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#hey op how are you feeling about cori now
preddy good, thanks : )
to get a bit more detailed though I'm super happy about the Perennial bond. I barely thought about it as a possibility & when it happened I got really excited, I just really love "I'm gonna prove her wrong" to a divine experiencing an existential amount grief about failing the galaxy over+over+over again & "I'm not gonna stop fighting if you won't" & I love Cori's goal for the finale... Excited to see how it all carries through!!! Especially with her obstacles ("your only tool is violence" had me 😊)
Cori hasn't quite managed to wrestle Millie from her spot of nr. 1 Sylvi character (though maybe I'll rethink this once the season is over. They could share 💙🩷) but her arc this season's been SO good and has all the way through felt super solid. Love to see character beats lined up & they hit & it's extremely good. homerun from sylvi!!!!!
edit:

picture. I'm still bored at work. I was just thinking about fun new Perennial outfits for Cori... I'd like to see it... this is still very plugsuit-ish but probably something that's actually more witchy could be cool... designing outfits isn't my strong suit but I might give it a shot
i really like putting these 3 next to each other. there's a lot of cool throughlines / parallels / contrasts that are SO fun to think about... like their relationship to (doing) violence! expecially excited for wherever Cori is gonna end up by the end of this season. on one hand i love going 'yes!!! kill!!!' when she does something sick. on the other : ( oh no
(quote is from Marielda 10: Four Conversations. it's said to Sylvi's character that season, which is additionally neat :>)
#I'm so unsure about the status of next season ig it'll truly all depend on the finale but I'm extremely hoping Cori makes it there#I want to see more Cori+Perennial witch shit I want to see what it means to NOT choose violence or not use it as your main framework#which isn't to say that violent action isn't necessary for change. the shows been clear on this & I agree#but for Cori who's been raised as a child soldier there has to be an after the fight too#Or like... The way Austin's talked about Arbitrage as a villain (likely for next season) and it is explicitly not -#- just a giant robot you could beat up in a boss battle due to what it is and does... you know!!!! Exciting stuff.#palisade spoilers#Palisadeposting#Haven't finished the newest ep yet btw though I know Cori has a scene (skipped around a bit)...#also I don't know if you were Actually asking but I'm bored at work I'll take the excuse : ) thank you either way
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Can the Perpetual Protocol (PERP) make money from Automated Arbitrage?
They claim the Perpetual Protocol (PERP) can make money from automated arbitrage. Moreover, they claim Perpetual users can earn a share of protocol revenue in USD Coin (USDC) stablecoins. Hence, they claim the Perpetual Protocol pays stakers with fiat currency, US Dollars. To explain, USD Coin is a stablecoin that pays with US Dollars they hold in BlackRock (BLK) and BNYMellon (BK) trust…
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#Can the Perpetual Protocol (PERP) Generate Revenue in USDC?#Can the Perpetual Protocol (PERP) make money from Automated Arbitrage?#How Hot Tub Vaults Make Money#How Perpetual (PERP) Automates Arbitrage#How Perpetual Protocol offers Leveraged Exposure to Crypto#Protocol (PERP)#The US Dollar is DeFi’s future
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— stepdad!sylus x reader ૮ ․ ․ ྀིა
synopsis: sylus becomes the daddy you never had.
tw: smut yaaay, stepcest, age gap, abandonment trauma, slightly inspired on ‘lolita’ and ‘the virgin suicides’, mentions of death, usage of ‘daddy’, kinda long ig, cheating, daddy issues, virginity loss, etc.



your mom marrying one of the most influential and rich man that society has ever seen was not on your life’s plans, not even the passing of your father.
as the oldest sister out of four you always had an eye on your parents relationship, having to be the one arbitraging their stupid fights and ordering them to stop bickering around when your siblings were asleep.
many would feel sorry for you when they found out about the responsibilities you had on your shoulders since such a young age, acknowledging the reason why you seemed so grown and mature; in reality it was all a facade to protect your sisters.
when you father fell ill you didn’t even flinch, and when he passed away a few months later you didn’t even cry. sure, you appreciated him but farther from the truth, he was just there.
you viewed him as a man you happened to live with, not a member of your family.
on the contrary, you looked up to your mother, being aware of the hard work she put to raise and provide to you and your sisters.
you tenderly recall the nights sitting on her vanity before going to bed as she detangled and oiled your hair, giving her advice as if she was your best friend.
the love for your mom was undeniable and you would always support every decision she’d make.
so when she invited her new boyfriend over to dinner you were as supportive as always, ordering your sisters to behave in his presence as you did their make up and advised them on their clothes.
but what you weren’t expecting when you walked downstairs was a tall and broad figure taking sit in the chair your father used to occupy, his white and lavish hair the only thing you could see from where you stood.
your siblings rushed to sit next to him, eager to form the stupidest questions ever made, as you walked towards the kitchen to help you mother with the rest of the preparations for dinner, coexisting in silence.
you weren’t blind, even as her daughter you could tell your mother was a beautiful woman. living her middle years after four pregnancies and keeping up a stunning figure and fancy features, carrying herself around as the elegant woman she always aspired to be.
