#Financial Reporting Lectures

[hotzimbabwejobs]

Shape the Future of Accounting: Lecturer/Professor Opportunities at NUST! - March 2025

The National University of Science and Technology (NUST) is seeking dedicated and experienced academics to join their Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences, Department of Accounting Sciences, as Lecturers/Senior Lecturers/Associate Professors! If you’re passionate about accounting education and research, this is an excellent opportunity to contribute to the development of future accounting…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

With Great Power Came No Responsibility

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in NYC TONIGHT (26 Feb) with JOHN HODGMAN and at PENN STATE TOMORROW (Feb 27). More tour dates here. Mail-order signed copies from LA's Diesel Books.

Last night, I traveled to Toronto to deliver the annual Ursula Franklin Lecture at the University of Toronto's Innis College:

The lecture was called "With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It." It's the latest major speech in my series of talks on the subject, which started with last year's McLuhan Lecture in Berlin:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

And continued with a summer Defcon keynote:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

This speech specifically addresses the unique opportunities for disenshittification created by Trump's rapid unscheduled midair disassembly of the international free trade system. The US used trade deals to force nearly every country in the world to adopt the IP laws that make enshittification possible, and maybe even inevitable. As Trump burns these trade deals to the ground, the rest of the world has an unprecedented opportunity to retaliate against American bullying by getting rid of these laws and producing the tools, devices and services that can protect every tech user (including Americans) from being ripped off by US Big Tech companies.

I'm so grateful for the chance to give this talk. I was hosted for the day by the Centre for Culture and Technology, which was founded by Marshall McLuhan, and is housed in the coach house he used for his office. The talk itself took place in Innis College, named for Harold Innis, who is definitely the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan. What's more, I was mentored by Innis's daughter, Anne Innis Dagg, a radical, brilliant feminist biologist who pretty much invented the field of giraffology:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

But with all respect due to Anne and her dad, Ursula Franklin is the thinking person's Harold Innis. A brilliant scientist, activist and communicator who dedicated her life to the idea that the most important fact about a technology wasn't what it did, but who it did it for and who it did it to. Getting to work out of McLuhan's office to present a talk in Innis's theater that was named after Franklin? Swoon!

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

Here's the text of the talk, lightly edited:

I know tonight’s talk is supposed to be about decaying tech platforms, but I want to start by talking about nurses.

A January 2025 report from Groundwork Collective documents how increasingly nurses in the USA are hired through gig apps – "Uber for nurses” – so nurses never know from one day to the next whether they're going to work, or how much they'll get paid.

There's something high-tech going on here with those nurses' wages. These nursing apps – a cartel of three companies, Shiftkey, Shiftmed and Carerev – can play all kinds of games with labor pricing.

Before Shiftkey offers a nurse a shift, it purchases that worker's credit history from a data-broker. Specifically, it pays to find out how much credit-card debt the nurse is carrying, and whether it is overdue.

The more desperate the nurse's financial straits are, the lower the wage on offer. Because the more desperate you are, the less you'll accept to come and do the gruntwork of caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying.

Now, there are lots of things going on here, and they're all terrible. What's more, they are emblematic of “enshittification,” the word I coined to describe the decay of online platforms.

When I first started writing about this, I focused on the external symptology of enshittification, a three stage process:

First, the platform is good to its end users, while finding a way to lock them in.

Like Google, which minimized ads and maximized spending on engineering for search results, even as they bought their way to dominance, bribing every service or product with a search box to make it a Google search box.

So no matter what browser you used, what mobile OS you used, what carrier you had, you would always be searching on Google by default. This got so batshit that by the early 2020s, Google was spending enough money to buy a whole-ass Twitter, every year or two, just to make sure that no one ever tried a search engine that wasn't Google.

That's stage one: be good to end users, lock in end users.

Stage two is when the platform starts to abuse end users to tempt in and enrich business customers. For Google, that’s advertisers and web publishers. An ever-larger fraction of a Google results page is given over to ads, which are marked with ever-subtler, ever smaller, ever grayer labels. Google uses its commercial surveillance data to target ads to us.

So that's stage two: things get worse for end users and get better for business customers.

But those business customers also get locked into the platform, dependent on those customers. Once businesses are getting as little as 10% of their revenue from Google, leaving Google becomes an existential risk. We talk a lot about Google's "monopoly" power, which is derived from its dominance as a seller. But Google is also a monopsony, a powerful buyer.

So now you have Google acting as a monopolist to its users (stage one), and a monoposonist for its business customers (stage two) and here comes stage three: where Google claws back all the value in the platform, save a homeopathic residue calculated to keep end users locked in, and business customers locked to those end users.

Google becomes enshittified.

In 2019, Google had a turning point. Search had grown as much as it possibly could. More than 90% of us used Google for search, and we searched for everything. Any thought or idle question that crossed our minds, we typed into Google.

How could Google grow? There were no more users left to switch to Google. We weren't going to search for more things. What could Google do?

Well, thanks to internal memos published during last year's monopoly trial against Google, we know what they did. They made search worse. They reduced the system's accuracy it so you had to search twice or more to get to the answer, thus doubling the number of queries, and doubling the number of ads.

Meanwhile, Google entered into a secret, illegal collusive arrangement with Facebook, codenamed Jedi Blue, to rig the ad market, fixing prices so advertisers paid more and publishers got less.

And that's how we get to the enshittified Google of today, where every query serves back a blob of AI slop, over five paid results tagged with the word AD in 8-point, 10% grey on white type, which is, in turn, over ten spammy links from SEO shovelware sites filled with more AI slop.

And yet, we still keep using Google, because we're locked into it. That's enshittification, from the outside. A company that's good to end users, while locking them in. Then it makes things worse for end users, to make things better for business customers, while locking them in. Then it takes all the value for itself and turns into a giant pile of shit.

Enshittification, a tragedy in three acts.

I started off focused on the outward signs of enshittification, but I think it's time we start thinking about what's going in inside the companies to make enshittification possible.

What is the technical mechanism for enshittification? I call it twiddling. Digital businesses have infinite flexibility, bequeathed to them by the marvellously flexible digital computers they run on. That means that firms can twiddle the knobs that control the fundamental aspects of their business. Every time you interact with a firm, everything is different: prices, costs, search rankings, recommendations.

Which takes me back to our nurses. This scam, where you look up the nurse's debt load and titer down the wage you offer based on it in realtime? That's twiddling. It's something you can only do with a computer. The bosses who are doing this aren't more evil than bosses of yore, they just have better tools.

Note that these aren't even tech bosses. These are health-care bosses, who happen to have tech.

Digitalization – weaving networked computers through a firm or a sector – enables this kind of twiddling that allows firms to shift value around, from end users to business customers, from business customers back to end users, and eventually, inevitably, to themselves.

And digitalization is coming to every sector – like nursing. Which means enshittification is coming to every sector – like nursing.

The legal scholar Veena Dubal coined a term to describe the twiddling that suppresses the wages of debt-burdened nurses. It's called "Algorithmic Wage Discrimination," and it follows the gig economy.

The gig economy is a major locus of enshittification, and it’s the largest tear in the membrane separating the virtual world from the real world. Gig work, where your shitty boss is a shitty app, and you aren't even allowed to call yourself an employee.

Uber invented this trick. Drivers who are picky about the jobs the app puts in front of them start to get higher wage offers. But if they yield to temptation and take some of those higher-waged option, then the wage starts to go down again, in random intervals, by small increments, designed to be below the threshold for human perception. Not so much boiling the frog as poaching it, until the Uber driver has gone into debt to buy a new car, and given up the side hustles that let them be picky about the rides they accepted. Then their wage goes down, and down, and down.

Twiddling is a crude trick done quickly. Any task that's simple but time consuming is a prime candidate for automation, and this kind of wage-theft would be unbearably tedious, labor-intensive and expensive to perform manually. No 19th century warehouse full of guys with green eyeshades slaving over ledgers could do this. You need digitalization.

Twiddling nurses' hourly wages is a perfect example of the role digitization pays in enshittification. Because this kind of thing isn't just bad for nurses – it's bad for patients, too. Do we really think that paying nurses based on how desperate they are, at a rate calculated to increase that desperation, and thus decrease the wage they are likely to work for, is going to result in nurses delivering the best care?

Do you want to your catheter inserted by a nurse on food stamps, who drove an Uber until midnight the night before, and skipped breakfast this morning in order to make rent?

This is why it’s so foolish to say "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." “If you’re not paying for the product” ascribes a mystical power to advertising-driven services: the power to bypass our critical faculties by surveilling us, and data-mining the resulting dossiers to locate our mental bind-spots, and weaponize them to get us to buy anything an advertiser is selling.

In this formulation, we are complicit in our own exploitation. By choosing to use "free" services, we invite our own exploitation by surveillance capitalists who have perfected a mind-control ray powered by the surveillance data we're voluntarily handing over by choosing ad-driven services.

The moral is that if we only went back to paying for things, instead of unrealistically demanding that everything be free, we would restore capitalism to its functional, non-surveillant state, and companies would start treating us better, because we'd be the customers, not the products.

That's why the surveillance capitalism hypothesis elevates companies like Apple as virtuous alternatives. Because Apple charges us money, rather than attention, it can focus on giving us better service, rather than exploiting us.

There's a superficially plausible logic to this. After all, in 2022, Apple updated its iOS operating system, which runs on iPhones and other mobile devices, introducing a tick box that allowed you to opt out of third-party surveillance, most notably Facebook’s.

96% of Apple customers ticked that box. The other 4% were, presumably drunk, or Facebook employees, or Facebook employees who were drunk. Which makes sense, because if I worked for Facebook, I'd be drunk all the time.

So on the face of it, it seems like Apple isn't treating its customers like "the product." But simultaneously with this privacy measure, Apple was secretly turning on its own surveillance system for iPhone owners, which would spy on them in exactly the way Facebook had, for exactly the same purpose: to target ads to you based on the places you'd been, the things you'd searched for, the communications you'd had, the links you'd clicked.

Apple didn't ask its customers for permission to spy on them. It didn't let opt out of this spying. It didn’t even tell them about it, and when it was caught, Apple lied about it.

It goes without saying that the $1000 Apple distraction rectangle in your pocket is something you paid for. The fact that you've paid for it doesn't stop Apple from treating you as the product. Apple treats its business customers – app vendors – like the product, screwing them out of 30 cents on every dollar they bring in, with mandatory payment processing fees that are 1,000% higher than the already extortionate industry norm.

Apple treats its end users – people who shell out a grand for a phone – like the product, spying on them to help target ads to them.

Apple treats everyone like the product.

This is what's going on with our gig-app nurses: the nurses are the product. The patients are the product. The hospitals are the product. In enshittification, "the product" is anyone who can be productized.

Fair and dignified treatment is not something you get as a customer loyalty perk, in exchange for parting with your money, rather than your attention. How do you get fair and dignified treatment? Well, I'm gonna get to that, but let's stay with our nurses for a while first.

The nurses are the product, and they're being twiddled, because they've been conscripted into the tech industry, via the digitalization of their own industry.

It's tempting to blame digitalization for this. But tech companies were not born enshittified. They spent years – decades – making pleasing products. If you're old enough to remember the launch of Google, you'll recall that, at the outset, Google was magic.

You could Ask Jeeves questions for a million years, you could load up Altavista with ten trillion boolean search operators meant to screen out low-grade results, and never come up with answers as crisp, as useful, as helpful, as the ones you'd get from a few vaguely descriptive words in a Google search-bar.

There's a reason we all switched to Google. Why so many of us bought iPhones. Why we joined our friends on Facebook. All of these services were born digital. They could have enshittified at any time. But they didn't – until they did. And they did it all at once.

If you were a nurse, and every patient that staggered into the ER had the same dreadful symptoms, you'd call the public health department and report a suspected outbreak of a new and dangerous epidemic.

Ursula Franklin held that technology's outcomes were not preordained. They are the result of deliberate choices. I like that very much, it's a very science fictional way of thinking about technology. Good science fiction isn't merely about what the technology does, but who it does it for, and who it does it to.

Those social factors are far more important than the mere technical specifications of a gadget. They're the difference between a system that warns you when you're about to drift out of your lane, and a system that tells your insurer that you nearly drifted out of your lane, so they can add $10 to your monthly premium.

They’re the difference between a spell checker that lets you know you've made a typo, and bossware that lets your manager use the number of typos you made this quarter so he can deny your bonus.

They’re the difference between an app that remembers where you parked your car, and an app that uses the location of your car as a criteria for including you in a reverse warrant for the identities of everyone in the vicinity of an anti-government protest.

