#Email Service Provider For Small Business

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[jeetwdx]

Best Email Marketing Software for Small Businesses

Email marketing is still one of the most effective digital marketing channels available to small businesses. An email marketing campaign can help you build relationships with customers and prospects, bring in new leads, and drive sales. 

But what’s the best email marketing software for small businesses? There are a lot of choices out there, and the wrong email marketing tool can be a big waste of time and money. In this article, we’ll help you choose the best email marketing software for your small business by sharing our top picks and explaining the key features you should look for in an email marketing tool.

1. Introduce the topic of email marketing software for small businesses

Email marketing software is a tool that allows businesses to send mass emails to their customers. It is a way to stay in touch with customers and promote new products or services. There are many email marketing software programs available, each with different features. It is important to choose the right email marketing software for your business, based on your budget and needs.

Some email marketing software programs are free, while others charge a monthly fee. The free programs usually have fewer features than the paid programs. However, they may still be adequate for small businesses. Paid programs typically offer more features, such as automation, tracking, and segmentation.

When choosing email marketing software, it is important to consider the features that are most important to your business. For example, if you have a small business with a limited budget, you may want to choose a program that offers a free trial or a pay-as-you-go option. If you have a large customer base, you may want to choose a program with features like automation and segmentation, so you can send targeted emails to different groups of customers.

There are many email marketing software programs available, so it is important to do your research before choosing one. Read online reviews, talk to other businesses, and try out a few programs to find the right fit for your business.

2. Define what email marketing is and what it can do for small businesses

Email marketing is the process of creating, sending, and managing marketing emails with the goal of acquiring new customers or growing your business. It’s an effective way to reach your target audience and promote your product or service. 

Email marketing can be very beneficial for small businesses. It can help you reach a larger audience, promote your product or service, and generate leads. It can also help you build relationships with your customers and grow your brand. 

When done correctly, email marketing can be a very powerful tool for small businesses. It can help you reach more customers, promote your product or service, generate leads, and build relationships with your customers.

3. Outline the benefits of email marketing software for small businesses

Email marketing software provides small businesses with a number of benefits. First, it helps businesses keep track of their customer base by providing a database of customers and their contact information. This information can be used to send targeted marketing communications to specific customers or groups of customers. Email marketing software also provides tools for creating and managing email campaigns, including templates, autoresponders, and trackers for measuring campaign performance.

Another benefit of email marketing software is that it can help small businesses automate their marketing communications. For example, email marketing software can be used to set up automatic welcome messages for new subscribers, birthday messages for customers, or reminders for customers who haven’t made a purchase in a while. Automating these messages can save small businesses time and ensure that customers always receive timely communications.

Finally, email marketing software can provide small businesses with insights into their customers’ behaviors. Most email marketing software includes features that allow businesses to track who opens their emails, clicks on links, and forwards or shares the emails with others. This data can be used to improve future marketing campaigns by understanding what types of content are most likely to lead to engagement.

4. Introduce the 3 best email marketing software platforms for small businesses

As a small business owner, you're always looking for ways to get ahead of the competition. Email marketing is a great way to reach out to your customers and promote your products or services. But with so many email marketing software platforms available, it can be hard to know which one is right for your business.

To help you make the best decision for your business, we've put together a list of the three best email marketing software platforms for small businesses.

1. MailChimp

MailChimp is a popular email marketing software platform that offers a free plan for small businesses. With MailChimp, you can send up to 12,000 emails per month to 2,000 subscribers. The free plan includes all of the essential features you need to get started with email marketing, including customizable templates, a drag-and-drop editor, automatic emails, and more.

2. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is another great option for small businesses. Their email plans start at $20/month and allow you to send an unlimited number of emails to an unlimited number of subscribers. Constant Contact also offers a free 60-day trial, so you can try out the platform before you commit to a paid plan.

3. AWeber

AWeber is a reliable email marketing software platform that starts at $19/month. With AWeber, you can send an unlimited number of emails to up to 500 subscribers. AWeber includes features like customizable templates, a drag-and-drop editor, automatic emails, and more. They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try the platform risk-free.

All three of these email marketing software platforms offer great features for small businesses. But ultimately, the best platform for your business will depend on your specific needs and budget.

5. Provide an overview of each software, including pricing

Email marketing software provides small businesses with a way to cultivate and maintain relationships with their customers. By allowing businesses to send mass emails to a list of subscribers, email marketing software makes it possible to reach a large number of people with a personalized message. This can be a powerful tool for customer retention and can also help to increase sales.

The most popular email marketing software among small businesses is MailChimp. MailChimp allows businesses to create beautiful email newsletters, manage their subscribers, and track their results. The service is free for up to 2,000 subscribers, making it a great option for small businesses that are just getting started with email marketing. For businesses that need more features, MailChimp offers a paid plan that starts at $10 per month.

 Constant Contact is another popular email marketing software for small businesses. Constant Contact offers a wide range of features, including templates, list-building tools, automation, and reporting. Constant Contact also offers a free 60-day trial, making it a good option for businesses that want to try out the software before committing to a paid plan. paid plans start at $20 per month.

VerticalResponse is another email marketing software that caters to small businesses. VerticalResponse offers a wide range of features, including email template creation, contact management, reporting, and integrations with popular eCommerce platforms. VerticalResponse also offers a free trial, making it a good option for businesses that want to try out the software before committed to a paid plan. Paid plans start at $10 per month.

iContact is an email marketing software that offers a free trial and a wide range of features for small businesses. iContact allows businesses to create beautiful email newsletters, manage their contacts, and track their results. The service also offers a wide range of integrations with popular CRM and eCommerce platforms. Paid plans start at $14 per month.

GetResponse is an email marketing software that offers a free trial and a wide range of features for small businesses. GetResponse allows businesses to create beautiful email newsletters, manage their contacts, and track their results. The service also offers a wide range of integrations with popular CRM and eCommerce platforms. Paid plans start at $15 per month.

6. Compare and contrast the features of each software

Email marketing software is designed to help businesses send marketing messages to customers and prospects. There are many different types of email marketing software, each with its own set of features. Here, we will compare and contrast the features of six different email marketing software programs: AWeber, Constant Contact, GetResponse, MailChimp, VerticalResponse, and Emma.

AWeber and Constant Contact are both web-based email marketing programs. AWeber offers a wide range of features, including autoresponders, email templates, list management tools, and detailed reporting. Constant Contact is also packed with features, including a contact management system, email templates, social media tools, and surveys. Both AWeber and Constant Contact make it easy to create and send newsletters, email campaigns, and other marketing messages.

GetResponse is another web-based email marketing program, but it also offers a few features that the other programs do not, such as landing pages and webinars. GetResponse also has a wide range of templates and tools to help you create your email campaigns.

MailChimp is a popular email marketing program that offers a free plan for small businesses. MailChimp’s features include customizable templates, a drag-and-drop editor, list segmentation, and detailed reporting.

VerticalResponse is another web-based email marketing program. It offers a wide range of features, including a contact management system, email templates, autoresponders, and email list management tools.

Emma is a web-based email marketing program that offers a wide range of features, including a contact management system, customizable templates, a drag-and-drop editor, and list segmentation. Emma also has a few unique features, such as the ability to send “hand-written” notes and the ability to track your email campaigns in real-time.

7. Summarize thearticle and provide a call-to-action for small businesses

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach out to customers and promote your business. However, with so many email marketing software programs available, it can be tough to know which one is right for your small business.

To help you make the best decision for your business, we've compiled a list of the seven best email marketing software programs for small businesses. We'll go over the features of each program, as well as the pros and cons, to help you make the best choice for your business.

Constant Contact is one of the most popular email marketing software programs available. It offers a wide range of features, including a drag-and-drop email builder, built-in templates, list management tools, and more. It's also one of the easiest programs to use, making it a good choice for businesses that are new to email marketing.

VerticalResponse is another popular email marketing software program, and it offers many of the same features as Constant Contact. However, it also has some unique features, such as the ability to create surveys and polls, as well as integration with social media sites.

MailChimp is one of the most popular free email marketing programs available. It offers a wide range of features, including automation, list management, and more. It's also easy to use, making it a good choice for businesses that are new to email marketing.

1&1 Mail is a good choice for businesses that are looking for an affordable email marketing solution. It offers a wide range of features, including a drag-and-drop email builder, list management tools, and more.

Benchmark Email is a good choice for businesses that are looking for an easy-to-use email marketing solution. It offers a wide range of features, including a drag-and-drop email builder, templates, list management tools, and more.

iContact is a good choice for businesses that are looking for an email marketing solution that offers a wide range of features. It offers a drag-and-drop email builder, templates, list management tools, and more.

So there you have it, our list of the seven best email marketing software programs for small businesses. We hope this list has helped you narrow down your choices and find the right program for your business.Email marketing software is an important tool for small businesses. It can help you reach your customers and prospects, and can even automate some of your marketing tasks. There are many great email marketing software options available, so be sure to do your research before choosing one. The best email marketing software for small businesses will be affordable, easy to use, and have great features to help you grow your business.

[thekeeperof-thefandoms]

I asked a few of my favorite hazbin writers this and only one answered and it was ok but I felt like it could have been expanded on so here's my take

Vox, Val, Alastor, and Lucifer react to your love language being baking/cooking

Vox

(Starting with him because he's the one thaf inspired this).

Vox came from the 50s and even though I firmly believe he is past all the ingrained gender roles and homophobia I think he still has some internalized misogyny. He wants to be viewed as the man in the relationship, the breadwinner, the provider. He can cook for himself but it's pretty basic food (except steak. Like every other man since the invention of the grill how to bbq has been hardwired into his brain. If his partner also grills ya'll fight over whose turn to cook out it is)

(Unrelated but as a lesbian who loves to grill, and is the designated grill bro, butch lesbians or cookout lesbians are some of Vox's favorite type of gays to chill with)

I firmly believe that's why even though he's a sub, it's so hard and would take time and trust to get him to let you top and enjoy it. He's so worried people will find out and judge him, that you'll judge him. His ego can be very fragile.

Especially if we go with the Vox used to be a cult leader theory. His power, image, and success are linked to his ability to appear in control. To appear to have all the answers and take responsibility. It's going to take a lot of time and patience to unravel all that and help him seperate his personal and professional image.

That being said, a partner who uses acts of service as a love language is perfect for him. He's a busy man, so he tends to be a gift giver type. The gifts are always well thought out and expensive. He wants it to be something you need, want, can get a lot of enjoyment from, and be worth the money spent, so he puts time and effort into them. Unless he's just showing off by giving you his card and telling you to go nuts.

So you taking time to make his coffee for him the way he likes, ordering lunch from his favorite places and having it sent to his office so he remembers to eat, or just texting him reminders to drink water or eat/take breaks throughout the day makes him giddy.

If you're his assistant or something, (and I believe Vox absolutely would have his partner working for him/with him), then it's even better when you take on extra work to try and help him. Organizing his schedule, sorting emails/mail, and proofreading things. Any small act you do for him, because you want to and care about him, makes his heart rate pick up.

