#Mergers and Takeovers

[tapiocalad]

Aw hell naw these mergers & acquisitions need to stop the ice cream man just tried to hostile takeover my kid’s lemonade stand 😭

[superthatguy62]

This thought largely occurred to me while formulating an AU sideblog thingamajig,

But the Pokemon World/multiverse is lucky that Rainbow Rocket Giovanni hasn't yet stumbled upon a vengeance-driven Ardos who would gladly work to rebuild Cipher.

[katierosefun]

hitting season 4 of suits is particularly funny to me because this show really went from going "being an attorney is exhausting and the politics of a big law firm is exhausting and everyone in this building swings between being morally grey or morally bankrupt" to "but at least you're not a goddamn investment banker"

[codexofforbiddenknowledge]

Could the Great Tech Merger be real? Rumors swirl that Google, Amazon, and Meta are joining forces in a digital monopoly, seizing data control and threatening privacy. This mind-blowing video on YouTube dives into the conspiracy—watch it now!

[challzworld-blog]

The 10 Smartest Corporate Buyouts of All Time (And What We Can Learn From Them)

The 10 Smartest Corporate Buyouts of All Time (And What We Can Learn From Them) Buyouts can be the corporate world’s version of a reality TV twist—some end in happily-ever-afters, while others spiral into a fiery mess worthy of a Netflix documentary. But every once in a while, a company makes a buyout so genius that even Warren Buffett raises an eyebrow in approval. Let’s take a look at the 10…

[watchfreeone1]

what is a hostile takeover: Understanding the Difference

what is a hostile takeover: Understanding the Difference

As businesses grow and expand, they often look to acquire other companies to increase their market share and gain a competitive edge. This process is known as a takeover, and it can take on different forms depending on the approach taken by the acquiring company. One type of takeover is known as a friendly takeover, where the target company agrees to the acquisition and the process is completed amicably. However, there are also examples of hostile takeovers, where the acquiring company makes an offer to purchase shares without the agreement of the target company.

In a hostile takeover, the acquiring company aims to gain control of the target company by bypassing the board of directors and making a direct offer to shareholders. This can be done through a tender offer, where the acquiring company offers to purchase shares at a premium to the market price. Hostile takeovers can be contentious, as they often involve members who oppose the takeover and may try to defend against it through various means.

To defend against a hostile takeover, the target company may employ various strategies, such as implementing a poison pill or finding a white knight to make a friendlier offer. The board of directors also plays a crucial role in determining the fate of the company, as they can approve or reject takeover bids and influence the actions of shareholders. Understanding the mechanics of a hostile takeover and the various factors involved is essential for companies and investors alike.

Key Takeaways

Takeovers can be either friendly or hostile, depending on the approach taken by the acquiring company.

Hostile takeovers involve the acquiring company bypassing the board of directors and making a direct offer to shareholders.

The target company can employ various defense strategies, and the board of directors plays a crucial role in determining the outcome of the takeover bid.

Understanding Hostile Takeovers

As an expert in corporate finance, I have a deep understanding of hostile takeovers and their impact on companies. In this section, I will explain what a hostile takeover is, how it occurs, and provide examples of hostile takeovers.

Definition and Types

A hostile takeover is a type of acquisition in which one company, known as the acquiring company or bidder, attempts to take control of another company, known as the target company, without the approval of the target company’s board of directors. Hostile takeovers can be classified into two types: the tender offer and the proxy fight.

[hameesstuff]

"Until the Heart Remembers"

Pairing: Ceo! Jaehyun husband x Ceo! Reader wife

Themes: Arranged marriage, Forced proximity, Teasing, Fluff, Heavy smut, a bit of angst.

Word count: ~5k

Preview: Bound by a marriage of convenience, two stubborn hearts clash with fire—until teasing turns tender and pride softens into longing. In the quiet after the storm, they find love not in grand gestures, but in gentle touches and the promise of forever whispered beneath shared sheets.

___________________________________________

Jaehyun – One Week Before the Wedding

The conference room reeked of polished egos and perfumed power. Jaehyun sat with his fingers steepled, his eyes fixed on the digital clock above the mahogany doors. Three minutes late. Typical.

He didn't flinch when the double doors swung open.

Click. Click. Click.

The heels were sharp, designer, and unforgiving—just like her.

She stepped in wearing a power suit more tailored than a sniper rifle, eyes as indifferent as the contracts she shredded in boardrooms. And of course, that smirk.

“Apologies,” she said, though there was none in her tone. “I had a meeting with people who actually matter.”

Jaehyun smiled without warmth. “Funny. I didn’t realize your mirror was giving business advice now.”

Her eyes flashed, but her voice remained silk. “You’ll get used to losing, Jaehyun. Marriage is basically a hostile takeover with better PR.”

God help him.

He was marrying her in a week.

Reader – One Week Before the Wedding

She hated him.

His stupid, perfect suits. His stupid, unreadable face. The way he always sat like he owned the oxygen in the room.

And now, thanks to a merger between their family empires, they were the newest PR stunt of the year: the golden couple. Korea’s billionaire power duo.

The ring on her finger might’ve cost more than a private jet, but it felt like a shackle.

“I still think this is unnecessary,” she said, voice flat as she scrolled her phone. “We could’ve just signed the deal and left romance out of it.”

Jaehyun shrugged. “Our fathers think it’s good optics. If you want out, you can always run away. Preferably before the cake deposit’s due.”

She shot him a sideways glare. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d love not having to listen to you breathe in my penthouse.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You breathe louder.”

He smiled. Bastard.

Jaehyun – Wedding Day

He never imagined he'd wear a tux just to sign his life away.

She looked devastating, of course. Like she was about to destroy his company rather than promise him forever.

He didn't say "I do" so much as he dared her to say it back.

She did.

They kissed.

It meant nothing.

But later that night, when she stormed into their shared penthouse and tossed her heels across the marble floor, he looked up from his scotch and said, “Don’t forget to unpack your ego. It takes up a lot of space.”

She scoffed. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep it in the bedroom where your charm won’t get lonely.”

Reader – Wedding Night

The penthouse was silent, soaked in shadows and too much glass. She walked barefoot across cold marble, her wedding dress hung carelessly over one arm, her hair undone but her spine perfectly straight.

He sat on the sofa like some smug painting. Shirt unbuttoned just enough to be annoying, tie loosened like the night hadn’t suffocated him the way it had her.

“You’re in my spot,” she said, eyeing the couch.

Jaehyun sipped his drink. “Didn’t realize the couch belonged to Her Royal CEOness.”

She rolled her eyes and moved to the other side. He didn’t budge.

They sat in silence. Not peace—just silence dressed up in ego.

Then he spoke.

“You surprised me today.”

She didn’t look at him. “How so?”

“You looked like someone I could actually fall in love with… if I hated myself enough.”

A laugh broke from her chest before she could stop it. “You’re going to be so lonely in this marriage, Jaehyun.”

“Why? You planning to move out already?”

She smiled, slow and confident. “No. I like watching you suffer.”

He raised his glass. “To mutual misery.”

Jaehyun – Two Weeks Married

Their mornings were a warzone.

She hogged the espresso machine. He hijacked the hot water.

She changed the thermostat to 25°C. He set it back to 19°C.

It wasn’t hatred. It was worse—it was fascination laced with fury.

This morning, she was in his seat at the kitchen island again, scrolling through reports, wearing his silk button-down like it was hers now.

“New habit? Stealing my wardrobe?” he asked.

She didn’t even look up. “You didn’t seem to want it back.”

“You’ll ruin the fabric. That shirt’s worth more than your last PR campaign.”

She finally glanced up. “Then take it off me.”

The silence after that sentence was criminal.

She didn’t blink.

Neither did he.

She arched an eyebrow, lifted her coffee, and sipped—smirking as if she hadn’t just dropped a nuclear flirtation between them.

He muttered, “You’re insufferable.”

“You’ll live,” she replied.

Reader – Late Night, Same Day

The penthouse was unusually quiet. For once, she wasn't working, and he wasn’t brooding in the corner pretending he didn’t enjoy their verbal jabs.

She padded into the living room and found him asleep on the couch, head tilted back, shirt open, hair tousled. Vulnerable. Human.

She stood there too long.

Too curious.

Too drawn.

She reached down slowly and tugged the blanket off the back of the couch, draping it over him with a sigh she didn’t mean to make.

But then—

“Caught staring?” he murmured, eyes still closed.

Her stomach dipped.

“You wish.”

He peeked one eye open. “You’re soft when you think I’m not looking.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re delusional when you’re half-asleep.”

He smiled.

God, she hated how smugly handsome he looked when he smiled.

Or maybe she didn’t hate it as much as she wanted to.

Jaehyun – Later That Night

He didn’t sleep much, not with her just down the hall.

Their bedroom was big enough to house the tension between them.

They’d drawn an invisible line between the sides of the bed—but sometimes, when the nights got too quiet, he’d hear her shift closer. Breathing in sync. Neither touching. But painfully aware.

Tonight was no different.

Except—her voice cut through the dark.

“Jaehyun?”

He turned toward her voice in the shadows. “What?”

“…Do you think we’ll ever be real?”

He didn’t answer right away.

He didn’t know how.

So instead, he whispered, “You tell me.”

She didn’t reply.

But she didn’t turn away either.

Reader – Three Weeks into the Marriage

She didn’t expect it to bother her.

