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peachsukii · 6 months

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Okay I’m back I’m sorry your writing is like cocaine to me idk you’re awesome-

Bakugou x reader where they’re on a mission and it involves a teams of heroes to dress up like Dynamight to confuse the enemy??? Just like Bakugou’s reaction to seeing his girlfriend decked out in his gear like 😭😭😭

but like picture like reader trying to fit Bakugou into a version of her costume too-

Ohkay I’m going even further now- Bakugou and reader wearing formal wear modeled after each other at a Hero’s gala to debut their relationship to the world???? I can just imagine after the mission they just really like wearing each other’s stuff-

Anyways you’re amazing have an amazing day!!

I’m so so sorry this took me so long to get to! You’re the sweetest!! 🥰 thank you so much for rec and coming back! I’ve enjoyed the ideas you’ve suggested so much and hope you like this one. 💖✨

Substitute Gear

『 ♡』 k.bakugo x fem!reader ꒰ pro-hero au | age 24 | lovers (bf/gf) ꒱ ⇢ bakugo and reader are joking around in their apartment one night when they decide to try on each others costumes! this leads to a fun inspiration for the upcoming hero gala as their agencies recommend for them to reveal their relationship officially. Why not do it in style?

꒰ tags & warnings ꒱ no cw minus cursing | fun & fluffy ꒰ cross posted to ao3 | wc; ~1.1k ꒱ -`✧ katsuki bakugo masterlist

“Ugh, what an ugly shift,” you complain as you’re walking through the front door of your apartment. You’re kicking off your dirty boots in the entryway when Katsuki comes to greet you.

“Long day?” He asks, analyzing how filthy your hero suit is. It doesn’t stop him from giving you a light peck on the lips to welcome you home.

“More like what didn’t happen today. A kid threw up on me, and when I washed that off, some asshole bled all over me when I cuffed him! To top it all off, I tripped and fell into the mud while in pursuit of a robbery. Head first!”

As you’re rattling off the laundry list of shitty things that happened during the day, Katsuki’s silently instructing you to take the suit off. He spins you around, unzipping the neck piece and carefully removing all of your components and accessories.

“I broke my damn helmet in that fall,” you groan, wiping dried dirt from your cheek.

“Better than your head, dumbass,” Katsuki counters. “Ya got extras, no use cryin’ over one of ‘em.”

You shimmy the suit off of your shoulders and pull out of the material one limb at a time.

“You’d think as heroes, there’d be a professional laundry service or something,” you complain, letting your suit crumple on the floor. It comically puffs out a dried cloud of grime.

Katsuki stifles a laugh. “Weird way of sayin’ I do all your laundry. Get your ass in the shower, you reek.” He smacks your barely-covered ass to get you moving, continuing to snicker to himself as you waddle down the hallway.

───

After a long and hot shower, you emerge from the bathroom with a dramatic haze of steam following you.

“Ya done yet, peach? Dinners done,” Katsuki calls from the kitchen, dishes clattering as he’s prepping plates for the two of you. You scamper down the hall to meet him in the kitchen, a delicious aroma filling your senses when you approach the stove. He hands you one of the plates of beef and peppers stacked high on a bed of rice.

“Mmm, you even made me extra peppers!” You chirp, flashing him a cheesy smile. He grins in response and slips past you to sit on the couch.

The news channel is droning in the background during dinner, the news anchors excitedly discussing the upcoming annual Hero Gala - the glitz and glamour side of it, anyways. The Gala itself is an enormous event to celebrate Japan’s hero society and to announce the year’s hero ranking; however, everyone treats it as one extravagant event, red carpet and all.

“I’ve never been to the gala before,” you say before taking another mouthful of rice. “I never qualified to attend until this year. I’m kinda nervous to be…debuting us, if I’m being honest.”

Your agencies had caught wind of your relationship - rather, Katsuki’s assistant accidentally caught you two kissing in his office - and wanted to use you as an opportunity to introduce the “new hottest hero couple.” Agencies care about appearances and tabloid drama just as much as actual hero work. What's hotter than a top hero dating a lower - much lower - ranked hero?

The gala is in two weeks and the two of you haven't settled on what to do about it.

