#Decision Maker Survey

[1lattice]

Business Decision Makers: Reports and Publications of 1Lattice

1Lattice offers an invaluable resource for staying ahead in your industry. Our reports and publications delve deep into current market trends, providing actionable insights for making informed business decisions. Whether you are a seasoned professional or just starting, staying informed is key to success. At 1Lattice, you gain access to a wealth of knowledge that can propel your business forward. Do not miss out on the opportunity to tap into this invaluable resource and stay ahead of the curve.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

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

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[itsjusthockey]

Hughes Your Daddy pt.2 - Jack Hugges

wow.

It took longer than expected, but you should all be thankful because I was going to quit this blog, but I didn't give up

tell me how proud you are and how much you love it. pls & thx

Anyway, enjoy ❤️

w.c: 2,754 (credit to gif maker) (don't steal my work)

The crisp 100-dollar bill you’ve just won sits nicely tucked in your back pocket as Jack breaks the world record for sprinting and dodging almost a million cameras to get to you. As soon as he crashes into your waiting arms, he lifts you into the air and lets out a breathy laugh in your ear that’s only reserved when you’re with him. It’s light, happy, and maybe even a little giddy.

After a moment of you being suspended in the air, he gently sets you down, giving you one last tight squeeze, then backs up to see your face.

“Did I embarrass you?”

You give him a slight smirk and shrug your shoulders. “You did okay.”

He playfully rolls his eyes, shaking his head at you as he moves on to hug his waiting parents. With his attention away from you, you survey the space and catch sight of the other Hughes brothers walking toward the group.

Luke is doing his little half smile and has a slight pep in his step that comes with a nice win, and Quinn looks about unbothered with everything as usual. You make a mental note of that, knowing that your evil boyfriend is going to push his buttons later to get any sort of reaction to his loss.

“Nice game, Lukey,” you pull him into a hug as he gets within distance, patting his arm as you pull away. “You’re kinda being a stud out there.”

Luke blushes a shade darker at your comment, and you can’t help but love knowing you can still get a rise out of him. Luke moves on, too, and you’re left facing the only Hughes brother who didn’t have a win tonight.

“Tough loss cap.” You hug Quinn tightly before glancing back at your boyfriend and leaning in slightly to whisper in his ear. “But we all know you’re still the best.”

Quinn gives you a small laugh, and you can see his head is held a little higher as you pull him to join the circle with the rest of the family. As soon as you do, Jack opens his smart mouth.

“Family circles are for winners only.”

As soon as the words leave his lips, Ellen hisses his name, and you pinch the back of his arm as hard as you can.

“Ow,” he yelps at you, rubbing his arm. “What was that for?”

You give him a look that tells him exactly what that was for, to which he rolls his eyes at you.

“He knows it’s in good fun,” Jack says. “Right Q?”

This time, Quinn rolls his eyes but nonetheless nods his head.

The group chats about the game for a couple of minutes before unanimously deciding that family dinner is a must, and then you’ll head back to Quinn’s place for one last night altogether. As soon as the decision is made, you beeline to follow when Jack holds you back for a second.

“Dinner, just you and me, okay?” He all but pleads, pulling you toward him.

You glance back at his family walking away, seemingly unaware you two fell behind.

“They want to see you too, J.”

He grabs your hands and pulls even closer, leaving no room for any personal space. “They don’t care that much, and I haven’t had a second alone with you.”

His point is fair, but you also are torn by the fact that it isn’t very often that all three brothers are together.

“C’mon (Y/N). The winner should get a reward dinner right?”

You raise your eyebrow at him. “Then shouldn’t we invite Luke?”

He snorts at your comment and shakes his head.

“Please, I did the heavy lifting.”

Twenty minutes later, you’re at a nice restaurant in downtown Vancouver. It’s big yet cozy and has low lighting, making it slightly romantic. You’re impressed with Jack's pick, but you also know deep in your heart he probably asked Quinn for his recommendations.

Your reserved table is in a cozy little corner, and a bottle of wine is sitting out, ready to be poured. You’re beyond happy with the setup, but you can’t help but feel a little underdressed as you both walk toward your seats. Jack has his game-day suit, but you’re still clad in a red and black jersey with the number eighty-six plastered across the back.

“This is wonderful, J, but you couldn’t warn me to wear something a little nicer.”

He pulls out the chair for you before you sit down, and as he crosses to the seat directly opposite you, he laughs.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He smirks. “This is my favorite outfit for you to be in.”

You roll your eyes as far back as possible but let it go. You are proud to be his girlfriend, and you allow him to have this little ego boost for one evening.

You spend the next hour talking about everything and nothing, and when the bill comes, Jack hands over his card, and you two pack up the leftovers you have, knowing Luke will destroy them once you get back to the house.

Once the card returns, you head out into the chill Vancouver night with Jack's arms wrapped around your waist. The walk to the car is short and filled with your usual light banter. As soon as you're within the view of the car, you go to swat away Jack's arm when he gets a little too handsy, but not before your boyfriend reaches into your back pocket and pulls out the hundred dollar bill that was safely hidden.

He eyes the bill with curiosity and darts his eyes back and forth between you and the bill for a few seconds.

“What this?”

“Cash?” You deadpan, moving to snatch the bill away, but he holds it out of your grip.

“You never carry cash.” He narrows his eyes slightly, then a dawning look crosses his face.

“This is the fourth hundred I’ve found in your pocket after a game with my brothers.”

You give him a surprised look but shake your head no.

“It’s just a coincidence, Jack.”

He passes you back the bill, but let’s put a low whistle. “Twice is a coincidence. Four times is a pattern.”

Before you can open the passenger door to the car, Jack blocks his body with it, tilting his head to the side and eyeing you up and down.

“You wanna know how I think you’re getting the money?”

You let out a puff of air, wishing he’d drop it, but you also know your boyfriend, and he will never let it go.

“Sure.” You take a step closer to him. “Let’s hear your theory.”

He smirks again and leans toward you as if he’s going to tell you a secret.

“I think you’re betting with my dad.”

You freeze when he speaks and must admit he’s smarter than he looks. You want to deny the accusation, but you simply shrug your shoulders and lean away from him.

“An excellent theory, J, but alas, it’s none of your business.”

You meet his stare, lean into him to kiss him on the cheek, and then body-check him from the side, and he stumbles just enough to allow you to climb into the passenger seat.

He heads to the driver a second later, and when he climbs in, the conversation is merely forgotten. You go back into talking about everything you’ve missed in each other's lives until you pull into the familiar driveway.

The house is decently quiet when you walk in, and when you round into the dining room, you see Luke and Quinn on opposite sides of the table, a checkerboard between them. Luke is stressed, chewing slightly on his hand, and across from him, Quinn sits with a smug smile and a stack of chips next to him.

“C'mon Lu, you’re better than this.” You say, gently patting his shoulder as you bring the leftovers to the fridge.

He huffs and glares at Quinn. “I am better, and I think he’s cheating somehow.”

Jack pipes up from behind you. “How can you cheat at checkers?”

Luke huffs again and mutters a quiet “he’s finding a way” under his breath, returning his attention to the board.

Jack crosses the room and sits down next to Luke, saying he’s playing the next round to defeat Quinn for the second time that night, and as soon as he takes his attention off you, you beeline to the living room in hopes of finding your gambling partner.

You find Jim and Ellen in the living room, and when you enter, they’re beyond excited to see you. You sit on the opposite chair and lean over to them both, whispering so the boy in the other room won’t hear you.

“Jack is onto us.”

Jim gives you a confused look.

“He knows about the betting.”

Ellen lets a giant laugh bubble past her lips, and soon enough, you’re all laughing about the situation.

“Out of all of them to figure it out,” Jim says, shaking his head.

You smile at them both, telling them how the secret came out, and in the end, they shrug it off.

“Just because he knows doesn’t mean we should stop. If anything, maybe it will be more of an incentive.”

You smile ear to ear and relax back into the chair, knowing that the little game won’t end, even if the boys know about it. You settle back into casual conversation for a while before you hear some commotion from the dining room, and Ellen gives you a knowing look.

You walk swiftly back into the dining where the chaos is, and when you enter, you see Quinn sitting calmly with his arms crossed and Jack standing in front of him, surrounded by all the tiny checker pieces with the board flipped upside down.

You can’t stifle your laughter, and you high-five Quinn across the table as Jack turns to you with a cold stare.

“You two can laugh all you want. I still won the actual game tonight.”

Quinn shrugs his shoulders at Jack. “Well, I just won the game that clearly matters more. So who’s the real winner tonight.”

Quinn throws you a wink as he begins cleaning up the pieces on the floor, and Jack follows suit, angrily putting them into the little pouch they came in.

You watch them clean up the game and go to stand by Luke, who’s eating your leftovers and quietly watching the scene unfold in front of him.

“Did you just stand here the whole time?” You ask.

He takes another large bite. “I enjoyed the show.”

You knock your shoulder against him, and a few minutes later, all the games are put away, and you all decide to join the parents in the living room. There, you watch a few episodes of The Office under Jack's hold, and soon enough, you find yourself dozing off in the comfortable position and extra body heat.

You're not sure how long you're asleep until you wake up hearing some shuffling around you. You open your eyes and see that Ellen and Jim have already left, and Luke and Quinn are moving around, getting ready also to leave the shared space. Quinn folds up a blanket and places it on the couch when you quietly whisper at him.

“Is he asleep?” You ask, referring to the boy behind you who’s gripped has softened a bit and whose breath has gone steady.

