#I also like how I kept flipping back and forth on whether the sub was sinister or not | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

foramomentonly · 4 years

Text

Nail in My Coffin, Part 7

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six

Summary: Alex and Kyle are fashion designers on a Next In Fashion style reality show. Michael is their model. Dom/sub elements. Prompt courtesy of @signoraviolettavalery .

Michael and Alex have a fight. It ends in “I love you.”

TW: Discussion of child abuse and homophobia, implied PTSD

Author’s Note: It’s been a week. I know. And I know this might not be what you all want to read right now (or ever again), and that’s okay. I was writing this piece before this week happened and coming back to it gave me comfort, so I kept writing it. I’ll continue writing Malex and I’ll continue in this AU, as well. Love to you, friends.

Read on AO3

It’s a bad fight because it’s their first, and they don’t know the rules.

“Know what today is?” Michael asks, grinning into Alex’s face as he battles with the stubborn hem of Michael’s sleeve.

Alex presses his lips together like he’s trying not to smile bigger and glances up at Michael mildly.

“Do you know what day it is?” he smirks. “You don’t strike me as a calendar person.”

“It’s your birthday,” Michael continues on, undeterred.

“I know,” Alex replies indulgently. “I was there when you found out.”

He glares over his shoulder at Kyle. Kyle clearly hears him, but he stays diligently bent over his own work. Alex hadn’t breathed a word, let half the day go by like any other. But Kyle had accidentally blabbed to Liz, and Liz had run off to tell the producer on set, and the whole debacle had ended with the entire cast and crew singing “Happy Birthday,” and Michael hurriedly calling in a favor from his well-connected sister for surprise dinner reservations.

Michael leans closer, brushing his nose against Alex’s temple.

"I think we should celebrate,” he murmurs in Alex’s ear. Alex tsks and lifts Michael’s arm impatiently to get at the bottom of the sleeve.

“Stand up straight,” he commands, and Michael does, but a dark look passes over his face.

“Anyway,” Michael goes on, “What about drinks and dinner?” He raises an eyebrow and grins. “I’ll throw in a birthday blow job. Time and location is up to you.”

Kyle flips off his machine and pivots off his chair in one fluid movement, calling, “Coffee,” over his shoulder as he practically sprints away.

Michael smirks.

"Finally.“

He looks down at Alex, expecting to find his dark eyes bright with mirth. He doesn’t exactly condone Micael’s teasing attempts to make Kyle uncomfortable, but he also doesn’t hide his amusement. This time, though, Alex is staring stonily at the hem of Michael’s sleeve, seemingly caught up in his work. But Michael sees how his eyes flit back and forth restlessly, and he knows Alex is deliberately avoiding eye contact. Michael furrows his brow, confused and bit frustrated.

“Alex,” he says through his teeth, “tonight? What do you think?”

Alex’s mouth is a thin line, his jaw tense.

“It’s not a good idea,” he says.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not,” Alex grits, his voice loud and commanding and filled with finality. It’s the tone that usually turns Michael’s spine liquid and replaces the chaos of his mind with peaceful, focused clarity. This time it grates in his chest like nails on a chalkboard, and he returns Alex’s cold stare with the full force of his heated glare.

“This isn’t a scene,” he hisses. “You don’t get to make all the decisions.”

“It’s my birthday,” Alex replies, “I absolutely do have final say in how I spend it.”

“Fine,” Michael spits, exasperated by Alex’s obstinance. “But what’s the big deal? Everybody knows about us, we’re not even trying to hide it anymore. Would it be so bad if we acted like a real couple?”

“Yes!” Alex cries, his voice a mixture of insistence and panic, and something in Michael caves, gives in, and he stops fighting in favor of sinking deep into the overwhelming disappointment and frustration weighing him down like an anchor. Alex searches his face, his lips parting as he lets out a breath and starts to speak.

“Michael-”

“Don’t bother,” he huffs, “let’s just get this over with.”

Alex straightens his spine, his features shifting as the emotion falls from his face and a cool mask of indifference slips into place.

“Left arm up,” he orders, but Michael shakes his head, glaring straight ahead.

“Do not give me orders right now,” he hisses. Alex regards him cooly for a brief moment before turning on his heel and striding away. A few minutes later, Kyle returns to their station, a silent apology evident in the shrug of his shoulders, and he finishes the rest of Alex’s work in silence.