I believe that enshittification is caused by changes not to technology, but to the policy environment. These are changes to the rules of the game, undertaken in living memory, by named parties, who were warned at the time about the likely outcomes of their actions, who are today very rich and respected, and face no consequences or accountability for their role in ushering in the enshittocene. They venture out into polite society without ever once wondering if someone is sizing them up for a pitchfork.

In other words: I think we created a crimogenic environment, a perfect breeding pool for the most pathogenic practices in our society, that have therefore multiplied, dominating decision-making in our firms and states, leading to a vast enshittening of everything.

And I think there's good news there, because if enshittification isn't the result a new kind of evil person, or the great forces of history bearing down on the moment to turn everything to shit, but rather the result of specific policy choices, then we can reverse those policies, make better ones and emerge from the enshittocene, consigning the enshitternet to the scrapheap of history, a mere transitional state between the old, good internet, and a new, good internet.

I'm not going to talk about AI today, because oh my god is AI a boring, overhyped subject. But I will use a metaphor about AI, about the limited liability company, which is a kind of immortal, artificial colony organism in which human beings serve as a kind of gut flora. My colleague Charlie Stross calls corporations "slow AI.”

So you've got these slow AIs whose guts are teeming with people, and the AI's imperative, the paperclip it wants to maximize, is profit. To maximize profits, you charge as much as you can, you pay your workers and suppliers as little as you can, you spend as little as possible on safety and quality.

Every dollar you don't spend on suppliers, workers, quality or safety is a dollar that can go to executives and shareholders. So there's a simple model of the corporation that could maximize its profits by charging infinity dollars, while paying nothing to its workers or suppliers, and ignoring quality and safety.

But that corporation wouldn't make any money, for the obvious reasons that none of us would buy what it was selling, and no one would work for it or supply it with goods. These constraints act as disciplining forces that tamp down the AI's impulse to charge infinity and pay nothing.

In tech, we have four of these constraints, anti-enshittificatory sources of discipline that make products and services better, pay workers more, and keep executives’ and shareholders' wealth from growing at the expense of customers, suppliers and labor.

The first of these constraints is markets. All other things being equal, a business that charges more and delivers less will lose customers to firms that are more generous about sharing value with workers, customers and suppliers.

This is the bedrock of capitalist theory, and it's the ideological basis for competition law, what our American cousins call "antitrust law."

The first antitrust law was 1890's Sherman Act, whose sponsor, Senator John Sherman, stumped for it from the senate floor, saying:

If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity. 

Senator Sherman was reflecting the outrage of the anitmonopolist movement of the day, when proprietors of monopolistic firms assumed the role of dictators, with the power to decide who would work, who would starve, what could be sold, and what it cost.

Lacking competitors, they were too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care. As Lily Tomlin used to put it in her spoof AT&T ads on SNL: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.”

So what happened to the disciplining force of competition? We killed it. Starting 40-some years ago, the Reagaonomic views of the Chicago School economists transformed antitrust. They threw out John Sherman's idea that we need to keep companies competitive to prevent the emergence of "autocrats of trade,"and installed the idea that monopolies are efficient.

In other words, if Google has a 90% search market share, which it does, then we must infer that Google is the best search engine ever, and the best search engine possible. The only reason a better search engine hasn't stepped in is that Google is so skilled, so efficient, that there is no conceivable way to improve upon it.

We can tell that Google is the best because it has a monopoly, and we can tell that the monopoly is good because Google is the best.

So 40 years ago, the US – and its major trading partners – adopted an explicitly pro-monopoly competition policy.

Now, you'll be glad to hear that this isn't what happened to Canada. The US Trade Rep didn't come here and force us to neuter our competition laws. But don't get smug! The reason that didn't happen is that it didn't have to. Because Canada had no competition law to speak of, and never has.

In its entire history, the Competition Bureau has challenged three mergers, and it has halted precisely zero mergers, which is how we've ended up with a country that is beholden to the most mediocre plutocrats imaginable like the Irvings, the Westons, the Stronachs, the McCains and the Rogerses.

The only reason these chinless wonders were able to conquer this country Is that the Americans had been crushing their monopolists before they could conquer the US and move on to us. But 40 years ago, the rest of the world adopted the Chicago School's pro-monopoly "consumer welfare standard,” and we got…monopolies.

Monopolies in pharma, beer, glass bottles, vitamin C, athletic shoes, microchips, cars, mattresses, eyeglasses, and, of course, professional wrestling.

Remember: these are specific policies adopted in living memory, by named individuals, who were warned, and got rich, and never faced consequences. The economists who conceived of these policies are still around today, polishing their fake Nobel prizes, teaching at elite schools, making millions consulting for blue-chip firms.

When we confront them with the wreckage their policies created, they protest their innocence, maintaining – with a straight face – that there's no way to affirmatively connect pro-monopoly policies with the rise of monopolies.

It's like we used to put down rat poison and we didn't have a rat problem. Then these guys made us stop, and now rats are chewing our faces off, and they're making wide innocent eyes, saying, "How can you be sure that our anti-rat-poison policies are connected to global rat conquest? Maybe this is simply the Time of the Rat! Maybe sunspots caused rats to become more fecund than at any time in history! And if they bought the rat poison factories and shut them all down, well, so what of it? Shutting down rat poison factories after you've decided to stop putting down rat poison is an economically rational, Pareto-optimal decision."

Markets don't discipline tech companies because they don't compete with rivals, they buy them. That's a quote, from Mark Zuckerberg: “It is better to buy than to compete.”

Which is why Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for a billion dollars, even though it only had 12 employees and 25m users. As he wrote in a spectacularly ill-advised middle-of-the-night email to his CFO, he had to buy Instagram, because Facebook users were leaving Facebook for Instagram. By buying Instagram, Zuck ensured that anyone who left Facebook – the platform – would still be a prisoner of Facebook – the company.

Despite the fact that Zuckerberg put this confession in writing, the Obama administration let him go ahead with the merger, because every government, of every political stripe, for 40 years, adopted the posture that monopolies were efficient.

Now, think about our twiddled, immiserated nurses. Hospitals are among the most consolidated sectors in the US. First, we deregulated pharma mergers, and the pharma companies gobbled each other up at the rate of naughts, and they jacked up the price of drugs. So hospitals also merged to monopoly, a defensive maneuver that let a single hospital chain corner the majority of a region or city and say to the pharma companies, "either you make your products cheaper, or you can't sell them to any of our hospitals."

Of course, once this mission was accomplished, the hospitals started screwing the insurers, who staged their own incestuous orgy, buying and merging until most Americans have just three or two insurance options. This let the insurers fight back against the hospitals, but left patients and health care workers defenseless against the consolidated power of hospitals, pharma companies, pharmacy benefit managers, group purchasing organizations, and other health industry cartels, duopolies and monopolies.

Which is why nurses end up signing on to work for hospitals that use these ghastly apps. Remember, there's just three of these apps, replacing dozens of staffing agencies that once competed for nurses' labor.

Meanwhile, on the patient side, competition has never exercised discipline. No one ever shopped around for a cheaper ambulance or a better ER while they were having a heart attack. The price that people are willing to pay to not die is “everything they have.”

So you have this sector that has no business being a commercial enterprise in the first place, losing what little discipline they faced from competition, paving the way for enshittification.

But I said there are four forces that discipline companies. The second one of these forces is regulation, discipline imposed by states.

It’s a mistake to see market discipline and state discipline as two isolated realms. They are intimately connected. Because competition is a necessary condition for effective regulation.

Let me put this in terms that even the most ideological libertarians can understand. Say you think there should be precisely one regulation that governments should enforce: honoring contracts. For the government to serve as referee in that game, it must have the power to compel the players to honor their contracts. Which means that the smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to permit.

So even if you're the kind of Musk-addled libertarian who can no longer open your copy of Atlas Shrugged because the pages are all stuck together, who pines for markets for human kidneys, and demands the right to sell yourself into slavery, you should still want a robust antitrust regime, so that these contracts can be enforced.

When a sector cartelizes, when it collapses into oligarchy, when the internet turns into "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four," then it captures its regulators.

After all, a sector with 100 competing companies is a rabble, at each others' throats. They can't agree on anything, especially how they're going to lobby.

While a sector of five companies – or four – or three – or two – or one – is a cartel, a racket, a conspiracy in waiting. A sector that has been boiled down to a mere handful of firms can agree on a common lobbying position.

What's more, they are so insulated from "wasteful competition" that they are aslosh in cash that they can mobilize to make their regulatory preferences into regulations. In other words, they can capture their regulators.

“Regulatory capture" may sound abstract and complicated, so let me put it in concrete terms. In the UK, the antitrust regulator is called the Competition and Markets Authority, run – until recently – by Marcus Bokkerink. The CMA has been one of the world's most effective investigators and regulators of Big Tech fuckery.

Last month, UK PM Keir Starmer fired Bokkerink and replaced him with Doug Gurr, the former head of Amazon UK. Hey, Starmer, the henhouse is on the line, they want their fox back.

But back to our nurses: there are plenty of examples of regulatory capture lurking in that example, but I'm going to pick the most egregious one, the fact that there are data brokers who will sell you information about the credit card debts of random Americans.

This is because the US Congress hasn't passed a new consumer privacy law since 1988, when Ronald Reagan signed a law called the Video Privacy Protection Act that bans video store clerks from telling newspapers which VHS cassettes you took home. The fact that Congress hasn't updated Americans' privacy protections since Die Hard was in theaters isn't a coincidence or an oversight. It is the expensively purchased inaction of a heavily concentrated – and thus wildly profitable – privacy-invasion industry that has monetized the abuse of human rights at unimaginable scale.

The coalition in favor of keeping privacy law frozen since the season finale of St Elsewhere keeps growing, because there is an unbounded set of way to transform the systematic invasion of our human rights into cash. There's a direct line from this phenomenon to nurses whose paychecks go down when they can't pay their credit-card bills.

So competition is dead, regulation is dead, and companies aren't disciplined by markets or by states.

But there are four forces that discipline firms, contributing to an inhospitable environment for the reproduction of sociopathic. enshittifying monsters.

So let's talk about those other two forces. The first is interoperability, the principle of two or more things working together. Like, you can put anyone's shoelaces in your shoes, anyone's gas in your gas tank, and anyone's lightbulbs in your light-socket. In the non-digital world, interop takes a lot of work, you have to agree on the direction, pitch, diameter, voltage, amperage and wattage for that light socket, or someone's gonna get their hand blown off.

But in the digital world, interop is built in, because there's only one kind of computer we know how to make, the Turing-complete, universal, von Neumann machine, a computing machine capable of executing every valid program.

Which means that for any enshittifying program, there's a counterenshittificatory program waiting to be run. When HP writes a program to ensure that its printers reject third-party ink, someone else can write a program to disable that checking.

For gig workers, antienshittificatory apps can do yeoman duty. For example, Indonesian gig drivers formed co-ops, that commission hackers to write modifications for their dispatch apps. For example, the taxi app won't book a driver to pick someone up at a train station, unless they're right outside, but when the big trains pull in that's a nightmare scene of total, lethal chaos.

So drivers have an app that lets them spoof their GPS, which lets them park up around the corner, but have the app tell their bosses that they're right out front of the station. When a fare arrives, they can zip around and pick them up, without contributing to the stationside mishegas.

In the USA, a company called Para shipped an app to help Doordash drivers get paid more. You see, Doordash drivers make most of their money on tips, and the Doordash driver app hides the tip amount until you accept a job, meaning you don't know whether you're accepting a job that pays $1.50 or $11.50 with tip, until you agree to take it. So Para made an app that extracted the tip amount and showed it to drivers before they clocked on.

But Doordash shut it down, because in America, apps like Para are illegal. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and section 1201 of the DMCA makes is a felony to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work," with penalties of $500k and a 5-year prison sentence for a first offense. So just the act of reverse-engineering an app like the Doordash app is a potential felony, which is why companies are so desperately horny to get you to use their apps rather than their websites.

The web is open, apps are closed. The majority of web users have installed an ad blocker (which is also a privacy blocker). But no one installs an ad blocker for an app, because it's a felony to distribute that tool, because you have to reverse-engineer the app to make it. An app is just a website wrapped in enough IP so that the company that made it can send you to prison if you dare to modify it so that it serves your interests rather than theirs.

Around the world, we have enacted a thicket of laws, we call “IP laws,” that make it illegal to modify services, products, and devices, so that they serve your interests, rather than the interests of the shareholders.

Like I said, these laws were enacted in living memory, by people who are among us, who were warned about the obvious, eminently foreseeable consequences of their reckless plans, who did it anyway.

