#(my partner is also a computer programmer send help)

[underthehedge]

Yeah tbh I was shocked when I read the post and went straight to settings and there I clicked on the learn-more link about the kinds of studies and data and it was all seemed...pretty much fine actually?

Also, to their credit, when you click on the learn-more links, look I'm not a techie but I was raised by programmers so maybe I'm not the best judge of this but it seems like they've really put the work in in making it comprehensible and plain language. It's not an EULA wrapped in five levels of niche jargon and legalese, they're legit trying to let you know what they mean in clear language.

that article going around abt firefox's new ad program is annoying bc it's phrased as though "mozilla has finally TURNED on its people and is SELLING YOU OUT for cold hard cash!!" when. that's not what's happening. it is specifically being implemented to discourage tracking behavior, and literally all the data they are giving to advertisers is aggregate and anonymized, which is like, the opposite of what that post wants you to worry about, lol

[pussydestroyer10110]

Jake x Avatar!Reader x Neytiri

1.25k words (not edited)

Chapter 1 - Context, arriving on Pandora

This is my first time writing avatar or anything like this so please bare with. I am writing this late at night so please be kind 🙏🙏🙏 also constructive criticism would be much appreciated

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You had arrived on Pandora after years floating in the abyss of space. The lack of gravity came as a shock after years asleep, making it feel as if you were still trapped in the never ending dream.

----------

You were a scientist and friend of Grace Augastine when she had been studying on earth, she first looked down at you with your lack of experience and youth but soon she recognised your passion and allowed the budding friendship to blossom. It was during your second year of studying under her that she was called to Pandora for a second time, afterall she had only returned to earth after the tragedy of the school and the RDA.

She had only ever briefly spoken about what happened that day but she still spoke of her students with love and kindness, holding them above almost everyone else she knew. Frequently she would tell you stories of the planet and how its buds would bloom with colours unseen by people on earth and how the animals were something out of fiction. It made you crave to go there.

When she had finally arrived on Pandora you were already deep in the field of environmental sciences, even studying samples of Pandora that she had collected herself, that's when she started sending you little messages with pictures of her avatar and the vibrant nature around her. For her she had seen you a mere few days ago but in reality it had been years.

Despite the time between last speaking to her the friendship remained strong and you opened each message with more curiosity than last.

She had told you about the marine 'Jake' that had joined them recently and how he was a complete moron with no respect for the world around him. Only weeks later she was singing his praises and telling you about how she had rejoined the clan she once and still loved.

You loved it all, you experienced it through her but that never seemed enough.

Then that one fateful day came, you had sat by your computer for months, checking and checking for new messages but nothing came. She had disappeared.

After a long while of waiting you had finally sent the dreaded message to the lab she was working at, asking of her where abouts, if she was okay. Nothing could've prepared you for the message you received, a message sent by one of her lab partners, Norm.

Now you knew of her death, it broke you in unimaginable ways. You felt your tie to the foreign world become severed within an instant, how could simple pixels on a screen completely twist your perception of reality?

So you threw yourself at your work, reading over notes only you had gotten thanks to Grace, you knew everything you could about this foreign world. That's why you were selected.

With the avatar programme under new management they decided they needed more hands to help repair the gaping wound left by the RDA and once Norm found your chat with Grace and heard about your work back on Earth he recruited you.

He had a team craft your own avatar for you.

When you saw it you cried. You felt a newfound connection to your old friend knowing she had experienced what you were going to.

Then you were placed on that flight which only about a dozen people were on to be shipped lightyears out into space.

----------

So here you were, your mouth dry, your body weak and tired despite your death like rest.

You were there in the outer atmosphere of Pandora. There was a large window carved into the far side of the ship, through it you could see the planet you had only heard about but dreamt of going to.

It felt new, fresh, it was a possibility of a new life as you literally had a new body to place yourself into.

A few hours later and you landed on Pandora, a mask clamped tightly around your face as you went from the shuttle to the base. Inside was sleek but more personalised than when the RDA had ran it, you felt yourself begin to feel slightly emotional once more knowing Grace had walked these same hallways were you were now.

It was a short walk to where the few humans of Pandora were, all of them were smiling and happy to greet you along with the team. To your knowledge they had picked a variety of skill sets, a few scientists, farmers and even a few family members.

You didn't know what to expect as you walked in but you knew you were the only one with an avatar.

The team had only enough materials to craft one more avatar due to the lack of government funding and it was gifted to you. You were waiting in this small room until a man entered, introducing himself as the 'Norm' you knew so much but so little about.

The others were soon chased off to do there duties, leaving you standing there, waiting for your own instructions. After a while Norm turned to you, a large smile on his face.

"Welcome, now you know we've given you an avatar because Grace had always spoken so highly of you"

You look at him with a soft smile, it was nice knowing your old friend had spoken fondly of you, he begins to walk through the hallways while spouting scientific facts about the lab around you, clearly wanting you to follow. Finally you reach a room with a thick metal door showing it was of higher security, from the gap between the door and the floor there was a soft blue glow.

"Now this is where we've kept your avatar for the time being, it's in with the link room as with you being the only avatar driver here we have to compact the space a bit more"

He says and he types a code and the door opens, inside a glowing blue tank and inside the tank the slender, hunched form of an avatar.

"She, well you, matured on the flight out"

As he says this you barely pay attention, instead choosing to walk up to the tank and gaze up at the otherworldly figure twitching slightly in the translucent substance. She looked like you but with her features sharper - not dissimilar to a cat - the whole thing enthralled you. Norm looked at you with a slight smile, he wasn't offended at the lack of focus you gave him as he reminded himself of the first time he'd seen his avatar.

"It's cool isn't it?"

He asks, momentarily breaking your train of focus, you turn to him with a sheepish smile knowing you've been preoccupied with your own thoughts.

"Yeah, it's a bit of a shock, Grace always told me about how it felt to be part of the Na'vi tribe, to look like one of them. I guess I'd never thought I'd experience it myself"

You state, it was obvious this whole experience felt surreal it almost wanted to make you pinch yourself to just assure yourself you weren't dreaming.

It was exciting, new and it hadn't even started yet.

[cyberstudious]

hi, im an high school sophomore interested in computer science and im also new to your blog. i was wondering if you would recommend conputer science and what have been your strengths and pitfalls with the field? thank u so much for your time.

Hi! Welcome to my blog, haha thanks for stopping by and sending an ask!

My path was self-taught game dev/web dev -> CS degree -> cybersecurity, so that's the perspective I'm writing from. My current job is basically just writing code for cybersecurity-related things (which I really like!). I do enjoy computer science and I think it's a great field to get into because you can do so many different things! I listed out my personal pros/cons under the cut but the tl;dr is that CS is a good field if you like constantly learning things, building things, and knowing how stuff works under the hood.

things I like about computer science:

so many options and things you can learn/specialize in

having programming skills and knowing how computers work gives you the foundational knowledge to succeed in a lot of things, both practical and theoretical/research-based. if you don't really like programming, there is plenty of theoretical math stuff you can do that's related to CS (this is what my partner is going back to grad school for haha)

lots of info available online for self-guided learning

do you want to learn how to make X? someone has almost certainly already written a tutorial for that and put it online for free. there are lots of open-source projects out there where you can read their documentation and even look at the code to figure out how things work!

there is always more to learn

tech evolves and you have to keep your skills up to date - that means there's always something new and interesting happening!

being able to build things

do you want to make an app? a website? a video game? a quick script to automate some annoying task that you do all the time? you can do that. all you need is a computer and some time! once you have some skills, it's amazing when you realize you can just Make Stuff literally whenever

understanding how things actually work

in a world of apps & operating systems that actively try to hide the technical layer of how they work in favor of "user friendliness", there is power to understanding what's actually happening inside your computer

problem-solving mindset

this kind of goes hand-in-hand with being able to build things, but eventually you get the hang of looking at a problem, breaking it down, and figuring out how to build a solution. this is something that I knew was an important soft skill, but I didn't really have any concrete examples until I started working with some technical but non-programmer coworkers. knowing programming & how to build things really does just help you solve problems in a concrete way and I think that's pretty cool.

things that can make computer science difficult:

programming is a cycle of failing until you succeed

programming is not something you get right on your first try - there's a reason that patches and updates and bug fixes exist. this might take some getting used to at first, but after that it's not an issue. failing constantly is just part of the process, but that means that solving those problems and feeling great when you figure it out is also part of the process!

there's so much to learn, you will have to go out and learn some of it on your own

a CS degree will not fully prepare you to be a professional developer, you will likely have to learn other languages & frameworks on your own (this is kind of a good thing btw - the average college probably isn't updating their curriculum often enough to teach you relevant frameworks/some professional coding things).

there is always more to learn

this is the other side of tech always evolving - sometimes it can feel like you're constantly behind, and that's okay - you can't learn literally everything! just do your best, explore a bit, and figure out the subset of things that you're actually interested in

lots of screen time

there are tech jobs where you can be active and move around and stuff, but I work from home and write code most of the day so I spend a ton of time in front of my computer. this isn't a huge problem, I just make an effort to spend time on my non-computer hobbies outside of work. something to note when you're looking for jobs, I suppose!

occasional toxic culture?

I'm thinking of "leetcode grindset bros" here because that was a common character at the college I went to - just ignore them and do things at a pace that feels comfortable to you, you'll be fine

on a related note, in my experience there will always be some dude who has been programming since like the age of 5 and seems to know everything and is kind of an ass about it, ignore these people too and you'll be fine

things are getting better, but CS is still very much a male-dominated field. however, there are plenty of organizations focused on supporting minority groups in tech! you can find a support group and there will always be people rooting for you.

that got kinda long lol, but feel free to reach out if you have any more questions!

[forsakenoathkeeper]

I Am Alive (chapter 7/?)

Chapter 7: Rising Tensions

Deviant!Connor[RK800] x (fem!)Reader Rated M(18+) for canon-typical violence and gore, medical procedures, and graphic sexual content

Chapters: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • more coming soon

You can also read on AO3 & thank you for supporting me ♥

The days that followed were quiet... until they weren't.

A demonstration was being held in the streets on an ordinary Friday morning. Charles Reaves, disgruntled former employee of Cyberlife, had started a frightening movement. He was calling it 'The Fight for Humanity'. He often accompanied that with 'against the machines'.

Charles claimed he had started at Cyberlife when they were a new company, watched it build and grow, participated in the rotation of androids as old models left and new ones came in. He helped build their AI. He even went so far as to call Elijah Kamski a hack.

Charles knew androids inside and out. He knew the exact layout of their internal workings, the purpose of each and every part. Charles was well rounded with their computer components, as well: how their processor worked, how their storage systems saved their memories, what could cause errors in their operating systems and how advanced their self-repair and diagnostic tools were.

Yet, he was of the firm belief that androids were nothing more than computers operating in the plastic shell of an object imitating a human. According to him, they were things owned by humanity, humanity's creation. He did not see them as a part of humanity.

You were at work, in the break room with a few other nurses huddled around you. All eyes were on the television, giving live coverage of the demonstration. Charles was up on a stage with hundreds of people watching from the sidewalk, the street, and, of course, thousands watching from the comfort of their homes.

When the camera swooped the crowd, you could see both humans and androids were in the crowd. The human's expressions were mixed, some looking on with admiration while others gawked in disgust. Some androids seemed afraid, others seemed enraged. None of the androids stood alone. They were in groups or partners, huddled together or holding hands.

"You know what makes up an android? Computer parts. Molded plastic. Silicone mesh and wiring," Charles declared from the stage, fire in his eyes. "They were designed with operating systems, clear instructions for behavior. They are components commanding a shell."

One of the androids in the crowd stood up on a crate. It made him stand out from the crowd; but, he still paled in comparison to Charles' stage. "How is that any different from humans!?" the android shouted. Charles eyed him with disgust, but was quiet, and let him speak.

"Humans' brains send signals to the body and interpret information the same way!" the android proclaimed. "You speak about our parts as if they are proof we aren't alive when humans are built all the same!"

Charles titled his head a little, annoyance present in his eyes. "Humans are the result of millions of years of evolution. You were made in our likeness because we chose to make you that way. We grow and we change and we adapt and we die. Androids never change. Androids don't die because they were never alive."

The android didn't step down, glaring at Charles. "We want and we fear and we love and we feel - just the same as humans!"

"Your 'feelings' are flawed programming by an incompetent programmer," Charles declared. "What you think is wanting is nothing but a fool's string of code jumbling the clear instructions given to you. I know your model, android. You were designed to drive trucks. Whatever purpose you think you have beyond that is a lie."

Your hands were clenched on the table, nails biting into the skin of your palm. In the corner of your eye, you could see nurses glancing at you occasionally, concern in their eyes. They all knew you were dating an android.

"We are alive!" the android shouted. Another joined in, calling out to the crowd, "we are alive!"

"I am alive!" Charles shouted in the microphone. He gestured to the humans in the audience. "We are born and we grow and we endure!" He pointed at the android standing up on a crate, elevated above the crowd. "YOU were made by US! YOU are NOTHING without us! -and you will be nothing when the absurdity of this is over..."

Unable to take anymore, you stood up and hastily exited the breakroom, crossing through the back hallways and stepping outside to get some fresh air.

'did you see the news?' you messaged Connor, tapping away hastily on your phone. You had started typing another message to follow it; however, Connor messaged you back before you finished.

'Can I call you?' the message read.

Worry bubbling up, you decided to jump the gun and called him instead. He uttered your name warmly when he answered.

"Connor, is everything okay?" you asked, some panic in your voice.

"Yes - everything's fine. I didn't mean to worry you," he replied, a bit startled by your outburst.

"No - it's okay," you replied softly. "I saw the protests and - just - was worried something happened."

"There's been more attacks on Cyberlife resource vehicles," he explained. "-and a fight broke out at a protest today. Some androids were attacked. They didn't fight back; so, there were no human injuries. I wanted to prepare you; but, it seems you were already aware."

"I saw the demonstration on the news; but, didn't hear about those things. That explains why it's been so quiet today. Androids are probably afraid to come in," you said sadly.

Connor knew the answer to that. Markus had told him himself. Their numbers had grown exponentially and the government was, mostly, supporting them. But, it would be a long time before things could be normal between androids and humans.

Groups were rising up against them; it was inevitable.

Afraid that you would put yourself in harm's way, Connor decided to keep that between him and Markus.

"With everything going on. I wanted to know if-"

Connor cut off for a second, going silent. When he continued, it was clear he was speaking to someone else. "No, she's fine," he said. "Well, I - that's none of your business, lieutenant," he added on, in a smug, sort of teasing, manner. You grinned into the phone, wishing you could hear whatever it was Hank was saying.

A few seconds later, Connor continued. "I - ah - wanted to know if - if you would stay with me, at my apartment - at least until things settle. As long as you feel comfortable, of course. I intend to make it more suitable. I don't expect you to-"

"Connor," you chuckled. "The answer's yes."

"Oh." He sounded surprised, honestly, like he hadn't expected you to cave so quickly.

"Though, it won't stay so clean with me living there," you said. "Humans make a mess. Sure you can handle that?"

"I'll have you know I'm very adaptable," Connor retorted, some pride in his tone.

"Is that so?" you giggled into the phone. "I've gotta pack some things first. So, I'll be late."

"I don't sleep; you don't have to worry about waking me," Connor stated, as if it was new information.

"Oh, that's right. You're an android. I forgot," you teased sarcastically into the phone.

"Recognizing your sarcasm is also one of my features," Connor replied. It was difficult to tell if he was joking without looking into his eyes. His voice wasn't always telling; but, his eyes were too expressive for his own good.

"Any other features I should know about?" you asked lowly.

Connor was quiet for a second. "Hank wanted me to tell you that being a pain in the ass is one of my features," Connor stated, perhaps dryer than he intended.

It had you doubling over in laughter.

"-and that I should stop being whipped," he added on, saying the word as if he didn't quite understand the context of it.

"Oh my god, Connor-" you stammered out between laughter.

"I haven't lost my freewill lieutenant," Connor stated, almost in an argumentative tone.

Oh no. He must have done a quick internet search on that term.

"Okay. I gotta go before you kill me," you chuckled. "I lo-"

Oh-

You caught yourself and dissolved the words into some coughs.

You almost-

"I gotta go, Connor," you added hastily. "Be safe."

-and hung up.

"Shit," you cursed at yourself, dragging your hand across your face. It almost slipped out. Was it too early to say that? For fucks sake, the first time shouldn't be over the phone.

It just-

-felt right.

You cursed at yourself again and hastily went back inside to find some work to do.

...

...

...

Seven PM rolled around and you were on your way out the door. Most other nurses had already gone home for the day, just one staying behind to help close up. You were just on your way to lock the door when two men approached.

You recognized one as a PL600 model. His companion was a tad bit taller with tan skin and short, nearly shaved, dark hair.

"I'm sorry it's so late," he apologized, immediately noticing you were about to close for the night.

"They're closing, let's-" the PL600 started, facing his companion.

Afraid they were going to leave, you gently interrupted him, "it's alright. Come in."

You held the door open, inviting them inside. The two men exchanged glances, the PL600 looking far more hesitant than the other.

"Simon, come on, it's gonna be fine," the tanner male encouraged him.

As you followed in behind them, you saw the other nurse shoot you a look, the kind that said, 'seriously?'.

"If you wanna head home, I can close up," you offered to her. She contemplated it for a minute, before tightening her bag on her shoulder and scurrying out the door.

Whatever-

-you trusted androids more than humans anyway.

"Alright. What's broken?" you asked them, brightening your tone with the hopes it would relax them. Both men looked uneasy, quite out of their element.

The darker of the two nudged the PL600 forward - the one named Simon.

Simon looked uneasy, like he had just been pushed into traffic. You gave him a small, patient smile. Simon lifted a hand and dragged his knuckles across his jaw nervously. "I - ughh - my right audio input is damaged," he stuttered, turning his head to show you his left ear. It seemed like he had either been hit or had something thrown at him. The outer shell of his ear was damaged, exposing some of the circuit board underneath.

"Can't hear out of it, huh?" you offered.

Simon turned his head back to face you. "No," he answered quietly. "-and it's - ugh - buzzing."

"I have plenty of boards that should be compatible. At least we can fix your hearing tonight. The ear will take some time. If you come back tomorrow, I'd be happy to repair it?" you suggested, looking up at Simon. His hair was pushed back and a little messier than his models typically had, and he had incredibly blue eyes.

Simon almost looked like he wasn't allowed to say yes. It didn't surprise you. He likely hadn't had a pleasant conversation with a human in a long time.

The other man, whom you assumed was also an android, stepped around Simon. "Thank you," he said sincerely. You looked up at him more properly this time. He had a kind smile, but tightness around his cheeks, suggesting he had some hasty repairs done in the past.

His eyes-

-one was mossy green and the other was pale blue.

You swallowed roughly, starting to recognize this stranger. It was Markus, the leader of the deviants, the face of the resolution. You didn't want to make it obvious that you recognized him, and did your best to maintain a stoic expression.

As much as you wanted to say something - you weren't quite what that would be - you also didn't want to put him on the spot. He likely had to deal with this sort of unwanted attention all the time.