“Th’ agencies wanting to use us as an attention grab is fuckin’ stupid," Katsuki mumbles, brows scrunched in frustration. "Who gives a shit who we're dating? Doesn't affect my ability ta do my job."

He had a point, of course, but that didn't make you any less nervous about it. You were being pressured to have an extremely public date and let "fans" know that Dynamight was off the market. The thought of fans metaphorically bashing your head in wasn't ideal, but whatever gets "ratings," right?

"We might as well just show up in each others' costumes," you joke, rolling your eyes as the news anchor shifts topics to the latest update on another nonsense story.

"That's...not a bad idea!" He shouts, putting his plate on the coffee table and excitedly jogging down the hall to the bedroom. "Where's your backup suit?"

"In the closet, why? There's no way your muscular ass is getting in that tight suit."

"No, dumbass! C'mere!"

You place your plate next to his and get up from the couch, waltzing to the bedroom to see what he's on about. Both your hero suit and his are laying on the bed next to each other.

"What if we swapped colors?" He asked, pointing to the suit designs. "You wear mine and I wear yours. That'll give the media somethin' to yap about."

That's actually...a brilliant idea! The media would absolutely eat up the "bad boy" Dynamight strutting into the gala with his partner's color pallet, especially because your colors were pinks and purples.

You raise an eyebrow to him, smirking as you begin to imagine him in a sharp pink and purple suit. "You do look good in pink, the few times you've worn it."

Katsuki cackles and winks at you. "Course I do, I make anythin' look good."

He immediately calls his agency to request the garments - they agreed wholeheartedly and offered to fund both outfits.

───

The night of the gala has finally arrived! There are plenty of news crews from all channels present, huddled around the main red carpet entrance. The scene is bedazzled with flashing camera lights, the shutter sounds of multiple cameras capturing photos in tandem. Your complimentary custom outfits are pristine and Katsuki's hand is in yours as the limo pulls up to the gateway, giving you a soft squeeze to gather your attention.

"It'll be fine, sweets. Jus' follow my lead, 'kay?"

You nod while taking a deep breath to calm your nerves. "Thanks babe."

The limo attendant outside skips to the door, opening it for the two of you and ushering you to the entrance. You're both standing in line behind other heroes awaiting their turn to enter the building, attention already building in your direction. A few minutes go by before one of the hosts motions for the two of you to proceed to the entrance.

Your heart is racing, threatening to burst right through your ribcage as the hot spotlights are covering the two of you. Cameras are flashing rapidly, waves of unintelligible shouting invading your senses - "Dynamight! Over here, look this way!" "Just one this way, you two!" "To the left, please!"

Katsuki's jaw is tense as his eyes are roaming around to satisfy multiple camera men, the resting glare he normally sports on patrol adoring his features. Your attempting to keep a soft smile, posing and waving gently. Suddenly, you're tugged into Katsuki's side, his hand leaving yours and wrapping around your waist, pulling you into his personal space. He spins you to face him, cupping your chin and dipping you backwards as his lips grace your own, holding you in place.

The world around explodes with surprise, the peanut gallery clamoring with questions about the two of you - "Are you two an item?" "Oh! A higher ranked hero and a brand new one!" "What a scandalous amount of PDA!"

When you part, he pulls you back to his side and keeps his hand on your waist while the two of you continue into the gala together. The paparazzi outside are tailing the two of you as they're stopped at the door, shouting for answers as he flips them off over his head.

"Told ya it'd be fine. Now let's fuckin' eat and enjoy the damn night."

thanks again for the suggestion @queenpiranhadon ! ✨

#bakugo katsuki #bakugo x reader #katsuki bakugo #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo fluff #bakugo x y/n #bakugo x you #bakugo x fem!reader #bakugou katsuki #bakugou x reader #bakugou x y/n #my hero academia #☆.from the stars #☆.rei writes

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ms-demeanor · 2 years

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any tips for Adult Phone Calls? i've been putting some off and it's going to start costing me money if i don't Get It Together soon, but that pressure just makes it harder!! part of my issue is not knowing what The Script is and part of it is that i find real-time conversation as An Adult really daunting....

Yes!

