#Lost and Founder's Day

[fountainpenguin]

Daddy's boy...

Bonus:

[egophiliac]

can't believe that skeleman has turned on us, and Halloween Prom is tomorrow.

(what a top-tier UM...we are about to be just totally obliterated in the absolute silliest way. what possible use could this power have outside of bringing us to the brink of utter holiday disaster.)

[coconuttyglittersmurf]

[43-moonshadow]

Wow what a great set of episodes, I can't wait to see what happens next!

[eemoo1o]

Okay it is REALLY not that deep and it’s forced conflict bc dev could have told hazel what’s up but like. Damn. Sad Dev is the worst dev and now I’m crying a bit

[aureentuluva70]

OK but I love how protective the other Valar are of Manwë in the Book of Lost Tales fr

Tulkas, Orome and Aule be like:

[nalooksthrough]

Dale is so disgusted with the idea of holding hands, which would be funny if he wasn't addressing his own son. Poor Dev. :(

[movies-tv-more]

Movie Releases for June 4, 2024

[brewscoop]

Join the adventure! Lost Worlds Brewing is opening a new taproom in Charlotte at the Metropolitan in Midtown. Experience unique decor, mouthwatering beers, and a special craft cocktail menu. Don't miss out on the grand opening, April 13!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me at NEW ZEALAND'S UNITY BOOKS in AUCKLAND on May 2, and in WELLINGTON on May 3. More tour dates (Pittsburgh, PDX, London, Manchester) here.

It's damned hard to prove an antitrust case: so often, the prosecution has to prove that the company intended to crush competition, and/or that they raised prices or reduced quality because they knew they didn't have to fear competitors.

It's a lot easier to prove what a corporation did than it is to prove why they did it. What am I, a mind-reader? But imagine for a second that the corporation in the dock is a global multinational. Now, imagine that the majority of the voting shares in that company are held by one man, who has served as the company's CEO since the day he founded it, personally calling every important shot in the company's history.

Now imagine that this founder/CEO, this accused monopolist, was an incorrigible blabbermouth, who communicated with his underlings almost exclusively in writing, and thus did he commit to immortal digital storage a stream – a torrent – of memos in which he explicitly confessed his guilt.

Ladies and gentlepersons, I give you Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta (nee Facebook), an accused monopolist who cannot keep his big dumb fucking mouth shut.

At long, long last, the FTC's antitrust trial against Meta is underway, and this week, Zuck himself took the stand, in agonizing sessions during which FTC lawyers brandished printouts of Zuck's own words before him, asking him to explain away his naked confessions of guilt. It did not go well for Zuck.

In a breakdown of the case for The American Prospect, editor-in-chief David Dayen opines that "The Government Has Already Won the Meta Case," having hanged Zuck on his own words:

https://prospect.org/power/2025-04-16-government-already-won-meta-case-tiktok-ftc-zuckerberg/

The government is attempting to prove that Zuck bought Instagram and Whatsapp in order to extinguish competitors (and not, for example, because he thought they were good businesses that complemented Facebook's core product offerings).

This case starts by proving how Zuck felt about Insta and WA before the acquisitions. On Insta, Zuck circulated memos warning about Insta's growth trajectory:

they appear to be reaching critical mass as a place you go to share photos

and how that could turn them into a future competitor:

[Instagram could] copy what we’re doing now … I view this as a big strategic risk for us if we don’t completely own the photos space.

These are not the words of a CEO who thinks another company is making a business that complements his own – they're confessions that he is worried that they will compete with Facebook. Facebook tried to clone Insta (Remember Facebook Camera? Don't feel bad – neither does anyone else). When that failed, Zuck emailed Facebook execs, writing:

[Instagram's growth is] really scary and why we might want to consider paying a lot of money for this.

At this point, Zuck's CFO – one of the adults in the room, attempting to keep the boy king from tripping over his own dick – wrote to Zuck warning him that it was illegal to buy Insta in order to "neutralize a potential competitor."

Zuck replied that he was, indeed, solely contemplating buying Insta in order to neutralize a potential competitor. It's like this guy kept picking up his dictaphone, hitting "record," and barking, "Hey Bob, I am in receipt of your memo of the 25th, regarding the potential killing of Fred. You raise some interesting points, but I wanted to reiterate that this killing is to be a murder, and it must be as premeditated as possible. Yours very truly, Zuck."

Did Zuck buy Insta to neutralize a competitor? Sure seems like it! For one thing, Zuck cancelled all work on Facebook Camera "since we're acquiring Instagram."

