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spooky-ghostwriter · 6 years

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Dressed to Kill - Chapter Thirteen

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Tsukiko pulled her cell phone off the small bedside table it sat upon. She pushed a button, blinding herself with the screen's backlight for an instant in exchange for information.

'2:11am', it read.

Tsukiko tossed the phone down and groaned. She covered herself with more blankets and rolled back into position.

Her room shook, jostling Tsukiko against the wall.

“God. Damn. It.” Tsukiko snarled.

She stood up and looked out the window. The road through which the circus convey was traveling could barely be considered one. She saw no pavement beneath her trailer's wheels; only a vague line in the dirt.

With each rotation of the wheels, her trailer rocked to and fro. She picked her fallen top hat up off the floor and hung it back on its hook.

In retrospect, having a mostly-empty trailer had its perks. The hat was the only disheveled item in her living space. She wondered if Galen, who had put a small television and video game console in his trailer, was having more troubles than her.

She flopped back onto the bed.

A tortuously long time later, for which Tsukiko was far more awake than she would have liked, the trailers stopped moving. Tsukiko heard the faint noises of the crew hooking up trailers to water pipes and other utilities.

“Magician Trailer One hooked up!” A male voice called to his associates.

Finally, Tsukiko said. She sauntered over to her trailer's tiny bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Frustratingly obvious wrinkles surrounded her eyes. Deciding that washing her face might help, she put a cloth under the tap and cranked it.

No water came out.

“Oh, great,” Tsukiko muttered. She tapped the faucet. She was positive that it wouldn't help the matter but couldn't think of any better plan.

She heard more noises outside; the ratcheting and whirring of power tools was getting closer.

Tsukiko's faucet sputtered. Water sprayed out like a garden sprinkler. The sudden noise startled her, and she flinched, but not quickly enough to avoid a face full of water.

“Magician Trailer Two hooked up!” The male voice announced proudly.

Tsukiko wrung water out of her treasured blonde lock of hair.

Eventually, a tired and frustrated Tsukiko made her way to a line of picnic tables. Later that night, they would be used for visitors to relax, talk, and eat overpriced food between one show and the next. Now, the performers themselves were doing the same.

Tsukiko followed her nose to her favourite food stand. Instead of the loud gunfire of popping corn, she heard the satisfying sizzle of a grill. Tsukiko helped herself to a plate of enough scrambled eggs and bacon to feed a family of four, then found Galen in their usual spot.

“Good morning!” Galen said cheerfully.

Tsukiko answered by slamming her plate down across from him and scowling at her food.

“Bad morning?” Galen corrected.

“I'm starting to miss having a room that stays still all night,” Tsukiko grumbled. “And, for that matter, having a bathroom that works whenever I want.”

“Was the ride that bumpy last night?” Galen asked. “I didn't really notice anything.”

Tsukiko gave him a look. Galen decided that eating was the safest course of action.

“Speaking of,” Tsukiko said after a few bites, “You're officially a stagehand-slash-assistant, right? You're not officially a stage magician?”

“Right,” Galen said. “My trailer has a wrench painted on the door. You get the cool top hat and wand symbol.”

“It is pretty cool,” Tsukiko said to herself. Then she shook her head and focused. “So I'm the only stage magician here.”

“Yup.”

“And yet I'm in Magician Trailer Two. So what is in Magician Trailer One that needs water and utilities hooked up to it before mine?” Tsukiko demanded. “I heard your co-crewmen talking about it.”

“They're not my co-crewmen. I don't do the night shift. I don't know any of the guys who do the driving and trailer work,” Galen said. After a bite of bacon, he added, “It does seem weird, though, I agree.”

“It's probably where Vercingetorix stores the Religalia, isn't it?” Tsukiko guessed. “That trailer had the same top hat symbol that mine did.”

“Probably,” Galen said with a nod. “If that's the case, it shouldn't need utilities. You should ask Vercingetorix what the deal is.”

“I dunno. I still feel bad about whining about Stiletto.”

“You were standing up for me. I appreciate the whining.”

“Well, Vercingetorix has a circus and a war to manage,” Tsukiko said. “I don't mind interrupting if I think it's really important, but for this? Nah.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“What makes you think I'm going to do something?”

Galen almost laughed.

“What, you're going to ignore a mystery?” Galen asked. “You? The girl who saw Amazio's second-best card trick on the Internet and didn't sleep for a week trying to figure out how it worked?”

“Man, what happened to me?” Tsukiko wondered. “Now I can't even deal with one day with a bad night's sleep.”

“So, what are you going to do? And stop trying to dodge the question.”

“Fine. You're right. I'll do whatever it takes,” said Tsukiko. “I will scour the entire circus grounds until I find Magician Trailer One. I will leave no stone unturned, no tent unentered. I will brave the lions and the serpents and whatever else stands between me and this mystery. I will not eat, sleep, or have knives thrown at me until I find it.”

“Here it is,” said Tsukiko, a few minutes after breakfast.

Tsukiko and Galen stood outside a trailer that looked, in every sense, identical to Tsukiko's own. Galen would have believed that Tsukiko led him to her own trailer, if it weren't for the fact that Magician Trailer Two was visible only a couple feet away.

Galen knocked on the door. There was no response.

He tried the door handle. It was locked.

“If someone does use this trailer, they must be eating breakfast,” Galen said. “Well, we're out of luck.”

“Yeah, if you're a quitter!” Tsukiko said. She fished two bobby pins from her jeans' pockets.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah! Stand guard for me,” said Tsukiko. She crouched down, focusing intently on the lock. “If I can do handcuffs, I'm sure I can do a simple door.”

“This is stupid,” Galen muttered, but did as she asked. “What are we even hoping to find? The most likely option here is that someone has a Magician Trailer even though they're not technically a magician, and then you've broken into someone's trailer.”

“All I want to prove is that this is someone's trailer,” said Tsukiko. “If it looks like it's just an old, unused trailer, then – aha!”

The lock clicked.

“It's actually kind of scary,” Tsukiko said idly. “Doors are harder to break than handcuffs are.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Galen said. “Now just hurry up, find whatever you're looking for, and let's leave the place exactly like it was.”

Tsukiko took her first step into the trailer. The first thing she noticed was a huge cloud of dust in the spot she expected to find breathable air. She coughed and eventually hid her mouth behind her hands.

“No one lives here!” Tsukiko decided immediately. “No one could live here.”

“You're sure?” Galen asked from outside. “If that's true, there's no sense hooking up utilities every day. I'll talk to Vercy about it.”

Tsukiko looked around the trailer. It contained the bed and mini-fridge in the same standard arrangement her own had had. Aside from that, it could not have looked less like Tsukiko's own sparsely-decorated trailer. There were more shelves in the room than Tsukiko would have believed could fit, each full to bursting of assorted stage magic-related props. Posters and pictures covered the walls. At a glance, they appeared to be about stage magic as the insignia promised.

Each of the posters depicted a gorgeous, blonde woman. In the first, she wore a billowing white suit jacket and held a calm pigeon in each hand. In the second, she was in the middle of a segmented woman trick, with a handsome male assistant pushing the middle third of her body away from the rest of herself.