Okay so a big part of my job is answering phone calls; I am a professional person who answers phone calls from people who would rather not have to call me and who are usually confused and upset by what is happening, which often has the potential to be expensive for them. It's a stressful call to make!

As a professional phone answerer, here are the things that help ME when people call:

Be able to describe the reason that you're calling and what you would like to do about it. This is a simple two-step giving basic background information and your desired outcome so that the person answering the phone can get the process started for you. Examples: "Hi, I'm a new patient referred by Doctor X; I'd like to make an appointment with Dr. Y." "Hi, I tried to use my credit card but it was rejected, I would like to know why." "Hi, I am calling about a late payment; I would like it removed from my record." "Hi, my sink is leaking and I'd like to schedule a visit for repair." "Hi, I think my computer has a virus, I'd like to bring it in to get checked out."

Call when you have some time. Don't call when you've only got five minutes to be on the phone, this could take a while and you will be less stressed if you call when you've got at least ten minutes to half an hour where you won't be interrupted. If you are less stressed, the person taking the call will be less stressed, and the whole process will work better.

Have any account/ticket/serial number/referral information handy. Pre-game the call in your head and think about any questions they might need to ask you, then gather the information they might need. Examples: If you're calling about something like a car or computer hardware, know the basics of make/model/age. If you're calling a financial institution or service provider, have your account number, verification information, etc. handy If you're calling a medical office you might want to have a list of medications as well as your insurance card available.

And here's some information that might make CALLERS more comfortable:

We're not mad at you for making the phone call; talking to you is our job. You're not bothering anyone or imposing on anyone's time. Please make the call instead of churning in panic for weeks or months; it's much easier to fix something or resolve an issue if it's addressed early than if you respond to it months down the line.

You can just say right off the bat that you're not sure about the call or that you don't know what's going on and you need help. You might want to say something like "Hi, I'm having an issue and I don't know the next steps to take to get it resolved; could you please help me?"

You can also just say something like "Hi, thanks for helping me; I'd like to let you know that I have a little trouble using the phone and may need to ask questions as we go or think for a second. Thanks for being patient with me, here's my issue."

There is like a zero percent chance that your call is going to be one of the more stressful things they do that day. The call is stressful for you, it is very routine for them, and they are used to everything from getting screamed at to trying to communicate in languages they don't speak to help callers.

Also: if you have not called this place before, feel free to call it with no plans to speak to anyone just to see how the phone system works. It may be an automated phone system and you can call and pre-navigate the options and take notes for when you're ready to call back, and you may be able to find out more of what the system will ask of you. If you get picked up by a person when you're not ready you can simply say "Oh, I'm sorry, I've got another call coming in, I'll call back, thank you" and hang up.

The Script for most Adult-type phone calls is "I am having X problem and I need help fixing it," and then requests for information and someone either providing a resolution for you issue or escalating it to the next step in the process.

It's hard to pre-plan a script without more details because some people you'll call will have a more difficult script than others (canceling cable, for instance, can be a hassle and there are people out there who have written specific instructions on how to do that) and some will be very easy (scheduling an appointment or opening an account can often be very simple!) but regardless of how difficult the specific script is you can ask for help along the way, and the process will be easier if you've done a little information gathering about your own needs/issues/desired resolution.

Good luck! Please don't let the phone scare you too much! People on the other end of the phone are usually quite happy to help.

If it's something really contentious like dealing with a collections agency, look up specific resource guides because that's where it pays to have a very specific idea in mind of how you're going to approach the problem.

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rideboomindia · 1 year

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Now you can book small delivery truck with the RideBoom app

RideBoom the unique ride-share app can help you and your business to move your stuff easily and affordably.

Courier and parcel services have become a fundamental part of our day-to-day life and with the rise of many parcels business or real estate sector e-commerce, local businesses, and food delivery, furniture the demand for quick and efficient removal services has increased. The courier and parcel and removal market in India experienced significant growth after the pandemic.

Now with the RideBoom app you not only can book taxis and bike rides, but you can also now able to book a small delivery or removal truck.

How This Works

1. Select delivery on the app and enter your pickup and drop-off destination.

You will get the fare estimate on the app that is included the waiting and loading unloading time.