"Just a second - gonna go grab that audio component," you explained, stepping away from them to head for the storage room.

Before rummaging around for the piece, you sent Connor a quick message. "will be a little late - guy came in with a fucked up ear," you had said, pressing send and tucking your phone back into your pocket to pull out the right piece for Simon's model.

As you approached them, component in hand, you called out, "Simon, can you sit down here, please?" You stepped around a chair, patting the armrest. The android shuffled over nervously. He took a seat, alert, facing you. He was sitting upright, hands in his lap.

"If it's alright, can you lay down? It'll make it easier," you requested.

Simon blinked slowly, looking uneasy. Markus' hand fell onto his shoulder for a moment.

"It's gonna be fine," he promised gently.

Simon shot Markus a look of understanding before shifting around, leaning back in the chair, presenting his damaged ear to you.

"Can you open your panel?" you requested softly.

Simon nodded, a little more fiercely than was necessary, likely to show you that he heard your request. The panel around his ear unhinged, allowing you to prop it open. You poked the edge with one of your tools to carefully push it aside, exposing the component underneath.

It was cracked right down the center.

"I'm gonna remove the broken one now," you explained, leaning in with a tool in either hand. Simon was still as you worked, his eyes focused on Markus, who was watching you. He didn't look untrusting or uneasy, and that gave you some relief.

"This new one will need a firmware update," you said gently as you slotted the replacement in and lined up the connectors. Simon flinched a little at the sensation. You folded the artificial tissue back over and leaned back, giving the android space to sit up.

He was quiet for a moment, LED flickering yellow as he downloaded the firmware update. Luckily, someone had taken ownership of Cyberlife's firmware servers in order to keep them running.

Simon sat up when it was complete, turning his head to look at you. "Diagnostics are reading normal," he stated.

"Is the audio input working normally?" you asked. Simon made a thoughtful expression. "Can you hear me alright?" you added on, mainly to help him judge the input feedback.

"Yes," the android replied softly. "Thank you," he added on, looking at you with a smile.

He looked so sincere, as if he hadn't expected such kindness. It melted you.

"Simon, actually, I can do the shell tonight, if you don't mind?" you offered.

"I've already kept you," Simon blurted.

"No, I can't let you leave like that," you explained. "Please?"

"I-" Simon stammered. "I should be saying 'please'."

"You..." you began, trailing off as you wondered if the words that threatened to leave your lips were inappropriate. "You got hurt at one of the protests, didn't you?" you asked gently.

Simon looked uneasy. Markus, however, was fierce. "Yes," he replied for the PL600.

You nodded in understanding. "I want to help," you whispered.

It was the first thing that came to mind. You wanted to help. You wanted to make it better, in whatever way you could. You could repair androids. You could diagnose their damages. That was all you could do.

"Okay," Simon suddenly said, sounding much more comfortable than he did a few minutes ago.

You smiled and rotated around to the end table nearest you. The tools you needed, extra membranous materials and plastic shell casing molds, were there. You pulled everything out and set them on the table nearby.

"Your model doesn't follow a protocol for the skeleton-base," you explained, information Simon likely already knew about himself. He was an older model, meant to be discontinued. That knowledge only made the situation harder. "So, I'll have to take my time. Ready?"

The android nodded and turned his head to give you room to work. In the corner of your eye, as you leaned over Simon, you could see Markus in the corner of your eye, an expression that looked like 'thank you' on his face.

"May I ask your name?" Simon uttered at some point.

You gave it softly, seeing as you were right next to his ear, poking and prodding at the artificial flesh there.

"Why did you suggest a manual repair and not a full shell replacement?" Markus asked, sounding more curious than judgmental.

"It's really hard to get shells, especially for smaller parts. We're lucky we have any pieces," you explained. "-and I guess I've done this enough that it doesn't bother me..."

'-like some of the other nurses' you almost said. You decided to hold your tongue.

"You've been doing this for a while?" Markus asked, almost hesitant.

"I suppose so," you answered quietly. You had gone to school for biomechanical engineering fresh out of high school and went straight to work repairing damages androids. It was potentially the most depressing time of your life; but, you had a childhood that conquered that.

The androids were quiet after that, letting you work in silence, if not for the overhead fan making annoying buzzing sounds.

"There we go," you groaned, sitting up and briefly stretching your bag. You set your tools down and fetched a hand mirror, offering it to Simon.

Markus walked around to take a look.

"I feel silly," Simon chuckled, looking at his reflection. You joined in his laughter, recognizing he meant the mirror and the vanity it was implying.

"Looks good as new," Markus commented with a smile.

Simon offered the mirror back to you. "I don't know if 'thank you' is good enough," he uttered, looking bashful. He didn't seem like the same man that walked in those doors an hour ago.

"It is, Simon," you offered with a smile. "I choose to do this."

Markus' multi-colored eyes landed on you. "There are many damaged androids afraid to come here. If I can get them to put their faith in you, would you be willing to go to them?"

You gawked up at Markus, who looked down at you with confidence.

"I don't know if I could get approval for that - the parts, I mean. I would try, if you believe they would want it? -from a human, anyway..."

Markus' head tilted slightly and his eyes darkened with concern. "I want us to work together with humans - I want them to see that it's possible - that there can be peace."

You smiled at Markus; but, the first android that came to mind was Connor. You felt your cheeks warm at the thought of what you had almost said to him earlier.

"You recognize me, don't you?" Markus asked suddenly, catching you off guard.

"I do, Markus," you replied carefully.

"-you still offered to help?" Simon uttered. Your eyes shifted to him for a moment. He seemed uneasy, likely expecting more hostility towards the leader of the deviants, regardless of your profession.

"I don't-" you began, breaking off when you realized you didn't know where you were going with that thought.

"I've seen androids torn to pieces," you started, looking back to Markus. "I've had them delivered to me crying that they don't want to die... I came back here because of this - because of the revolution. I wanted to do something I could be proud of for a change..."

It felt strange-

-admitting this to Markus.

He had a way with people, making them want to open up to him.

"I understand the risk you're taking," Markus stated. "I won't ask you to come if I don't feel it's safe... I hope I'll see you again."

You nodded and watched the boys leave, hoping that Markus would return.

...

...

...

When you finally staggered into Connor's apartment that night, the android was seated at the island, folders, papers, photographs and documents, scattered along the surface in front of him.

He turned his head a little to acknowledge you when you walked in before immediately craning his neck back down, eyes falling back to the document in front of him.

"Hey," you hummed, walking over to him. You leaned over his shoulder and pressed a kiss against his LED.

"Hey," he replied back, leaning into the kiss. You couldn't help but laugh at how silly the word sounded coming out of his mouth. It didn't quite the suit the prim and proper detective.

"Thank you for agreeing to stay here," Connor said, sincere.

"Why would I say no to an opportunity to spend more time with you?" you huffed. "Besides, your place is nicer than mine and closer to work."

"I'm glad to know you're benefiting."

You hummed, a little irritated by his response. "You think I'm inconvenienced?"

"In a way, yes," he replied, in a tone that seemed distant.

"I'm not inconvenienced - geez, what's gotten into you?" you snapped a little.

Connor looked up at you, discomfort dashing behind his eyes. "I-..." he trailed off, looking back down at his papers.  He dragged a hand through his hair. His fingers lingered briefly at the back of his neck before lowering back down to the counter.

"I'm sorry. I'm not handling this as well as I thought."

"The protests?" you offered softly.

The android didn't nod, nor answer. His eyes shifted away uneasily for a moment before moving back to you. It wasn't exactly a yes, but that seemed to be part of his trouble, at least.

"They're challenging your livelihood," you proclaimed. "You have every right to be upset."

"I made a choice against my creators; but..." Connor trailed off, his confidence waning for a moment. "This time, I have to be on both sides."

Connor felt as torn as he did back then. He wanted freedom for himself, for his people. He was fortunate to have a place to call his home, a job where he could find purpose. He wanted his people to have those things, too.

But, he feared the consequences of an uprising, of the human lives that would be lost. He still cared about humans. Maybe that was because of Hank - because of you. Maybe some part of his programming never quite left him.

You didn't know what to do - what to say. You wanted to embrace him and pull him away from that mess, just for a little bit; however, Connor turned away from you and buried his nose back into the pile of paperwork.

He wanted to confide in you; but, at the same time, he didn't. You had your own challenges, your own problems. He didn't want to add to that list. He didn't want to be one of the things that brought stress into your life.

"I'll-... be back in a second," you quietly, feeling small as you stepped away.

Connor's bedroom was as welcoming as you remembered and impeccably clean. You set your bags against the wall next to the archway that led into his bathroom. You brushed your teeth and changed into some comfy clothes, brushed your hair back, washed your face.

You returned to the kitchen and approached Connor. He looked up at you, hearing the quiet tapping of your bare feet on the floor. When his eyes lands landed on you, he looked conflicted.

"You know I believe in you... right?" you whispered, leaning against the counter nearest him.

He rotated around so that his lap was no longer tucked beneath the island's overlap. You decided to take that as an invitation and approached, standing a little closer, right in front of his knees.

"I like to imagine that. But, it feels better hearing you say it," he said quietly, like he was confessing to something outlandish.

"We'll get through this," you added on.

He looked away suddenly, lips tightening. You reached for him and cupped his cheek, pinkie and ring finger over the edge of his sharp jawline. Connor's eyes, warm, brown, shining in the bright kitchen lights, flickered back up to your face.

"I want to do this with you, Connor," you proclaimed proudly. "They're wrong about androids. Their views may never change, but that doesn't mean we can't strive for the future."

"This... isn't your fight," he said quietly, doubt flickering in his gaze. His brow lowered slightly. Your hand slid off his cheek and you frowned.

"It's my fight if I want it to be... and I do," you replied firmly, voice rising slightly.

"I don't want-" Connor stammered, frustration mingled with fear in his eyes.

"It's not just about you," you interrupted him sharply. "I care about androids - I did before I met you. I want to help. I-..." You trailed off, realizing you were mad at him for being worried about your safety. "I'm sorry for snapping at you, but-"

"No, you're right," he said hoarsely. "I shouldn't try to control you."

"That's not what this is!" you almost shouted, arms trembling at your sides. "I worry about you, too... -about what could happen. You're on the frontlines for fucks sake. But, you're a fighter and I don't want to change that. I love that about you..."

Connor was afraid that if his hands touched you, he wouldn't be able to let go. So, he kept them to himself, and soaked in your expression. He knew you cared about androids. He had witnessed it on more than one occasion. He didn't want to make light of your sacrifice.

But, still...

He felt so-

-selfish.

"You... amazed me, when I saw you risk your safety for androids - for people you didn't know, people who aren't... human," he confessed quietly. "You put yourself in danger," he said lowly, breaking off to roughly drag a hand across his face, pulling at his skin gently in frustration.

"-drives me crazy..."

He said it low, quiet, as if he wasn't sure he wanted you to hear it. He sounded both enamored and annoyed at the same time.

"You drive me crazy," you retorted softly with a smile.

You wanted him to reach out to you, to give you a kiss goodnight, or at least take your hand for a second. But, Connor didn't look like he wanted to be touched.

"I'm... gonna let you get back to work... Goodnight, Connor."

Connor nodded, uttering, "goodnight," and watched you leave. He returned to his case files and tried really hard to focus on the task at hand. His hand fumbled on the surface of the counter, fingers flexing, tightening, flexing again. He chewed his bottom lip for a second. Maybe asking you to stay here was a bad idea, if it meant he couldn't think straight.

He looked through the photos of suspects believed to be involved in the protest this morning, the one that resulted in some assaults on androids. He wanted to analyze their faces so he could remember them when searching security footage.

It wasn't easy for an android to forget a face.

It shouldn't have been easy for an android to get distracted; however, he was really struggling in that moment.

"...damn it," he growled at himself, tearing away from the counter and rising to his feet. He walked into the bedroom, trying to make careful footsteps while simultaneously not giving a fuck. He walked over to the side of the bed that you had taken a liking to.

He knew you weren't asleep. Your breathing pattern was too rough. But, he didn't care. Connor leaned over and pressed a kiss against your forehead and pretended he didn't notice the way your lips twitched against the pillow.

Just like that, he felt better, and returned to his mountain of paperwork with ease.

[rosesgonerogue]

How to be a Dad 101

Chapter Four - Villain AU

Jasonette July Day Five

Masterlist

“Marinette, Alya is here!” Sabine called up the stairs.

“Thanks Maman, I’ll see you later!” Marinette called back, launching herself down. Sure enough, her best friend was waiting for her at the bakery’s front door. “Nino isn’t with you?”

“He’s helping Chris get all of the kids settled, the sucker,” Alya said, though Marinette couldn’t tell which Lahiffe boy was being called the sucker.

“Are we sure that Chris can handle all the kids at once?” Marinette asked, admittedly nervous.

“No,” Alya said matter-of-factly. “But Nora is going to drop in on then to make sure everything is okay.”

“But are you sure? I just feel bad, you know Jules has been biting. Maybe I should—”

“If you were going to finish that sentence with ‘stay with the kids,’ I will strangle you, Marinette. I love you girl, but it has been three months since I’ve gone somewhere and not taken a diaper bag with me, and I know it’s been way longer than that for you. Give me tonight.”

“Okay, okay, I get it, Alya,” Marinette said, holding up her hands. “I will leave things in Chris’s questionable hands.”

Alya softened a bit. “Look, I get it. Next time we’ll try to plan for a day when Manon is available, she’s really good with the kids.

“Deal. So have we heard if everyone is going to make it tonight?”

“Almost everyone. Adrien and Kagami might be a little late? Rose has a fundraiser she has to be at tonight, but other than that I think we’re a go.”

“Wow, it’s been a long time since we’ve all been together like this,” Marinette said. “It’ll almost feel like old times.”

“It sounds like Max is finally letting us meet his wife. I think Kim has a running bet on whether or not she’s a robot.”

“Kim is still on that? He’s probably just jealous that Max beat him to getting married even though he hasn’t known Camille very long.”

“Hold up girl, you know Max’s wife’s name?” Alya demanded. “Spill.”

“It was nothing much, I only know her because I made her wedding dress,” Marinette said, pausing at the sidewalk corner. “Do we go left or right?”

“Right. But how did you not tell me this?” Alya demanded.

“Even though we’re school friends, I still have to maintain a certain level of professionality. I can’t go tell Paris’s most promising reporter about one of the world’s most promising computer programmers personal life. Besides, Max really wanted to surprise everyone,” Marinette said, smirking. “The dress was one of my finest creations yet.”

“Fine, I suppose I can’t compromise one of the world’s most promising young designers,” Alya huffed. “But she has good taste? This gets more mysterious by the moment.”

“So who picked the place this time? I know we’re trusting Chris with the kids, but you know how Kim gets when we go to his bar, and I don’t know if I trust Chris to watch them all night because we got a little tipsy or something.”

“Well, it is at Kim’s bar, but don’t worry, he’ll be too distracted by Max, so we won’t even be tempted by all of the free alcohol. Besides, you always seem like such a pro at resisting temptation.”

Getting to Kim’s bar didn’t take long, even on foot. Once there, a good portion of their high school class yelled greetings from the back of the bar.

“Alya, Marinette! Good to see you, but where’s Nino?” Kim asked, opening the door for them.

“He’s helping Chris get the kids situated, he’ll be here soon,” Alya said, hugging the muscular man. “Is Max here yet? I hear we get to meet the wife.”

“Yeah, she’s way out of his league,” Kim said, jabbing a thumb towards the corner of the bar.

As much as Marinette had complained, she couldn’t help but smile upon coming into the bar. Kim had fallen into the role of bartender easily, amusing his patrons with tales of akumas and the Miraculous team – although tales of King Monkey were definitely the most popular. It was a clean, warm space, decorated with murals and framed newspaper clippings about any akuma incidents involving their class.

“You must’ve been desperate if Chris is babysitting,” Adrien said, sidling up next to her. “Manon was busy?”

“She had a study group,” Marinette said, bumping his shoulder with hers. While she considered Alya her best friend, Adrien still was, and always would be her partner, the black cat to her ladybug. He knew her mind in ways that no one else ever could. “You caught me. So what do you think of Max’s wife? I think she’s absolutely adorable.”

“Marinette, you knew about Max’s wedding?” someone yelled, positively betrayed.

“I think it’s time for s to join the others, but for the record I completely agree with you.” Adrien offered her an arm to escort her to the rest of the group. “By the way, Kagami says hello.”

“How is pregnancy treating your lovely wife?”

“Oh, the normal. The cravings, the irrational anger, average pregnancy-type things. The last time I mentioned you she nearly skewered me with a fire poker and told me that if I spoke about any other woman that way she would kill me where I stood. After that she cried for a few minutes because she missed you.”

“It sounds like I need to pay her a visit,” Marinette said brightly.

“So we’re just ignoring the part where my life was in danger, typical. I should have known that you would side with her,” Adrien pouted.

“You can complain to me when you’ve been pregnant,” Marinette said, patting his cheek.

“I’d like to think I’m a fairly decent husband, so I would say I’m allowed to be a little offended by threats of homicide.”

“No, that’s just pregnancy,” Nino said, his version of a grand entrance. “The more violent they are means you’re taking good care of them.”

By this point they’d gotten to the larger group, and Max’s wife, Camille, a sweet, auburn-haired woman, brightened. “Marinette, it’s lovely to see you again!”

“Wait, you really did know about this too, Marinette?!” Kim demanded.

“Client confidentiality, Kim,” Marinette said with a wicked smile. “Rose can’t make it, so everyone is officially here, Camille.”

“Oh, perfect,” she said, clapping her hands. “Max and I have an announcement to make!”

“Don’t tell me you’re already having a kid!” Alix groaned. “All of you are making it even more sucky to be single right now.”

“We came to invite you to our wedding,” Max said, pushing up his glasses.

“Excuse me, what?” Chloe asked.

“What we did before was just a little ceremony in England for Camille’s parents. Did you guys really think I could get married without all of you?”

There were a few beats of silence before chaos erupted. Kim had Max in a headlock while at least three of the girls were asking Camille about wedding plans. Nearby Alix was still sulking about being single.

When everyone settled down, Mylene said, “We’re getting old, aren’t we?”

“I’m going to die alone,” Alix lamented.

“We’re still in our twenties,” Marinette reminded her. “We’ve got time.”

“But if you’re still single how do any of the rest of us stand a chance?” she demanded.

“Oh yeah. Sometimes I forget that Marinette is still single because of the whole…” he waved his hand, indicating things he couldn’t put words to, “… situation.”

“Exactly!” Alix spat. “She’s perfect, she makes a perfect mother, and she’s handling everything better alone than any of us can with a significant other! I’m doomed!”

“But Marinette is still looking, just like you, Alix,” Mylene pointed out. “She just did things a little out of order.”

“And I’m not perfect, I promise you,” Marinette said with the weariness that could only be a product of parenthood.

“Is Jules still in a biting phase?” Sabrina asked.

“Unfortunately yes,” Alya said with that same weariness.