Quinn nods and whispers back a goodnight, leaving you and Jack alone in the living room. You’re perfectly content to stay on the coach, but that doesn’t last until you feel Jack move behind you.

“What time is it?” He mutters.

You look around for your phone, and when you click on the screen, it reads about half an hour before midnight. You show him the screen, and he hums.

“Wanna go to bed?”

You nod, slinging your legs to the side and getting up. Your muscles are stiff, and you stretch them out as Jack follows close behind you to the shared bedroom you've been occupying this weekend.

As you are busy getting ready for bed, Jack joins you in your domestic bliss, washing your face together and brushing your teeth. You can’t help but smile into the toothpaste because every time you go to stare at him, he’s already looking at you, and a blush creeps into his cheeks when he gets caught.

You finish up, climbing into your pajamas, and when you walk back into the room, Jack is already under the covers, looking at his phone. As soon as he notices you, he tosses the device away and lifts the sheets, patting the space beside him.

You crawl in, and within a moment, his arms wrap securely around you, and you’re pulled to his chest. All the stress of finals, flying back and forth, and life in general melt away, and for the first time in a long while, you know you’ll get the best sleep tonight.

You settle in even deeper into Jack's hold, reading yourself to enter the dreamland until you’re slightly brought back when he gently taps your arm three times, your relationship code to see if you’re still awake.

“Yeah?” You ask, flipping over to face him in the darkness.

“I just have a question.” He whispers

You wait for him to ask, and after a second passes, he does.

“Of course, I’m not mad or anything. You betting with my dad is the funniest thing ever. But one thing is bugging me.”

You gently rub his arm, and he continues.

“How did you win?” His voice is soft. “Did you bet on us winning even though we haven’t been playing the best? Or was it something else? Do you switch teams? Or how do you decide which team you bet on?”

He throws so many questions at you that you silence him with a light kiss pressed to his lips. It effectively shuts him up, and he stays quiet until you answer.

You take a minute to speak on purpose, wanting to make him wait, but you know that his wheels are turning, and he honestly doesn’t know your secret to success, and you know you have to tell him.

It’s never a question when you’re betting with Jim; you always pick with your heart, and you’re rarely wrong, and even when you are, you’re still correct with the outcome, and you wouldn’t change it for the world.

“I never have to decide.” You press another kiss to his lips. “I always bet on you.”

[newsfromstolenland]

A new study of LGBTQ+ representation in Canadian film, TV, streaming and video game industries says there are significant gaps in how the diverse community is portrayed on screen, despite some recent improvements.

The paper published today by Pink Triangle Press says a majority of industry professionals agree that portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters is frequently superficial, stereotypical and focused solely on trauma.

[...]

It says that while 85 per cent of industry professionals have seen improvements over the past five years, a “significant” gap persists in the amount and type of representation, especially when it comes to queer and transgender characters.

The report – based on surveys, interviews and media content analysis collected from December 2023 to May – says gay men are the best-represented LGBTQ+ group but they still only represent seven per cent of characters in the top shows.

The paper says barriers to inclusion include a lack of LGBTQ+ decision-makers and “cautious” industry executives, as well as a reliance on storytelling tropes and stereotypes.

Full article

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

[deliciousangelfestival]

Tears In His Ferrari || Chp 3 - Bucky

Character: Bucky Barnes x Farmer!Reader

Words Count: 1,810

Summary: Bucky Barnes, used to a life of luxury, takes on farm challenges in a bet with his father. Mud-stained Ferraris and a rustic farmhouse lead to unexpected personal growth, guided by the stern mentorship of Y/N, a farmer making his city-boy life difficult.

Main Masterlist || If you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee on: Ko-fi

Thank you to anyone who gave a like, reblog, and left a comment. It motivated me to write more. 

Chapters: Chp 1, Chp 2, Chp 3 , Chp 4 , Chp 5 , Chp 6 , Chp 7 , Chp 8 , Chp 9 , Chp 10 , Chp 11 , Chp 12.

Bucky woke with a sore body, the stiffness a stark reminder of the physical toil from the previous day. Accustomed to the luxury of a comfortable bed, high-quality pillows, and a butler ready to attend to his every need, the reality of his new surroundings hit him like a jolt.

Groggily rubbing his eyes, Bucky surveyed the unfamiliar room. The rustic charm of the farmhouse was a far cry from the sleek, modern aesthetic he was accustomed to. The absence of a butler waiting at the ready only added to his disoriented state.

"I miss my old life," Bucky muttered, his voice tinged with a grumpy edge. The absence of the usual pampering he received back home left him feeling out of sorts. His gaze lingered on the simple furnishings, a stark contrast to the opulence he was used to.

As Bucky reluctantly swung his legs over the edge of the bed, he winced at the soreness in his muscles. "What was I thinking?" he mumbled, questioning the wisdom of his impulsive decision to take on the challenges of farm life.

The realization struck him as he stepped onto the cold, creaky floor – no butler, no high-end breakfast awaiting him. In this new chapter of his life, Bucky Barnes was on his own, starting with the most mundane task: preparing breakfast.

Bucky turned on his phone, half-expecting a call from his father. No calls. A sigh of both relief and disappointment escaped his lips. The absence of his father's voice on the other end left a void that forced him to confront the reality of his situation.

Bucky stepped outside with his phone in hand, cradling a warm coffee cup. The aroma wafting from the beverage provided a momentary solace, a small comfort amid the unfamiliarity surrounding him.

Grateful for his ability to make his coffee and his father's provision of a regular coffee maker, Bucky took a sip, savoring the rich flavor that greeted his taste buds.

Intent on enjoying the morning view, Bucky ventured further into the surroundings. The tranquil beauty of the farm at dawn, a stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of city life, began to work its magic on him.

However, his peaceful contemplation was interrupted by an unexpected sight – the familiar farm tractor from the previous day was in motion, navigating the plot he had been tasked with.

Bucky narrowed his eyes, attempting to process the scene. To his surprise, it was Y/N at the wheel, diligently working on planting barley seeds. A grumble escaped Bucky as he checked his watch. "It's still 7 a.m," he remarked, realizing the early hour. Approaching the tractor, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of annoyance.

Y/N halted her work upon spotting him and wasted no time in delivering her verdict. "You're late," she declared, her tone laced with irritation and amusement.

Bucky, taken aback by the unexpected accusation, retorted, "This is the earliest hour I wake up." His attempt at justification fell on deaf ears as Y/N remained unimpressed, making it clear that Bucky was running on a different schedule in the world of farming.

Y/N hopped off the tractor, her boots landing on the soft earth as she faced Bucky. "I've planted some of the barley seeds, and now it's your turn. Show me what you've learned yesterday," she instructed, a no-nonsense tone underscoring her words.

Bucky, feigning surprise, questioned, "You did? Why did you help me?" A playful smirk danced on his lips, a hint of mischief in his eyes.

"So it's quicker for you to go back," Y/N deadpanned, her response devoid of sentiment.

Putting on an exaggerated expression of disappointment, Bucky remarked, "And here I thought you could become my new best friend." His attempt at humor earned a half-hearted eye roll from Y/N.

Seated in the tractor again, Bucky took a deep breath, gearing up for the challenge. As he began driving, Y/N kept a close watch, her gaze assessing his every move.

Bucky, still grappling with the intricacies of the tractor, found himself navigating the field with a mix of uncertainty and determination.

After a few moments of awkward maneuvering, Bucky couldn't suppress his curiosity. "Am I doing it right?" he asked Y/N, seeking validation.

Y/N, maintaining her stern expression, nodded. "Not bad for a beginner," conceded. "But remember, the key is steady hands and focus. Precision is everything in farming."

Bucky, trying to absorb the newfound knowledge, muttered to himself, "Steady hands, focus, precision."

Bucky spent the entire day toiling under the sun, planting the barley seeds row by row until the sun dipped below the horizon. Exhausted but satisfied with his progress, he parked the tractor and surveyed the vast field he had cultivated. Y/N, recognizing that Bucky had successfully handled the task independently, decided to visit him.

To Bucky's surprise, Y/N approached riding a horse, showcasing a side of farm life he hadn't encountered in the city. As she dismounted, Bucky couldn't help but express his awe, "Your horse is cool. Why didn't you tell me you have a horse?"

Y/N, brushing her horse gently, Y/N explained, "This baby is afraid of cars and could kick with her strong legs. Do you want her to destroy your precious Ferrari?"

Realizing the potential danger to his luxury car, Bucky quickly responded, "No, thank you."

Y/N chuckled at his reaction and then pulled something from her bag, handing it to Bucky. "Here, my mother made this for your dinner."

At the mention of 'dinner,' Bucky's stomach betrayed him with a loud growl. He blushed, hoping Y/N hadn't heard it, but she seemed unfazed, pretending not to notice. With a smile and a friendly goodbye, Y/N left Bucky to enjoy the homemade dinner. 

Bucky, feeling rejuvenated after a satisfying dinner and a hot shower, was grateful for the delicious meal Y/N had provided. The exhaustion from the day's farm work seemed to dissipate, replaced by a newfound energy. His phone rang as he changed into fresh clothes, contemplating the slower pace of life in the countryside.

Seeing his best friend Steve's name on the screen, Bucky casually answered, "Hey, Rogers."

With a chuckle, Steve asked Bucky if he had managed to survive his first day. Bucky responded with a dry, "Haha, very funny," acknowledging the stark contrast between his city life and the challenges of farm living.

The conversation between friends continued, with Steve genuinely curious about Bucky's experiences. As they talked, the topic shifted to the practicalities of earning money quickly in the rural setting. Knowing that farming took months and years before yielding profits, Bucky sought advice from Steve.