It was the third that caught Tsukiko's attention. The same woman stood straight and tall, saluting the viewer. She was not wearing the white suit that Tsukiko assumed was her normal costume. Instead, she wore a camouflage-patterned tank top, with gold epaulets over her shoulders and the same green peaked cap that Tsukiko now had sitting on her nightstand.

“She has the Religalia!” Tsukiko blurted.

“Who?” Galen asked, still outside and unable to see the pictures. “I don't have any context to know who the 'she' is!”

“Freya. It's Freya's trailer!” Tsukiko snapped her fingers. “Alesia's old stage magician. Remember? We saw her on the website.”

“Didn't she leave the circus?” Galen asked. “Why does she still have a trailer?”

“I don't know,” Tsukiko said. “But there could be something related to the Religalia in here! If I could find a diary or journal – ”

“Whoa, let her have some privacy.”

“If I ever meet her, I'll apologize.” Tsukiko rolled her eyes. She turned back towards the door. A shadowy figure loomed back at her. Tsukiko flinched, preparing to have to explain to a person why she was in the trailer, but what she saw was not human.

Nor was it alive. What had startled her was a robe, stretched over a cross-shaped rack. The thing looked like a ghost. The robe was pitch-black with a diamond-shaped, reaper-like hood. It was a long garment. The top of the mannequin was a little taller than Tsukiko, and the hem of the robe barely touched the floor. Its sleeves were just as long; they likely would have gone down to Tsukiko's fingertips.

“What is this?” Tsukiko asked herself.

She touched the robe. It was torn; there was a wide hole a few inches down from the bottom of the hood. Beneath the robe's fabric, Tsukiko saw something glimmer.

Wires.

A sheet of thin, uncountable wires were wedged together within the cloak. Tsukiko recognized them immediately.

“Galen!” She hissed. “There's another Religalia in here!”

“What?!” Galen demanded. “What is it?”

“It's creepy, is what it is,” Tsukiko said, more to herself than to Galen. Then, remembering him, she raised her voice and added, “It's like a grim reaper cloak.”

“What does it do?” Galen asked.

“How would I know?” Tsukiko retorted. “Knowing the rest of them, it's probably a pun. Think of some puns.”

“If it's a cloak, maybe it turns you invisible!” Galen guessed.

That would make sense, Tsukiko admitted mentally. But then – why wouldn't Vercingetorix tell us about this?

The longer Tsukiko looked at the thing, the more she realized that mere invisibility wasn't enough of a power for this. The shadows underneath the robe's hood were the darkest blackness she'd ever witnessed. The robe had a presence of its own; it was a feeling Tsukiko wouldn't know how to describe later, but it felt like she was staring at death itself.

Meanwhile, outside the trailer, Galen was fighting his own curiosity. He still wasn't convinced that going into the trailer was a good idea, but Tsukiko's mumbling made him want to see this supposed seventh Religalia for himself. Besides, it was only recently that he'd assured himself that he and Tsukiko were still equals.

All right, He decided. Let's see this.

He gave a quick glance to his surroundings and immediately changed his mind.

“Hey, Tsuki!” Galen hissed. “Vercingetorix is coming!”

“Crap!” Tsukiko muttered. “Is he looking this way?”

“Yeah!”

Tsukiko looked around the trailer. The door, she decided, was clearly not an option. The window was at an angle where a person climbing through it may have still been visible to Vercingetorix, and for that matter, looked too small for her to squeeze through anyway.

Mom was right. I should've done yoga.

Tsukiko made her choice out of the limited options she had. She crouched under the hem of the cloak. She stood up on the rack's feet and stuck her arms through the sleeves. She was backwards, and it was intentional – she hoped that her black hair would be enough to hide her head.

This was not an ideal solution. It was already a little uncomfortable, with her arms outstretched and her perch on the stand being precarious at best. Still, she heard Vercingetorix's and Galen's voices, and knew she had no time to change her mind.

“Galen?” Vercingetorix asked, approaching the trailer. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, uh – ” Galen looked back at the trailer, and the top hat marking on its door. “Just looking for Tsukiko.”

“Ah, of course. I understand the confusion.” Vercingetorix tapped the door with his finger. “This is actually Magician's Trailer One. Tsukiko's is over there.” He gestured in a vague direction.

“Oh, my bad.”

Vercingetorix opened his ever-present metal briefcase and pulled out some sheets of paper.

“Here is this week's crew schedule,” He said, handing a paper to Galen. “I've kept you off duty on Wednesday. We'll be trying your and Tsukiko's show on Stage 1 this week, so I want you to spend that day preparing.”

“Great! That's the big stage, right?”

“Yes. You'll have more space, so feel free to perform whatever flashy tricks you need to in order to use the whole stage. There will also be more audience members, but try not to let that stress you out.”

“That won't be a problem. Tsuki's been asking about performing on the big stage for a while now.”

You know, Tsukiko thought. When I woke up this morning, I didn't think I'd be stuck in a grim reaper costume in a dark, dusty trailer listening to people talk about me.

“Cold blood.”

Tsukiko was shaken from her thoughts. She must not have been listening to the conversation outside as closely as she'd thought. The context of 'cold blood' was completely lost on her, and she hadn't even been able to tell which one of them had said it.

“Cold steel.”

It happened again. This time, she understood why the voice had interrupted her thoughts so piercingly – it did not belong to either Vercingetorix or Galen. This voice felt like it was directly beside her ear, though in such a hushed whisper that it had felt just as quiet as the conversation. Besides, though it was hard to tell from a mere whisper, the voice sounded feminine.

“What did you say?” Tsukiko asked, keeping her voice so low that she barely said anything at all.

“Cold blood,” replied the voice, whispering in her left ear. “Cold steel.”

“What do you mean?” Tsukiko asked, again in a barely-existent volume. Realizing a much more pressing question, she added, “Who are you?”

“Cold. Blood. Cold. Steel.”

This was all that the voice said. It repeated the words in that same hushed whisper, over and over. The repetitions grew louder, though still a whisper and still limited to her left ear. Tsukiko immediately regretted asking the voice anything at all. She shut her eyes tight, even though she hadn't been able to see anything through the back of the robe's hood anyway, and tried to focus on Galen and Vercingetorix to see if it was safe for her to leave her complete mistake of a hiding place.

Suddenly, the whispers stopped; drowned out by the sound of the trailer door opening. Tsukiko forced herself to stay still just a little longer as Vercingetorix stepped into the room. She heard a few footsteps behind her, but couldn't tell the direction he was walking.

“Galen,” Vercingetorix said.

“Yes?” Galen's voice replied.

“If you see Jeffery today, let him know that this trailer needs a new lock. I'm positive I locked it properly before.”

“Will do.”

The door closed. Tsukiko stayed still for a few more moments. Her eyes and fists were clenched shut, and she pleaded with every fiber of her being that the whispers wouldn't start up again.

“Tsuki!” Galen said. “He's gone. Let's go.”

Tsukiko breathed an enormous sigh of relief. She let herself drop out of the robe and its stand and got out of the trailer as quickly as she possibly could. She doubted words could have expressed how excited she was to take a step outside of that trailer.

“Good hiding spot?” Galen asked, closing the door behind them.

“The worst, actually.”

They began walking; Tsukiko had picked a random direction that was away from the trailer, and Galen had simply followed her.

“You look pale,” Galen said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tsukiko decided. “Hey, have you ever heard the phrase 'cold blood, cold steel'?”