2. Tap on book now and you able to see the nearest available drivers and the estimated time of the arrival.

3. You can track the progress of your delivery and will get the fare in the end you can pay cash or pay in the app to the driver.

At this stage, the RideBoom delivery truck service is available only in tri-city and very soon the service will be added to more cities.

Why use the RideBoom delivery service

1. Its affordable RideBoom gives you a fair and accurate upfront price estimate. You can save up to 50% compared to traditional providers.

2. Conveniently, Our technology makes it easier than ever to book, track, communicate & pay. Request a Delivery Professional in one minute.

3. All RideBoom delivery professionals are licensed, insured, background checked, and reviewed.

Before making your final decision, make sure to consider what options you truly need in terms of delivery services. There is no better time than now to download and use RideBoom delivery service that can help to increase efficiency and lower costs for your business and personal items removal.

Let's RideBoom your business.

For more info www.rideboom.com/india

#rideboomindia #rideboom delhi #delhi airport #delivery #taxi #taxiapp #travel #airport taxi

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Flickr to copyleft trolls: drop dead

Today’s a big day for users of Creative Commons images: Flickr has declared zero tolerance for copyleft trolls, predators who exploit a bug in out-of-date versions of the CC licenses in order to threaten good-faith users of CC images who make minor errors in the way they credit the images.

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/2023/04/01/pixsynnussija#pilkunnussija

First things first: Flickr’s new community guidelines prohibit copyleft trolling: “Failure to allow a good faith reuser the opportunity to correct errors is against the intent of the license and not in line with the values of our community, and can result in your account being removed.”

https://www.flickr.com/help/guidelines

If you are targeted by a copyleft troll who demands that you pay them because of minor errors in your Creative Commons attribution, here’s how to report them and get them kicked off Flickr forever:

https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404057906068-How-to-report-Community-Guidelines-violations

Now, some background. Early versions of the Creative Commons licenses have a bug, a clause that says that the permissions conferred by CC licenses “terminate automatically upon any breach” — that is, if you violate any term of the license, it ceases to be in effect:

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator-5f6360713299

Core to the CC licenses is the idea of attribution. When you use a Creative Commons image, you must name the creator and link to the original, and name the license and link to it. Many CC users don’t understand this; they use an image and add something like “Image: Cory Doctorow/Creative Commons” with no links or specific licenses.

Under the pre-4.0 versions of the license, this can be construed as a “breach” which “terminates” the CC license. That’s where the copyleft trolls come in.

Copyleft trolls post CC-licensed stock art and then wait for a naive person to make a minor attribution error, and then they pounce, sending a legal threat and a speculative invoice demanding hundreds or thousands of dollars, under the threat of a $150,000 statutory damages award.

This is deeply unethical conduct. As I wrote when I was targeted by one of these creeps:

If you put a CC license on your work, its explicit message is, “I want you to re-use this.” Not “I am a pedantic asshole with a fetish for well-formed attribution strings.” The point of CC is not to teach the world to write attribution strings: it is to facilitate sharing and re-use. If you are a good-faith user of CC licenses, then your response to an incorrect attribution string should be a request to correct it, not a threat to sue for $150,000 in statutory damages.

Unethical as this conduct is, it’s also big business. One company, Pixsy, is responsible for a long-running shakedown campaign, working with scammy photographers to send out demand letters to unsuspecting Creative Commons users.

And many of those photographers rely on Flickr to bait their traps.

There’s a reason for this. Flickr’s early years were a period of enormous innovation. Flickr was the first mobile photo-sharing site, and it invented numerous community features that turned it into a thriving hub for photographers, amateur and professional alike. Flickr was also an interoperability pioneer, offering an API that let any user move their photos to a rival service — a tacit pledge to keep your business by being better than the rest, not by locking you in.

I know all this because I was an early advisor to Flickr, and because, in a weird way, I am partially responsible for Flickr. You see, before Flickr, I was carrying on a long-distance relationship from San Francisco with a woman in London, and we were both alpha testers for a social game called GameNeverending.

One day over breakfast with GNE’s founder Stewart Butterfield, he asked me how things were going in my romantic life. I answered that things were great, but mentioned that my girlfriend and I were struggling to share the pictures we took in our daily lives with one another. Stewart said, “Well, there’s a photo-sharing feature for GNE on the roadmap — why don’t I bump it up and we’ll see if other people use it, too?”