***

Alex doesn’t speak to Michael the rest of the day. He doesn’t return to his work station until after Kyle has released Michael, and whether it’s by fate or by design, they don’t call him back for a second fitting. Michael watches as absolutely no one suggests so much as a birthday drink to Alex, but from a distance, he can see that Alex is perfectly content in his isolation. Alex isn’t especially outgoing or demonstrative, Michael’s always known that. But their connection was instantaneous, almost cosmic, and Michael had assumed Alex was making other, if fewer relationships on set. He never realized until now how rare personal interaction actually is for Alex outside of himself and Kyle. He watches Alex back at the hotel share a quiet meal with Kyle at the bar and accept a hug from Liz, his gaze following Alex’s stiff form across the room and toward the elevator bay. He realizes if he wants any kind of resolution tonight, Michael has to go to him.

***

Alex answers the door wearing the same carefully neutral expression he had when he’d walked away from Michael earlier in the day, and Michael feels like ice water is seeping into his veins.

“Can we talk?” he asks, and Alex steps aside so he can pass into the room.

They stand in silence, facing one another across the length of the bed like opponents in a duel. Alex is fully dressed, prosthesis still on, but his eyes are tired and a little bloodshot, and his hair is unkempt, like he’s been running his fingers through it carelessly. Michael wonders how many drinks he had with dinner. Still, his stance is firm and steady, and when he finally speaks, his voice is clear.

“So,” he says, not quite meeting Michael’s eye, “what do you want to talk about?”

Michael scoffs.

“Are you kidding?” he asks, voice already rising. “You left, Alex. I don’t know what the fuck happened, but you just left.”

Alex shrugs.

“I needed space,” he says, “and you clearly didn’t want me there.”

“Then you say you need some time,” Michael insists. “You don’t just walk away.”

“Why are you trying to push this?” Alex demands suddenly, brow furrowed in anger, and he finally meets Michael’s gaze with a resentful glare. “We’re together, we’re not hiding. Suddenly that’s not enough?”

Michael shakes his head, running a hand through his messy curls.

“Apparently not,” he cries, throwing his arms in the air, “cuz I still feel like a side piece.”

Alex takes a step back, expression incredulous.

“What?” he spits.

“First we had to keep it secret because of the show. Now everyone knows, but you still don’t want to leave the hotel with me for some reason? I feel like I’m your side chick and I’m just letting you string me along like an idiot, making promises I know you’re not gonna keep!”

“I’ve never promised you anything,” Alex says coldly.

Michael scoffs.

“Believe me, I know.”

“And don’t pretend like you don’t love being my dirty little secret,” Alex says, his voice glacial.

"Jesus Christ, Alex,” Michael groans, fisting a hand in his already chaotic hair, “I love you, but what the fuck am I supposed to say to that?”

“What?"

"I said what do you expect me to say?” Michael cries, shoulders raised and arms outstretched as though to catch an answer tumbling out of the sky.

“No, y-you—you said—”

Michael pauses, thinks back, and recognition dawns. He squares his shoulders.

“I said what I said,” he admits softly.

“Me, too,” Alex replies with a ridiculously formal nod.

“What?”

“I-I love you, too.”

Michael feels the air rush out of him, along with all the bones in his body, and he steps forward, opening his arms to Alex. Alex takes a hesitant step back.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to hold you,” Michael answers incredulously. Then, softer, he asks, “Is that okay with you?”

He waits until Alex nods, stepping hesitantly into his arms. Michael wraps his long limbs around Alex’s shoulders, feels Alex run his palms over his back and, after a moment, press his face into Michael’s wild curls.

“I’m sorry,” Michael breathes, and he’s surprised to feel a wet lump in his throat making his voice shake. “I shouldn’t have pushed you. I just—I want you, Alex. I want all of you, all the time. I love you and I—”

Alex shakes his head, pulling away only far enough to cup Michael’s jaw, to steady him with the dark, calming pools of his eyes.

“This isn’t about you, it’s me,” he says, leaning in to press a tender kiss to the corner of Michael’s mouth before moving away, lowering himself into the desk chair behind him and sitting forward, elbows resting on his knees. Michael misses his touch, his proximity, instantly, but he drops onto the corner of the bed, accepting Alex’s unspoken request for space.

“I didn’t grow up in a safe home,” Alex begins in that even, disconnected tone Michael knows means this story will not be a happy one. “My father is military. My three older brothers are, too. Growing up with them was. Well. It was very obvious very quickly that I was gay and not interested in carrying on the family legacy. The abuse was constant, unpredictable. Verbal, emotional. Physical.”