“Uh... no. I haven't.”

“I didn't think so. It was worth a try.” Tsukiko said.

Galen was naturally curious as to why Tsukiko had brought it up, but she was so oddly quiet as they walked that Galen decided not to ask. Before the trailer disappeared out of view, Galen gave it one last look. He wondering just what had happened to Tsukiko behind that door.

#dressed to kill #original fiction #tsukiko #the format is weird on this one #I don't know how to fix #aaah

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butcheres-blog · 3 years

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Кусэ — Today at 12:10 PM No humility.

Артемий — Today at 12:10 PM No will. It's hard to put into words, but that's it. They don't see what they've done, the gravity of it. And when they get glimpses, they just use it to self-flagellate.

Кусэ — Today at 12:12 PM Is it you wishing them more like of me?

Артемий — Today at 12:14 PM You know what I believe... and your choice was willed. And you accept the consequences and move forward.

Кусэ — Today at 12:15 PM Boddho has been merciful, esegher.

Артемий — Today at 12:15 PM It's about understanding. And blood. I don't need them to understand. They can't. They're too different from us. I just need them to give me space, after they've injured us all. And move forward. I'd prefer them brash and unrepentant to whatever the fuck this is. Taking up my space, demanding my energy, filling my home with their self-pity.

Кусэ — Today at 12:24 PM You have the duty of care, emshen. You fulfill it. Khyygedi be oshoko. A life is round, let it not be warped.

Артемий — Today at 12:29 PM Thank you. And thanks for letting me speak freely.

Кусэ — Today at 12:30 PM It is natural. The distress, natural too.

Артемий — Today at 12:34 PM

Unente, I'm cleaning the house. My American friend is coming to visit again. But you should come by the house again, too.

Кусэ — Today at 12:37 PM Be khara... it will be done, esegher.

Артемий — Today at 12:38 PM Boddho caress your step, nookherni. And your partner.

#I'm glad I talked to them.

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localbizlift · 5 years

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Facebook really doesn’t want you to read these emails

Oh hey y’all, it’s Friday! It’s August! Which means it’s a great day for Facebook to drop a little news it would prefer you don’t notice. News that you won’t find a link to on the homepage of Facebook’s Newsroom — which is replete with colorfully illustrated items it does want you to read (like the puffed up claim that “Now You Can See and Control the Data That Apps and Websites Share With Facebook”.)

The blog post Facebook would really prefer you didn’t notice is tucked away in a News sub-section of this website — where it’s been confusingly entitled: Document Holds the Potential for Confusion. And has an unenticing grey image of a document icon to further put you off — just in case you happened to stumble on it after all. It’s almost as if Facebook is saying ‘definitely don’t click here‘…

So what is Facebook trying to bury in the horse latitudes of summer?

An internal email chain, starting September 2015, which shows a glimpse of what Facebook’s own staff knew about the activity of Cambridge Analytica prior to The Guardian‘s December 2015 scoop — when the newspaper broke the story that the controversial (and now defunct) data analytics firm, then working for Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, had harvested data on millions of Facebook users without their knowledge and/or consent, and was using psychological insights gleaned from the data to target voters.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s official timeline of events about what he knew when vis-a-via the Cambridge Analytica story has always been that his knowledge of the matter dates to December 2015 — when the Guardian published its story.

But the email thread Facebook is now releasing shows internal concerns being raised almost two months earlier.

This chimes with previous (more partial) releases of internal correspondence pertaining to Cambridge Analytica — which have also come out as a result of legal actions (and which we’ve reported on previously here and here).

If you click to download the latest release, which Facebook suggests it ‘agreed’ with the District of Columbia Attorney General to “jointly make public”, you’ll find a redacted thread of emails in which Facebook staffers raise a number of platform policy violation concerns related to the “political partner space”, writing September 29, 2915, that “many companies seem to be on the edge- possibly over”.

Cambridge Analytica is first identified by name — when it’s described by a Facebook employee as “a sketchy (to say the least) data modelling company that has penetrated our market deeply” — on September 22, 2015, per this email thread. It is one of many companies the staffer writes are suspected of scraping user data — but is also described as “the largest and most aggressive on the conservative side”.

On September 30, 2015, a Facebook staffer responds to this, asking for App IDs and app names for the apps engaging in scraping user data — before writing: “My hunch is that these apps’ data-scraping is likely non-compliant”.

“It would be very difficult to engage in data-scraping activity as you described while still being compliant with FPPs [Facebook Platform Policies],” this person adds.

Cambridge Analytica gets another direct mention (“the Cambridge app”) on the same day. A different Facebook staffer then chips in with a view that “it’s very likely these companies are not in violation of any of our terms” — before asking for “concrete examples” and warning against calling them to ask questions unless “red flags” have been confirmed.

On October 13, a Facebook employee chips back into the thread with the view that “there are likely a few data policy violations here”.

The email thread goes on to discuss concerns related to additional political partners and agencies using Facebook’s platform at that point, including ForAmerica, Creative Response Concepts, NationBuilder and Strategic Media 21. Which perhaps explains Facebook’s lack of focus on CA — if potentially “sketchy” political activity was apparently widespread.

On December 11 another Facebook staffer writes to ask for an expedited review of Cambridge Analytica — saying it’s “unfortunately… now a PR issue”, i.e. as a result of the Guardian publishing its article.

The same day a Facebook employee emails to say Cambridge Analytica “is hi pri at this point”, adding: “We need to sort this out ASAP” — a month and a half after the initial concern was raised.

Also on December 11 a staffer writes that they had not heard of GSR, the Cambridge-based developer CA hired to extract Facebook user data, before the Guardian article named it. But other Facebook staffers chip in to reveal personal knowledge of the psychographic profiling techniques deployed by Cambridge Analytica and GSR’s Dr Aleksandr Kogan, with one writing that Kogan was their postdoc supervisor at Cambridge University.

Another says they are friends with Michal Kosinsky, the lead author of a personality modelling paper that underpins the technique used by CA to try to manipulate voters — which they described as “solid science”.

A different staffer also flags the possibility that Facebook has worked with Kogan — ironically enough “on research on the Protect & Care team” — citing the “Wait, What thread” and another email, neither of which appear to have been released by Facebook in this ‘Exhibit 1’ bundle.

So we can only speculate on whether Facebook’s decision — around September 2015 — to hire Kogan’s GSR co-founder, Joseph Chancellor, appears as a discussion item in the ‘Wait, What’ thread…

Putting its own spin on the release of these internal emails in a blog post, Facebook sticks to its prior line that “unconfirmed reports of scraping” and “policy violations by Aleksandr Kogan” are two separate issues, writing:

We believe this document has the potential to confuse two different events surrounding our knowledge of Cambridge Analytica. There is no substantively new information in this document and the issues have been previously reported. As we have said many times, including last week to a British parliamentary committee, these are two distinct issues. One involved unconfirmed reports of scraping — accessing or collecting public data from our products using automated means — and the other involved policy violations by Aleksandr Kogan, an app developer who sold user data to Cambridge Analytica. This document proves the issues are separate; conflating them has the potential to mislead people.

It has previously also referred to the internal concerns raised about CA as “rumors”.