But what about after the purchase. Did Zuck reduce quality and/or raise costs? Well, according to the company, it enacted an "explicit policy of not prioritizing Instagram’s growth" (a tactic called "buy or bury"). At this juncture, Zuckerberg once again put fingers to keyboard in order to create an immortal record of his intentions:

By not killing their products we prevent everyone from hating us and we make sure we don’t immediately create a hole in the market for someone else to fill.

And if someone did enter the market with a cool new gimmick (like, say, Snapchat with its disappearing messages)?

Even if some new competitors spring up, if we incorporate the social mechanics they were using, these new products won’t get much traction since we’ll already have their mechanics deployed at scale.

Remember, the Insta acquisition is only illegal if Zuck bought them to prevent competition in the marketplace (rather than, say, to make a better product). It's hard to prove why a company does anything, unless its CEO, founder, and holder of the majority of its voting stock explicitly states that his strategy is to create a system to ensure that innovating new products "won't get much traction" because he'll be able to quickly copy them.

So we have Zuck starving Insta of development except when he needs to neutralize a competitor, which is just another way of saying he set out to reduce the quality of the product after acquisition, a thing that is statutorily prohibited, but hard to prove (again, unless you confess to it in writing, herp derp).

But what about prices? Well, obviously, Insta doesn't charge its end-users in cash, but they do charge in attention. If you want to see the things you've explicitly asked for – posts from accounts you follow – you have to tolerate a certain amount of "boosted content" and ads, that is, stuff that Facebook's business customers will pay to nonconsensually cram into your eyeballs.

Did that price go up? Any Insta user knows the answer: hell yes. Instagram is such a cesspit of boosted content and ads that it's almost impossible to find stuff you actually asked to see. Indeed, when a couple of teenagers hacked together an alternative Insta client called OG App that only showed you posts from accounts you followed, it was instantly the most popular app on Google Play and Apple's App Store (and then Google and Apple killed it, at Meta's request):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But why did the price go up? Did it go up because Facebook had neutralized a competitor by purchasing it, and thus felt that it could raise prices without losing customers? Again, a hard thing to prove…unless Zuck happened to put it in writing. Which he did, as Brendan Benedict explains in Big Tech On Trial:

I think we’re badly mismanaging this right now. There’s absolutely no reason why IG ad load should be lower than FB at a time when . . . we’re having engagement issues in FB. If we were managing our company correctly, then at a minimum we’d immediately balance IG and FB ad load . . . But it’s possible we should even have a higher ad load on IG while we have this challenge so we can replace some ads with [People You May Know] on FB to turn around the issues we’re seeing.

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/zuckerberg-v-zuckerberg-will-the

So there you have it: Zuck bought Insta to neutralize a competitor, and after he did, he lowered its quality and raised its prices, because he knew that he was operating without significant competitors thanks to his acquisition of that key competitor. Zuck's motivations – as explained by Zuck himself – were in direct contravention of antitrust law, a thing he knew (because his execs explained it to him). That's a pretty good case.

But what about Whatsapp? How did Zuck feel about it? Well, he told his board that Whatsapp was Facebook's greatest "consumer risk," fretting that "Messenger isn’t beating WhatsApp." He blocked Whatsapp ads on Facebook, telling his team that it was "trying to build social networks and replace us." Sure, they'd lose money by turning away that business, but the "revenue is immaterial to us compared to any risk." Sure seems like Zuck saw Whatsapp as a competitor.

Meta's final line of defense in this case is that even if they did some crummy, illegal things, they still didn't manage to put together a monopoly. According to Meta's lawyers – who're billing the company more than $1m/day! – Meta is a tiny fish in a vast ocean that has many competitors, like Tiktok:

https://www.levernews.com/mr-zuckerbergs-very-expensive-day-in-court/

There's only one problem with this "market definition" argument, and that problem's name is Chatty Mark Zuckerberg. On the question of market definition, FTC lawyers once again raised Zuckerberg's own statements and those of his top lieutenants to show that Zuckerberg viewed his companies as "Personal Social Networks" (PSNs) and not as just generic sites full of stuff, competing with Youtube, Tiktok, and everyone else who lets users post things to the internet.

Take Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, who explained that:

Instagram will always need to focus on friends and can never exclusively be for public figures or will cease to be a social product.

And then there was Zuck's memo explaining why he offered $6b for Snapchat:

Snap Stories serves the exact same use case of sharing and consuming feeds of content that News Feed and Instagram deliver. We need to take this new dynamic seriously—both as a competitive risk and as a product opportunity to add functionality that many people clearly love and want to use daily.