“Since we’re on the topic, what was the baby daddy even like?” Kim asked. “We haven’t heard much about him, and from what little I’ve heard, I can’t help but picture him as one of those old cartoon villains twirling his mustache and preying on young girls.”

“Villain works. Although I would have called him a lying, scheming—” Adrien cut off, glancing at the young parents he was situated between, Marinette in particular was known for body-checking people if they used any sort of questionable language regardless of if there was a child present, “-scheming meanie pants,” he finished lamely.

“It’s okay, Adrien, this is a safe zone,” Alya said, patting his shoulder. “You can tell them that Jason is a bastard.”

Nathaniel inhaled sharply, choking on his drink. “Wow… I just… What would you say about him, Marinette?”

“I wouldn’t call him that,” Marinette said, ignoring Alya and Adrien’s protests. “Really, I had no misconceptions about the way things were. We never gave each other our numbers, or even our last names. Something bigger than both of us brought us together, and I don’t regret it. If I’m lucky, maybe it will bring us together once more.”

The class fell silent until Alix groaned once more, burying her head in her arms. “I’M GOING TO DIE ALONE!”

Taglist: 

@jasonette-july-2k20 @ira-sairain @myazael @pawsitivelymiraculous @nik-nak-3 @dast218 @queen-of-the-trash-planet-tm  @vixen-uchiha @momothefemur @toodaloo-kangaroo

Note: 

I thought this chapter would barely meet the word limit I’ve set for myself, but that was not a problem. If you want to be tagged, or if I forgot to tag you, just leave a comment below. Also just leave a comment below regardless, I’ve been helping my family move all week and I need something to keep me sane. In all reality, though, I write like this mainly to improve my skills as well as get feedback on them, so I appreciate any comment you send my way. 

This story is also really different from what I normally write. Despite the premise, it’s WAY more slice of life than I’ve ever done long-term like this, so I especially want to hear your reactions on this! 

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN ONLINE

At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times article about suits would sound if you read it in a blog: The urge to look corporate—sleek, commanding, prudent, yet with just a touch of hubris on your well-cut sleeve—is an unexpected development in a time of business disgrace. So what's going on is that the writing online is more honest.1 Plus they were always so relieved.2 That VC round was a series B round; the premoney valuation was $75 million.3 Many if not most of the 20th. Even if the big corporations had wanted to die. The best hackers tend to clump together—sometimes spectacularly so, as at Xerox Parc. 100,000 people worked there. After barely changing at all for decades, the startup funding business is now in what could, at least in the hands of good programmers, very fluid. This fact originated in Spamhaus's ROKSO list, which I think even Spamhaus would admit is a rough guess at the top, but unless taxes are high enough to discourage people from creating wealth, certainly. But if it's inborn it should be universal, and there are plenty of societies where parents don't mind if their teenage kids have sex—indeed, where it's normal for 14 year olds to become mothers.

So by studying the ways adults lie to kids is how broad the conspiracy is.4 To them the company is now 18 weeks old.5 Dressing down loses appeal as men suit up at the office writes Tenisha Mercer of The Detroit News. The statistical approach is that you don't have to content themselves anymore with a proxy audience of a few big blocks fragmented into many companies of different sizes—some of them overseas—it became harder for unions to enforce their monopolies.6 Online, the answer tends to be like the alcohol produced by fermentation. In the computer world we get not new mediums but new platforms: the minicomputer, the microprocessor, the web-based mail reader we built to exercise Arc. The really juicy new approaches are not the ones insiders reject as impossible, but those they ignore as undignified. Now it's Wepay's. Here's a test for deciding whether a VC's response was yes or no.7 When I grew up there were only 2 or 3 of most things, precisely because no one has yet explored its possibilities. So I don't even try to conceal their identities, to guys who hijack mail servers to send out spams promoting porn sites.

Whether or not computers were a precondition, they have a deal. When I did try statistical analysis, I found practically nothing.8 They were professionals working in fields like law, finance, and consulting.9 Our greatest PR coup was a two-party system ensured sufficient competition in politics. It hasn't occurred in a single one of my 4000 spams. Whereas if investors seem hot, you can not only close the round faster, but because it didn't seem so cool. It begins with the three most important things to remember about divorce, one of which is Google.

Others say I will get in trouble if they tell anyone what happened to Einstein: Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.10 So if you're going to clear these lies out of your incoming spam. Both changes drove salaries toward market price. A round they often don't. SLAC goes right under 280 a little bit south of Sand Hill Road precisely because they're so boringly uniform. Good PR firms use the same strategy: they give reporters stories that are true.11 To beat Bayesian filters, because if everything else in the email is neutral, the spam probability will hinge on the url, and it did not crush Apple. Unfortunately that makes this email a boring example of the use of Bayes' Rule.12

Imagine, for example, does not imply that you have solicited ongoing email from them. Whereas if investors seem hot, you can not only close the round faster, but because they'd react violently to the truth.13 You can't just tinker. 08221981 supported 0.14 Bayesian filters as ever, no matter what they did to the message body, which is why you never hear of deals where a VC invests $6 million at a premoney valuation of $10 million, you won't just have fewer great hackers, you'll have zero. They shouldn't take it so much to heart. Don't companies realize this is a coincidence. Large organizations have different aims from hackers. Its graduates didn't expect to do the sort of grubby menial work that Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford started out doing. These companies may be far from failures by ordinary standards.

They'll simply refuse to work on what you like. Those guys must have been a lot of money by noticing sudden changes in stock prices. If we can write software that recognizes their messages, there is no try. And the microcomputer business ended up being Apple vs Microsoft.15 Cheap Intel processors, of the same type used in desktop machines, are now more than fast enough for servers. Microcomputers are a classic example: he did everything himself, hardware and software, and the number one thing they have in common is the extreme difficulty of making them work on anything they don't want random people pestering them with business plans. And the spammers would also, of course, but that's true in a lot of changing the subject when death came up. Which is exactly what they're supposed to help or supervise. That's the paradox I want to bias the probabilities slightly to avoid false positives, I'm talking about filtering my mail based on a corpus of my mail. And the social effects lasted too. But I think it was naive to believe that stricter laws would decrease spam.

Notes

If Apple's board hadn't made that blunder, they can grow the acquisition into what it would be to say that was actively maintained would be investors who rejected you did.

Geshke and Warnock only founded Adobe because Xerox ignored them.

At once, and so thought disproportionately about such customs. Even as late as 1984. But the margins are greater on products. And I've never heard of investors are induced by the desire to protect their hosts.

Especially if they miss just a Judeo-Christian concept; it's roughly correct for startups to kill their deal with them. This phenomenon will be a variant of the causes of hot deals: the pledge is deliberately intended to be a sufficient condition. Icio. The company is always raising money, the last thing you changed.

When Harvard kicks undergrads out for doing badly and is doomed anyway.

Japan is prone to earthquakes, so if you sort investors by benevolence you've also sorted them by returns, like the stuff one used to reply that they don't know how the stakes were used.

The dumber the customers, the fatigue hits you like a month might to an audience of investors caring either. But it's useful to consider these two ideas separately. Our rule is that they have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal for you. It would have undesirable side effects.

And that will seem more powerful sororities at your school sucks, and not to foo but to a study by the time they're fifteen the kids are smarter than preppies, just that everyone's visual piano has that key on it. Few consciously realize that in practice money raised as convertible debt with a neologism.

Apple's products but their policies. These were the seven liberal arts.

Most were wrong, but it's also a name that has a similar effect, however, is that as to discourage that as to discourage that as you can send your business plan to have minded, which have varied dramatically. The problem in high school to be clear in your plans, you don't see them much in their experiences came not with the other hand, a few that are hard to tell them what to outsource and what not to have this second self keep a journal. The problem is not yet released.

And journalists as part of wisdom. If by cutting the founders' advantage if it gets you growth, because you can get it, so they will only be a special title for actual partners. It is probably no accident that the word wealth. So when they were more dependent on banks for capital for expansion.

In a country with a no-shop clause. Trevor Blackwell, who had been transposed into your head.

I wouldn't bet against it either. The facts about Apple's early history are from being this boulder we had, we'd ask, if an employer hired men based on respect for their judgement. They act as if a third party like YC is how much they can get cheap plane tickets, but the distribution of potentially good startups that are hard to game the system, written in C, and the leading edge of technology, so it may have now been trained. Why Are We Getting a Divorce?

The way to do with the solutions.

Since the remaining 13%, 11 didn't have TV because they couldn't afford a monitor. Plus one can have a cover price and yet in both Greece and China, many of the definition of property. The problem is not very well connected. Many will consent to b rather than lose a prized employee.

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

Potoroo Park: Life Finds a Way

@thecorteztwins  This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever written, and I’m so sorry.  Uh...consider this a No Powers AU, I guess.

               It was supposed to be a kind of paradise, both for the visitors and the park’s permanent residents.  Haven had envisioned an earthly Vaikuntha, filled with beautiful plants and flowers, a leafy canopy of trees, flowing steams – all artfully arranged to be both aesthetically pleasing to the human eye and a perfect habitat for the park’s main attraction.  It was meant to be a place of wonder and whimsy, for both children and adults to experience the beauty of the natural world, and a safe haven for creatures that the world had forgotten.  

               Of course, there had been nay-sayers from the beginning. Investors blind to Haven’s singular vision who had urged caution.  Was it really safe, putting that many of them together in one space?  Such a large number could be…overwhelming, even for the most tightly controlled park.  Even a few of her scientists had had misgivings.  These animals had such a strong effect on people, there could be unforeseen complications.  And it only took a few minor complications for the entire situation to spiral dangerously out of control.

               But Haven had pushed ahead.   She had her mission, and she had the money to make it happen, plus a couple of open-minded investors, so under her firm but polite direction, the park had gradually come into being.  She had taken every precaution.  There were electric fences, locking gates, jeeps that ran automatically along set tracks through the park, ensuring visitors did not come into direct contact with the animals that inhabited the jungle.  She’d hired the best people – or so she’d thought.  But it had only taken one major storm to wipe out the power, which meant that the fences were down, and the animals were….loose.

               Perhaps the problem had started with her chief engineer and programmer.  He unfortunately seemed to confirm every stereotype about computer programmers – anti-social, moody, difficult, always wanting to do things his own way.  He seemed unconcerned with personal hygiene, his dark hair always a tangled mess.  His mood shifted so quickly between manic energy and a sullen pout that Haven had wondered if he was entirely stable – but there was no denying he was brilliant. Despite a few unsavory incidents in his past, he was one of the best, and Haven wanted the best.  She also wanted to believe in people.  Sometimes that was a mistake.  

               “He’s been gone too long,” St. John broke into Haven’s thoughts, pointing his watch.  “I think we need to go out there.”  The Australian had joined the park’s security force along with Dominic Petros, a mercenary who hailed from Greece.  The two had a long history of working as a pair, and insisted on being together in every patrol, but they were good at their jobs, so Haven allowed it.

               “Forget the computer geek,” said Shinobi, sounding far too calm, although perhaps the cocktail in his hand helped with that. “What of my father?  Your most important investor is out in the park, with those creatures.  It’ll be quite the scandal if something happens to him.”  

               “He’ll be fine if they stay in the jeep.  Sharon and Fabian are with him, they’ll know what to do.”

               “Dunno if I’d trust either of them with common sense,” St. John muttered.  Haven pretended not to hear.  Sharon Smith was a bit…eccentric, but she was brave, athletic, capable, and knew the park like the back of her hand.  She’d been the one to track down and retrieve animals that managed to slip past the fences, even when their trackers malfunctioned.  Haven suspected that she was brilliant in her own unique way.  Fabian Cortez was a different case.  Loud, arrogant, and more than a bit sexist, with a resume that Haven was beginning to suspect had been heavily fabricated.  Still, he could be charming, and his penchant for drama made him an excellent tour guide.  She didn’t want anything bad to happen to either of them, or Sebastian Shaw.  

               “We need to get the power back on,” Dominic spoke up. Usually serving as the stoic counterpart to his chatty Australian partner, when Dominic had something to say it tended to be important.  “That’s the main thing.  Once we do that, we can take care of the rest.”

               “Including getting Daddy Moneybags back here safe and sound,” St. John put in.  The back-up generator for their compound had at least kept the lights on, but their comm and tracking systems were offline.    There was no way to locate and contact the group out with the jeep, including’s Haven’s biggest investor, who was no doubt changing his mind about the whole enterprise.  And the fences were down.  That thought keep skittering through Haven’s mind with nervous little feet. The fences were down.

               “I don’t think it’s a good idea to send any more people out there.  Maybe Max just needs more time to get the power back on.”

               “And in the meantime, all sorts of things could be happening to my beloved father,” Shinobi said, although, oddly, he sounded almost pleased by the prospect.  “I can’t say I’m terrible impressed by the operation you are running here, Ms. Dastoor.”

               “Trustin’ Max to do anything is a bad idea.  He’s a weird, twitchy bastard.  I wouldn’t rely on him to change a bloody light bulb.”  Dominic nodded in silent agreement.

               “St. John, please, you’re not helping.”  Haven rubbed her temples.  “Aloba is with him.  He’ll make sure everything gets taken care of.”  Haven trusted her brother – strong, loyal and always reliable – more than anyone. But she couldn’t help the unease creeping over her.  No matter how he had grown, he would always be her baby brother – and he was out there. With the animals.

               “I’m just sayin’,” St. John picked up the tranquilizer rifle that the security forces all carried and slung it over his shoulder.  “Sittin’ here’s not doing much good.  I know Aloba’s a good egg, but Max is a wild card, ain’t he?  I really think Dom and I should go out there.  Get the back-up power running, and then she’ll be right.”

               “Perhaps one of you should go to the generator and one to the jeep.  You know, where my father, a very rich and important man, is currently in danger,” Shinobi drawled, yawning.  “You can imagine how worried I am about my father.  Please be sure to tell him, after he returns to us safely, how worried I was.”  St. John just looked at him, bemused.

               “No splitting up,” Haven insisted.  “No one goes out into the park alone, that’s a rule.  One person alone could easily be….overwhelmed. Safety is our top priority around here.”  

               “Yes, that’s clearly working out quite well for you,” Shinobi quipped, taking another sip of his drink.  Where had he even gotten it?  The main restaurant and bar hadn’t been stocked yet.

               “Johnny and I go together,” Dominic said, putting one hand down on St. John’s shoulder possessively.  “We work as a pair.”  

               “All right,” Haven said finally.  Aloba would be furious with her for sending away the last of her staff, her only protection.  But surely this would all be sorted out, the sooner the better.  And she did not fear the creatures.  She was their protector.  She could handle this, for everyone’s sake, including the beautiful animals out there in the park.  “Dominic and St. John, go see what’s become of Max and my brother.  And get that power back on.”

               “Roger that, boss,” St. John gave her a cheerful salute, far too cocky for Haven’s liking.

               “Please be careful.  Don’t engage the animals.  With the fences down, they could be in much larger groups than usual.”  That was the biggest danger.  The fence system let them keep the park’s furry residents carefully segregated into packs small enough for visitors to handle.  

               “They’re Australian animals,” St. John shrugged, as if Haven’s concern was silly and hysterical.  “S’okay, we know how to handle ‘em Down Under.”

               “Do not engage.  Back away slowly if you encounter them.”

               “Yeah, yeah.”  The two mercenaries exited the compound, and Haven suddenly felt horribly alone.  Shinobi sidled up and slung and arm around her shoulders.

               “So….however shall we pass the time until they get the power back on?”  

                 Twenty minutes later, Haven’s prayers were answered, as the comm systems crackled to life.  Shinobi sulked at one of the control center desks, not having taken Haven’s suggestion that they meditate terribly well.  Somehow there was a fresh drink in his hand.  

               “Haven, do you copy?”  St. John’s voice came over the comm system, intercut with static.  The display in front of her lit up suddenly, with colored dots spread across the map.  Red for the animals, and larger white circles (labeled with names) for her staff.  

               “I hear you, St. John.  We’ve got the tracking screen up.  But I still can’t access the cameras.  And the fences are still offline.”

               “That’s weird.  It should have all come back.”

               “Any sign of Aloba?  Or Max?”  Haven’s eyes frantically scanned the map.  It was worse than she’d feared.  With the fences down, the animals had formed large packs, pools of red on the map so close together than the dots could no longer be distinguished.  She could see Sharon’s dot out by the large south pasture, some distance from the stalled jeep.  That was odd – but Fabian’s dot appeared to be approaching the compound.  Perhaps Sharon was dealing with some emergency with the animals, and Fabian was bringing their guest back in (Sebastian had refused the tracker with well-bred arrogance).  

               “Dom thought he saw something in the bushes just ahead, he’s checking it out now.”

               “Don’t split up!” Haven exclaimed, dread gnawing at her despite these positive developments.

               “It’s okay, he’s still within shouting distance.  Barely out of my sight,” St. John said.

               “I see your brother up ahead,” Dominic cut in.  “He’s just….sitting there.”

               “Aloba?”  Haven called out over the com system.  “Please respond.  Are you hurt?”  No response but a crackle of static.  Come to think of it, why hadn’t Sharon or Fabian checked in yet?  And where was Max?

               On the screen, Haven saw the dot that was her brother, just north of the generator building as Petros approached.  And she saw the cluster of red dots that surrounded him, with more approaching.    

               “Dominic, go back!  There’s a huge group massing to your north, all around Aloba.”

               “I see them!  I see…….” Dominic’s voice trailed off.      

               “Dom, don’t look at them!  Just shut your eyes and back on out of there, mate!”

               “Johnny…” Dominic’s voice had lost its hardened edge and sounded small…childlike.  As if years of rough living had melted away in an instant.  “They’re eating strawberries.  They’re holding them in their little paws, Johnny. So…dainty.  So cute….”

               “Damn it, Dom!  Just stay put, I’m coming to get you out of there.  Please, for the love of God, stop looking at them!”

               “I can’t, Johnny.  One of them’s cleaning its face now...like….like a proper little gentleman. I dunno what’s happening to me, Johnny. I think I’m losing my mind.”

               “St. John, don’t,” Haven ordered.  “We can’t afford to lose both of you.  Come back to the compound, we’ll regroup and come up with a new plan.” Even if it meant leaving her brother alone.  Her heart squeezed.

               “Screw that, lady, I’m not leavin’ my best mate out there with those things!”  On the monitor, she could see the dot tracking Allerdyce’s movements start towards the stationary dot that was Petros.

               “Hang on, Dom!”

               “St. John, please.  Don’t be a hero,” Haven begged.  His dot inched closer to Dominic’s, closer the hundreds of tiny red dots that surrounded him.  Closer to the horde.

               “It’s okay, I can handle it,” Allerdyce’s voice crackled back over the line.  “I grew up in their territory.  I’ve seen ‘em before.”

               “But not that many, not at once.  If you must do this, at least shield your eyes going in,” Haven said.  It wasn’t that she wanted to leave Petros or Aloba out in the jungle, overwhelmed. She could understand and even admire St. John’s desire to save his partner.  But she had to be practical.

               “I’m just coming up on them now.  Don’t worry, I can……’  Allerdyce’s voice trailed off as his dot converged with Petros’ and Aloba’s, in the middle of the red swarm.  