They did. In fact, the feature was so popular that within a few months, GNE relaunched as Flickr, jettisoning the game entirely and focusing on just that one feature. I stayed on the advisory, and one of the things I encouraged was the plan to roll out Creative Commons licenses for Flickr images — and I made sure everyone knew about it when Flickr became the first CC-enabled image site.

(I also married the woman I was carrying on that long-distance relationship with and today we have a 15 year old daughter!)

But after Flickr was sold to Yahoo, it joined Yahoo’s haunted armada of Web 2.0 ghost-ships, tossed back and forth in the storms created by the dueling princelings of Yahoo’s bloated management layer, who spent more time sabotaging one another than they did making anything anyone else wanted to use. Yahoo eventually sold off all of those holdings at fire-sale prices to Verizon, who neglected them still further.

An abandoned ship is easy picking for the rats that live in its bilges. Pixsy and its photographers actually became official Flickr partners, pitching themselves as a way for photographers who didn’t want their images shared to hunt down infringers — even as they facilitated a revolting campaign of copyleft trolling that depended on Flickr as their base of operations.

The depravity of copyleft trolls is truly boundless. Take Marco Verch, a prolific copyleft troll who hosts nearly 47,000 photos on Flickr. Verch hires low-waged gig work photographers through platforms like Upwork to take photos, then harasses people who make minor attribution errors:

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252488167/Automated-image-recognition-How-using-free-photos-on-the-internet-can-lead-to-lawsuits-and-fines

Verch boasts that his predation lets him work for four hours a week, leaving him with ample time to focus on his hobby, running. Verch is a truly prolific predator, and his attacks have made untold numbers of victims miserable — including the small Dutch charity that was forced to shut down after paying his ransom demand. Pixsy has been Verch’s US counsel and filed dozens of suits on his behalf.

Back in 2021, I got hit by Pixsy on behalf of a photographer named Nenad Stojkovic, with a claim that I had failed to attribute his image correctly. The email threat was truly vicious, calculated to strike terror into the recipient’s heart and prompt swift payment of $600, for using a freely licensed image whose market value had been set by its creator at $0.00.

There was just one problem: I hadn’t flubbed the attribution string. I helped with the launch of Creative Commons. I was CC’s first European director. What’s more, I have decades of experience fighting bullies and trolls and I knew their threat was bullshit — no court would award them the damages they were seeking.

So I wrote about it, publishing the text of my correspondence with Pixsy’s staff and management, and calling on Flickr to make changes to prevent their tools from being abused to victimize innocent people, like forcing users with CC 2.0-licensed images to relicense them as CC 4.0, which guarantees users the right to 30 days to fix attribution strings.

The reason I thought Flickr might take this in hand is that it is finally under decent, responsive leadership — since 2018, Flickr has been owned by Smugmug, a family-owned business that really cares about photographers and the open internet.

Flickr hasn’t taken all of my suggestions yet — my understanding is that they are laboring under enormous technological debt thanks to years of neglect by Yahoo and Verizon, and even small changes require weeks of all-hands technological work.

But what they have done is modify their policies to create a de facto CC 4.0 environment for their users, by promising to terminate the accounts of any user who repeatedly threatens legal action over bad attribution strings without first offering a 30-day grace period.

Flickr’s done more than that, actually. For one thing, they ditched Pixsy, severing their relationship with the company (Pixsy still lists them on its “partner” page). They also created the Flickr Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to providing long-term, responsible stewardship for their CC and public domain image respositories:

https://www.flickr.org/

For its part, Creative Commons published an excellent “Statement of Enforcement Principles” for its licenses that unequivocally rejected the way that Pixsy and other copyleft trolls abuse the bug in its older licenses:

https://creativecommons.org/license-enforcement/enforcement-principles/

In the months since I published my article detailing Pixsy’s attempt to shake me down, two things happened. First, I got a legal threat from Kain Jones, Pixsy’s CEO, who demanded that I get on the phone with him, the the alternative being “escalating things legally”:

https://doctorow.medium.com/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats-5dfc54558f2c

Jones also falsely claimed that naming the employees who’d threatened me violated the GDPR, which is extremely on-brand for this whole mess. While I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest expert on GDPR, I did lobby in Brussels for it, and I do have German specialist lawyers on tap who are happy to explain that Jones’s threat is absolute nonsense.