In response, Steve suggested an unconventional idea. "Why not try live streaming or making a vlog about your daily farm life?" Steve proposed. "You've already got a bunch of followers on social media. It could be a unique angle, and who knows, it might kickstart something."

Bucky's eyes lit up at the suggestion. "That's a good idea! I've got the audience, and people love a good lifestyle change story," he remarked. The prospect of sharing his journey on social media seemed like an exciting venture and a way to leverage his existing platform for financial gain.

As Bucky considered the potential of this new endeavor, he couldn't help but feel a renewed sense of purpose. 

Feeling refreshed on the second day, Bucky decided to up his game for the vlog. He brushed his hair and wore stylish yet comfortable clothes that reflected his city-boy flair adapting to farm life. Armed with the camera, he began recording, using the natural light that enhanced the aesthetic appeal.

A small box caught his attention as he opened the front door to start his vlog. Intrigued, Bucky leaned down and discovered a tiny puppy inside.

The little creature opened its eyes, emitting a soft bark that immediately melted Bucky's heart. He couldn't resist picking up the puppy, cooing at its cuteness while wondering how it ended up in his house.

Picking the puppy gently, Bucky wondered aloud, "How did you end up in my house?" The unexpected gift had melted his heart, and he couldn't fathom who might have left such a cute puppy for him.

Y/N, having just arrived, witnessed the adorable scene. Still holding the puppy, Bucky showed it to her and inquired if she knew anyone in the neighborhood with a dog. Y/N after some contemplation, Y/N glanced at the box and seemingly deduced something.

"If the owner doesn't show up, I'll tell you who it is," Y/N declared.

Bucky, curious, nodded, recognizing that Y/N might have some insights into the matter. However, his attention was diverted when he realized his phone's camera was still rolling. Lifted in his hand, he casually mentioned, "Oh, I'm making a vlog."

Y/N's demeanor tensed visibly, catching Bucky's attention. She sighed, warning as she spoke, "If my face ever gets into the shot, delete it. If not, I'll destroy your phone." 

With that, she left Bucky, who quickly protected his phone. "Geez, what's her deal?" he wondered aloud. Meanwhile, the puppy continued to squirm in his arms, its innocence distracting from the day's farm work.

Bucky gently stroked the soft fur of the puppy, making comforting sounds as he held the small creature close. "Shhh, I will protect you," he whispered soothingly. The puppy, seemingly reassured by Bucky's gentle touch, nestled in his arms, its tiny frame a bundle of warmth and vulnerability.

As Bucky cradled the puppy, he couldn't help but marvel at the unexpected addition to his day. The mystery of the puppy's origin lingered in his thoughts, but for now, he was content to enjoy this newfound companionship. The bond between man and puppy began to form, a silent promise of care and protection exchanged in those quiet moments.

Bucky looked down at the puppy's innocent eyes and chuckled, "Well, looks like it's you and me against the farm adventures, huh?" The puppy responded with a playful wag of its tail, blissfully unaware of the challenges that awaited them.

With the camera still in hand, Bucky contemplated whether to include the puppy in his vlog. He didn't want to upset Y/N, considering her aversion to being on camera, but the irresistibly cute puppy might add a charming touch to his content.

Deciding to tread carefully, Bucky adjusted the camera angle to focus solely on the puppy, ensuring Y/N's face remained out of the shot. He continued to speak to his audience, introducing the unexpected farm companion and sharing the heartwarming story of how the puppy came into his life.

Chapters: Chp 1, Chp 2, Chp 3 , Chp 4 , Chp 5 , Chp 6 , Chp 7 , -

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[haggishlyhagging]

But what exactly is it about women's equality that even its slightest shadow threatens to erase male identity? What is it about the way we frame manhood that, even today, it still depends so on "feminine" dependence for its survival? A little-noted finding by the Yankelovich Monitor survey, a large nationwide poll that has tracked social attitudes for the last two decades, takes us a good way toward a possible answer. For twenty years, the Monitor's pollsters have asked its subjects to define masculinity. And for twenty years, the leading definition, ahead by a huge margin, has never changed. It isn't being a leader, athlete, lothario, decision maker, or even just being "born male." It is simply this: being a "good provider for his family."

If establishing masculinity depends most of all on succeeding as the prime breadwinner, then it is hard to imagine a force more directly threatening to fragile American manhood than the feminist drive for economic equality. And if supporting a family epitomizes what it means to be a man, then it is little wonder that the backlash erupted when it did—against the backdrop of the '80s economy. In this period, the "traditional" man's real wages shrank dramatically (a 22 percent free-fall in households where white men were the sole breadwinners), and the traditional male breadwinner himself became an endangered species (representing less than 8 percent of all households). That the ruling definition of masculinity remains so economically based helps to explain, too, why the backlash has been voiced most bitterly by two groups of men: blue-collar workers, devastated by the shift to a service economy, and younger baby boomers, denied the comparative riches their fathers and elder brothers enjoyed. The '80s was the decade in which plant closings put blue-collar men out of work by the millions, and only 60 percent found new jobs—about half at lower pay. It was a time when, of all men losing earning power, younger baby-boom men were losing the most. The average man under thirty was earning 25 to 30 percent less than his counterpart in the early '70s. Worst off was the average young man with only a high-school education: he was making only $18,000, half the earnings of his counterpart a decade earlier. Inevitably, these losses in earning power would breed other losses. As pollster Louis Harris observed, economic polarization spawned the most dramatic attitudinal change recorded in the last decade and a half: a spectacular doubling in the proportion of Americans who describe themselves as feeling "powerless."

When analysts at Yankelovich reviewed the Monitor survey's annual attitudinal data in 1986, they had to create a new category to describe a large segment of the population that had suddenly emerged, espousing a distinct set of values. This segment, now representing a remarkable one-fifth of the study's national sample, was dominated by young men, median age thirty-three, disproportionately single, who were slipping down the income ladder—and furious about it. They were the younger, poorer brothers of the baby boom, the ones who weren't so celebrated in '80s media and advertising tributes to that generation. The Yankelovich report assigned the angry young men the euphemistic label of "the Contenders."

The men who belonged to this group had one other distinguishing trait: they feared and reviled feminism. "It's these downscale men, the ones who can't earn as much as their fathers, who we find are the most threatened by the women's movement." Susan Hayward, senior vice president at Yankelovich, observes. "They represent 20 percent of the population that cannot handle the changes in women's roles. They were not well employed, they were the first ones laid off, they had no savings and not very much in the way of prospects for the future." Other surveys would reinforce this observation. By the late '80s, the American Male Opinion Index found that the largest of its seven demographic groups was now the "Change Resisters," a 24 percent segment of the population that was disproportionately underemployed, "resentful," convinced that they were "being left behind" by a changing society, and most hostile to feminism.

To single out these men alone for blame, however, would be unfair. The backlash's public agenda has been framed and promoted by men of far more affluence and influence than the Contenders, men at the helm in the media, business, and politics. Poorer or less-educated men have not so much been the creators of the antifeminist thesis as its receptors. Most vulnerable to its message, they have picked up and played back the backlash at distortingly high volume. The Contenders have dominated the ranks of the militant wing of the '80s antiabortion movement, the list of plaintiffs filing reverse-discrimination and "men's rights" lawsuits, the steadily mounting police rolls of rapists and sexual assailants.

-Susan Faludi, Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women

[skyscratch-wc]

Skyfall Clan Ranks and Structure

UPDATE 9/2/2024: Changed Doctor and Priest from RiverClan to WindClan. Head Mentor is now a ThunderClan specific role.

I have made significant changes to the clan structure and ranks for my AU. I wanted to create a backdrop to make the cats easier to characterize and to give the clans a wider range of jobs beyond fighting stuff.

Each clan has a slightly different set of ranks, but all clans include the following:

The Leader:

This role functions identically to canon. The Leader is the cat selected by the clan and Starclan to be the final decision maker. These cats lead their warriors into battle, perform ceremonies, and are the role models for their clan. They receive 9 lives from Starclan and thus have a longer lifespan than the average warrior.

The Deputy:

The Deputy is the second-in-command to the leader. Selected by the leader (and voted on by the clan in the case of Modern Skyclan), this cat organizes patrols and the day-to-day operations of the clan. They help select mentors for apprentices and step in for the leader if they are unavailable.

Clerics:

In all clans except WindClan and Modern Skyclan, the Cleric is the same as the Medicine Cat role from canon warriors. They are both doctors and spiritual leaders within their clans. In WindClan and Modern Skyclan, however, these roles look a little different.

In WindClan the role of Cleric is divided into two: the Doctor and the Priest.

The Doctor is responsible for the well being and health of the clan, while the Priest is a dedicated spiritual guide who acts not only as the clan's connection to Starclan, but also as an emotional support figure and the main cat to perform religious rituals at birth and death.

In Skyclan the role of Cleric is similarly divided, only they refer to the ranks as the Heart and the Soul, although when they arrive at the Lake cats may also refer to these ranks as the Doctor and the Priest. These roles function effectively the same as WindClan.

Senior Warriors:

Within each sub-rank (see below) there is a Senior Warrior. This Warrior, called the "Head [Rank Name Here]" is responsible for leading and maintaining their sub-rank of cats. There is one senior warrior per sub-rank and they are advisors to the leader and deputy.

In ThunderClan there is a Head Mentor, who oversees all apprentice training. All clans also have a Head Queen/Caretaker, who makes sure the voices of the parents and kittens are heard in clan decisions.