⠀⠀ “this one was unexpected, mom.” you spoke under your breath as your pulled out the plate from the oven, taking off the gloves and apron to gaze her way.
⠀⠀ “you didn’t even speak to him yet, baby, give him a chance.” she stated, leaving the kitchen to place the utensils on the dining table.
and so you did. gave him a chance. your mom had some hookups along the passing months, nothing decent or closely acceptable.
you thought that’s what this was, a hookup. good sex that was invited to dinner a random night to then be dumped because he made the girls uneasy.
but you could tell this was not the case.
sylus was the name of the scary man sitting in front of you. the white hair you saw before put together neatly, thick eyebrows that dressed a pair of cat-like orbs, colored crimson.
you noticed as you ate the baked potatoes how his clothes were clearly too expensive for you to even think about, his perfume reaching your nostrils to the point you could almost taste it mixing with the garlic.
if your widowed mother was going to take advantage of the (you assumed) rich man you weren’t going to complain. because his money would be your mom’s, and your mom’s money would be yours.
later on you’d find out who sylus was, what was his place in the world. he’d mention companies you knew to be his, and you couldn't believe your luck.
⠀⠀ “so, if you live in such a high end environment, how’d you two meet?” you questioned after sipping on some water, crossing your arms.
⠀⠀ “we simply bumped into each other at one of my restaurants. your mother was the waitress and spilled some whine on my shirt.” he lightly answered with a deep voice that got stuck in your head for the rest of the day.
sylus seemed to adore your mom, and you were happy for her, really.
he started to come over your humble home more and more often, and your sisters couldn’t stop talking about him and yearn to spend time together.
‘have you seen his hands?’, ‘today his pants were tighter than usual.’, ‘his lips look so kisseable.’ blah blah blah.
they were fixated on this stupid tradition your mom started, friday movie night. the man would come home and stay the night after watching movies together as a big and happy family.
an excuse to fuck your mother, you thought. you seemingly knew it all, you knew everybody’s mind.
but as smart as you thought you were, you couldn’t acknowledge sylus’ admiration for you, the oldest sister. he’d stare at you and wonder if this yearning was even moral.
he would fixate his red eyes on you when nobody else was watching, would take in how you munched on the popcorn he prepared and how your glasses framed your perfectly structured face. the mere thought of you was chasing him around every second of the day, even when he was with your mom, his fiancée.
the imagine of your started to replace your mom’s, he started to imagine you were the one he was pounding so hard into. started to fantasize about taking you out to these fancy dinners instead of your her.
he even sneaked into your room after fucking and waiting for her to fall asleep, just to sit next to you in your bed and caress your hair with his knuckles, going down until his hand cupped your cheeks and your oh-so-desirable lips formed a pout.
it was all wrong, he knew that.
taking advantage of your innocence? he knew you were the most mature amongst your sisters, but you were very naive still. sylus loved showing you things you didn’t know about, talking of countries you never heard of and teaching you random facts about anything.
he knew how to make you desire him as much as he desired you. you both started to spend more time together in an organic way you couldn’t notice, him being more and more present in your every day life.
he started taking you and your sisters to class, you being the last one he kissed on the cheek goodbye, closer to your lips than he did to your siblings. he sat next to you every chance he got, his big palm wrapping around your thigh when nobody else was looking, arriving home with gifts for you and you only, taking you out on secret dates.
and so you did, you fell in love with him, with the way his voice pronounced your name, the warmth of his honey like skin… everything about him seemed to be divine to your eyes.
it was all wrong, but it was bearable. until it wasn’t.
until his desires started to grow bigger in his chest and his expensive pants. you’d become more confident around him and started wearing skimpier clothes inside the house, leaving little to imagination.
you didn’t do this on purpose, you raised yourself around women, and this was what you were accustomed to. you didn’t know the reason why sylus had to excuse himself mid conversation was because of the half of your ass showing outside those stupidly small shorts, and you didn’t know he rushed to the bathroom to jerk off with both hands like a horny teenager.
⠀⠀ “sy, you okay?” you asked after knocking on the bathroom door. great, that’s the last thing he needed.
⠀⠀ “all good, princess, i just felt a little nauseous. it’s all good.” the last sentence was said as a whisper, trying to convince himself to stop massaging his foreskin as he spoke to you and dress up and act like a decent person.