As I noted in my followup to Jones, he seems incapable of interacting with the public or his critics without making legal threats — and not just any legal threats, but legal threats that are grounded in an unhinged, and, in my opinion, deliberately deceptive theories of the law.

Pixsy continued to rattle its sabers for a while after this, tweeting that I’d made errors in my description of its business operations but declining to correct those records in response to my and others’ requests for further detail. It is my opinion that Pixsy failed to correct the record because my accusations were and are substantively correct.

But even after I stopped hearing from Pixsy, I continued to hear from its victims. I routinely receive distraught emails from everyday people who thought they were doing the right thing by using Creative Commons-licensed images in their work, and who now face a remorseless onslaught of threats from Pixsy’s team. Some of these people have been targeted on behalf of Nenad Stojkovic, just as I was.

These people beg me for advice — will Pixsy sue? Can they ignore Pixsy’s demands? I give them my condolences and tell them that I can’t promise them that a company as vindictive, greedy and morally bankrupt as Pixsy won’t bring a lawsuit. Every time, I wish I could offer them more.

Well, now I can: if you are targeted by a copyleft troll for using a Flickr-hosted image, narc them the fuck out. Tell Flickr about them. Flickr no longer tolerates copyleft trolling, and they will terminate repeat offenders’ accounts.

As I wrote this today, I went back and revisted Pixsy CEO Kain Jones’s letter to me and I was struck again by its absolute rank hypocrisy, the sheer sociopathic lack of self-awareness it displays. Jones presides over an empire of bulk legal threats, carefully drafted to frighten blameless people into sending him money they can’t afford and don’t owe. In this correspondence, his company tells its victims that they are liable “regardless of knowledge or intent.” Victims are told that correcting their error will not suffice, because it “does not resolve the period of unlicensed use.”

And yet, in this letter, Jones calls on me to show understanding because “people occasionally make mistakes.” He scolds me for my “vitriol” in my naming and shaming a senior executive who boasts on Pixsy’s website of having “overseen over 140,000 cases” — that is, who sent these outrageous letters to more than one hundred and forty thousand people and organizations.

Unlike Kain Jones, I am a working artist. I make my living from the sale of my creative works, not from tricking people who’ve made innocent, trivial legal errors into sending me hundreds or thousands of dollars. Unlike Marco Verch, I don’t pay anonymous randos small sums to create new works, slap my name on them, and then threaten blameless people in the name of defending artists’ rights.

And I sometimes have to police my copyrights. The world is full of quick-buck scammers who rip off my work, including my Creative Commons-licensed works, often with the assistance of some of the world’s largest corporations:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

These people are engaged in what Douglas Rushkoff calls “Going Meta.” They don’t do anything useful, but rather, they create a chokepoint between people who do useful things and people who want to pay for those things, and squatting there, collecting rent:

https://rushkoff.medium.com/going-meta-d42c6a09225e

This is the passive-income brainworm — a parasitic, end-stage capitalist hustle that cloaks itself in high-minded rhetoric even though it is the very lowest of bottom-feeders. Pixsy claims that it is primarily an artists’ defense tool, but the company conspicuously refused to tell me what share of its income comes from real copyright defense, and what share comes from copyleft trolling.

Whenever I think back on Kain Jones and his outrageous legal threats to me — first the one that falsely claimed I had violated a Creative Commons license, and then the one that insinuated that calling him out broke the law — the thing that outrages me most is his assertion that he is a defender of artists’ rights.

What an outrageous and grotesque claim that is. A man who presides over a powerful corporation that devotes its considerable energy to tormenting people who used Creative Commons licenses as they were intended to be used sends a legal threat to a working artist and he styles himself a champion of the arts? If I wrote that into one of my bestselling novels — which generate revenue by making people happy through artistic expression, and not by terrorizing people with deceptive and unethical legal threats — I’d be accused of absurd, overbroad parody.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

[[Image ID: John Milton's 'Fall of Lucifer,' modified so that God's light emanating from heaven is coming out of the Flickr blue-and-red-balls logo.]]