Back in 2010, two ministers from Stephen Harper's government decided to copy-paste America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act into Canadian law. They consulted on the proposal to make it illegal to reverse engineer and modify services, products and devices, and they got an earful! 6,138 Canadians sent in negative comments on the consultation. They warned that making it illegal to bypass digital locks would interfere with repair of devices as diverse as tractors, cars, and medical equipment, from ventilators to insulin pumps.

These Canadians warned that laws banning tampering with digital locks would let American tech giants corner digital markets, forcing us to buy our apps and games from American app stores, that could cream off any commission they chose to levy. They warned that these laws were a gift to monopolists who wanted to jack up the price of ink; that these copyright laws, far from serving Canadian artists would lock us to American platforms. Because every time someone in our audience bought a book, a song, a game, a video, that was locked to an American app, it could never be unlocked.

So if we, the creative workers of Canada, tried to migrate to a Canadian store, our audience couldn't come with us. They couldn't move their purchases from the US app to a Canadian one.

6,138 Canadians told them this, while just 54 respondents sided with Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement. Then, James Moore gave a speech, at the International Chamber of Commerce meeting here in Toronto, where he said he would only be listening to the 54 cranks who supported his terrible ideas, on the grounds that the 6,138 people who disagreed with him were "babyish…radical extremists."

So in 2012, we copied America's terrible digital locks law into the Canadian statute book, and now we live in James Moore and Tony Clement's world, where it is illegal to tamper with a digital lock. So if a company puts a digital lock on its product they can do anything behind that lock, and it's a crime to undo it.

For example, if HP puts a digital lock on its printers that verifies that you're not using third party ink cartridges, or refilling an HP cartridge, it's a crime to bypass that lock and use third party ink. Which is how HP has gotten away with ratcheting the price of ink up, and up, and up.

Printer ink is now the most expensive fluid that a civilian can purchase without a special permit. It's colored water that costs $10k/gallon, which means that you print out your grocery lists with liquid that costs more than the semen of a Kentucky Derby-winning stallion.

That's the world we got from Clement and Moore, in living memory, after they were warned, and did it anyway. The world where farmers can't fix their tractors, where independent mechanics can't fix your car, where hospitals during the pandemic lockdowns couldn't service their failing ventilators, where every time a Canadian iPhone user buys an app from a Canadian software author, every dollar they spend takes a round trip through Apple HQ in Cupertino, California and comes back 30 cents lighter.

Let me remind you this is the world where a nurse can't get a counter-app, a plug-in, for the “Uber for nurses” app they have to use to get work, that lets them coordinate with other nurses to refuse shifts until the wages on offer rise to a common level or to block surveillance of their movements and activity.

Interoperability was a major disciplining force on tech firms. After all, if you make the ads on your website sufficiently obnoxious, some fraction of your users will install an ad-blocker, and you will never earn another penny from them. Because no one in the history of ad-blockers has ever uninstalled an ad-blocker. But once it's illegal to make an ad-blocker, there's no reason not to make the ads as disgusting, invasive, obnoxious as you can, to shift all the value from the end user to shareholders and executives.

So we get monopolies and monopolies capture their regulators, and they can ignore the laws they don't like, and prevent laws that might interfere with their predatory conduct – like privacy laws – from being passed. They get new laws passed, laws that let them wield governmental power to prevent other companies from entering the market.

So three of the four forces are neutralized: competition, regulation, and interoperability. That left just one disciplining force holding enshittification at bay: labor.

Tech workers are a strange sort of workforce, because they have historically been very powerful, able to command high wages and respect, but they did it without joining unions. Union density in tech is abysmal, almost undetectable. Tech workers' power didn't come from solidarity, it came from scarcity. There weren't enough workers to fill the jobs going begging, and tech workers are unfathomnably productive. Even with the sky-high salaries tech workers commanded, every hour of labor they put in generated far more value for their employers.

Faced with a tight labor market, and the ability to turn every hour of tech worker overtime into gold, tech bosses pulled out all the stops to motivate that workforce. They appealed to workers' sense of mission, convinced them they were holy warriors, ushering in a new digital age. Google promised them they would "organize the world's information and make it useful.” Facebook promised them they would “make the world more open and connected."

There's a name for this tactic: the librarian Fobazi Ettarh calls it "vocational awe." That’s where an appeal to a sense of mission and pride is used to motivate workers to work for longer hours and worse pay.

There are all kinds of professions that run on vocational awe: teaching, daycares and eldercare, and, of course, nursing.

Techies are different from those other workers though, because they've historically been incredibly scarce, which meant that while bosses could motivate them to work on projects they believed in, for endless hours, the minute bosses ordered them to enshittify the projects they'd missed their mothers' funerals to ship on deadline these workers would tell their bosses to fuck off.

If their bosses persisted in these demands, the techies would walk off the job, cross the street, and get a better job the same day.

So for many years, tech workers were the fourth and final constraint, holding the line after the constraints of competition, regulation and interop slipped away. But then came the mass tech layoffs. 260,000 in 2023; 150,000 in 2024; tens of thousands this year, with Facebook planning a 5% headcount massacre while doubling its executive bonuses.

Tech workers can't tell their bosses to go fuck themselves anymore, because there's ten other workers waiting to take their jobs.

Now, I promised I wouldn't talk about AI, but I have to break that promise a little, just to point out that the reason tech bosses are so horny for AI Is because they think it'll let them fire tech workers and replace them with pliant chatbots who'll never tell them to fuck off.

So that's where enshittification comes from: multiple changes to the environment. The fourfold collapse of competition, regulation, interoperability and worker power creates an enshittogenic environment, where the greediest, most sociopathic elements in the body corporate thrive at the expense of those elements that act as moderators of their enshittificatory impulses.

We can try to cure these corporations. We can use antitrust law to break them up, fine them, force strictures upon them. But until we fix the environment, other the contagion will spread to other firms.

So let's talk about how we create a hostile environment for enshittifiers, so the population and importance of enshittifying agents in companies dwindles to 1990s levels. We won't get rid of these elements. So long as the profit motive is intact, there will be people whose pursuit of profit is pathological, unmoderated by shame or decency. But we can change the environment so that these don't dominate our lives.

Let's talk about antitrust. After 40 years of antitrust decline, this decade has seen a massive, global resurgence of antitrust vigor, one that comes in both left- and right-wing flavors.

Over the past four years, the Biden administration’s trustbusters at the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau did more antitrust enforcement than all their predecessors for the past 40 years combined.

There's certainly factions of the Trump administration that are hostile to this agenda but Trump's antitrust enforcers at the DoJ and FTC now say that they'll preserve and enforce Biden's new merger guidelines, which stop companies from buying each other up, and they've already filed suit to block a giant tech merger.

Of course, last summer a judge found Google guilty of monopolization, and now they're facing a breakup, which explains why they've been so generous and friendly to the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, in Canada, our toothless Competition Bureau's got fitted for a set of titanium dentures last June, when Bill C59 passed Parliament, granting sweeping new powers to our antitrust regulator.

It's true that UK PM Keir Starmer just fired the head of the UK Competition and Markets Authority and replaced him with the ex-boss of Amazon UK boss.But the thing that makes that so tragic is that the UK CMA had been doing astonishingly great work under various conservative governments.

In the EU, they've passed the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, and they're going after Big Tech with both barrels. Other countries around the world – Australia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and China (yes, China!) – have passed new antitrust laws, and launched major antitrust enforcement actions, often collaborating with each other.

So you have the UK Competition and Markets Authority using its investigatory powers to research and publish a deep market study on Apple's abusive 30% app tax, and then the EU uses that report as a roadmap for fining Apple, and then banning Apple's payments monopoly under new regulations.Then South Korea and Japan trustbusters translate the EU's case and win nearly identical cases in their courts

What about regulatory capture? Well, we're starting to see regulators get smarter about reining in Big Tech. For example, the EU's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act were designed to bypass the national courts of EU member states, especially Ireland, the tax-haven where US tech companies pretend to have their EU headquarters.

The thing about tax havens is that they always turn into crime havens, because if Apple can pretend to be Irish this week, it can pretend to be Maltese or Cypriot or Luxembourgeois next week. So Ireland has to let US Big Tech companies ignore EU privacy laws and other regulations, or it'll lose them to sleazier, more biddable competitor nations.

So from now on, EU tech regulation is getting enforced in the EU's federal courts, not in national courts, treating the captured Irish courts as damage and routing around them.

Canada needs to strengthen its own tech regulation enforcement, unwinding monopolistic mergers from the likes of Bell and Rogers, but most of all, Canada needs to pursue an interoperability agenda.

Last year, Canada passed two very exciting bills: Bill C244, a national Right to Repair law; and Bill C294, an interoperability law. Nominally, both of these laws allow Canadians to fix everything from tractors to insulin pumps, and to modify the software in their devices from games consoles to printers, so they will work with third party app stores, consumables and add-ons.

However, these bills are essentially useless, because these bills don’t permit Canadians to acquire tools to break digital locks. So you can modify your printer to accept third party ink, or interpret a car's diagnostic codes so any mechanic can fix it, but only if there isn't a digital lock stopping you from doing so, because giving someone a tool to break a digital lock remains illegal thanks to the law that James Moore and Tony Clement shoved down the nation's throat in 2012.

And every single printer, smart speaker, car, tractor, appliance, medical implant and hospital medical device has a digital lock that stops you from fixing it, modifying it, or using third party parts, software, or consumables in it.

Which means that these two landmark laws on repair and interop are useless. So why not get rid of the 2012 law that bans breaking digital locks? Because these laws are part of our trade agreement with the USA. This is a law needed to maintain tariff-free access to US markets.

I don’t know if you've heard, but Donald Trump is going to impose a 25%, across-the-board tariff against Canadian exports. Trudeau's response is to impose retaliatory tariffs, which will make every American product that Canadians buy 25% more expensive. This is a very weird way to punish America!

You know what would be better? Abolish the Canadian laws that protect US Big Tech companies from Canadian competition. Make it legal to reverse-engineer, jailbreak and modify American technology products and services. Don't ask Facebook to pay a link tax to Canadian newspapers, make it legal to jailbreak all of Meta's apps and block all the ads in them, so Mark Zuckerberg doesn't make a dime off of us.

Make it legal for Canadian mechanics to jailbreak your Tesla and unlock every subscription feature, like autopilot and full access to your battery, for one price, forever. So you get more out of your car, and when you sell it, then next owner continues to enjoy those features, meaning they'll pay more for your used car.

That's how you hurt Elon Musk: not by being performatively appalled at his Nazi salutes. That doesn't cost him a dime. He loves the attention. No! Strike at the rent-extracting, insanely high-margin aftermarket subscriptions he relies on for his Swastikar business. Kick that guy right in the dongle!

Let Canadians stand up a Canadian app store for Apple devices, one that charges 3% to process transactions, not 30%. Then, every Canadian news outlet that sells subscriptions through an app, and every Canadian software author, musician and writer who sells through a mobile platform gets a 25% increase in revenues overnight, without signing up a single new customer.

But we can sign up new customers, by selling jailbreaking software and access to Canadian app stores, for every mobile device and games console to everyone in the world, and by pitching every games publisher and app maker on selling in the Canadian app store to customers anywhere without paying a 30% vig to American big tech companies.

We could sell every mechanic in the world a $100/month subscription to a universal diagnostic tool. Every farmer in the world could buy a kit that would let them fix their own John Deere tractors without paying a $200 callout charge for a Deere technician who inspects the repair the farmer is expected to perform.

They'd beat a path to our door. Canada could become a tech export powerhouse, while making everything cheaper for Canadian tech users, while making everything more profitable for anyone who sells media or software in an online store. And – this is the best part – it’s a frontal assault on the largest, most profitable US companies, the companies that are single-handedly keeping the S&P 500 in the black, striking directly at their most profitable lines of business, taking the revenues from those ripoff scams from hundreds of billions to zero, overnight, globally.

We don't have to stop at exporting reasonably priced pharmaceuticals to Americans! We could export the extremely lucrative tools of technological liberation to our American friends, too.

That's how you win a trade-war.

What about workers? Here we have good news and bad news.

The good news is that public approval for unions is at a high mark last seen in the early 1970s, and more workers want to join a union than at any time in generations, and unions themselves are sitting on record-breaking cash reserves they could be using to organize those workers.

But here's the bad news. The unions spent the Biden years, when they had the most favorable regulatory environment since the Carter administration, when public support for unions was at an all-time high, when more workers than ever wanted to join a union, when they had more money than ever to spend on unionizing those workers, doing fuck all. They allocatid mere pittances to union organizing efforts with the result that we finished the Biden years with fewer unionized workers than we started them with.