“Facebook was not aware that Kogan sold data to Cambridge Analytica until December 2015. That is a fact that we have testified to under oath, that we have described to our core regulators, and that we stand by today,” it adds now.

It also claims that after an engineer responded to concerns that CA was scraping data and looked into it they were not able to find any such evidence. “Even if such a report had been confirmed, such incidents would not naturally indicate the scale of the misconduct that Kogan had engaged in,” Facebook adds.

The company has sought to dismiss the privacy litigation brought against it by the District of Columbia which is related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal — but has been unsuccessful in derailing the case thus far.

The DC complaint alleges that Facebook allowed third-party developers to access consumers’ personal data, including information on their online behavior, in order to offer apps on its platform, and that it failed to effectively oversee and enforce its platform policies by not taking reasonable steps to protect consumer data and privacy. It also alleges Facebook failed to inform users of the CA breach.

Facebook has also failed to block another similar lawsuit that’s been filed in Washington, DC by Attorney General Karl Racine — which has alleged lax oversight and misleading privacy standards.

#marketing

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pmsocialmedia · 5 years

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Facebook really doesn’t want you to read these emails

So what is Facebook trying to bury in the horse latitudes of summer?

But the email thread Facebook is now releasing shows internal concerns being raised almost two months earlier.

“It would be very difficult to engage in data-scraping activity as you described while still being compliant with FPPs [Facebook Platform Policies],” this person adds.

On October 13, a Facebook employee chips back into the thread with the view that “there are likely a few data policy violations here”.

It has previously also referred to the internal concerns raised about CA as “rumors”.

Facebook has also failed to block another similar lawsuit that’s been filed in Washington, DC by Attorney General Karl Racine — which has alleged lax oversight and misleading privacy standards.

via Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2MA0jCu

#IFTTT #Social – TechCrunch

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workfromhom · 5 years

Text

Facebook really doesn’t want you to read these emails

So what is Facebook trying to bury in the horse latitudes of summer?

But the email thread Facebook is now releasing shows internal concerns being raised almost two months earlier.

“It would be very difficult to engage in data-scraping activity as you described while still being compliant with FPPs [Facebook Platform Policies],” this person adds.

On October 13, a Facebook employee chips back into the thread with the view that “there are likely a few data policy violations here”.

The email thread goes on to discuss concerns related to additional political partners and agencies using Facebook’s platform at that point, including ForAmerica, Creative Response Concepts, NationBuilder and Strategic Media 21. Which perhaps explains Facebook��s lack of focus on CA — if potentially “sketchy” political activity was apparently widespread.

It has previously also referred to the internal concerns raised about CA as “rumors”.

Facebook has also failed to block another similar lawsuit that’s been filed in Washington, DC by Attorney General Karl Racine — which has alleged lax oversight and misleading privacy standards.

from Facebook – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2MA0jCu via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Facebook – TechCrunch

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un-enfant-immature · 5 years

Text

Facebook really doesn’t want you to read these emails

So what is Facebook trying to bury in the horse latitudes of summer?

But the email thread Facebook is now releasing shows internal concerns being raised almost two months earlier.

“It would be very difficult to engage in data-scraping activity as you described while still being compliant with FPPs [Facebook Platform Policies],” this person adds.

On October 13, a Facebook employee chips back into the thread with the view that “there are likely a few data policy violations here”.

It has previously also referred to the internal concerns raised about CA as “rumors”.

Facebook has also failed to block another similar lawsuit that’s been filed in Washington, DC by Attorney General Karl Racine — which has alleged lax oversight and misleading privacy standards.

#TechCrunch

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guileheroine · 7 years

Text

kaleidoscope downtown

Korra and Asami have a super chill day out, featuring Established Relationship, gifts, flowers, Republic City and other pleasant things 🌹🌻 🌷 / 5.6k / ao3

Sunlight, somewhere - behind the curtain of her eyelid or her consciousness, and a rising, resonant note that slithers unwelcome between her shoulder blades.

Korra’s first instinct is to yell at the warbling voice that wakes her to shut up and let her sleep, until she realizes that the voice won’t hear her, it belongs to a record, and that the record belongs to Asami, who must be here and up and waiting.

So what she does shout through the door is “Five minutes!” before dragging herself quickly and painfully out of bed and into the bathroom.

Five minutes later, in the light of the floor-length window of her main room, Asami looks the opposite of how Korra feels. Fresh and alert, with the sun flaring her a backlight; pulling up the sleeves of her loose nightshirt as she carefully makes to lift the lid of a brown paper box on the counter.

“You know, if you really wanted to wake me,” says Korra with a gravel voice as she scratches her arm in the doorway. “...You could play something a little more… dynamic.”

Asami shrugs, raising a challenging eyebrow, and her eyes are so full with that state of sentience too eager for the hour that they practically protrude into Korra when she looks up. “You’re up, aren't you?”

“Mm, not awake,” Korra groans, letting her own eyes fall shut against the vigour of Asami's wakefulness. “This isn’t morning music, and I can't look at you right now.”

Asami shakes her head, giving her another pointed look, a whatever-you-say-Avatar look, before turning her attention back to the counter. “Look what Ikki and Meelo brought me yesterday!” She says, perfectly harmonious with the melody emanating from the phonograph, bauble eyes shining at Korra as she gestures to the box. “Pema’s fried dough balls, the sweet ones with the raw sugar.”

“Your favourite, right?” Korra says, skipping forward with a curious glance into the box from its other side. She recognises Jinora’s loopy writing on the top: dearest Asami, love from Jinora Ikki Meelo Rohan Pema Tenzin, all in a neat, teetering column, with a small moonflower tied through a gap in the hinge.

Asami nods, lifts a dough ball delicately out and takes a bite, before feeding Korra the rest over the counter. The quick exchange is enough to draw Korra a little further to earth at this very early hour. She smiles, deliberately slow, as she licks the sugar from her lips and watches Asami’s own (still an easier sight than her eyes.) “Thank you. Happy birthday.”

In response Asami's expands with warmth. She grins brilliantly and says, “Come here, Korra”; meaning her side of the counter, presumably so she can smother her.

As a matter of fact, Asami’s birthday had been yesterday. But she worked all day, meetings too important to slyly delegate (not that she would have if they hadn't been); although as she tells Korra later, plenty of her closer staff - and a detectived-out Mako - had been happy to join her at the bar afterwards. And Korra hadn’t gotten in from her week-long expedition to the northern Earth Republic until Asami went to bed. Asami was out by the time she snuck in.

“I missed you!” Asami says once she has her hands on her; no pretense, the same rather fulsome and sweet way her voice carries the words every time. She holds her tight for a moment, before Korra draws back so she can kiss her, cheek and lips, and lips again. The kisses roll off her mouth, and Asami smells clean like morning. She places her hand over Asami’s shoulder, and then snug around it, coiling it in the still-damp hair at the base of her neck - the nearness invigorates Korra at last, pounds a giddy little beat in her chest. Then Asami interrupts -

“How was the… operation?”

Korra pauses for a second before explaining. It’s an unenticing leap from kisses to that, and it takes a moment to make it. “There were raids on a series of villages,” she says. “Pillagers. We took care of them, though. Nothing that serious, I made sure - I don’t really wanna think about it anymore.”

Asami kisses her again, punctuating end of discussion.

“Coffee?” Korra pulls back, breathing in the hint of it the widening space between them.