It'll really make him overheat, glitching slightly, literal heart eyes, if he comes home after a shitty day and you're cooking for him.

His internal monologue is absolutely raving about what a good housewife you are for him, a hard working husband.

Bonus points if you cleaned too! Either way, he adores you even more now, letting you fret and coo at him, removing his jacket and tie, pouring him a drink and telling him dinner will be ready soon and you made his favorite. He's so tempted to bend you over the counter right now, but that would ruin dinner. After you guys eat though, he's having you for dessert. Man's gonna make sure you know how much he appreciates this by turning your knees to jello, good luck walking tomorrow, doll.

If you bake treats and bring them to VoxTek he's gonna brag so much. Literally the embodiment of John Mulaney's, "That's my wife!" If you bring them just for him, he's defending his treats like they're the last ones in Hell. He has literally hit Val with a fly swatter for even asking if he could have one.

(Unrelated but like, chubby vox maybe? You're cooking is too good)

Valentino

Val wishes he could cook better. He's some kind of latino, so I feel like the fact he can't cook very well is a sore spot culturally. He can make the salsa and chips and like, help with stuff, he knows how to wrap tortillas and tomales (I picture him as like Mexican or Puerto Rican but that's just cuz the town I grew up had a large Puerto Rican group).

It doesn't help that his eyesight is even more shit in Hell. He can't see what he's doing hald the time. It ruins his art hobby too. He's overall just more easily frustrated with his bad eyesight.

I don't imagine you guys dating per se. Maybe you're his sugar baby, maybe you're someone he hired to help him do stuff like clean and organize and you just sorta start doing other things to help him. (Again I'm not saying it excuses jackshit, but as someone who worked with bipolar people and people with mood disorder I kinda see the fan theory in him, either way I think all the Vees could be sort of trained to be better people, but especially Val. We already saw Vox do it.)

After all, he's usually in a much better mood if you do and that means less outbursts. The first few times you cook him something he teases you about being his housewife, tries to make it sexual. It's not really something he clocks as being an act of love because I don't think you'd realize it yourself at first. I think the more you got to see him when he wasn't stressed, lashing out, being abusive, you'd start catching feelings. ("I can fix him", delulu asses)

He loves to be in the kitchen when you cook once it starts becoming a regular thing. He can't see clearly what you're doing but the way you move around the kitchen and get what you need, even if you're an ADHD mess and do steps out of order or at random, he can tell you know what you're doing. He likes to smell the food too while it's cooking.

He will ask you to try and make some spicier/more traditional foods he grew up with, but he doesn’t remember all of the ingredients, and it just gets him more frustrated he can't tell you. If you look them up and surprise him with it it'll probably be the most genuine, human response you get from him.

He's shocked, silent, standing frozen in the penthouse as familiar smells waft around him. You present him a plate nervously, practically shaking hoping it's good enough. The first bite nearly puts him in tears. No one's done anything this nice for him? Why would you? Lowkey thinks you want something from him. It's gonna make him paranoid for a while so don't expect a verbal compliment but he eats it all.

Eventually though, one day when you're in the kitchen cooking, humming softly and swaying your hips, one set of his arms will wrap around your waist, the other reaching around you help with the salsa, or wrap a tamale, and he'll prop his chin on your head and mumble out thanks. Some praise, maybe. Would definitely tell you stories about eating these foods growing up.

It's the first step towards having an actual relationship with him.

Alastor

This man almost always insists on cooking. He isn't much of a sweet tooth either. You tell him one night you want to try cooking for him. Tell him you understand it's an activity he enjoys and relaxes too, (especially if you know it's something that reminds him of his mother), but you want to do something for him and this is one way you show you care.

It's gonna remind him of his Mama so much that if you didn't know why he loved cooking so much before you do now. He compromises. You pick the meal and gather the ingredients and do most of the cooking and he helps prep and does dishes.

He playfully critiques you the entire time about adding some spice too it or a little southern flair. Just smack him with the wooden spoon, gently. It's gonna make him laugh because his Mama used to do that when he wouldn't keep out of the sweets, or tried to add stuff to her cooking.

Once you start it becomes habit to help each other in the kitchen every night, trading off who cooks and who preps and does dishes.

If you do find baked goods he likes that aren't too sweet and send them to him as snacks, especially to Overlord meetings, he's so fucking obnoxious about his sweet little doe (doesn't matter if you are one or not) and how they spoil him. Especially rubs it in Vox's face (not him whining to his partner so they send him with treats too so he can also brag).

Only shares with Charlie, Rosie, Niffty, and sometimes Zestiel. If he's feeling generous, Husk can have a bite.

Low-key also has a thing for his partner behaving domestically even if he isn't exactly invested in traditional marriage.

Favorite activity though is dancing with you in the kitchen to jazz while dinner cooks, holding you close, in his room usually, so he can hear the sounds of the bayou. If he closes his eyes he can pretend this is how his life went and that his Mama is in the corner or sitting in her chair, watching him, happy to see him find someone.

He will literally kiss Vox willingly before admitting that last part though.

Lucifer

It's not that he can't cook, it's just....it's easier to just snap his fingers and make food appear. He's been in a depressed slump for decades man, he's lived off of the 'want food, no cook, only eat' mindset.

When you come into his life it's a complete overhaul. Despite what issues you have yourself you can recognize someone in worse state than you and immediately categorize and prioritize. First thing first, get this man's duck collection/obsession organized, thinned out, and under control.

Second, help him work through his issues with Lillith and Charlie. Encourage therapy, be a mediator between him and Charlie (and trust me she appreciates it. She knows her dad struggles, didn't know how bad, and still feels awkward). Help him socialize more, rebuild his connection with the other sins.

Get this man a work schedule!

Then it's on to personal habits. You help him get out of bed, you're both probably a little helpless in the sleeping on time category though. Help him get a routine again to keep out of his funk. Then you start cooking for him. It just happens naturally. You enjoy cooking, you enjoy showing people you love how much you care by providing good meals.

At first he's gonna resist and tell you he can handle that, you already do so much for him. He can cook or better yet he can just make it appear and you laugh and tell him it tastes better when it's made with love. He brushes it off as a joke too, you're both just being silly and obviously you said that to get him to quit fussing. Except, unholy hell does it actually taste so much better.

Lucifer hadn’t realized how bland and unsatisfying just materializing the food was. Maybe that's because he was so depressed and uninterested in what he ate, maybe not. Either way, your cooking is so much fucking better. He actually looks forward to eating now. If he gets caught up in work or has a bad day, you make sure to always bring him something, leaving it as an offering of sorts. It almost always works and entices him to eat at least once.

You cook, he does dishes, and he will not budge on that rule. He wants to be a fair man. He occasionally boots you out to do dessert, though. Apple pie is his bitch and you've never tasted one as good as his. He also makes good pancakes and some absolutely orgasmic angel's food cake.

Ironicall, devil's food cake is one of your go to recipes. Sometimes you both make a cake and take it to events just to watch people get confused as fuck when it's revealed the literal Devil did not make the devil's food cake.

Everyime you're in the kitchen together it's a disaster, you're both to silly and chaotic. You were making noodles one time and he threw flour at you so you smacked him with the noodle you were holding, leaving a line of flour and a speck of dough against his cheek. From there it escalates. It happens every time. Making cakes together, you're smashing frosting on each other. Making cookies, you're fighting each other to stop eating cookie dough.

Once, after you get fed up with him stealing her spatula to lick the chocolate off of, hovering above you with his wings, you pout and bat your eyes, asking him sweetly to please give it back. He swoops down in front of you, booping your nose to smear chocolate on it and leaning in to kiss you, letting you have a taste of the chocolate batter you were mixing for brownies. While his tongue is in your mouth, drunk off the taste of you and chocolate you smash an egg over his head and let out a triumphant cheer, snatching back your spatula.

He's so stunned his wings disappear and he drops the last few inches to the ground while you cackle. His heart is pounding, his ears are ringing, and his chest feels like it's gonna explode. His eyes are literal sparkles. He hasn't felt this much joy, wonder, and love since Charlie was born. It feels like witnessing creation all over again, of the breathlessness he felt when he first saw Lillith.

You're laughter stops when you realize he's just staring at you awestruck and you smile, asking if he's ok.

"For once...yeah..Yes. I'm ok." He responds, genuinely. You kiss his cheek and resume baking. He watches you from the counter now, dreamily, thinking about how he's gonna marry you someday.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

And much more besides. And I got all of this through fraud and deception.

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 3, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 04, 2025

I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.

But they are not doing that.

Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes.

The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup. The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical.

But Republicans are allowing Musk to run amok. This could be because they know that Trump has embraced the idea that the American government is a “Deep State,” but that the extreme cuts the MAGA Republicans say they want are actually quite unpopular with Americans in general, and even with most Republican voters. By letting Musk make the cuts the MAGA base wants, they can both provide those cuts and distance themselves from them.

But permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.

Musk’s team in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has taken control of the U.S. Treasury payment systems that handle about $6 trillion in annual transactions for the U.S. government, thus gaining access to Americans' personal information as well as information about Musk's competitors. From there, Musk claims to have been cancelling those transactions he thinks are wasteful. He claims, for example, to have “deleted” the popular Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Direct File system that enabled people to file their taxes online for free, without the help of paid tax preparers.

Musk’s team apparently consists of six engineers, aged 19 to 24, who are taking control of the computers at government agencies. From the Treasury Department, they went on to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Their breaching of the computers there compromises our national intelligence systems, which must now be considered insecure.

From there, they went on to the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal government’s 7,500 or so buildings. Musk’s people sent an email to regional managers telling them to begin ending the leases on federal offices. According to Chris Megerian of the Associated Press, the person in charge of that initiative is Nicole Hollander, who describes herself on LinkedIn as employed at Musk’s social media company, X.

Today, according to an email sent to employees of the Small Business Administration, Musk’s people have gotten into that agency’s human resources, contracts, and payment systems. The Small Business Administration supports small businesses and entrepreneurs, and under the Biden-Harris administration, small businesses boomed thanks to small-dollar loans to women, Black, and Latino entrepreneurs.

By this afternoon, Musk’s people were digging into the data of the Department of Education with an eye to dismantling it from the inside before Trump tries to shut it down with an executive order, although only Congress itself can shutter the department. According to Laura Meckler, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post, Musk’s DOGE staffers had accessed sensitive internal data systems, including the personal information of millions of students who are taking part in the federal student aid program. It is highly unlikely that Congress would destroy the Department of Education, so Musk and Trump hope to hollow it out from within.

On a livestream last night, Musk said of his destruction of the federal government: “If it’s not possible now, it will never be possible. This is our shot, This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. If we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.”

Three federal employees unions are suing the Trump administration to stop Musk, and today, Democratic members of the House and Senate tried to enter the USAID building but were denied entry. Led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Democrats condemned what Raskin called Musk and Trump’s “illegal, unconstitutional interference with congressional power.”

“Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury,” Raskin said, “but you don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that—under Article I of the Constitution. And just like the president, who was elected to something, cannot impound the money of the people, we don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk. And that’s going to become real clear.”

Senator Murphy said: "[L]et's not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions of dollars based off of his business with China. And China is cheering at [the destruction of USAID]. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our government right now is doing it based on self-interest: their belief that if they can make us weaker in the world, if they can elevate their business partners all around the world, they will gain the benefit.”

Murphy continued: “But there’s another reason this is happening. They’re shuttering agencies and sending employees home in order to create the illusion that they’re saving money, in order to…pass a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations.”

While Musk and his DOGE team are trying systematically to dismantle the government, today Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in grants and loans before DOGE got going. AliKhan said that by impounding funds—which Congress declared illegal in 1974—Trump’s Office of Management and Budget “attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it.” It is Congress, not the president, that determines federal spending.

Meanwhile, the elected president, Donald Trump, sparked a crisis last Friday when his White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced that he fully intended to go through with the trade war he had hyped on the campaign trail. Trump announced he would levy tariffs of 25% on most products from Mexico and Canada and of 10% on products from China, beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, in violation of the trade agreement his own team had negotiated during his first term.

As soon as Leavitt announced the upcoming tariffs, the stock market began to fall, and by last night, stock market futures had fallen 450 points on the expectation of tariffs hitting at midnight tonight. Today, the stock market continued to fall. Even reliable Trump allies began to complain that the tariffs would raise prices. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called Trump’s tariffs “the dumbest trade war in history.”

Today, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that she and Trump had “reached a series of agreements” that would pause the threatened tariffs for a month. Mexico agreed to “reinforce the northern border with 10,000 elements of the National Guard immediately, to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States,” while the U.S. “commits to work to prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.”

When Trump announced their conversation shortly afterward, he omitted the part of the agreement that committed the U.S. to try to stop the flow of guns to Mexico. He also did not mention that, in fact, Mexico committed to putting 10,000 troops at the border in 2021. As Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post commented above a record of Mexican troop deployments: “Any news outlet reporting Mexico conceded anything to Trump to get him to delay tariffs has not done its homework. Trump boasts he got Mexico to commit to stationing 10K troops at our border. Apparently he didn’t realize Mexico already has 15K troops deployed there[.]”

The crisis at the northern border worked out in a similar fashion. After conferring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump announced a 30-day pause in the implementation of tariffs. Trudeau agreed to appoint a border czar and to implement a $1.3 billion border plan that Canada had announced in December.

In other words, while Musk was causing a constitutional crisis, Trump created an economic crisis that threatened both domestic and global chaos, then claimed Biden administration achievements as his own and declared victory.

The tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect as planned. China has promised to levy tariffs of up to 15% on certain U.S. products beginning a week from today. It also said it will investigate Google to see if it has violated antitrust laws.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[pinkyplushiemaker]

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Commission Information and Terms of Service

Information on Artist.

I started my plush work in 2013. I have worked hard on developing my style and process over the years. I create my embroidery and patterns from scratch, so everything I make is one of a kind. I do not sell my patterns because they are not normal and only I can understand how they come together. I live in West Virginia, USA. I can ship all over the country and internationally. I live in a dog, bird, and reptile friendly home. I love anime/manga, superhero movies/tv/comics, horror movies, animals, art, and making plushies.

My Plush Work

I work with minky fabric since it’s the highest quality I can use to make my work the best quality possible. I can also use faux furs, long pile minky, mochi fabric, fleece, and cotton if needed (or requested). I use upholstery thread when sewing my plush together. The thread is incredibly strong and the chances of pieces coming apart are very low. If they do come apart (very uncommon), just message me and I will fix and reinforce the piece.

My work is considered “art”, not factory produced for the general public. This means that they are unique and special, but it also means they are not really meant to be handled roughly, crushed, and/or given to very small children. They are pretty durable since they are plush, but any material can wear over time when they are over “loved” (lol). Taking them on adventures, and carrying them around is totally welcomed, just please go easy on the tug and pull <3

Ordering a Plush

Please feel free to reach out to me through Twitter (X), Tumblr, Instagram, or Facebook. I do my best to answer as soon as possible, but you are welcome to message again in case I have not replied after a few days. (I can get busy with the Plush Business, my full-time job, and taking care of my pets.)

Let me know what you are looking to have made. (I can make humans, animals, creatures, cars, robots etc.) Let me know what size and style you are thinking of and if there is a certain time you would like to have it made by. (It normally takes about 2-4 weeks, it depends on if I need to order anything specific.) Please provide images if possible (if you want something unique and only have a description, I can do a rough concept of the character for you, or if you would like to commission me to do art of the character, please feel free to request it). Once I have this information, I will give you a price quote. The quote will only be for the plush, this will not include the shipping or taxes. If you agree to the price, I will request an email from you and will send an invoice. It will list all the details for the transaction, including shipping and tax. The invoice is through PayPal Goods and Services, so we are both protected.

Once the payment is made, you are added to the queue. Before I start on the plush, I will create a concept for it. In this stage (and only in this stage) you are welcome to make any updates to the design. (For example: preferring a different color, wanting the eyes to be bigger, not wanting a certain part included etc.) I will do my best to get as close to the concept as possible. It will never be exact, but I do normally get really close. After the concept is finished, I will share fabric colors to ensure they are right.

Once everything is approved, I will create the pattern and embroidery files. Next, I will embroider the fabric and cut out the pattern. Finally, I will sew the plush together and share the final plush in our communication. I will need you to share the preferred name and address for the shipment. Once this information is provided, I will pack up the plush and send it out. I will provide the tracking when it is on its way.

Shipping the Plush

My standard shipping is first-class and using a waterproof bubble mailer envelope. This keeps the shipping as low as possible. ($7 within the US, $25 International)

For 2025, I am offering priority and over-night shipping (overnight only available in US). I am also offering the option to ship within a box instead of a bubble mailer. These options will be much higher prices and can be discussed while setting up the commission.

Please note, once I ship a plush and provide a tracking number. It is out of my hands.

Canceling a Commission

You have 1 week after ordering to cancel a commission. If I ordered materials for the project, it will be deducted from the total.

If a plush is not correct (and it is due to my mistake), I can grant a full refund. Unless I am able to fix the issue. The mistake would be due to me not using the correct color fabric, missing an important detail from the concept etc. Just not liking a plush or deciding you don’t want to pay for a plush once it is made are not valid reasons. I have various examples of my work and before commissioning me, please review my pages to make sure you like my style and quality.

Final Note

I am more than happy to work with someone to make a plush they can afford and love. Since all of my plush are custom and I make all the patterns and embroidery, I can make adjustments easily. For example, I can make the plush smaller and contain less details. I will be happy to explain what parts are causing the higher price and we can work out other options. I believe PayPal has options to make multiple payments too, so I can still get full payment and you wont need to pay in full right away.

Thank you for reading!! I hope I can bring your favorite characters to life 😊

[mariacallous]

“I can look into it,” Elon Musk posted on X on March 1. He was responding to a comedian named Terrence K. Williams who had written, “ELON MUSK!!! I’m begging you! Please ask President Trump to get rid of this ridiculous BOI rule that Biden Created It’s targeting conservatives and small businesses!” As part of the post, Williams claimed that he had received an email saying he needed to fill out a beneficial ownership report or be fined more than $500 per day and risk prison time.

The exchange seems to have been the impetus for a major change in U.S. anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) policy. The shift has caused regulatory chaos, especially for small businesses in the United States.

Less than 24 hours after Musk made his promise to Williams, the U.S. Treasury Department sent out a series of five X posts stating that the agency would not enforce any “penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners” with regards to adherence to the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). The act, passed during the first Trump administration with overwhelming bipartisan support as part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, requires companies to identify who ultimately owns and/or controls them and bans the formation of anonymous shell companies in the United States. Shortly after the Treasury posts, President Donald Trump jumped on Truth Social to say:

Exciting news! The Treasury Department has announced that they are suspending all enforcement of the outrageous and invasive Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting requirement for U.S. Citizens. This Biden rule has been an absolute disaster for Small Businesses Nationwide. Furthermore, Treasury is now finalizing an Emergency Regulation to formally suspend this rule for American businesses. The economic menace of BOI reporting will soon be no more.

The CTA is one of the most important AML/CFT laws passed in decades, and while experts are still parsing out the full implications of its rollback, so far at least four key issues stand out.

First, lifting the enforcement of this law undermines anti-money laundering efforts, puts the United States out of compliance with international anti-money laundering standards, and even undermines some of Trump’s other executive orders.

While the rules governing the CTA were indeed written during the Biden administration, the law itself was passed after Congress overrode Trump’s veto. Its passage had been a priority for law enforcement groups such as the Fraternal Order of Police and good governance advocates for decades. Trump’s first treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, testified to the House in 2019 in favor of the CTA, and then-Sen. Marco Rubio (now Trump’s secretary of state) spoke in strong support of it in 2018. The ability to form anonymous shell companies has been a major reason why the United States was long considered the easiest place in the world to launder money.

Getting the CTA passed had been a bipartisan—but nonetheless decades-long—endeavor. The war on drugs and the fight against terrorism finance, especially after the 9/11 attacks, had shown a spotlight on the role that shell companies could play in undermining U.S. national security. Meanwhile, leaks of documents from auditing and law firms including the 2014 Luxembourg Leaks, 2016 Panama Papers, and 2021 Pandora Papers further highlighted the role that anonymous shell companies played in a host of illicit activities that were facilitating drug trafficking, sanctions evasion, corruption, and myriad other crimes. A 2012 study found that U.S. corporate service providers offered some of the easiest ways to set up anonymous shell companies, even when those seeking to open shell companies displayed significant red flags for possible ties to terrorism. By 2016, the United States—formerly a leader in anti-money laundering legislation—was out of compliance with international standards. Countering lobbying from the National Association of Secretaries of State and various business lobbies, law enforcement bodies such as district attorneys and police organizations tipped the balance of support toward enacting the legislation, with the CTA finally passed on Jan. 1, 2021.

U.S. efforts at beneficial ownership legislation largely mimicked European efforts, albeit with a lag. The European Union as well as more than 100 other countries either require or are implementing beneficial ownership registries for businesses. Yet, despite its national security importance and international AML/CFT standards, the CTA never entirely shook off its detractors. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, in its Treasury Department chapter, advocates for the law’s repeal and a review of all AML/CFT legislation and rules. As the comedian Williams pointed out, there were also concerns over the cost and time to input company beneficial ownership information, plus privacy concerns. In a standard limited liability company, however, providing basic information on a company beneficial owner is a simple matter and requires basic information such as the names of the owners and that of the business, the address, and the owners’ dates of birth. The Treasury Department estimated that it would only take 90 minutes to register companies with simple beneficial ownership structures; I was able to register the beneficial ownership of my own limited liability company in about 15 minutes.

Moreover, until a few days prior, the Trump administration had still been defending the CTA in court, with the National Small Business Association filing a series of lawsuits against it. To say that this freeze on nearly all CTA enforcement is a surprise is thus an understatement.