⠀⠀ “are you sure, can i help you with anything?” you insisted with a sweet voice. fuck, that voice drive him crazy. his hand sped up, faster, harder.
he went silent for half a minute and you started to worry, knocking on the door again, pressing an ear against the wood to hear squelching and huffs on the other side.
was he…? no, he couldn’t be doing that... right?
your thighs pressed together in an attempt to ignore your clit throbbing against your cotton panties. you were getting ahead of yourself.
on the other hand, sylus was losing it. it was too much for him to hold back. the way your nipples craved through your tank top, the way you sucked on the damn spoon and licked your lips after each sip, the way you were so goddamn concerned about his wellbeing.
you were about to knock again as a curious cat would before gasping at the sudden grasp on your wrist, pulling you inside the bathroom.
sylus’ pants were undone, zipper down and boxers misplaced, trying to hide and obvious problem.
he cornered you against the tiled wall, placing both hands next to your head as he reached down, his nose caressing yours as he spoke with an almost trembling voice, trying to hold himself back, just a little bit longer.
⠀⠀ “of course you can help, my dear. you actually caused the problem in the first place.” he whispered against your lips while pressing his knee between your closed legs, feeling warmth leaving your body and earning a low chuckle.
⠀⠀ “sylus, what are you—” you tried to pull away as an instinct. this was wrong. you knew what he wanted, you wanted it too. but it was wrong.
he didn’t allow you to finish that pointless question, losing every bit of self control when he saw the way you looked up at him with those big eyes he loved to stare at, attacking your cherry lips effusively.
you whined against his mouth, the hands you had placed on his chest to pull him away now pulling him closer, grinding yourself against his knee.
no more self control, even if it was wrong.
he grabbed both your hips to shortly walk you both towards the bathroom counter, refusing to break the wet and nasty kiss he so desperately wanted for so long.
⠀⠀ “gonna be a good girl and take me, doll? gonna take everything I’ve been keeping for you and only you?” he asked you while he bended you over the flat surface, steeping behind you.
⠀⠀ “mhfm, daddy, I’ll take it all, please, please.” you started to cry. god this was twisted and plain disgusting. he knew about your daddy issues, about the longing for a fatherly figure. he should’ve felt repulsed by the nickname, his dick should’ve just go soft instantly. but it was a shock to his body, an impulse that added to the need for you, to be inside you.
he just loved hearing the new name roll out your sinful mouth.
⠀⠀ “that’s right, princess, daddy’s gonna fuck you stupid, hmm? want that? of course you do.” he stated while adverting down, seeing how your ass swayed from side to side against his erection, your face full of tears and your nipples sensitive against the cold marble.
your hands reached out, grabbing both your asscheeks to spread them apart and give him a view of the curve of your pussy against the cottony material of your shorts, tracing the wet line with a manicured finger.
⠀⠀ “fucking god, doll, when did you become so nasty, uh?” he was in awe, slapping the fat of your butt before tearing those damned shorts apart along with your annoying panties, tracing your bare pussy with a thumb.
you tried reaching for his erection, your cries making it impossible to answer anything. from his point of view you seemed pathetic, if he yearned you as a madman, you yearned him as a pathetic bitch in heat. sylus couldn’t believe the sweet and reserved girl he fell in love with was acting like this right before his eyes.
⠀⠀ “shh, angel, I’ll give it to you, quit crying.” he lied, he didn’t want you to stop crying, actually. he pulled out his aching cock, pumping it a few times before pushing himself inside you way too wet cunt.
you just couldn’t hold back your moans, the squelching sound of both your arousals and the tapping of his balls against your wet skin making you feel dizzy.
blood showed up not a lot long after, an evidence of the loss of your innocence. he didn’t even think of that, didn’t even consider the possibility of you being completely untouched.
⠀⠀ “fuck, princess, I’m corrupting you entirely, am I? daddy’s claiming you as a woman.” he said between thrust, loving how your ass jiggled against his pelvis. you could only nod and moan as a response. the connection you two were having too carnal, too raw.
it didn’t take long for him to cum white stripes inside your bloody cunt, followed up by you creaming his cock entirely, holding himself to the counter as he kept on thrusting, slower each time until he stopped.
you were fucked out, your brain mush as you tried to understand your environment and the situation, feeling both your releases drip to the tile flooring.
⠀⠀ “daddy? sylus?” you cried out, trying to turn around to reach for your stepdad as you started to cry once more, scared of being left behind again. “please daddy, don’t leave me again, please, I’ll be good I promise.” you kept on rumbling.
⠀⠀ “it’s okay, babydoll, I’m here. I’m here.” he reassured you, pulling out as his arms wrapped your body and brought you against his chest to hug you, his hands caressing your hair as he kissed your forehead, carrying you bridal style towards your bedroom after a little while.
he would change your clothes into new and fresh ones, clean up the mess he made while he pampered kisses all over your face, tuck you both in your bed while he caressed your long hair, staring at your angel like face while clarity hit him.
he didn’t care about the consequences he had to face in the morning. the pandora box was already open, he had a taste of you and he couldn’t let you go, not now.
sylus thought of all the ways he could escape, run away with you. he would leave your mom behind if it meant another night next to you, sleeping in his chest as you were doing now.
you were his little girl, you trusted him.
and he was going to take care of you as good daddies do.