Asami tilts her head up in recognition, releasing her immediately. “Oh, right, I made coffee.” Korra hops onto the worktop, the nearest surface on which she might brace herself, as Asami reaches around her to fetch another mug from the cupboard. It feels nice, having her hover around her.

The warmth of the liquid loosens Korra back to a sleepy state, at least for the moment (counterintuitive, she thinks dryly.) Meanwhile Asami talks away, already thoroughly energised - no exquisitely strung sentences, just a train of thought that Korra basks in, content to be privy to the sound of her voice after a long week even where she doesn’t follow all the words.

“Oh, you know what I found yesterday? I thought I’d tidy up - a gift to myself,” Asami is saying with a wry gleam in her eyes. “The drafts for those hummingbird mecha suits. They’re very, uh, hasty renderings - precise, of course, but oh, man, I’d forgotten how much pressure we were under… I really liked those, though...” She looks a little sad, sounding oddly apologetic even though the sadness is her own.

“Well, they were a wicked smart idea,” Korra says behind her mug.

Asami’s mouth twists. “I know it was a desperate situation, and I obviously didn’t have fun using them - but I was proud of the design. It’s amazing what you can pluck right out of nature, and I’m not just talking about dragonfly hummingbirds, even though they might be my favourite…”

She stops with a little huff, blinking into Korra before extending a shapely hand out to grasp her chin. “Breakfast?”

“Please,” says Korra warmly, removing Asami's hand from her face. She watches her produce a half a pan of hot, fluffy omelette from the grill. “And what afterwards? Today’s for you.”

Asami piles omelette, an asparagus salad and more dough balls onto a plate for her, and purses her lips around sugary fingertips before answering. “It’s not exciting, I know,” she says, “but I wanted to go shopping. Out of necessity more than anything, but we can make a day of it.”

Korra has to make a show of rolling her eyes. It's her favourite affectation, this one. “This is what I came back for?”

Asami laughs immediately, having anticipated the response, and shakes her head. “Knock it off! I know you never mean that.” She pulls some greens off Korra’s plate, continuing: “That’s what I want, okay? For you to come shopping with me today.”

Sure enough, not half an hour later, Republic City is rolling by behind them. Asami takes a lull in the traffic to comb a hand through her hair, roots to ends, perfectly nonchalant: an old, old tendency that nonetheless reproduces itself every once in a while and transports Korra to the earliest of days, of noticing that (for whatever reason) it was hard not to look at her.

“So we’re really doing this?”

Korra shifts in the passenger seat, semi-sideways, an arm slinging across her headrest.

Asami blinks at her, smaller in her own seat, both hands gripping the steering wheel. “Yes! Of course we are! It’s for my birthday,” she arches an eyebrow, almost pleadingly. “But I promise you’ll enjoy it.” She embellishes it with a belated smile.

Korra reaches over and touches her shoulder briefly. “I never said I wouldn’t.”

“That you didn’t,” Asami replies with a deliberate foot on the gas, now that she’s left the busy toll booth that marks the end of the Silk Road Bridge behind - the resultant surge immediately bringing the wind in her hair and all her usual flair back. Korra grins and busies herself with the radio. Her finger on the button clicks forward mechanically, not allowing more than a second of each station to play, until Asami makes the vaguely impatient sound Korra has been waiting for.

“Are you searching for something in particular?” She asks pointedly.

“No,” Korra admits happily, watching for Asami's reluctant smile.

“Then why don’t you just sing for me?” Asami leans back, a couple of gentle blinks making her expression lazy, and all too captivating.

“What if you fall asleep?” Korra wreathes her voice in mock concern, and it earns her a lovely laugh.

The grime of the dense, winding streets eventually peels away to upmarket city houses verged by greenery, and then the green gives way to rows of glitzy, high-end shops and offices. Korra absorbs the splashy ads plastered on brightly-painted shopfronts, and the elegant lettering on showroom placards; young women wearing young trends as they dash around the odd street vendor in both gaggles and quiet pairs - and, where the veneer cracks - a haggle playing out in increasingly, ferociously indignant gesticulations. In reality, this area of downtown doesn’t fare much better at the hands of racketeers and underground syndicates than any of the others, but it does a stellar job of whitewashing. Asami parks on the corner of Harmony Plaza, so named for the nearby tower.

Korra climbs out of the car as a soon as it stops. “So is there anything specific we should be looking for?” She probes. “Do you have a list?”

Asami rolls her eyes as she slips her keys into the pocket of her dress. “Well, not really. Would you rather I did and we just got this over with?” She loops her arm through Korra’s, eyes sparkling, stripping the jibe of any edge. “Let’s walk.”

“You know, in the Southern Water Tribe, a day out usually consists of more, uh, adventure,” Korra continues, unrelenting, twisting her arm so that Asami’s leading.

“Yeah, but we’re in a metropolis, Korra,” Asami insists, gesturing around with her free arm. Her bracelet, watch and hair all glint simultaneously in the sunshine; it feels like Korra’s holding onto something a bit magical. “And this is an adventure,” she adds with a pout.

“Alright,” Korra concurs, as if she hadn’t an hour ago. “As long as we can give the Little Ba Sing Se Fashion Mall a pass.” She arches her brow and Asami widens her eyes at the reference, nodding immediately. They’ve heard enough horror stories about Earth Kingdom loyalists (that is, royalists) languishing in the miniature Upper Ring, even so long after their former prince had apparently found himself better.

Asami wrinkles her nose cutely. “Anyway, that place is more like a…”

“Theme park?” Korra pulls her by the forearm, giving somebody’s haughty-looking cat deer a wide berth.

“Exactly,” says Asami.

They move a while through the crowd - thin, thanks to the hour, but thickening by the minute - following the course of sunlit street contained by the shadows of awnings and shop signs on either side. Sometimes men and women under hats take double, but being adults in the right part of town, they continue on their way - it’s a kid here and there that marvels (or demands), “Are you the Avatar, miss?” (“No,” Korra says, incredulous, but her smile is all the answer they need, and usually enough to have them skipping off in a buzz.)

Eventually, they duck into a boutique, and exactly the kind Korra would expect Asami to duck eagerly into. Silvery drapes frame multiple large mirrors fixed on the walls, creating the illusion of capaciousness in the compact, neat space. “I need new shirts,” Asami explains, looking around before striding over to the section that catches her eye.

“Since you keep heading to the workshop in your good clothes?” Korra says, rifling through a line of crisp, creamy blouses.

Asami looks duly embarrassed, glancing up from the collar stitch she appears to be examining. “Not on purpose.” Which, of course not - Asami was meticulous in every endeavour - but sometimes all you can really bear to do between desk meetings and messy shop hours is pull hair back and gloves on.

“What do you think of this?” Asami says, a couple of densely packed rows of clothes hangers later. Korra looks at the top she’s holding up: an incredibly pretty periwinkle, tasteful and comfy-looking with a close scooped neck.

“Well, it’s not what I’d have expected you to go for,” she acknowledges, folding the shirt in her own hand back, “but, hey, it’s beautiful and so are you, so...!”

“Not -” Asami begins, slightly red, extending the hanger to Korra. “Not for me - for you.”