Then we got Trump, who illegally fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB without a quorum and thus unable to act on unfair labor practices or to certify union elections.

This is terrible. But it’s not game over. Trump fired the referees, and he thinks that this means the game has ended. But here's the thing: firing the referee doesn't end the game, it just means we're throwing out the rules. Trump thinks that labor law creates unions, but he's wrong. Unions are why we have labor law. Long before unions were legal, we had unions, who fought goons and ginks and company finks in` pitched battles in the streets.

That illegal solidarity resulted in the passage of labor law, which legalized unions. Labor law is passed because workers build power through solidarity. Law doesn't create that solidarity, it merely gives it a formal basis in law. Strip away that formal basis, and the worker power remains.

Worker power is the answer to vocational awe. After all, it's good for you and your fellow workers to feel a sense of mission about your jobs. If you feel that sense of mission, if you feel the duty to protect your users, your patients, your patrons, your students, a union lets you fulfill that duty.

We saw that in 2023 when Doug Ford promised to destroy the power of Ontario's public workers. Workers across the province rose up, promising a general strike, and Doug Ford folded like one of his cheap suits. Workers kicked the shit out of him, and we'll do it again. Promises made, promises kept.

The unscheduled midair disassembly of American labor law means that workers can have each others' backs again. Tech workers need other workers' help, because tech workers aren't scarce anymore, not after a half-million layoffs. Which means tech bosses aren't afraid of them anymore.

We know how tech bosses treat workers they aren't afraid of. Look at Jeff Bezos: the workers in his warehouses are injured on the job at 3 times the national rate, his delivery drivers have to pee in bottles, and they are monitored by AI cameras that snitch on them if their eyeballs aren't in the proscribed orientation or if their mouth is open too often while they drive, because policy forbids singing along to the radio.

By contrast, Amazon coders get to show up for work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand. They get to pee whenever they want. Jeff Bezos isn't sentimental about tech workers, nor does he harbor a particularized hatred of warehouse workers and delivery drivers. He treats his workers as terribly as he can get away with. That means that the pee bottles are coming for the coders, too.

It's not just Amazon, of course. Take Apple. Tim Cook was elevated to CEO in 2011. Apple's board chose him to succeed founder Steve Jobs because he is the guy who figured out how to shift Apple's production to contract manufacturers in China, without skimping on quality assurance, or suffering leaks of product specifications ahead of the company's legendary showy launches.

Today, Apple's products are made in a gigantic Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou nicknamed "iPhone City.” Indeed, these devices arrive in shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles in a state of pristine perfection, manufactured to the finest tolerances, and free of any PR leaks.

To achieve this miraculous supply chain, all Tim Cook had to do was to make iPhone City a living hell, a place that is so horrific to work that they had to install suicide nets around the worker dorms to catch the plummeting bodies of workers who were so brutalized by Tim Cook's sweatshop that they attempted to take their own lives.

Tim Cook is also not sentimentally attached to tech workers, nor is he hostile to Chinese assembly line workers. He just treats his workers as badly as he can get away with, and with mass layoffs in the tech sector he can treat his coders much, much worse

How do tech workers get unions? Well, there are tech-specific organizations like Tech Solidarity and the Tech Workers Coalition. But tech workers will only get unions by having solidarity with other workers and receiving solidarity back from them. We all need to support every union. All workers need to have each other's backs.

We are entering a period of omnishambolic polycrisis.The ominous rumble of climate change, authoritarianism, genocide, xenophobia and transphobia has turned into an avalanche. The perpetrators of these crimes against humanity have weaponized the internet, colonizing the 21st century's digital nervous system, using it to attack its host, threatening civilization itself.

The enshitternet was purpose-built for this kind of apocalyptic co-option, organized around giant corporations who will trade a habitable planet and human rights for a three percent tax cut, who default us all into twiddle-friendly algorithmic feed, and block the interoperability that would let us escape their clutches with the backing of powerful governments whom they can call upon to "protect their IP rights."

It didn't have to be this way. The enshitternet was not inevitable. It was the product of specific policy choices, made in living memory, by named individuals.

No one came down off a mountain with two stone tablets, intoning Tony Clement, James Moore: Thou shalt make it a crime for Canadians to jailbreak their phones. Those guys chose enshittification, throwing away thousands of comments from Canadians who warned them what would come of it.

We don't have to be eternal prisoners of the catastrophic policy blunders of mediocre Tory ministers. As the omnicrisis polyshambles unfolds around us, we have the means, motive and opportunity to craft Canadian policies that bolster our sovereignty, protect our rights, and help us to set every technology user, in every country (including the USA) free.

The Trump presidency is an existential crisis but it also presents opportunities. When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. We once had an old, good internet, whose major defect was that it required too much technical expertise to use, so all our normie friends were excluded from that wondrous playground.

Web 2.0's online services had greased slides that made it easy for anyone to get online, but escaping from those Web 2.0 walled gardens meant was like climbing out of a greased pit. A new, good internet is possible, and necessary. We can build it, with all the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the ease of use of Web 2.0.

A place where we can find each other, coordinate and mobilize to resist and survive climate collapse, fascism, genocide and authoritarianism. We can build that new, good internet, and we must.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/#enshittification-eh

[victoryai]

10TH LORD IN THE SIGNS(Career focused)

I already wrote on 1st Lord in the signs here and 7th lord in the signs here. So I guess you understand what I mean.

10th lord in the signs is only concerned about which sign the 10th house Lord is in. It don matter here which planet is your 10th lord but rather which sign your 10th lord is placed in.

10th Lord in Aries: Your career involves "you" to a great extent. Maybe you are required to be physically present or your body is a big part of your job e.g modelling, dancing, wrestling etc that involves your physical ability and natural strength .

10th Lord in Taurus: Your job deals with money or valuables, financial security, isn't very stressful, likely to give you a comfortable life, e.g banker, store owner, jeweller etc

10th lord in Gemini: Your job brings about frequent short journeys and trips, maybe you travel often to your workplace, or work with siblings, your job is likely focused on communication and information, involves teaching or learning and multitasking too, e.g teacher, journalist, news reporter,

10th Lord in Cancer: Your job isn't really stressful, allows you to work from home sometimes, might involve lands or houses, something like real estate or house agent, might also indicate that you work with family members or you are involved in the family business.

10th lord in Leo: Your job is something fun and entertaining, involves being dramatic sometimes, maybe acting, making skits, cartoons, entertainment sector, might involve kids or working with children. Might put you in fame's way.

©victoryai

10th lord in Virgo: Your job involves routine and precision, punctuality and order, probably a job that deals with diseases or conflict, involves a due procedure and any mistake could be costly e.g doctor, nurse, lawyer, police officer.

10th lord in Libra: Your job involves working with a number of people, might be beauty focused, you might work with spouse, needs you to be diplomatic and accommodating in nature, isn't very stressful. Types of job could be a diplomat, counsellor, etc

10th lord in Scorpio: Your job probably involves valuables or belongings of other people, needs you to keep a few secrets, do underground work or deal with waste, somewhat dangerous and risky, a job most folks wouldn't take up. E. G undertaker

10th lord in Sagittarius; Your job might involve long distance journeys, teaching or learning, adventure, knowledge, philosophy, and culture. A job where you constantly have to upgrade your knowledge, work in foreign lands etc. Jobs may include translator, lecturer, professor, teacher, travel blogger, pilot, space 🤔, religious leader(is that a job 😂 sorry😭)

10th lord in Capricorn: A typical job I would say, nothing weird about it. Might put you in a place of authority as time goes by, you might be a public figure, a reputable job, you may be famous too, seems like a serious job to me( the one where you have to put on corporate wears all the mf time)

10th lord in Aquarius: Your job might be about cyber stuff, internet or social media related, maybe an influencer, might work online, programming, AI related stuff and some weird shit that only very smart people understand, unique in nature, might work together with friends too.

10th lord in Pisces: Your job might be something really unusual or special in the sense that most people can't do it. Maybe a diviner, a spiritualist, a seer, an astronaut 🚀🤔, using your intuitive gifts for work, a polygrapher or psychologist.

©victoryai

[probablyasocialecologist]

An innovation that propelled Britain to become the world’s leading iron exporter during the Industrial Revolution was appropriated from an 18th-century Jamaican foundry, historical records suggest. The Cort process, which allowed wrought iron to be mass-produced from scrap iron for the first time, has long been attributed to the British financier turned ironmaster Henry Cort. It helped launch Britain as an economic superpower and transformed the face of the country with “iron palaces”, including Crystal Palace, Kew Gardens’ Temperate House and the arches at St Pancras train station. Now, an analysis of correspondence, shipping records and contemporary newspaper reports reveals the innovation was first developed by 76 black Jamaican metallurgists at an ironworks near Morant Bay, Jamaica. Many of these metalworkers were enslaved people trafficked from west and central Africa, which had thriving iron-working industries at the time. Dr Jenny Bulstrode, a lecturer in history of science and technology at University College London (UCL) and author of the paper, said: “This innovation kicks off Britain as a major iron producer and … was one of the most important innovations in the making of the modern world.” The technique was patented by Cort in the 1780s and he is widely credited as the inventor, with the Times lauding him as “father of the iron trade” after his death. The latest research presents a different narrative, suggesting Cort shipped his machinery – and the fully fledged innovation – to Portsmouth from a Jamaican foundry that was forcibly shut down.

[...]

The paper, published in the journal History and Technology, traces how Cort learned of the Jamaican ironworks from a visiting cousin, a West Indies ship’s master who regularly transported “prizes” – vessels, cargo and equipment seized through military action – from Jamaica to England. Just months later, the British government placed Jamaica under military law and ordered the ironworks to be destroyed, claiming it could be used by rebels to convert scrap metal into weapons to overthrow colonial rule. “The story here is Britain closing down, through military force, competition,” said Bulstrode. The machinery was acquired by Cort and shipped to Portsmouth, where he patented the innovation. Five years later, Cort was discovered to have embezzled vast sums from navy wages and the patents were confiscated and made public, allowing widespread adoption in British ironworks. Bulstrode hopes to challenge existing narratives of innovation. “If you ask people about the model of an innovator, they think of Elon Musk or some old white guy in a lab coat,” she said. “They don’t think of black people, enslaved, in Jamaica in the 18th century.”

[ros3ybabe]

Daily Check-in: April 5, 2024 🎀

Friday was a decently good day! I managed to get some stuff done despite extremely fatigue (thank you womanhood), a 6.5 hour class, and crying my eyes out on zoom with my boyfriend (again, thank you womanhood). I hate having a functional female body, but I love being a woman? ughh, the confliction

🩷 What I Accomplished:

completed Chapter 9 of Spanish on Busuu

Created an excel spreadsheet to track scholarship applications that I am going to begin working on soon

watched a short YouTube interview in Spanish for some passive/active-ish learning

took a peak at the pdf Spanish textbook I'm going to begin using

read the first chapter of Essentialism (not sure if I'm going to keep reading that for now)

caught up on hand written psyc notes from the last two lectures

created a list of things for my excel spreadsheet for hosting rent options near my campus (I am moving out of my current place soon)

made my brain dump list for the week

planned out my upcoming week loosely

contacted a financial peer mentor from my university for help learning about budgeting and saving better

🩷 Good Things That Happened:

my position in my restaurant class barely changed, so I'm happy

met most of my prioritized goals

decorated one of my tracking journals with cute stickers

got confirmation that my friend is taking me to work on Saturday

had a really good day overall

got to zoom call my boyfriend twice

talked to my dad on the phone twice

my grade in one of my classes went up from a 79 to an 83

🩷 What Could've Been Better:

my friend and I accidently swapped chem lab notebooks on Thursday so I wasn't able to do my report with the extension

got told I was talking to loud during my restaurant class :(

found that I'm working with a girl I'm not too fond of (due to her controlling and "authoritative" tendencies) for my restaurant class

cried on zoom with my boyfriend because this time of year is hard for me

lots of back pain and low stomach cramping

drank a soda after having a coffee and had waayyy too much energy

didn't drink enough water or eat enough protein/vitamin-richs foods

🩷 Stuff To Do Tomorrow:

work shift 8am to 3pm

complete small Spanish study tasks

read a chapter of a book

update my brain dump list

create excel spreadsheet for renting options near the campus

look into savings template for my goals

find out how many hours I've worked to guesstimate my pay for this upcoming paycheck

complete assignment for chemistry

Saturday is going to be a good day! I am going to make sure I have a good day on Saturday because even if bad things happen, it doesn't mean my day itself was inherently bad. Gotta stay optimistic

til next time lovelies 🩷

[mariacallous]

With the suspect accused of killing Minnesota’s Democratic house leader and her husband now in custody, investigators will have a long list of questions to ask about what the alleged shooter believes. The emerging biography of Vance Boelter suggests a partial answer, one that involves his contact with a charismatic Christian movement whose leaders speak of spiritual warfare, an army of God, and demon-possessed politicians, and which has already proved, during the January 6 insurrection, its ability to mobilize followers to act.