Freezing the CTA puts the United States grossly out of compliance with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards. The United States is due to be evaluated for its compliance in early 2026, and failing could land it on the FATF gray list as a jurisdiction requiring additional AML/CFT monitoring. Should the United States join countries such as Syria, Venezuela, and Mali on the gray list, American individuals and businesses will find it harder to do international transactions, especially banking.

Not only is this change in policy undermining the U.S. fight against money laundering, but it is also undermining the Trump administration’s own executive orders. For example, a Feb. 4 order about sanctions on Iran called for the FATF to evaluate beneficial ownership thresholds to constrain Iran from using shell companies and similar financial machinations used to avoid sanctions. But how can that happen if the United States—the country that incorporates the most companies in the world—will no longer gather hardly any beneficial ownership information? This rule undermines a host of other Trump priorities, such as fighting fentanyl trafficking, since narcotraffickers often use anonymous shell companies to launder their funds. It is also out of keeping with the feelings of Trump’s voter base: A recent survey by a conservative polling firm found that 81 percent of respondents agreed that small businesses doing 20 minutes of beneficial ownership paperwork was acceptable in order to fight “drug trafficking, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes.”

It is the executive branch’s job to enforce the laws, but the Trump administration has increasingly decided not to. The Treasury Department on March 2 announced a new rulemaking whereby only foreign reporting companies will be required to declare their beneficial owners. This “interim final rule” came into effect on March 26 concurrently with the public comment period on the new rule. But Congress specifically legislated that nearly all companies—foreign and domestic—must declare their beneficial owners. Assuming the interim final rule continues to hold, more than 99 percent of companies will continue to be exempt from the CTA statute.

Another law within a similar subject area—the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)—is likewise not being enforced, at least in theory. Nonetheless, despite the enforcement freeze, jury selection has begun for two executives charged under the FCPA for paying bribes to Indian officials, making an already confusing legal situation even more chaotic. Individuals and businesses are increasingly finding themselves in a no-win situation.

The full ramification of this bizarre policy shift is still being sorted out, but the resulting havoc will continue.

[cathkaesque]

2024 in review, cathkaesque wrapped

Compared to previous years this one was pretty uneventful. There were no devastating life events, no major mental breakdowns, only a small amount of international travel. I have preferred it lol

I always told myself that if I could make it to two years on HRT, I would probably be where I wanted to be, and I was right. Not to toot my own horn, my body is fantastic, I am curvy, I have tits and and an ass, and my face is just, I am beautiful. I've mellowed out a bit from the crazy emotional mood swings from last year that were really hard to navigate. I feel like I've finally made it.

My relationship is going from strength to strength, we've grown closer and weathered a lot of storms together. I realise I have someone who truly understands me and really loves me, and I love him, and I can't tell you how much that means to me. It feels nice :)

I've leaned into my hobbies this year, and had such a wonderful time painting my Flames of War figures. It has been so cathartic and relaxing, and wonderful seeing my skills improve. I have almost finished my Russian and German infantry, next project is my Russian and German tanks. I also have some US paras to do as well. So many more to go. I've got to start playing some games with them next!

I've done some really fantastic work in my farmworker job this year. I have supported people through some pretty awful events on farms, I managed to undertake some very high level negotiations with supermarkets and investors on a policy I've wanted to have happen (that supermarkets should pay the travel and visa costs of farmworkers, which may be being piloted soon). Amazingly, I am helping some wonderful workers organise a demonstration at the end of January. I went to Italy on a delegation and made a fantastic impression on people while I was there. I have managed to properly establish this work, a branch of work that I made happen.

I went on a couple of lovely holidays with friends and family - I also took acid for the first time this year lol (not nearly as scary or mindblowing as I thought it would be, but it was a pretty low dose).

I have managed to solves several longstanding problems, namely recovering £1600 wrongly taken from me by British Gas, and having a much better set up with Octopus Energy (who solved the reason for the overcharge with a short email exchange which we had been fighting BG about for 2 years); getting my landlord to take action on damp and mould, which has been making me very sick for years; and I have a permanent contract and my work now (and helped everyone else get permanent contracts as well). I want to keep doing this, keep resolving problems, keep fighting for a secure life. It feels within my grasp.

I briefly had an admin job working for a friend of mine, which unfortunately didn't go very well. Navigating the relationship that was one of friendship to one of boss-worker was Weird as hell, and neither of us adapted to it well. The work as well was, frankly, corrupt. It was for a social enterprise organisation which had received a huge council/levelling up fund grant to provide consultancy to these businesses. There was very little 'social' in the work and the enterprises themselves were very often not worthwhile ventures. My accountacy skills are largely from reading company accounts to find things which are embarrassing and can be used against them and it was weird to be on the other side of this, knowing that the council was cutting essential care services while spending money on this. I was also doing some really major, really difficult, and really cool work in my farmworker job and the disjoint between that and doing admin work for people who didn't even care about the other work I was doing was soul destroying.. I ended up quitting and I think I've done a lot of damage to a friendship I held really dear, which makes me really sad. However, it did mean I was able to financially weather the year, and I am in a good position now. It also made me value my farmworker job - I have been frustrated in previous years with the lack of management and support I have received from the rest of my organisation, but now I understand that working for someone else doing something meaningless doesn't make me happy, and that I should value the autonomy and control I have over this work.

So basically, my resolution is to continue doing what I'm doing, continue growing, continue loving, and continue living life more

[imptwins]

ALRIGHT, no more messing around I suppose.

Over the last twelve months my close friend @kimberlyeab and myself have been the targets of sustained harassment by a series of "anti-ship" accounts, that may or may not be the same person, that I am not going to name up here because I do not want to give them any more traffic than necessary. This is over some of the content we make, 18+ fiction revolving around Undertale and Deltarune, and sometimes involving dark kinks. I'm going to ask you to put aside whether you think this is immoral for the moment.

Under the break below is what I wrote a few hours ago. Things have since escalated. Both myself and Kim have been targeted by email bombs on our business emails, services/bots that spam your email address with garbage signups, rendering your email address completely unusable. At worst, this can overwhelm your email service so much that your account is unable to process new emails and is eventually disabled by the provider. I'm still getting bursts of activity after over 200 emails, so I'm not sure if it's dying down, or if it's so backlogged that this is what's happening.

This is literally a crime, by the way. It's classified as cyber abuse.

On top of this, whoever has done this has access to personal information. A full legal name, first and last, was used in several of the signups, so they are either implicitly threatening to doxx us, or simply flexing that they could. Likewise a crime.

Additionally, this seems well coordinated, but there are no suspicious recent results for us in The Usual Places. This makes me believe this person is probably using some foul back-alley site like KF to organize this. I don't think the legal name in question could have been acquired by one person, it's extremely difficult to trace back.

tl;dr: whoever is doing this knows their way around the internet and is actively dangerous, they are severely impeding our lives and have the potential to become incredibly, incredibly dangerous.

Why am I posting this? Not really to get those accounts in trouble (although you should absolutely stay the hell away from them, and severely scrutinize anything they leave a mark on). I don't think they'll be punished, nor would it help since they constantly block evade, and at this point I don't think this recent online abuse crap is actually them, just someone attaching themself to their crusade. Though I'm not sure.

What I want to illustrate is how these kind of callout posts feed into targeted harassment of minorities. This is just another reason why things that make you uncomfortable should be dealt with by curating your experience using tags and blacklists and blocks, rather than trying to assign moral value to what people make. If my content makes you that uncomfortable I *actively encourage* you to block me.

It doesn't matter whether you personally dislike minorities or not, or whether you're subconsciously targeting them, or whatever. Someone else who does will latch on. That person who writes nothing but callout posts, yet they're always for small trans creators who make some 'icky stuff' and never for big-name bigots who parade their bigotry out in the open; is it because they're a sock puppet of an overt reactionary, or just because they want to feel some control over their life so they subconsciously focus on vulnerable people?

Simple: you can't know.

These people are the dangerous ones. Not people who just make content, properly tag it, and mind their own business. But these people, obsessed with ruining other people, with finding 'evil' in the world so that they can purge it? You can find their name below if you really want, and literally their entire blog is just constant callouts, broadcasting people doing callouts, trying to network with other people who do callouts. This is why these people were originally called 'antifans', their entire fandom presence is centered around tearing other people to shreds.

Do your due diligence and fact-check, before you broadcast that someone in your fandom did something awful. Make sure they actually hurt someone. I know mega-bastards will use 'you can't prove it' as an excuse, but actually analyze it a bit. It's almost always painfully obvious, I know, I spent years doing antifascism. And more than anything else, neither entertain, nor broadcast, nor embolden the kind of people who dedicate their entire existences on the internet to lateral abuse. Not just these particular ones, but ANYONE who dedicates their life to this online torch-waving garbage over fictional content. Whether they're a reactionary or just projecting trauma, whether they actually hate x y or z minority or they just happen to always go for the most vulnerable people, whether the person they're targeting makes content that makes you feel very icky and gross or not, these self-ordained Crusaders are consistently, unquestionably, dangerous.

That's one page out of 4. Also some of them have between 10 and 80 updates in the one email from the same address. There's about 300 emails all up. And there's zero reason they can't do this again.

===

Anyway. The accounts in question are @snowcollecter/@brieffamilycat/@krispy-chicken-shipping/@bonniehbunny. First two are definitely them, I highly suspect the latter two are their main, or at the very least someone who constantly signal boosts them. We have endured over 12 months of:

calling for brigades against us, and at least 4 other people

block dodging to constantly screenshot and reference our posts

literal libel by accusing us of grooming a child despite screenshots, as well as both statements and direct requests to stop by both the supposed groomed child and their actual friends who witnessed all interactions we had

spamming anon asks to literally every single person that they can find who we ever interact with

using tiktok cen)sor)ship nonsense to get past peoples' blacklists and force this stuff in front of them

using no less than 3 confirmed alts with about 5 more extremely suspicious accounts in attempts to artificially broadcast themself and again evade blocks (when the original account itself is transparently an alt too)

joining multiple random discords to try to shove this stuff in peoples' faces

now spamming Kim's business email at signup services

probably being behind the attempts to doxx and raid us last year on a certain hate-monger website, since the signup spam demonstrates they're cool with bog standard channer troll tactics

They also pretty tellingly refused to even talk to this minor we supposedly groomed, who attempted to tell them personally that we hadn't done the shit they claim we did. You'd think someone who is this caught up about the safety of minors in fandom spaces would jump at the chance to help this kid, to tell them not to talk to us and get them away from us, to convince them to stay away? No, they said 'I don't talk to minors' (this is demonstrably untrue: their discord accounts are in many all-ages spaces) and immediately blocked them.