Not the distance. Not the walls. Certainly not the way he looked at her like she was a deal he didn’t remember signing.

But it did.

It bothered her when he came home late, tie askew, laughing at something his assistant said. It bothered her when he disappeared into his office, door locked, like she wasn’t a living person behind the walls they shared.

Most of all, it bothered her that she noticed.

Tonight, she was curled up on her side of the bed with a contract in hand, phone buzzing beside her with messages from friends pretending she hadn’t gone missing into a marriage she never asked for.

Then the door creaked open.

Jaehyun stood there, hair damp from the rain, one brow raised.

“Reading legal documents in bed. Sexy,” he said dryly.

She looked up. “Well, my husband’s busy pretending I don’t exist. I had to turn somewhere for comfort.”

He smirked. “You always this dramatic, or do I just bring it out in you?”

“You wish you had that power.”

“Oh, I do.” He moved toward the closet, unbuttoning his shirt without a care in the world. “You hate how much you notice me.”

She stared at the buttons slipping free, the way his shoulder blades moved beneath the wet fabric.

“I don’t notice you at all,” she lied.

He paused at the closet door and looked over his shoulder. “Then why are you still looking?”

Damn him.

Jaehyun – That Same Night

She was quiet tonight.

No sarcasm, no bite—just eyes that lingered and lips that didn't quite part. And he hated how much he wanted her to say his name when the silence stretched too long.

He hated how her perfume stayed in the sheets, in his suit jackets, in his damn bloodstream.

She wasn’t just beautiful. She was infuriatingly present, like the space beside him remembered her even when she wasn’t there.

He stood at the bedroom mirror, pretending to fix his hair, just to steal a glance.

She was watching.

Not in admiration. Not in desire.

Just… wondering.

Maybe she was wondering the same thing he was: What the hell were they doing, pretending not to care, when every inch of this stupid marriage screamed inevitable?

He turned slowly. “You hungry?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Hungry. You know. Food? That thing humans consume?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re asking me to dinner?”

“No. I’m offering you one. There’s a difference. Less romance, more obligation.”

She stood, brushing invisible lint off her thigh. “Fine. But I pick the place.”

Jaehyun grinned. “Of course you do, Your Majesty.”

She tossed a pillow at his head.

He caught it one-handed, grinning wider.

Reader – At the Restaurant

She hated how good he looked in candlelight.

She hated that the waitress kept smiling at him.

But most of all, she hated that this dinner didn’t feel like war.

He poured her wine without asking, pushed the menu toward her like he actually cared, and listened.

Listened.

“Why are you being nice?” she finally asked.

He tilted his head. “Because I want something.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Sex?”

He choked on his wine. “God, no.”

“Rude.”

“I meant peace. Truce. Whatever version of civility your claws allow.”

She lifted her glass slowly. “I can be civil.”

He smirked. “Define civil.”

“No throwing things.”

He chuckled. “Even verbal grenades?”

“I make no promises.”

They clinked glasses.

And for the first time, something unspoken bloomed between them.

Not peace.

But something close.

Jaehyun – On the Drive Home

She fell asleep in the passenger seat.

Jaehyun glanced over more times than necessary.

She was soft in sleep, lips slightly parted, a lock of hair brushing her cheek. Vulnerable in a way he’d never seen. Never thought she’d allow.

He didn’t wake her when they pulled into the garage.

Didn’t say a word when he scooped her gently into his arms.

Her head fell against his chest.

She stirred just slightly, murmuring, “You smell expensive…”

He nearly laughed.

But he just whispered, “You’re exhausting.”

Still, he held her tighter.

And carried her upstairs like something sacred.

Reader – The Next Morning

She woke up in bed, fully dressed, the faintest memory of arms under her knees and a chest that smelled like cedarwood and sin.

Jaehyun.

He had carried her up.

She blinked against the sunlight, her throat dry and heart... confused. There was a folded blanket on the foot of the bed. And beside it, a steaming cup of coffee. Black. No sugar—just how she liked it.

The sticky note on it read:

"Don’t get used to it. I was bored." — J

She stared at the note for a long moment.

Then sipped.

And smiled.

Damn him.

Jaehyun – Same Morning

He didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

Making her coffee? Carrying her upstairs like a rom-com cliché? Sleeping on the sofa while she hogged the bed?

This wasn’t part of the plan.

They were supposed to coexist—cold, beautiful, bitter, professional. Two CEOs stuck in a marriage built for headlines.

But then she laughed the night before.

And it wasn’t mocking or cruel.

It was real. And it hit his chest like a car crash.

“Stop looking at her like that,” his assistant said, slapping a folder down on his desk.

Jaehyun blinked. “What?”

“You’re smiling like a man who bought a puppy.”

He scowled. “Get out.”

His assistant grinned. “Too late. You’re in love with your wife.”

He didn't respond.

Because the worst part?

He didn’t know if it was a lie.

Reader – At the Office That Week

She didn’t tell anyone.

About the coffee. About the way Jaehyun touched her wrist when he passed by. About the way he waited in the lobby for her after her meetings without explanation.

But people noticed.

Especially when the two of them arrived together at a tech gala, fashionably late and inexplicably... soft.

"You’re glowing," her best friend whispered behind a champagne glass.

"I’m successful," she replied.

"You're blushing."

"It’s the lighting."

"It’s Jaehyun."

She turned toward the bar, heart in her throat—and froze.

Because across the crowd, Jaehyun was watching her with a gaze so intense, it felt like it stripped her bare.

And when he walked over, leaned close to whisper in her ear, the words weren't flirtatious.

They were dangerous.

“I haven’t kissed you yet. Why haven’t I kissed you?”

She didn’t know the answer.

But suddenly she wanted to.

Jaehyun – That Night

He didn’t kiss her.

Not yet.

He wanted it too much.

Wanted her too much.

But it was dangerous, this fire growing in silence. The kind of want that made a man stop thinking and start pulling her into walls and gasping into her throat.

She wasn’t a fling. Not even a fantasy.

She was his wife.

And it terrified him how badly he needed her to choose him.

Not for the company.

Not for the marriage contract.

But for him.

He closed the door to his office that night, alone again, and stared at his phone.

No messages.

No goodnights.

No “come to bed.”

But she had worn his cufflinks to the gala.

And he’d noticed.

Every. Damn. Second.

Reader – One Month into the Marriage

It was dangerous, the way he stared now.

Not just in passing. Not in those careless, arrogant glares he used to wear like a shield.

This was different.

He watched her.

Like he was trying to memorize her. Undo her. Ruin her.

She tried to pretend she didn’t feel it—his gaze on the back of her neck during breakfast, the way he leaned a fraction too close when he passed her in the hallway.

Tonight, they were getting ready for another corporate dinner. She stood at the vanity, adjusting her necklace.

“Too much?” she asked aloud.

Behind her, Jaehyun’s reflection appeared in the mirror.

He was in a black suit, no tie, shirt unbuttoned just enough to be sinful. His jaw was clean-shaven. His voice came low.

“Not enough.”

She stilled.

He stepped behind her, fingertips ghosting the clasp at her nape.

“You’re not wearing this for them,” he said. “You know that, right?”

She met his eyes in the mirror. “And who am I wearing it for, Jaehyun?”

He smiled without softness. “Me.”

Jaehyun – That Same Night

She was teasing him again.

Wearing a dress that dipped scandalously low in the back. Laughing at another CEO’s joke while nursing wine she didn’t even like. Tossing glances over her shoulder to make sure he saw.

He did.

Oh, he saw everything.

Every twitch of her lips. Every flick of her lashes.

So when he stepped behind her on the terrace, hand finding the small of her back, he leaned in and murmured, “Keep looking at him like that, and I’ll put a claim on you no one will miss.”

She didn’t turn.

Didn’t flinch.

She just sipped her drink and said, “Possessive looks good on you.”

He growled, quiet and dark. “Don’t tempt me.”

She arched a brow. “Or what?”

“You’ll find out.”

Reader – Back at Home

They didn’t speak on the drive.

Didn’t need to.

The tension clung to them like perfume—thick and sweet and utterly consuming.

He opened the penthouse door. She stepped inside.

But this time, she didn’t head to the bedroom.

This time, she turned back.

“Why haven’t you kissed me?” she asked softly.

He froze, closing the door behind him like it hurt.

“I told you,” he said, voice rough. “I want you to want it first.”

Her heels echoed as she crossed the floor toward him.

Eyes locked. Mouths close. Inches apart.

“And if I want it now?”

His breath caught. “Then I’m already losing.”

She reached up.

Tugged his collar.

And whispered, “Lose.”

His mouth crushed into hers like he’d been waiting his whole life to be ruined.

Jaehyun – The First Kiss

It wasn’t soft.

It wasn’t careful.

It was months of denial crashing all at once—teeth, tongue, breathless gasps between bites of longing.

She moaned into him.

He pressed her against the nearest wall, hands gripping her waist like it would anchor him.

“Say my name,” he demanded against her lips.

She did.

Over and over.

Jaehyun, Jaehyun, Jaehyun.

And when they finally broke apart, flushed and dizzy, he rested his forehead against hers.

Breathing hard.

“What now?” she whispered.

He smiled.

“A very slow, very long mistake,” he said.

She laughed, breathless.

And kissed him again.

Jaehyun – The Morning After the Kiss

She was gone when he woke up.