Warriors:

Warriors are split into sub-ranks, but as a collective are referred to as warriors. On a day to day basis though, most cats will identify with their sub-rank within being a warrior. Sub-ranks include the following:

Protector - These are cats specifically trained to patrol and usually lead battle patrols. They are the clans first line of defense and are usually most skilled fighters in the clan.

Hunter - These cats are specialized in, as their name suggests, hunting

Crafter - These cats are artisans that produce leatherwork, ceramics, and other tools for the clan. This role is especially coveted in Shadowclan, Riverclan, and Skyclan.

Collector - These cats collect materials, herbs, and other knick knacks for their clan. They tend to work in tandem with Clerics and Crafters, going out into the territory or town to collect needed items. They also trade with local non-clan cats, making them the most knowledgeable in the clan as far as non-clan information goes.

Tunneler (Windclan Only) - These cats dig and survey the tunnels that run under the moor for both battle and hunting

Tanner (Shadowclan Only) - Due to Shadowclan's extensive use of hides, Shadowclan has a cat specialized in tanning and preparing hides for use in crafting

Sentinel (Riverclan Only) - Sentinels are 1-2 cats from the protector group that patrol the territory for signs of flooding and monitor weather patterns in order to warn the clan ahead of flooding or similar disasters

Trail-Builder (Thunderclan Only) - Trail-Builders are 1-2 cats that clear paths in the dense undergrowth of Thunderclan territory in order to make traversing the territory easier, especially for the young and old making their way to gatherings. These cats are usually protectors, but can come from any rank.

Mediator (Modern Skyclan Only) - This cat leads clan voting and discussion and is responsible for mediating clan relationships and helping maintain a sense of closeness and community within the clan. Mediators may also help with inter-clan diplomacy.

Scout (Ancient Skyclan Only) - In Ancient Skyclan, these cats were sent out ahead of battle patrols to scout enemy positions and where often the first to attack as an ambush patrol from the trees. These cats were a specialized group within the Protector rank.

In Modern Skyclan, the ranks above are named differently and some ranks may not exist at all. More detail in the Skyclan Culture post linked here [COMING SOON]

Queens and Caretakers:

This rank includes nursing parents and other cats directly responsible in the raising of kittens. This rank can be temporary while raising a litter or a permanent position (Example: Daisy and Ferncloud in Thunderclan). Most pregnant or nursing mother cats will take the title Queen, however, some cats may opt for the title Caretaker, especially toms and gnc cats. Either title is welcome to be used by a cat of any gender, however.

Queens and Caretakers are responsible for the care and raising of kittens. This ranges from suckling kittens to teaching them basic hunting skills to teaching them clan history and lore (a job also undertaken by the Elders).

Apprentices:

Apprentices are young adult/"teenage" cats, usually between 6 months and a 1 year old, who are training to become warriors, clerics, or caretakers. Kittens are made apprentices at 6 months and most graduate around 1 year. Cleric/Doctor/Priest apprenticeships often last a few months longer than warrior apprenticeships. Apprenticeship looks slightly different from clan to clan, and details about that can be found on the various Clan Culture posts.

Apprentice names take the form of First Name + -paw.

Kittens:

Kittens are young cats under 6 months of age.

Kitten names take the form of First Name + -kit.

Elders:

Elders are the oldest cats in the clan who have retired from warrior duties. Most cats retire around 10-12 years old, although some cats may chose to never retire to retire earlier for various reasons. Elders help perform burial rituals and are the storytellers of the clan.

[luminouslywriting]

Chapter 6 (Mastermind)—MOTA Fic

A/N: Ruth and Kidd are quickly becoming one of my favorite Brotps of the fic haha! That being said, enjoy the beginning of a hilarious partnership in this chapter. Let me know what you think :)

Learning secondhand that Colonel Huglin was being transferred to a hospital in London due to stomach ulcers and was going to be replaced was most assuredly not on Ruth’s list of things that she needed to have happen.  A change in leadership during an attempt to clean house of problem-makers wasn’t going to help the situation much and she felt for the men on base, the confusion of the past few days probably leaving them reeling. 

Still, Ruth was one of the first people up after Huglin was sent away and his replacement, Colonel Harding wanted to meet with all of the Air Executives, all of the Majors, and anyone who was going to be pertinent in relaying information to him.  That being said, Ruth was also one of the first people that he met with—in fact, she was the first. 

The difference between Colonel Huglin and Colonel Harding was startling—and she found Chick Harding to be altogether more relaxed than Colonel Huglin had been.  In fact, the first thing that he did was offer her a cigarette. 

“You smoke, Lieutenant?” Harding asked, leaning forward and offering his pack in her direction. 

Clearly an attempt to get a read on her. 

“Not often, but occasionally,” Ruth carefully plucked a cigarette with a nod of gratitude.  She leaned forward, allowing him to light the cigarette as they sat there, a silent battle of wills and attempting to read one another in the process. 

“I’ll be honest,” Harding gave a sigh. “I’m not a big fan of having JAG-Corp on base.” 

“Not many are.” 

“But in the few weeks since you’ve been here, the numbers don’t lie.  Lower court martial cases, clearer direction with the missions.  Huglin wanted you here indefinitely, correct?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“For now, I’m of the same mindset.  But I’ll be frank with you—” 

“I’d much prefer it if you were, sir.  And I don’t get offended by much,” Ruth added.  

“Things are going to be different now that I’m here.  I care, of course—about the well-being of the men.  But I’m more of a spirit of the law leader than a letter of the law kind of guy.  I’ll rely upon your good judgements to decide if a court martial is really needed, of course.  But I’d prefer to utilize your abilities more so on the level of surveying missions and making battle decisions.” 

“Sir?” 

“I understand that you’re not a combatant.  But truthfully, from a legal standpoint, this war has all but shot us to hell.  So as much as you can help us logically work through things on our end here, things might go smoother out there,” Harding insisted. 

“I look forward to the challenge, sir.” 

“Great,” Harding let out a sigh and leaned back.  “Now about the Hunderedth’s Air Executive—I’ve heard some mixed things. I want your thoughts.” 

Ruth sucked in a breath of smoke, thinking long and hard for a moment about how she was going to respond to this particular question.  “Some leaders are better leaders when they’re in the field and with their men.” 

“Is that your professional opinion?” 

“He’s antsy on the ground, especially when his men are in the air.  He cares too much to be comfortable sitting back on base.  I think his talents would be more useful to all of the men in the skies rather than down on the ground.  Someone else would have to be considered but I’m afraid I don’t know the men well enough to suggest anyone else.  Perhaps by speaking with the other men and Majors you can find a suitable replacement?” Ruth finally finished.  

Colonel Harding made a note on the paper in front of him.  “I thank you for your time, Lieutenant Sharpe.  This has been enlightening.” 

“My pleasure, sir.  And welcome to Thorpe Abbotts.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Both Jack Kidd and Gale Cleven were digging into breakfast by the time that Bucky finally emerged from Colonel Harding’s office—looking slightly relieved and dead-tired.  “Boys,” Bucky exclaimed, pulling out a seat and sinking into the chair across from them. 

“Bucky,” Kidd mumbled, a mouthful still full of food. 

“Well?” Buck questioned, narrowing his gaze at his friend. 

“I got demoted,” Bucky retorted, tone still full of relieved surprise.  

“To…?” 

“CO of the 418th Squadron,” Bucky answered.  He glanced over in Kidd’s direction, a slight look of apology in his eyes.  “Sorry Jack, the boys are back with me again.” 

“It’ll be good to get my fort back,” Kidd said with a slight shrug.  

Bucky just gave a wince. “Yeah, Harding wants to see you about that.” 

The coloring drained from Kidd’s face as he blinked slowly.  “I’m Air-Exec?” Bucky simply gave a nod and Kidd dropped his fork.  “You son of a bitch.” 

“It wasn’t my idea,” Bucky replied defensively.  

“Yeah, Huglin recommended it—” Buck cut in. 

“You’re both sons of bitches,” Kidd said, shaking his head at the pair of Bucks.  He shoved his chair out from behind himself and got up, annoyance clear as day on his face. 

“Look at this way,” Bucky tried encouragingly.  “He thinks we’re the least disciplined bomb group on the entire base and maybe you can make a difference.”

“I don’t want to be the guy wiping your ass, Bucky.” 

With that, Jack Kidd strode from the breakfast table and towards Harding’s office, trying to clear his mind as the annoyance overtook him.  Finding Lieutenant Ruth Sharpe waiting outside wasn’t a surprise and clearly had an impact on Bucky’s foul mood that he had acquired.  Wordlessly, Sharpe handed him some paperwork. 

“What’s this, then?” Kidd asked in a weary tone. 

“For when you accept the position,” She replied in an innocent voice. 

“How can you be so sure I’m accepting the position?” Kidd retorted. 

“Because while Bucky Egan might be a likable guy and a great leader in the field, he was a little too drunk to be an Air Executive at any given time.  And there’s no one else that Huglin liked enough to recommend the job.  So that leaves you without an option,” Ruth said simply, shrugging her shoulders ever so slightly.  

Jack Kidd had never been so annoyed in his life.  And he was even more annoyed, fifteen minutes later, when he strode from the office and plucked the paperwork from Lieutenant Ruth Sharpe wordlessly.  Stupid Bucky Egan getting demoted and forcing him to be the one working with the shark lawyer. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ruth couldn’t say that she’d ever had the misfortune of seeing a plane crash up until this point.  But three weeks later, in mid-July, Ruth saw it with her own eyes.  She had been discussing an upcoming mission with Jack Kidd when sirens began to blare and the two of them had locked eyes in slight confusion. 