Of course. Because this was never about the safety of minors. Flip a coin; if it's heads, they're a far-right sock puppet who just knows they can use the 'think of the children' angle to drive a wedge into queer communities. If it's tails, they're just a routine runt who's projecting their lack of ability to do anything about the ACTUAL assholes of this world onto other queer people, wailing and flailing and doing anything they can to have some influence despite getting 3 notes on almost everything they ever post. Hence the anon asks, and Discord spam, and blacklist/block evading. If they can't have a platform - because anyone who looks at their garbage for more than a month at most sees how absolutely deranged they are - they'll just force people to see it.

Do they ever attack actual transphobes, which this fandom is not at all short on? Well, sort of! They did one or two callout posts about a TERF who used to run in these spaces... But didn't say anything about the TERF shit. Just the porn. The porn constantly put behind age confirmations and thorough tags/content warnings. This person spouted generic 'all-powerful trans lobby' 'social contagion' 'please look at this study about desistance I found on a hard-right website' bullshit, but no, it was them drawing aged-up highschoolers (REMINDER: NOT EVEN CANONICALLY UNDERAGE, JUST VAGUE HIGHSCHOOLERS, *AND* THEY WERE EXPLICITLY OLDER IN THEIR CONTENT!) that was apparently the greater evil.

I'm not even really sharing this to call them specifically out or draw attention to them. Regardless of whether they're a chud in a mask or just someone who severely, *severely* needs psychological help about their obsession, they're not going to stop. They've made that plainly obvious. At this point I've basically just accepted I'm going to have this deranged stalker until I leave the fandom, which I don't plan to do anytime soon so buckle up I guess.

No, I just want people to see what these people are like. How they ignore the people they claim are victims. How they employ the same tactics as doxxing websites and old channer trolls, or even outright enlist them. How they only EVER put sustained effort into taking down queer people with small platforms because going after the in-plain-sight actual bigots and scumbags would just be too much effort, a reflection of how this is about feeling righteous and powerful, not actually making the world better. They create nothing, they contribute nothing, they bring nothing but arguing and drama and isolation to the spaces they inhabit.

These kind of people are blights on the fandoms they cling to. And any time you act like their *miserable* Hays Code, Jack Thompson With A Rainbow Flag, no kink at pride, BDSM is abuse, drag queens are indecent, cover those ankles *garbage* warrants any notice at all, you deal another blow to the fandom you are in, because nobody wants to be around these little goddamn nightmares. edit: I know how red-flag any grooming allegations are, if you want the full story to that I already addressed it here. tl;dr, no, we did not let a child look at our porn let alone show it to them, we in fact stopped them from doing so. We are not in some secret private 18+ server with them, we actively ensured they STOPPED making themself unsafe, and have strained extremely, extremely hard to keep our very limited interactions with them transparent, scrutinizable, and appropriate. The only reason we even stuck around was because it became rapidly apparent they were in an abusive living situation which we occasionally gave them advice to manage, eg helping them look up boarding options, unlike the torch-waving dipshits who did NOTHING to reach out to them or help them in any way. They're doing much better, both in their home life and in terms of not following or privately palling around with 18+ creators anymore, thanks to us, and at the expense of both our mental health and reputations. You're fucken' welcome.

[finniestoncrane]

Unburied!Riddler x Fem!Reader, word count: 6k commission: eddie is made for cuckoldery, particularly when he gets to stroke his ego as the bull. and reader is lucky enough to have captured his attention on the kink forum to provide his services 💚 commission me here! request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi • masterlist minors DNI!! 🔞 cw: cuckoldery, videotaping sex, plus size reader, lil bit of humiliation and degradation, penetrative sex

There were plenty of hotels in Gotham that asked no questions and gave no answers when any authority came questioning. As long as the money was paid upfront, cash only, then you could do almost anything you wanted to within reason. The one you had chosen for your arranged dalliance was no exception, though it was one of the cleaner and more reputable ones. Worth it, however, for that semblance of safety and comfort for what was potentially a one-off experience. A trial. A taster. An adventurous step into uncharted territory. And it was going to be awkward, even just initially, so why not treat yourself. A strange encounter in a classy environment. 

Thinking about it, it felt almost like a dream. It was strange to know that you had been conversing with Edward Nygma, renowned and widely disliked criminal, for weeks now. Arranging this meet-up, contacting him through the burner email account you used for registering on the fetish forum. Secretly, you had hoped it wasn’t actually him on the other side of the screen. But as you made your way down from the room you had booked, you could see him in the lobby. Unmistakeable. Standing out, but fitting in seamlessly. Free of Arkham yet again, and fulfilling requests to participate in organised cuckoldery with strangers. 

It was an awkward greeting. He smiled knowingly, all too smug for your comfort, but something in the way he carried himself with what you felt was, despite his notoriety, an undeserved level of confidence struck a chord within you, a chime that resonated through your chest and sent vibrations over your skin. But despite him feeling secure and smug, confident in himself and his reputation, he still politely introduced himself which put you at ease a little. And the way he gestured towards the elevators to the rooms took away the nerves that wrestled in your stomach as you had been wondering how you were going to proceed with the events to come. 

“Shall we then? I’m a busy man, believe it or not.”

The elevator ride was quiet, a brief moment of small talk as Eddie asked how you were. You could only muster an awkward smile in response, thankfully saved from what was going to be a relatively snippy retort by the ding of the antiquated elevator reaching your floor. With an air of confidence, only somewhat forced, you led him down the hallway, smiling as you pressed the key card against the lock. 

You opened the door to the empty room and ushered him inside, gesturing to the space with an awkward grin before watching him enter and look around. He nodded as he took it in with a haughty air before pressing his fingers together and taking in a deep inhale. Irritated by what you perceived to be judgement, you pursed your lips together and took a breath before you spoke. 

“What? Got a problem?”

Folding your arms, you raised an eyebrow expectantly, waiting on his response. He turned to you, his eyes slowly shifting from your feet to your head, training his gaze on yours as he smirked. 

“It’s better than Arkham.”

With a slight laugh, you replied.

“I’m glad you think so.”

“That isn’t as great a compliment as you’re welcome to pretend it is.”

You rolled your eyes, but still smiled. His sense of humour, though you wouldn’t admit it to him, was delightful. Something you had always admired in partners, or people in general. Sharp wit, taunting, but in a way that excited you. You’d noted it in the interviews you’d read with him, remembered it from your email correspondence, and in person it had an even stronger effect. 

Ed definitely excited you. You had seen the images of him with barbara Gordon, old coverage of his previous arrests, snapped pictures of him by Gotham’s warped paparazzi. Always messy hair, a sweatshirt, his arkham jumpsuit. And while there had always been something about him that caught your eyes, you were faced with a far more obvious attraction as he stood before you. 

His dark hair was slicked back into a tidy, classic style. Every so often, he would reach his long fingers, well-manicured nails now, to the flat, neat lapels of the deep green suit jacket. His clean shaven skin was smooth, impossibly clear, and the sweet shade of brown seemed to have an almost golden hue to it, though you imagined the sparkle was due to the fog of attraction. Freedom suited him, and it suited your tastes. Especially as you noticed the slightest hint of ageing which had begun to show on the corners of his mouth and around his eyes. 

“So… are you wearing this? Do I get to undress you from your street clothes? Add an element of narrative to this little roleplay?”

Eddie’s voice had interrupted your thoughts so unexpectedly that you began giggling, unable to help yourself in the face of his charisma, the smug smile that creased into his cheeks, tittering like a school girl at the way his deep brown eyes seemed to hold you, magnetised and focused. 

“I’m actually going to go get changed into something a lot more attractive and a lot less comfortable. You can make yourself comfy in here, if you need to. I won’t be long.”

“Oh, please, by all means take your time. If it’s for my benefit, I’d rather you looked your best.”

Another eye roll as you made your way into the bathroom, turning quickly to hide the blush that had begun to heat your cheeks. And once in the bathroom, you took a moment first to catch your breath and calm yourself. You weren’t usually a nervous person, but something about him made your heart beat a lot faster than usual. Unsurprising, really, when you thought about it. It was Edward Nygma after all. A criminal. A handsome criminal. A handsome criminal who, without much doubt, was going to fuck you. He’d looked at your pictures, read your rules and stipulations and what you wanted from him, and had decided that he was happy to oblige. He wanted you.Or at least, he wanted to please you, which was just as good in your books. But the way his eyes lingered…

The notion of being desired by him made your chest shudder, a refreshed confidence that spurred you on as you quickly changed out of the sweatshirt and skirt you had on and into the lingerie that your partner had picked out. Something they knew you would look good in, and which would look good being taken off of you by Edward.

Leaning against the bathroom door, you rapped with your knuckles and spoke out to Ed. 

“Are you ready in there?”

“”Uh, yes. I’m a genius, remember? I’m capable of unlacing my own shoes in record time without any help, believe it or not.”

Rolling your eyes once more, and biting your lip to curtail the spread of the grin that rose on the corners of your mouth, you left the bathroom and offered Edward a smug smile of your own, knowing you looked exceptional. 

He sat on the edge of the bed, his shoes and tie off, suit jacket folded neatly on the back of the desk chair. The sleeves of his clean, white shirt were rolled up, showcasing his arms which were slim, toned, and covered in thick, dark hair. His eyes rolled over you, up and down, slowly, lingering, learning, as he took in the outfit you had changed into with a dark smile. 

Standing, your back leaning against the dresser, you folded your arms and watched as Edward managed to drag his eyes away from you and began studying the room again. The silence was uncomfortable for only a moment, but you had prepared yourself for that. This felt like a game of chicken though. Tense. Who would break first? It definitely wasn’t going to be you. You had known Edward for such a short time, but you were certain you couldn’t give him any win, no matter how small. And as Ed opened his mouth to sigh, you celebrated this minute win. 

“So what? They’re being cuckolded in spirit? Didn’t want to come watch the professional in person?”

Typically, yes, being cuckolded would involve you being in the room to watch as your partner was satisfied by another party, but you and your partner had come to a different decision.

“I think it was enough to know that it was happening.”

“Huh…”

Eddie walked around the side of the bed, an inquisitive and exaggerated frown on his face. 

“So, I suppose we don’t need to do anything at all. For all they know, I rocked your world. Which I would. But if they’re not here to witness it, then I can claim this time back and go and have a coffee. It’s the simple pleasures, y’know, when you get your freedom back.”

Raising an eyebrow, suspicion clouding every other thought in your mind, you questioned him in a somewhat sharp tone.

“You don’t want to go through with this?”

Eddie raised his hands defensively, shaking his head with a slight smile.

“Of course I do! Humiliation, ownership, rule breaking, taboos, viciously lewd sex. All of that is well within my wheelhouse.”

“So…?”

“But you want to as well. I can tell. Far more than just a quick dive into kink. And while I do think, no, know, it would be fun, I’m willing to risk it for something I would find even more delicious.”

You folded your arms in front of you, eyes narrowing as you tried to figure out what his game was. 

“And what might that be?”

He lowered his head, looking up at you from his furrowed eyebrows, mischievous smile changing the way he said the words. 

“I would like you to beg for it. Either you beg me, or I walk away. You can still them that we did this, pretend that you lived out your little cuckold fantasy. But if you want to really experience the good stuff…”

Ed’s hands flourished in front of his crotch, a gesture that made you grimace, but sent a tingle down your spine and left a heat in the pit of your stomach.