a/n: I love daddy sylus guys u don’t understand (◞‸◟;)
— masterlist.
#lads headcanons#lads smut#love and deepspace smut#lads x reader#love and deepspace fic#lads sylus smut#sylus smut#sylus x reader#sylus headcanons#ldns sylus#love and deepspace sylus smut#sylus fluff#sylus imagine#sylus x mc
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"Because the idea – what happens is, if you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us. Any country – like, we had tariffs – the president put tariffs on China, right, in 2018. And then what China started doing is, they started going through other countries to America… They just built through other countries through America… And so the president knows that. He's tired of it. And he's going to fix that. So, basically, he said, look, I can't let any part of the world be a place where China or other countries can ship through them."
I want to post this to highlight what's behind 99% of the leftist freak outs over things the right does. They start from a false premise, in this case that Trump is irrationally putting tariffs on uninhabited islands, and go from there without ever looking into any reason or explanation that might alter that premise's validity. This is why you should never trust anything the media says. I've seen things like this happen on an almost weekly basis since Trump got elected the first time. Whenever the media comes out with a big Trump talking point, just wait, at most, a week and you'll end up getting the real story from outside the mainstream news.
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Low-tariff countries get used as intermediaries until they get hit with tariffs on the next round, eventually through arbitrage all nations will be equally tariffed by America
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SITUATION In an alternate history where time travel has been invented, a cabal of time-traveling traders and politicians are engaged in intertemporal arbitrage, using their future knowledge to corner markets throughout history. They've recently set their sights on the oyster trade of 19th century New York City, hoping to use their advanced refrigeration tech and insider info to make a killing. But their actions are destabilizing the timeline and threatening to erase key historical figures from existence. The party must unravel this temporal trade network and confront the mysterious mastermind behind it all before irreparable damage is done to the space-time continuum.
SETTING The adventure spans multiple eras, but key events occur in:
New York City, 1842 - The booming oyster trade has made the city the oyster capital of the world. Oyster cellars line Canal Street, shucking a staggering 700 million oysters a year. The docks bustle with oystermen.
The Far Future Oyster Vaults of Neo-Nassau, 2891 AD - Towering refrigerated vaults hold trillions of perfectly preserved bivalves. Chrono-barges zip through pneumatic tubes overhead. Neon-lit canals crisscross the city.
The Temporal Trade Hub, Outside Time - A mind-bending nexus where past, present and future intersect. Causality-defying architecture shifts like a kaleidoscope. Traders haggle over price fluctuations yet to occur.
CAST
Crassus Rockefeller III - Robber baron, mastermind behind the Oyster Futures Syndicate. Seeks to monopolize history's oyster supply. Wields a Causality Anchor that stabilizes him in spacetime.
Vivian "Viv" Wellfleet - Rogue chrono-trader with a heart of gold. Wants to stop Crassus and restore the timeline. Former collegiate oyster shucking champion.
Shucker Jim - Grizzled 19th century oysterman. Secretly an undercover Chronoguard agent. Rocket harpoon prosthetic arm. Loyal but haunted by a tragic past.
The Muculent Sibyl - Prophetic oyster-human hybrid from an alternate timeline where oysters evolved sapience. Whispers maddening future-truths. Chained in Crassus' vault.
Ostreida, the Oyster Goddess - Eldritch bivalve deity worshipped by a future oyster-cult. Seeks to flood Earth's history, returning it to a primordial sea.
The Chronoguard - Temporal law enforcement. Hardened time-cops in chromed exo-suits. Seek to stop illegal intertemporal trade by any means necessary.
The Oystermen's Union - Tough New York oyster workers, their livelihoods threatened by future sabotage. Burly, bearded, and brawny. Know the oyster beds like the back of their callused hands.
INITIAL CONDITIONS The 19th century oyster trade is booming, but prices have started fluctuating wildly and oyster shortages loom due to temporal meddling. Anachronistic tech has been found in oyster beds. Strange future-cultists lurk in oyster cellars, preaching the coming of an Oyster God. The Chronoguard has dispatched agents to 1842 to investigate, but Crassus' syndicate has a head start and deep pockets. The timeline is already fraying at the edges - historic oyster-lovers like Queen Victoria are fading from existence. The players arrive in old New York to find a temporal powder keg ready to blow.
GOALS
Crassus Rockefeller III - Corner the oyster market across all of history, making trillions. Ascend to economic godhood.
Vivian "Viv" Wellfleet - Stop Crassus, restore the original timeline, save the future. Maybe shuck some oysters along the way.