“I didn’t think your men were flying today,” Ruth said, shoving her notebook shut. 

“They’re not,” Kidd frowned.  “It’s just some practice runs, no missions—” 

He didn’t even get to finish his sentence before someone else was running in and calling for him—given the fact that he was the new Air Executive of the Hundredth and it was one of his pilots that had crashed and gone down. But then before Ruth could even encourage him to go off and address the problem, the private was adding that Ruth’s presence had been requested for the recording of the incident. 

So there Ruth was, on an early morning in July, in a jeep with Jack Kidd and going to inspect the damages done and interview the mechanics and ground crew that had worked on the plane.  It wasn’t an investigation by any means, but it certainly felt more like one than she had done in years. 

The car ride there was short and tense—and she could see the thick black smoke licking up into the air from the main headquarters.  As they approached the treeline, the scent of oil and something burnt shifted through the air and Ruth nearly gagged at the smell.  There was a reason why she wasn’t a damn nurse—she hated anything to do with the doctors or nurses.  She didn’t envy the men who were attempting to find any remains. 

They were on the scene fairly quickly, though there were already people showing up to help put out the fire, remove debris, and attempting to assess the situation at hand.  Ruth wasn’t surprised when the other Majors on the base arrived on the scene, staring at the smoke and crash-site.  

It was a haunting smell, and one that she knew all of them would remember for the rest of their lives.  God, it made her worried about her brothers.  Ruth kept quiet, eyes locked onto the scene ahead of her.  Guide them safely home and please—let it have been quick for all of them.  A silent prayer seemed to pour out from her heart and then the moment was gone. She busied herself with asking the proper questions and recording responses.  

When she had finally finished up, she returned back to where the Majors were all talking in quiet tones.  “Finish up the interviews?” Kidd questioned, gaze falling on her. 

“Yes.  It seems to be a pilot error, nothing to do with the ground crew,” Ruth replied.  

Harding arrived on the scene not even seconds later, a frown on his face.  “What happened?” He questioned, gaze switching onto the group of Majors, Air Executives, and Ruth. 

“Practice mission—he went into his turn too early and too slow.  Engine stalled out,” Veale answered.  

“Who was it?” Harding pressed. 

“One of the 349th. A new crew.”

“Barnhill,” Buck answered grimly.

Harding glanced in Ruth’s direction.  “You get any answers out of the mechanics?” 

“The plane was perfectly fine before they left.  It seems to just be an error on the pilot’s side of things, though that can’t be remedied now,” Ruth said with a slight frown.  “I’ll have the report back to you within the next hour.” 

Harding gave a firm nod.  “We’re going to have to move things around to make up for the loss.  Veale, you get working on the letters to the families and then we all need to have a long conversation about how to avoid simple accidents like this.” 

The resounding “Yes sir” still echoed in Ruth’s ears as they left.  Because how could that ever be considered a simple accident?  And how could they all become so numb to the realities of war that they forgot what it was to be an actual living and breathing human being? She figured that if people got numb enough to what war was—and it was a living hell and should not have happened in the first place—then they couldn’t ever resolve or stop the horrors of it.  Because they’d be too far removed and numb to what it meant to be at peace. 

They could not forget it.  And Ruth would be damned before she let them do so. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ruth was well-acquainted with the art of curling hair.  Not that she had any need of it, given the ever-present state of her hair always being curly.  But at the moment, she was placing curlers in Helen’s hair.  Not a single force on the whole damn planet could have convinced her of going out that night—especially given the fact that the smell had lingered throughout the day. 

Her report had been pristinely delivered to Harding just when she said it was and they had spent the better part of the morning rearranging the forts to make up for the loss of numbers that they had endured over the last few weeks. 

By the time that night had fallen, Ruth was plain and simple, just tuckered out.  Her social battery left little to be desired, but neither Tatty or Helen seemed bothered by her cold demeanor and it almost threw her for a loop.  So they had asked her to help them with their hair and to just have a quiet night in.  Ruth could handle that sort of thing like it was just another Tuesday. 

“You’re not writing any men, are you?” Helen asked, craning her neck ever so slightly to catch a look at Ruth’s face. 

Ruth wasn’t fazed by the question and didn’t even blink. “Just my two brothers.  I’m afraid I’m very boring.” 

“Oh there had to be someone,” Tatty insisted, giving a slight wince as Helen finished up a curl in her own hair. 

“There’s no one,” Ruth reassured them.  “Though to my mother and father, that’s a different story.  They’re under the delightful impression that my sole goal in being in Europe at the moment is because I’m engaged to some pilot and waiting for the war to be over.  Because of that, I’m clearly advocating for women’s causes in the countryside.” 

Tatty couldn’t help the fact that her jaw dropped.  “You told them all of that?” 

“Oh please, I did all of that before I even left for Europe.  I’ve told much worse lies.  I think,” Ruth gave a slight shrug.  

“Why though?” Helen questioned. 

“Because my sisters Alice and Sarah—one’s married and the other is engaged and they think that I should do that too.  But days like today?  Where a man blows up because he was going too slow?  That’s a harsh slap in the face to the reality of war.  And I won’t be one of those little widows, barely bed, and their husband dies.  That’d just be awful.  Love is for children, which I am not.” 

“God,” Helen sighed.  “We just need to find you a nice man.” 

“Now you sound like my mother,” Ruth retorted.  “But I’ll concede to that.  You find me a man who does major damage to the German empire, has a sense of humor, and one that can keep up with me?  I’ll go on a date with that man.” 

“Something tells me that he’s going to be hard to find,” Tatty mumbled.  “Seeing as how most of these pilots don’t come back truthfully.” 

“Exactly.” 

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Floods have affected 3,000 health care units in Rio Grande do Sul

The plight in traditionally marginalized communities has worsened

Approximately 3 thousand health care facilities may have been affected in some way by the climate disaster in Rio Grande do Sul state, South Brazil. These include doctors’ surgeries, clinics, health centers, and pharmacies. Already vulnerable territories in the state were also impacted: more than 40 quilombola communities, 240 favelas, and five indigenous villages. The data can be found in a survey carried out by research foundation Fiocruz.

According to Fiocruz specialist Renata Gracie, the main objective of the work is to inform strategies to be taken by public authorities and society in the recovery of the affected areas. She stressed it will be necessary to take ever greater care of people’s health, as they may suffer from skin diseases, viruses, and other illnesses related to contact with dirty water.

“Things are going to be complex because of the illnesses. Many health units have been flooded and people won’t be able to access them. So these data are for municipal and state decision makers to look at the scale of the impact and make a diagnosis of the situation,” she stated.

In addition, Gracie said the maps can help the people directly, as they can identify the services that are still available near where their location.

Continue reading.

[mariacallous]

The NATO alliance turned 75 this year. For some, this milestone proves how important the trans-Atlantic alliance is to U.S. and global security. More than seven decades of alliance coordination to solve some of the world’s toughest challenges is nothing to sneeze at, after all. But for others, the alliance’s age is evidence of NATO’s increasing irrelevance—the international security equivalent of a senior citizen shaking a cane at the state of the world and missing the boat on the questions that really matter, such as Gaza or Chinese economic coercion. Not to mention the long-standing perception that Europe isn’t pulling its weight when it comes to defense spending.

For any number of geopolitical reasons, pundits have wrongly predicted the demise of NATO for decades. Yet recent polling suggests that there is something deeper at work when it comes to how different age groups think about the alliance. The German Marshall Fund’s 2023 Transatlantic Trends survey discovered that younger respondents view NATO as less important, and Chinese and Russian influence more positive, than older generations do. In other words, Gen Z is not necessarily buying the assumptions that many of us older, crotchety folks make about the enduring importance of NATO.

Google “NATO and Gen Z,” and you’ll discover that NATO is now a dating term that, for some, means “Not Attached to an Outcome.” In the complex jungle (hellscape) that constitutes the social media and online dating world, NATO is a way to say that one is OK with the dating journey and not dedicated to any particular relationship destination, such as marriage. It is mindfulness and living in the moment applied to meeting and getting to know another person and potential romantic partner.

Now, the NATO alliance is very much wedded to certain strategic outcomes: deterring Russia, tackling climate change, advancing democracy, and countering authoritarianism being some of the alliance’s key priorities. But taking a step back and thinking about what it will take for the alliance to have another 75 years ahead of it, NATO and its member states might usefully consider applying a “Not Attached to an Outcome” philosophy to its way of doing business:

Setting up good options. A positive dating experience is often contingent on having sizable and flexible resources; you never know when you’re going to meet someone, and those dinners don’t pay for themselves. Applied to NATO, countries need to think about how to build themselves robust, flexible capabilities that give current and future decision-makers the ability to jump on critical opportunities. While defense spending is a critical component of future-option building, so is developing NATO’s capability to respond to broader challenges that are not strictly military, such as enhancing civilian infrastructure and resilience building.

Build resonance in order to build relevance. One-sided lectures are a great way to bring a first date to an abrupt end. Talking at our publics and saying NATO is working on Very Important Things is necessary but not sufficient; people know when they are being messaged to, and ultimately, a few words in a summit declaration have very little practical meaning for the overwhelming majority of the trans-Atlantic public. Rather, NATO, with its member states in the lead, should better, and more actively, engage diverse stakeholders in their polities to understand how they view the world and how NATO can be relevant to grappling with those challenges. What challenges resonate with our communities? What role can NATO play in addressing those challenges?