“... then I want you to look desperate.”

You scoffed incredulously, refusing to give in quickly despite being particularly inspired by this request. With a derisive hand motion you waved off his proposal, pretending it was ridiculous and completely out of the question. 

“We both benefit from this, Nygma. You think you’re any different from any other person who might have answered the call for a one-time bull to play out this experiment in kink?”

Taking a step towards you, Eddie leaned in, his nose almost touching yours, his hot breath on your lips and cheeks as he spoke. 

“I don’t think anything, I know I’m different. And so do you.”

You inched closer to him, noses pressed together now, unafraid of stepping to him in whatever kind of game this was. The tension, the adrenaline, the arousal, it was all more than you could have even imagined. 

“Oh yeah?”

Ed pressed forward even further, your noses squished together, chests almost touching as you both took deep breaths in and out. 

“Obviously, I’m the greatest and smartest man alive, duh.” 

“Smartest, huh?”

As he nodded, you let your body fall back ever so slightly, your lips pouting forwards as you whispered your winning statement.

“Not smart enough to notice the camera on the dresser though.”

As you pulled back, you smacked your palm on his cheek twice in succession, soft enough that he still stood, blank stare, the gears in his big brain turning to find a suitable retort. But he couldn’t find one. He knew he had to say something, but there was a burning excitement in his chest. Heartburn? He thought it could be. There was a faint sensation of bile churning in his throat. But it felt good. To be challenged. Someone who was going to put up a fight against his demands, against his sarcasm. Wit versus wit. You were someone he could genuinely have fun with. So, at the risk of sounding stupid, but knowing he had to have some give if he waned to keep you on side, he said the only thing he could think of. 

“I see. You’re recording this.”

Looking over your shoulder, you winked at him.

“Treasured memories. I only… perform… for one person at a time. Having someone, even them, watching me while I do my thing… the idea of it made me feel nervous.”

Eyes widening, Edward looked you up and down, taking in the vintage lingerie you wore under the sheer robe you had changed into in the bathroom, an outfit he had to admit had been clouding his mind and rendering his IQ in half since he’d first seen it. 

“You don’t strike me as the shy type.”

“I didn’t say I was shy. I said I was nervous.”

Parrying on the nerve he had clearly hit, Ed took another step closer to where you stood by the dresser. 

“What are you nervous about then? Worried you might be able to perform to my standards?”

You stifled a laugh which turned into a choked snort. Ed’s eyebrows narrowed as an irritated, but falsified, frown formed. 

“No, I’m worried this might be a waste of time. I’m beginning to think I should have been far more shrewd in choosing a potential participant. That I shouldn’t have let my partner jump at the chance for, and I emphasise that this is their words and not mine, ‘a celebrity’ involved in our sex life.”

“A celebrity, hm?”

Eyes rolling dangerously to the back of your head, you sighed and returned to the bed, untucking the tightly made sheets and setting out the lube you had brought for the occasion. You ignored his question until you were walking away back towards the dresser. 

“In name only, Nygma. In name only.”

The warmth in your smile was obvious, unable to be hidden as you enjoyed the back and forth. Strangely enough, he put you at ease, like you had known him your whole life. He picked up on the banter, the tone, never offended and never offending. Not truly anyway. 

Without breaking eye contact, you reached for the camera on the dresser. It was borrowed from a friend, loaded with your own memory card. Better to have these things separate from something like a phone or a laptop. Your private life, and Ed’s, you supposed, were worth protecting in any way you could. You looked up to him once through your eyelashes, a silent question asked as your fingers hovered over the buttons on the camera, one which he responded to with a slow nod. 

“I won’t beg, Mr Nygma, bu-”

“Ed. Eddie. Edward. Anything but Mr Nygma. I think formalities need to be set aside for an occasion such as this.”

Ignoring the urge to chastise him for interrupting, you continued.”

“I won’t bed, Ed. But I will say… I do want this. And while I’m still undecided on whether the choice of candidate was a mistake or not, I can hardly hide the fact that there’s an element of excitement that comes with you. One I’m keen to experience fully.”

To your surprise, Ed only nodded, self-admiration written over his face as he nodded in agreement. Not wanting to give him any more satisfaction from that little admittance of the truth, you turned away from him, bending in front of the dresser. You angled the camera as best as you could towards the bed. A high definition reflection on the side screen showed you the view, almost perfect, the bed behind you where Ed sat still, silently, and not so covertly admiring your rear in the position you were in. 

“Enjoying the view?”

“It would be rather pointless me being here if I didn’t, don’t you think?”

Quick, sharp. You were going to have to keep up with him, unless you wanted him to ever think he had the upper hand. 

“I don’t know, Mr Ny-... Ed… I do wonder how many prospects you have given your reputation.”

Ed laughed, leaning back on the bed, nimble fingers undoing another button on his shirt as he made himself more comfortable. 

“And you? Like what you see?”

It had been so quick, the nervous glance to the side, to where the camera sat just behind you. All three of the parties were consenting, but you weren’t sure how into it you should be. Jealousy might make a fire, but it was one that could potentially burn out of control. Sensing the question, understanding it before you had even really asked it to yourself, Ed offered what was conceivably a solution.

“Of course you do. Who wouldn’t? Look at me, I’m adorable.”

When you brought your eyes to him, you could see that he was looking directly into the lens of the camera. He was putting on a show. That made it just a little bit easier for you to play along with, calming your nerves, giving you some direction. And while words still weren;t coming to you, Ed was happy to continue the delivery of his own lines in this role which suited him so well. 

“You can say it. In fact, I might make you. Because, after all, what was even the point in letting me have you if you weren’t going to be a good little slut for us both and enjoy yourself?”

With wide eyes you swallowed the collecting drool as he looked at you, staring intensely as he spoke his next words, no longer focused on the audience, but giving his full attention to you. 

“Or is that question a little too hard? Too difficult for you? You can take it with you as homework then. Oooh, Professor Nygma… I like the sound of that… Do you think they let ex-cons teach night classes?”

You looked to him, smirking at the suggestion that he’d place himself in such a reserved position on the academic ladder. Returning your stare, he rolled his eyes and scoffed. 

“Oh, come on. I’m egomaniacal, yes, but I am a genius. I’d have to be pretty stupid to think I’m going to be the fucking department head with tenure. Not with my rap sheet… Babs might vouch for me though…”

He caught your eye, realising he had trailed off of the important events of the day.

“... maybe roleplay isn’t the way to go, I tend to get distracted with the details… Anyway!”

Eddie clasped his hands together, folding all but his two pointer fingers together and pointing them both, hands clasped behind him, straight at you. 

“Shall we begin?”

“An odd way to propose sex.”

Striking his cheek with his palm in a look of faux shock, Eddie gasped.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, how formal of me. Just trying to play the part here, y’know? What would you rather I said? Hop on the bed so I cna fuck you good and hard? Or something in between? You know, if we postpone actually having sex a little while longer, we could really labour over this and come to the correct answer if you want?”

Before either of you were really aware of it, the heel of your hands were pressed into his collarbones, fingers clutching his shoulders as you pushed him down flat onto the mattress, settling yourself on top of him, thighs straddling his waist. 

“Ah, now this is more like it! I enjoy a ‘take charge’ lover.”

But as the words came out of his mouth, you found yourself losing balance, his arms surprisingly strong for all that he was slender and toned, and he had you pinned down on your back in no time. Each of his hands curled around your wrists, holding your own arms above your head. He marvelled at you for a moment, allowing himself to indulge in the vision before him. Breasts spilling over the top of your lingerie, your hair in loose curls spread over the bedsheets like a halo. Your cheeks flushed as his dominance sunk in.

The way he looked down at you. Condescending, controlling, authoritative. Irritatingly sexy. It made you forget who you were and what you were doing. So much so that you had stopped pushing your wrists out against him, instead almost admitting defeat in your lovestruck stupor. 

“I hadn’t thought of you as someone who would give up so easily. I imagined you’d have a little fight in you.”

“Are you saying… you’d rather I was difficult to control?” 

He mulled this over, looking to the ceiling as if it held the answer, before his eyes shot back down to catch your gaze.

“No. Not at all. But I do enjoy a challenge. It’s far more… stimulating for me.”

With a gleeful giggle, you tried to struggle against him, wishing you had your hands free to hide your blush. You teased him, sticking your tongue out before you spoke.

“I know what we’re here for, but I’m not about to take orders from you.”

“Now that is exactly the kind of bratty attitude I was hoping for. If you keep that up, I’ll have no complaints to make.”

“Oh what? Are you going to give me a bad review otherwise?”

“We’ll see.”

He let go of your arms, his body still above you as he knelt on the bed, back straight, your hips closed in by his thighs. With his now free hands, he unbuckled his belt, slowly pulling the leather strap through the loops of his pants and tightening it around his knuckles. This display, the dominance, Ed could feel it soothing him, his chest swelling with pride at his ability to command anyone, or anything. Beneath the fabric of his pants he felt his cock, now semi-erect, twitching in response to the pleasure he received from the way you bit your lip, anticipating his next move. 

“Roll over and push your ass out.”

“Please.”

He was suddenly at your level, catching you as mid-roll and pressing his lips to the shell of your ear.

“You're mouthy, and yet you do exactly as you’re told. What a little conundrum you’re turning out to be. Does your partner take this kind of attitude from you? What am I saying, of course they do. A pathetic cuck? I’m surprised this was even partly their idea.”

You stayed silent, wriggling around onto your stomach and pressing your hips up and out towards Edward. It was a desperate display, but you felt like he was due some leeway. Besides, as much as you enjoyed being a nuisance, you wanted this just as much as he seemed to, so a little bit of giving in meant you could reassure him that you were still very much interested. 

He didn’t seem deterred, though, as you felt a soft thud against the base of your spine, a warmth on the skin as Ed lay his fully erect cock against you. His hips rolled softly, allowing himself the pleasure of friction as he spoke, almost in a whisper, but loud enough that he knew the camera would pick it up.

“So, how do I compare then? And there is a correct answer, so that better be the one you give me. And be sure to speak up, we wouldn’t want to miss any juicy gossip for the record.”

And then, quiet enough that only you would hear, his lips so close to your ear that his lips would be covered from the lens.

“Make sure to play it up for the camera. I want them to be seething at home.”

Trying to suppress your giddy glee, you kept your face away from the view of the lens, hiding the grin and the blush as you spoke. It wasn’t the best quality acting you could do, but you were flustered, nervous, and excited. 

“I hate to give you the ego boost, since you definitely don’t need it… but credit where credit is due, you do feel far more impressive, Eddie.”

“Mmm, it does feel good to hear someone else say it.”

Ed grabbed your hips, pressing his cock between your soft, plush ass cheeks. With what sounded almost like a trembling whimper, he slid it up and down, masturbating himself with your flesh, letting his fingers dig deep into your love handles as he held you in place, fingernails making impressions in your skin that you hoped would last long enough for you to admire them later, alone.

