#Private Engine

[ravenpureforever]

Actually it is deeply funny to me how the Batman fandom does not acknowledge Harold in any capacity so when I first saw him in comics I was fully jumpscared by “who the hell is this motherfucker”

Anyway more fics need to feature the full on Hunchback of Notre Dame subplot that apparently went down in the Batcave

I want Tim or Dick to offhandedly mention missing him or something while the newer kids are like what the fuck are you talking about what do you mean

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity rips off its investors, too

I'm coming to DEFCON! TOMORROW (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

It's amazing how many of the scams that have devastated our economy and everyday people owe their success to the fact that we assume that rich people know what they're doing, so if they're doing something, it must be real.

Think of how many people lost everything by gambling on junk bonds, exotic mortgage derivatives, cryptocurrency and web3, because they saw that the largest financial institutions in the world were going all-in on these weird, incomprehensible bets.

Then there are the people who are convinced that online advertising is built around a mind-control ray, because tech companies claim that's what they have ("I am an evil dopamine-loop-hacking wizard and I can sell anything to anyone!"), and because huge, sober blue-chip companies hand billions to these soi dissant svengalis. Sure, online ads are a swamp of clickfraud and garbage, but would these super smart captains of industry spend so much on online advertising if it didn't work super-well?

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

From our worms'-eye-view here on the ground, it's easy to assume that rich people and the people who sell them stuff are all on the same side. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," right? If Facebook is tormenting you with surveillance advertising, it must be doing so on behalf of the surveillance advertisers, for whom Mark Zuckerberg has bottomless reservoirs of honest, forthright impulses.

The reality is simultaneously weirder, and obvious in hindsight. The reason Zuck is tormenting you is that he's a remorseless sociopath who doesn't care who he hurts. He rips off everyone he can rip off, and that includes advertisers, who have seen steady price-hikes and lower-fidelity targeting, even as ad-fraud has skyrocketed while Facebook draws down its anti-fraud spending:

https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/

This is not to say that Facebook advertisers have your best interests at heart, that they aren't engaged in active deception in order to better themselves at your expense. Rather, it's to say that there's no honor among thieves, and Zuck is an equal-opportunity predator. Moreover, both Zuck and his advertisers are credulous dolts, so the mere fact that they are pouring money into something (advertisers: FB ads; Zuck: metaverse) it doesn't follow that these are real or important or the coming thing.

For me, the Ur-example of "rich people are dumb, even when it comes to money" is the private equity sector. I've written a lot about PE, and how destructive it is to the real economy, from Toys R Us to pet grooming:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

How they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And how they actually created the death panels that Sarah Palin warned us about (it's OK, though: these death panels are run by the efficient private sector, not government bureaucrats):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

The devastating effect of private equity on the real economy is increasingly well understood, and a curious side-effect of this is that people assume that if PE is destroying their lives, they must be doing so on behalf of their investors, who are making bank.

But – like Zuck – PE bosses are just as happy to steal from their investors as they are to to steal from the workers and customers of the businesses they acquire on those investors' behalf. They swaddle this theft in performative complexity and specialized jargon, but when you strip all that away, you find more fraud.

All the misery that PE inflicts on workers, communities and customers are just a convincer in a Big Store con, a bid to make the scam seem credible. For a certain kind of investor, any economic activity that destroys communities and workers' livelihoods must be a good bet. This is the dynamic at work in the pitch of AI image-generator companies, who spend tens of billions on technology that there is no substantial market for:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter

AI image generators represent a high-profile, extremely visible example of "a job that AI can do." Nevermind that AI illustration went from a novelty to a tired cliche in less than a year. Even if you think that AI illustrations are a perfect substitute for commercial illustrations, that still won't come anywhere near making AI companies a profit. Add up the entire wage bill for every commercial illustrator in the world, hand it to Open AI, and you're not even gonna cover the kombucha budget for Open AI's staff kitchens.