“Oh,” Korra says. That puts a self-satisfied smirk on Asami’s face, which she doesn’t deign to wipe off as she produces another item of clothing from the display behind her. “And for myself, I really like this.” She holds her second hanger up, awaiting Korra’s assessment.

“That’s not a shirt, Asami.” Korra’s tone is chiding as she takes in the mauvish sheath dress, though she grants her approval anyway. “But try this,” she offers, picking out a blouse; another purple (as most things in this shop seem to be), but paler, with a stylish cinch at the elbow-length sleeve.

Asami’s eyes light up and she receives it immediately for a closer look. “You’re right, that is nice.”

Soon, the sun draws them out into the street again. Korra counts five more shops that they make it into (mostly splendid but modestly sized like the first, with some larger or stranger, planted more or less in a streets-long succession) - though they rack up coats and boots and shirts (some to share) many more than that number between them.

Eventually, they find themselves on a bench under the shade of a sensibly city-small linden tree, somewhere before the turn of ten, just as the crowd truly begins to grow. There Asami smooths her hands out in her lap and comments, with a quirk of her mouth, “It’s a little early in the morning to splash out, isn’t it?”

“Never stopped you.” Korra crosses her legs onto the warm wood, making herself at home even roadside in the centre of town. Asami laughs and a fallen leaf in her hair shakes loose. The inimitable hybrid scent of baking and brewing draws Korra’s attention to the cafe opposite their resting stop, and she wonders for a short second about stepping in for a while before realising that no, she can’t well concede weariness yet, when it’s not even midday.

Instead she gives her hand to Asami, who looks perfectly content not to take it.

“Don’t tell me you’re already losing steam!” Korra teases, hefting up an armful of shopping bag with ease.

Asami gives her a look that indicates not even, standing in a purposeful motion. It makes Korra smile. “Where next, birthday girl?”

For a moment Asami’s eyes flicker upwards in thought, lips pursing. Korra takes the opportunity to smooth over the lapel of her dress, brushing another of the sweet-smelling linden leaves off. Asami’s expression sets with resolution as she peers behind Korra, beyond the coffee shop.

“The art store over there,” she says, cocking her head in that direction, “by the gallery. You remember Varrick’s new assistant, Shen?”

“The one courting your cute receptionist?” Korra replies after a second of combing of her brain. Since his marriage to Zhu Li, Varrick had had, and continued to have, a veritable parade of new assistants - never managing not to rankle one or two into an early discharge every quarter, or so it seemed. No one could be blamed for struggling to recall who was currently in the line of fire.

“Right, he’s with Hoshiko,” Asami giggles, as they cross the street and bypass the cafe chock full of young, well-to-do patrons under the spell of caffeine (and hopefully nothing else at this hour.) “Actually, that’s why I saw him - when I was leaving work yesterday. He told me that Varrick’s sending prints of his movers to shop… so people can see them again.” She says this last part with a kind of confused distaste.

“What, like at a revival house?” Korra asks curiously, and then grimaces. “Though I’m not sure any of those masterpieces need to be revived.”

“Not quite,” says Asami. The breeze swirls a strand of her hair against her mouth, and after an inelegant struggle to blow it away with her hands full of shopping, she continues. “He wants people to take them home and play them there. I mean, you’d need a projector. He’s calling for a ‘home-mover revolution.’” She flares her nostrils for the words, a note of cautious intrigue in her voice. “I figure we should check it out.”

Sure enough, the store they enter boasts a whole glittery stall dedicated to brand new copies of The Adventures of Nuktuk: Hero of the South, The North Strikes Back, and so on - even specially animated runs of The Animal Adventures of Roh-Tan and Juji for the school-age, who are really all that's left of the market now. In a closed cabinet in the corner live the expensive film projectors one would need to play the prints. Even the shop’s usual collection of posters, and the commercial art reproductions increasingly gaining popularity in the United Republic, are dominated by signed, glossed, framed Nuktuk posters.

“Well -” begins Asami, struck more amused than dumb by the ostentatious display. “I’m impressed Bolin managed to keep this from us.” The words are right out of Korra’s mouth.

They give Varrick’s efforts a minute or two, if only for the absurdity of it all.

“It’s a vanity project,” Asami insists, all tittery, “he knows only a handful of kids are going to be able to afford the tech required for these ‘home-movers’ to take off.”

“His whole life is a vanity project,” says Korra, struggling to keep the smile off her face as she lifts up a small stuffed Nuktuk-head and torso, vest and all, with a cottony heart-shape nestled between the furs. “You want this?”

“No, thank you,” Asami grins, laughter making her voice syrupy. Then Korra watches an idea click into place in her eyes, a familiar, wonderfully beloved image. “We’re getting it, though…”

“For Opal!” Korra finishes the thought.

In the end they leave with more than the toy, though: a new record, Korra’s choice, ‘morning music’; and an arresting original landscape of sunset over Yue Bay, for Asami’s bedroom (even if Korra did spend more hours asleep in it.)

Outside the weather becomes heavy - the kind that makes your skull beat if you don’t find shade quick enough. So they slip into the next shop that looks like it might entertain for a while.

The Emperor’s Emporium is a treasure trove; a deceptively dingy anterior giving way to a vast and vivid collection of not only the classical Fire Nation fashion and memorabilia implied by its name, but odds and ends from every corner of the world. A melange of clothing, antiques, peeling books and knick-knacks without count piles high in shelves and hooks far above Korra’s head. It’s immediately apparent that this extensive hoard is not particularly organised, but naturally that only adds to its cluttered, hide-and-seek appeal.

Korra swipes aside a heavy curtain to reveal an ancient-looking map of Yu Dao, the oldest of the colonies that preceded the United Republic. Stacked in flimsy frames below it are similar charts. Korra takes her time tracing through an early hand drawn map of Republic City, marveling at how neat and simple the turns are compared to the sprawling mess of metro today.

She’s interrupted when Asami calls her over to a section with a heavy cursive exclusive! history for sale sign over it (though as far as Korra can see, everything in this room is exclusive.) There’s a quizzical expression on Asami's face as she examines a pair of thin-woven gloves with red ribbon ties around each wrist. “That gentleman,” she tells Korra conspiratorially, gesturing to the back of the storekeeper, who’s in conversation with another customer, “says these gloves belonged to Avatar Yangchen herself, and she handed them off to a girl she rescued from an avalanche up north whose family ended up here. Can you verify?”

“Hm...” Korra pulls the gloves on, each one with purpose, and looks up in a show of thought. “Let’s say… yes,” she decides seriously, before cracking a grin. “Because I have no idea, and that’s cooler.”

“You're incredible,” Asami deadpans, snatching the gloves back, though she can’t help the glint in her eyes as she turns away.

Korra stays with the exclusive history for sale for a moment, rifling through bending scrolls that almost come away at her touch, although whether they really are ancient, merely shopworn or an acute combination of both she can’t tell. What she does take away a good fifteen minutes later is something Asami would definitely laugh at: not a scroll but a towel - displaying waterbending forms handiest in the kitchen.

A few paces over, there are the small trinkets, handiworks that Asami would covet - pocket-size photo frames of vibrant agate bent to last; and candles in metal casings with swirling waves and cityscapes intricate as shadow puppets carved finely up along the rim, such that the flame would cast shapes out of them - quintessential Fire Nation craft. In a mounted case above these sit bits of metal that would definitely intrigue Asami: gold and silver from the earliest Earth Kingdom mines along the continent’s western coast - long-defunct, as the adjacent sign denotes - some fashioned into proper pieces and some in natural nuggets.