Shucker Jim - Complete his mission, avenge his partner, keep the space-time continuum safe from rogue traders and their greed.
The Muculent Sibyl - Escape her imprisonment, reveal cosmic truths, bring about the Oyster Singularity her visions foretell.
Ostreida, the Oyster Goddess - Flood Earth's history, make the world a oyster's paradise. Destroy upstart humanity.
The Chronoguard - Arrest Crassus and his cronies, stop the temporal trade in its tracks, preserve the integrity of the timeline.
The Oystermen's Union - Protect their way of life, drive out strange future interlopers, keep oyster prices stable and bellies full.
TOOLS/RESOURCES
Crassus Rockefeller III - Vast wealth, future tech, Causality Anchor, bribed officials across eras, oyster futures contracts.
Vivian "Viv" Wellfleet - Heirloom chrono-compass, knack for disguise, knowledge of oyster lore, her trusty quantum-shucking knife.
Shucker Jim - Rocket harpoon arm, Chronoguard combat training, 19th century street smarts, loyal oystermen contacts.
The Muculent Sibyl - Precognition, psychic whispers, eldritch oyster magic, fanatical mollusk-hybrid cultists.
Ostreida, the Oyster Goddess - Divine bivalve powers, oyster monster hordes, tidal magic, beachhead temples across history.
The Chronoguard - Jurisdiction across spacetime, stun-harpoons, chrono-cuffs, hardened exo-suits, orbital trawler-ships.
The Oystermen's Union - Strength in numbers, intricate knowledge of oyster beds, sturdy oyster boats, shucking solidarity.
SAMPLE SOLUTIONS
Infiltrate Crassus' syndicate posing as fellow traders, destabilize his operations from within while searching for evidence of his crimes. Coordinate with Chronoguard to arrest him in a dramatic sting.
Rally the Oystermen's Union to sabotage future tech and resist the Syndicate's strong-arm tactics. Stage a general strike to force the city to crack down on rogue traders.
Beat Crassus at his own game by cornering the oyster market first. Flood the market with your own supply via time travel, tanking prices and ruining his monopoly.
Cut a deal with Ostreida, brokering a compromise where oysters and humans can coexist across history. Use her power to threaten Crassus into surrendering.
Rescue the Muculent Sibyl and convince her to aid you with her prescient visions. Navigate the fluctuating timeways to always stay one step ahead of Crassus and his goons.
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It sounds like you likely side against the protesters in New Caledonia who were apparently protesting about France giving people who moved there recently the right to vote in local elections. (i.e. the native minority doesn't want the colonizers to have the right to vote)
I probably would! If you live somewhere, and pay taxes there, and use the public services and utilities there, you should have full political rights. That policy seems like an overcorrection for historical injustice--e.g., the French not granting Muslims voting rights in North Africa.
And there are other awkward questions you could pose for my open-borders-and-free-citizenship stance--like the fact that the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy was driven in part by immigrants of American background who felt excluded from representation (but who in turn wanted to exclude Asian immigrants from representation), or how small countries that suddenly find themselves in an advantageous economic position often find their demographics rapidly changing (Qatar, Hawaii in the early 20th century).
But the alternative--the whole hog of blood-and-soil nationalism, with a bit of anti-colonial lipstick--seems pretty bad to me. People move around. Places change. Cultures change. We can and should do everything in our power to ensure those changes and that movement is the result of, like, free individual choice, and not war or violent seizure of land or systems of brutal economic exploitation. And sometimes despite those changes, the things people love about their traditional cultures can persist--especially now, in a world that pays much more attention to the rights of (for example) minority language speakers than it used to.
But the desire for the world to remain culturally, linguistically, and economically static is basically reactionary. I mean really, it's the aesthetic heart of reaction. It's also an absurdity. Even perfectly isolated societies can change in dramatic ways. And, of course, very often "tradition" is a cudgel simply wielded in the service of entrenching a different kind of elite power: I am no more supportive of the Hawaiian monarchy, one born of bloody conquest by an imperialistic dynasty, than I am of the British; the British one just happened to be more historically successful, but the underlying principles are the same. Cf. also the way land tenure works in American Samoa, a system that is billed as keeping land in native hands--which it does, by institutionalizing the colonial system of blood quantum and being explicitly racist, and simply serving to prop up a different set of elites (in this case, traditional tribal elites rather than colonial ones).
I think the only way you can really escape the trap of reaction and nationalism is to refuse to play the game in the first place--to put the primacy of your bond to your fellow human beings, regardless of culture or race or origin, and thus inherent political equality (and solidarity) above other considerations. Tribalism, pillarization, byzantine ethnicity-based power-sharing arrangements, special rules for land tenure or voting rights--all these have a nasty way of turning into new forms of exploitation, of someone figuring out how to do the economic and political arbitrage at someone else's expense. The central insight of 1789 was correct here: the only solution is the universal equality of all human beings. The trick is to carry that insight through to its logical conclusion.