Hell, all the wages of every commercial illustrator that ever lived won't pay back even a fraction of the money the AI companies spent on image generators. The pauperization of an entire class of creative workers is just a canned demo, a way to fool investors into thinking that there is a whole universe of similarly situated workers whose wages can be diverted to AI companies. This is the logic of small-time spammers, scaled up to the scale of the entire S&P 500. Smalltime spammers looked at AI and thought, "OK, I can generate as much botshit as I want on demand for free. Science fiction magazines pay $0.10/word. So if I generate a billion words, I'll get $100 million." But that's not how any of that works: sf magazines don't buy botshit, and even if they did, the entire market for short fiction adds up to what Sam Altman spends on a single designer t-shirt. The point of destroying these beloved, useful things isn't to make a lot of money by taking their markets – it's to convince dopey, panicked rich people to give you lots of money you can steal, because they think you can do this to every market and they don't want to miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Take "divi recaps": after a private equity firm acquires a company (by borrowing money against its assets), it typically declares a "special dividend," emptying out the company's cash reserves and pocketing them. A "divi recap" is when PE then takes out another massive loan against the company's (remaining) assets and pockets that:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

All of this happens under an opaque cloud, thanks to the light-to-nonexistent disclosure rules for PE. A public company has to open its books for the SEC, its investors, and the world. PE is private – and so are its finances. It is absolutely routine for PE bosses to put their spouses, kids, and pals on the payroll and hand them millions for doing little to nothing, all at the expense of their investors:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/sec-set-to-lower-massive-boom-on-private-equity-industry.html

PE bosses charge huge fees to their investors – not merely the usual 2-and-20 (2% of the funds under management and 20% of any profits) – but also a wide variety of special one-off fees that pile to the sky. They also dip into their investors' funds to issue themselves massive loans that they use to make side-bets, without telling the investors about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#gary-gensler

PE investors are chickens ripe for the plucking: take "continuation funds," which allow PE bosses to soak the rich people and pension funds who supply them with billions:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/matt-levines-money-stuff-buyout-funds-buy-from-themselves

Remember 2-and-20? 2% of all the money you manage, every year, and 20% of all the profits. You'd think that these would be somewhat zero sum, right? If you use some of your investors' cash to buy a company, and then sell off that company for a profit, you get the 20%, but now the pot of money you're managing has gone down by the amount you used to buy the company, and so your 2% carry goes down, too.

But what if you sell your portfolio companies to yourself, using your investors' own money? When you do that, you continue to hold the company on your PE firm's books, meaning you continue to get the 2% carry, and you can pocket 20% of the sale price as a "profit":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

This is straight-up fraud, wrapped up in so much jargon that it can successfully masquerade as "financial engineering" ("financial engineering" is really just a euphemism for "fraud"). PE bosses keep coming up with new, exotic ways to steal from their investors. The latest scam is "tax receivable agreements":

https://archive.ph/RczJ9

On its face, this is a tax scam. When a company goes public, early investors generally hold stock in the original partnership or LLC; this company ends up holding a ton of shares in the new, public company. When they sell those non-public shares in the LLC, this creates a (potentially gigantic) tax credit.

A TRA hustle involves tracking down these LLC shareholders and convincing them to sign off on dumping the LLC's shares, which generates a huge tax credit for the public company. The hustler offers to split these credits with the LLC holders.

All of this is especially attractive to PE bosses, who often take a company private, do a bunch of "financial engineering" and then take it public again, leaving the PE firm as the owner of those LLC shares that can be converted to a TRA and a huge windfall – which the PE bosses pocket, because they (not their investors) are holding those credits.

This scam is really doing big numbers. KKR – the monsters who killed Toys R Us – just diverted $650 million in TRA loot, prompting a lawsuit from Steamfitters union pension fund, which had handed these jerks millions of its members' money to gamble with:

https://archive.ph/kqQvI

This highlights another very weird aspect of the PE scam: they are absolutely dependent on pension funds. To add insult to injury, PE funds are notorious union-busters – they use union money to buy companies and destroy their unions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/05/mr-gotcha/#no-ethical-consumption-under-capitalism

People who try to understand the PE business model often give up, because it seems to make no sense, leading many to assume that they're too unsophisticated to grasp the complex financials here. For example, PE is absolutely dependent on massive loans as a way of looting its businesses, but it also often defaults on those loans. Why do banks and investors keep making huge loans to PE deadbeats? Because – like the PE fund investors – they are credulous dolts.

The reason PE seems like a scam is that it is a scam. It is a fractal scam – every part of it is a scam. You might have heard about the "carried interest" tax loophole that allows PE bosses to avoid billions in taxes on the money they steal from their investors, creditors, workers and customers. Most people assume "carried interest" has something to do with "interest" on a loan. Nope: "carried interest" is a 16th century nautical tax rule designed for mercantalist sea-captains who had an "interest" in the cargo they "carried":

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

But rich people and other "sophisticated investors" (like pension fund investment managers) are no smarter than the rest of us. They are herd animals. When they see other rich people piling into some scheme or asset class, they rush to join them, which makes the asset price go up, which makes them think they're smart (until the inevitable rug-pull). When one plute jumps off the Empire State Building, the rest of them jump, too.