Michael’s brow furrows, but he stays silent. Alex takes a deep breath through his nose, exhales slowly through his open mouth, and continues.

“When I was seventeen I was at a stalemate with my dad. I was not gonna join up and he was not going to pay for college. But I had a boyfriend. I thought if I could just ride out the summer I could follow him when he went to school. We could be together, get an apartment. I could work.” Alex shrugs. “We were in love. On my birthday, we were fooling around in this old shed at the back of my dad’s property. He caught us. I—” Alex swallows, finishes his story in a rush. “It was bad. I don’t remember most of it. The next day he drove me to the recruitment office.”

Michael nods, absorbing and processing while Alex gazes at him with an unnerving calm.

“So, you don’t like to celebrate your birthday?” Michael asks, and Alex shakes his head slowly. “And—and does your dad know about the show? Your work?”

Alex sighs.

“He knows what me and Kyle are doing, yeah,” Alex says softly, “but I need to be careful. I don’t court attention. And I don’t want you and I to become a fucking storyline. I know he can’t hurt me anymore, he can’t hurt us, but sometimes I’m still so goddamn afraid—”

Alex cuts himself off, shaking his head firmly and taking deep, even breaths to steady his trembling frame.

“So, can I ask you a stupid question?” Michael says softly once Alex has regained his composure.

Alex nods.

“The boyfriend,” he says hesitantly, “was it Kyle?”

Alex laughs. Not his genuine laugh, the one that scrunches up his nose and makes him look so painfully young and carefree. But his shoulders relax and voice grows stronger.

“No,” he says, “definitely not Kyle. Kyle’s like a brother to me. A real brother. He—he’s been a constant. Just always there. Always backing me up.” He laughs, a little lighter. “Always calling me on my shit.”

“I got one of those,” Michael murmurs. “Isobel. My sister.”

“Sister?” Alex asks, leaning back in his seat and crossing his legs, more at ease now that the focus is off of him.

“Well, adopted. Well, sort of,” Michael stammers. “We were found together, on the side of the road, when we were little. Me, Isobel, and her twin brother, Max. We all went into a group home. They got adopted, I went into the system. But Max and Isobel, they found me a few years later. They’re my family.”

“How long were you in foster care?” Alex asks.

“Only until I got the fuck outta there,” Michael mutters, and Alex tilts his head and shifts foward again in his seat, an unspoken question. “I had some bad placements. Fundamentalists. Drunks. Went through some of the same shit you did. When I was sixteen I traded a mechanic work for an old truck. Fixed it up. Slept in the bed.” He pauses, adds with characteristic flourish, “Under the stars.”

“Where was all this?”

“Albuquerque.”

Alex blinks, a smile pulling at his lips, and shakes his head ruefully.

“What?”

“I grew up in Roswell.”

Michael grins.

“I got placed there for a minute,” he says, “but the family moved out of state.”

“So, in another lifetime we might have grown up together?”

Michael reaches a hesitant hand out between them and Alex takes it easily, allows himself to be tugged up to stand between Michael’s legs. Michael grips Alex’s hips and rests his chin on Alex’s stomach, wide eyes gazing up at him.

“I bet I would have been all over you in high school,” he murmurs.

Alex laughs, threads his fingers through Michael’s hair and scratches his nails lightly against his scalp. Michael’s eyes fall shut.

“Doubtful. I was totally emo in high school,” he says. “Black nail polish, septum piercing. The works.”

Michael drags the tip of his nose down Alex’s abdomen, presses a kiss just under his belly button.

“Hot,” he mumbles into the fabric of Alex’s shirt. “Tell me you wore eyeliner and I’m building a time machine.”

“I love you,” Alex breathes, and he uses his grip on Michael’s curls to tilt his head up. “I’m fucked up and I shut down and I fucking hate talking about shit I really should be talking about. But I love you and I don’t want you to think that I don’t want this. I want to be with you.”

Michael releases a shaky breath, eyes wet and shining golden, and shakes his head.

“It isn’t just you that fucked up. I got my own shit,” he admits. “I’ve been left too many times to not freak out when someone walks away from me. I don’t always do so well with the whole concept of ‘space.’”

Alex laughs.

“So basically we’re doomed?”

“Yup.” Michael grins, slipping his hands up under Alex’s shirt. “Wanna go out with a bang, Captain?”