Not that she’d spent the night in his bed—he knew that. They hadn’t gone that far.

But still… he’d expected her to be there.

Coffee in hand. A smirk on her lips. Some quip like “You kiss like you fight—desperate to win.”

But instead, silence.

Just the ghost of her laugh in the hall and the memory of her mouth on his.

He showered in frustration. Dressed too sharply. Glared at the mirror until it cracked his mood.

She was driving him mad.

And the worst part?

He liked it.

Reader – That Same Morning

She needed air.

Not because she regretted the kiss—no, never that.

It was everything a first kiss with Jaehyun should be. Fiery. Greedy. A little dangerous.

But now? She felt exposed.

That kiss had stripped something. Peeled back armor she’d spent years building.

And now, here she was—standing outside her own company’s tower, pretending the CEO she was married to hadn’t kissed her like a promise last night.

“Ma’am?” her assistant interrupted gently. “There’s someone in your office.”

She blinked. “Who?”

“He said he’s your husband.”

Oh no.

Jaehyun – In Her Office

He was sitting on her desk.

Her desk.

Reading her agenda like he paid the bills. Which, annoyingly, he partially did.

She stepped inside, glaring. “How did you get past security?”

He shrugged. “I’m charming.”

“You bribed them.”

“Same thing.”

She crossed her arms. “What do you want?”

He looked up slowly. “Your attention.”

“You already have it.”

He smiled like the devil. “Good.”

Then stood, walked around the desk, and leaned in too close.

“About last night…”

She raised a brow. “Which part? The kiss? Or the part where I left you breathless?”

He chuckled, low and dangerous. “You think you won?”

“Didn’t I?”

Jaehyun leaned down, lips just grazing her ear.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, “I’m still playing.”

She shivered. And hated how much he saw it.

Reader – That Night

She didn’t kiss him again.

Not yet.

But she let him brush her hair off her shoulder at dinner. Let his fingers linger too long on her waist when they passed in the hallway.

Let the heat build.

And build.

And build.

Until one night, he cornered her in the kitchen, midnight light painting them in silver and sin.

“You keep looking at me,” she whispered, daring him.

Jaehyun stepped closer, voice thick. “You keep walking away.”

“I’m testing you.”

His hands slid to her hips. “And what do you want me to do, wife?”

She swallowed.

He leaned closer.

“I can be patient. But eventually…” he whispered, lips brushing her jaw, “…I’m going to wreck you.”

She closed her eyes, head falling back slightly.

And whispered, “Promise?”

Reader – Three Months In

The marriage had rules. Unspoken, but clear.

Don’t fall first.

Don’t show weakness.

Don’t stay the night.

And yet—

She found herself waiting for him to come home.

Her phone lit up with his name more often. Sometimes it was business. Sometimes it wasn’t.

Sometimes it was, “Did you eat?”

Other times, it was, “Your smile was lethal today.”

And sometimes… nothing at all. Just a missed call at 11:47 PM.

A silent confession.

An ache wrapped in pride.

She never called back.

But her heart did.

Loud. Every time.

Jaehyun – One Night Alone

The penthouse felt too cold without her in it.

He hated that.

He wasn’t soft. He was a shark in Armani, built on ambition, cash, and steel.

But she made silence feel like failure.

He stared at the door longer than he should’ve.

Waited.

Hoped.

She didn’t come back that night.

So he poured himself a drink. One finger of whiskey. Neat.

Then poured another.

And muttered to himself, “You’re falling. Goddammit.”

That Weekend

She walked into his home office late on a Friday night.

He looked up, surprised. Shirt sleeves rolled, tie undone.

“Lost?” he asked.

She held up a folder. “Board documents. Needed your signature.”

He reached for it—but didn’t take it.

Instead, he stepped around the desk and walked right into her space.

“You could’ve sent an assistant,” he murmured.

“I wanted to see your face when you read it.”

Jaehyun grinned. “You missed me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Too late.”

She turned to walk away—but he grabbed her wrist.

“Stay,” he said, softer.

Not commanding. Not smug.

Just… asking.

She didn’t say yes.

But she didn’t leave either.

The Storm

She stormed into the penthouse, slamming the door behind her.

“Don’t even try to act innocent,” she snapped.

Jaehyun stood from the couch slowly, face darkening. “What are you talking about?”

She threw the magazine at him. The headline screamed "CEO Jung’s Late-Night Rendezvous with Old Flame?"

“You told me you don’t see her anymore,” she hissed. “That she was history.”

“She is,” he snapped, tossing it aside. “That photo’s ancient. They dredged it up to sell stories!”

“But you didn’t tell me! Why didn’t you warn me something like this could resurface?”

“Because I didn’t think I’d have to!” he yelled. “Because I didn’t think I’d have to explain myself to someone who knows me!”

“Well, maybe I don’t,” she seethed, chest heaving. “Maybe this whole thing is just a game to you!”

He paused.

Then said, too quietly, “You think I’m faking this?”

Silence fell like a bomb.

And it hurt. Visibly.

Jaehyun’s jaw clenched. “You really think I could touch you like I do, look at you like this, and still not mean it?”

She faltered—but pride kept her mouth shut.

So he stepped back.

“You know what?” he murmured. “Maybe I was right in the beginning. Maybe marriage was a mistake.”

Her heart dropped.

She turned and walked away.

Not because she didn’t love him.

But because if she stayed, she’d shatter.

Aftermath: The Quiet Hurt

That night, neither of them slept.

Separate rooms.

Separate worlds.

Regret sat heavy on both chests—but neither broke first.

Until the next morning.

Reconciliation

The next day, she found him on the balcony—wet from the rain, coffee cold in hand.

“You’ll catch a cold,” she said gently.

He didn’t look at her. “Maybe I deserve to.”

She sighed, walking toward him. “I didn’t mean what I said last night.”

He turned finally, eyes tired. “But you said it.”

A beat.

“I get scared too,” she whispered. “But I don't want to lose you over my pride.”

His expression cracked. Just a little. “Then come here.”

She stepped into his arms.

He held her like she was breakable for once.

And when he kissed her—it wasn’t fire this time. It was water.

Soft. Cleansing. Needed.

They moved to the bedroom without a word.

No games. No power.

Just mouths on skin. Just hands saying I’m sorry. Just moans that sounded like don’t go.

He laid her down with reverence.

Undressed her slowly, worshipfully, kissing every inch.

And when he slid into her, it wasn’t about dominance or tension or release.

It was love.

It was forgiveness.

It was home.

She held his face as they moved together, whispering, “We’re still learning.”

He kissed her back. “I’ll keep trying.”

They came together gently, with a sob between them.

And that night, they didn’t just sleep together.

They stayed.

Epilogue – One Year Later

The contract was gone.

Their marriage? Very much alive.

She still teased him in meetings.

He still smirked when she got flustered in boardrooms.

But now, the teasing ended in kisses.

In touches beneath the table.

In long, luxurious weekends spent wrapped in sheets and morning coffee.

Their penthouse had changed.

There was art on the walls. Her work. His pride.

Plants she bought lined the kitchen windows. Half of them thrived. The other half he kept alive with silent determination.

Every Sunday, he made her breakfast in just his sweatpants.

Every Friday, she brought him coffee and sat on his lap during late-night calls.

One night, curled into each other on the couch, she looked at him and whispered,

“I can’t believe I almost walked away.”

He brushed her hair back, smiling softly. “You almost did. I almost let you.”

“But we didn’t.”

“No,” he said, kissing her hand. “We found our way.”

A pause.

“Still think this marriage was a mistake?” she teased.

He leaned down, kissed her lips slow.

Then murmured, “Only that we didn’t fall sooner.”

The End.

___________________________________________

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“The Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets”

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While we truly live in an age of ascendant monsters who have hijacked our country, our economy, and our imaginations, there is one consolation: the small cohort of brilliant, driven writers who have these monsters' number, and will share it with us. Writers like Maureen Tkacik:

https://prospect.org/topics/maureen-tkacik/

Journalists like Wired's Vittoria Elliott, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman are absolutely crushing it when it comes to Musk's DOGE coup:

https://www.wired.com/author/vittoria-elliott/

And Nathan Tankus is doing incredible work all on his own, just blasting out scoop after scoop:

https://www.crisesnotes.com/

But for me, it was Tkacik – as usual – in the pages of The American Prospect who pulled it all together in a way that finally made it make sense, transforming the blitzkreig Muskian chaos into a recognizable playbook. While most of the coverage of Musk's wrecking crew has focused on the broccoli-haired Gen Z brownshirts who are wilding through the server rooms at giant, critical government agencies, Tkacik homes in on their boss, Tom Krause, whom she memorably dubs "the Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets" (I told you she was a great writer!):

https://prospect.org/power/2025-02-06-private-equity-hatchet-man-leading-lost-boys-of-doge/

Krause is a private equity looter. He's the guy who basically invented the playbook for PE takeovers of large tech companies, from Broadcom to Citrix to VMWare, converting their businesses from selling things to renting them out, loading them up with junk fees, slashing quality, jacking up prices over and over, and firing everyone who was good at their jobs. He is a master enshittifier, an enshittification ninja.

Krause has an unerring instinct for making people miserable while making money. He oversaw the merger of Citrix and VMWare, creating a ghastly company called The Cloud Software Group, which sold remote working tools. Despite this, of his first official acts was to order all of his employees to stop working remotely. But then, after forcing his workers to drag their butts into work, move back across the country, etc, he reversed himself because he figured out he could sell off all of the company's office space for a tidy profit.