How can we build resonance in practice? Many in the United States are rightly concerned with illegal immigration on the southern border, a view that many are quite vocal about. The part of the argument that is not often articulated is that failure to support Ukraine will almost undoubtedly lead to a broader conflict in Europe that will embroil the United States and send economic shockwaves around the world. Tackling the southern border under those strategic conditions would be exponentially more difficult.

Be open to connection—but be prepared to walk away. Not being attached to an outcome means being ready to pursue a relationship for as long as it runs its course—but no longer. As the alliance looks to the future, it should pursue its institutional partnerships for as long as the vibes remain good. For example, right now NATO is building connections with Australia, Japan, and South Korea because they are like-minded democracies that have useful insights and capabilities to help the alliance grapple with difficult global challenges. Yet the alliance must also move more quickly when circumstances change; NATO was arguably slow to recognize the emerging threat from Moscow, and many of its member states are finding it difficult to insulate themselves against the risk of Chinese economic and political coercion. Enhancing early warning and intelligence-sharing capabilities can usefully help the alliance understand when it’s time to walk away and pursue other options.

Focus on the benefits, not the burdens. Another good way to get ghosted: focusing conversations on one’s drawbacks rather than strengths. For decades, under the moniker of better burden-sharing, the United States has been pillorying European allies about defense spending and the continent’s collective inability to deliver military effects. It should hardly be surprising, therefore, that many policymakers—particularly in Washington—are convinced that NATO allies are free-riding on U.S. military largesse. Yet a recent study I co-authored for the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that at least 25 NATO allies are spending more than 3 percent of their GDPs on programs that have utility for national security programs. In other words, allies are shouldering collective security responsibility. It’s a good news story and highlights that NATO has a lot to offer.

Be authentic. Many conversations about NATO are inherently technical: what work the allies are doing on a particular issue or who has spent what on military capabilities or advanced technologies. But at the end of the day, alliances are made of people. They are multifaceted pacts among and between citizens and governments to build a better world. Ultimately the alliance must be about, and focus on, the people it serves and the people who work for and serve the alliance.

Ultimately, NATO’s duration and continued relevance is not a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it never was. So if NATO is to make it to 150 years, new generations need to come to their own understanding of why the alliance is—and will remain—a useful national security partnership. And in this, what matters is the journey, the process of the discourse, and the process of continual, open engagement. The process is, in many ways, the product because it is how a renewed understanding of the values and strengths of the alliance gets rooted in our democracies—and will make NATO the partner of choice for global security leadership for decades to come.

[backtothefanfiction]

The Angel In The Garden of Evil | Chapter 10: Million Dollar Man

Summary: When that explosion at F.E.A.S.T hits, Peter is quick to jump into action.

Warnings: 18+ ONLY! Bombing, terror attack, blood, gore, IF THESE ARE GONNA MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE DON'T READ THIS CHAPTER!!! Genre typical violence and drama, angst

Word Count: 2K

A/N: As stated in the authors note of the last chapter, I am very aware of how this part of the story could be triggering for people or hard to read. I will put red stars ** to mark where the more graphic first response scenes end so you can read the plot info towards the end of the chapter, but if you want to skip this specific chapter altogether you can, the story will still make sense! This is a chapter from Peter's POV. The title comes from yet another Lana Del Rey song but I couldn't pick just one line as the whole of that song just encapsulates the feelings between Peter and Angel in this chapter. Also just to note, first responders are f*cking heroes and deserve to be treated as such every single freaking day! Anyway, enjoy!

TEN

BOOOMMM!

Peter was five blocks away from the hub when the blast went off. It was large enough to shake the surrounding buildings, car alarms going off.

“What the fuck was that?!” he hissed to Miguel in the driver's seat as traffic came to a screeching halt.

“I don’t know.” Harry frowned as they began to climb out of the car. That’s when they saw the smoke.

“That looks like-” Harry said.

“You don’t think-” Eddie chimed in, but Peter knew immediately, his ears tuning into the radio of a parked police car a little way up the street.

“We need all units to head towards Chinatown. There's been an explosion on Mulberry st.”

Peter didn’t think, just started running in the direction of the hub. As he ran down old back alleys and streets he hadn’t thought about in years, he couldn’t help but think this would be a lot quicker if he could swing there. He needed to get there. Although he ran as fast as he could, he felt like he was running out of time. Every second in a crisis like this was crucial. It was the literal decision maker between life and death.

‘Come on, still be alive.’ He thought to himself. ‘Still be alive.’

His heels skidded onto the street. It was carnage. Police and paramedics had already started to arrive, lifting bodies into the back of ambulances or covering them in sheets. There was smoke and dust everywhere. “Hey, you okay? What happened?” he asked an elderly couple who were trying to find a spot on the sidewalk away from the smoke to assess their injuries. The older gentleman had blood running down the side of his face, which dust and ash began to stick to. The older woman hobbled under his arm, a large graze on her arm and leg, her lungs heaving, trying to clear the smoke and dust.

“Bomb.” The old man’s gravely voice said.

A younger woman in her 30’s ushered them into her shop and out of the direct smoke and ash as Peter turned to survey the street again, working out how best to try and find her, his feet slowly carrying him towards the now former F.E.A.S.T building. If she was still inside he had no clue how he was gonna get her out.

“PETER!” A voice called to him. “YO BOSS! OVER HERE!”

Peter scanned the street until he located the owner of the voice, Miles, his shirt held up to his mouth as he tried not to inhale the smoke.

“Where is she!” Peter commanded.

“Right here.” Miles said as Peter reached him, Miles’ body now crouching protectively over Angel again.

She had a deep cut in her eyebrow that was gushing blood down the side of her face. Her hair was full of flecks of ash. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving and Peter suddenly feared the worst as his hands reached out to her.

“Is she…?” 

“No. Just unconscious.” Miles coughed.

“We need to get her out of here!” Peter shouted over the sound of sirens and people’s shouting voices. There was a baby screaming and the fire that had taken hold in the wake of the explosion roared behind them. “What happened!?”

“I don’t know, we were crossing the street when we were knocked on our asses. If she hadn't stopped at that cafe, we would have been in there!”

“What cafe?”

“The Lucky Cat, or something like that? Why?”

Peter just shook his head in acknowledgment, letting out a small thank you under his breath, but he didn’t know to whom.

“Hey, over here!” a fireman who had come up beside them, shouted to a paramedic, waving them over. That was when Peter looked down to see Miles’ leg, his pant leg torn and caked in blood.

A young female paramedic not much older than Miles himself, dropped to the floor beside them as she began to introduce herself and assess injuries. “Hi, I’m Dani, what’s your name sir?” she asked of Miles, as she grabbed out a tourniquet kit from her bag and began to apply it to Miles’ leg.

“Miles.” he informed her.

“And is this your friend Miles?” She asked, motioning to Angel’s body lying on the floor.

“That’s my wife.” Peter said.

“And you are sir-” Dani started to ask as she looked him over only to see he didn’t have any injuries, the only thing currently tying him to the blast, the ash and dust that had settled in his hair and on his black blazer and trousers. Then she caught a better look of his face and her question froze in her mouth at her recognition. She quickly decided to wave off the question as she looked from Peter to Angel and back again, before fixing her eyes to finish off wrapping Miles’ leg. When she was done her fingers reached out to check for Angel’s pulse.

“She was conscious just after the blast but then she became unresponsive again.” Miles filled her in.

“Again?” Dani asked, her eyebrows raising in the younger man’s direction.

“When the blast first went off and we were knocked on our asses-”

“-where were you?”

“-crossing the road. She was out of it for a second with the blast but she woke up when I called her name, she tried to sit up but then just collapsed again.”

“Okay. Okay.” Dani said before turning her head and calling to a colleague. “I’m gonna need a board so we can get her into the back of an ambulance, I’ve got a blow to the head- did she hit the car?” Dani quickly turned to check with Miles as she took in the dent in the side of the car door that was giving them shelter.

“Yes.” Miles hastily responded.

“Yeah! I’m worried about potential internal bleeding!” Dani turned back to shout at her colleague who gave a nod before leaving his own more stable patient and running down the street to a parked waiting ambulance. “Mr Parker,” she said as she turned back towards Peter, her fingers subconsciously retrieving gauze and a bandage from her kit to wrap around Angel’s head, “I suggest you make yourself scarce right now unless you want to cause even more of a scene and problems, especially if you want us to take care of your wife.” she advised. “I will make sure Miles here will get placed in the same ambulance as her and they end up at the same hospital so he can let you know where they end up so you can meet them there, but right now, it’s in everyone’s best interest if you leave. Unless you want to risk being arrested.”

Peter looked to his wife conflicted, but he knew the young lady before him was right.

“Pete!” Harry’s voice called as he made his way past bodies to reach them.

“I advise you, get your friend out of here now!” Dani cautioned again to Harry.

“Come on, Pete, we need to go.” Harry encouraged him as Peter slowly stood. “PETE!” Harry shouted at him to snap him out of the trance he seemed to be in. “This is exactly what Toombes wants. Don’t get yourself caught man!” Harry continued to reason, pulling at him.

“I’ll make sure she’s okay.” Miles promised.

****

Peter reluctantly turned his back on Miles and his wife and allowed Harry to ferry him away from the scene and back to where Miguel was now parked with the car.

“Boss, what do you want us to do?” Eddie asked as Peter climbed back into the car.

“I need you to call around to all the other hubs, make sure they get evacuated immediately.” Peter said. His message conveyed its urgency but his tone showed his mind was still split.

“Boss, Hobie’s calling?” Miguel said, handing a phone into the back of the car to him.