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Can you expand on what you mean by "the posession of stores of(nominal) purchasing power is Essentially The Same as having productive capital" from this post?
Oh hey sorry! I completely missed this! So first I have to foreground that I am taking the credit theory of money as true. "Credit" and "money" in our contemporary systems are the same thing, both are purchasing power. A big point of contention among not just Marxist economists but various other heterodox economists is the role of fictive capital in the economy.
When I stress that the US economy (and imperial core economies in general) have large stores of "nominal" purchasing power, I'm stressing that much of the supposed value that exists in that economy exists on balance sheets as a result of debt-leveraged arbitrage on speculative assets inflating their value, but real attempts to realize the entirety of it (as in attempting to use it all to purchase non-speculative goods) is basically impossible (instead what you'd get is an economic crisis that reverts the value of those speculative assets back to a ground state, closer to their use-value).
As a result, for one thing, however much money the US and its financial institutions supposedly have, they can only ever take advantage of some fraction of it, and moreover if they attempted to buy all of what they needed for, say, a total war economy all at once, the prices themselves would inflate for the inputs into that economy and the lack of prior investment in capital resources (in this case complex and specialized machinery) and human resources would mean that, however much money you have, it can't materialize the things the state needs to achieve its imperial goals
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Dragons hoard a lot of coins, but do they attribute the same relative value between different types of coins? Since they aren't using the coins to purchase anything, they have no reason to value them with the same exchange rate as society at large. What I'm saying is, there is potentially a lot of profit to be made in dragon arbitrage.
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"all I'll say" lol I'm full of shit y'all know I never shut up. I do actually want to talk about how I use chatGPT, I just don't wanna field tiresome arguments about souls and the inherent virtue of toil or whatever.
And no, I'm not using it to write for me. I'm with everyone on the "if no one cared enough to write it then I don't care to read it" thing. But if you understand its limitations and know how to prompt it, it really is an incredible tool for research.
Most recently I had it collate information so I could create history-based currency systems in the setting of Tamriel. With only books and search engines at my disposal, this might have taken me WEEKS. A keyword based search will bring up anything containing a phrase, e.g. "bullion currency," and those sources might not actually answer my questions.
Plus, when I ran into an economic concept I didn't understand, I could ask it to define the terms and then rephrase it if I wasn't grasping the definition.
And lastly I can make it provide sources. I use these for further reading (again saving hours of searching and avoiding dead ends) and also to verify the info it gives me. Yes, ChatGPT is sometimes wrong, but that was also always true of the shit you found on Google.
I did all this over the course of a day so I could find some historical grounds for Tanis doing stupid sleazy arbitrage schemes in Skyrim. I'm having fun! Chatgpt is fucking fun!! Just try it you won't go to hell because hell isn't real!!!!
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Gonna go on a classic rant here, as the "Uber Shuttle....do you mean a BUS LOL" complaint is making the rounds:

This objection - "why are you just re-inventing buses" has always been very silly because buses are not exclusive services, they aren't like a train where building two "competitive" tracks is a huge waste of money. They can just go on the road like a car! That is the whole point of roads. And US public buses...pretty universally suck (on average, varies per city ofc). We have poor stop infrastructure, incredibly late arrival times, unoptimized routing, and in particular a stubborn refusal to enforce safety and decorum standards, which means riding the bus is very often just a not fun ordeal. I still do it, it is of course normally fine, but if I was richer and could easily pay 3x the going rate for a good bus I would do that a lot. Certainly for trips to the airport or farther distances.
Buses don't have any generalized reason to be shielded from competition, you can just run multiple buses. Its generally better to run more, that means less cars! There are some kinks about traffic flow and stop points, but on average private buses are great. They don't often exist in the US (a good number do ofc, the US is vast) because they have been made either dejure or defacto illegal in many places- though as expected shadow networks exist, which exactly plug the demand gaps that public transit is failing to fill. Private buses are good.
Uber is likely going to be playing the same regulatory arbitrage that its always been with taxis, trying to use tech to help classify itself outside the regulatory system that currently bans private buses - though idk maybe they have worked out deals with the cities its doing its pilot in, not relevant to my point. You wanna complain about how they treat drivers or regulations or w/e, totally fine (or at least a separate topic). But a kneejerk "buses are public" is an ignorance-showing moment, they both aren't in many places and shouldn't be in more.
(pour this one out for @voxette-vk, long lost tumblrite who I know would stan the fuck out of private buses back in the day)
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Hatton Garden - Wikipedia
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Prime’s enshittified advertising

Prime's gonna add more ads. They brought in ads in January, and people didn't cancel their Prime subscriptions, so Amazon figures that they can make Prime even worse and make more money:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/amazon-prime-video-is-getting-more-ads-next-year/
The cruelty isn't the point. Money is the point. Every ad that Amazon shows you shifts value away from you – your time, your attention – to the company's shareholders.