Krause canceled employee benefits, like thank you days for managers who pulled a lot of unpaid overtime, or bonuses for workers who upgraded their credentials. He also ended the company's practice of handing out swag as small gifts to workers, and then stiffed the company that made the swag, wontpaying a $437,574.97 invoice for all the tchotchkes the company had ordered. That's not the only supplier Krause stiffed: FinLync, a fintech company with a three-year contract with Krause's company, also had to sue to get paid.

Krause's isn't a canny operator who roots out waste: he's a guy who tears out all the wiring and then grudgingly restores the minimum needed to keep the machine running (no wonder Musk loves him, this is the Twitter playbook). As Tkacik reports, Krause fucked up the customer service and reliability systems that served Citrix's extremely large, corporate customers – the giant businesses that cut huge monthly checks to Citrix, whose CIOs received daily sales calls from his competitors.

Workers who serviced these customers, like disabled Air Force veteran David Morgan, who worked with big public agencies, were fired on one hour's notice, just before their stock options vested. The giant public agency customers he'd serviced later called him to complain that the only people they could get on the phone were subcontractors in Indian call centers who lacked the knowledge and authority to resolve their problems.

Last month, Citrix fired all of its customer support engineers. Citrix's military customers are being illegally routed to offshore customer support teams who are prohibited from working with the US military.

Citrix/VMWare isn't an exception. The carnage at these companies is indistinguishable from the wreck Krause made of Broadcom. In all these cases, Krause was parachuted in by private equity bosses, and he destroyed something useful to extract a giant, one-time profit, leaving behind a husk that no longer provides value to its customers or its employees.

This is the DOGE playbook. It's all about plunder: take something that was patiently, carefully built up over generations and burn it to the ground, warming yourself in the pyre, leaving nothing behind but ash. This is what private equity plunderers have been doing to the world's "advanced" economies since the Reagan years. They did it to airlines, family restaurants, funeral homes, dog groomers, toy stores, pharma, palliative care, dialysis, hospital beds, groceries, cars, and the internet.

Trump's a plunderer. He was elected by the plunderer class – like the crypto bros who want to run wild, transforming workers' carefully shepherded retirement savings into useless shitcoins, while the crypto bros run off with their perfectly cromulent "fiat" money. Musk is the apotheosis of this mindset, a guy who claims credit for other peoples' productive and useful businesses, replacing real engineering with financial engineering. Musk and Krause, they're like two peas in a pod.

That's why – according to anonymous DOGE employees cited by Tckacik – DOGE managers are hired for their capacity for cruelty: "The criteria for DOGE is how many you have fired, how much you enjoy firing people, and how little you care about the impact on peoples well being…No wonder Tom Krause was tapped for this. He’s their dream employee!"

The fact that Krause isn't well known outside of plunderer circles is absolutely a feature for him, not a bug. Scammers like Krause want to be admitted to polite society. This is why the Sacklers – the opioid crime family that kicked off the Oxy pandemic that's murdered more than 800,000 Americans so far – were so aggressive about keeping their association with their family business, Purdue Pharma, a secret. The Sacklers only wanted to be associated with the art galleries and museums they put their names over, and their lawyers threatened journalists for writing about their lives as billionaire drug pushers (I got one of those threats).

There's plenty of good reasons to be anonymous – if you're a whistleblower, say. But if you ever encounter a corporate executive who insists on anonymity, that's a wild danger sign. Take Pixsy, the scam "copyleft trolls" whose business depends on baiting people into making small errors when using images licensed under very early versions of the Creative Common licenses, and then threatening to sue them unless they pay hundreds or thousands of dollars:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

Kain Jones, the CEO of Pixsy, tried to threaten me under the EU's GDPR for revealing the names of the scammer on his payroll who sent me a legal threat, and the executive who ran the scam for his business (I say he tried to threaten me because I helped lobby for the GDPR and I know for a fact that this isn't a GDPR violation):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

These people understand that they are in the business of ripping people off, causing them grave and wholly unjust financial injury. They value their secrecy because they are in the business of making strangers righteously furious, and they understand that one of these strangers might just show up in their lives someday to confront them about their transgressions.

This is why Unitedhealthcare freaked out so hard about Luigi Mangione's assassination of CEO Brian Thompson – that's not how the game is supposed to be played. The people who sit in on executive row, destroying your lives, are supposed to be wholly insulated from the consequences of their actions. You're not supposed to know who they are, you're not supposed to be able to find them – of course.

But even more importantly, you're not supposed to be angry at them. They pose as mere software agents in an immortal colony organism called a Limited Liability Corporation, bound by the iron law of shareholder supremacy to destroy your life while getting very, very rich. It's not supposed to be personal. That's why Unitedhealthcare is threatening to sue a doctor who was yanked out of surgery on a cancer patient to be berated by a UHC rep for ordering a hospital stay for her patient:

https://gizmodo.com/unitedhealthcare-is-mad-about-in-luigi-we-trust-comments-under-a-doctors-viral-post-2000560543

UHC is angry that this surgeon, Austin's Dr Elisabeth Potter, went Tiktok-viral with her true story of how how chaotic and depraved and uncaring UHC is. UHC execs fear that Mangione made it personal, that he obliterated the accountability sink of the corporation and put the blame squarely where it belongs – on the (mostly) men at the top who make this call.

This is a point Adam Conover made in his latest Factually podcast, where he interviewed Propublica's T Christian Miller and Patrick Rucker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_5tDXRw8kg

Miller and Rucker published a blockbuster investigative report into Cigna's Evocore, a secret company that offers claims-denials as a service to America's biggest health insurers:

https://www.propublica.org/article/evicore-health-insurance-denials-cigna-unitedhealthcare-aetna-prior-authorizations

If you're the CEO of a health insurance company and you don't like how much you're paying out for MRIs or cancer treatment, you tell Evocore (which processes all your claim authorizations) and they turn a virtual dial that starts to reduce the number of MRIs your customers are allowed to have. This dial increases the likelihood that a claim or pre-authorization will be denied, which, in turn, makes doctors less willing to order them (even if they're medically necessary) and makes patients more likely to pay for them out of pocket.

Towards the end of the conversation, Miller and Rucker talk about how the rank-and-file people at an insurer don't get involved with the industry to murder people in order to enrich their shareholders. They genuinely want to help people. But executive row is different: those very wealthy people do believe their job is to kill people to save money, and get richer. Those people are personally to blame for the systemic problem. They are the ones who design and operate the system.

That's why naming the people who are personally responsible for these immoral, vicious acts is so important. That's why it's important that Wired and Propublica are unmasking the "pubescent sovereignty pickpockets" who are raiding the federal government under Krause's leadership:

https://projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-doge-tracker/

These people are committing grave crimes against the nation and its people. They should be known for this. It should follow them for the rest of their lives. It should be the lead in their obituaries. People who are introduced to them at parties should have a flash of recognition, hastily end the handshake, then turn on their heels and race to the bathroom to scrub their hands. For the rest of their lives.

Naming these people isn't enough to stop the plunder, but it helps. Yesterday, Marko Elez, the 25 year old avowed "eugenicist" who wanted to "normalize Indian hate" and could not be "[paid] to marry outside of my ethnicity," was shown the door. He's off the job. For the rest of his life, he will be the broccoli-haired brownshirt who got fired for his asinine, racist shitposting:

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5289337/elon-musk-doge-treasury

After Krause's identity as the chief wrecker at DOGE was revealed, the brilliant Anna Merlan (author of Republic of Lies, the best book on conspiratorialism), wrote that "Now the whole country gets the experience of what it’s like when private equity buys the place you work":

https://bsky.app/profile/annamerlan.bsky.social/post/3lhepjkudcs2t

That's exactly it. We are witnessing a private equity-style plunder of the entire US government – of the USA itself. No one is better poised to write about this than Tkacik, because no one has private equity's number like Tkacik does:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

Ironically, all this came down just as Trump announced that he was going to finally get rid of private equity's scammiest trick, the "carried interest" loophole that lets PE bosses (and, to a lesser extent, hedge fund managers) avoid billions in personal taxes:

https://archive.is/yKhvD

"Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest rate – it's a law that was designed for 16th century sea captains who had an "interest" in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Trump campaigned on killing this loophole in 2017, but Congress stopped him, after a lobbying blitz by the looter industry. It's possible that he genuinely wants to get rid of the carried interest loophole – he's nothing if not idiosyncratic, as the residents of Greenland can attest:

https://prospect.org/world/2025-02-07-letter-between-friendly-nations/

Even if he succeeds, looters and the "investor class" will get a huge giveaway under Trump, in the form of more tax giveaways and the dismantling of labor and environmental regulation. But it's far more likely that he won't succeed. Rather – as Yves Smith writes for Naked Capitalism – he'll do what he did with the Canada and Mexico tariffs: make a tiny, unimportant change and then lie and say he had done something revolutionary:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/is-trump-serious-about-trying-to-close-the-private-equity-carried-interest-loophole.html

This has been a shitty month, and it's not gonna get better for a while. On my dark days, I worry that it won't get better during my lifetime. But at least we have people like Tkacik to chronicle it, explain it, put it in context. She's amazing, a whirlwind. The same day that her report on Krause dropped, the Prospect published another must-read piece by her, digging deep into Alex Jones's convoluted bankruptcy gambit:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-02-06-crisis-actors-alex-jones-bankruptcy/

It lays bare the wild world of elite bankruptcy court, another critical conduit for protecting the immoral rich from their victims. The fact that Tkacik can explain both Krause and the elite bankruptcy system on the same day is beyond impressive.