Reporting so far describes Boelter, the 57-year-old man now facing murder charges, as a married father of five who worked in the food industry for decades, managed a gas station in St. Paul and a 7-Eleven in Minneapolis, and recently began working for funeral-service companies as he struggled financially. At the same time, Boelter had an active, even grandiose, spiritual life long before he allegedly carried out what authorities describe as a “political assassination” and texted his family afterward, “Dad went to war last night.”

To some degree, the roots of Boelter’s beliefs can be traced to a Bible college he attended in Dallas called Christ for the Nations Institute. A school official confirmed to me that Boelter graduated in 1990 with a diploma in practical theology.

Little known to outsiders, the college is a prominent training institution for charismatic Christians. It was co-founded in 1970 by a Pentecostal evangelist named James Gordon Lindsay, a disciple of the New Order of the Latter Rain, one of many revivalist movements that took hold around the country after World War II. Followers believed that an outpouring of the Holy Spirit was under way, raising up new apostles and prophets and a global End Times army to battle Satanic forces and establish God’s kingdom on Earth. Although Pentecostal churches at the time rejected Latter Rain ideas as unscriptural, the concepts lived on at Christ for the Nations, which has become a hub for the modern incarnation of the movement, known as the New Apostolic Reformation. NAR ideas have spread far and wide through megachurches, global networks of apostles and prophets, and a media ecosystem of online ministries, books, and podcasts, becoming a grassroots engine of the Christian Right.

Many prominent NAR leaders have connections to the school. These include Dutch Sheets, a graduate who taught there around the time Boelter was a student, and who went on to become an influential apostle who used his YouTube platform to mobilize many of his hundreds of thousands of followers to the U.S. Capitol on January 6. More recently, Sheets suggested on his podcast that certain unnamed judges—“including Supreme Court justices,” he said—oppose God and “disrespect your word and ways,” and he prayed for God to “arise and scatter your enemies.” Cindy Jacobs, an influential prophet who is an adviser and frequent lecturer at the school, was also in D.C. on January 6, praying for rioters climbing the Capitol steps.

During his time at the school, Boelter would have been exposed to the beliefs that motivate these movement leaders. He would have been taught to see the world as a great spiritual battleground between God and Satan, and to consider himself a kind of spiritual warrior. He would have been told that actual demonic forces can take hold of culture, political leaders, and entire territories, and thwart God’s kingdom. He would have been exposed to versions of courses currently offered, such as one that explains how “the World is in an era of serious warfare” and how “the body of Christ must remember that Jesus has already won this war.” He may have heard the founder’s slogan that “every Christian should pray at least one violent prayer a day.”

On Saturday, Christ for the Nations Institute issued a statement that read, in part, “We are absolutely aghast and horrified that a CFNI alumnus is the suspect. This is not who we are,” and “CFNI unequivocally rejects, denounces and condemns any and all forms of violence and extremism, be it politically, racially, religiously or otherwise motivated.” The school clarified that the slogan refers to the founder’s belief that prayer should be “intense, fervent, and passionate, not passive and lukewarm, considering that spiritual forces of darkness are focused on attacking life, identity in God, purpose, peace, love, joy, truth, health, and other good things.”

Precisely what Boelter absorbed or rejected from the school remains to be seen. On an archived website, Boelter claims that he was “ordained” in 1993. Tax documents from 2008 to 2010 show him as president of something called Revoformation Ministries. He claimed to be writing a book called Original Ability, promising readers “a different paradigm on the nature of man” and warning that it “may change the way you see yourself, other people, and God.” Boelter claimed that before the September 11 terrorist attacks, he had gone to Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank to “share the gospel” with militant Islamists.

In recent years, Boelter traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where videos show him delivering guest sermons at a large church, chastising Christians who don’t fight abortion and homosexuality, and saying that “God is going to raise up apostles and prophets in America” who will “correct his church.” As law enforcement searched for the suspect across rural Minnesota on Saturday, a childhood friend of Boelter’s told reporters that Boelter had texted him that he had “made some choices.”

Minnesota authorities said that they’d found “voluminous writings” in the suspect’s vehicle and at his home, and that he’d kept a notebook that mentioned about 70 potential targets, including politicians, civic leaders, and Planned Parenthood centers. Boelter is now facing federal murder charges for the fatal shooting of State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. State prosecutors have also charged Boelter with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder for allegedly shooting and wounding State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. If Boelter’s beliefs were a factor in the shootings, the question is not exactly what radicalized him, Frederick Clarkson, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates who has been tracking the NAR movement for years, told me: The worldview that Boelter appeared to embrace was radical, he said.

“Everyone brings faith to their life and the things they do—the question is, in what ways does your faith inform your actions and your decision making?” he told me. “Without knowing exactly what motivated the shooter, we can say that being oriented into this kind of NAR thinking, to my mind, it’s just a matter of time before an individual or group of individuals take some kind of action against the enemies of God and the demons in their midst.”

[multidimensionalguidance]

📚💸 Career + Wealth Analysis 💸📚

One of the most frequent questions astrologers receive from their clients when doing a chart reading is about their career, profession or work.

The labor we do on an everyday basis is essential when it comes to our finances and self fulfillment. It can either be something we enjoy doing that meets all of our needs, or what brings a paycheck yet lacks inner satisfaction.

There are several ways to confirm if the work you are doing is activating your Venus properly, and you may wonder why that planet in particular? Simple! Venus is related to finances, luxury, and comfort. The jobs that align with our Venus sign tend to be the ones that not only fits into our financial needs, but also provides a genuine feeling of contentment.

So, if you want the straight forward answer to “What career/field/job/hobby can help me create wealth and feel joyful about it?” Then Venus is your short answer. Remember that wealth will look differently for everyone since we all have different perceptions of how much money is truly enough to have the lifestyle we dream of.

Look for the Sidereal sign that your Venus falls in, find below the careers or fields related to it, and confirm for yourself the difference in your wealth accumulation once you incorporate it into your life.

Note: please keep in mind that if your Venus is conj, square or opposite a malefic planet/s (Mars, Saturn, Rahu/Ketu), there will be some natural resistance or challenges that you will experience throughout life with work, job, profession, or financial matters. Venus in Virgo, Scorpio, and Capricorn to a degree could also experience similar experiences.

The house where this planet is placed also tells a lot about the way your job manifests in your life (places, people, etc). Now, there are many ways to remediate any negative effects, so no need to be concerned or feel doomed.

There are many advanced Vedic Astrologers who mostly focus on remediation of planets that are in difficult or challenged positions, so take a look at the options available if you ever feel like there's an extra difficulty for you in those matters.

♈️➡️ Vocations that require independence, daring and the pioneering spirit: entrepreneurs, pioneers in any field, idea people, those who initiate new projects, troubleshooters, directors, adventurers, executives.

Firemen or fire fighters, forest rangers, engineers (metallurgical), members of the armed forces, firearms experts, police officers, machinists, mechanics, iron and steel workers, locksmiths, welders, athletics that involve speed and daring, race car drivers, contact sports, boxers, dancers, movement therapists, physical education instructors, surgeons.

♉️➡️ Vocations dealing with the earth and substance: farmers, ranchers, agriculture instructors, landscape architects, gardeners, rock collectors (semi-precious gems), builders, carpenters, building contractors, concrete pourers, chiropractors, massage therapists, computer programmers.

Occupations involved with money and finance: bankers, bank tellers, stock brokers, financiers, money managers, investment advisors, security analysts, treasurers, economists.

Artists, sculptors, jewelers, pottery makers, fashion designers, tailors, florists, musicians, singers, voice teachers, throat specialists.

♊️➡️ Vocations involved with communication or transportation: authors, proofreaders, ad copywriters, screenplay writers, editors, reporters, teachers, lecturers, linguists, speech therapists, librarians, bookstore owners, publishers, magazine employees.

Radio operators or disc jockeys, television producers, telephone operators or repair persons, telemarketers, stationery store owners, journalists, salespeople, printers, book distributors, clerks, office workers, secretaries, typists, typesetters.

Messengers, mail carriers, taxi drivers, bus drivers, railway employees, plane pilots, accountants, jacks-of-all-trades. Can engage in two or more occupations at once.

♋️➡️ Vocations that nurture: physically or emotionally (especially through food): caterers, restaurant owners, chefs, cooks, bakers, waiters and waitresses, confectioners, dairy farmers, grocers, food distributors, nutritionists.

Social workers, counselors, psychics, nurses, family therapists, preschool teachers, children's writers, tioners, caretakers, water-related occupations, plumbers, swimmers, lifeguards, fishermen.

All careers dealing with the home: realtors, hotel managers, innkeepers, homemakers, governesses, maids, laundry workers.

♌️➡️ Performers of all types: actors and actresses, playwrights, entertainers, dancers, singers, musicians, movie stars, circus performers, jugglers, clowns, sports figures, teachers (good teachers are entertainers), amuse ment park owners, speculators, gamblers.

Leaders of all types: executives, managers, government officials, politicians, foremen, judges, athletes, salespeople, the profession of selling, promoters, dia: mond and precious metal brokers, gold workers, heart specialists, all vocations involving children.

♍️➡️ Vocations dealing with analysis, detail and technical expertise: statisticians, accountants, book-keepers, computer programmers, teachers of technical subjects, stenographers, critics, inspectors of all types, draftsmen, graphic artists, technical illustrators, crafts-people, specialists.

Health occupations and the social services, mental health workers, therapists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, social workers, employment counselors, nurses, doctors, massage therapists, respiratory techairians, dental hygienists, dentists, secretaries, office managers, food service worker, nutritionist, waiters and waitresses, dieticians, veterinarians, zoologist, sanitation workers, janitors, public health officials, house cleaners, butlers.

♎️➡️ Vocations that pursue balance, harmony and justice: negotiators and counselors of all types, marriage counselors, wedding related businesses, diplomats, labor arbitrators, judges, lawyers, managers, salespeople.

Occupations dealing with beauty: artists, architects, painters, illustrators, photographers, fashion designers, fashion industry workers, milliners, color consultants, clothing store owners or salespeople, beauticians, hairdressers, cosmeticians, interior and exterior decorators, cosmetic manufacturers and dealers, jewelers, florists, candy makers.

♏️➡️ Vocations that focus on uncovering hidden secrets: researchers, muckraking journalists, investigators, detectives, physicists, occultists, those who work behind the scenes, espionage agents, psychics, astrologers, all matters dealing with death, funeral home directors, morticians, cemetery workers, insurance salespeople, soldiers, those working under the earth, undertakers.

Those who work as healers. all medical practitioners, physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, surgeons, pharmacists, pathologists, past-life investigators, hospice workers, chemists, music therapist, musicians.

♐️➡️ Vocations dealing with exploration, travel and adventure: explorers, astronomers, travel agents, airline employees, flight attendants, astronauts, import-export agents, foreign correspondents, language interpreters, traveling salespeople, promoters, customs officers, athletes of all types, archers, sporting goods manufacturers, horse trainers, breeders and jockeys.

Occupations dealing with higher knowledge: philosophers, college professors, ministers, theologians, missionaries, preachers, orators, publishers, metaphysical writers, philanthropists, lawyers.

♑️➡️ Vocations dealing with administering and organizing: administrators of all types, managers, business owners, executives, government officials, politicians, judges, manufacturers, coordinators, principals at schools, wardens, disciplinarians, buyers, consul-tants, vocational counselors.

Occupations that work with form and structure: architects, contractors, builders, carpenterivil and rivil and get industrial engineers, economists, chiropractors, orthopedic specialists, osteopaths, miners, landowners, mountain climbers.

♒️➡️ Vocations dealing with progress and inven-tion: inventors, scientists, educators, researchers, astrologers, social workers, psychologists, futurists, humanitarians, social reformers, United Nations workers, employees of world relief organizations, future-oriented occupations, astronauts, airplane pilots, aviators, parachutists, hang glider pilots, solar energy researchers, physicists, radio and television technicians, electricians, electrical engineers.

♓️➡️ Vocations of a spiritual, healing or artistic na-ture: religious workers, priests, monks, nuns, sisters of mercy, rabbis, clairvoyants, mediums, charity workers, prison workers.