“Fuck.” Peter huffed, running a dusty hand through his equally dusty hair, getting frustrated as it flaked all over the seats of the car. He let out another groan before he answered the buzzing phone.

“Hey, man, what’s going on over there?” A loud, yet concerned, deep British voice bellowed down the phone. “It’s all over the news.”

“Fuck.” Peter sighed as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest.

“We’ve just had it confirmed that one of the injured here on the scene is Y/N Parker, otherwise known as Angel, the daughter of recently deceased gangster Wilson Fisk. The F.E.A.S.T establishment here was set up by the Benjamin Parker foundation, 6 years ago, a charity that was created in Ben Parker's memory after his brutal murder almost 11 years ago now.” Peter heard the broadcast say in the background as Hobie spoke.

“Shit man, this is gonna bring so much attention. What the fuck happened? Some sources are citing it as a gas explosion but others are speculating because of your family ties to it being gang activity. It’s not looking good.” There’s a pause on the line as Peter thought and tried to compose himself. “Yo, Parker man, we gotta get on top of this shit now.” Hobie pressed him down the phone, but Peter had nothing, his mind panicking, trying to chase too many thoughts at once and coming up empty. “Look, I’m gonna call up Reilly, we’re gonna get on a jet and be with you asap. We can work this shit out when we get there.”

“Hobie?” Peter finally said, finding his voice. “What do you know about the Vulture?”

“Oh shit, no man! You are not in it deep with the Vulture?” Hobie responded. “Dude, that guy is ruthless, you saw what he did to KingPin.”

“But you know him?” Peter confirmed.

“Yeah, nasty piece of work. You know we had that warehouse in Manchester raided a few months back?”

“Yeah.”

“Well he took no time in swooping down and trying to take it.”

“You never told me that.” Peter looked confused.

“Didn’t need to, sent Reilly up there with some of his boys and they stamped that shit out quick. Guess that's when he decided to high tail it to New York and start messing with Fisk, not before he took a little stop in Italy, that is.”

Peter’s ears pricked up. “Italy?”

“Yeah. I had a tip off from Francetti when he saw the Romano’s sitting down with a guy he didn’t recognise and it was starting to brew trouble. When we asked him to give us a description of the guy we knew it was our man.”

Peter’s face changed. “What does that mean?” Harry asked, who had been listening in on the conversation. “Pete?”

“Any of Romano’s men get in touch with the Bianchi’s over here?” Peter asked down the phone.

“Yeah, why?”

“Shit!” Harry said as he too started to put the pieces together.

“Eddie?” Peter called out to the front passenger seat to get Eddie’s attention.

“Yeah.” Eddie’s gruff voice said back.

“When exactly did Angel get back into town?”

“It was maybe two days after Fisk had that break in at the Phoenix club.” Eddie replied.

Peter began to think. That was when Fisk first started having issues with the Italians. He thought back to his conversation with his wife at the house before they were shot at. She had said they had just thought it was the Italians getting too big for their boots at first.

“I’ve just got a text from Miles, they’re just pulling into Kings.” Eddie then said.

“Brooklyn?” Miguel confirmed as he started up the engine to the car. Eddie nodded as Miguel pulled out into traffic.

“Parker, we’re gonna get on a plane and be with you in a few hours.” Hobie said down the phone. “We’ll get this guy, I promise. Nobody lays a finger on our Angel without burning in hell for it.”

-----------------------------------------

New chapters go live on Wednesdays and Fridays! If you want to be added to the tag list make sure you put it in writing for me. Also if you are enjoying the story don’t forget to tip me like you would your waiter by reblogging and leaving feedback and letting me know what you think!

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[ukrfeminism]

Domestic abuse charities and centres dealing with sexual violence say council budget cuts will have a devastating impact on support for women, warning that entire services will have to close as local authorities strip back to basics.

Charities said that most aspects of the services were non-statutory, meaning councils do not have a legal obligation to keep funding them and are likely to cut them as they try to balance their budgets amid a nationwide funding crisis.

“Violence against women services are really among those most at risk,” said Mary-Ann Stephenson of the Women’s Budget Group. “As local authorities are cutting to the bone, there is basically nothing left to cut, so everything that is non-statutory is going.”

Women’s Aid, a federation of about 180 domestic abuse services across England, said services in areas where local authorities have issued a section 114 notice, effectively declaring bankruptcy, were bracing for the worst.

“We’re hearing from members in those areas that entire services will have to close and many of staff members will have to be made redundant,” said Lucy Hadley, the head of policy at Women’s Aid.

“These things will be the first to go. Coming on top of a decade of funding crisis, many of our members are really concerned this will just have a devastating impact on continuing their services.”

Hadley said the cuts were happening at time when domestic abuse and coercive control was being aggravated by the cost of living crisis. A Women’s Aid survey found that three-quarters of women in a relationship with their abuser, or financially linked to them, were unable to leave because of the rising cost of living.

Some aspects of domestic abuse services, such as refuge and accommodation are statutory, but Hadley said members had raised concerns that funding for them was being diverted elsewhere as a result of councils’ desperate financial situations.

“Sadly, this is not an issue decision-makers prioritise because it’s not something that affects everyone in their community. It’s not the bin services, for example, that they get lots of letters about,” Hadley said. “We absolutely feel this is a priority for government to fund and to ensure that councils are meeting their duties on.”

Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) coalition, said many services have already had to close their waiting lists because of rising demand and costs.

“Local authority budget cuts not only impact the funding they can provide for vital women’s services, but leaves these services to pick up the pieces when local authorities and other agencies turn them away,” she said.

In Coventry, where the city council has said it is making some “very difficult choices” to balance its books, the Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre (Crasac) is losing £195,000 of council funding and has closed its waiting list as a result.

Its CEO, Natalie Thompson, said she was “gutted” by the council’s decision.

“We know demand is growing year on year, but we’re really struggling to keep up the pace because with inflation, especially in the last few years, everything’s getting more expensive,” she said.

“So we’ve just had to close the waiting list because the knock on effect of this [funding cut], as well as austerity. It’s not safe for clients or our staff any more.”

The council said in a statement that it was not cutting the service, but had decided not to renew its contract with Crasac because it was “not addressing increasing waiting lists”.

“We will work with various partners to address the prevention of sexual assault and rape, and assist partners in the health and care system to commission improved services for this important population,” it said.

Stephenson said pressure was mounting on councils as they move to set their budgets for the next financial year, and that there needed to be increased awareness of how important the services were.

“There are women whose lives are at risk if they can’t safely leave violent partners who need domestic violence services, and there are women who are suffering severe trauma as a result of sexual violence,” she said. “These services should be securely funded and somehow they’re treated as nice to have that you can cut.”

[juliebowie]

Understanding Different Types of Variables in Statistical Analysis

Summary: This blog delves into the types of variables in statistical analysis, including quantitative (continuous and discrete) and qualitative (nominal and ordinal). Understanding these variables is critical for practical data interpretation and statistical analysis.

Introduction

Statistical analysis is crucial in research and data interpretation, providing insights that guide decision-making and uncover trends. By analysing data systematically, researchers can draw meaningful conclusions and validate hypotheses. 

Understanding the types of variables in statistical analysis is essential for accurate data interpretation. Variables representing different data aspects play a crucial role in shaping statistical results. 

This blog aims to explore the various types of variables in statistical analysis, explaining their definitions and applications to enhance your grasp of how they influence data analysis and research outcomes.

What is Statistical Analysis?

Statistical analysis involves applying mathematical techniques to understand, interpret, and summarise data. It transforms raw data into meaningful insights by identifying patterns, trends, and relationships. The primary purpose is to make informed decisions based on data, whether for academic research, business strategy, or policy-making.

How Statistical Analysis Helps in Drawing Conclusions

Statistical analysis aids in concluding by providing a structured approach to data examination. It involves summarising data through measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and variability (range, variance, standard deviation). By using these summaries, analysts can detect trends and anomalies. 

More advanced techniques, such as hypothesis testing and regression analysis, help make predictions and determine the relationships between variables. These insights allow decision-makers to base their actions on empirical evidence rather than intuition.

Types of Statistical Analyses

Analysts can effectively interpret data, support their findings with evidence, and make well-informed decisions by employing both descriptive and inferential statistics.

Descriptive Statistics: This type focuses on summarising and describing the features of a dataset. Techniques include calculating averages and percentages and crating visual representations like charts and graphs. Descriptive statistics provide a snapshot of the data, making it easier to understand and communicate.

Inferential Statistics: Inferential analysis goes beyond summarisation to make predictions or generalisations about a population based on a sample. It includes hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and regression analysis. This type of analysis helps conclude a broader context from the data collected from a smaller subset.

What are Variables in Statistical Analysis?

In statistical analysis, a variable represents a characteristic or attribute that can take on different values. Variables are the foundation for collecting and analysing data, allowing researchers to quantify and examine various study aspects. They are essential components in research, as they help identify patterns, relationships, and trends within the data.

How Variables Represent Data

Variables act as placeholders for data points and can be used to measure different aspects of a study. For instance, variables might include test scores, study hours, and socioeconomic status in a survey of student performance. 

Researchers can systematically analyse how different factors influence outcomes by assigning numerical or categorical values to these variables. This process involves collecting data, organising it, and then applying statistical techniques to draw meaningful conclusions.

Importance of Understanding Variables

Understanding variables is crucial for accurate data analysis and interpretation. Continuous, discrete, nominal, and ordinal variables affect how data is analysed and interpreted. For example, continuous variables like height or weight can be measured precisely. In contrast, nominal variables like gender or ethnicity categorise data without implying order. 