“Ohmygod,” Alex laughs, pressing his palms against Michael’s shoulders and forcing him back onto the bed, settling beside him. Michael slides his leg between Alex’s, cups Alex’s cheek and presses their brows together.

“I love you,” he whispers, gravitating closer to Alex’s lips with every breath. “Ha—Can I say it?”

Alex brushes his lips against Michael’s and smiles, eyes already half closed.

“ I’ll allow it,” he breathes.

“Happy birthday.”

#malex #malex fic #rnm #rnm fic #alex manes #michael guerin #malex fashion au #dom/sub elements #kyle valenti #kylexbrotp #cw child abuse #cw homophobia

45 notes · View notes

endenogatai · 5 years

Text

Apple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offs

Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead crying foul over perceived hypocrisy.

The problem for this subset of otherwise loyal European iPhone users is that Apple isn’t offering enough privacy.

These users want more choice over key elements such as the search engine that can be set as the default in Safari on iOS (Apple currently offers four choices: Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo, all U.S. search engines; and with ad tech giant Google set as the default).

It is also being called out over other default settings that undermine its claims to follow a privacy by design philosophy. Such as the iOS location services setting which, once enabled, non-transparently flip an associated sub-menu of settings — including location-based Apple ads. Yet bundled consent is never the same as informed consent…

6/ and @Apple also defaults to ON, approx 13 location settings the moment a user enables location settings

that includes using YOUR location to support APPLE’s advertising business interests & $$$. By ‘enabling location based services’ you give your consent to this

@tim_cook pic.twitter.com/scYSg94QgY

— Privacy Matters (@PrivacyMatters) October 19, 2018

As the saying goes you can’t please all of the people all of the time. But the new normal of a saturated smartphone market is imposing new pressures that will require a reconfiguration of approach.

Certainly the challenges of revenue growth and user retention are only going to step up from here on in. So keeping an otherwise loyal base of users happy and — crucially — feeling listened to and well served is going to be more and more important for the tech giant as the back and forth business of services becomes, well, essential to its fortunes going forward.

(At least barring some miracle new piece of Apple hardware — yet to be unboxed but which somehow rekindles smartphone-level demand afresh. That’s highly unlikely in any medium term timeframe given how versatile and capable the smartphone remains; ergo Apple’s greatest success is now Apple’s biggest challenge.)

With smartphone hardware replacement cycles slowing, the pressure on Cook to accelerate services revenue naturally steps up — which could in turn increase pressure on the core principles Cupertino likes to flash around.

Yet without principles there can be no brand premium for Apple to command. So that way ruin absolutely lies.

Control shift

It’s true that controlling the iOS experience by applying certain limits to deliver mainstream consumer friendly hardware served Apple well for years. But it’s also true iOS has grown in complexity over time having dropped some of its control freakery.

Elements that were previously locked down have been opened up — like the keyboard, for instance, allowing for third party keyboard apps to be installed by users that wish to rethink how they type.

This shift means the imposed limit on which search engines users can choose to set as an iOS default looks increasingly hard for Apple to justify from a user experience point of view.

Though of course from a business PoV Apple benefits by being able to charge Google a large sum of money to remain in the plum search default spot. (Reportedly a very large sum, though claims that the 2018 figure was $9BN have not been confirmed. Unsurprisingly neither party wants to talk about the terms of the transaction.)

The problem for Apple is that indirectly benefiting from Google eroding the user privacy it claims to champion — by letting the ad tech giant pay it to suck up iOS users’ search queries by default — is hardly consistent messaging.

Not when privacy is increasingly central to the premium the Apple brand commands.

Cook has also made a point of strongly and publicly attacking the ‘data industrial complex‘. Yet without mentioning the inconvenient side-note that Apple also engages in trading user data for profit in some instances, albeit indirectly.

In 2017 Apple switched from using Bing to Google for Siri web search results. So even as it has stepped up its rhetoric around user privacy it has deepened its business relationship with one of the Western Internet’s primary data suckers.

All of which makes for a very easy charge of hypocrisy.

Of course Apple offers iOS users a non-tracking search engine choice, DuckDuckGo, as an alternative choice — and has done so since 2014’s iOS 8.

Its support for a growing but still very niche product in what are mainstream consumer devices is an example of Apple being true to its word and actively championing privacy.

The presence of the DDG startup alongside three data-mining tech giants has allowed those ‘in the know’ iOS users to flip the bird at Google for years, meaning Apple has kept privacy conscious consumers buying its products (if not fully on side with all its business choices).