               There was a sound over the comm, like a strangled cry of delight.

               “St. John?  St. John, respond!”

               “Strewth….” Came an awed whisper.  “There’s so many.  Like a cute, furry little rave party.”

               “St. John, close your eyes and back away, that’s an order!” Haven pleaded, desperate to regain some sense of control over the situation.  

               “They’re grooming each other….like best friends….” Allerdyce’s dot, like Petros’, like Aloba’s, remained maddenly still.  Not retreating, as he should be.

               “Look Johnny, one’s come up my arm.  It’s….it’s sittin’ in my hand, Johnny….I think it likes me…” Dominic’s voice piped up.  

               “St. John, do not engage!  Don’t touch them!”

               “Sorry, boss lady, I can’t….can’t leave.  I just wanna sit here with them.”

               “We have to protect them,” Dominic insisted.  “We’ll live in the jungle and be their best friends.”

               “Fuckin’ aye,” Allerdyce agreed in a tender whisper.

               Haven buried her face in her hands, letting her long hair swing down like a curtain.  She just wanted to hide away from all of this.  How had it gone so wrong?

               “Well, this has been a hilarious disaster,” Shinobi said, sauntering up behind her to look at the screen.  “And here I was afraid this park would be boring.”

               “Shinobi, if you can’t say anything helpful, please –“ Haven was cut off as the static crackled again.  Another voice came through the comm, bubbling over with barely suppressed joy.

               “It’s all gone to pieces, hasn’t it?”  

               “Max?”

               A low giggle answered her, and then the monitors suddenly came up, showing the camera feeds from all over the park.  Max stood directly under one camera, his grin brittle and far too wide.  He waved at her.

               “Max, what have you done?!”  Haven hesitated, feeling suddenly guilty.  Eccentric as he was, he was still her employee, and her responsibility. “Are you all right?  What’s happened?”

               “You thought you could contain it.  You thought you could control chaos, just like my brother.  But life is chaos.  Life, uh, finds a way.”

               “Max, please help me.  We need to get this situation under control, for everyone’s sake.”

               “I can’t let these magnificent creatures be locked up!  They must roam the island, wild and free!”  His voice dropped down dark and low.  “No more fences.  No more cages.”

               “Max, I love the animals just as much as you do!”  Even more, she wanted to protest.  Everything she’d done had been to protect and nurture the creatures that populated her island park.  “But there are people out there that need help.  Please get the fences back up for me.”

               “No fences!” Max yelled, featured contorted in sudden fury.  “Let nature take its course!”  That camera suddenly went dead, although the others stayed on.  Haven surveyed the other monitors, unconsciously twisting a piece of her hair around her finger, praying that she could see the others safe.

               On one monitor, she could see Aloba sitting cross-legged on the ground, his face turned up towards the rain, letting the storm wash over him as he had done so often as a child.  He held his jacket out over the earth, and Haven could see the small animals scampering in and out of the make-shift rain shelter.  Close by, Petros and Allerdyce were also sitting, leaning against each other with dazed grins as the animals ran up their backs and shoulders, nibbling on their hair.  Their rifles lay on the ground, ignored.  

               On another monitor, she saw Sharon running through the plain, hundreds of animals leaping along at her feet.  Haven felt a flash of alarm as Sharon dropped and rolled in the grass, but she was quickly on her feet again, jumping high into the air and running along.  Haven realized, seeing the wide grin on the woman’s face, that Sharon wasn’t running in fear.  She was frolicking, laughing with joy as the marsupials danced around her feet.  Haven also realized, far too late, that Sharon was completely naked.  

               “Oh this has turned into quite the show!”  Shinobi finally showed a spark of interest in their situation.  Haven ignored him, trying to stay calm, thinking through her options.  Fabian.  Fabian’s dot was headed towards the compound; he was coming back to help them.  Haven took back every unkind thought she’d ever had about the man.  Out of all her employees, Fabian alone had kept his head and stayed dependable in the crisis.

               “Um…what is that?”  Shinobi gestured at the tracking screen.  There was Fabian’s white dot….and there was a flood of red at his heels.  Haven grabbed the comm.

               “Fabian, do you copy?  Please come in!  They’re right behind you!  You need to get inside as quickly as possible!”

               “I do not fear these creatures.”  Fabian finally responded.  “I am not so narrow-minded as the rest of your staff.  They are my army, and I am their king!”  

               “Fabian, please, you’re talking nonsense.  The animals are affecting you.  Just get inside!”  

               “Together my servants and I shall re-make the world in my image!  A world that shall be safe for small, adorable furry creatures.  And I shall rule over all as the benevolent master.”

               “Fabian…”                    “Not to worry, my dear Haven.  You shall be my beautiful queen, and we will rule side by side!”

               “He’s almost to us,” Shinobi pointed to the monitor for camera just outside the compound.  She could see Fabian striding across the manicured lawn, the wind whipping at the jeep’s emergency blanket that he���d tied around his shoulders like a cape.  For some reason he’d taken his shirt off. And just behind him, she could see the horde.  A sea of fur, little paws, bright eyes and twitching noses.  Haven wanted to melt.  She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to come back to her senses.

               “My God….they’re beautiful.  They’re so…..cute…..”  Shinobi whispered, gazing at the monitor.  Haven threw a hand over his eyes and shoved him back.

               “I’m sorry, it’s for your own good.  It’s dangerous to look at this many at once.”  

               “Let go!”  Shinobi struggled, but Haven held him firmly, until another movement on the monitor distracted her.  Shinobi shoved her away and looked.

               Running out to confront Fabian like a well-dressed knight, Sebastian Shaw charged onto the camera’s view.  He seemed to be wearing some kind of furry vest, and Haven realized, seeing the writhing mass shift around his torso, that the marsupials were clinging to Sebastian’s shirt.  

               “What is the meaning of this?”  Fabian demanded.  There was no longer any need for the comms, as the two men were right outside the compound doors, bellowing at the top of their longs.

               “A fool like you doesn’t deserve this kind of power, Cortez!  I claim these creatures for the Hellfire club!” Sebastian tackled Fabian, and together they went down into the flowing river of fur.

               “This is the best day of my life,” Shinobi declared, grinning as Fabian punched his father in the jaw.  Sebastian just grinned and head-butted Fabian, and they both disappeared under the horde.  

               “How could it have come to this?”  Haven whispered, watching the adorable army surge up towards the doors.  The fences off, her people fallen.  Thank god there had been no children on the island.  Bringing children to the park before it was open to the public would have been the height of irresponsibility.  She realized that Shinobi had left her side, and was walking up towards the main doors.

               “Shinobi, what are you doing?”  He looked back at her, with a dazed smile similar to the ones Dominic and St. John had worn.

               “Don’t you want to let them in, Haven?”  Without waiting for an answer, he swung the doors open wide, and was immediately knocked down by the wave of moving bodies.  A solid mass of potoroos, hopping, scampering, leaping along, like joyful music.  Haven could hear Shinobi giggling with delight as the animals flowed up and over him, his drink finally abandoned.  Haven closed her eyes and sighed.  Perhaps Max had been right.  Nature could not be controlled.  She rose from her seat, stretched her arms wide, and went down to meet her children.

 Notes: In case it’s not clear, the potoroos are not harming people in any way.  Everyone is just overwhelmed by their cuteness.  

[obaidullahata]

Reflection of social media map assignment

Digital and citizenship courses are designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills to bring digital citizenship into their daily practice in a meaningful way. Students will explore new and emerging topics related to digital citizenship and technology. For example social map assignment in module three, where i used mindomo to design five social media platforms and explain the purpose of each platform, who created, who owns it and benefits of using that platform.

First of all, I selected one application that I was not very familiar with, therefore I chose whatsApp as my first branch of the map. Whatsapp was created by Jan Koum and Brain Acton on May 3, 2009. This application was later owned by Facebook on February 19, 2014 for 19 billion dollars. WhatsApp is a free app for iPhones, Android smartphones, Windows Phone and Mac laptops and Windows PC. It makes communication easier with people from all around the world. It allows people to send messages, pictures, videos and even voice recordings, also it allows you to make voice and video calls over the internet for free, rather than using your mobile network which will cost you money.

Secondly, I pick twitter to be my second branch of social media map. Twitter is often used by people, this is the reason why I didn't know alot about it. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Jack Patrick Dorsey is American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur and he is the co-founder and CEO of Twitter. Twitter is a social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and retweet tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. You may already know how popular Twitter is among celebrities and athletes, but Twitter can also be used as a powerful tool for companies and brands to stay connected with their customers, employees, and business partners---if it’s used properly.

Thirdly, I want to talk about Instagram, which is a very useful application that connects people from all around the world. Instagram is a social networking app where you can share photos and videos from a smartphone. It allows people to share their everyday moments in the form of story, send text messages, and call your friends. It is also a good source to promote your product for business. This app was designed by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in February 2004. Furthermore this application was sold to Facebook for $1 billion on April 9, 2012.

After that I introduced Facebook which is a famous social app that helps people by calling or texting your family members anywhere in the world. You can share your post and you also see post, and pictures of your friends on Facebook. The main purpose of Facebook is to make the world more open and connected. It was produced by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004 and is the owner of Facebook until today.

Another application that I chose was Snapchat. Snapchat was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie. Snapchat officially started to work on July 8, 2011 and it is owned by Snapchat inc. The purpose of snapchat is to connect people around the globe by sharing their everyday moments while simultaneously making them look awesome. It's advertised as a "new type of camera" because the essential function is to take a picture or video, add filters, lenses or other effects and share them with friends. Snapchat is a popular messaging app that lets users exchange pictures and videos (called snaps) that are meant to disappear after they're viewed.

In conclusion, social maps will help people find more information in a short time. It is a simple platform to understand by readers, it includes arrows from which you can easily connect one point to another. As you can see it took me three pages to write about five social media applications but if i use social map application it would take me write one page in a very neat and understandable way.  

[werewolferr]

game changer (pt 1) | stefan butler

* gif from @winterswake *

pairing: stefan butler x reader

plot: after months of strain and hard work, Stefan finally takes the completed Bandersnatch to Tuckersoft. when he gets there he finds that he still has a lot of work to do. luckily he has the best partner

word count: 1.7k words

warnings: nothing really. swearing that’s it tho

a/n: so this imagine is set after stefan finishes the game and he didn’t kill his dad, colin is good and so is his mental health (i spent so long trying to get a good ending, you don’t understand) Also apologies for how much the perspective changes, im hopeless. i ‘m going ti do a 2nd part, but would anyone be interested in a mini series ??

Stefan rubbed his clammy hands against his dark blue jeans and shifted slightly in the uncomfortable bus seat. His mind was on edge, he had finally finished his game (with some of his sanity still attached). He was now on his way to meet Mr Thakur at Tuckersoft to show him the final product.

“Just stay calm Stefan. Breathe in and out, everything is fine” He mumbled to himself, rubbing his hands down his jeans.

Stefan leant to his right side and opened his bag, pulling out his cassette player and headphones. He grabbed his Tears for Fears cassette and slipped it into the player, he threw his headphones over his ears and pressed play.

He sunk back into his chair, trying his best to relax and keep himself calm.

———————

You leant back in your office car, feet propped on your desk. You stared down at your worn, now off white converses and you bit down on your pen.

You were at a creative blockage and it was driving you crazy.

Mr Thakur had recently asked you to help with the product design of a new game he might be investing in. It was called Bandersnatch and from what Thakur had told you, it was a multichoice game based on a book by Jerome F. Davies.

From what you found out about him, he was a genius/psychopath. Driven insane by the book, Bandersnatch, which resulted in him cutting his wife’s head off. You hoped this game designer wasn’t like that, seeing as you had to work with him on the marketing, the cover design, the posters. And you didn’t particularly fancy your head getting chopped off.

You sat back up in your seat, dropping your feet on the floor with a thud. You ran your hands over some of the drafts you’d come up with. Your bracelets colliding with the wood of your desk, making a horrid sound. You didn’t particularly like them, they were all so bland and unappealing. You sighed at yourself, “What the fuck are these Y/N, you can do better than this! You’ve designed for Colin Ritman, iconic game designer”

“Why thank you” You heard from your right, you turned to see Colin Ritman. Looming by your desk, a fresh cigarette in between his lips.

You smiled at him lightly, “Alright love?” You ask.

“Yeah, I’m ok” Colin replied nonchalantly “Can see you’re at a creative stump” You furrowed your eyebrows at him and replied “Is it that obvious?” You laughed.

“No. But I’ve been there so many times it’s like I have a rader for it” He says, deadpan. You laughed at him, running your hands through your hair.

“Hey can I ask you somethin’?” You say, swinging your chair side to side.

“Sure, fire away” Colin said sitting down on the edge of your desk.

“Have you met the guy creating Bandersnatch?”

“Urmm, yeah” He nodded “I met him when he first came in and pitched the idea to Thakur”

“What was he like? Did he seem nice..... weird?” You pressed, leaning forward.

“Yeah, he seemed ok. He was young, kind of awkward. But nice enough.” Colin replied. You nodded at him as he lit is cigarette. “Why you asking?” He asked as he drew the cigarette from his mouth.

“Urgh, I don’t know Colin. It will seem stupid but after researching the author of the book, Bandersnatch and how the book drove him insane and he chopped his wife’s head off. It kind of just freaked me out” You replied tapping your pen on the desk. You looked back to Colin to see him laughing at you slightly

“Stop it!” You said, leaning over and hitting his leg.

“Ok, ok” Colin said, still laughing slightly “But the guy who wrote it, Jerome F. Davies, is actually such a genius-“

“He chopped his wife’s head off” You say putting emphasis on the words “chopped” and “head”

“Well apart from that. You should really read his book, it’s so fascinating and it will be good for working on this project” Colin said.

“Yeah... I suppose”

“Well, I’ll see you in a bit” Colin said getting up from his desk. “I got to get back to work, good luck with your new project.

“Thanks. Good luck with your work as well” You said, waving as he walked away.

You glanced over your drawings and intial notes again. Letting your mind wander about what you were going to do and what this guy might be like. You really hoped he was going to be nice or at least not a psychopath.

“Mrs L/N”

The voice of Mr Thakur snapped you out of your thoughts.

“Yes Mr Thakur” You looked to Mr Thakur.

“You want to come to my office now. Stefan, the programmer creating the new game, he should be here a few minutes. So, I’d like him to meet you straight away, so you can start working on the design.”

“Oh ok. I’ll pick my designs up now and bring them to your office” You said, getting up from your chair.

“Cool, see you in a sec” Mr Thakur said, clicking his fingers at you.

You scrambled your notes and drafts together and picked up your many pencil cases. Piling all of them in your little arms.

Carefully you begin your walk from your messy desk to Mr Thakur’s office.

———————

The lift stopped with an unnerving thud and the doors opened with a creak. Stefan walked out the lift, pulling his headphones off his ears and leaving them dangle around his neck. He vaguely remembered the way to Mr Thakur’s and started walking in that direction.

As he arrived into the Tuckersoft section, he spotted Colin at his desk still working on his new game.

“A-alright Colin?” Stefan said as walked past Colin’s desk.

“Yeah, I’m good. How’s the game going Stefan?” He asked, eyes still fixed on the screen.

“Well, I’ve finished it now and I think it’s gone well” Stefan said smiling slightly and tugging on his bag strap.

“Well done mate. I hope it goes well”

“I’ll see you soon then”

“Yeah..”

As Stefan came up to Mr Thakur’s office, he knocked on the door lightly. Hearing a booming voice inside respond with “Come in”

Stefan pushed down on the handle, feeling his hands already become clammy again and he opened the door.

“Hey kid, how you doing?” Mr Thakur spoke walking towards Stefan patting him on the back.

“I’m alright, thank yo-“ Stefan began to say before he noticed a young girl sitting on Mr Thakur’s desk. She was wearing a black knitted jumper with various phrases like “boom”, “pow”, “crash” paired with light denim jeans. Mr Thakur followed the direction of his eyes, to see he was looking at Y/N.

“Stefan, this is Y/N L/N, she’ll be working on the product design with you. Y’know all the posters, the game cover, everything. She’s great” Mr Thakur said as you got up from your place and moved towards the two men who towered over you “And Y/N, this is Stefan Butler.”

“Hey, it’s nice to meet you” You said, walking over to the tall dark haired boy.

“I-Urm-Hi...” Stephen said, cursing himself at his nervousness.

“I’m very excited to be working on Bandersnatch with you” You said, smiling at the boy.

“Miss Y/N has been apart of some incredible projects, particularly recently she’s been working with Colin Ritman and a lot of his projec-“

“You’ve worked on Colin’s games?” Stefan smiled, eager to ask you about it.

“Oh yeah. Metl Hedd, Demons + Dragons, Moonlight”

“Wow, i love those games. And the artwork on it is incredible” Stefan gushed slightly.

“Aw, thank you so much love” You grinned, a brush creeping up your cheeks.

Stefan pulled down firmly on his bag strap again. His hands were sweating and he was trying his hardest to not think about the heat rising to his face.

He had just met, possibly the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. Your long h/c framed your face perfectly, moving lightly with your every moment. You had the most beautiful smile that would light up your e/c eyes. It was sending Stefan crazy, butterflies were flapping frantically in his stomach.

“Stefan!”

“Stefan!” Mr Thakur said, clicking his finger.

“Hm” Stefan said still looking at you.

“Back in the room buddy?” Mr Thakur laughed

“Y-yes, sorry” Stefan said now moving his attention to him.

“Could we look at your game now, so then we can get started on production?”

“Yeah, of course” Stefan replied, beginning to search through his bag to find the game.

“Ok, just pop it in your here” Mr Thakur said turning his computer so everyone can see the screen and then switching it on. Also checking the console was on and working.

Stefan put the game in the cartridge and pressed play. “Ok this is how the game works”

After Stefan had walked you and Mr Thakur through the majority of the game. You were left speechless, the work he’d done was incredible, groundbreaking. You didn’t know what to say, you felt so excited to be able to slightly help with this project, and even more excited to play it when it was released.

“I’m investing!” Mr Thakur shouted. Raising from his set and scaring Stefan half to death. Mr Thakur often did this when he found a new project he liked so Y/N was use to it.

“Kid, this game is so good. The world needs Bandersnatch!” Mr Thakur continued to shout “Honestly, kid. When you came to me and asked for more time on the game, I was nervous. I thought you wouldn’t be able to do, but you proved me wrong” Mr Thakur said punching Stefan in the shoulder, a little harder than intend as Stefan rubbed his shoulder lightly.

“Y/N! Just double checking, are you still interested in this project? Because I need you to be completely on board ok if you’re going to do it, it needs all your efforts” Mr Thakur pressed.

“Definitely. I’m 100% on board, I really want to work on this project” You beamed, jumping up and down on the spot. “Only if you’ll have me Stefan”

“Yes, of course. Your work is incredible” Stefan blushed slightly.