That's the crux of enshittification. Companies don't enshittify – making their once-useful products monotonically worse – because it amuses them to erode the quality of their offerings. They enshittify them because their products are zero-sum: the things that make them valuable to you (watching videos without ads) make things less valuable to them (because they can't monetize your attention).
This isn't new. The internet has always been dominated by intermediaries – platforms – because there are lots more people who want to use the internet than are capable of building the internet. There's more people who want to write blogs than can make a blogging app. There's more people who want to play and listen to music than can host a music streaming service. There's more people who want to write and read ebooks than want to operate an ebook store or sell an ebooks reader.
Despite all the early internet rhetoric about the glories of disintermediation, intermediaries are good, actually:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/direct-the-problem-of-middlemen/
The problem isn't with intermediaries per se. The problem arises when intermediaries grow so powerful that they usurp the relationship between the parties they connect. The problem with Uber isn't the use of mobile phones to tell taxis that you're standing on a street somewhere and would like a cab, please. The problem is rampant worker misclassification, regulatory arbitrage, starvation wages, and price-gouging:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible
There's no problem with publishers, distributors, retailers, printers, and all the other parts of the bookselling ecosystem. While there are a few, rare authors who are capable of performing all of these functions – basically gnawing their books out of whole logs with their teeth – most writers can't, and even the ones who can, don't want to:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation
When early internet boosters spoke of disintermediation, what they mostly meant was that it would be harder for intermediaries to capture those relationships – between sellers and buyers, creators and audiences, workers and customers. As Rebecca Giblin and I wrote in our 2022 book Chokepoint Capitalism, intermediaries in every sector rely on chokepoints, narrows where they can erect tollbooths:
https://chokepointcapitalism.com/
When chokepoints exist, they multiply up and down the supply chain. In the golden age of physical, recorded music, you had several chokepoints that reinforced one another. Limited radio airwaves gave radio stations power over record labels, who had to secretly, illegally bid for prime airspace ("payola"). Retail consolidation – the growth of big record chains – drove consolidation in the distributors who sold to the chains, and the more concentrated distributors became, the more they could squeeze retailers, which drove even more consolidation in record stores. The bigger a label was, the more power it had to shove back against the muscle of the stores and the distributors (and the pressing plants, etc). Consolidation in labels also drove consolidation in talent agencies, whose large client rosters gave them power to resist the squeeze from the labels. Consolidation in venues drives consolidation in ticketing and promotion – and vice-versa.
But there's two parties to this supply chain who can't consolidate: musicians and their fans. With limits on "sectoral bargaining" (where unions can represent workers against all the companies in a sector), musicians' unions were limited in their power against key parts of the supply chain, so the creative workers who made the music were easy pickings for labels, talent reps, promoters, ticketers, venues, retailers, etc. Music fans are diffused and dispersed, and organized fan clubs were usually run by the labels, who weren't about to allow those clubs to be used against the labels.
This is a perfect case-study in the problems of powerful intermediaries, who move from facilitator to parasite, paying workers less while degrading their products, and then charge customers more for those enshittified products.
The excitement about "disintermediation" wasn't so much about eliminating intermediaries as it was about disciplining them. If there were lots of ways to market a product or service, sell it, collect payment for it, and deliver it, then the natural inclination of intermediaries to turn predator would be curbed by the difficulty of corralling their prey into chokepoints.
Now that we're a quarter century on from the Napster Wars, we can see how that worked out. Decades of failure to enforce antitrust law allowed a few companies to effectively capture the internet, buying out rivals who were willing to sell, and bankrupting those who wouldn't with illegal tactics like predatory pricing (think of Uber losing $31 billion by subsidizing $0.41 out of every dollar they charged for taxi rides for more than a decade).
The market power that platforms gained through consolidation translated into political power. When a few companies dominate a sector, they're able to come to agreement on common strategies for dealing with their regulators, and they've got plenty of excess profits to spend on those strategies. First and foremost, platforms used their power to get more power, lobbying for even less antitrust enforcement. Additionally, platforms mobilized gigantic sums to secure the right to screw customers (for example, by making binding arbitration clauses in terms of service enforceable) and workers (think of the $225m Uber and Lyft spent on California's Prop 22, which formalized their worker misclassification swindle).
So big platforms were able to insulate themselves from the risk of competition ("five giant websites, filled with screenshots of the other four" – Tom Eastman), and from regulation. They were also able to expand and mobilize IP law to prevent anyone from breaking their chokepoints or undoing the abuses that these enabled. This is a good place to get specific about how Prime Video works.