But that sort of compromise position looks increasingly difficult for Apple to defend.

Not if it wants privacy to be the clear blue water that differentiates its brand in an era of increasingly cut-throat and cut-price Android -powered smartphone competition that’s serving up much the same features at a lower up-front price thanks to all the embedded data-suckers.

There is also the not-so-small matter of the inflating $1,000+ price-tags on Apple’s top-of-the-range iPhones. $1,000+ for a smartphone that isn’t selling your data by default might still sound very pricy but at least you’d be getting something more than just shiny glass for all those extra dollars. But the iPhone isn’t actually that phone. Not by default.

Apple may be taking a view that the most privacy sensitive iPhone users are effectively a captive market with little option but to buy iOS hardware, given the Google-flavored Android competition. Which is true but also wouldn’t bode well for the chances of Apple upselling more services to these people to drive replacement revenue in a saturated smartphone market.

Offending those consumers who otherwise could be your very best, most committed and bought in users seems short-sighted and short-termist to say the least.

Although removing Google as the default search provider in markets where it dominates would obviously go massively against the mainstream grain that Apple’s business exists to serve.

This logic says Google is in the default position because, for most Internet users, Google search remains their default.

Indeed, Cook rolled out this exact line late last year when asked to defend the arrangement in an interview with Axios on HBO — saying: “I think their search engine is the best.”

He also flagged various pro-privacy features Apple has baked into its software in recent years, such as private browsing mode and smart tracker prevention, which he said work against the data suckers.

Albeit, that’s a bit like saying you’ve scattered a few garlic cloves around the house after inviting the thirsty vampire inside. And Cook readily admitted the arrangement isn’t “perfect”.

Clearly it’s a trade off. But Apple benefitting financially is what makes this particular trade-off whiff.

It implies Apple does indeed have an eye on quarterly balance sheets, and the increasingly important services line item specifically, in continuing this imperfect but lucrative arrangement — rather than taking a longer term view as the company purports to, per Cook’s letter to shareholders this week; in which he wrote: “We manage Apple for the long term, and Apple has always used periods of adversity to re-examine our approach, to take advantage of our culture of flexibility, adaptability and creativity, and to emerge better as a result.”

If Google’s search product is the best and Apple wants to take the moral high ground over privacy by decrying the surveillance industrial complex it could maintain the default arrangement in service to its mainstream base but donate Google’s billions to consumer and digital rights groups that fight to uphold and strengthen the privacy laws that people-profiling ad tech giants are butting hard against.

Apple’s shareholders might not like that medicine, though.

More palatable for investors would be for Apple to offer a broader choice of alternative search engines, thereby widening the playing field and opening up to more pro-privacy Google alternatives.

It could also design this choice in a way that flags up the trade-off to its millions of users. Such as, during device set-up, proactively asking users whether they want to keep their Internet searches private by default or use Google?

When put like that rather more people than you imagine might choose not to opt for Google to be their search default.

Non-tracking search engine DDG has been growing steadily for years, for example, hitting 30M daily searches last fall — with year-on-year growth of ~50%.

Given the terms of the Apple-Google arrangement sit under an NDA (as indeed all these arrangements do; DDG told us it couldn’t share any details about its own arrangement with Apple, for e.g.) it’s not clear whether one of Google’s conditions requires there be a limit on how many other search engines iOS users can pick from.

But it’s at least a possibility that Google is paying Apple to limit how many rivals sit in the list of competitors iOS users can pick out an alternative default. (It has, after all, recently been spanked in Europe for anti-competitive contractual limits imposed on Android OEMs to limit their ability to use alternatives to Google products, including search. So you could say Google has history where search is concerned.)

Equally, should Google actually relaunch a search product in China — as it’s controversially been toying with doing — it’s likely the company would push Apple to give it the default slot there too.

Though Apple would have more reason to push back, given Google would likely remain a minnow in that market. (Apple currently defaults to local search giant Baidu for iOS users in China.)

So even the current picture around search on iOS is a little more fuzzy than Cook likes to make out.

Local flavor

China is an interesting case, because if you look at Apple’s growth challenges in that market you could come to a very different conclusion vis-a-vis the power of privacy as a brand premium.

In China it’s convenience, via the do-it-all ‘Swiss army knife’ WeChat platform, that’s apparently the driving consumer force — and now also a headwind for Apple’s business there.

At the same time, the idea of users in the market having any kind of privacy online — when Internet surveillance has been imposed and ‘normalized’ by the state — is essentially impossible to imagine.