Korra discreetly takes two of the latter with her towel (one silver, one gold), tucking them away in it once she makes the purchase.

The Emperor’s Emporium devours time like a vortex, and the second they leave hunger crashes into Korra. But at Asami’s behest they skip the first few eateries they encounter, aiming for an old favourite across the street from expansive, sunny Avatar Korra Park.

They take iced teas to-go and a paper bag of peanut butter buns, and perch on the edge of one of the park’s many quaint wood bridges. It’s as busy as Korra would expect on a beautiful weekend - people of all walks claiming their periodic escape from the small spaces of a big city - but it’s not impossible to find a spot that’s more or less vacant, thanks to a proliferation of wispy spirit vines coiled around a fountain, and the bustle of little spirits weaving in and out of them. (“I’m glad nobody wants to disturb them!” Asami says with feeling, totally, kissably earnest.)

“She’s overshadowing me,” Korra pouts, drawing Asami’s attention away from the fountain before them and to the towering statue in the distance.

Asami laughs. “Shh, no she’s not. When does anyone ever do that?” She brushes breadcrumbs out of her lap before twisting to lean her head against Korra’s shoulder, giving a gentle, lazy kick designed to make their dangling feet collide. “You’re still my favourite, for what it’s worth, and I like her a lot.”

“Well…” Korra concedes, eyes trained on her statue. “I guess I like her hair.” Asami emits a brief sound that resides casually between acknowledgement and agreement, and a smile inches slowly over Korra’s face. “Oh, and her arms,” she adds conversationally, curling her foot around Asami’s. “She’s pretty cute, actually. Nice chest, too -”

Asami kicks her with more purpose this time, retracting and crossing her arms with her tongue between her teeth. “Just let me pay you a compliment, Korra!” She laughs an exhale and clasps her arms around Korra’s waist again. “Not that I’m disputing your assessment.” She laughs again, a surge in tandem with the breeze, and the combination makes Korra flutter. She unlatches Asami’s hands so she can lift one and kiss it. The afternoon sun and Asami’s weight make her feel heavy.

“Naga would have loved to be out today. I wish she were here,” Korra says, watching some girl's deer dog chase her around a clearing.

Asami’s still. “Yeah. But she would have hogged you. As she has every right to.”

“So you want me all to yourself, huh?” Korra needles, renewing her grip over Asami’s wrist. Asami bites back the smile that says she refuses to be embarrassed, and inhales to reply when Korra steals well, it’s my birthday off her lips, pressing, and then breathing a premature breath (her breath) from the clumsiness of the angle.

Asami sits up straight with hands firm around the waist again and takes her breath back from Korra.

Then she smiles. “I’m going to fall asleep if we don’t start moving soon,” she says, looking at the paper bag in her fist as she crumples it.

She pulls Korra up by the hand and leads her down the short distance to the end of the bridge so they can walk alongside the pond under it. A confused spirit, apparently unaware that it’s inhabiting a structure filled with water, rushes down from the fountain and onto the bank of the pond for a drink. It stops mid-scuttle to eye up the baby turtleduck that it finds there. The spirit blinks stupidly for a moment, and then, having reached some silent understanding, hops onto the turtleduck’s back, producing a strange, if charming, sight.

“Oh, it probably can’t swim,” Asami says, watching the pair paddle across the water. Two more baby ducks replace them on the bank.

“Isn’t that sweet?” Korra sighs, bending a gentle gust to help the first turtleduck along. Asami crouches and empties her paper bag into a cupped hand, extending the crumbs to the pair on the bank. Her eyes absorb the little stretch of water as the ducks feed: the placid mother a few metres away, serenely floating with the remainder of her bunch, and the smattering of late summer flowers on the water’s edge; tall fire cardinals and jewelweed as shiny as any real gem.

Asami turns to look up at Korra in a motion that makes her hair bounce mesmerizingly. “We should get some flowers!”

And so their next stop is the flower stall that parks on the corner of the park all summer - it doesn’t have a name other than ‘Madame Juchi’s flower stall’, but it carries the reputation of the finest retailers in town.

“That one’s for beauty,” says Juchi, bangles clinking as she feathers the extravagant-looking flower with large, flat petals in pink and white stripes in Korra’s hand.

“They’re all for beauty,” Asami scoffs, the note of her voice utterly harmless, though Korra can tell it’s a genuine niggle. (She’s right, of course.)

Juchi waggles her eyebrows. “It’s also love.”

“Right, love and beauty,” Asami amends. “They’re all love and beauty.”

The old woman’s eyes gleam and she wants to play along. “Well, there are certainly variations on the theme. This one, for example -” she indicates a bright orange flower, cradling the bloom under its long curling petals “- is coquetry.”

“Excellent,” Korra replies without a beat, a sly grin peeking from under the bouquet she has her nose in, “that’s Asami right there.”

Asami turns pink as the love and beauty flower and nudges Korra’s shoulder; but the flowers evidently have her mind, and she lets Madame Juchi take her through each vivid row of them, meaning by arbitrary, mystical meaning. Meanwhile Korra scans the other side of the display (it’s large enough to qualify as a flower museum of sorts, she thinks) and finds that she can recognize more of them than she thought. There’s even her longtime favourite: a many-petaled flower from Air Temple Island, one of the brightest she’s ever encountered - blooms in golden yellow, white, red and pink.

In the end Asami picks a waxy flower of a blushing white that seeps into yellow at the centre (“for protection, good for ringing in your next year”); with a complementary small pink blossom (spiritual beauty, she’ll take that) to fill out the bouquet.

She transfers the flowers into a suitable pack after sticking one of the pink blossoms in Korra’s hair. Her hands are full with the day’s yield, particularly with delicate flowers in the mix, but their walk back to the car is rather long from here.

“Let’s sit at the dock for a minute,” Asami says. “My feet are aching.”

The dock (the one for tourists and mindful repose) isn’t far - a short walk out of the main road and along the waterfront. They place their bags in a pile and sit perpendicular to the pier, watching gentle waves foam at the lip of the embankment.

There’s still a way to twilight, but the sun is low enough to cast itself splendidly through the clouds, winking on the water. It’s the regular Republic City occurrence that makes Korra glad to still live with the sea, lack of perennial snow notwithstanding. She tells Asami as much and Asami takes her hand, golden in the light.

“I'm glad you’re here, that you made it your home. Because I would never want to leave Republic City.”

The bay glitters gold again, stirring Korra’s mind.

“I wanna show you something,” she says suddenly, releasing Asami’s hand to reach for her bags. She returns with the two metal pieces from the emporium enclosed in her palms, and holds up the gold between them.

“This is from the Red Hill Mine,” she tells Asami, watching her eyes light up in recognition and curiosity, mouth in a little ‘wow.’ “Old, right? Amazing how this stuff lasts,” Korra smiles. “I thought you’d like it.”

She puts the silver in her sticky palm down for a moment, holding the gold nugget between two sets of precise, anticipatory fingers. Then with practised effort, she bends, separating the piece into two smaller ones that she curls into hooks above a curved, faceted body, fine little wings molding out of a thorax.

