare, and I was also able to speak to some trans people in the community who would benefit from this change.

[papiliomame]

With the full cover reveal for the next graphic novel "Danny Phantom: Fair Game" I want to go little bit into theorycrafting.

One of the things that got my attention is the equipment of the A-Listers( ecxept Dash, does he want to hunt ghosts with his bare fists or what?), where does it come from? We know of 3 primary ghost hunting equipment producers form the show:

Fenton Works

Guys in White

VladCo

With how they look like in the cover we can exclude 2 of the list:

Fenton Works gadgets are always greyish with green colored accents:

Plus in the AGiT graphic novel the A-lister wore also the Fenton jumpsuits when they were hunting in the beginning, so in the sequel the A-lister did not get their equipment from the Fentons.

The Guys in White have equipment which are white with blue accents, sometimes green:

They also probably don't sell the secret government ghost hunting stuff to minors who are not even undercover with their white suit uniform. They are out of question too.

VladCo's stuff are a wild card and the design all over the place:

But something is in common for the official stuff which Vlad used for his public appearance, the big "V" as a Logo. Vlad secret gadgets don't have that, especially the equipment Vlad provides for Valeriein secret in the first 2 seasons:

And those almost looks exactly like the A-lister equipment in the cover art. "Almost", because Kwan hoverboard has similarities with Valerie's second hoverboard which is Techus design ( and telepathic connected with her or something):

The difference is the the "sidehorns" are missing and the color scheme is not black with red but grey with pink like Valerie's first equipment.

What can we conclude from this? Did Vlad after his heartwrenching speech how he wants to redeem himself after the events from AGiT just said: "Nah, I just continue to be evil and let's use Danny's class mates as pawns and give them ghost hunting equimpent to hunt him ( and Dani) down."?

Well, that would be kinda lame wouldn't it? I think someone different with access to Valerie's equipment gave them to the A-Listers:

Yes, Valerie herself!

We saw in the end of AGiT that two Valerie exist in the timeline now. I think the Valerie in the full cover of Fair Game is the Valerie who forgot/ didn't experience the event of AGiT and hunts Danny like business as usual. The timemedallion!Valerie is working behind the scenes, reverse engineered her current hoverboard and gave that and her old equipment to the A-Listers.

Why would she do that? Maybe with Phantom action in AGiT she saw even more how dangerous ghost are expecially halfas and wants to the eleminate every single one of them, even Dani who she became friends with and even with the help of her former "friends". Or she wants revenge because for here not only did ghost put her into poverty they also destroyed her timeline ( well, that escalated quickly). Her only purpose in live now is to take revenge to the ones that did that to her ( which would be tragic, that means she would be a like a "living ghost" with the revelation in AGiT that ghost are emotions manifested and all that).

I also had a theory that the timemedaillion!Valerie kills the oblivious!Valerie to take her place in the timeline, but I think that would be a little too dark. Or maybe the two Valerie team up together after timemedallion!Valerie somehow convinced the oblivious!Valerie of the events of AGiT.

What do you think?