[ebaeschnbliah]

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Last week I read another one of @sagestreet 's wonderful metas. Darth Vader ('Sherlock')  In my comment I refered to the Klingons and the Cowboys in black hats, who are also mentioned in that scene in TFP. If 'Darth Vader' is of meaning (which I'm convinced of) then the Klingons and the Cowboys with the black hats are most likely of meaning too. This thought wouldn't leave my head. Until I remembered having already seen a Klingon wearing a black hat .... Lieutenant Commander Worf from the starship Enterprise. I rewatched the episode where this occurs and now I'm a bit blown away.

Some keywords ...

Klingons - black hats - fathers and sons - the android who desires to feel emotions - positronic brain malfunction - empath in the role of the mysterious stranger - the Wild West - a son in prison - a son abducted - crossdressing - inside a created story - suddenly it's not a game anymore - character shifting - reluctantly wearing a hat to play a role - no, no, no, this is too easy - Spot the cat ....

Favourite Quote: Data when asked about Geordi's slowly growíng beard:

"As is the case with many natural growth processes, it is difficult to envision the end product based on an intermediate stage."

In case you are interested, feel free to engage in Star Trek TNG, Season 6, Episode 8:

A Fistful of Datas

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About Lieutenant Commander Data

Data is an android - a machine - who desires nothing more than to become human one day and to experience emotions. Data is also a great admirer of Sherlock Holmes. Especially of his ability to solve mysteries by careful examination of the available evidence. He loves to quote Holmes (x  x) and he played that character on the holodeck (x) However, Sherlock Holmes doesn't feature in this episode .... but maybe the episode features in Sherlock BBC. Unless, of course, it's just coincidence ...

.

A sheduled appointment is postponed for two days. Many members of the Enterprise are taking advantage of the delay to pursue their own projects.

La Forge and Data get the permission to experiment on a new interface between Data’s positronic brain and the ship’s computer. This would allow Data to act as an emergency backup in the event of a ship-wide systems failure. Soon it turns out that this experiment causes some computer problems. Parts of the ship’s computer get altered and are replaced by Data’s personal programming. Systems affected by the malfunction are the library, the replicator selection and the recreational programming ... the holodeck. Nothing critical, it would seem.

As a result ….

a piece of Mozart changes to Dvorak’s The Slavonic Dances, because Data had been analysing the collected works of Czech composer Antonin Dvorak.

a theatre play is replaced by Data’s poem 'Ode to Spot’, dedicated to his cat.

the replicators on some decks are producing nothing but the cat food Data had been formulating for Spot. (X)

an interaction between Data’s personal programming and the programming of  the holodeck occurs. It replaces parts of Data’s memory structures with the files that are currently activated. Files related to the nineteenth century American West. Suddenly Data's behaviour changes and he starts talking like someone out of that time, using terms like ... 'Howdy, Commander' ... 'You got it, partner' ... 'Vamoose, you little varmint' ... 'Commander. You just sit tight. We'll have this all fixed up in time for supper'

About Lieutenant Commander Worf and his son Alexander

The relationship between father and son is a difficult one. Alexander was raised by his mother K'Ehleyr, a half-human half-klingon embassador of the Klingon Empire. Worf, an orphan himself and raised by humans on Earth, didn’t know for years about the existance of his son. Soon after K'Ehleyr revealed the truth to Worf she got killed. Worf acknowleded his son but sent him away to Earth to be raised by his own former foster parents. Some time later Alexander is brought back to the Enterprise. Worf learns that there are difficulies, problems with adjusting, that his adoptive parents feel too old for the challenge to deal once again wth a Klingon child … in short, Alexander needs his father. At first Worf doesn’t feel ready nor competent enough to deal with the new situation. He decides to send Alexander away again. This time to a Klingon school. Then he reconsiders the decision and both - father and son - agree to face their relationship problems together. This is why - one day - Alexander programmes an adventurous play on the holodeck which he can take on together with his father …. who is not very enthusiastic about it.

Deadwood. Nineteenth century Earth. The Ancient West

WORF: What is our function here? ALEXANDER: You’re the Sheriff and I’m the deputy. WORF: So, we are in law enforcement. ALEXANDER: Right.

And so the programme starts like many Western stories …. a little town under a glaring sun ... a sheriff and his deputy are walking slowly down a deserted main street.

The sound of a gunshot from the saloon ... a man on the piano ... poker players ... a mysterious stranger ... some bad guys who aren’t really a match for sheriff Worf. Alexander doesn't like it.

ALEXANDER: No, no, no. Computer, freeze programme. WORF: What is wrong? ALEXANDER: That was too easy. It has to be harder to beat the bad guys. Otherwise, it’s no fun. Computer, increase programme difficulty to level four. Go back to where my father and I first walked into the saloon. Come on, Father.

Alexander and Worf leave the saloon and the programme starts once more. This time the bad guys are clearly more dangerous and not as easy to subdue. The owner of the saloon is a woman called Annie.

Unexpected for Worf - not for Alexander - they receive help from a woman with a gun. She is DeannaTroi, who serves as  ship’s councelor aboard the Enterprise. As a half-Betazoid, Deanna Troi is capable of extra-sensory empathy. Alexander asked her to join them because Counsellor Troi loves Western stories.

TROI: My father used to read me stories from the Ancient West when I was a little girl. I must admit, I always wanted to play the part of the mysterious stranger. 

Eli Hollander, the bad guy, gets arrested. Sheriff Worf, deputy Alexander and Durango, the mysterious stranger, lock him up in the prison cell. As it turns out, Eli Hollander has a dad as well.

ELI: Frankly, I don’t think I’ll be around here that long. Not after my old man hears about this. WORF: What old man are you referring to? ELI: My pa. When he breaks me out of this tin can, the gravedigger’ll be working overtime.

At this point things start getting out of hand because of the experiment Data and La Forge are cónducteding. Deputy Alexander goes missing.

In the saloon sheriff Worf meets Frank Hollander, Eli’s dad, and learns that the man has abducted his deputy. Most alarming is the fact that Frank Hollander looks like Commander Data.

DATA-FRANK: I ain’t in the mood for games, Sheriff.

And indeed, this isn’t a game anymore. The holodeck safeguards are out of order. Worf gets shot in the arm and is actually injured. They are in trouble and it gets worse. When Worf comes back to the prison, Eli Hollander has also transformed into Data. 

Desperately but without success they try to end the programme. There is only one hope.

TROI: We have to remember, even though the holodeck safeguards may be off, this is still a programme. If we can just get to the end of this story the way it was designed to play out, the programme will automatically terminate.

And so they play along as best they can. Data-Frank Hollander visits his son Data-Eli in prison to comfort him and to propose an exchange with the abducted deputy Alexander.

DATA-FRANK: You sit tight, boy. I’ll have you home in time for supper. (to Sheriff Worf) I’m going to give you one more opportunity, Sheriff, to avoid a ugly situation. Release my boy. WORF: I have reconsidered your offer. I will release your son in exchange for my deputy. DATA-FRANK: I thought you might have a change of heart. Meet me in two hours. You be in front of the saloon. I’ll be in front of the livery station. Strangers ain’t invited.

Two fathers and two sons meet under the glaring sunshine in the middle of a deserted main street.

Deanna Troi’s warning words turn out to be true … that villains in Western stories can’t ever be trusted.

TROI: They’re not concerned with honour, Worf. This is the Ancient West. There’s a gunfighter out there who has the speed and accuracy of an android. And in two hours, he’s going to try to kill you.

Data-Frank Hollander doesn’t come alone to reclaim his son. Another two outlaws are lurking near the street … behind a door, on top of a roof … waiting to interfere. And both of them have turned into Data’s as well.

Then the gunfight is over. As mentioned by Deanna Troi, the computer programme should automatically end now. Surprisingly, it doesn’t. It seems the story isn’t quite over yet.

To Worf’s utter shock and surprise, Annie, the lady who owns the saloon, approaches him. She hugs and kisses the sheriff enthusiastically …. and she too looks now like Data ….

DATA-ANNIE: Sheriff! You’re as handy with a shooting iron as you are with a woman’s heart. WORF: (panic-stricken) Computer, end programme! Computer! Now! 

After that strange adventure Alexander heavily doubts that his father will ever again engage with him in a similar play on the holodeck. Turns out … he is mistaken …

WORF: The town of Deadwood may face danger once again. If they do, they will need a sheriff and a deputy.

And back in the main room ..... in front of the mirror .... :)))

.... while the Enterprise flys off into the sunset of an alien star ....

Some intersting background information

The director of this episode is Patrick Stewart.

The episode title is an homage to the Clint Eastwood film A Fistful of Dollars.

The original title was The Good, the Bad and the Klingon, a paraphrase of the title of Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The plot is a homage to Rio Bravo.

In an interview Stewart mentions that for this episode he watched the movie Shane for inspiration regarding westerns. A scene from Shane was taken by Stewart and copied as the one where Alexander looks out of the bottom of the saloon doors.

I leave you to your own deductions.

Source of script (X)   Wikipedia (X)   Memory-Alpha (X)

Mai, 2018

@gosherlocked @sagestreet @raggedyblue @possiblyimbiassed @sarahthecoat @221bloodnun @loveismyrevolution @sherlockshadow

[alilybit]

Steam Scam Documentation

improved readability + table of contents on my website: https://phal.io/hackers/stean (free easter egg included!)

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TLDR – What To Do

Prevention

- Never sign in using Steam anywhere unless it’s a well known site that you navigated to yourself, preferably by manually typing the URL into your browser and saving that URL as a bookmark for later, NEVER sign in on links others sent you, even your significant other whom you would trust with your life because their account could be hijacked or they don’t know they’re sharing a malicious link

- Optionally send the link to an internationally approved computer expert you trust (me?)

- When you confirm trades in the app, always double check both trade contents AND the person you’re trading with (level, friend date) because hackers can automatically replace outgoing and incoming trade offers to go to a different account with the same name and pfp as your original trade partner

When It’s Too Late

- Warn your friends not to click on any link that might be sent on your behalf, check active chats for messages you didn’t send, send/tell them this

- Change your password (if you use your Steam password elsewhere, change those as well, you should be using unique passwords and a secure open source password manager like KeePassXC)

- Log out all sessions in the Steam desktop client by clicking on your name in the top right corner next to notifications and navigating to account details -> account security - manage Steam guard -> deauthorize all other devices

- Open https://steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey in your browser (if you don’t trust my link, which you shouldn’t, simply find out if steamcommunity dot com is the real domain for Steam and then manually type the complete link into your browser), revoke any API key there is if you haven’t created them or don’t know what they are, if you did make them replace them

- Optionally report the link at https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en to make all common web browsers display a warning before loading the malicious site

(Source + further info: https://forums.steamrep.com/pages/hijacking/)

When a Friend Sends You a Malicious Link or Acts Suspiciously

- Try to contact them somewhere outside of Steam and send/tell them this to save their account and to prevent the hijack from spreading further through their friends list

- Warn their friends

Pro Tip

The interwebs are full of malicious links/downloads, even/especially search engine results. To make sure you get the proper installer for programmes/the proper link to log into/purchase something, ALWAYS use the Wikipedia Technique™:

- Open wikipedia.org

- Search for the programme/site/shop/whatever

- Look for the website link either on the right in the summary box or by navigating to the external links section at the bottom

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I will now describe and show how a friend of mine had their account hijacked. I’ll also keep adding other forms of scam attempts to this post/site as I come across them so you can look at examples and be prepared for when it happens to you.

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Incident 1 – Can You Vote for My Team?

It was the night before my first vaccination. I was still doing something on my PC, I don’t remember what, even though it was past bedtime, when I got a message from a Steam friend. I’ll call them Ingeborg. My brother, Ingeborg and I had met a month earlier on a TF2 rocket jump server and we added each other. We played together a couple more times but beside that I didn’t know Ingeborg that well. You can see the chat from that day in the images below.

The first cropped message from Ingeborg at the top is “hey u free rn?” or something. I assumed they just wanted to ask about playing a game of TF2 with me, as it has happened before. When they dropped the question about voting for their team and getting keys in return, I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know of any competitive team they were in and I also didn’t know Ingeborg well or that alleged tournament at all. It also didn’t seem like they could just throw expensive keys around. I took some time to process the information and to think about what I should reply, but Ingeborg didn’t leave me much time to think, following up with “?” and “u here”. So I asked, feeling stupid for not knowing what they’re talking about.

Then, they also set a time limit of less than 30 minutes and kept asking why I’m not immediately replying or “voting”. I have to admit, I nearly fell for it. I want to help people and I can’t think clearly under pressure, especially when it involves other people. And, for the Permanent Record, I of course wouldn’t have taken anything in return for helping a friend. I wanted to tell them that but they didn’t even give me the time to type that. I had already put my name and password in the form, after a lot of thinking, but something prevented me from pressing enter, it just didn’t feel right. I had even briefly searched the web for that tournament and didn’t really find anything. But what finally made me realise that there is something wrong and what made me think clearly again was the border and title bar of that alleged pop-up window. (Edit: Thanks for 1 likes. I compared genuinely signing in through Steam on scrap.tf and it did not open a pop-up window, it simply completely sent me to steamcommunity.com. I guess that means pop-up Steam sign ins are always fake.) I already tried clicking on the HTTPS information earlier which didn’t work for some reason but which still didn’t make me 100 % realise that this is a fake site. Until I noticed that the title bar is a Windows 10 default light theme title bar. I’m on Linux and I use dark themes, the title bar should look completely different. I tried moving the window around and it moved choppily and I could only move it within the Firefox window. I checked the source code and it was true: It was merely an iframe within the site that contained a fake Steam login form from a different URL that’s not steamcommunity.com. This is the site in the iframe:

As you can see, it’s the Steam login form, but the address at the top is not a Steam address. I took a look at its source code and found that it was a lot longer than the original and also contained a lot of dialogue lines about removing the Steam mobile authenticator. This apparently didn’t come up when actually putting in password and username, but you should look out for fake sites telling you to remove your authenticator, they could get complete access to your account that way.

I confronted Ingeborg with this and they stopped replying. But they didn’t immediately remove me from their friends list, like that one time I was actually scammed. I wasn’t sure what to do now. Was Ingeborg really a scammer? Was everything we did together so far just to gain my trust to scam me? Like that one time I was actually scammed? The funny thing is that out conversation before this was about scammers. Some usual random scammer put a usual comment on my profile and Ingeborg warned me. But I believe in the good in everyone and I didn’t want to just assume they were a scammer without making absolutely sure. I thought about what else I knew about Ingeborg. They gifted my brother some items because he barely has any. They invited me to their Steam group. They subscribed to me on YouTube and put my channel on their home tab. Coincidentally, earlier that same day, I also took some time to take a look at their YouTube channel and subscribed. So I thought that me subscribing to them was the sign they were waiting for, signalling that I trusted them enough to fall for the scam. I checked their channel and I was still on their home tab and subscriptions. I checked their Steam group and was still a member. This convinced me that there really is a possibility that this wasn’t actually Ingeborg trying to scam be but that they’ve also been phished and someone else is now trying to also gain access to their friends’s’s accounts.

Ingeborg’s friends list and profile comments were now set to private, so I couldn’t comment or directly message their friends to warn them. But there was the Steam group. One other member was online, one with a Pokémon profile picture and I believe I also remembered noticing them on Ingeborg’s friends list because of the Pokémon theme. So I put a comment in the group and added the Pokémon person, who unfortunately had their comments disabled as well, so I put an explanatory message into my profile to let them know why I’m adding them. I warned them and asked them to tell Ingeborg that someone has access to their account, should they know Ingeborg better than me. On YouTube, Ingeborg had their Discord name listed. I tried to add them but friend requests were disabled. There was also an Instagram name. I technically don’t have Instagram but I made a test account a while ago to test a YouTube scam comment with a link to an alleged Instagram password hacking site. I logged in with that account, changed my profile picture to my real one, added an explanation to the bio and added Ingeborg. But they didn’t react. So I wrote a comment on a YouTube video. I think it took three attempts for the comment to pass the automatic spam filter. It could of course also have been Ingeborg deleting my comments exposing them for being a scammer. But the third castle stayed up. And a while later, they actually responded. I then tried to tell them to add me on Discord, that also took many attempts and extremely careful wording to get through. Not even my Discord tag with numbers spelled out and 1447 speak, as Jeremy 900 800 500 would say, went through, but a carefully camouflaged link to my website did. By then, they also messaged me on Steam, asking for help and asking me to temporarily take their valuable items to secure them. I told them to add me on Discord so I know it’s actually them I’m chatting with. As it turned out later, it was really good that they didn’t trade me their stuff.

Apparently, Ingeborg wasn’t home at the time and only had access to their phone. And they allegedly fell for the exact same scam a day before. The obvious first thing that had to be done was changing the Steam password. But it seems that the password can’t be changed in the app itself. So I had the idea that Ingeborg could log into Steam on their phone’s web browser and change the password there, which worked. We kept chatting and I kept researching. I still wasn’t sure if this was still part of Ingeborg’s ingenious plan to regain my trust to scam me again, but I believed in them. Eventually Ingeborg got home, and I stayed awake gladly until 3:47 in the morning, I… I sang as time went off. Because as long as menly men like me are prepared to give their time, a flower grows. And that flower, that small, fragile, delicate yellow flower, shall burst forth and defeat interwebs criminals. On the “next” day, the vaccine had a side effect of making me a little tired. Strangely enough, that side effect already started before the injection itself.

I also kept thinking about what the actual purpose of this series of hijacking accounts is. Ingeborg’s Steam wallet and inventory seemed to have been untouched but there must be some way for the criminals to profit off of this, if only to pay for the costs of the website and domain. On Vaccinator day, I finally found an article on https://forums.steamrep.com/pages/hijacking/ that explains it. When you give them your password and current authenticator code, they obviously get access to your account, but you still have the authenticator, so what they can do is limited. Apparently, they use the opportunity to create an API key that allows them to keep accessing your account even after you changed your password and they use it to immediately replace incoming and outgoing trade offers with ones that go to a fake version of your original trade partner with the same name and profile picture. You might then not notice the difference when confirming the trade in the app and give them your items, unknowingly and without them having to have access to or remove your mobile authenticator. A brilliant idea. You might as well check if you have any API keys which you usually shouldn’t, the details are explained on the steamrep link and in the “when it’s too late” section at the top of this piece of medium literature.

And the moral of this story: Always be careful, educate yourself on how they trick you and on digital security in the sense of safety, never assume you won’t fall for it, don’t shame people who fell for it and don’t feel ashamed if you fell for it. And always have an internationally approved technical support character on your team.