We've got a lot of work ahead of ourselves. The people in charge of this system – whose names you must learn and never forget – aren't going to go easily. But at least we know who they are. We know what they're doing. We know how the scam works. It's not a flurry of incomprehensible actions – it's a playbook that killed Red Lobster, Toys R Us, and Sears. We don't have to follow that playbook.

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/2025/02/07/broccoli-hair-brownshirts/#shameless

[mariacallous]

A short note here on what I’m covering and why. The political changes we’re seeing across the world are underpinned by technological ones that are now accelerating. For more than a decade, I’ve been trying to investigate and expose these forces. Since 2016 that’s included following a thread that led from Brexit to Trump via a shady data company called Cambridge Analytica and the revelation of a profound threat exploit at the heart of our democracies. But what’s happening now in the US is a paradigm shift: this is Broligarchy, a concept I coined last summer when I warned that what we were seeing was the proposed merger of Silicon Valley with state power. That has now happened. Writing about this from the UK, it’s clear we have a choice: we help lead the fight back against it. Or it comes for us next. Please share this with family and friends if you feel it’s of value. Thank you, as ever, Carole

Let me say this more clearly: what is happening right now, in America, in real time, is a coup.

This is an information war and this is what a coup now looks like.

Musk didn’t need a tank, guns, soldiers. He had a small crack cyber unit that he sent into the Treasury department last weekend. He now has unknown quantities of the entire US nation’s most sensitive data and potential backdoors into the system going forward. Treasury officials denied that he had access but it then turned out that he did. If it ended there, it would be catastrophic. But that unit - whose personnel include a 19-year-old called “Big Balls” - is now raiding and scorching the federal government, department by department, scraping its digital assets, stealing its data, taking control of the code and blowing up its administrative apparatus as it goes.

This is what an unlawful attack on democracy in the digital age looks like. It didn’t take armed men, just Musk’s taskforce of boy-men who may be dweebs and nerds but all the better to plunder the country’s digital resources. This was an organised, systematic, jailbreak on one of the United States’ most precious and sensitive resources: the private data of its citizens.

In 2019, I appeared in a Netflix documentary, The Great Hack. That’s a good place to start to understand what is going on now, but it wasn’t the great hack. It was among the first wave of major tech exploits of global elections. It was an exemplar of what was possible: the theft and weaponization of 87 million people’s personal data. But this now is the Great Hack. This week is when the operating system of the US was wrenched open and is now controlled by a private citizen under the protection of the President.

If you think I’ve completely lost it, please be advised that I’m far from alone in saying this. The small pools of light in the darkness of this week has been stumbling across individual commentators saying this for the last week. Just because these words are not on the front page in banner headlines of any newspaper doesn’t mean this isn’t not happening. It is.

In fact, there has been relentless, assiduous, detailed reporting in all outlets across America. There are journalists who aren’t eating or sleeping and doing amazing work tracking what’s happening. There is fact after fact after fact about Musk’s illegal pillaging of the federal government. But news organisation leaders are either falling for the distraction story - the most obviously insane one this week being rebuilding Gaza as a luxury resort, a story that dominated headlines and political oxygen for days. Or…what? Being unable to actually believe that this is what an authoritarian takeover looks like? Being unsure of whether you put the headline about the illegal coup d’etat next to a spring season fashion report? Above or below the round-up of best rice cookers? The fact is the front pages look like it’s business as normal when it’s anything but.

This was Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Tuesday. She’s a historian of fascism and authoritarianism at New York University and she said this even before some of this week’s most extreme events had taken place. (A transcript of the rest of her words here.)

“It’s very unusual. In my study of authoritarian states, it's only really after a coup that you see such a speed, such obsessive haste to purge bureaucracy so quickly. Or when somebody is defending themselves, like Erdogan after the coup attempt against him, massive purge immediately. So that's unusual. I don't have another reference point for a private individual coming in, infiltrating, trying to turn government to the benefit of his businesses and locking out and federal employees. It is a coup. I'm a historian of coups, and I would also use that word. So we're in a real emergency situation for our democracy.”

A day later, this was Tim Snyder, Yale, a Yale professor and another great historian of authoritarianism, here: “Of course it’s a coup.”

History was made this week and while reporters are doing incredible work, to understand it our guides are historians, those who’ve lived in authoritarian states and Silicon Valley watchers. They are saying it. What I’ve learned from investigating and reporting on Silicon Valley’s system-level hack of our democracy for eight long years and seeing up close the breathtaking impunity and entitlement of the men who control these companies is that they break laws and they get away with it. And then lie about it afterwards. That’s the model here.

Everything that I’ve ever warned about is happening now. This is it. It’s just happening faster than anyone could have imagined.

It’s not that what’s happening is simply unlawful. This is what David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School told the Washington Post.

“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

And he’s right. The system can’t and isn’t. Legal challenges are being made and even upheld but there’s no guarantee or even sign that Musk is going to honour them. That’s one of the most chilling points my friend, Mark Bergman, made to me over the weekend.

Last week, I included a voice note from my friend, tech investor turned tech campaigner, Roger McNamee, so you could hear direct from an expert about the latest developments in AI. This week I’ve asked Mark to do the honours.

He’s a lawyer, Washington political insider, and since last summer, he’s been participating in ‘War Game’ exercises with Defense Department officials, three-star generals, former Cabinet Secretaries and governors. In five exercises involving 175 people, they situation-tested possible scenarios of a Trump win. But they didn’t see this. It’s even worse than they feared.

“Those challenges have been in respect of shutting down agencies, firing federal employees and engaging in the most egregious hack of government. It all at the hand hands of DOGE, Musk and his band of tech engineers. DC right now is shell-shocked. It is a government town, USA, ID, the FBI, the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, no federal agency will be spared the revenge and retribution tours in full swing, and huge numbers have been put on administrative leave, reassigned or fired, and the private sector is as much at risk, particularly NGOs and civil society organizations. The more high-profile violate the law, which is why the courts have been quick to enjoin actions. “So yes, we've experienced a coup, not the old fashioned kind, no tanks or mobs, but an undemocratic and hostile takeover of government. It is cruel, it is petty. It can be brutal. It is at once chaotic and surgical. We said the institutions held in 2020 but behind institutions or people, and the extent to which all manner of power structures have preemptively obeyed is hugely worrying. There are legions ready to carry out the Trump agenda. The question is, will the rule of law hold?”

Last Tuesday, Musk tried to lay off the entire CIA. That’s the government body with the slogan ‘We are the nation’s first line of defense’. Every single employee has been offered an unlawful ‘buyout’ - what we call redundancy in the UK - or what 200 former employees - spies - have said is blatant attempt to rebuild it as a political enforcement unit. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reports that new appointees are being presented with “loyalty tests”.

Musk’s troops - because that’s what they are, mercenaries - are acting in criminal, unlawful, unconstitutional ways. Organisations are acting quickly, taking lawsuits, and for now the courts are holding. But the key essential question is whether their rulings can be enforced with a political weaponized Department of Justice and FBI. What Mark Bergman told me (and is in the extended note below) is that they’ve known since the summer that there would be almost no way of pushing back against Trump. This politicisation of all branches of law enforcement creates a vacuum at the heart of the state. As he says in that note, the ramifications of this are little understood outside the people inside Washington who study this for a living.

And at least some of what DOGE is doing can never be undone. Musk, a private citizen, now has vast clouds of citizens’ data, their personal information and it seems likely, classified material. When data is out there, it’s out there. That genie can never be put back into the bottle.

Itt’s what it’s possible to do with that data, that the real nightmare begins. What machine learning algorithms and highly personalised targeting can do. It’s a digital coup. An information coup. And we have to understand what that means. Our fleshy bodies still inhabit earthly spaces but we are all, also, digital beings too. We live in a hybrid reality. And for more than a decade we have been targets of hybrid warfare, waged by hostile nation states whose methodology has been aped and used against us by political parties in a series of disrupted elections marked by illegal behaviour and a lack of any enforcement. But this now takes it to the next level.

It facilitates a concentration of wealth and power - because data is power - of a kind the world has never seen before.

Facebook’s actual corporate motto until 2014 taken from words Mark Zuckerberg spoke was “Move fast and break things”. That phrase has passed into commonplace: we know it, we quote it, we also fail to understand what that means. It means: act illegally and get away with it.

And that is the history of Silicon Valley. Its development and cancerous growth is marked by series of larcenous acts each more grotesque than the last. And Musk’s career is an exemplar of that, a career that has involved rampant criminality, gross invasions of privacy, stock market manipulation. And lies. The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently suing Musk for failing to disclose his ownership stock before he bought Twitter. The biggest mistake right now is to believe anything he says.

Every time, these companies have broken the law, they have simply gotten away with it. I know I’m repeating this, but it’s central to understanding both the mindset and what’s happening on the ground. And no-one exemplifies that more than Musk. The worst that has happened to him is a fine. A slap on the wrist. An insignificant line on a balance sheet. The “cost of doing business”.