Which is why there's more money flooding into PE than at any time in history, $2.62T in "dry powder," handed over to greedy, thieving PE bosses in a poker game where everyone is the sucker at the table:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

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/2024/08/08/sucker-at-the-table/#clucks-definance

[sthilarions]

Okay I’m never gonna write the fic that is written in my ideas file as “save a horse ride a cowboy/he thinks my tractor’s sexy”

I’m never gonna write it so it’s irrelevant that Edwin grows heritage crops and is at the cutting edge of small-scale organic farming techniques, he’s listed as a co-author on a dozen different papers, which he worked on while sitting perched in the raised bucket attachment of the aforementioned tractor

it’s not relevant that Charles kept coming by on his horse and interrupting him, standing up on the saddle to get his head roughly level with Edwin’s to ask him about what he was doing (and not at all to impress him obviously of course)

no reason to mention that Charles ended up as a co-author on a paper, the BA standing out in the list

or that Charles’s horse has gotten very used to being ground-tied next to Edwin’s tractor so his rider can hop up on the bucket next to some weird human

or that the next paper they co-author, Charles’s name has an MS, which didn’t even take him longer than two years to get even though he was doing it long-distance, which he says is because he had a lot of free time to work on stuff while out sitting by bob-wahr fences under beating sun making his eyes dance, and curled up in the back of his F-150 under the stars. it was probably easier for him than most people, he says, if asked, with a loose grin

And it definitely doesn’t matter that the next paper after that, he and Edwin have the same last name.

(The cowboy church* that Charles went to for social reasons refused to let them marry there, which they’d expected but Charles felt it was the right thing to do to ask anyway, but that was alright, because the pastor, Charlie, went rogue and agreed to officiate for them outside of the church, so they got married out on Edwin’s back 40, the ranch dogs and farm cats running around under the feet of the half dozen guests, the other weirdos in the area, and the fiddler played til dawn)

*Cowboy churches are a real thing, this is not a joke.

Another bit of relevant cultural context is that none of the cowboys I grew up with had four year degrees. That Charles starts out with a BA means that while he’s under-credentialed for an academic setting, he’s simultaneously already over-educated for his own cultural context, and probably spends a lot of time getting mockingly called “professor” by his ‘friends’ and remembering not to use overly fancy words and so forth.

Also he probably tries to avoid Zoom calls because having a noticeably rural accent around academics is Fraught, he checks his emails twice to make sure he hasn’t typed ‘y’all’

I am not writing this and I therefore do not know that Charles’s MS is from A&M, which is both the best university for his field and so virulently homophobic that I have a lot of acquaintances who had to drop out from there specifically because of that, and that the co-authored papers were on the topic of using animals for sustainable agriculture, like using Lacewings to manage aphids, and goats to manage invasive flora; Charles's knowledge of animal husbandry and Edwin's knowledge of sustainable agriculture meeting in the middle

If I were actually writing this as a fic, I’d mention things like the instability and draconian download caps of HughesNet that mean if Charles needs to download a big file like a recorded lecture he has to set an alarm for 3AM to download it during the unthrottled grace hour; the laptop running out of charge out in that truck bed, Charles using money he doesn’t have to buy a converter so he can charge it off the F-150

how he was doing homework under the stars not because it’s romantic but because if he gets out of the cab and parks on top of the tallest hill he might be able to get line of sight to a tower and hotspot off his phone (and worry about the bill later); about how he can only work for brief periods at a time during the day because the sun will make his laptop overheat, how he keeps an ice chest full of Nordic Ice in the back seat of the truck not just for water but so he can pop his laptop in there to cool it down; how he overclocks that shitty laptop making it run data analysis in R; how he rations his gas so he can turn on the AC once in a while and charge his laptop and still be able to drive home.

How Charles and Edwin started carpooling for the hour-long drive each way to the grocery store for the monthly stock of jugs of bottled water, that they need because the leaky water pipes they and their neighbors maintain themselves (because no government or corporate guy is gonna come out there) run under cow pastures and pesticide-laced fields and septic tanks and the tap water isn't safe even boiled, and they use the couple of hours in the truck to bounce ideas off each other, a laptop balanced on the truck's center console, pausing only to touch their hats when they pass another truck.