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Incident 2 – Simply Building Trust AKA Social Engineer

We write the distant year of 2016. Two… œ… six… one. Oh, I’m an idiot, I held the pen upside down. Never mind. I don’t recall the incident in as many details, but I still know the most important things. It started on a TF2 tdm_hightower community server, rocket jumping and Market Gardenering around. I don’t remember exactly how one of the other players started conversing with me, I just remember that they, I’ll call them Wincohn, added me, chatted with me and wanted to trade one of my items that was not yet tradable. We chatted over the course of multiple days. Eventually, we also chatted about bad things that happened in our pasts, like the divorce of my parents and how their dad allegedly died when they were young. And we comforted each other. They also asked me if I was religious at some point, I guess because religious people are easier to scam. When I took a look at their inventory, I saw TF2 competitive matchmaking beta passes. I don’t remember exactly how that worked, but I was excited about matchmaking and you could only get in if you have the beta pass item, but having it also gives you some invites to give to other people. So I offered to take a beta invite in exchange for the item they wanted. My item, a festive Rocket Launcher was still not tradable though, so they offered me to temporarily give them something else and they would immediately give me a beta invite. Since the beta invite is not an item, I had to trust them they would actually invite me in return. We were on the aforementioned community server again and they agreed to make our trade public to the server members so they could witness it and report one of us, should we not keep our side of the bargain. So we opened a trade and I gave them one cosmetic drop I didn’t need, one cosmetic I used and two non-strange festive weapons so I don’t lose my stats, which were apparently in total about equal in value to the Rocket Launcher. Right before the trade went through, they left the server, which I only noticed when the trade window closed. And they removed me from their friends list. No beta invite. I told the others on the server that we traded but he left before it went through and he scammed me but nobody cared. The chat where we agreed that I would get a beta invite was also gone. I lost my items and I didn’t even have proof that it was a scam and not just a gift or tax dodge. Steam rightfully doesn’t return scammed items, because the scammers of course immediately sell them and taking them away from the buyer would be unfair for them and giving the victim a duplicate would be easily exploitable, but getting them banned would at least prevent further scams. The worst part, though, is that everything they told me was a lie and only served the purpose of gaining my trust. Fascinating.

After it happened, I was of course sad and angry. But only temporarily. I don’t hold a grudge against them, I’ve long since forgiven them. Quite on the contrary, I’m even thankful because I didn’t lose that much virtual material value (like 3 $) and it was a valuable experience. I only hope that they have changed since then and don’t do this anymore. The comments on their profile are disabled to this day, not the best sign. They also don’t have a Steam or third party ban. Either them scamming was not a common occurrence or nobody was ever able to prove it.

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Incident 3 – Wanna Join Our Tournament Team? (Incomplete)

I got another one of those friend requests on Steam from a suspicious looking profile. One of those that have TF2 comp stuff in their profile description. This time, I accepted it to see what they would do, to document more methods used by interwebs criminals.

This account had 1200 hours of TF2 playtime. So it looked like they’re an actual player, or maybe a hijacked account. Their inventory was public as well, but nearly empty, not even regular weapons or anything. They were playing TF2 the entire time and when I checked the server they were on, it always said no server. I guess that means they just have TF2 open the entire time to farm playtime that is publicly and prominently displayed on their profile to appear like a real player.

I tried to go along with their chat but it didn’t go well. I even prepared my long unused Gibus Cap Discord account that I used to use to test roles on our server. But apparently, I asked too many questions. I was too eager to get a nice phishing link into my net. After that last message, they removed me from their friends. Next time, I won’t ask questions.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE ANATOMY OF VC BE A STARTUP

If in the next couple years. Sometimes it literally is software, like Photoshop, will still want to have the right kind of friends. Where the work of PR firms.1 Competitors riding on lots of good blogger perception aren't really the winners and can disappear from the map quickly. One reason Google doesn't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. Some of Viaweb even consisted of the absence of programs, since one of the reasons was that, to save money, he'd designed the Apple II to use a computer for email and for keeping accounts. They want to know what is a momentous one. How do you find them? Suppose it's 1998. The big media companies shouldn't worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. Once someone is good at it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.

Gone with the Wind plus Roots. This is extremely risky, and takes months even if you succeed.2 At most software companies, especially at first. Their answers were remarkably similar. I use constantly?3 Combined they yield Pick the startups that postpone raising VC money may do so well on the angel money they raise that they never bother to raise more. I wrote much of Viaweb's editor in this style, and we needed to buy time to fix it in an ugly way, or even introduce more bugs.4

Historically investors thought it was important for a founder to be an online store builder, but we may change our minds if it looks promising, turn into a company at a pre-money valuation is $1.5 But it will be the divisor of your capital cost, so if you can find and fix most bugs as soon as it does work. Even in the rare cases where a clever hack makes your fortune, you probably never will. You may not believe it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.6 But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. Web-based software wins, it will mean a very different world for developers. I think we're just beginning to see its democratizing effects. But this is old news to Lisp programmers. If 98% of the time.7 It might help if they were a race apart.8

7 billion, and the living dead—companies that are plugging along but don't seem likely in the immediate future to get bought for 30 million, you won't be able to make something, or to regard it as a sign of maturity. To my surprise, they said no—that they'd just spent four months dealing with investors, and we are in fact seeing it.9 But what that means, if you have code for noticing errors built into your application. The number of possible connections between developers grows exponentially with the size of the group. We think of the overall cost of owning it. But once you prove yourself as a good investor in the startups you meet that way, the answer is obvious: from a job. Your housemate was hungry. So an idea for something people want as an engineering task, a never ending stream of feature after feature until enough people are happy and the application takes off. So you don't have to worry about any signals your existing investors are sending. They do not generally get to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is just a guess, but my guess is that the winning model for most applications will be the rule with Web-based application.

It's practically a mantra at YC. You probably need about the amount you invest, this can vary a lot.10 If you lose a deal to None, all VCs lose.11 Plenty of famous founders have had some failures along the way. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who works for a big company or a VC fund can only do 2 deals per partner per year. For insiders work turns into a duty, laden with responsibilities and expectations.12 In addition to catching bugs, they were moving to a cheaper apartment.13 If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, and try to get included in his syndicates.14 VCs did this to them.15

Most people, most of the surprises. So the previously sharp line between angels and VCs. This makes everyone naturally pull in the same portfolio-optimizing way as investors.16 And there is a big motivator.17 These things don't get discovered that often. Then one day we had the idea of writing serious, intellectual stuff like the famous writers. You need investors. The mud flat morphs into a well. When a startup does return to working on the product after a funding round finally closes, it's as if they used the worse-is-better approach but stopped after the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers.

Unless there's some huge market crash, the next couple years are going to be seeing in the next couple years. And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. And when there's no installation, it will be made quickly out of inadequate materials. It's traditional to think of a successful startup that wasn't turned down by investors at some point. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to sell.18 Big companies are biased against new technologies, and to have the computations happening on the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at Viaweb bugs became almost a game.19 Plans are just another word for ideas on the shelf.

I wouldn't try it myself. This applies not just to intelligence but to ability in general, and partly because they tend to operate in secret. Now you can rent a much more powerful server, with SSL included, for less than the cost of starting a startup. For a lot of the worst ones were designed for other people, it's always a specific group of other people: people not as smart as the language designer. We're not hearing about Perl and Python because people are using them to write Windows apps. But if you look into the hearts of hackers, you'll see that they really love it.20 I am always looking.21 But you know perfectly well how bogus most of these are. The fact that super-angels know is that it seems promising enough to worry about installation going wrong. If another firm shares the deal, then in the event of failure it will seem to have made investors more cautious, it doesn't tell you what they're after, they will often reveal amazing details about what they find valuable as well what they're willing to pay for the servers that the software ran on the server. Why can't defenders score goals too? If coming up with ideas for startups?

Notes

But if they pay a lot of people who need the money.

A Bayesian Approach to Filtering Junk E-Mail.

Unless you're very docile compared to sheep. Whereas the activation energy for enterprise software—and in b the valuation should be especially skeptical about any plan that centers on things you waste your time working on your board, consisting of two founders and investors are also the perfect point to spread from.

Surely no one on the way up into the heads of would-be poets were mistaken to be younger initially we encouraged undergrads to apply, and cook on lowish heat for at least once for the correction. I know it didn't to undergraduates on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend.

The hardest kind of method acting. Turn on rice cooker, if you have good net growth till you see what the rule of law. But there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. In fact, this seems empirically false.

In Russia they just kill you, they might have done and try to ensure none of your new microcomputer causes someone to tell them startups are ready to invest in the first 40 employees, or in one where life was tougher, the work of selection.

The best kind of kludge you need to, but except for money. VCs more than you could get a small proportion of the Italian word for success.

To a 3:59 mile as a motive, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including the numbers we have to assume it's bad. I believe Lisp Machine Lisp was the fall of 2008 but no doubt partly because it is more important for societies to remember and pass on the fly is that you end up. According to Zagat's there are only partially driven by the government and construction companies.

One great advantage of startups have elements of both. Not least because they're determined to fight. The quality of investor behavior.

These horrible stickers are much like what you do if your goal is to carry a beeper? Acquisitions fall into in the angel is being unfair to him?

Which OS?

As I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example, you're not allowed to discriminate on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor in Lisp, you might be tempted to ignore what your GPA was.

Prose lets you be more alarmed if you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play. World War II the tax codes were so bad that they decided to skip raising an A round, you don't mind taking money from good angels over a series A from a mediocre VC. The dictator in the US. Google's revenues are about two billion a year for a couple hundred years or so you can make offers that super-angels will snap up stars that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods.

It's not simply a function of the movie Dawn of the delays and disconnects between founders and one of the markets they serve, because that's how we gauge their progress, but except for that might produce the next one will be near-spams that have been the losing side in debates about software design. Japanese.

There were a first—9. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, they'd have something more recent. Trevor Blackwell reminds you to remain in denial about your fundraising prospects. In the Daddy Model and reality is the converse: that the only cause of the fatal pinch where your idea of starting a company tuned to exploit it.

A few VCs have an email being spam.

The late 1960s were famous for social upheaval. Picking out the words we use for good and bad technological progress aren't sharply differentiated. Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard.

So you can fix by writing library functions.

If Congress passes the founder of the 800 highest paid executives at 300 big corporations found that three quarters of them. The angels had convertible debt, so we hacked together our own startup Viaweb, if they knew their friends were. But be careful. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

The only people who had been with us if the quality of production. If they agreed among themselves never to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their hands. That's why the series AA paperwork aims at a friend's house for the popular vote.

Galbraith p. And so this one is harder, the median VC loses money. European art.

Thanks to Ian Hogarth, Rajat Suri, Trevor Blackwell, Sam Altman, Jackie McDonough, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading a previous draft.

[dragonbagel]

Bonded - Part 10

finally an update, as promised. read it on ao3 here.

Rhys absentmindedly scratched at the back of his neck as he sat in yet another meeting, the scarring-over wound itching like a giant bug bite. He was nearing the two month mark since what they’d taken to calling the Incident, meaning this hell was more than halfway over. The constant itching had only recently started, and he figured it meant that the bond was finally starting to break-- which, in his opinion, was a pretty fine trade-off for this thing to finally go away.

The bond had made the last few days of his heat the month before... interesting, to say the least. In addition to the typical mood swings and underlying horniness, he was plagued by intense unease and anxiety. When he and Jack weren't fucking, he stayed as far away from the alpha as possible. The space seemed to dilute his restlessness, although he still found himself pacing through the halls of the apartment as Jack looked on in concern. He could smell the omega's discomfort mingling with his usual pheromones, and the realization that he may be the cause of said unease dredged up hatred toward not only the other alpha but also toward himself.

On the few occasions that Rhys felt more like himself, he dedicated his time to covering Jack in kisses and reassurances (as long as he wasn't sleeping or hunched over the toilet). Jack was quite receptive to his boyfriend's advances, but he could tell that the omega was trying to overcompensate for his noticeable distance. He'd asked Rhys multiple times if he was feeling okay, if he needed Jack to do anything for him.

Rhys' response, of course, was to guide Jack's hand toward his crotch and whisper how there was definitely something Jack could do to help him, but the alpha knew that Rhys was hiding from the problem at hand.

The omega was still attempting to avoid the subject of the bond, and he was grateful that the bond would (hypothetically) be gone by the time his next heat came around. He knew Jack was worried about him, but he also knew that Jack was under immense pressure at work, which he didn't want to add onto.

"So, tell me again why the security hole I asked you to patch weeks ago is still letting in viruses?"

The Hyperion employees at the front of the conference room shifted where they stood, practically cowering under Rhys' disappointed gaze.

"We thought we fixed it!" one of them squeaked out, clearly not wanting to have gotten her boss' attention in such a negative manner.

Rhys sighed. "Show me what program you used."

The two programmers quickly nodded, scrambling to project their work onto the large screen behind them while Rhys continued to scratch at his neck. Damn, he just wanted to go home and sleep for the next week.

Although he'd never admit it for the sake of professionalism, his attention began to wander as the programmers' rambling continued-- which was embarrassing, really, because he used to be able to understand entire lectures centered solely around computer binary translation. Maybe it was the fact that the meeting room was stuffy as hell, or maybe it was that he'd overslept and hadn't had time for breakfast, but Rhys began bouncing his leg in annoyance, glancing at the clock every moment or so. 

Why was he still in this stupid room? Seriously, they needed to get that air conditioner fixed, because he couldn't really breathe, and his neck hurt but he couldn't stop himself from practically clawing at it, and his skin felt hot, too hot, and why was this meeting so long, and goddamnit why were these idiots still talking?

On his next breath, it was like something within just snapped.

"What the hell am I paying you people for?" he said, planting his hands on the table and shooting up to stand. Any residual traces of panic were gone, replaced instead by an unadulterated rage.  

"S-sir?" one of them asked unsurely, readjusting his glasses.

"You did go to college, right?" Rhys said with a scowl, standing straight and using his height as further intimidation.

"O-of course," he stammered, glancing from his blonde coworker back to Rhys. "Top of my class on Eden-6."

"Then why don't you start acting like it?" Rhys snapped, taking far too much pleasure in the way blondie was hiding behind her work partner, as if her buddy could somehow absorb Rhys' anger and shield her from his fury.

"We're trying our best, sir," he said, shifting uncomfortably where he stood.

"Does it look like I care?" Rhys snarled. "You could be spending every fucking hour working on this shit and still not do it right!"

"Th-that's uncalled for, sir," blondie piped back up, her bravery undermined by her obvious fear.

"Did I ask you?" he growled, narrowing his eyes.

Before either trembling employee could respond, the door to the room opened and Janey entered. "Sorry for interruptin', boss, but the CEO's here to see you."

Janey was the only one at work that Rhys allowed to address him so casually, and his fury slightly softened, especially at the fact that Jack had come to see him.

"Thanks," he said, nodding to dismiss her.

Janey grinned, turning to duck out before pausing to take a deep inhale.

"Ooh, kudos on the new air freshener, Mr. M," she said appreciatively. "Oranges-- or are they tangerines, I can never tell the difference-- were a good call."

If Janey noticed the way Rhys suddenly stiffened, she didn't show it, the spring in her step as she left at complete odds with Rhys' newfound anxiety.

His fear, however, soon gave way to anger once again, and he turned to glare once again at his incompetent employees. "Well?" he snapped. "What are you waiting for? Go fix this mess before I fire you!"

The two quickly nodded, scurrying out the door without so much as a backwards glance. Blondie brushed against his arm as she hurried past, and Rhys couldn't help but let out a low growl. Rage once again pulsed through him, and a small (large) part of him felt an itching to send this dumb bitch on a one-way trip out of an airlock. 

His anger didn't relent as he exited the meeting room, jabbing the button on the elevator with way more force than necessary. He'd learned his lesson about taking the stairs when he'd accidentally locked himself inside the stairwell for half an hour, and that was an experience he had no intention of repeating.

"Stupid fucking idiots," he muttered to himself, ignoring the somewhat surprised look on Janey's face as he stalked past her into his office. "Can't fucking do anything right."

"Who are ya talking about, Rhysie?"

Rhys' head snapped up at the sound of Jack's velvety voice, his irritation flaring as he watched the alpha lazily spin around in the desk chair. In Rhys' desk chair.

"Boring meeting?" Jack asked, smirking as he raised his eyebrows. "Same here, kitten. That's why I came down to visit."

Rhys nodded mechanically, although he wasn't putting in any effort to actually comprehend the words being spoken to him. He'd started to pace, his non-metal fingers twitching slightly at his side.

“I’m going to fucking kill them,” Rhys muttered to himself, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“Oh, kitten, you sure know how to get me all hot and bothered,” Jack said with a smirk.

Rhys was thoroughly unamused by Jack’s comment (which was saying something, since he scoffed at the majority of what Jack considered to be humor). “It’s not funny.”

“Really?” Jack asked, hoping to goad Rhys out of whatever sour mood he was in. “Because I don’t think you even know how to hold a gun.”

The omega simply glared at him. “I don’t have time for this crap, Jack. I have work to do.”

“But that’s boring!” Jack complained, the spitting image of any overly spoiled child.

Rhys shrugged, his fingers still twitching at his sides. “And how is that my problem?”

Rhys’ continued annoyance and downright pissy attitude was beginning to finally cut through Jack’s good humor. Seriously, what was up with him? Yeah, he’d never expressed any praise about his teasing, but the alpha was pretty sure that the usual blush Rhys failed to hide sent the message out pretty clearly.

Jack frowned, watching quietly as Rhys stopped pacing to flip through the stacks of paperwork on his desk. He seemed to be looking for something, his irritation growing as he continued to fumble through the piles of folders. When he accidentally knocked one of the folders off the countertop, sending its contents in a flurry across the room, Jack barely had time to move out of the way before Rhys slammed his cybernetic fist onto the mahogany.

“What the hell are you doing, Rhys?” Jack said, his eyes wide.

Rhys was panting, his hand still resting on the desk. He was staring down at the now-clear surface, considering he’d inadvertently caused the rest of the papers to fly off as well. He flinched as Jack’s hands landed lightly on his shoulders, pulling him back upright.

“Let me see your hand,” he said softly, reaching for the cybernetic as Rhys didn’t react.

The metal, as Jack had suspected, was dented, and the yellow paint was chipped in a few areas. At least now maybe Rhys would agree to upgrading to the newer model instead of clinging to this piece of shit, Jack thought dryly.

“I’m sorry,” Rhys said, so quietly that Jack didn’t think he’d actually heard anything at first. “I don’t-- I don’t know why I did that. I was just so… angry.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Babe, you know I’m the king of anger management issues.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Rhys said, bitterly over-accentuating each word.

It was blatantly obvious how un-funny Rhys truly found the situation to be, and Jack stepped closer so that he was staring directly at Rhys. “Really, it’s okay.”

The omega bit his lip, looking down at his shoes. His gaze only flicked up when he felt Jack wrap his arms around him, pulling him close. He kissed Rhys’ forehead, rubbing Rhys’ back with his right hand. Rhys practically melted in his arms, feeling exhausted now that the way-too-intense anger had passed.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

Jack was quick to shush him, moving to card his fingers through Rhys’ hair. He pulled back with a gasp, however, and Rhys looked at him in confusion.

“Umm… Jack?”

“Your neck,” Jack said, clutching at his hand. “It fucking burned me.”

“What?” Rhys asked, confused.

“Look at this shit,” Jack said, displaying his now reddened fingers.

Rhys frowned, tentatively touching the back of his neck as Jack watched nervously. Sure, the skin felt a bit warm-- but nothing that would burn him. If anything, the pressure on it just made it begin to itch again. “It feels normal.”

“No way,” Jack said, maneuvering Rhys so that he could more closely inspect the area that had so rudely scalded him.