On Friday, Robert Reich, the former United States Secretary of Labor, who’s been an essential voice this week, told the readers of his Substack to act now and call their representatives.

“Friends, we are in a national emergency. This is a coup d’etat. Elon Musk was never authorized by Congress to do anything that he’s doing, he was never even confirmed by Congress, his so-called Department of Government Efficiency was never authorized by Congress. Your representatives, your senators and Congressmen have never given him authority to do what he is doing, to take over government departments, to take over entire government agencies, to take over government payments system itself to determine for himself what is an appropriate payment. To arrogate to himself the authority to have your social security number, your private information? Please. Listen, call Congress now.”

It’s a coup

I found myself completely poleaxed on Wednesday. I read this piece on the New York Times website first thing in the morning, a thorough and alarming analysis of headlined “Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab”. It quoted Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University, “programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness.” It was displayed prominently on the front page of the New York Times but it was also just one piece among many, a small weak signal amid the overpowering noise.

There’s another word for an “Executive Power Grab”, it’s a coup. And newspapers need to actually write that in big black letters on their front pages and tell their tired, busy, overwhelmed, distracted, scared readers what is happening. That none of this is “business as usual.”

Over on the Guardian’s UK website on Wednesday, there was not a single mention on the front page of what was happening. Trump’s Gaza spectacular diversion strategy drowned out its quotient of American news. We just weren’t seeing what’s happening in the seat of government of our closest ally. As a private citizen mounted a takeover of the cornerstone superpower of the international rules-based order, our crucial NATO ally, our biggest single trading partner, the UK government didn’t even apparently notice.

The downstream potential international consequences of what is happening in America are profound and terrifying. That our government and much of the media is asleep at the wheel is a reason to be more not less terrified. Musk has made his intentions towards our democracy and national security quite clear. What he hasn’t yet had is the backing of the US state. That is shortly going to change. One of the first major stand-offs will be UK and EU tech regulation. I hope I’m wrong but it seems pretty obvious that’s what Musk’s Starmer-aimed tweets are all about. There seems no world in which the EU and the UK aren’t headed for the mother of all trade wars.

And that’s before we even consider the national security ramifications. The prime minister should be convening Cobra now. The Five Eyes - the intelligence sharing network of the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada - is already likely breached. Trump is going to do individual deals with all major trading partners that’s going to involve preposterous but real threats, including likely dangling the US’s membership of NATO over our heads all while Russia watches, waits and knows that we’ve done almost nothing to prepare. Plans to increase our defence spending have been made but not yet implemented. Our intelligence agencies do understand the precipice we’re on but there’s no indication the government is paying any attention to them. The risks are profound. The international order as we know it is collapsing in real time.

It’s a coup

We all know that the the first thing that happens when a dictator seizes power is that he (it’s always a he) takes control of the radio station. Musk did that months ago. It wasn’t that Elon Musk buying Twitter pre-ordained what is now happening but it made it possible. And it was the moment, minutes after Trump was shot and he went full-in on his campaign that signalled the first shot fired in his digital takeover.

It’s both a mass propaganda machine and also the equivalent of an information drone with a deadly payload. It’s a weapon that’s already been turned on journalists and news organisations this week. There’s much more to come.

On Friday, Musk started following Wikileaks on Twitter. Hours later, twisted, weaponized leaks from USAID began.

This is going to get so much worse. Musk and MAGA will see this as the opening of the Stasi archive. It’s not. It’s rocketfuel for a witchhunt. It’s hybrid warfare against the enemies of the state. It’s going to be ugly and cruel and its targets are going to need help and support. Hands across the water to my friends at OCCRP, the Overseas Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative journalism organisation that uncovers transnational crime, that’s been in Musk’s sights this weekend, one of hundreds of media organisations around the world whose funding has been slashed overnight.

It’s a coup

By now you may feel scared and helpless. It’s how I felt this week. I had the same sick feeling I had watching UK political coverage before the pandemic. The government was just going to ignore the wave of deaths rippling from China to Italy and pretend it wasn’t happening? Really? That’s the plan?

This is another pandemic. Or a Chernobyl. It’s a bomb at the heart of the international order whose toxic fallout is going to inevitably drift our way.

My internal alarm bell, a sense of urgency and anxiety goes even further back. To early 2017, when I uncovered information about Cambridge Analytica’s illegal hack of data from Facebook while the company’s VP, Steve Bannon, was then on the National Security Council. That concept of highly personalised data in the control of a ruthless and political operator was what tripped my emergency wires. That is a reality now.

The point is that the shock and awe is meant to make us feel helpless. So I’m telling a bit of my own personal story here. Because part of what temporarily paralyzed me last week was that this is all happening while my own small corner of the mainstream media is collapsing in on itself too. The event that I’ve spent the last eight years warning about has come to pass and in a month, 100+ of my colleagues at the Guardian will be out of the door and my employment will be terminated. I will no longer have the platform of the news organisation where I’ve done my entire body of work to date and was able to communicate to a global audience.

But then, it’s all connected. We are living through an information crisis. It’s what underpins everything. In some ways, this happening now is not surprising at all. Moreover, many of the people who I see as essential voices during this crisis (including those above) are doing that effectively and independently from Substack as I will try to continue to do.

And, the key thing that the last eight years has given me is information. The lawsuit I fought for four years as a result of doing this work very almost floored me. But it didn’t. And I’ve learned essential skills during those years. It was part of what powered me to fight for the rights of Guardian journalists during our strike this December.

The next fightback against Musk and the Broligarchy has to draw from the long, long fight for workers rights which in turn influenced the fight for civil rights that must now power us on as we face the great unknown. What comes next has to be a fight for our data rights, our human rights.

This was former Guardian journalist Gary Younge on our picket line and I’ve thought about these words a lot. You have to fight even if you won’t necessarily win. Power is almost never given up freely.

If you value any of this and want me to be able to continue, I’d be really grateful if you signed up, free, or even better, paid subscription. And I’d also urge you to sign up also for the Citizen Dispatch, that’s the newsletter from the non-profit I founded that campaigns around these issues. There is much more it can and needs to do.

[urbanrelics]

HAUT FOURNEAU 4

I adore visiting blast furnaces. They are the most spectacular sights I've ever got to witness. The intricacy of the engineering is quite simply astonishing. This particular specimen in Belgium, which has been under close surveilance since it was shut down in 2008, has been preserved in a remarkably good condition. Almost immediately after the closure, an interest group was established that wanted to preserve the blast furnace as an industrial landmark.

This blast furnace company, which is a defining feature of the city of Charleroi, was founded in 1836, during the heyday of the European steel industry. Like all other steel companies in the region, this blast furnace was also the subject of numerous takeovers and mergers. These mainly took place in the 1960s and 70s. It always remained a flourishing company, competitive on a global scale. However, the takeover by the Duferco group in 2001 heralded the beginning of the end…

The site was then operated under the name Carsid. After a fire in 2007, the furnace was temporarily shut down to carry out the necessary repairs. At the same time, capacity was increased and a number of environmental investments were made. The installation would now be operational for another ten years. Barely a year later, the blast furnace was shut down again, due to “poor prospects”. Due to the economic crisis and the declining demand for steel, the operation of the blast furnace company was no longer deemed profitable.

A “temporary” closure and the search for a buyer should bring relief. After more than three years of uncertainty and economic unemployment, the curtain finally fell for the blast furnace. Since HF4 is one of the best preserved blast furnaces in Europe, the Walloon government is striving to preserve the furnace as industrial heritage. Although a ministerial decree has been published to this effect, the demolition work on the site is progressing steadily…

Unfortunately Charleroi is one of the poorest cities in Belgium. There is no budget for the necessary sanitation and preservation works, which would run in the millions of euros. The futures is looking bleak for this beautiful piece of industrial heritage...

[ceyanabbiolo]

CONTRACT // C.S [02]

Summary: Christopher Sturniolo, a 26-year-old billionaire CEO, agrees to a strategic marriage with Aurora Devereaux, the 21-year-old daughter of his rival, to save his company during a crisis. Raised in a cold, arrogant environment, Chris is used to control and detachment. Aurora, a final-year fashion student, is forced into the arrangement by her powerful father and struggles with the fear of losing herself. As the two navigate their unexpected marriage, they begin to confront emotional walls and develop a connection that challenges everything they thought they knew about love and trust. But with their families’ influence looming, will their bond be strong enough to survive—or will it fall apart?

Warnings: Slight yelling. That's it.

wc: 1650

Chapter 2: The Meeting

The dining room felt too damn formal. Tall ceilings, heavy chandeliers, a table long enough for a corporate takeover. I sat at one end, drumming my fingers against the polished wood, trying not to show how tense I felt. Across from me, Thomas Devereaux lounged in his chair like a king on a throne, sipping whiskey like this was just another part of the plan. Beside him sat his wife — Elena Devereaux — her hands folded tightly in her lap, her mouth a thin, uneasy line.

It had been a week since he laid it all out: Marry his daughter, save the company. Simple. Brutal.

“She’ll be down in a moment,” Thomas said, checking his watch with a practiced flick. Elena didn’t speak, but I caught the small glance she sent her husband — worried, tight with guilt.

I just nodded stiffly, adjusting the cuffs of my shirt. Every second that passed, the weight in my chest pressed harder. I hated waiting. Especially for something like this.

Footsteps echoed from the grand staircase — light and hesitant. I looked up. And there she was.