Yet Apple continues doing business in China, netting it further charges of hypocrisy.

Its revised guidance this week merely spotlights how important China and emerging markets are to its business fortunes. A principled pull-out hardly looks to be on the cards.

All of which underscores growing emerging market pressures on Apple that might push harder against its stated principles. What price privacy indeed?

It’s clear that carving out growth in a saturated smartphone market is going to be an increasingly tricky business for all players, with the risk of fresh trade-offs and pitfalls looming especially for Apple.

Negotiating this terrain certainly demands a fresh approach, as Cook implies is on his mind, per the shareholder letter.

Arguably the new normal may also call for an increasingly localized approach as a way to differentiate in a saturated and samey smartphone market.

The old Apple ‘one-sized fits all’ philosophy is already very outdated for some users and risks being caught flat-footed on a growing number of fronts — be that if your measure is software ‘innovation’ or a principled position on privacy.

An arbitrary limit on the choice of search engine your users can pick seems a telling example. Why not offer iOS users a free choice?

Or are Google’s billions really standing in the way of that?

It’s certainly an odd situation that iPhone owners in France, say, can pick from a wide range of keyboard apps — from mainstream names to superficial bling-focused glitter and/or neon LED keyboard skins or indeed emoji and GIF-obsessed keyboards — but if they want to use locally developed pro-privacy search engine Qwant on their phone’s native browser they have to tediously surf to the company’s webpage every time they want to look something up.

Google search might be the best for a median average ‘global’ (excluding China) iOS user but in an age of increasingly self-focused and self-centred technology, with ever more demanding consumers, there’s really no argument against letting people who want to choose for themselves.

In Europe there’s also the updated data protection framework, GDPR, to consider. Which may yet rework some mainstream ad tech business models.

On this front Qwant questions how even non-tracking rival DDG can protect users’ searches from government surveillance given its use of AWS cloud hosting and the U.S. Cloud Act. (Though, responding to a discussion thread about the issue on Github two years ago, DDG’s founder noted it has servers around the world, writing: “If you are in Europe you will be connected to our European servers.” He also reiterated that DDG does not collect any personal data from users — thereby limiting what could be extracted from AWS via the Act.)

Asked what reception it’s had when asking about getting its search engine on the Safari iOS list, Qwant told us the line that’s been (indirectly) fed back to it is “we are too European according to Apple”. (Apple declined to comment on the search choices it offers iOS users.)

“I have to work a lot to be more American,” Qwant co-founder and CEO Eric Leandri told us, summing up the smoke signals coming out of Cupertino.

“I understand that Apple wants to give the same kind of experience to their customers… but I would say that if I was Apple now, based on the politics that I want to follow — about protecting the privacy of customers — I think it would be great to start thinking about Europe as a market where people have a different point of view on their data,” he continued.

“Apple has done a lot of work to, for example, not let applications give data to each by a very strict [anti-tracking policy]; Apple has done a lot of work to guarantee that cookies and tracking is super difficult on iOS; and now the last problem of Apple is Google search.”

“So I hope that Apple will look at our proposal in a different way — not just one-fits-all. Because we don’t think that one-fits-all today,” he added.

Qwant too, then, is hoping for a better Apple to emerge as a result of a little market adversity.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://tcrn.ch/2RxIUfB via IFTTT

#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425

0 notes

rolandfontana · 5 years

Text

The Rise and Fall of the ‘Teflon Don’

A fatal plane crash in May 1982 began the slow unraveling of the once-formidable Gambino crime family of New York. The man who died in that private plane, which crashed 12 miles southeast of Savannah, Ga., in a flight bound from New Jersey for Orlando, Fl., was Gambino “associate” Salvatore Ruggiero, who had been running a profitable heroin business that few people knew about—even leaders of the Gambino family.

In his new book Gotti’s Boys: The Mafia Crew That Killed for John Gotti, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony DeStefano traces the impact of the crash on the story of John Gotti, the so-called “Teflon Don” and the murderous underlings who helped him build a crime empire. Angelo Ruggiero, the brother of Salvatore, as well as John and Charles Carneglia, Salvatore Scala, and Vincent Artuso all bonded with Gotti and, as DeStefano writes, “propelled him to the top”—until he was finally brought down by his trusted lieutenant Sammy “the Bull” Gravano.