And an internal strategy document that explained the competitive risks to Facebook:

Social networks have two stable equilibria: either everyone uses them, or no-one uses them. In contrast, nonsocial apps (e.g. weather apps, exercise apps) can exist [somewhere] along a continuum of adoption. The binary nature of social networks implies that there should exist a tipping point, ie some critical mass of adoption, above which a network will organically grow, and below which it will shrink.

Sure sounds like Facebook sees itself as a "social network," and not a "nonsocial app." And of course – as Dayen points out – when Tiktok (a company Meta claims as a competitor) went up for sale, Meta did not enter a bid, despite being awash in free cash flow.

In Zuckerberg's defense, he's not the only tech CEO who confesses his guilt in writing (recall that FTX planned its crimes in a groupchat called WIREFRAUD). Partly that's because these firms are run by arrogant twits, but partly it's because digital culture is a written culture, where big, dispersed teams expected to work long hours from offices all over the world as well as from their phones every hour of day and night have to rely on memos to coordinate:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

When Dayen claims that "the government has won the Meta case," he doesn't mean the judge will rule in the FTC's favor (though there's a high likelihood that this will happen). Rather, he means that the case has been proven beyond any kind of reasonable doubt, in public, in a way that has historically caused other monopolists to lose their nerve, even if they won their cases. Take Microsoft and IBM – though both companies managed to draw out their cases until a new Republican administration (Reagan for IBM, GWB for Microsoft) took office and let them off the hook, both companies were profoundly transformed by the process.

IBM created the market for a generic, multivendor PC whose OS came from outside the company:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

And Microsoft spared Google the same treatment it had meted out to Netscape, allowing the company to grow and thrive:

https://apnews.com/article/google-apple-microsoft-antitrust-technology-cases-1e0c510088825745a6e74ba3b81b44c6

Trump being Trump, it's not inconceivable that he will attempt to intervene to get the judge to exonerate Meta. After all, Zuck did pay him a $1m bribe and then beg him to do just that:

https://gizmodo.com/zuckerberg-really-thought-trump-would-make-metas-legal-problems-go-away-2000589897

But as Dayen writes, the ire against Meta's monopolistic conduct is thoroughly bipartisan, and if Trump was being strategic here (a very, very big "if"), he would keep his powder dry here. After all, if the judge doesn't convict Meta, Trump won't have wasted any political capital. And if Meta is convicted, Trump could solicit more bribes and favors at the "remedy" stage, when a court will decide how to punish Meta, which could be anything from a fine to a breakup order, to a nothingburger of vague orders to clean up its act.

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/2025/04/18/chatty-zucky/#is-you-taking-notes-on-a-criminal-fucking-conspiracy

[fountainpenguin]

Why is Dale so mean to his son for no reason

[gaza-giving-tree]

Hossam Al-Qazzaz and his family were finally able to move into their newly rebuilt tent... And now, it looks likely they will be displaced yet again.

Images: Hossam Al-Quzzaz rebuilt his family's tent after it was destroyed in an airstrike on the night of March 17/18, 2025.

@hos-pal

@bashar-qazaz

@hane-qazaz

Written by @rumiandroses

In the early hours of March 17/18, 2025, the ceasefire in Gaza collapsed. Airstrikes lit up the dark night, killing over 400 people.

Sleeping in their tent in the Khan Kunis displacement camp, the Al-Quzzaz family had a nightmarish awakening: their tent collapsing on top of them, their belongings catching fire from the blast.

Hossam, his wife Hanan, and their four children—Bashar (9), Hani (8), Diana (4), and 4-month-old Habiba—managed to scramble out of the wreckage.

Video: Clip from a ten minute Al-Jazeera video, featuring Hossam, as he recounts the night his family's tent was destroyed in an airstrike.

Original Video: [LINK]

"Miraculously, we survived," Hossam wrote to us the next morning, assuring us he and his family were unharmed. The tent, however, was completely destroyed.

“By the grace of the Creator, we were not physically harmed, but we are psychologically and morally broken,” Hossam wrote in the March 19th update on the family's GoFundMe page. “... our hearts are still trembling until now, because we have lost everything. Our tent was completely destroyed, just as our house was destroyed before, and we are now homeless, without food, without clothes, without money…”

The devastating blow was softened a little by the kindness of others; thanks to everyone who donated to the Chuffed campaign our founder, Bethany Grace, created to help the family rebuild, we were able to send the Al-Qazzaz family $788 (€697.48 after conversion)—enough to start constructing another shelter out of sturdy materials.