#pluralistic #rent seekers #predators #new york time #flickr #pilkunnussija #Nenad Stojkovic #new york times #creative commons #pixsy #kain jones #marco verch #copyleft trolls #going meta

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patheditprovider · 6 months

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clipping path- path edit provider

A clipping path service, also known as a path editing provider, is a professional service often used in graphic design and image editing. It involves creating a precise outline or path around an object in an image, effectively separating it from the background. This process is commonly employed to remove unwanted backgrounds, isolate objects, or create a specific shape for design purposes.

Clipping path services are extensively utilized in industries such as e-commerce, advertising, photography, and publishing, where high-quality images are crucial for marketing and branding purposes. Skilled graphic designers typically use specialized software like Adobe Photoshop to meticulously trace around the edges of an object, creating a precise selection known as a clipping path.

Once the clipping path is created, it allows for easy manipulation of the object, such as placing it on a different background or applying various effects. Path editing providers offer these services to businesses and individuals who require professionally edited images for their projects. They ensure that the final result meets the client's specifications and maintains the highest standards of quality and accuracy.

#multi clipping path #Professional Clippingpath Service #clipping path service #Clipping Path #background removing service

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graphicsdesignexperts · 2 years

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Photo Retouching Services

Top Quality High-End Photography Retouching Service Provider. We have Highly Skilled 120+ Professional Editors.

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justinspoliticalcorner · 3 months

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Ari Drennen at MMFA:

A New York Times article about the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s 2022 standards of care draws on emails released by a psychologist who has compared homosexuality to pedophilia and reportedly worked on behalf of an extreme anti-LGBTQ group.

The Times piece, which claims that the Biden administration lobbied to remove explicit age limits from the guidelines, does not provide sufficient context on the psychologist's background or his reported work for Alliance Defending Freedom, a Project 2025 partner.

The article also uses outdated data to fearmonger about rising numbers of trans youth and again includes misinformation about transition care from elected officials with no fact-checking.

The Times report quotes email excerpts filed in a legal challenge to Alabama's ban on gender-affirming care from WPATH officials describing their interactions with Sarah Boateng, who then served as chief of staff to Adm. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. Boateng argued at the time that listing specific age guidelines for transition surgeries would fuel more aggressive legislative efforts to ban them.

The Times states that “the excerpts were filed by James Cantor,” whom the paper describes simply as “a psychologist and longstanding critic of gender treatments for minors.”

Cantor frequently presents himself as an expert on gender-affirming medicine and has reportedly been retained as an expert by the states in favor of West Virginia’s ban on sports participation and restrictions on health care in Texas, Florida, and Alabama. In the Alabama trial at the center of the Times’ reporting, Cantor also appears to have worked on behalf of Project 2025 partner and extreme anti-LGBTQ organization the Alliance Defending Freedom – a detail excluded from the Times’ report.

[...]

Project 2025 is a comprehensive transition plan for the next GOP presidential administration. Its nearly 900-page policy book labels “the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children” as “pornography” that “should be outlawed” and states that “the people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.” The Alliance Defending Freedom, which also works to curtail access to abortion, is one of over 100 organizations that have endorsed the document, meant to serve as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Cantor has a troubling resume outside of his work alongside the Alliance Defending Freedom. He was previously removed from the state of Florida’s roster of “subject matter experts” on transition care after linking homosexuality to pedophilia and stating that sexual attraction to children is “not inherently wrong.” Cantor served as member of the advisory council for Prostagia, which has campaigned against bans on sex dolls resembling children and has hosted support groups for “minor attracted people” open to adults alongside people as young as 13. [...]

The Times also claims that “the numbers for all gender-related medical interventions for adolescents have been steadily rising as more young people seek such care.” But the data used to support this assertion ends in 2021, when many states began restricting or outlawing transition care, meaning those numbers may no longer be “rising.” The article also includes statements from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott characterizing transition surgeries as “disfiguring” and “genital mutilation,” respectively, with no fact-checking, a repeat of a pattern previously noted by Media Matters and GLAAD. Activists opposing female genital mutilation also say that the harmful practice should not be “hijacked for purposes to target and discriminate against vulnerable youth.” The Times story was updated after publication to remove the detail that Marci Bowers, president of WPATH, is herself a transgender woman. While the current version of the story states that Levine is also a transgender woman, it makes no note of the gender identity of Cantor, DeSantis, or Abbott.