DeStefano, a former Newsday staffer who has covered organized crime for three decades, discussed his book with The Crime Report’s Nancy Bilyeau in a wide-ranging discussion that explored the world of the American Mafia, its lingering impact on U.S. society, and the reasons for the public’s apparently insatiable interest in chronicles of the “wise guys.”

The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

The Crime Report: Why was that May 1982 plane crash such a critical event in the story of John Gotti?

Anthony DeStefano: It served as a catalyst for some of the things that happened subsequently. After the crash, certain people had to take action to protect their interests, and as a result they got deeper into things just at a moment when law enforcement was starting to watch [high level members of the Gambino family].

TCR: So members of the Gambino family were already being surveilled when the plane crashed?

AD: The FBI got more than they bargained for. I think they were looking for traditional stuff: hijacking, money laundering, gambling. Suddenly the bugs are picking up all this frenetic activity on the drug empire. People were doing these drug deals. Now, people had been doing deals before that, but this really accelerated the tempo and brought more people into the situation that might not have gotten involved. They were trying to launder certain assets. The circle of culprits expanded.

TCR: Is it a myth that, historically, Mafia bosses have not wanted to get too involved with illegal drugs?

AD: There were certain old-school gangsters like Carlo Gambino who did not want to get involved with drugs. They knew what the risks were. But others were doing business with drugs from way back in the 1930s, even the 1920s. It was an accepted open secret.

TCR: Since John Gotti was part of the Gambino crime family and he was not totally avoiding drug profits, this must have caused a problem.

AD: Gotti’s out-front position was “I’m against drugs.” But it was a willful blindness. He was taking his cut and he didn’t care where the money came from.

TCR: An interesting part of your book is your analysis of Gotti as a boss. He wasn’t a great one, though his “boys” were loyal to him for the most part.

AD: He could be very nice to people, but he had this streak to him that he had to show people he was tough and he would abuse his own sub-bosses and people around him. He could be generous; I was told he would carry people who couldn’t earn a dime. But he could be nasty.

Gotti ‘would bet money on the way a raindrop would fall.’

TCR: I didn’t know until I read your book that he was such a chronic gambler.

AD: It was addictive. People told me he would bet money on the way a raindrop would fall. He got money. And he threw it away.

TCR: According to your book, one of the reasons Gotti hated his boss, Paul Castellano, whom he later had killed outside Sparks Steak House, was that he didn’t share money.

AD: He didn’t share. Castellano didn’t make friends with the people under him. He considered himself a businessman and above the riffraff and that created tension within the family. He was very greedy, and that caused resentment. Gotti got money and he shared it with his friends. He was generous. But Gotti wasn’t smart about his money. He would throw it away on gambling. He didn’t invest his money in anything or bury it in companies.

TCR: Gotti’s conviction in 1992 (for five murders, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, illegal gambling, extortion, and loansharking) came largely on the evidence of his close associate Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, arguably his deputy. If Sammy Gravano hadn’t heard John Gotti deriding him on a recording the authorities shared, would he have flipped on Gotti?

The death of Gotti henchman Angelo Ruggiero’s brother, Salvatore, in a 1982 plane crash heightened the FBI’s attention to the Gambino crime family. Photo courtesy Kensington

AD: I go back and forth on that. Gravano was worried when he got arrested that Gotti might want him to take the fall. Gravano didn’t actually have much of a jail record, despite all the people he may have killed. He did the arithmetic in his head and knew that he was looking at big time if he was convicted for this. And once he did hear how Gotti was talking about him, he decided, “I’m not going down for this guy.”

TCR: Reading your book, I was shocked by how little care was taken of the juries in the earlier John Gotti trials and how in danger these people were. “Gotti’s boys” were busy trying to tamper juries.

AD: Yes, they would follow the jurors to their cars out of the parking lot and write down their license numbers and were able to find out about them. In a number of cases, there were attempts to intimidate. In Gotti’s 1986 federal trial, they managed to bribe one juror who swung the other jurors his way and there was an acquittal. These were bold attempts.

TCR: After media darling Gotti was sentenced and lost his power, didn’t the Mafia realize they needed a lower profile?

AD: Yeah, the Mob (came to the conclusion), “don’t bring attention to yourself. Don’t have these social clubs where everybody comes and pays homage to the boss. Don’t have these big meetings.” They became very discreet.

TCR: Would you say then that they got smarter after Gotti?

AD: I think in terms of secrecy, yes.

TCR: What do you think of Rudy Giuliani’s role in spearheading an aggressive stance against the Mafia when he was a prosecutor?