You nodded, biting your lip to hold back the guttural groan of ‘yes’ that longed to come out. But nodding wasn’t enough for Ed, evident by the way he reached for your cheek, hand caressing it gently, holding you firmly in place. 

“I asked you a question. It would be impolite not to answer it. Unless of course, you don’t have an answer… but I don’t expect that you’re truly that stupid, despite knowing that my assumptions are never incorrect.

Nodding again, you made sure to utter a clear answer alongside the motion.

“Yes, I’m ready for you.”

His hand slipped away, thumb grazing over your lip as he went, and he busied himself with the lube by the side of the bed. 

“I would have expected a please, or a more excited tone. But I think I know you well enough now.”

With his cock coated in lube, he pressed the tip against your lips, sliding himself in easily, but carefully. The way he filled you up, pushing past your natural instinct to clench around him, made your mouth open in a silent gasp. Without realising it, you arched your back to give him a better angle, pushed your hips into him to help him enter you further. 

“Patience, dear. Good things come to those who wait.”

His condescending tone, the patronising way he chose to lecture you for wanting him, only made your desire for him stronger. And as much as you wanted to push yourself back on him, cheeks meeting his abdomen as you felt him squirm at being completely inside of you so quickly, you did as you were told and eased up, relaxing further into the mattress, lifting your ass higher, spreading your thighs wider, to make it easier for him to tease you.

Each little bit of himself that entered you felt better than the last, and you let out a sigh of relief as you felt his high, tight balls graze against you. Eddie stayed there, still, relishing in the warmth of your body for just a moment before he pulled back out, almost completely, and then eased in once more. Quicker this time, but still not as rough and ready as you wanted. You were aching for him, your body clenching around him to keep him inside of you. And you were certain he could tell how desperate you were. 

“Someone’s enjoying themself… is this a new sensation for you?”

You whimpered as he brought a hand down to your cunt, fingers pressed flat to it as he stroked your skin, your hair, teasing around your clit until you twitched, at which point he withdrew the source of satisfaction. Cruel, and in control.

“No answer again… well, how about an easier one for you?”

Eddie’s pace stayed the same, slow, almost painfully slow, but each thrust into your body was firmer, with more effort behind it, as he spoke. 

“Tell me, and please do note that this is a question simple enough that even your pleasure-addled mind will be able to answer it, so make sure that you do…”

You rolled your eyes, aware he couldn’t see the feature from his position behind you, and knowing full well that in his typical self-satisfied and sanctimonious way, that his eyelids would be gently closed anyway while he was talking down to you.

“... do they ever make you feel like this? Do they tease you to the point where you’re just desperate, close to begging like a good little slut? Or is it just me that makes you this wet, so needy? Hm?”

The silence between you spoke volumes. He was right, it was a simple question. And one with a very obvious answer. But it was one you weren’t quite willing to accept, not just yet anyway. And certainly not at the behest of Edward Nygma. Besides, he said he liked a challenge, so it was surely your duty in this role to hold out a little bit with any praise, despite the fact that you could have happily opened the windows and screamed to all of Gotham how good it felt to be fucked by the Riddler.

And Eddie seemed ok with you not offering him a response, despite his demanding one moments ago.

“Fine, fine. Keep quiet. I’ll remember that though! And I’m deducting one point from you. You’ll be taking home a terrible report card. Won’t they just be the picture of disappointment.”

It was hard to contain the excited, mischievous giggle that fell over your lips, but it was a sound that made Edward smile. He liked the confirmation that, over everything else, you were enjoying yourself. It would make for a far better experience for you, and for him, and for your partner, watching later, irritated that some previously thought ineffectual nerd had you begging for his touch and laughing along with his charms.

That stroke of his ego, the kind that had him purring like a cat, that was what he was hoping to get out of this. Imagining, as he had to with this particular set up, the emotional scarring, the ego bruising that your partner might experience at his hands, or at his cock. The way they might wince at his cheesy lines, at the way he spoke them without thinking, without worry, and still managed to have you swooning over him. That he was so unforgettable, to them and to you, so annoyingly wonderful, just as wonderful as he thought himself to be. Committing that kind of crime, against someone’s confidence. That was his specialty, and he was glad he found a legal way of committing it. 

“I don’t need you to give me the answer anyway… I’m Edward fucking Nygma. I don’t need help to be correct.”

His pace quickened, his hips barrelling into you as he fucked you harder and faster, picking up the speed and the force as he continued his self-congratulations, the demeaning, humiliating words aimed at your partner. 

“They can’t be any better than me… you’re so tight… so quick to bend to me… to fit me in… to clench around my shape…”

A hand clapped against the side of your rear, the most forceful thing he had done so far, spurring your heart into a frenzy.

“So tight… feels good to get stretched out, hm?”

You could feel his cock twitching, turning himself on inside of you as he upped the effort he was putting into the gimmick. Or was it even really a gimmick? Someone like him, like the Riddler, who for all intents and purposes seemed to forever be trying to prove himself… Cuckolding someone’s partner while complimenting himself seemed par for the course. 

“I feel like I can really leave my mark on you… would they like that?”

So much of your effort was placed into keeping yourself up and calm, not wanting to collapse into an almost immediate orgasm under his control.

“Would you like that?”

The way he fucked you felt amazing, different, not better, than your partner. But it was an experience you wouldn’t forget quickly. His tone, his arrogance, they all added to his specific brand of attraction. But the way his hands smoothed over your waist, around to your stomach. How he held his breath as he felt the slight jiggle of your soft skin. You could feel him, rutting into you like a stud, wild and animalistic, but his touch was still gentle, secure, as though he had remained entirely focused on the fact that he was still a stranger to you, despite the surface level of familiarity he seemed to exude.

There was care in the way he held himself. It made sense. He didn’t seem like the type to half-ass a job of any description.

It was probably why you felt yourself coming undone so soon, against your will almost. You’d wanted it to last longer, desperate to keep him for as long as you could. And luckily, even as he felt your arousal dripping out of you around his cock, he kept pumping, only gripping tighter.

“I’m not… done with you… yet…”

Ed thrust into you, keeping himself still for a moment as he maintained his composure, unsure of how much longer he could keep up, but refusing to succumb easily. The hair on his chest had begun to mat with the sweat that dripped down, his hair no longer slicked back neatly into the tidy style from before. Instead, strands draped in front of his eyes, giving him a dishevelled look that suited the deep, guttural grunts that poured over his lips like granulated sugar. 

“Does your partner let you get away with that? With coming first and then stopping?”

Even through the frantic moans and frenzied motions he still put the effort into the humiliation, ever committed to his work. 

“Keep going… that’s it… You’re still mine until I’ve filled you up. I wouldn’t want to have to leave without tainting what’s theirs. A moment preserved in time forever. Featuring yours truly.”

With a slight vocal flourish as he referred to himself, you could feel Eddie losing control, his fingers pressed tighter into your skin, but his grip loosening up as the rest of his body tensed up, almost completely rigid as he prepared himself for the orgasm that began surging through him. 

Ed’s seed was warm within your walls, and as he pulled himself free of your satisfied cunt you could feel it dripping down over your skin. A quick, playful smack against your rear cheeks told you it was over. Regretfully so, you mused. A brief encounter with the Riddler. It would have been disappointingly short had it lasted a week. There would never be enough of him. His ego was well-deserved, though you would never consider admitting that to him. 

You would have the memories though. Preserved for as long as the medium you stored it on was available. It wasn’t something you’d give up easily, and it wasn’t something you wanted to forget in any kind of hurry.

He had walked away, presumably to get dressed, so you followed suit, making your way to the bathroom. But as you approached the door, Ed moved in front of it,blocking you from entering. As you stood there in a stalemate, trying hard to keep your eyes from wandering down his smooth, slim chest, you folded your arms and sighed.

“Make as much fuss as you want, but you’re not going in there. Don’t bother with modesty, and don’t bother showering.”

In response to the quick shift in your eyebrows and your questioning gaze he continued.

“Pull up your panties and head on straight home.”

“But-”

“Think of it as a… souvenir. Surely your partner will be expecting you to bring them a little something back other than just the tape.”

He brought his fingers to your cunt, still wet with your own slick, sticky with his cum, spreading the collected arousal around.

“A little extra proof. Something to keep me in your mind a little longer. Although I doubt you’ll be able to forget me quickly. No one is.”

He laid a hand on your cheek, pushing his lips out in a pout as he kissed at the air in front of you. 

“And don’t try to argue about it. Let’s leave on a high note, shall we?” 

A wink, a grin that you couldn’t help but return. A high note indeed.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dave Jamieson and Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost:

Federal employees are receiving fresh “deferred resignation” offers in their inboxes as the Trump administration takes another shot at pushing them off the government payrolls. Workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security were told Monday they were being given another chance to accept the White House’s “Fork in the Road” proposal, according to emails viewed by HuffPost. VA workers were given until April 30 to accept, while DHS workers were given until April 14. As outlined by the administration, workers who take the deferred resignation deal would remain on the payroll through September while performing little or no work. It’s part of the Trump administration’s effort, spearheaded by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to cut a large chunk of the federal workforce by legally dubious means. The White House is trying to use the threat of looming layoffs to persuade more workers to take the “Fork in the Road” offer. Agencies across the federal government are developing what are known as “reduction in force” plans to be rolled out in the coming weeks, potentially leading to the elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Many workers have chosen to resign rather than face more uncertainty and firings. In the VA email, Secretary Doug Collins wrote that the agency was offering “another opportunity to take advantage of the deferred resignation offer” — one that came with a warning. “Should you elect to not take the DRP, VA cannot provide assurance regarding the certainty of your position moving forward,” Collins wrote. The deferred resignation proposal was initially made to workers in late January. At the time, the administration set what it portrayed as a firm deadline of Feb. 6 in hopes of pressuring as many employees as possible to take it. The “Fork in the Road” page on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management website even says the program “is now closed” and not accepting new resignations.

[...] Federal News Network reported Monday that employees at the Internal Revenue Service were just given a “second and final” chance to accept the deal. Last week, similar offers were made at the Defense Department, the Small Business Administration and the Housing and Urban Development Department, among other agencies. The Monday email from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the deferred resignation program was still on the menu, along with other, more standard early retirement and voluntary separation programs.

The Trump/Musk Regime is trying to bully more federal workers into signing on to the “Fork In The Road” memo in a bid to get them off of the federal government payroll.

[whatbigotspost]

Guys. If you follow me you well know 1) I can be petty as hell and 2) I am always happy to write extremely long and thorough take downs when needed and 3) I love sourcing things and know no limits to spending my time on BEING RIGHT 😂

Well today I brought all of this at work, cranked to an 11. Some technology service we pay for tried to claim they’re taking us to collections for lack of payment when both myself and one of my fave coworkers has spent the past year trying over and over to get them to correctly link the payment we 100% did pay (and we have provided ample evidence of doing so) to our account. We have asked their customer service to help us a dozen times and when prodded, their staff has admitted more than once that we did pay and the outstanding balance is wrong. But they just. don’t. CLEAR THE GODDAMN BALANCE ON OUR ACCOUNT ONCE AND FOR ALL.