Once again, the New York Times fails to properly note the anti-trans extremism of the subjects being covered on gender-affirming care issues, this time in a story discussing James Cantor in which NYT omitted his ties to anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group Alliance Defending Freedom.

#The New York Times #Gender Affirming Healthcare #Transgender Health #Transgender #Rachel Levine #Sarah Boateng #James Cantor #Alliance Defending Freedom #Project 2025 #Ron DeSantis #Greg Abbott #Marci Bowers #WPATH #Prostagia #Anti Trans Extremism #Criminalization of Trans Health

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clippingnext-blog · 3 months

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addermoray · 7 months

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Tim Drake: Civilian Life

As many of you know, Tim Drake is my favorite comic book character and has been for decades. And being the long time fan that I am, I hate to see my boy's wheels spinning. But I also hate to see writers try to advance him to places he really shouldn't be going.

Some of you may have read previous posts I've made about the character and know that I agree with the thoroughly ingrained concept that, in the future, Tim will become Batman, despite not wanting to be, out of obligation and doing the job will make him miserable.

Why would I want to inflict this kind of suffering on my favorite character? Because it's the only route that has ever made sense for him. Tim's entire character, his entire reason for becoming Robin in the first place, has been stepping up because someone had to, despite never wanting to be that someone.

His other defining character trait is his loyalty to the people close to him. Not just the Batfamily, but the original Young Justice as well. When Tower of Babel happened, the team got nervous about Tim doing the same to them and he swore he could never treat his friends that way. Years later

Your first instinct might be to say he went back on his word. But you'll notice that his list includes not one single member of his Young Justice team.

Why do I bring this up in a post about what I would do with Tim Drake if given free reign at DC? We'll get there.

The answer to the question, by the way, is that I would do one last story arc tying up loose ends as Robin and then I would have him move on...

To civilian life.

Tim was never meant to stay a super hero. It is a tragedy, in universe, that he's done it as long as he has. And the day he comes back to be Batman because someone has to will always be some distance in the future. So one final story line. One last long string of triumphs before he hangs up his cape (except, ya know, for big giant crossover stories where it's all hands on deck) and is sidelined into the background of the DCU.

Sidelined, but not removed.

Because while I'd take him out of active hero duty, there are a bunch of dangling threads that would make for a beautiful bow to keep him in the loop while off of the front lines.

Tim Drake's mother was killed. And then his father was killed. But he has a Step-Mother that survived, vanishing from the story. As did the failing, but not failed, Drake Industries.

Let's bring those back. The final chapter of Tim Drake's final story as an active super hero would be reconnecting with Dana-Winters Drake. After her mental crisis, following her husband's death, she was able to recover. Tim had been helping, but keeping his distance. His being a hero has gotten enough of his parents killed. The company he inherited? He gave to her once she was fit to take it, expecting her to sell it.

Instead, she brought it back from the brink, never taking it public.

Tim, finally putting his super heroics behind him, can at last feel safe reuniting with her.

Flash forward and Tim's got a role in what was his father's company. Not in charge of it, why would he ever want to take that from his stepmom? But he runs his own division and has full autonomy. Over the years there have been many companies purporting to provide aid to super heroes. The problem is that they were all inevitably revealed to be evil ploys, run by villains, or taken over by greedy fat cats.

But what if there was one that was guaranteed to be trustworthy?

From equipment, to safe houses, to access to medical and psychiatric professionals, Drake Industries has you covered. And, of course, the first people we see Tim, in a suit and tie instead of a cape and mask, extending these services to are his old team.

And with this being the new status quo, Tim is still around to be used in stories and is freed up to take a background role that can have him appear in any number of books, not just bat and Young Justice books. Like Nightwing and Oracle before him, he becomes a major player in the DCU overall. But he's also finally living the life he wanted to, balancing his sense of obligation with at last being free from the rooftops.

#batman #robin #tim drake #dc #dc comics

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