Aurora Devereaux.

She didn’t storm in, didn’t smile. She moved carefully, like she was walking into a battlefield she didn’t even sign up for. She wore a simple sage-brown maxi dress that skimmed over her small, delicate frame. She couldn’t have been more than 5'1 — tiny compared to the towering height of everything around her. Her hair was a glossy, rich red, tumbling in soft waves down her back, catching the light like a flame. Her eyes, wide, deep brown doe-eyes — scanned the room anxiously, landing on me and freezing like a deer caught in headlights. Her mouth, with its naturally plush lips, was pressed into a tight, uncertain line.

Soft. Fragile. Stunning. Everything about her made something uncomfortable twist inside me.

"Christopher," Thomas said smoothly, standing. "This is my daughter, Aurora."

Aurora hesitated at the bottom step, hands twisting nervously in front of her. She didn’t look like someone about to make a deal. She looked like someone trying to survive one.

I stood too, out of some buried sense of decency. "Hi," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Hi," I said, my voice coming out rougher than I intended.

Thomas gestured for her to sit, and like a soldier taking orders, she moved to the chair beside him — carefully, quietly — as far from me as she could without being rude. Elena offered her daughter a small, reassuring smile, but it was tight with helplessness.

I sat back down, forcing my face to stay blank. This was already a disaster.

Thomas, of course, filled the silence, rattling off my achievements like he was pitching a client. Aurora nodded where expected, her gaze fixed on her hands or her untouched plate. When Thomas mentioned she was in her final year of university for fashion design, she gave the smallest smile — and even that looked painful, like it cost her something.

"That's impressive," I said, surprising both her and myself.

She glanced up at me quickly, startled. "Thanks," she whispered.

Thomas barely noticed. He launched straight into logistics — dates, merger contracts, expectations. Aurora’s posture got tighter and tighter, her fingers picking at the fabric of her dress until her knuckles turned white. Her mother placed a hand lightly on her back in comfort, but Aurora barely seemed to register it.

The food turned cold on the plates. Nobody actually ate.

Finally, Thomas stood, brushing his hands together with fake finality. "I’ll leave you two to talk," he said, practically glowing with self-satisfaction. Elena gave Aurora's shoulder a soft squeeze before rising as well, offering me a look — apologetic — before following her husband. The heavy doors clicked shut behind them.

Silence.

Aurora sat frozen, her hands tangled tightly in the folds of her dress.

I leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms loosely. "I didn't want this either," I said flatly.

Her eyes widened, searching my face for something—anything. Hope. Mercy. A way out.

"I gave your father an ultimatum," I added, voice low. "I told him I wasn't agreeing to anything unless you did."

She blinked, stunned. "But... he never asked me."

A humorless laugh escaped me as I rubbed a hand over my jaw. "Yeah. Figures."

Aurora shrank back slightly, the soft curve of her shoulders curling inward.

"I'm not going to force you into anything," I said after a beat, my tone cold but not cruel. "You can say no. Walk away. I don't want a hostage for a wife."

Her lips parted, a flash of disbelief crossing her face. "You’re serious?" she asked, her voice shaking.

I nodded once. "Dead serious."

The silence thickened again, only broken by the faint clatter of plates being cleared in the far distance.

"I... I don't even know you," she said, almost pleading.

I shrugged, the motion sharp and bitter. "Same goes both ways, ma."

Her cheeks flushed a pale pink, and for a second, anger flickered behind her eyes. Better than fear.

"Then why agree to this at all?" she asked, voice almost rising.

I met her gaze head-on, steady. "Because sometimes life hands you two shitty choices, and you pick the one that leaves the least damage."

Aurora inhaled sharply, nails digging into her palms. She looked seconds away from breaking.

I sighed, leaning forward. "Look," I said, my voice low, "I know this isn't fair to you. It's not fair to either of us. But if you choose to go through with it..." I paused. "I'll do my best not to make it worse."

Her eyes shimmered, but she blinked them away, fierce and stubborn. "You don't have to pretend to be nice," she said tightly. "I’m not expecting anything from you."

That hit harder than it should have.

I sat back slowly. "Good," I said finally, my voice cool. "Because I’m not good at pretending."

The warning hung between us.

Aurora swallowed hard. "I need time," she whispered.

"Take it," I said, pushing back from the table. "I’m not going to chase you, Aurora. Decide what you want."

Without another word, I turned and left the room, the heavy doors clicking closed behind me.

AURORA

I sat frozen in my chair, staring at the door Christopher had just walked through. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.

My mom’s hands were suddenly on mine, gentle but trembling. "Baby," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

I shook my head, blinking hard against the tears burning my eyes. "Why, Mom?" My voice cracked. "Why would he do this to me?"

Her mouth twisted painfully, and I watched helplessly as tears shimmered in her own eyes. "Your father… he’s under a lot of pressure, Aurora," she said quietly. "He thought—he thought this would protect everything. Protect you too."

"I don’t care about the company!" I cried, the words ripping out of me, broken and loud. I didn’t want to protect anything except the life I thought I was going to have — the future that was crumbling around me.

"I know," she whispered, pulling me into her arms. I let myself collapse into her, sobbing into her shoulder like I was five years old again. She stroked my hair, whispering soft, helpless words. "You don't have to say yes," she murmured against my ear. "If you don’t want this… You don’t have to."

But I knew it wasn’t that simple. I could feel the weight of it — the expectation, the invisible chains tightening around me.

"I—I need to talk to Dad," I choked out, pulling away. Mom tried to stop me, but I was already on my feet, heart racing wildly. I couldn't leave it like this. I had to try.

I stormed down the hall, my bare feet thudding softly against the marble floors. I found him in his study — my father — sitting behind his massive oak desk like he had every right to rule my life.

He looked up when I burst in, frowning. "Aurora," he said sharply. "Knock next time—"

"Dad," I interrupted, voice shaking. "You have to cancel this."

He stood slowly, his jaw tightening. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.

I moved closer, hands clenched at my sides. "I don’t want to marry him!" I said, my voice rising. "Christopher — he even told me I had a choice. He said I could say no!"

My father’s face darkened instantly. "You think you have a choice?" he barked, stepping out from behind the desk. "This isn't about what you want, Aurora. This is about the survival of everything I’ve built — everything our family stands for!"

"I didn’t ask for any of it!" I cried, my voice breaking. Tears blurred my vision, but I refused to look away.

"You wouldn’t have anything without me!" he snapped, anger flashing across his features. "You think you’d be finishing school, living in comfort, following your little fashion dreams if it weren’t for what I built?"

I flinched like he had slapped me. "That’s not fair," I whispered.

"Life isn’t fair," he bit out. His hands slammed down on the desk, the sound echoing through the room. "You will marry Christopher Sturniolo. You will protect this family. End of discussion."

I stood there, shaking, tears streaming down my face. My throat closed up so tight I could barely breathe.

"You’re choosing a business deal over your own daughter," I whispered, voice hollow.

His mouth twisted into something cold.  "I’m choosing survival."

I stumbled back, feeling like the ground under me was cracking open. Without another word, I turned and fled the study, my heart breaking with every step.

I didn't care about the company. I didn't care about survival.

I just wanted my life back.

And somehow, it felt like it had been stolen from me in a single night.

So, I agreed.

READ ALL RELEASED CHAPTERS HERE!

[a/n: bro…i’m nervous. Tumblr is such is interesting place. but everyone on here talented asf] — lots of love ceyana

[shannonsketches]

this is another post I’m starting with ‘something I think about a lot’ but something I think about a lot is how in Toriyama’s version of things, it seems like the Freeza’s empire, generally, takes good care of its people, and I mean that in the most insidious possible way.

Iirc, Freeza’s empire is very very intentionally Toriyama’s commentary on imperial capitalism and corporatocracy (at least, he’s certainly explicitly stated Freeza is inspired by 1990s land developers in Japan). The ENG dub of the anime really consistently uses the word slavery in terms of the Saiyan relationship to the empire, but the manga and JPN dubs don’t, because slavery doesn’t typically include getting to independently keep and run your homeland and your government and your culture.

In Toriyama’s version, King Cold’s relationship with King Vegeta seems much more like corporate takeover. I read it as how major corporations work — finding businesses that are doing very well and offer to absorb them in a merger deal — which is not actually an offer, because the alternative is to be outmatched by a company who can afford to hemorrhage money to offer your consumer base your services at a fraction of your cost, until you shrivel up and die or fold and sign the contract.

As I understand Toriyama’s lore — Saiyans were conquering and selling planets to the highest bidder, and King V wandered into King Cold’s territory. Instead of destroying them outright, King Cold saw King V’s business model was raking in profit, and did the Dxsney thing. King V is not a good man but he’s not a stupid man! Maybe he tried to hold out, but the Freeza Force is huge and powerful and eventually huge powerful companies get what they want. (This is also true of the land developers Toriyama cites as Freeza’s inspiration, but they did it with more mafia behavior, like Freeza does).

And then King Cold stepped down as CEO, and his exceptionally cruel nepobaby son took over Daddy’s company, and Dxsney shut down Blue Sky and fired hundreds of employees. “It was the pandemic, we needed to cut costs”/“It was a meteor, and a tragedy” It’s an excuse to take out a competitor, and keep the most profitable pieces for yourself. So as Dxsney acquired the Ice Age (one of the highest grossing franchises of all time), so too did Freeza acquire Prince Vegeta (one of the most powerful saiyans ever born).