Hossam, skilled in construction, has been hard at work for the past few weeks, clearing out the debris and reconstructing the family's shelter with materials he was able to obtain.

Every day, Hossam toiled to rebuild his family's shelter. And every long night, the family could barely sleep as brutal airstrikes continued to light up the night.

“The sounds of bombings are everywhere,” Hossam wrote to us one evening. “And the planes fly at a close distance. And fires everywhere.”

A few days ago, the family was able to move back into their shelter together.

But today, Hossam sent us a message that made our blood run cold:

“The tanks are approaching and are almost a kilometer* or a little more away. If [they] come any closer, we'll get out of there because we'll be within range of [their] fire.”

*Kilometer = 0.62 miles

This precious family, already displaced multiple times for over a year, now might be displaced again, under threat of fire. With no stable income and essential supplies priced beyond reach, the Al-Qazzaz family is fighting a daily battle just to keep their children warm, fed, and safe.

The Al-Qazzaz family is one of countless in Gaza enduring wave after wave of trauma, displacement, and loss. And yet, through it all, they have held onto their dignity, their love for each other, and their will to survive. The support of the online mutual aid community has been a lifeline for them—allowing them to feed their children, find temporary shelter, and begin again each time everything is taken from them.

If you are moved by their story and wish to help, the family has a GoFundMe campaign that directly supports their daily essentials—food, medicine, and immediate needs. Every donation, no matter the size, helps them meet the most basic requirements to keep going in impossible circumstances.

Additionally, a Chuffed campaign, organized by the founder of Gaza Giving Tree, is helping to raise funds specifically to aid the family in either rebuilding yet again or evacuating to safety if that becomes possible. This effort is aimed at long-term stability and survival—a future where the children can sleep without fear.

Please consider contributing to one or both campaigns. Your generosity can be the reason this family has a chance at life beyond war and rubble.

The Al-Qazzaz family's campaign has been vetted by @gazavetters and is (#287) on their list of verified campaigns.

[rdlain]

eccosys.com, c.1997, one of the first 'mainstream' websites in Japan

[uwmspeccoll]

The author, Angela Hovak Johnston.

Johnston and Marjorie Tungwenuk Tahbone, traditional tattoo artist.

Catherine Niptanatiak: "I designed my own, something that represents me and who I am, something that I would be proud to wear and show off, and something that would make me feel confident and beautiful. . . . I have daughters and I would like to teach them what I know. I would like for them to want to practice our traditions and keep our culture alive."

Cecile Nelvana Lyall: "On my hand tattoos, from the top down, the triangles represent the mountains. . . . The Ys are the tools used in seal hunting. . . . The dots are my ancestors. . . . I am so excited to be able to truly call myself and Inuk woman."

Colleen Nivingalok: "The tattoos on my face represent my family and me. The lines on my chin are my four children -- my two older boys on the outside protecting my daughters. The lines on my cheeks represent the two boys and the two girls on either side. The one on my forehead represents their father and me. Together, we live for our children."

Doreen Ayalikyoak Evyagotailak: "I have thought about getting traditional tattoos since I was a teenager. . . . When I asked the elders if I could have my own meaning for my tattoos, they said it wouldn't matter. My tattoos symbolize my kids."

Mary Angele Takletok: "I always wanted traditional tattoos like the women in the old days. I wanted them on my wrists and my fingers so I could show I'm Inuk."

Melissa MacDonald Hinanik: "As a part of celebrating my heritage and revitalizing important traditional customs that form my identity, I believe I have earned my tattoos. I am a beautiful, strong young woman. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend, and an active community member. I reclaim the traditional customs as mine, I re-own them as a part of who I am."

Star Westwood: "We still have some of our culture, but some things are slowly dying. Having tattoos helps us keep our culture alive. . . . . My tattoos represent my dad and my dad's dad. The ones closest to my wrists represent my sisters."

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

National Tattoo Day

July 17 is National Tattoo Day. To celebrate, we present some images from Reawakening Our Ancestors' Lines: Revitalizing Inuit Traditional Tattooing, compiled by Angela Hovak Johnston, co-founder with Marjorie Tahbone of the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project, with photographs by Inuit photographer Cora DeVos, and published in Iqaluit, Nunavut by Inhabit Media Inc. in 2017.