Physicians, faith healers, psychic healers, nurses, hospital workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, hypnotists, anesthesiologists, podiatrists. Poets, musicians, writers (inspirational, fantasy, metaphysical, science fiction), actors, dancers, painters, artists, entertainers, comedians, singers, filmmakers.

Water-related activities, fishermen, sailors, divers, swimmers, lifeguards, marine scientists, oceanographers, bartenders, oil industry workers.

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

Is your Venus sign all you need to know to find all the clues and perfect descriptions to tailor your ideal professional life? No, but it is a huge start in a small way and with short information.

If you guys would like to go more in depth with career astrology, then also take your time to check the following, and find the common theme:

•10H sign + where its lord is located

•D10 Lagna (Dasamsa chart)

•Mahadasha planet in your chart, the house its located, and where the lord goes.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jim Morin, Miami Herald

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 17, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 18, 2024

Yesterday, Trump gave his first press conference since the election. It was exactly what Trump’s public performances always are: attention-grabbing threats alongside lies and very little apparent understanding of actual issues. His mix of outrageous and threatening is central to his politics, though: it keeps him central to the media, even though, as Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points Memo on December 13, he often claims a right to do something he knows very little about and has no power to accomplish. The uncertainty he creates is key to his power, Marshall notes. It keeps everyone off balance and focused on him in anticipation of trouble to come.

At the same time, it seems increasingly clear that the wealthy leaders who backed Trump’s reelection are not terribly concerned about his threats: they seem to see him as a figurehead rather than a policy leader. They are counting on him to deliver more tax cuts and deregulation but apparently are dismissing his campaign vows to raise tariffs and deport immigrants as mere rhetoric.

As the promised tax cuts are already under discussion, interested parties are turning to deregulation. Susanne Rust and Ian James of the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that on December 5, more than a hundred industrial trade groups signed a 21-page letter to Trump complaining that “regulations are strangling our economy.” They urged him to gut Biden-era regulations and instead to “partner” with manufacturers to create “workable regulations that achieve important policy goals without imposing overly burdensome and impractical requirements on our sector.”

They single out reductions in air quality, water quality, chemical, vehicle, and power plant environmental regulations as important for their industries. They also call for ending the “regulatory overreach” of the Biden administration on labor rules, saying those rules “threaten the employer-employee relationship and harm manufacturers’ global competitiveness.” They want an end to “right-to-repair” laws, a loosening of the rules for how and when companies need to report cyber incidents, and the replacement of mandated consumer product safety rules with “voluntary standards.”

They also call for cuts to the Biden administration’s antitrust efforts and for looser corporate finance regulations. On December 12, Gina Heeb reported in the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s advisors are exploring ways “to dramatically shrink, consolidate or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington,” including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

As Catherine Rampell explained in the Washington Post today, Congress created the FDIC in 1933 to protect bank deposits so that a bank’s customers can trust that mismanaged banks won’t lose their money. The FDIC also oversees those banks so that they are less likely to get into trouble in the first place. Congress created the system after people rushing to get their money out before a collapse actually created the very collapse that they feared, with one bank failure creating another in a domino effect that dug the economy even further into the crisis it was in after the Great Crash.

But the insurance money for those banks comes from fees assessed on the banks themselves, so abolishing the FDIC would save the banks money.

When he learned that Trump’s advisors are eyeing cuts to the FDIC, Princeton history professor Kevin Kruse commented: “When I lecture about New Deal banking reforms, I note that some of the key measures—like Glass Steagall—were repealed by the right with disastrous results like the 2008 financial meltdown, but ha ha, no one will ever be stupid enough to kill FDIC and bring back the old bank runs.”

Ben Guggenheim of Politico was the first to report that twenty-nine Republican members of Congress are also quick off the blocks in getting into the act of promoting private industry, calling for the incoming president to end the program of the Internal Revenue Service that lets people file their taxes directly without using a private tax preparer. Other developed countries use a similar public system, but in the U.S., private tax preparers staunchly opposed the public system. When more than 140,000 people used the IRS pilot program this year, they saved an estimated $6.5 million. Republicans called for its end, warning it is “a threat to taxpayers’ freedom from government overreach.”

But for all their faith that Trump will deregulate the economy, economic leaders seem to think his other promises were just rhetoric.

Brian Schwartz of the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that business executives have been lobbying Trump to change his declared plans on tariffs. The president-elect has vowed to place tariffs of 25% on products from Canada and Mexico, and of an additional 10% on products from China. He claims to believe that other countries will pay these tariffs, but in fact U.S. consumers will pay them. That, plus the fact that other countries will almost certainly respond with their own tariffs against U.S. products, makes economists warn that Trump’s plans will hurt the economy with both inflation and trade wars.

Schwartz reported that some companies and some Republicans are hoping that Trump’s tariff threats are simply a bargaining tactic.

Trump supporters say something similar about his vow to deport 11 to 20 million undocumented immigrants, hoping he won’t actually go after long-term, hardworking undocumented people. On December 10, Jack Dolan reported in the Los Angeles Times that the resort town of Mammoth Lakes, California, depends on migrant labor, and on December 15, Eli Saslow and Erin Schaff of the New York Times reported the story of an undocumented worker brought to the U.S. as an infant, who is now trying to figure out his future after his beloved father-in-law voted for Trump. Two days ago, CNN reported on Trump-supporting dairy farmers in South Dakota who depend on undocumented workers, insisting that Trump will not round up undocumented immigrants, no matter what he says.

One person who is not discounting Trump’s threats is Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). McConnell will give up his leadership position in January and has told his colleagues he feels “liberated.”

McConnell appears to be taking a stand against Trump’s expected appointee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy speaks often against vaccines, and after the New York Times reported that the lawyer working with Kennedy to vet potential HHS staff petitioned federal regulators to take the polio vaccine off the market, McConnell—a polio survivor—warned: “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they’re dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

McConnell has also been vocal about his opposition to Trump’s isolationism. He is a champion of sending military support to Ukraine and, after he steps down from the leadership, will chair the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, the subcommittee that controls military spending. “America’s national security interests face the gravest array of threats since the Second World War,” McConnell says. “At this critical moment, a new Senate Republican majority has a responsibility to secure the future of U.S. leadership and primacy.”

McConnell will also chair the Rules Committee, which gives him a chance to stop MAGA senators from trying to abandon the power of the Senate and permit Trump to get his way. McConnell has said that “[d]efending the Senate as an institution and protecting the right to political speech in our elections remain among my longest-standing priorities.”

That last sentence identifies the current struggle in the Republican Party. McConnell is showing his willingness to prevent Trump and MAGA Republicans from bulldozing their way through the Senate in order to undermine the departments of Justice, Defense, and Health and Human Services, among others. But when he talks about “protecting the right to political speech in our elections,” he is talking about protecting the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that permits corporations and wealthy individuals to flood our elections, and thus our political system, with money.

It is those corporations and wealthy individuals who are now lining up for tax cuts and deregulation, but who don’t want the tariffs or mass deportations or isolationism Trump’s “America First” MAGA base wants.

Trump and his team have been talking about their election win as a “mandate” and a “landslide,” but it was actually a razor thin victory with more voters choosing someone other than Trump than voting for him. He will need the support of establishment Republicans in the Senate to put his MAGA policies in place.

At yesterday's press conference, he appeared to be nodding to McConnell when he promised: “You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine. That’s not going to happen.” McConnell’s fierce use of power in the past suggests that the Senate’s giving up its constitutional power to bend to Trump’s will isn’t likely to happen, either.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[drcyrusbortel]

The Assistant

It's not an interrogation. They just want to properly debrief you.

That was what Rex had said, and Hunter had nodded along. And Omega trusted both with her life.

Unfortunately, it seemed that nobody had told the intelligence officer in the nondescript - Alderaanian? - uniform, or the designers of the dimly lit durasteel cubicle that he had chosen as a venue for his... debriefing.

The spook fired up his holorecorder and set it on the table, bathing them in an eerie blue glow.

"Let's start from the beginning, shall we? What's the first thing you remember?"

=/=

…a beige-and-red helmet filling her mind with ideas and attitudes, facts and figures, instincts and reflexes, pouring composite memories and unlived experience and rote understanding into a meticulously engineered personality imprint stamped upon optimized wetware… 

The words came to her, unbidden, as she looked around the flash-training center. Walls of pure white adorned with a magnificent ultraviolet mosaic of Academian Vor Nui’s Great Lecture, as vivid as day in her mind’s eye, stared back at her. The other rigs were empty, odd considering the high facility overhead…

The door dilated, and a pair of tall, slender Kaminoans - adorned with the insignia of very senior scientific officers - glided into the room.  

She snapped to attention, rattled off her serial number, and reported herself fit for service to the scientists towering over her.

The younger Kaminoan was first to speak. 

“I am Doctor Nala Se. This is Chief Scientist Ko Sai. We are part of the senior scientific staff providing support to Kaminoan Industries’ flagship Republic Military Project. Can you describe your training?”

She blinked. Medicine. Genetics. Bioengineering. 

And much, much, more. 

A vague disquiet stirred in her chest, as she looked down at herself. Biologically five standard. Small batch production. Nonstandard flash training. Modified mass production clone, alternative template, or composite?

“Modified mass production product.” Nala Se noted. “Please proceed.”  

She almost felt dizzy, but complied with the directive, describing her scientific background even as a small part of her seemed to yearn for service of the Galactic Republic, its Constitution, and its elected officials. 

Ko Sai smiled as she completed her report. “Excellent. You will be a most useful addition to Nala Se and her team.”

“Indeed.” Nala Se said. “As you know, Kaminoan Industries, in concert with the Government of Kamino, has embarked on the greatest industrial undertaking in Kaminoan history - the creation of a military force for the Galactic Republic.”

Ko Sai continued. “In essence, we have been tasked with converting a considerable infusion of financial capital into material capital, and in particular, human capital.”

“The economy of Kamino is to be totally remade in service of this goal. Extremely large investments into plant, machinery, and associated support and defense infrastructure are ongoing across Kamino and Her Colonies.” Nala Se bent down, bringing herself eye to eye with the human. “Commensurate investments are being made into new creche production - Kaminoan and human - to provide the necessary labor. You, and others like you, are part of this human capital accumulation.”

She nodded, understanding. 

“You will be working under Nala Se in support of our contracts for Clone Army research, development, production, and sustainment. You answer to her, and ultimately to me. You are property of Kaminoan Industries.” Ko Sai looked thoughtful. “You are not property of the Galactic Republic.”

Nala Se gestured to the door. “Please follow me. We must vacate the room for the next cohort. You are the last one.”

She obeyed, and followed Nala Se out the room. 

=/=

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Josh Shepperd at The Conversation:

The Trump administration’s drive to slash government spending on everything from the arts to cancer research also includes efforts to carry through on the Republican Party’s long-standing goal of ending federal funding for NPR, the nation’s public radio network, and PBS, its television counterpart. Across the country, 1,500 independent stations affiliated with NPR and PBS air shows such as “Morning Edition,” “Marketplace,” “PBS NewsHour,” “Frontline” and “Nova.” Some 43 million people tune into public radio every week, and over 130 million watch PBS every year, according to the networks. Public media stations air local news and, when necessary, emergency information. Most also feature regional, national and global coverage of arts and culture. With commercial media divesting from local news reporting, audiences that have long relied on public media to inform their communities are even more dependent now on that service, as are audiences that got their local news from commercial sources.

Investigating public media

Public media is also under attack from the Republican majority in Congress and facing scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission, the government agency that regulates media. Brendan Carr, whom President Donald Trump appointed to lead the FCC, helped draft Project 2025. That’s the conservative blueprint that Trump distanced himself from during the 2024 campaign but has since embraced. As proposed in Project 2025, the FCC is examining NPR’s approach to underwriting. Through underwriting, financial support from sponsors is acknowledged on air without asking audiences to form an opinion about a product or make a specific purchase. The FCC is investigating whether those messages on NPR and PBS “cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements.” The top executives of NPR and PBS have denied that their underwriting practices violate any regulations or laws.

At the same time, House Republicans are holding hearings regarding what they say is public media’s “liberal bias.” Their attention is primarily directed at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit corporation that stewards federal money that Congress appropriates for NPR and PBS. And in a separate move, Trump demanded that CPB “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law” and “decline to provide future funding” in an executive order issued on May 1, 2025. Trump’s order accused NPR and PBS of bias in its “portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.” I’m a media historian who wrote a book about the origins of public media in the U.S. and how NPR and PBS contribute to democratic participation. Both networks are designed to provide equal access to information for every listener and viewer. In my view, as these efforts to investigate and end the funding of public media proceed, it’s worth revisiting why the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was founded in the first place and to understand how it contributes to equal access to information today.