AD: You’ve got to credit Giuliani with putting together the idea of a racketeering and conspiracy case against most of the bosses of the five families. And he took out some of the top bosses. Tony Salerno, Tony Corallo. Paul Castellano was on trial when he was killed. In doing that, [Giuliani] seriously hobbled the mob in the concrete industry, the construction rackets. That didn’t mean that things didn’t persist in the construction area and other industries. It went on for a good 15-20 years.

TCR: But is it fair to say the Mafia is not as predominant in New York City and other U.S. Northeast cities now?

AD: They’ve been seriously impacted by the prosecutions. The unions are now run by trustees and federal monitors, so the Mob is kept out of them. There is no longer that power base for them. I think it’s also true for the docks and the garment industry. Where you still have the Mob is, I think, the gambling, some drugs, and the lower-level extortions and loan sharking.

TCR: And no one has tried to take the place of the Italian Mafia?

AD: There are some smaller groups. For a while you had the Albanian groups who were trying to vie for control of some of the Five Family rackets, notably gambling, stolen-car rackets. But they get picked off. The Feds have gotten better at it over the decades. You’ve got the wiretaps and the surveillance. This is a different time. It isn’t the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s, or even the 1960s, when the Mob could work with impunity.

TCR: Yet the popular culture is bursting with movies, TV series, podcasts, and documentaries about the Mafia.

Anthony DeStefano

AD: What’s happened is people still glamorize the Mafia, for reasons I’m not sure of. I was talking to my editor about it and he said the Mafia has become almost like the Old West genre. It’s passed into American folklore, and people like these stories, whether they are true or fiction. It doesn’t matter. These are now folkloric characters: John Gotti, Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, Joe Bonanno. Just the lifestyle, the aura.

And some of them were very family-oriented. [They care about their] wives and children. Plus they were patriotic. So a certain section of the public could relate to them. I even ask people why they want to know about the Mob and they say, “It’s just so interesting.” And I say, “OK.”

Editor’s Note: Gotti died of cancer in prison in 2002. Gravano, believed to have killed 19 people, received only a five year-sentence because he testified against Gotti, but while in Witness Protection in Arizona after release, he ran a huge illegal drug business. He was arrested in 2000, tried, and convicted; he served almost 20 years of his drug sentence. Gravano was released from an Arizona prison in September, 2017. He now keeps a low profile.

Nancy Bilyeau is deputy editor of The Crime Report. She welcomes comments from readers.

The Rise and Fall of the ‘Teflon Don’ syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

0 notes

technicalsolutions88 · 5 years

Link

The problem for this subset of otherwise loyal European iPhone users is that Apple isn’t offering enough privacy.

6/ and @Apple also defaults to ON, approx 13 location settings the moment a user enables location settings that includes using YOUR location to support APPLE’s advertising business interests & $$$. By ‘enabling location based services’ you give your consent to this @tim_cook pic.twitter.com/scYSg94QgY

— Privacy Matters (@PrivacyMatters) October 19, 2018

As the saying goes you can’t please all of the people all of the time. But the new normal of a saturated smartphone market is imposing new pressures that will require a reconfiguration of approach.

Certainly the challenges of revenue growth and user retention are only going to step up from here on in. So keeping an otherwise loyal base of users happy and — crucially �� feeling listened to and well served is going to be more and more important for the tech giant as the back and forth business of services becomes, well, essential to its fortunes going forward.

Yet without principles there can be no brand premium for Apple to command. So that way ruin absolutely lies.

Control shift

Elements that were previously locked down have been opened up — like the keyboard, for instance, allowing for third party keyboard apps to be installed by users that wish to rethink how they type.

This shift means the imposed limit on which search engines users can choose to set as an iOS default looks increasingly hard for Apple to justify from a user experience point of view.

Not when privacy is increasingly central to the premium the Apple brand commands.

All of which makes for a very easy charge of hypocrisy.

Of course Apple offers iOS users a non-tracking search engine choice, DuckDuckGo, as an alternative choice — and has done so since 2014’s iOS 8.

Its support for a growing but still very niche product in what are mainstream consumer devices is an example of Apple being true to its word and actively championing privacy.

But that sort of compromise position looks increasingly difficult for Apple to defend.

Not if it wants privacy to be the clear blue water that differentiates its brand in an era of increasingly cut-throat and cut-price Android-powered smartphone competition that’s serving up much the same features at a lower up-front price thanks to all the embedded data-suckers.