(The studio parallel is not the inspiration for Toriyama’s writing, it’s just the clearest example I can offer of the corporate/colonialism parallels at play with the Freeza Force)

And I say that it seems to me like, generally, and insidiously, the FF takes good care of its people because, much in the same way that people still buy into the Happiest Place on Earth Magic Kingdom marketing, a majority of the characters we’ve met in the Freeza Force are either runaways or survivors of lost worlds who are now protected by Freeza’s empire (there’s a blurb about Cheelai that says she a thief on the run from Galactic Patrol when she joined the FF, and cops don’t fuck with mega corporations.)

Cheelai’s blurb says she only knows Freeza by his reputation, despite her living on the same ship he is in DBS, which makes sense! They’re massive floating army bases, and randos do not simply meet the President. Freeza not only has these bases, but according to Vegeta, establishes a shiny massive new base on a planet, gets bored, and wanders off to find a new one to do the same thing (and is implied to have done so 79 times by the time he gets to Namek).

All this to say that, unless you’re in his military, his inner circle, or the Galactic Patrol, you likely don’t know (or think about) Freeza and the FF are very obviously the bad guys. All you’re exposed to is the beautiful buildings and all of the high-quality options (chefs like Lemu, for example) and safety and comfort (as Vegeta drags Cui for enjoying) you have within the empire, while never having to ask how it got there (and likely being removed if you do, tbh. This is a Legitimate Business, how dare you imply we are committing crimes).

And the thing I think about most, and I’ve been thinking about lately, and what made me think to write this down, is that Vegeta has spent his entire life inside the inner circle. Vegeta’s been a top dog in this empire since childhood. And he knew Freeza was powerful, he knew Freeza was in charge for a reason — but the thing that fucks me up is that he spent his whole life doing what they do, and was still shocked to learn it was Freeza who destroyed his planet. Even up through the more recent movies, it’s the only thing about Freeza he cites as unforgivable.

It’s Zarbon he condemns for the overwork he experienced, Dodoria he condemns for being a brainless thug, Cui he condemns for being a spineless leech, but Freeza, himself, he never suspected. Freeza, himself, to some degree, is someone Vegeta trusted and low-key modeled himself after.

I think so much about his hesitation to execute Freeza in Resurrection F; he was gone during Freeza’s fight with Goku, Trunks killed him in the blink of an eye. Vegeta has never, in 30+ years of knowing him, ever seen Freeza desperate. He’s never seen Freeza cornered. He never knew Freeza as a Weasel. He wouldn’t have any reason to expect Freeza to use an underhanded tactic. Even after everything he’d done and learned, Vegeta STILL, to some degree, trusted Freeza to die like a warrior, because he never knew Freeza the Nepobaby. He’d only ever experienced Freeza the Emperor. Vegeta’s fear was gone but his respect was still present, despite himself.

Anyway, tldr I am a huge fan of golden cage theory. Not just as it applies to Vegeta’s dynamic with Freeza, but as it applies to almost everyone within the empire’s dynamic with the empire itself. It’s imperial capitalism, it’s glistening corporotocracy. The bad people know how the sausage is made, the comfortable think the food is worth the cost, the rescues are grateful to have something to eat, and the opposed get quietly pushed into the grinder.

[evelynquack]

This post is about the literary trope of Transmigration.

Imagine you are a four year old, and you suddenly gain the memories of a… let’s say seventeen year old.

You are not mentally 17 now. You still have the brain of a 4 year old. But you’re also not mentally 4.

It’s a juxtaposition, I believe the term is?

You both are and aren’t 17. You both are and aren’t 4.

Sure, you could maybe say that you’re just 4 years younger now, and proclaim to yourself that you’re mentally about 13-ish. Or just halve 17 and say you’re now mentally a super mature 8 and a half year old.

You could logic it whatever way you wanted to, but it still wouldn’t be quite right. It’s up for interpretation by you yourself, and nobody else… since you can’t really tell anyone that you’ve transmigrated.

But that’s in the case of a larger gap.

Let’s now say you’re a 13 year old with the memories of a 17 year old. How much a difference is that really?

It’s just 4 years in terms of development, give or take since different bodies develop at different rates. It’s still weird, uncomfortable, etc. But less dramatically so, yes? If you ended up dating someone of the same physical age when you’re… say, 15 or 16 — readers wouldn’t find it nearly as questionable, right?

And this is all assuming it’s a full takeover, and not a merger.

So now, let’s say you’re 13, and you’ve still got your memories, but you just suddenly also gained the memories of a 17 year old.

In that situation, are you still mentally 13? Or are you older? Or maybe just more mature?

Whenever I read a transmigration story, I always try to figure out what the author’s answers to these questions are.

In the better ones, they usually answer by making the Transmigrator just Oblivious about romantic interest towards them — off the top of my head, Katarina Claes and Kim Hajin come to mind.

Speaking of Kim Hajin — how weird is it for a late 20s woman to be lowkey into a 17 year old with the mind of an early to mid 20 something yr old?

Don’t get me wrong, I personally love Hajin & Byul together, but it’s still an intriguing thought experiment. I guess one’s answer basically depends on if they’re pro or anti ship though, doesn’t it?

Anyways; I’m just really into the thought experiments inherently surrounding transmigration stories. Feel free to reblog or whatever with any additions or thoughts you’d like to bring up!!!

[badopenttdideas]

Do you hate having competition?

Sometimes, you're playing OpenTTD and you see that you have opponents who are also playing OpenTTD. And then they go and do things like open up routes that you wanted to serve, fill the sky with planes, or do other annoying things that prevent you from having infinite money. Sometimes they even have more money than you. Unbelieveable. Well, I'm here to tell you how YOU can get rid of your competitors and reign supreme over the transport market for the entire world. Unless you're playing against a human. They tend to be clever and also this trick doesn't work in multiplayer.

Here we see one of our many opponents, the nefarious NoCAB - v2.1.3 (a very stupid name for a transit company, although roughly on par with those of my regular human opponent @cosmos-dot-semicolon). What we do to make them stop existing without driving them into bankruptcy (because that's rather difficult) is we perform a hostile takeover. Just click the button, say "yes" to buying them, and boom, you now own all of their things!

Now that we have bought out one of our competitors, it's time to start preparing to eliminate the rest. Your opponents will be none the wiser to your plans – after all, you bought them for an "undisclosed amount" (we know what that amount was - £2,876,279) so that could have been £3 and a tube of pringles for all they know. However, we now face a problem: the computer opponents, being vastly inferior to anything a human could achieve, are not always very good at running things.

Here we see that the company we just acquired has rather a lot of old planes that are losing significant amounts of money. In some cases, the planes have not even been in service – they've just been sitting in the hangar for ages. Obviously, the fleet is due for an upgrade, and probably also massive service cuts (fortunately for passengers, it's possible to replace every vehicle at once but you have to cut services individually, so if I can't be bothered then I won't).

Now on to our next opponent, the imaginatively named NoCAB - v2.1.3 - #3. They have comitted the unforgivable sin of having more money than me, and for that they must perish. So we buy them out as well.

Following the merger, the markets take some time to adjust, as seen above, with things going all over the place. Now that our only threat has been eliminated, it's time to mop up the remaining few competitors (I will skip the tedious process of buying them all out individually for the reader's convenience).

Now we have bought out all of our competition (ignore the second line on the graph, and the slightly different color of some of the station names) we can see just how beneficial this has been to our company: THE LINE IS GOING UP. Truly, we are winning OpenTTD the way it was meant to be won: with a monopoly.

Of course, there are some difficulties that do happen as a result of these massive mergers and acquisitions, such as how having so many planes means that accidnets are a regular occurence. This is of course the fault of the previous owner's lax maintenance standards and practices and in no way related to us – it takes time to upgrade our new fleets to the most modern vehicles available.

Finally, a little over a year after we started to build our monopoly, we have achieved our goal: total control over the world's transit system. Ignore what happened to our cash reserves, we made the line go up and that's all that shareholders want. There will be no issues if a recession hits and we will not be forced to make massive cuts and layoffs to avoid insolvency.

As can be seen from the leaderboard, this is an effective strategy for winning games of OpenTTD. Indeed, 4 out of 5 companies on the leaderboard had no competition whatsoever. That 3 of those had no competition from the beginning is irrelevant.

Of course, as I mentioned previously, this does not work in multiplayer against real humans. But since winning multiplayer games does not put you on the leaderboard we don't care.

As for how you eliminate human opponents, you simply drive them into bankruptcy. How you do this is left as an exercise for the reader.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Certain cellphone plans in Western Canada are not as cheap as they were prior to the Rogers-Shaw merger, Canada's competition watchdog says. Jeanne Pratt, the Competition Bureau's senior deputy commissioner of mergers and monopolistic practices, says the agency hasn't seen evidence showing Rogers Communications Inc. is offering comparable pricing for bundled wireless plans offered by Shaw Mobile in Alberta and British Columbia before the $26-billion takeover closed last April. Pratt was testifying at the House of Commons industry committee on Monday along with representatives from the CRTC, as MPs study the accessibility and affordability of wireless and broadband services in Canada. MPs on the committee sounded the alarm in January, when Rogers confirmed prices were going up by an average of $5 for wireless customers not on contract and some Bell Canada customers were also told their wireless bills were set to increase.

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