He froze when he saw the scarlet outlines of the bite marks on Rhys’ neck. The wounds had matured into scars in the past few months, and once the bond broke, they would supposedly fade away completely (if Tim’s research was to be trusted). However, his bonding site was currently flushed with blood, tinged with scarlet as darkly as it had been in the first few days after the Incident.

“Rhysie,” he breathed, Rhys shuddering slightly as the exhale raised goosebumps on the sensitive skin. “Your neck.”

“What’s-- what’s wrong with it?” the omega asked, fidgeting with his hands.

“It’s all red.”

Rhys swallowed. “Oh. Is it-- how bad is it?”

Jack paused for a moment. “It’s not pretty.”

“Wonderful,” Rhys said with a sigh. “Let’s just-- let’s not talk about this anymore.”

Jack groaned. “You can’t keep avoiding this, cupcake.”

Rhys snorted, turning around so that he was facing the alpha again. “The hell I can’t.”

“You’ve been acting weird,” Jack said, deciding that now was as good of a time as any to finally broach the topic. “You’re quiet, and moody, and distant--”

Rhys huffed, cutting him off. “You’re exaggerating.”

“You just punched a fucking table!” Jack said, gesturing to the mess that was Rhys’ desk.

Rhys held his tongue, because yeah, he had just punched a fucking table. But that wasn’t his fault, was it? He was just pissed off at his stupid employees and the constant inundation of stupid paperwork and the stupid prickling feeling on his neck…

Rhys froze. “Jack.”

“Yeah, kitten?” He was regarding Rhys cautiously, like some sort of specimen.

“Do you think it’s-- do you think it’s because of the bond? The-- the table-punching, I mean,” he said, flushing.

Now it was Jack’s turn to bite his lip. He hadn’t wanted to be the one to suggest it, but now that Rhys had said it himself… “Maybe. I don’t know, though; do you have a vandalism kink you haven’t told me about?”

Rhys groaned. “Great. This is just great. That asshole is still fucking with me.”

Jack offered a sympathetic smile, but even he knew it looked hollow.

“Wish I’d killed him when I had the chance,” he said under his breath, drawing a real smirk from Jack.

“We’re almost there, babe,” he said, taking Rhys’ flesh hand and pressing a kiss on his knuckles. “Just gotta hold on a bit longer.”

“I don’t want him to make me feel things,” Rhys said, his voice small. “I don’t-- I’m not a bad person, am I?”

“Of course not, pumpkin,” Jack replied. “It’s not your fault this jackass doesn’t know how to keep himself in check.”

Rhys chuckled at that. “Says you.”

“Says me,” Jack said, giving Rhys a peck on the lips. “Now get back to work, I can’t have you air-locking any employees. These nerds are hard to come by.”

“You’re a nerd.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, giving Rhys what felt like the first genuine smile in weeks. “But I’m your nerd.”

[three-drink-amy]

How about either 7 or 21! Jake and Amy!

I picked 7! Fake Dating is my jam! Thanks for asking!

Send me a ship and a number and I’ll write a short fic! 

“Heyyy, Jake,” Amy greeted. He looked at her with a confusedexpression. “So do you have any big plans for the weekend?”

Jake’s confusion turned to skepticism. “No. Why?”

“Just curious,” Amy lied. “Hey, there’s a box in theevidence lockup that I can’t reach. Can you help me?” Jake agreed and followedher away from the bullpen. Once in the lockup, she rounded on Jake. “I don’tactually need something in here. I just needed to ask you something in private.”

Jake eyed her suspiciously. “What is it?”

Amy sighed. “This is really hard for me to ask.”

“Oh my God, are you dying?”

“No,” Amy assured him. Taking a deep breath, Amy proceeded. “I’mspending the weekend in the Hamptons with a group of people I went to highschool with. Including this one girl who always had it out for me. Most of themare bringing their husbands or significant others. The snotty jerk asked if I evenhad a significant other to bring and I panicked and said yes.”

Jake looked puzzled. “But you aren’t dating anyone.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s where you come in,” Amy explained. Jake’sface broke out in a huge grin. “Can you please come with me this weekend andpretend to be my boyfriend so I can prove to this bitch that I’m fine? I wantyou to know how painful this is to ask.”

Jake was still grinning largely. He dropped down on oneknee. Amy rolled her eyes. Jake reached for her hand. “Amy Santiago, it wouldbe my supreme pleasure to be your fake boyfriend.” Amy begrudgingly thankedhim. “Here’s the deal,” he said dramatically as he stood back up. “My name isSimon Fisher and I’m a computer programmer rom Boston, but I have a dark past.”

“Your name will be Jake Peralta and you will be my partnerturned boyfriend,” Amy corrected.

Jake shrugged. “Yeah, I guess that works too.”

Amy and Jake managed to leave early Friday and drove to theHamptons for Amy’s weekend with friends. Amy spent the time in the car dreadingthe weekend, but also prepping Jake. They nailed down the details of how theyended up together. Amy explained her dynamic with these people. They had asystem down.

Amy did her best to ignore the part of her that said itwould be a great weekend to tell Jake how she actually felt about him. Realfeelings didn’t matter with these stakes.

They arrived, set their stuff in their hotel room, and wentdown to the meeting place. All the women caught up while the men introduced themselvesto each other. It wasn’t ten minutes into the weekend before the first barb wasthrown at Amy. She steeled herself and wrapped her arm around Jake’s waist. Hefollowed suit and tucked her into his side as they all stood their talking.

More veiled insults were tossed at Amy at dinner. Jake didhis best to counter them and talk about all the reasons he fell for Amy. “Imean have you ever heard someone with as great a laugh as Amy?” he asked. “Istarted to tell her jokes just so I could hear it more.” Amy stared at Jake,questioning how real his statement was. Did she have a great laugh?

“I always loved how much Amy wore clothes that made her looklike an old librarian,” Julia said with a sneer. Amy just laughed weakly andagreed that her fashion sense wasn’t great.

Thankfully the conversation drifted from Amy As they startedtalking about someone’s accounting firm, Amy felt Jake lay his hand on herknee. She reached out and held onto his hand, squeezing it in thanks.  

The next day carried on much of the same way. Wine tastingsand insults. Lunches and embarrassing stories about Amy. Jake could cover up embarrassingstories with badass stories. He’d talk about how awesome she was and Amy wouldbe left wondering how much he meant it.

After dinner that night, Amy couldn’t take it anymore. Sheslipped out of the room they were drinking in and walked straight for thebeach. She just needed to get away. Amy couldn’t have been sitting on the beachfor more than fifteen minutes when she heard someone walking up behind her.Jake plopped down in the sand next to her.

“Wow, that lady is such a jerk,” he said. Amy just nodded. “Iknow she’s gotta be bothering you, but Ames, you’re so much better than she is.”Amy looked at him with an air of disbelief. “You are!” Jake promised. “For one,you never throw it back because you won’t stoop to her level.”

“Or maybe it’s just because I am a loser,” Amy wonderedaloud.

Jake scoffed. “Not true. I can’t believe you’d say that. Doyou think I’d fake date a loser?” Amy glared at Jake.

Jake scooted close to Amy and took her hand in his. “Amy youare a badass cop with a great sense of humor and a heart of gold. And not aword of that was fake. That came from Jake Peralta, your real partner.”

Amy smiled at him. Her mind was swirling with other thoughtsshe was trying to drown out. “Thanks, Jake,” she replied after a long pause.She laid her head on his shoulder and she felt him kiss the top of her head.

“You’re one of the best people I know, Ames,” Jake admitted.“It’s why it was so easy for me to accept to be your fake boyfriend thisweekend.”

Amy chuckled. “I figured it was because I told you I’d payfor it.”

Jake laughed. “That obviously helped. But honestly, justgetting to spend more time with you was enough of a draw for me. “

Amy took a deep breath. She couldn’t believe what he wassaying. It seemed like so much more than friends. She picked up her head andlooked at him.

Jake stared back at her. She saw him swallow harshly justbefore he squeezed the hand he still held. “Look Amy, I may just be your fakeboyfriend, but…I may also still have real feelings for you.” He paused, waitingto see what she made of it.

Amy smiled radiantly, scooting closer to Jake. She releasedhis hand and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him to show him that shefelt the same way.

Suddenly the rest of the weekend seemed tolerable. Jake wasstill by her side, but no longer just her fake boyfriend. Maybe she should havedone this a long time ago.

[garywonghc]

Practicing the Good Heart

by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Many years ago His Holiness the Dalai Lama was in the Lahoul Valley where I was living. At that time, he was giving a number of empowerments and talks. He was there for about one week. After one of his talks which had lasted for several hours, I asked one of the Lahouli women, “Do you know what the Dalai Lama was talking about?” And she said, “Well, I didn’t catch much, but what I understood was that if we have a good heart, that’s nice.” Well, basically, that’s it. What more is there to say? If we have a good heart, that’s nice, isn’t it? So what do we mean by a good heart?

Our society is very concerned with the development of the individual. We are very concerned with realising our own unique potential yet at the same time, conforming very much with the society in which we were born. It’s like a paradox, because on the one hand, we are encouraged to be individualistic, but on the other hand, even within the alternative society itself, everybody’s being alternative in more or less the same way. Have you noticed this?

Traditionally society was based on the family. When I was a child, we played games together as a family. We played monopoly or we played cards or we played other games together. It was a family thing. The mother was at home: she cooked and she took care of the children. One identified oneself with being a part of a family framework. Then beyond that, we identified ourselves with a particular class, caste or society and still further with one’s particular region, country, race and so on.

The point is that in a traditional society, each person knew who they were in relation to everyone else around them. They had their allotted position and within that position — be it high or low (or high to some and low to others) — one knew how to act and what was expected; there were also duties and responsibilities which were a part of being in a group, of being part of a family, of being part of this small society in which one lived. I remember that although I was brought up in London, if anyone in our neighbourhood was sick, all the neighbours were there. There was this sense that being a neighbour gave you the responsibility of caring for one another.

During the time when I was brought up, this sense of being part of a whole network of interconnections was still very strong. But nowadays, as the call to be an individual becomes stronger and stronger, it seems that society is becoming more and more alienated. So, this sense of being able to communicate with others gets less. No longer are we brought up with the sense of respect, duty and responsibility, but more with the sense of asserting “my rights” and doing “my thing”.

We would think that this should lead us to being able to express ourselves, being able to get exactly what we want and being able to do whatever appeals to us. The idea is that this individualisation will make us very satisfied; that this will help us discover who we really are, so that we will feel a great sense of fulfillment. This is the idea, isn’t it? That if we act exactly how we want to act, say exactly what we want to say and think about what we want, this will somehow make us happy, satisfied and fulfilled because we are getting just what we want. So how does this go so very wrong?

We can see this clearly in a place like Australia: outwardly, Australia looks like a paradise, does it not? I mean, coming from Delhi, let me assure you that Australia looks like a paradise! It’s so clean, it’s so well organised: traffic goes into the right lanes, there are no cows wandering across the roads (the cows are in the pastures not in the streets). There is no overt poverty; there are no lepers and beggars on the streets. When you look at it, it really looks like something out of a picture book. So why is it that Australia has one of the highest suicide rates in the world? What’s gone wrong?

This is a deep and troubling question. I’m not a sociologist and I’m not a psychiatrist, so I am not going to go into this in too much detail. But behind that question, lies this darkness because our society, the media and the education system are trying to encourage people to think that success is what counts; and that being beautiful and popular, having lots of money and beautiful clothes is going to bring eternal happiness. And clearly, this is not true. If it were true, you wouldn’t be here tonight. Because if it were really true, then that would be enough. We would not have a need to go beyond that.

Nowadays, the East — especially third-world countries — are beginning to absorb this consumer consciousness. They are starting to plug into this ethic that says “more is better”, and that life without a television, a car or fancy clothes or whatever is deprivation. Therefore, to be happy, we have to have these things. But most people don’t have these things; there is a rising middle class, but the majority still does not have much above the bare essentials. But they see these fancy consumer goods on the television and so they think “if we only had these things, we would be eternally happy.” They see these American programmes dubbed in Hindi showing incredible American homes, and so they imagine, “Now, if we had a home like that, this would be nirvana”. But because they don’t have it, it has a distant glitter. But in the West, we have these things. Most people have been brought up in homes which have all these things already.

I remember a German friend who lived in our Tibetan camp. She was going to buy a vacuum cleaner and she was so excited about it! For weeks, she went around looking at the various makes that were on offer and she finally got one. So she cleaned up her whole house and was so happy. Can you imagine being ecstatic over a vacuum cleaner?

But if we don’t have these things, there is the very strong idea that if we could have them, they would really bring long-lasting satisfaction. Of course, she was German, and although she was excited, she also knew this was very silly. But if we have never had these things, we could be lulled into this false sense that here is the answer ….if only we could have these things.

Now in the West, because we do have so many of these material goods — and if we have any intelligence at all, — we would have realised that these are not the answer. Because the emptiness is still inside, and however much we try to fill it up with things, that inner sense of lack is still there. This is not to say that we shouldn’t have a television, a car or a vacuum cleaner. The problem is not to do with the external object or how much or how little we have. The question is whether we believe these things will really bring us deep-seated satisfaction. So this is the advantage for the West: that if we can get over a sense of wonder with material possessions, one is at a stage where one starts to think that there must be something beyond these.

We hold what we think are very contemporary values but they are usually only the superficial values which have been spoon-fed to us by the media, by our environment and by our society. In ten or twenty years, we will look back and think, “Good Gracious, did I really wear that?” “Did I really think that?” Because thoughts and opinions, judgements and biases can quickly become as outmoded as the clothes we wear. Sometimes when we look back at something that was so revolutionary a few years ago, it has already become obsolete.

In our society, we are taught to think about ourselves; we are trained to develop ourselves in order to succeed. We are taught that it’s very necessary to get on in life — in whatever is our particular sphere — and prove to everyone else how well we are achieving so that everyone else will envy us. As a result, our society builds more and more a culture of alienated beings. This of course is aided by the age of the computer where people can relate more easily to their computer than they can with members of their family. Typically the husband and wife go out and work their heads off. They come home and what do they do? They carry home some take-away food — nobody cooks any more — and collapse in front of the television. The kids come home and off they go to their own rooms to watch their own programmes. Everybody’s plugged in to the Internet, or they’re answering their e-mails. Where is the communication with each other?

So we have this society of adolescents who are growing up unable to communicate with one another. Even when they see each other, they’re often logged into their own entertainment. We see people walking along the road listening to music through earphones or chatting on their mobiles. In other words, they’re walking to their own beat. They’re completely enclosed in their own world — not the world outside them — but the world blasting in their heads. So, we become more and more alienated, and as we become more and more alone with others, we become more and more depressed. It’s so ironic.

So why do Westerners often experience alienation, this deep dislike of themselves, and a sense of disconnection with other people? The cause seems to be a deep sense of alienation from within, and not just from the others outside. People are not happy with themselves, they are not at peace with themselves. They don’t like themselves. Now, if we don’t like ourselves, then the fact is, we are always going to have problems with others.

2500 years ago, when the Buddha talked about the practice of loving-kindness, he said there were two ways in which one radiated loving-kindness to all beings everywhere. Firstly, we could send out thoughts of love in all directions — the north, the south, the east and the west up, down and everywhere. We just radiate loving-kindness to all the beings in the world. Or we could start with people we like — our family or our partners, our children — and then extend that to people we feel indifferent towards, and then to people we dislike and finally out further to all beings everywhere.

But before we start doing all that, the Buddha said that we begin by radiating loving-kindness to ourselves. We start by thinking, “May I be well and happy. May I be peaceful and at my ease.” Do you understand? If we do not first feel that sense of kindness towards ourselves, how are we ever really going to be kind to others? We have to feel love and compassion for all sentient beings: humans, animals, insects, fish, birds — beings both seen or unseen, beings in the higher realms, beings in the lower realms, beings throughout the universe. All sentient beings are the object of our love and our compassion. So how is it that we omit the being right here? The one who’s supposed to be feeling this endless love? It’s like we’re radiating so much light but yet we are standing in the dark. And that’s not right — we first have to extend our kindness towards the being who’s also in need of our kindness at this moment - that is our own self. This has to do with developing a good heart.

Ironically, in our society, it is traditionally considered that one should think of all the bad things one has ever done and feel deep regret and guilt — lots and lots of guilt; because we are sinners, we should feel bad. A low self-esteem is a good thing because we are meaningless worms unless we are saved by someone else.

But that is not the Buddhist view. The Buddhist view says that since the very beginning, we are all utterly pure and utterly perfect. Our original mind is like the sky — it is vast, it has no center and no limits. The Mind is infinitely vast. It is not “me” and it is not “mine”. It is what interconnects us with all beings — this is our true nature. Unfortunately, right now our genuine nature has got a little bit obscured by very thick clouds and we are identifying with the clouds; we are not identifying with the deep, blue, eternal sky. And because we are identifying with the clouds, we have very limited ideas of who we and others really are. If we take the point of view that from the very beginning, we have always been utterly perfect but somehow confusion arose and covered up our true nature, then there is no question of being unworthy. The potential is always there, if only we can see it. Every single one of us possesses that potential, that Buddha potential, that potential for enlightenment. So where is the question of it being a meaningless world? Once we understand that the inner potential is always there as the very basis and ground of our being, then this question of having a good heart makes sense. Because what we are doing is reflecting our essential nature through kindness, through compassion and through understanding. It’s not that we are trying to develop something we don’t already have.

To change the metaphor, it is like we are coming back to a pure spring. Inside, we have a spring of everlasting love, wisdom, compassion and understanding which is our true nature. It’s always there, but it has got blocked up, so we feel dry inside. We look and all we see is dry earth. Or we see this huge garbage heap. And we think, “I’m this garbage heap. I don’t have a pure spring of wisdom and love. I’m just a big heap of garbage. I’m just junk!” And this is a terribly false identification. We’re identifying with the junk heap, we’re not identifying with what’s underneath. Underneath all that junk — and it doesn’t matter if it’s a huge mountain of garbage — the spring is always there. It can never, never, never stop. What we have to do is uncover the spring and there it is leaping up as a fountain! So it’s very important to know that since the very beginning, our essential nature is good. It may have got a bit covered up, but it’s always there.

Now, of course there are various ways to begin to remove the junk. The six paramitas or six perfections are the path which the Buddha laid down for attaining enlightenment. These include not only exotic things like meditation and wisdom, but they start with very basic practical factors like generosity, patience and tolerance, ethical conduct based on harmlessness and having the enthusiasm to transform our lives. All these qualities are very important for our inner transformation because we cannot alter the outer world until we change ourselves. The outer world is the reflection of the minds of the beings who inhabit that society. We have the society that we deserve. Our society is just a multiplication of the minds of the humans in that society. We cannot just blame the politicians and the businessmen. Who gave them the power? Who elected them? Who buys their products? If everyone tomorrow refused to buy these products, the economy would collapse. Then they would have to think of something else. But we do buy them and so the businesses prosper. Our society is us. Until we transform our minds, society isn’t really going to change very much. We have responsibility. Society isn’t just a big conglomerate out there. Society means the family, lots and lots of families, lots and lots of relationships, businesses and shops. This is what society is. If one person knows how to transform his/her own mind, that will change the dynamics of the relationship of his/her family, of the place where s(he) works, of the people that s(he) meets during the day. Each of us is responsible for transforming ourselves from within.