For thousands of years, Inuit have practiced the traditional art of tattooing. Created the ancient way, with bone needles and caribou sinew soaked in seal oil, sod, or soot, these tattoos were an important tradition for many Inuit women, symbols etched on their skin that connected them to their families and communities. But with the rise of missionaries and residential schools in the North, the tradition of tattooing was almost lost. In 2005, when Angela Hovak Johnston heard that the last Inuk woman tattooed in the old way had died, she set out to tattoo herself in tribute to this ancient custom and learn how to tattoo others. What was at first a personal quest became a project to bring the art of traditional tattooing back to Inuit women across Nunavut.

Collected in this book are photos and stories from more than two dozen women who participated in Johnston's project. Together, these women have united to bring to life an ancient tradition, reawakening their ancestors' lines and sharing this knowledge with future generations. Hovak Johnston writes: "Never again will these Inuit traditions be close to extinction, or only a part of history you read about in books. This is my mission."

Reawakening Our Ancestors' Lines forms part of our Indigenous America Literature Collection.

Angela Hovak Johnston (right) with her cousin Janelle Angulalik and her aunt Millie Navalik Angulalik.

View other posts from our Indigenous America Literature Collection.

[eemoo1o]

Rip dev they’re really forcing the conflict between u and hazel and I don’t like it

[sophrosyncc]

— can't stop thinking of you !

warnings/tags : SFW, yearning, gender-neutral reader, 3.2 exploration spoilers (memory fragment)

author's note : was feeling very romantic so I quickly whipped up something for our amphoreus professor. huge thanks to my pillow who helped me imagine the scenes better

art credits : official commission from honkai: star rail by the artist luminos!

word count : 652

when you called anaxa dear for the first time, you didn't even notice how naturally it slipped out of your tongue.

it was another night of lounging in his private laboratory, relaxing on the couch he recently moved there to host guests, a weak excuse to hide that it was only for you. the two of you were far too used to this routine, staying in each other's personal spaces like it was second nature, drawn to his presence like he was with you.

magnets. a word hyacine often used to describe the two of you.

you think it fits well.

"so, who was chasing you this time?" you question, threading your fingers through his hair. it brought a feeling of contentment to see anaxa relax on your lap. a rare moment of peace in his hectic and fast-paced life, a direct contrast to yours. "fools? guards from the council of elders?"

the sage and founder of the nousporists wasn't someone the majority would consider normal. a heretic, fool, blasphemous scholar— these were all variations of multiple titles the public call him. even his most dedicated students couldn't keep up with every bad mouthed nickname bestowed upon their professor.

ten? fifty? one hundred?

none of you knew the answer to that, including the man himself. someone who didn't even care about such trivial matters in the first place.

anaxa sighs. "fools," he dryly replies, tilting his head to further lean into your touch. you resist the urge to coo or compare him to a cat silently asking for more affection. "they wanted to publicly execute me this time. I had to bring my lecture to dawncloud instead."

"dawncloud?" your eyebrows raise in surprise.

that was very far from the grove of epiphany. too far. it would take a day to get there on foot.

the place was all the way in okhema where aglaea and castorice were stationed, constantly monitored by the golden threads he disliked so much. not to mention, a good amount of people there openly shared their distaste about him. how much of a disturbance were they that even his 'teaching tool' couldn't scare them off?

without knowing it, you stop rubbing his scalp, lost in thought.

anaxa opens his eye. he peers up at you questioningly, wondering why you suddenly stopped. until he sees that familiar dip between your eyebrows, lips pursed into a thin line, a tinge of barely hidden concern written all over your face.

he nudges your hand with his head.

you don't budge.

he tries it again.

nothing happens.

a quiet grumble leaves his lips.

"why did you stop?" he finally asks, snapping you out of your own bubble of thought. "there's no need to worry about me. the chances of ica reaching apotheosis are far more greater than the success of their threats."

you blink.

hyacine's pegasus turning into a titan?

with a soft laugh, you continue combing his hair. "...that's ridiculous."

"it worked, didn't it?" anaxa smoothly responds. he inclines his head back, sighing as your fingers make their way down to his nape, lightly scratching his skin. even with his eyepatch covering half of his face, you could see the slightest of smiles from the corner of his lip.

for all the nonchalance he seemed to carry with him in front of other people, he didn't hesitate to lower his guard around you.

the same feeling of warmth settled in your chest again, content to stay like this forever.

you lean down. pressing your forehead against his, breathing in the familiar smell that belonged to him, you whisper. "thank you, dear."

he pauses, followed by a sharp exhale. "...it's nothing."

pulling away, you take the time in the peaceful moment to admire him. when you brush the strands of hair away from his forehead to get a clearer view, your heart skips a beat at the sight.

his ears were red.