[...]

Nearly a decade later, in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act. That law guaranteed a permanent stream of government funding for educational radio and television. Congress had pivoted from “education” to “public” broadcasting as the medium incorporated a wider array of programs, including BBC shows from the U.K. PBS first went live in 1970, and NPR’s first broadcast aired in 1971. To buffer NPR and PBS from the influence of political parties and commercial sponsors, the law called for the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In addition to receiving and then disbursing to NPR and PBS the federal funds that Congress appropriates for public media, the CPB provides additional grants to stations across the country. Notably, federal funds help to pay for maintaining equipment and studios where public media programs are taped. That is, most government funding for public media is dedicated to maintaining the technology necessary to continue with its mission to provide equal access. The rest of the federal money supports the same program development and audience engagement research that started with the National Association of Educational Broadcasters’ “bicycle network.”

Establishing a strong track record

The CPB model has succeeded by many measures. About 99% of Americans have access to public media through their television sets, car radios, computers and other devices. The CPB received $535 million in government funding in the 2025 fiscal year, equal to roughly $1.60 per American. About 70% of that money supports local radio and television stations. Public media costs taxpayers far more elsewhere. A 2022 study found that Germany spends around $142 per person, the U.K. spends $81, and Canada spends over $26 per year. The U.S. system is also unusual in that the local affiliates are nonprofits that have to pay for the NPR and PBS programs they run. Like the CPB, NPR and PBS are independent nonprofits, not government agencies. Rather than having the federal government foot the whole bill, in the U.S. public media also relies on $1.3 billion in annual charitable donations from viewers, listeners, corporations and foundations. Of that, public media receives $170 million  in underwriting, according to a 2023 report. But should the federal government end all federal funding for the CPB, their NPR- and PBS-affiliated stations would have more trouble buying, repairing and replacing the transmitters, antennas and websites required to broadcast their programs.

Late Thursday night, anti-American fascist Tyrant 47 signed an executive order to end funding for PBS and NPR, which is right out of Project 2025’s playbook.

See Also:

AP, via HuffPost: Donald Trump's Assault On PBS And NPR Takes Another Turn

Daily Kos: Trump pretends to defund public media with meaningless order

The Guardian: Trump signs executive order to cut funding for public broadcasters

[dwellordream]

“The impact of both new technology and the growing influx of immigrant workers can best be seen in the New England textile mills. In the 1820s and 1830s, young women from the farm country of New England went to work in the massive brick textile factories springing up along the Merrimack River near Lowell, Massachusetts, and other New England towns. In 1820, Lowell--then called Chelmsford--was a sleepy village of about 200 farm families, located about 25 miles northwest of Boston. Six years later, it had grown into a town of 2,500 and was incorporated as the town of Lowell. In 1830, the population surged to 6,000, and tripled to 18,000 just six years later. By 1850, Lowell boasted a population of 33,000.

What created this booming growth was the rise of the textile industry. Other New England mill towns also grew, but Lowell quickly became the center of the New England textile industry and drew workers--mostly single women as young as 16 or 17--from across New England. These women generally came from the middle ranks of farm families, those that were neither impoverished nor wealthy. The desire to be financially and socially independent, to finance an education, or to simply experience the pleasures of living and working in a larger town drew many young farm women to the mills. Some women did contribute their earnings to their families, but mostly they worked in the mills to earn their own income.

…Mill owners insisted that their female hands be in their boarding houses by 10 o’clock each evening, and they urged boarding house keepers, usually older women, to report any violators to the management. In the early years, women were required to attend church services regularly, and some mill owners even deducted pew rent from the women’s earnings and paid it directly to local churches. These close living and working arrangements created a camaraderie among the women workers, a community of like-minded women who eagerly wanted to improve their minds and their lives. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, they organized and attended lectures, language classes, sewing groups, and literary ‘improvement circles’--after working a 12-hour day. From one of these circles was born the Lowell Offering, the first journal ever written by and for mill women. The journal published poetry, short stories, and commentary penned by the female workers.

Workers also organized themselves into labor-reform groups to crusade for better working conditions and shorter workdays. As technological innovations enabled women to work faster and produce more, mill owners assigned more machines to workers--without raising wages. For example, at Hamilton Company, one of the mills in Lowell, the average number of looms per weaver more than doubled between 1840 and 1854. The workload for spinners increased as well. Workers were expected to operate more machines at a faster rate. But wages remained the same--although the company reaped higher profits from the workers’ increased productivity.

…In 1846, Elias Howe introduced the first sewing machine. Five years later, in 1851, the addition of a foot treadle for easier operation made the machine an indispensable tool. But instead of easing the sewer’s burden, the sewing machine increased it. Hand sewers could no longer compete with the sewing machine. In one day, one sewing machine operator could do as much work as six hand sewers. Hand sewers were forced to buy or rent sewing machines, or work in garment factories, where they had no control over their wages or hours.

To make matters worse, seamstresses, like the mill workers of New England, were expected to work faster and produce more while working for the same wages. New technology, such as the sewing machine or improved looms, enabled consumers to buy manufactured goods at reasonable prices--but at the expense of factory workers, who were not paid a fair wage for operating this new technology.

…Despite the long hours and low wages, women still preferred working in factories to being domestic servants. At least factory workers had some free time; servants were on call 24 hours a day. Domestics worked up to 16 hours a day, with one afternoon off each week. They earned $1 to $1.25 a week plus board. Servants’ duties varied according to their employers’ requirements and the number of other servants employed in the house. But in general, the work was very demanding. Domestics devoted entire days to washing, baking, ironing and cleaning each room. They were accustomed to heavy physical work--cleaning out fireplaces or emptying chamber pots--and trudging up and down staircases several times a day.

Besides enduring the back-breaking work, servants also had to endure the snobbery of their social ‘superiors.’ During the colonial era, servants were treated as part of the family and joined in all household activities. By the mid-19th century, however, they were regarded as mere hired hands, and were viewed as an inferior class. The Boston census of 1845 categorized servants as part of the ‘unclassified residue of the population.’ No wonder that young women wanted to avoid the social stigma of being a domestic.”

- Harriet Sigerman, “‘I Never Worked So Hard’: Weavers, Stitchers, and Domestics.’” in An Unfinished Battle: American Women, 1848-1865

[darkmaga-returns]

The Tides Foundation, a left-wing dark money giant backed by George Soros and other progressive billionaires, bankrolled the fiscal sponsor of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an anti-Semitic group sanctioned in the United States for providing financial support to terrorists, according to newly released tax forms.

The foundation reported in its latest Form 990 tax return that it granted $286,000 to the Alliance for Global Justice in 2023, a group best known for serving as the fiscal sponsor of Samidoun. The Treasury Department in October sanctioned Samidoun as a "sham charity" that provided material support to a Palestinian terrorist organization that participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist rampage in Israel. Canada levied its own sanctions against Samidoun as well in October, labeling the group a "terrorist entity" under its criminal code.

Founded in 1998, the Alliance for Global Justice let Samidoun borrow its charitable tax privileges to operate and raise funds in the United States without obtaining its own organizational credentials. In other words, the Alliance for Global Justice and Samidoun are legally indistinguishable. It’s unclear if the group continued to serve as Samidoun’s fiscal sponsor after the Treasury Department sanctioned the terrorism financier in October.

The Tides Foundation said the purpose of its grant to the Alliance for Global Justice in 2023 was to support a "sustainable environment." It’s unclear if the Tides grant went to support Samidoun or one of the several dozen other fiscally sponsored organizations operating under the Alliance for Global Justice’s tax ID.

The Treasury Department in October described Samidoun as a "sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization." The PFLP cut its teeth in the late 1960s by hijacking and opening fire on commercial airplanes, and later participated in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. It leverages Samidoun as a front organization in both Europe and North America to bankroll its terrorist activities, the Treasury Department said in October. Samidoun is also banned in Germany for its overt support of Hamas terrorism.

Samidoun’s U.S. leaders don’t shy away from their terroristic tendencies. Its leaders, Charlotte Kates and her husband, Khaled Barakat, explicitly endorsed terrorism against Jews during a lecture in March before the anti-Israel student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The Treasury Department sanctioned Barakat in October for his "fundraising and recruitment" efforts for the PFLP’s "terrorist activity against Israel," adding that he has publicly acknowledged Samidoun’s affiliation with the terrorist network.

Tides and the Alliance for Global Justice did not return requests for comment.

Major donors to the Tides network include liberal billionaire financier George Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Ford Foundation. In 2023, the Tides network raked in nearly $800 million, according to its audited financial statements.

The Tides network is hardly the only liberal dark money giant to bankroll the Alliance for Global Justice. In 2021, Tides and the New Venture Fund, the largest branch of the Arabella Advisors dark money behemoth, donated more than $9 million to the Alliance for Global Justice. The Arabella Advisors network donated an additional $1 million to the Alliance for Global Justice in 2022, the Free Beacon reported.

The Arabella Advisors network distanced itself from Samidoun after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, telling the Free Beacon that Samidoun "is not and has never been a client of Arabella Advisors" and that it "unequivocally condemn[s] terrorism and violence against civilians."

The Tides network has offered no such denunciation of the terrorism financier.

[pouroverpaloma]

(putting this in your ask box instead of messages bc i'm sure this could be helpful to other people!!!)

how does one decide where to go for grad school? like for my program specifically but also in general??? i was thinking about my MLIS earlier today and looking thru the ALA database adn i got overwhelmed. thanks <3

Hi!! I've finally reached a conclusion, after thinking a lot, making it overly complex for myself, and throwing all that out.

First thing, APPLY FOR FAFSA. It's a pain but it's vital if you want to do any kind of work study or take out government loans. Similarly, make sure you check out the ALA website and see what scholarships you can apply for.

Then what I did, personally, was pick ten highly-ranked programs (according to US News and World Report) that appealed to me and make a spreadsheet with:

Price. The full price of what it would cost to complete a degree. Library school is very light on what you need to actually purchase (unsurprisingly), but you need to know ahead of time what the lump sum would be without financial aid or fellowships.

Program type. Do they offer in-person, online, or hybrid? If online, are classes synchronous (live zoom meetings) or asynchronous (video lectures and assignments)? I personally think synchronous programs are a LOT better for many reasons but hey, these all get you degrees

Interesting features. Do they have a specialization you think is cool? Do they have an on-campus museum or rare books library you could intern with?

Have you applied yet? I just make this a yes/no tick box to keep on top of what I've already done.

Are your letters of rec in yet? Same thing, just a tick box to keep track.

Then apply and see what comes your way! I got my MLIS from University of Illinois online, and I went to classes at night so I could keep working. It took me three years instead of two, because I was going part-time and taking summers off, but that didn't matter at all. I had a really great experience and I highly recommend that program. There are many other excellent ones, though!

[ckmstudies]

July 6th:

I knew I wanted to stay up late tonight to hear Speak Now Taylor's Version so I just kept studying. I ended up doing just under six hours which is the most I've done since I started studying this summer. I finished modules five through nine of area six which means I officially finished all the modules and now technically should know everything on the exam. But of course now that I've finished learning the material its review time. Tomorrow I'll take the practice exam for area six and the mini exam covering areas five and six. I really was hoping to do the simulation exam covering all six areas tomorrow but that may need to be pushed back to Saturday as I don't want to take too many tests in one day and I want time to review the earlier material since it was so long ago. Still, I'm pretty proud of myself for getting through all the lecture videos, multiple choice questions, and practice simulations. The hard work is done, now just have to review everything.

Today's accounting topic: The objective of a review of interim financial information of a public entity is to provide an accountant with a basis for reporting whether material modifications should be made to conform with Generally Accepted Accounting Principals.

Other activity: My cat was actually nice to me today and curled up next to me as I ate my lunch. Usually she just stares at me with indifference even though I love her

[ros3ybabe]

Daily Check-in: April 8, 2024 🎀

Monday was a decently good day for me. Me and my boyfriend had to sort out some stuff after arguing Sunday night but everything is good now, work had went amazing, and I got a lot done. I know everyone hates Mondays but I genuinely look forward to them.