…but I’m not writing it, so.

[blackramhall]

The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb - The Residence 01.07 directed by Jaffar Mahmood - written by Paul William Davies

----------------------------------------------------------- Whodunit fan? Find more mysteries on Blackram Hall. Avatar pic by Mitchell Turek

[spotaus]

That Modern(ish) Tauverse AU where we have Nightmare and his four adoptive sons now has this lil collection of Bad Reference Doodles lol!

[bauliya]

no one really tells you this but as you grow up you will watch how privilege accumulates over a lifetime like I’ve been on-on tumblr since 2016 and browsing without an account since 2013 and out of the many many queer people I’ve been vaguely aware of all these years all of whom began as mostly children obsessed with the same fandoms…. The middle class ones have gone on to become middle class academics and professionals and establish families and become independent while the impoverished ones have now become increasingly disabled, unhoused, precarious, have died even. ten years ago they were all trading the same gay headcanons and writing the same fanfiction and RPs and now the gap is totally insurmountable. like my god.

[monkeyssalad-blog]

2x2 by Treflyn Lloyd-Roberts Via Flickr: A pair of twin-engine planes perform a formation flypast over Old Warden during the Shuttleworth Collection's 2025 Military Air Show. Aircraft: former-Royal Air Force Avro Anson C.19 TX176 and private-owner Dornier Do-28A-1 N123CA. Location: Old Warden Aerodrome (EGTH), near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire.

[carlyraejepsans]

aro papyrus warrior forever..... however. papyton doth compel me

[smol4bluengine]

The Duke and Duchess of Boxford held onto each other tightly as Spencer rushed down the track, the private engine was trying to save Flying Scotsman from an electric orb.

From what Edward had told Sir Topham Hatt, it seemed like these electric orbs were the cause of the others babyfication humanization, and now Scotsman was in danger of joining his brother Gordon for nap time.

By now Spencer had caught up to Scotsman.

"What should I do"? Scotsman called out.

"Take the next points, we need to avoid going up Gordon's Hill." Spencer said.

The cousins took the points that would lead them around Gordon's Hill, however Scotsman noticed too late that the track was blocked by a mud slide. His driver slammed on the breaks, but it was too late. Scotsman slammed face first into the mud, he was stuck.

Spencer was lucky to stop buffer to buffer, any later and the two engines would've had a collision.

"Spencer behind you"! Scotsman called out.

The Duke and Duchess just got out of their private coach in time to see the orb approaching, as it did the orb began to slow down and began to make it's way toward Spencer slowly and menacingly. Spencer got a sudden realization that the orb hadn't been after Scotsman, it had been using him as bait to get to Spencer.

"Stop right there"! The Duke demanded the orb.

"I don't know what your game is, but these engines shall be having none of that." The Duke told the orb, his brow furrowed in a scolding manner.

This seemed to have upset the orb as it began to enlarge, arks of sparking electricity angrily shooting out of it.

Fearing for the Boxford's safety, Spencer jostled out his crew, causing his driver to accidentally switch Spencer into reverse as he tried to hold on.

"Spencer what are you doing"?! Cried the Duchess.

"I'm sorry your grace but I cannot allow this thing to harm you, even if it means putting myself out of commission." Spencer said bravely as he inched closer to the orb.

The orb gleefully reached out towards its next victim, consuming Spencer in a brilliant light. The onlookers had to shield their eyes.

As it faded, the wail of an infant filled the night sky. On the track, the Boxford's found Spencer, laying on the track. The new human was wiggling around, confused at his new limbs.

"Oh, Spencer." The Duke said solemnly as he took off his coat and helped his wife swaddle up their former private engine.

The crews of Scotsman and Spencer set out to free the former from his muddy prison, the Boxford's headed towards the nearest signal house to call for a rescue crane as well as inform Sir Topham Hatt about the situation.

As they waited for the Fat controller to arrive, the Boxford's stayed close to each other, comforting Spencer to the best of their abilities. To their shock and relief, it didn't take long for the new baby to calm down, even falling asleep in the Duchesses arms. The Duke gently stroked Spencer's silver hair.

Him and the Duchess always wanted to have a child.

[pannacottababy]

COLLAB WITH MY FRIENDS!