“Your dragonfly hummingbirds,” she says, placing a pair of earrings into Asami’s palm.

Asami blinks into her hand for a moment, into the play of light over lines of scale detail as thin as silk thread, and then turns to Korra, breaking into a stunned (stunning) smile. “You got really good at that! Korra...” She breathes, immediately moving to the hair tie on her wrist, dropping two little dragonfly hummingbirds into her lap so she can pull her hair up and put them on.

“They’re so cute! So beautiful.” She laughs, running a thumb over the tiny contours in the left one before she hooks it in.

“They’re a little smaller than the actual creature,” Korra says, as Asami beams at her. “But I don’t think you want life-size insects on your ears.”

Her fingers close over the silver and she brings it to Asami’s attention. “Now, I’m not sure where exactly this comes from. But it’s somewhere along that stretch on the southeastern coast. You know where they opened, like, five mines at once, as soon as they realised that was a thing they could do?” Asami nods knowingly, peering intently at the nugget, but Korra takes it back into her hands.

Again she bends - two pieces, two hooks, a simpler shape this time, more geometrical, though with no less detail.

She closes them in her fist for a second before transferring them to Asami. “These -” she begins, and waits for Asami to take them in, wide green eyes equally as entranced as before, but also inquisitive.

“These are for you because,” Korra starts again, more tentative this time. “Well, they always remind me of you when I see them - I don’t think I’ve ever told you that. They were at the stall today.”

Asami clasps the two silver flowers between her fingers, each arrayed with at least thirty tiny petals, eager for the explanation.

“You brought me a bunch of these right before I left. A long time ago, I mean, when I left for the South Pole to recover. They grow on the Island - that’s probably all. I felt like shit, obviously, and you were trying to cheer me up. But they were very pretty, so many colours…”

Asami continues to smile, eyes shining, and Korra wonders if her face is starting to hurt.

“They’re called Yawen’s blossom. That’s the woman who first cultivated them for sale. I had a whole lot of nothing to do while I was down south and I think I was probably missing green… There was a book at Katara’s about floriculture that I must have read twice over, I think it belonged to Kya. Anyway, I read that this flower - a bouquet of these - basically means I miss you. Like, you’re away from someone, but, um - you know, that you’re thinking about somebody and they’re not there… Well,” she giggles finally, at her own delicate recollection, Asami joining. “You know I did a bit of that! But reading that, it made me feel… I don’t know. Something good. I mean, I didn’t think you knew, but ever since…”

“I’ll get them again for you.” There's love tucked in all the corners of Asami's voice. She feels the silver in her hand again. “And I love these. I love you.”

She fishes into her pocket for her purse and carefully places the earrings inside - and once they’re stored away her arms wrap tight around Korra. Korra feels the tips of Asami’s fingers warm on her back, the heavenly contrast that all of Asami against her makes to the cooling air.

“Oh, and you know,” she delivers her afterthought into Asami’s shoulder, “the book said dragonfly hummingbirds love that flower. They’re its main pollinators.”

Asami giggles her acknowledgement and says again, “I love you. Thank you.” And then laughs again. “How am I going to top this, Korra? I can’t metalbend.”

Korra scoffs through her own snort. “Uh, you'll probably manage, Miss Million Yuans A Month.” She squeezes her tighter, murmuring through a smile against the fabric of Asami's dress. “But you don’t have to, you know.” She feels Asami burrow back, almost absently. “You just have to be your perfect self.”

#korrasami #korrasami fanfiction #legend of korra #**

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sheminecrafts · 5 years

Text

Facebook really doesn’t want you to read these emails

Oh hey, y’all, it’s Friday! It’s August! Which means it’s a great day for Facebook to drop a little news it would prefer you don’t notice. News that you won’t find a link to on the homepage of Facebook’s Newsroom — which is replete with colorfully illustrated items it does want you to read (like the puffed up claim that “Now You Can See and Control the Data That Apps and Websites Share With Facebook”).

So what is Facebook trying to bury in the horse latitudes of summer?

An internal email chain, starting September 2015, which shows a glimpse of what Facebook’s own staff knew about the activity of Cambridge Analytica prior to The Guardian’s December 2015 scoop — when the newspaper broke the story that the controversial (and now defunct) data analytics firm, then working for Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, had harvested data on millions of Facebook users without their knowledge and/or consent, and was using psychological insights gleaned from the data to target voters.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s official timeline of events about what he knew when vis-à-vis the Cambridge Analytica story has always been that his knowledge of the matter dates to December 2015 — when The Guardian published its story.

But the email thread Facebook is now releasing shows internal concerns being raised almost two months earlier.

If you click to download the latest release, which Facebook suggests it “agreed” with the District of Columbia Attorney General to “jointly make public,” you’ll find a redacted thread of emails in which Facebook staffers raise a number of platform policy violation concerns related to the “political partner space,” writing September 29, 2015, that “many companies seem to be on the edge- possibly over.”

“It would be very difficult to engage in data-scraping activity as you described while still being compliant with FPPs [Facebook Platform Policies],” this person adds.

On October 13, a Facebook employee chips back into the thread with the view that “there are likely a few data policy violations here.”

On December 11 another Facebook staffer writes to ask for an expedited review of Cambridge Analytica — saying it’s “unfortunately… now a PR issue,” i.e. as a result of The Guardian publishing its article.

The same day a Facebook employee emails to say Cambridge Analytica “is hi pri at this point,” adding: “We need to sort this out ASAP” — a month and a half after the initial concern was raised.

Also on December 11 a staffer writes that they had not heard of GSR, the Cambridge-based developer CA hired to extract Facebook user data, before The Guardian article named it. But other Facebook staffers chip in to reveal personal knowledge of the psychographic profiling techniques deployed by Cambridge Analytica and GSR’s Dr Aleksandr Kogan, with one writing that Kogan was their post-doc supervisor at Cambridge University.

Another says they are friends with Michal Kosinski, the lead author of a personality modeling paper that underpins the technique used by CA to try to manipulate voters — which they described as “solid science.”

A different staffer also flags the possibility that Facebook has worked with Kogan — ironically enough “on research on the Protect & Care team” — citing the “Wait, What” thread and another email, neither of which appear to have been released by Facebook in this “Exhibit 1” bundle.

So we can only speculate on whether Facebook’s decision — around September 2015 — to hire Kogan’s GSR co-founder, Joseph Chancellor, appears as a discussion item in the “Wait, What” thread…

It has previously also referred to the internal concerns raised about CA as “rumors.”

Facebook has also failed to block another similar lawsuit that’s been filed in Washington, DC by Attorney General Karl Racine — which has alleged lax oversight and misleading privacy standards.

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technicalsolutions88 · 5 years

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So what is Facebook trying to bury in the horse latitudes of summer?

But the email thread Facebook is now releasing shows internal concerns being raised almost two months earlier.

“It would be very difficult to engage in data-scraping activity as you described while still being compliant with FPPs [Facebook Platform Policies],” this person adds.

On October 13, a Facebook employee chips back into the thread with the view that “there are likely a few data policy violations here”.

It has previously also referred to the internal concerns raised about CA as “rumors”.

Facebook has also failed to block another similar lawsuit that’s been filed in Washington, DC by Attorney General Karl Racine — which has alleged lax oversight and misleading privacy standards.

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