🩷 What I Accomplished:

assigned reading quiz for psyc

chemistry homework

chemistry extended lab report (finally got my notebook back)

2 medical terminology lectures

medical terminology flashcards

medical terminology self + timed test

meeting with a financial aid advisor

submitted my application for a 2nd job on campus

prepped myself amazing at work

studied Spanish

made a study plan for chemistry for the rest of the semester

🩷 Good Things That Happened:

got to see my dad for a short bit

work went super good and I finished very quickly

got to zoom call my boyfriend and it went well

started the first episode of Parasyte The Grey on Netflix and in already hooked

got my lab notebook back from my friend

was able to leave my study room early due to lack of stuff to do

have more space in my room now cause my dad took a bunch of stuff I needed to get rid of

drank half a gallon of water total (I never drink that mih even tho realistically I need more water then that daily)

🩷 What Could've Gone Better:

ate too much and didn't eat the healthiest, but that's okay because everyday is a new day and a new chance to make some good choices

could've spent more time the past weeks looking at the stuff for my lab report so I would've gotten more right

got my chem exam back and I don't think I did as well as I hoped, but the professor hasn't posted grades yet so idk

realized I definitely need to study chemistry more then I thought

So, Monday was definitely a good day overall. I was surprised by how well work went and how everything felt but not mad about it at all! I love having good days! Let's hope Tuesdays just as good <3

btw, check out my depop shop if you get the chance, will be uploading more stuff soon!

til next time lovelies 🩷

💕 Song of The Day:

ILLIT -- Magnetic

When I say this song has been on repeat....I mean it's been on REPEAT. such a catchy song, I love the Kpop genre so much <3333

[lemoncrushh]

Out of Bounds - Chapter 32

STORY PAGE

Word Count: 2595

The weekend went by pretty fast. Harry had to work both Friday and Saturday night. Penny's band had a gig on Friday, so I went with Zack to go see them play. Joey met us up there as well, and it was nice to get to know him a little better. He's a sweet guy and fun to be around. He confided in me that he was a bit envious of Harry, and hoped he could find a nice gal like me. He asked if I had any friends I could hook him up with, to which I laughed and said no, but I'd be on the lookout.

Penny and I slept in on Saturday, both with slight hangovers. Then we watched chick flicks all day in our pajamas. Harry called before he left for work like he always did, and once he'd returned.

Before I knew it, it was Monday and time to go back to school. Professor Jacobson delved quickly into a lecture about our final chapter, giving us a heads-up on a quiz planned for the next week before our final exam. Professor Lloyd was also in full accelerator mode. Because I had missed so much of both classes when I'd been sick, I was rather behind. Fortunately for History class, all I really needed to do was study the end of the previous chapter. With English, however, I had missed the introduction to the new book that Lloyd had assigned, and apparently had told us to get on started on during the week of Thanksgiving. I had a lot of catching up to do.

I wasn't in the door ten minutes when my cell phone rang. A number that I didn't recognize was displayed, but because I had applied for a few jobs, I decided to answer it. I quickly regretted it.

"Hello, Tisa, this is Glenn Goodner."

It took me a moment to recognize the name, but once I did, I grimaced. The divorce lawyer.

"Hello," I greeted through my teeth.

"How are you today?" he asked in a cheerful voice.

I sighed. "I'm okay."

"Fantastic. I was calling to let you know a date has been set for court. Monday, the twenty-sixth of January, at two PM."

I was grateful that he hadn't continued with the small talk and just cut to the chase.

"That's fine," I told him softly. "Thanks."

"You're quite welcome," Glenn replied. "See you then."

He didn't wait for me to respond. I held my phone in my hand, debating whether or not to call Harry. Not that there was really much to say. The date was set. Done deal.

Instead, I made a sandwich and opened my laptop to search for more jobs. If I didn't find something soon, even if it was just temp, I might have to start applying for holiday help at the mall. The thought of that made my stomach churn, but at least it would be something. I had very little money in the bank. When I'd taken my last temp job, I'd opened a checking account of my own. The job hadn't been a financial necessity, but more of something to keep myself busy. I hadn't worked that job for very long, however, and the money would soon run out. I needed something fast.

I went to Harry's that night so we could go over our Sociology report again, but really it was just an excuse to see each other. We still had to present our report the next day since I'd been unable to that week before Thanksgiving, but we still knew it backwards and forwards.

"You okay, love?" Harry asked me, running a hand through my hair as I laid against his chest on the sofa.

"Yeah, why?"

"You seem...distracted. Like something's on your mind."

I scoffed. "There's a lot of things on my mind."

"Tell me."

I sighed loudly, gathering my thoughts. Harry pointed the remote at the television and turned it off, giving me his full attention.

"The date is set," I said matter-of-factly.

The room filled with silence before Harry muttered, "Oh. When is it?"

"January 26th."

"Okay. That's good, yeah?"

I paused for a moment. "Yes. Yes, I supposed it is."

I ran my hands over Harry's which were placed gently on my stomach. I traced the bottom of the anchor tattoo on his wrist with my finger and played with his rings.

"What else?" asked Harry. I'd been so lost in my own head, I almost jumped.

"I...um..." I stumbled. "I'm on my own, Harry."

"No, you're not," he argued. "You have me." He squeezed me tighter, kissing me on the top of my head.

"That's not what I mean," I frowned.

"I'm sorry. What do you mean?"

I bit my lip. "I haven't been on my own since I was twenty-one. I knew that when I left, but I guess it's just now really hitting me. I barely have any money. James is going to stop paying my bills. I have to get a job, and so far, no luck. And obviously I can't go to school after this semester is over. I guess I never really considered all of the things I took for granted being married. It's like I'm back at square one. I'm kind of scared to be honest."

Harry was quiet for a while, his hands still on my stomach. I could hear his breathing, feel his heart beating. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke.

"Are you reconsidering?"

I widened my eyes. "The divorce? Oh God, Harry, no!" I sat up and glared at him. "Why would you think that?"

The look on his face showed a mix of worry and concern. He blinked a couple times before answering.

"It's just...I guess I could understand if you did."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "That's an awful thing to say."

"Tisa," Harry shook his head, "Putting my feelings for you aside. I just mean I could understand a woman finding comfort in security. I'm sure there's lots of women who stay in unhappy marriages for that reason."

"I don't want to be that woman," I commented.

Harry's expression softened. "Okay."

"I'm just afraid," I admitted.

"I understand that too. But you know I'm here for you. I'll help out any way I can."

"Harry, I can't ask you to do that."

"It's fine," he added. "If you're in a financial bind, I'm sure between Penny, Zack and me we can work it out until you're on your feet."

I sighed, leaning my head against his chest again, wrapping my arms around his torso.

"Thank you," I breathed into his t-shirt.

"It's what people do, Tisa," Harry expressed, rubbing my back. "They're kind to those they love and help when they can."

"Sounds like a Hallmark commercial," I joked.

"Don't mock me," Harry demanded, poking me in the side causing me to giggle.

"Or better yet, a Savings and Loan commercial."

This time Harry grabbed me and pinned me to the couch. He began tickling me, and I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

"Oh, I got it! State Farm!"

Before I could utter another word, Harry silenced me with his mouth on mine. His hands finally stilled from tickling me, and I fell into his kiss.

Crawford gave us another A and didn't count off points for my being sick. The rest of class was spent discussing the next chapter and our final presentations.

As Harry and I left class, I noticed Leslie looking at me funny. It wasn't really a piercing glare like she and the other mean girls would usually give, but it wasn't really pleasant either. I also took note of her friend Charice, who usually kept quiet anyway, but this time she wasn't even walking with Leslie. Instead, she'd stayed back at her desk, packing up her belongings until Leslie had left the classroom.

When Harry and I said our goodbyes and I watched him walk away, I caught a glimpse of Liz out of the corner of my eye. When I turned, I realized she was coming towards me.

"Hi, Tisa," she greeted, stopping in front of me.

"Hi," I said quietly.

"How are you?" she inquired.

"I'm okay."

I brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, not really sure what else to say. Liz had been helpful that day in the restroom, and I was glad that she didn't despise me, but we weren't exactly friends.

"That's good," she commented. "Everything okay with you and Harry?"

I pursed my lips and tried to keep myself from rolling my eyes. Here we go again.

"Yeah, why?"

Liz shrugged. "Just wondering." She paused to look at her feet before continuing. "I just kind of wanted to warn you about Britney."

This time I did roll my eyes. "I'm not worried about Britney."

"I know," she nodded. "And you shouldn't be, really. I think she's pretty harmless. But..."

"But what?" I raised an eyebrow.

"It's just..." Liz let out an exasperated breath. "She's still hung up on Harry."

"And?"

"Well...I haven't talked to her...you know, since I talked to you last. She's still pretty mad at me. But I know she's still friends with Leslie. And apparently she told Leslie that she didn't give a crap that Harry's with you. Because she's determined to get him."

I thought my eyes would fall out of their sockets from rolling them around so much.

"This is all so stupid and juvenile," I said.

"I know," Liz agreed. "I just wanted to give you a heads up. She's apparently still after him, so she'll probably be showing up at Mikado's a lot."

"Thanks," I groaned.

"You're welcome. Like I said, just thought I'd warn you. Glad you're feeling better."

Liz waved goodbye before I headed to the parking lot. As I drove home I was still shaking my head at all this Britney nonsense. It was somewhat humorous, but also very annoying. I hated stooping to her level, but the thought that kept racing through my mind was...Harry is mine! By the time I walked in the door, I was chuckling to myself.

My light mood was soon drained, however, when I noticed I had a text from Justine. Actually, it was more like a book. It was a good thing I kept my sound turned off during class, because she had sent me several messages in a row. More curious than anything, I sat on the sofa to read them.

J: Tisa, I know you don't want to talk to me. If I call, I know you won't answer, and if I leave a voicemail, you'll probably just delete it without listening to it. You might delete this too, but I figured this was my best shot at getting you to hear me out.

First of all, I'm not with James. In a way, I never really was "with" James. When he first called me and I met with him, he was very upset. I admit, I felt sorry for him. When I said I didn't tell him about you and Harry, that was the absolute truth. He figured it out on his own.

I was also truthful about Halloween night. I was with James that night. I felt really guilty about it afterwards, but then when the P.I. got your photos and James was angry, he came over and said he wanted to stay with me. I let him. Then the guilt started setting in again so I told him to go home to you. I knew you were having an affair with Harry, but I didn't want to be the cause of your marriage ending. I realize now that was completely selfish of me, and I'm sorry.

Up to this point, I honestly didn't know how serious things were with you and Harry. I contacted Glenn Goodner when James told me he wanted a divorce. Like I'd told you, Glenn was my divorce lawyer. But what I didn't tell you was that we used to have a thing. After my divorce from Chris, we went out a couple times and it turned into something. I'm not sure what to call it really. We were sleeping together, but it never got serious. We also would drink together. A lot.

Anyway, after I connected James with Glenn, we'd sometimes meet up at Mikado's. Sometimes it was just James and me, sometimes Glenn and me. It's cruel of me I know, but at first it felt good to play the spy, checking up on your boyfriend. Then, as usual, I felt guilty.

One night, James confided in me that he hadn't always been faithful to you. He told me about two times he cheated, but the way he confessed them to me made me think those weren't the only times. In fact, he made it sound like it was just a normal thing husbands do when they're stressed out and need a release. I was appalled.

I broke it off with James, telling him we shouldn't see each other anymore. That was the day before I ran into you at the supermarket. I really wanted to talk to you then, to make amends. You were such a good friend to me and I treated you like crap. But I guess I got what I deserved.

After that I called up Glenn. My rational side said not to, especially since he's James's lawyer. But I did anyway, and we went out drinking. I already had a good buzz going when he suggested we head over to Mikado's. Harry was our waiter. I started drinking heavily, as did Glenn, and I was feeling bitter that you hadn't wanted to talk to me. I don't remember everything, but I know some harsh words were thrown and I somehow got Harry fired.

I can't even express to you how very sorry I am, Tisa. I've been the worst friend. I just wanted to tell you the complete truth. If you don't believe me, I'll understand. I hope one day you'll find it in your heart to forgive me, but if not, I'll understand that too. You deserve all the happiness in the world, and if that's what Harry gives you, then he's perfect for you.

As I said, I'm no longer in contact with James, nor with Glenn. Not only because I think they are toxic for me, but because I still consider you my friend, and I need to do what's right.

If you decide to text me back, I'll be here. I wish you all the best.

I set my phone down on the end table and went into Penny's kitchen to find something for lunch. After finishing some leftover pasta and watching two reruns of The Golden Girls, I washed the dishes, picked up my laptop, and did more job searching.

It wasn't that I was trying to avoid the text. It wasn't really even that I didn't want to reply. I just didn't know what to say.

Finally, I closed my computer, sat back and picked up my phone again.

T: Thanks for the text. I forgive you. But only because I feel in my heart that's the right thing to do. I think it's better though if we are not friends.

After hitting send, I returned the phone to the table and took a deep breath. I leaned my head back on the couch, waiting for the tears to fall, but they never came.

MASTERLIST | KO-FI | FEEDBACK