Researchers can apply appropriate statistical methods and avoid misleading results by correctly identifying and using variables. Accurate analysis hinges on a clear grasp of variable types and their roles in the research process, interpreting data more reliable and actionable.

Types of Variables in Statistical Analysis

Understanding the different types of variables in statistical analysis is crucial for practical data interpretation and decision-making. Variables are characteristics or attributes that researchers measure and analyse to uncover patterns, relationships, and insights. These variables can be broadly categorised into quantitative and qualitative types, each with distinct characteristics and significance.

Quantitative Variables

Quantitative variables represent measurable quantities and can be expressed numerically. They allow researchers to perform mathematical operations and statistical analyses to derive insights.

Continuous Variables

Continuous variables can take on infinite values within a given range. These variables can be measured precisely, and their values are not limited to specific discrete points.

Examples of continuous variables include height, weight, temperature, and time. For instance, a person's height can be measured with varying degrees of precision, from centimetres to millimetres, and it can fall anywhere within a specific range.

Continuous variables are crucial for analyses that require detailed and precise measurement. They enable researchers to conduct a wide range of statistical tests, such as calculating averages and standard deviations and performing regression analyses. The granularity of continuous variables allows for nuanced insights and more accurate predictions.

Discrete Variables

Discrete variables can only take on separate values. Unlike continuous variables, discrete variables cannot be subdivided into finer increments and are often counted rather than measured.

Examples of discrete variables include the number of students in a class, the number of cars in a parking lot, and the number of errors in a software application. For instance, you can count 15 students in a class, but you cannot have 15.5 students.

Discrete variables are essential when counting or categorising is required. They are often used in frequency distributions and categorical data analysis. Statistical methods for discrete variables include chi-square tests and Poisson regression, which are valuable for analysing count-based data and understanding categorical outcomes.

Qualitative Variables

Qualitative or categorical variables describe characteristics or attributes that cannot be measured numerically but can be classified into categories.

Nominal Variables

Nominal variables categorise data without inherent order or ranking. These variables represent different categories or groups that are mutually exclusive and do not have a natural sequence.

Examples of nominal variables include gender, ethnicity, and blood type. For instance, gender can be classified as male, female, and non-binary. However, there is no inherent ranking between these categories.

Nominal variables classify data into distinct groups and are crucial for categorical data analysis. Statistical techniques like frequency tables, bar charts, and chi-square tests are commonly employed to analyse nominal variables. Understanding nominal variables helps researchers identify patterns and trends across different categories.

Ordinal Variables

Ordinal variables represent categories with a meaningful order or ranking, but the differences between the categories are not necessarily uniform or quantifiable. These variables provide information about the relative position of categories.

Examples of ordinal variables include education level (e.g., high school, bachelor's degree, master's degree) and customer satisfaction ratings (e.g., poor, fair, good, excellent). The categories have a specific order in these cases, but the exact distance between the ranks is not defined.

Ordinal variables are essential for analysing data where the order of categories matters, but the precise differences between categories are unknown. Researchers use ordinal scales to measure attitudes, preferences, and rankings. Statistical techniques such as median, percentiles, and ordinal logistic regression are employed to analyse ordinal data and understand the relative positioning of categories.

Comparison Between Quantitative and Qualitative Variables

Quantitative and qualitative variables serve different purposes and are analysed using distinct methods. Understanding their differences is essential for choosing the appropriate statistical techniques and drawing accurate conclusions.

Measurement: Quantitative variables are measured numerically and can be subjected to arithmetic operations, whereas qualitative variables are classified without numerical measurement.

Analysis Techniques: Quantitative variables are analysed using statistical methods like mean, standard deviation, and regression analysis, while qualitative variables are analysed using frequency distributions, chi-square tests, and non-parametric techniques.

Data Representation: Continuous and discrete variables are often represented using histograms, scatter plots, and box plots. Nominal and ordinal variables are defined using bar charts, pie charts, and frequency tables.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main types of variables in statistical analysis?

The main variables in statistical analysis are quantitative (continuous and discrete) and qualitative (nominal and ordinal). Quantitative variables involve measurable data, while qualitative variables categorise data without numerical measurement.

How do continuous and discrete variables differ? 

Continuous variables can take infinite values within a range and are measured precisely, such as height or temperature. Discrete variables, like the number of students, can only take specific, countable values and are not subdivisible.

What are nominal and ordinal variables in statistical analysis? 

Nominal variables categorise data into distinct groups without any inherent order, like gender or blood type. Ordinal variables involve categories with a meaningful order but unequal intervals, such as education levels or satisfaction ratings.

Conclusion

Understanding the types of variables in statistical analysis is crucial for accurate data interpretation. By distinguishing between quantitative variables (continuous and discrete) and qualitative variables (nominal and ordinal), researchers can select appropriate statistical methods and draw valid conclusions. This clarity enhances the quality and reliability of data-driven insights.

[brian-houchins]

Crafting the Perfect Buyer Persona for Your B2B Corporation

In the intricate world of B2B marketing and sales, understanding your customer is not just a part of the strategy; it's the core around which all strategies revolve. This is where the concept of a 'buyer persona' becomes invaluable. A buyer persona is a detailed, semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, crafted through research and real data. For B2B corporations, developing a well-defined buyer persona is crucial for tailoring marketing efforts, product development, and sales strategies to meet the specific needs of your target audience.

Why Buyer Personas Matter in B2B

In B2B marketing, you're not just selling a product or service; you're addressing complex business challenges and decision-making processes. A buyer persona helps you to:

Understand your clients' pain points and challenges.

Tailor your messaging and value proposition to resonate with your target audience.

Streamline product development to meet specific customer needs.

Enhance customer engagement and relationship building.

How to Create a B2B Buyer Persona

1. Data Collection and Analysis

Start by gathering data from your existing customer base. Use surveys, interviews, and sales data to collect information on demographics, business size, industry type, and other relevant details. Analyzing interactions through sales calls, emails, and customer feedback is also crucial.

2. Identifying Challenges and Pain Points

What problems are your customers trying to solve? What obstacles do they face in their industries? Understanding these challenges is key to positioning your product or service as a solution.

3. Understanding the Decision-Making Process

B2B purchases often involve multiple stakeholders. It's essential to identify who is involved in the decision-making process, their roles, and the factors that influence their decisions.

4. Goals and Objectives Analysis

Determine the short-term and long-term goals driving these businesses. How does your offering align with these objectives?

5. Mapping the Buying Journey

Understand how your customers find information, evaluate options, and make purchasing decisions. This insight helps in creating targeted marketing and sales strategies.

6. Segmentation

If your business serves multiple industries or business sizes, create separate personas for each key segment.

7. Creating Detailed Persona Profiles

Compile your findings into detailed persona profiles. Include demographic information, business characteristics, goals, challenges, decision-making processes, and buying behaviors.

8. Regular Use and Updates

Regularly use these personas in your marketing and sales efforts and update them as market conditions change.

Example: A B2B Buyer Persona in Action

Let's illustrate with an example:

Persona Name: IT Innovator Ian

Demographics: Aged 35-45, IT Manager in a mid-sized tech company.

Business Characteristics: Focuses on innovative tech solutions, 200-300 employees.

Goals: Implement cutting-edge technology, improve operational efficiency.

Challenges: Limited budget, need to justify ROI, keeping up with tech advancements.

Decision-Making Process: Key decision-maker but requires CFO approval; values detailed information and case studies.

Buying Journey: Extensive online research, industry webinars, peer recommendations.

Preferred Communication: Detailed emails, technical webinars, whitepapers.

With a persona like IT Innovator Ian, a B2B corporation can tailor its marketing messages, product development, and sales strategies to directly address Ian's specific needs and preferences.

Conclusion

Developing a buyer persona is not just a marketing exercise; it's a strategic tool that can significantly impact your B2B corporation's success. By understanding your ideal customer's world - their challenges, decision-making processes, and priorities - you can create more effective, targeted strategies that resonate deeply with your audience. Remember, in the B2B space, the more you know about your customer, the better you can serve them, and the more successful your business will be.

[unwelcome-ozian]

Military forces contend with, and resolve, major social-psychological problems. Kenneth E. Clark pointed out that military services are concerned with big operations, and the behavioral and social science research that supports those services must tackle big problems—a kind of work he referred to as ‘macro psychology’ (Crawford 1970). Because of substantial government backing and financial sponsorship, military psychology often mounts a concerted attack on major social problems. Large research projects combine extensive logistical support and well-orchestrated efforts of teams of multidisciplinary scientists. On large practical problems, hundreds of military personnel may serve as research participants for field experiments, and tens of thousands may participate in survey work. Ample research instrumentation is arranged, millions of data points are collected and analyzed, and results are often presented to ultimate policy decision makers at the highest levels of the military or civilian government prompting such study. Changes decided upon as a result of psychological research can be implemented because of the relatively closed-loop military organizational structure, and impact results are subsequently fed back to the source where they can affect even more change in service-wide procedures or policies affecting millions of people.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil municipalities with forest fire emergencies up 354% in August

The number of municipalities that have declared emergency situations due to forest fires in August grew by 354 percent compared to the same month in 2023, as per a survey by the National Confederation of Municipalities.

This month alone, 118 municipal decision-makers have registered the situation with the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development.

Until August 26, 167 municipalities had declared a situation of emergency this year. In the same period in 2023, only 57 had faced the problem.

According to the survey, 4.4 million people have been affected by forest fires this year, with the majority (4 million) affected by consequences, including air pollution and loss of biodiversity.

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