(Left to right, top to bottom)

Stareater (Daybreak) - heartsforkaveh. on Discord

James (TTTE) - @horiizonsstuff

Li Xue (Pokemon OC) - @aster-may

Mozart and Marie Antoinette (Fate) - @thegreatestrat

Michael Burton (OC) - TheWwapZone on Youtube

Hiei (Yu Yu Hakusho) - yours truly

~~~

Okay so THANK YOU @horiizonsstuff for organizing this collab. I have maybe a few words to say.

When I claimed my spot I KNEW I had to put Hiei. But at the time I was working on the drawing, I had limited internet access.

There was a lot of power outages due to several storms hitting our area so I only managed to search "Hiei jaganshi form".

Now, Hiei Jaganshi form, really? You might be thinking that but I am not discreet when it comes to my crushes.

Yes, I LOVE Hiei Jaganshi. I can say that was something I did NOT expect to see (I dove into Yu Yu Hakusho knowing nothing.)

That power outage actually prompted me to shade for once. I also haven't drawn a serious digital piece in a LONG while.

Anyway, it was great having collabs like this. We have planned this a month(?) or so prior but tbh we still were a little late. I hope y'all enjoy!

[sandinthepipes]

In these shitty times I remind you to DITCH CHROME AND GOOGLE and use a reliable browser who won't sell you and your mom.

TL;DR. DuckDuckGo both search engine and browser is a good option for everybody and everyday purpose

I'd think duckduckgo both browser and search engine is a good

If you use iPhones and Mac Safari isn't the worst.

Tor is the best in terms of privacy, but it's run by volunteers so it's better if you don't use it to watch YouTube and download stuff, it's also very slow for socials.

Brave browser is slightly better then duckduckgo, but for average use it's almost the same. Also it has had a couple of controversies overtime.

I've recently found out that duckduckgo has it's own browser as well!!!!! AND it's available on both pc and android and I believe even ios and Mac.

Duckduckgo is (mainly) a search engine that doesn't try to sell you stuff like Google, gives you what you search for unfiltered, doesn't collect your data's, AND datas are filtered and bounced around multiple times to encrypt them better.

I know ecosia is appealing because of the trees, you can still use it, but be aware that there's basically no difference between that and Google. It's not secure nor you're guaranteed the results aren't filtered according to whatever strikes them at the moment

[lavampira]

I don’t actually have a modern au but I’ve been having so many thoughts about modern d’alia lately lmao

[allgremlinyaps]

stop arguing the existence of forklifts in the atla comics under my post you guys. there was an honest to god truck in Day Of Black Sun

[heirloommtomatoes]

i used to be so.....prestige or whatever-brained that i was like. ok i'll go to law school just so i can Have a jd and then never practice law and do something more creative or fulfilling or something. yay! :) and really thought this was gonna be like. a plan

[the-golden-vanity]

Participants in the Sloop Providence's crew exchange with the Mildred Belle swing by our ship on the way to National Harbor, Maryland, 10/14/24

[pxmun]

Holly Huntington S: F Birthday: October 25 Age:9 Height: 85cm? Parente: Lucius and Clegg Huntington Hometown: Pelican Falls Engine: Spencer Conductor# 423

Special Notes: ~Holly has Achondroplasia Dwarfism. ~As such, Holly should have a slightly large head and short limbs. Even appearing bow-legged ~Physically Holly will not be able to do certain activities like the rest of the human cast. ~ Nonetheless, our other M.C.'s are always willing to lend a helping hand when Holly needs it. ~We are hoping Holly will be a good representative for the Dwarfism community and that she'll leave a positive impact on the audience about acceptance, help, inclusivity, and not feeling negative for having a disability. ~The cancer Holly had was Leukemia. -She was exposed to Gold Dust during her time on Sodor. Its magic regrew Holly's hair overnight and turned it silver rather than her original light brown hair. Holly is an imaginative child with a love for horses and fairy tales. She lives with her dads on their farm in Pelican Falls, though Holly is just now returning home from the hospital after beating cancer. Her reunion will have to wait though, as the night before she was due home, Holly uncovered the Jukebox Band and their manager, J.J. Silvers. Holly joins the band and helps them travel to Sodor via Lady the magic engine, so the band can learn the fate of their friend Mr. Conductor. However, their little visit doesn't go as planned as Holly ends up taking a midnight train ride all around Sodor when she meets and befriends Spencer the silver engine. Can Holly get back home before her parents find out she's missing? Holly & Spencer The two work and act like siblings. With Spencer he learns how to treat those with differences kinder compared to how he was in "Hero of the Rails". With Holly Spencer helps her learn how to be independent.