And like…WE are the customers here! And nonprofit customers at that! It’s so unhinged for a megacorp to treat us this way when our resources are so limited. Like you’re really threatening a charity with collections?? for?? something?? we?? did?? pay??

When said beloved coworker first saw the collections threat email earlier today, I think a little piece of her soul died, as did mine…and when she asked me what we do now that I was like friend leave it to me, this is where I shine!!!

And I went full on me. Professional me but like me writing as many words as I wanted to. Pulling historical proof, asking why we’re being treated like this when we’re a small nonprofit who they could be donating this stuff to anyway, instead of taking up our time to waste because they don’t know how to run their business or comport themselves professionally. I had proof of payment in not one but 2 forms, email threads with 6 people in company who had contacted me and I attempted to get help me but who ultimately did not.

Like I’ll be the first to admit it was overkill in the most deliciously “how fucking dare you” way BUT ultra restrained and like appropriate corporate speak style where it’s a “your company is a pack of assholes” but more like…

(Ugh ignore typos!)

Like I’m not kidding when I acknowledge my own ridiculousness here but you can only be treated terribly by someone YOU HAVE PAID before you snap, ya know? 😂 and I snapped.

Well after I hit send, I was like “oh god will beloved coworker think I am fully off my rocker…”

BUTTTTTT I got this lil gem on slack

[4bttnra]

Heather Cox Richardson

February 3, 2025 (Monday)

I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.

But they are not doing that.

Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes.

The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup. The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical.

But Republicans are allowing Musk to run amok. This could be because they know that Trump has embraced the idea that the American government is a “Deep State,” but that the extreme cuts the MAGA Republicans say they want are actually quite unpopular with Americans in general, and even with most Republican voters. By letting Musk make the cuts the MAGA base wants, they can both provide those cuts and distance themselves from them.

But permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.

Musk’s team in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has taken control of the U.S. Treasury payment systems that handle about $6 trillion in annual transactions for the U.S. government, thus gaining access to Americans' personal information as well as information about Musk's competitors. From there, Musk claims to have been cancelling those transactions he thinks are wasteful. He claims, for example, to have “deleted” the popular Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Direct File system that enabled people to file their taxes online for free, without the help of paid tax preparers.

Musk’s team apparently consists of six engineers, aged 19 to 24, who are taking control of the computers at government agencies. From the Treasury Department, they went on to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Their breaching of the computers there compromises our national intelligence systems, which must now be considered insecure.

From there, they went on to the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal government’s 7,500 or so buildings. Musk’s people sent an email to regional managers telling them to begin ending the leases on federal offices. According to Chris Megerian of the Associated Press, the person in charge of that initiative is Nicole Hollander, who describes herself on LinkedIn as employed at Musk’s social media company, X.

Today, according to an email sent to employees of the Small Business Administration, Musk’s people have gotten into that agency’s human resources, contracts, and payment systems. The Small Business Administration supports small businesses and entrepreneurs, and under the Biden-Harris administration, small businesses boomed thanks to small-dollar loans to women, Black, and Latino entrepreneurs.

By this afternoon, Musk’s people were digging into the data of the Department of Education with an eye to dismantling it from the inside before Trump tries to shut it down with an executive order, although only Congress itself can shutter the department. According to Laura Meckler, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post, Musk’s DOGE staffers had accessed sensitive internal data systems, including the personal information of millions of students who are taking part in the federal student aid program. It is highly unlikely that Congress would destroy the Department of Education, so Musk and Trump hope to hollow it out from within.

On a livestream last night, Musk said of his destruction of the federal government: “If it’s not possible now, it will never be possible. This is our shot, This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. If we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.”

Three federal employees unions are suing the Trump administration to stop Musk, and today, Democratic members of the House and Senate tried to enter the USAID building but were denied entry. Led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Democrats condemned what Raskin called Musk and Trump’s “illegal, unconstitutional interference with congressional power.”

“Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury,” Raskin said, “but you don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that—under Article I of the Constitution. And just like the president, who was elected to something, cannot impound the money of the people, we don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk. And that’s going to become real clear.”

Senator Murphy said: "[L]et's not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions of dollars based off of his business with China. And China is cheering at [the destruction of USAID]. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our government right now is doing it based on self-interest: their belief that if they can make us weaker in the world, if they can elevate their business partners all around the world, they will gain the benefit.”

Murphy continued: “But there’s another reason this is happening. They’re shuttering agencies and sending employees home in order to create the illusion that they’re saving money, in order to…pass a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations.”

While Musk and his DOGE team are trying systematically to dismantle the government, today Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in grants and loans before DOGE got going. AliKhan said that by impounding funds—which Congress declared illegal in 1974—Trump’s Office of Management and Budget “attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it.” It is Congress, not the president, that determines federal spending.

Meanwhile, the elected president, Donald Trump, sparked a crisis last Friday when his White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced that he fully intended to go through with the trade war he had hyped on the campaign trail. Trump announced he would levy tariffs of 25% on most products from Mexico and Canada and of 10% on products from China, beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, in violation of the trade agreement his own team had negotiated during his first term.

As soon as Leavitt announced the upcoming tariffs, the stock market began to fall, and by last night, stock market futures had fallen 450 points on the expectation of tariffs hitting at midnight tonight. Today, the stock market continued to fall. Even reliable Trump allies began to complain that the tariffs would raise prices. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called Trump’s tariffs “the dumbest trade war in history.”

Today, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that she and Trump had “reached a series of agreements” that would pause the threatened tariffs for a month. Mexico agreed to “reinforce the northern border with 10,000 elements of the National Guard immediately, to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States,” while the U.S. “commits to work to prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.”

When Trump announced their conversation shortly afterward, he omitted the part of the agreement that committed the U.S. to try to stop the flow of guns to Mexico. He also did not mention that, in fact, Mexico committed to putting 10,000 troops at the border in 2021. As Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post commented: “Any news outlet reporting Mexico conceded anything to Trump to get him to delay tariffs has not done its homework. Trump boasts he got Mexico to commit to stationing 10K troops at our border. Apparently he didn't realize Mexico already has 15K troops deployed there[.]”

The crisis at the northern border worked out in a similar fashion. After conferring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump announced a 30-day pause in the implementation of tariffs. Trudeau agreed to appoint a border czar and to implement a $1.3 billion border plan that Canada had announced in December.

In other words, while Musk was causing a constitutional crisis, Trump created an economic crisis that threatened both domestic and global chaos, then claimed Biden administration achievements as his own and declared victory.

The tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect as planned. China has promised to levy tariffs of up to 15% on certain U.S. products beginning a week from today. It also said it will investigate Google to see if it has violated antitrust laws.

[amirhamza74]

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[houseofbrat]

Blast from the past

Back to 2023, when Valentine Low was still writing for The Times.

But just over a year into his service as Prince of Wales it is becoming clear that William is the prince who wants to do things differently, from seaweed to royal warrants. [...] However, behind the scenes it is also apparent that quietly, and without making a great fuss about it, William questions many of the ingrained traditions that the royal family has long taken for granted. He often asks his advisers: “Is there a way of doing these things genuinely a bit differently?” One example is the system of royal warrants, which recognises people or companies that provide goods or services to the royal household. Present holders range from Fortnum & Mason to a firm of chimney sweeps. At the moment, the issuing of royal warrants is not William’s responsibility, but he has already been asking whether warrants could go to supporting up-and-coming young artists, for instance — not because they are an established business but as a way of giving them support.

Well, well, well...

Back in September 2023, Kensington Palace had no problem spilling to Valentine Low William's "different" plans for royal warrants. Something that sounds far more like a patronage than a warrant.

William doesn't do much support for his patronages to begin with. What would an artist really gain from having a "warrant" by him? Also, it's interesting that William is the one listed as wanting to support artists when he graduated with a degree in geography instead of art history, like his wife.

William has already shaken up the system of patronages. The late Queen Elizabeth was patron of more than 600 charities. Apart from his military affiliations, William has 38. “By royal standards that is very small,” said the source. “That is deliberate.” It reflects his desire to have a deeper and more meaningful relationship with the organisations with which he is connected.

Yeah. 38 patronages circa 2023. He's picked up a few more since then. A FEW. Which puts the number into the 40s. He can't support any more because then he might have to do regular royal work, and he doesn't want to do that within his 32 working weeks per year.

If it's not the Earthshot Prize or Homewards, William doesn't seem to do that much for his patronage these days. I have yet to see "a deeper and more meaningful relationship" with his patronages demonstrated.

But still, notice that back in September 2023, we were all supposed to start thinking about Will & Kate's patronages & warrants, even though they did not have the ability to issue royal warrants.

Cut to one year ago on 09 January 2024, when non-royal-rota reporters James Hurley and Hannah Prevett published an article on businesses and royal warrants for The Times.

There aren’t many clubs where you’ll find premium fashion brands, famous sports car marques and top champagne producers rubbing shoulders with the providers of portable toilets, laundry services and horse riding helmets. All these and many more are members of the Royal Warrant Holders Association, which represents individuals and companies lucky enough to hold what it calls a “mark of recognition with a unique status in business” — royal warrants, which recognise the supply of goods or services to the royal household. There are about 800 holders, including famous names such as Aston Martin, Burberry and Coca-Cola, as well as hundreds of small companies. All are in the midst of the biggest shake-up of the system in decades. Last week the association, which administers the system, provided holders with some long-awaited details of the timetable for the overhaul of warrants required following the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of the King. About 570 holders of royal warrants have been sent application packs to apply for new ones from Charles III. Decisions are “expected in the autumn”, an email from the association seen by The Times says. The email contains the first confirmation that Queen Camilla will become a “grantor” of warrants, opening up fresh opportunities for companies to secure royal recognition. Applications for warrants to the Queen will open in May, as will applications from non-warrant-holders to secure one from the King. Decisions on this will be made in March next year. In March this year, former Prince of Wales warrant-holders will learn whether applications for a warrant from the King have been successful, the email says. Craig Beaumont, chief of external affairs at the Federation of Small Businesses, said: “This provides certainty for holders and a ‘royal roadmap’ through 2024 into 2025, for those applying for the very first time to be new suppliers to HM the King and HM the Queen.”

Look at that! Actual specific details and a timeline!

Did everyone notice that there is an actual association that manages the royal warrants? Not just mouthpieces from KP insinuating that Will & Kate are going to issue warrants "in due course."

If Will & Kate were going to be issuing royal warrants soon, then businesses would already have application packets available so that they could apply. The Royal Warrant Holders Association would have the requirement details and a timeline of when Will & Kate's royal warrants were going to be issued.

Details conveniently missing from any recent article about Will & Kate issuing royal warrants soon. Those details are missing because Will & Kate do not have the ability to issue warrants yet, and clearly are not going to get the ability in the near future.

Just like Kate's "gradual return," it ain't happening this year!