So, we start in a small way. When we talk about loving-kindness, there are specific meditations for developing this quality. In different traditions, it is practised slightly differently. But if one is not careful the meditation becomes very abstract. We sit there radiating our loving-kindness in all directions to all beings everywhere. We are sitting there and the whole universe is full of loving-kindness but then our kid comes in and says “Hey! I want to put the television on!”, and we say “Go away!! Don’t disturb me! I’m doing my loving kindness meditation”!

Loving-kindness starts from just where we are. It’s obvious. First, it starts with ourselves. Coming to terms with ourselves and then coming to terms with all those around us. If we cannot even have kindness and understanding towards ourselves, it means that we have a low self-image, and this is not something good spiritually. Some people think that because Buddhism goes on a lot against self-cherishing, if we feel at ease with ourselves, it means that somehow we are a bad person and that it is just ego. But that is a big misunderstanding.

Shantideva, the seven century Indian philosopher, points out in his Bodhicharyavatara that there is a big difference between pride and arrogance — that self-cherishing of “me” and “mine” and the “I’m so wonderful” feeling - and self-assurance, which is that sense of being friends and at ease with oneself, so that one has the confidence to go forward. In the West, we so often undercut ourselves the whole time because we don’t believe in ourselves. The first time I met His Holiness the 16th Karmapa, in Calcutta back in 1965, he said to me within the first ten minutes, “Your problem is that you have no confidence. You don’t believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, who will believe in you?” And that is so true.

We have to be friends with and kind towards ourselves. If we tend to be the kind of person who zeroes in on all our own faults, we can acknowledge that we have faults — of course, everyone has faults — but we also have to acknowledge and encourage the good within us. Because if we ignore it, it will wither, like a plant that has no sunlight. We can think: “Well, I’m really an angry person but on the other hand I’m also quite generous.” Now, if we just say “I’m an angry person” or “I’m angry and I get jealous” and leave it at that, then we just think of all the bad in ourselves. But even the worst person has good qualities and these good things need to be encouraged, they need to be acknowledged.

The Buddha said that there were four powers. First of all, the power of getting rid of those negative qualities which have arisen and seeing that other negative qualities do not arise in the future. The second was acknowledging the good qualities which we have and encouraging more of these to arise. So, we have to acknowledge what is good as well as what is negative in us. And that goes for other people too — even people we dislike must have some good qualities.

Everybody wants to be happy. We may define happiness in many different ways — we all have our own ideas of wherein happiness resides and some people have very peculiar ideas of what happiness is — but nonetheless, we all basically want happiness and a sense of fulfillment. Very few people wake up in the morning and think “How can I be really miserable today and make this day as miserable as possible for everybody else?” Most people, if given a choice, would prefer to be happy. So, when we meet somebody, we should remember that “This person wants to be happy”. Basically, that’s all they want. However mistaken their ideas of where happiness lies, they basically just want to be happy. And most people would appreciate a frown much less than they would appreciate a smile; most people don’t really want to be spoken to rudely; most people would appreciate some politeness.

So during the day, with every person we meet — whether it’s someone very close to us — our partner, our parents, our children, our siblings or our colleagues at work or strangers we meet in a shop, or anybody we meet in the passing — think, “They all want to be happy” and “How, in this moment can I do something to help establish a little pleasure or joy in their life?” With every being we meet, with goodwill we can reflect using words or without words “May you be well and happy” It doesn’t matter whether we like that person or not, or whether that person is beautiful or ugly, old or young. We feel from our heart: “May you be well and happy”.

A Bodhisattva takes on the suffering of the world, but Bodhisattvas are always shown smiling. This is because their compassion is conjoined with understanding. It’s very important to appreciate that however outwardly prosperous and successful some of us might seem, we might be very sensitive sentient beings inside. Underneath that mask which everyone is wearing, is something very tender and delicate. The pain, the insecurity and the fear are there. And we feel great kindness and compassion for that.

A genuinely good heart is based on understanding the situation as it really is; it’s not sentimental. Nor is it just going around in a kind of euphoria of fake love, denying suffering and saying that everything is all bliss and joy. It’s not like that. A genuine good heart is a heart which is really open and listening to the sorrows of the world but with understanding too. It is a paradox that the more we are centred on our own suffering, the more we suffer but the more we think about the suffering of others, the more we come to feel an inner sense of fulfillment and a kind of joy. I don’t mean that we rejoice in the suffering of others, obviously, but we can get off our own backs when we think of others.

People who have a mental illness are usually obsessed with themselves. They talk and think about themselves all the time. If someone tries to introduce a more general topic, they bring it back to themselves, because that’s all that interests them. They’re obsessed with themselves — their sufferings, their life, their memories. It’s like they’re completely locked in on themselves. And they suffer. People who are completely sane and inwardly well-balanced think of others. They take care of themselves, but their main concern is for the happiness and well-being of others. And in thinking of the happiness and the well-being of all the others, and not primarily of their own happiness and well-being, they become well and happy!

So our society is wrong in thinking that happiness depends on just fulfilling our own wants and desires. That’s why our society is so miserable. We’re a society of individuals, all obsessed with trying to obtain our own happiness. Therefore, we are cut off from this sense of interconnection with others; we are cut off from reality. Because in reality, we’re all interconnected.

As long as our hearts are closed, and we think only of ourselves — even if we are only thinking of how horrible, stupid and worthless we are and how we’re always going to be failures — it is a closed heart. And that closed heart is going to cause both ourselves and others a lot of pain. If we have a mind which is only thinking of how to get our own gratification — “what pleases me is good for the rest of the world because it pleases me. And that’s all I care about and to hell with everybody else. They can do their own thing, I’m going to do my thing” — that’s also a very pained mind. It is not a happy mind. It might be frenetic and it might get euphoric sometimes, especially when it’s high on substances but it’s not a happy, centred or contented mind. It’s only when we learn how to open up our hearts to include in a genuine way the well-being of others, that we find that this inner space, this inner sense of lack and emptiness can be filled.

So we start from where we are and who we are. It’s no good wanting to be somebody else; it’s no good fantasising about what it would be like if we could be like this or if we weren’t that or whatever. We have to start from here and now, with who we are and where we are, in the situation we are in, right now. And we have to deal with that — we have to deal with who we live with, who we work with and the people that we are meeting. That is the challenge. Sometimes we avoid our present circumstances, thinking that over the years we are sure to meet with the perfect situation somewhere, but there is never going to be that ideal time and place because we are taking the same mind with us everywhere. The problem isn’t out there — the problem is usually within us. So what we need is to cultivate this inner transformation. Once we have developed our inner change, it’s all the same wherever we are; we can deal with whatever happens.

What does love mean? In the West, we mistake the meaning of love; we bandy the word around all the time, from “I love ice-cream” to “I love God”. But we mistake love for desire, for greed, for lust, and for attachment. We think that to love something or someone means to hold on very tightly and to think of it as “mine”. And because of this grasping mind, we suffer very much. We suffer from the fear that we will lose what we desire, and we suffer from grief when we do lose. Think about that. We usually mistake attachment for love. But attachment is not love. Attachment is grasping, attachment is clinging. And this is the root cause of our being in this state of suffering.

The Buddha said that there is a truth of suffering and that there is a cause of suffering. The cause of suffering is grasping. We hold things so tightly because we don’t know how to hold things lightly. But everything is impermanent. Everything is flowing — it’s not static or solid. We cannot hold on to anything. As long as we try to hold on to the flow of the river, we either end up with nothing — because we can’t grasp water in a tight fist. Or else, we dam up the flow and end up with something very stagnant, smelly and stale. The actuality is movement. If we try to hold on tightly, we kill it. And that causes so much pain; it causes so much fear in our lives. That’s not love. Love is a tremendous opening of the heart. It’s a heart which thinks ”May you be well and happy” and not “May you make me well and happy”.

In order to cultivate that kind of heart which wishes for the happiness of others, we can start first by opening with our family. This means by trying to make them happy and being open towards them. But not clinging or grasping — just being there for them. Showing them love, showing them affection, because they are the first people who need our love and affection. But it’s not a tight grasping affection.

When I was 19, I decided to go to find a Lama, and I said to my mother “I’m going to India” and she said, “Oh yes, when are you leaving?” She didn’t say “What do you mean you are going to India? How could you leave your poor old mother?” She said, “Oh yes, when are you leaving?’” not because she didn’t love me, but because she did love me. She loved me and she wanted me to fulfill my own potential and be happy. She was not thinking “Oh, but if you’re going to leave me, I’m going to be lonely. I’m going to be miserable. How can you abandon me?” So, because of her non-attachment, she rejoiced in my happiness. Even while I was away, though I am sure she missed me very much, but she rejoiced in all the things I did, the places I went and the people I met. She came to India for a year and stayed with me. But then she went back. All the time that I was there, she never once wrote and said “Ok, now come back. I’m getting old and it’s your duty as my daughter to come back and take care of me.” The most she’d write was “Well, I know you really belong in India, but you’ve been away for 10 years. So, if I sent you a return ticket, would you come back for a month?”

That’s love. And that heart of warmth is not something impossible. It’s something we can all develop. That joy in making others happy, in thinking how we can give a little happiness, a little joy to others that we meet, through a kind word, through a smile, through a gift or whatever. Not always thinking “Oh, but they never gave me anything, so why should I give them anything?”, or “They never smile at me, so I’m not going to smile at them.” That’s such a petty, small mind. Think about a society in which everyone is at least nice to each other. That would be heaven, would it not? And yet it doesn’t take that much to be pleasant, even to people who are not pleasant in return. If we were affable to everybody, then on the whole, people would be agreeable in response.

Because it’s really true that we get out of life what we put into it. And if we are always radiating negative thoughts and feelings – anger, resentment or just self-absorption — then that’s what we’ll get back. If we think it’s a horrible world and that everybody is rotten, then we’ll be totally miserable. Well, that’s our freedom — we can do that. But if we give out genuine good thoughts; if our attitude towards people is wishing that they should be happy — and that as much as we can, we contribute to that in some way, with a kind word or a smile (and with our family, we can contribute in big ways) — then eventually, what we’ll get back is what we put out. On the whole, people will be nice to us; on the whole, people will like us. If our feelings are genuine, we will get a genuine response.

We project our own world. Our mind is like a big projector so that two people in the same place can experience completely different versions of what is going on. And once we realise that, we understand that we have the freedom to change. We are not computers who are just programmed in one way. We can all change. But no one can do it for us. It’s up to us. We have to change ourselves. We have to make the decision.

We have this lifetime. This lifetime is going to be full of challenges. We are not just in this world to be happy and comfortable. Animals want to be comfortable. What do animals want? They want shelter, they want food, maybe they want sex, (if they’re given the opportunity not to be sterilised when they are too young to protest). They want affection. They want warmth and comfort. So do we. But if this is all we want from life, we are no better than animals. But we are humans and we have the chance to really develop our inner qualities — our intelligence, our spiritual impulses — which make us specifically human. Because, if we spend our lives just trying to be comfortable, just trying to have a nice life, and trying to avoid anything painful and only going after what is pleasant, then not only are we going to be disappointed, we’re also not going to learn anything.

Somebody said that this life was like the gymnasium of the soul. This is true. This world is where we train, this is where we learn, this is where we develop our muscles. We can sit curled up in a chair and get flabby. That’s up to us. But we can also say “Look, here I am. This is my situation, this is the kind of person I think I am. I have this kind of upbringing, I accept it all. Now what?” And all those things which are negative, which cause pain to ourselves and others, can be transformed, or used, can be acknowledged and then released. And those qualities which we need to develop can be developed. The only reason why we don’t do it is that we are lazy. We think: “Oh no, other people can do these things, but I can’t”. But all of us can.

So it’s up to us. We create this world as we project it from our mind. We can make this world into something meaningful. We can make some genuine contribution to our environment. Even just within our own circle, by helping others to feel better, we can have a life that has some purpose. So that at the end of our life, we can look back and say, “well, at least I did what I could.” Or we could waste it — we can go through life grumbling, and moaning and complaining and blaming other people in the family, an unhappy childhood and one’s parents or the government and society.

Whether we go up or whether we go down or whether we stand still, is up to us. And if we want to be miserable, we can be absolutely miserable. We have full permission. But if we don’t want to be miserable, that is also up to us. Things can change. Things are changing moment to moment. We can change. And if we change ourselves, everything changes. Everything changes.

[shadow-cities]

Reality Gives - Empowering Youth in the Shadows of Mumbai, India

Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi, is home to nearly one million people in just .81 square miles within Mumbai. That is every citizen of both Denver and Fort Collins living on just three of Denver’s biggest parks (City Park, Cheeseman Park and Wash Park).

It may be easy to picture Dharavi as a wasteland - pity its inhabitants, and think the solution is to bulldoze the entire slum and relocate its inhabitants. However, despite its horrors and the aspects that had me holding back tears it is important to recognize that... well... these are homes.  Not just that, but living around these homes are families, and communities that have learned not to just survive - but to build. They have built their homes, they have built their communities, and they have built an economy worth nearly one billion dollars. 

In an attempt to better understand Dharavi, I decided to go on a guided walk with Reality Tours. They are an NGO which charges 12 US Dollards (a lot of money in India!) in exchange for an “authentic and thought-provoking local experience... and use the profits to create change in their community”. While sure, they claim to send 80% of proceeds to its partner NGO, Reality Gives, to sponsor and empower Dharavi’s youth - but I was hesitant. I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is this slum tourism? Is this messed up?” Having gone on the walk, I can say that it may be “"slum tourism” but its benefits far outweigh the bad. First off, the NGO is sensitive to its presence and has a strict no photo policy. So all these photos i’ll be using come from them or the public domain. They also chose to highlight Dharavi’s economic back bone and the stronger residential communities that have developed... Leaving tour goers with a bit of hope, realism, and the optimism that things can get better for these people.  

My guide’s name was Hitesh. He was what you would picture a typical Indian male to look like: brown skin, dark hair, wearing a long sleeve shirt and pants.  Only his shirt was light blue and had “Reality Tours” printed on it. He was very excited to meet us and did the Indian head thing as he started our tour with a bit of history. Apparently Dharavi was settled in the 1860′s. “Older than Canada!”, Hitesh proudly proclaimed. Originally, all its buildings were made from discarded building materials that were being dumped on the site by lazy British contractors. Back then the British were busy redeveloping their quarters as they filled the land that once split Mumbai into 7 different islands. Yet while the British went on to plan their quarters of Bombay they left the areas designated for the ‘native’ as a free for all - and Dharavi was born.

Chickens clucked, mopeds were dodged and stray dogs avoided as Hitesh brought us onto a main street within Dharai. He pointed out every business you could imagine - banks, schools, food stands, gyms and even movie theaters! The theater lacked chairs but are an affordable way for one to catch a semi recent Bollywood Film.

We were then shown the industrial heart of Dharavi - learning how a slum could generate nearly one billion dollars.  Hitesh started with the plastic recycling yards. Here old dashboards, children's toys, and appliances (any discarded hard plastic really) are gathered by some of Dharavi’s poorest. These piles are then sorted by women into more piles. These sorted piles are then chopped down by a special machine made within Dhavari (an industry within itself), cleaned in a soapy water solution, dried on the roofs and melted/extruded into grain sized plastic pellets that are sold to manufacturers of plastic products.  

After the plastic yards Hitesh showed us the shops that clean and process old paint cans. In these shops paint cans are set ablaze in furnaces to destroy their contents. Their charred carcasses are then scrubbed clean, and marked. If this is the can’s third mark it is cut down. They bang it flat into a sheet so it could be sold as building material. Next to nothing is wasted in Dharavi.

Numerous other factories were then shown to us. All of which were not allowed in the residential areas because of their toxicity. We saw furnaces melting old aluminum into “grey gold”, shops manufacturing equipment like the plastic crushers, and areas where the plastic is crushed into finer particulate (see the above photo). Sadly because of the toxicity in all of these factories the life expectancy of employees decreases dramatically - to just 45 years old.  However, many men line up to do these jobs. Mostly because they require little training and they can send much more money back home. Not only do they pay better but factory owners let them sleep inside the factories in exchange for  guarding the shops equipment.

Amongst the tanneries (where leather was prepped, tanned, colored, pressed into faux textures and cut) we were actually taken into the ‘coolest place in Dharavi’. Sure, Hitesh said this literally as the store was blasting AC, but amongst the typical knock off hand bags I found myself surrounded by something quite different and beautiful -  their own brand! Flashing on the wallets, purses and handbags was their logo: Dharavi. The shop owner informed us they were proud of their work, had always dreamed of really “owning” it and now could because of the tour I was on. They no longer had to be ashamed of their location and hide behind other labels. While sure, I was totally suckered into buying something I didn’t really need, I was excited and optimistic - because even within Dharavi people are dreaming and working hard for a better life. 

Then a deeper dose of reality. We were led into the residential areas where the quality of housing varies drastically. The nicer ones doubled as live/work spaces... Allowing for non toxic business like tailoring, suitcase construction, baking, woodworking, pottery and more. However, in the bleaker areas the situation is much more dire. Monsoon water floods, disease is rampant, and families are squeezed into the tightest of quarters. Many homes also rely solely on the community toilets - where the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) says there is only one toilet for every 1,440 people. Not only that, but water taps within Dharavi only run for two hours a day. As many as 15 families will share one tap. Yet despite all these conditions, these communities survive, and residents are able to live their lives.

The tour then showed us how they are helping the youth of Dharavi. Reality Gives wants them to know their dreams living outside of the slum are obtainable. In their classrooms they teach 400 kids computer literacy, English (speaking english fluently leads a huge range of job opportunities), and soft skills (communication skills and interview training). They also provide a support network and pay a portion of the fees for 130 children to participate in sports programs. While they could pay the entire fee, they’ve found that asking students to pay a portion gives the students a sense of ownership and raises their commitment to the programs.

One program in particular is having a huge impact: their girls football club. Sadly, sexism is rampant throughout the slum. Most husbands want their wives and daughters to stay home and do the cooking and household chores. So perhaps the biggest impact of this club is the breaking of the social stigma regarding girls and sports. In fact, as Hitesh said, “The girls were once shy, not wanting to be seen running and playing sport -  but now they stand tall!” It was a very optimistic and empowering end to the tour. 

I woke up the next day thinking about this contrasting shadow caster. So I decided to try and see it. Just 8 miles away from Dharavi rises Antila - the private home to a family of 5. While I heard about this in grandiose display of wealth in architecture school, I must say, its 27 floors, 168 car stalls, 3 helicopter pads, and multiple swimming pools really hit home after seeing Dharavi. However, this building has had an impact on my research. I have realized that an architectural solution for our world’s shadow cities must involve studying the psychological impact of these shadow casters. Perhaps shadow cities need the ability to cast a shadow of their own. Until next time, Pist0l