There's two ways to get Prime videos: over an app, or in your browser. Both of these streams are encrypted, and that's really important here, because of a law – Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act – which makes it really illegal to break this kind of encryption (commonly called "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM"). Practically speaking, that means that if a company encrypts its videos, no one is allowed to do anything to those videos, even things that are legal, without the company's permission, because doing all those legal things requires breaking the DRM, and breaking the DRM is a felony (five years in prison, $500k fine, for a first offense).
Copyright law actually gives subscribers to services like Prime a lot of rights, and it empowers businesses that offer tools to exercise those rights. Back in 1976, Sony rolled out the Betamax, the first major home video recorder. After an eight-year court battle, the Supreme Court weighed in on VCRs and ruled that it was legal for all of us to record videos at home, both to watch them later, and to build a library of our favorite shows. They also ruled that it was legal for Sony – and by that time, every other electronics company – to make VHS systems, even if those systems could be used in ways that violated copyright because they were "capable of sustaining a substantial non-infringing use" (letting you tape shows off your TV).
Now, this was more than a decade before the DMCA – and its prohibition on breaking DRM – passed, but even after the DMCA came into effect, there was a lot of media that didn't have DRM, so a new generation of tech companies were able to make tools that were "capable of sustaining a substantial non-infringing use" and that didn't have to break any DRM to do it.
Think of the Ipod and Itunes, which, together, were sold as a way to rip CDs (which weren't encrypted), and play them back from both your desktop computer and a wildly successful pocket-sized portable device. Itunes even let you stream from one computer to another. The record industry hated this, but they couldn't do anything about it, thanks to the Supreme Court's Betamax ruling.
Indeed, they eventually swallowed their bile and started selling their products through the Itunes Music Store. These tracks had DRM and were thus permanently locked to Apple's ecosystem, and Apple immediately used that power to squeeze the labels, who decided they didn't like DRM after all, and licensed all those same tracks to Amazon's DRM-free MP3 store, whose slogan was "DRM: Don't Restrict Me":
https://memex.craphound.com/2008/02/01/amazons-anti-drm-tee/
Apple played a funny double role here. In marketing Itunes/Ipods ("Rip, Mix, Burn"), they were the world's biggest cheerleaders for all the things you were allowed to do with copyrighted works, even when the copyright holder objected. But with the Itunes Music Store and its mandatory DRM, the company was also one of the world's biggest cheerleaders for wrapping copyrighted works in a thin skin of IP that would allow copyright holders to shut down products like the Ipod and Itunes.
Microsoft, predictably enough, focused on the "lock everything to our platform" strategy. Then-CEO Steve Ballmer went on record calling every Ipod owner a "thief" and arguing that every record company should wrap music in Microsoft's Zune DRM, which would allow them to restrict anything they didn't like, even if copyright allowed it (and would also give Microsoft the same abusive leverage over labels that they famously exercised over Windows software companies):
https://web.archive.org/web/20050113051129/http://management.silicon.com/itpro/0,39024675,39124642,00.htm
In the end, Amazon's approach won. Apple dropped DRM, and Microsoft retired the Zune and shut down its DRM servers, screwing anyone who'd ever bought a Zune track by rendering that music permanently unplayable.
Around the same time as all this was going on, another company was making history by making uses of copyrighted works that the law allowed, but which the copyright holders hated. That company was Tivo, who products did for personal video recorders (PVRs) what Apple's Ipod did for digital portable music players. With a Tivo, you could record any show over cable (which was too expensive and complicated to encrypt) and terrestrial broadcast (which is illegal to encrypt, since those are the public's airwaves, on loan to the TV stations).
That meant that you could record any show, and keep it forever. What's more, you could very easily skip through ads (and rival players quickly emerged that did automatic ad-skipping). All of this was legal, but of course the cable companies and broadcasters hated it. Like Ballmer, TV execs called Tivo owners "thieves."
But Tivo didn't usher in the ad-supported TV apocalypse that furious, spittle-flecked industry reps insisted it would. Rather, it disciplined the TV and cable operators. Tivo owners actually sought out ads that were funny and well-made enough to go viral. Meanwhile, every time the industry decided to increase the amount of advertising in a show, they also increased the likelihood that their viewers would seek out a Tivo, or worse, one of those auto-ad-skipping PVRs.
Given all the stink that TV execs raised over PVRs, you'd think that these represented a novel threat. But in fact, the TV industry's appetite for ads had been disciplined by viewers' access to new technology since 1956, when the first TV remotes appeared on the market (executives declared that anyone who changed the channel during an ad-break was a thief). Then came the mute button. Then the wireless remote. Meanwhile, a common VCR use-case – raised in the Supreme Court case – was fast-forwarding ads.
At each stage, TV adapted. Ads in TV shows represented a kind of offer: "Will you watch this many of these ads in return for a free TV show?" And the remote, the mute button, the wireless remote, the VCR, the PVR, and the ad-skipping PVR all represented a counter-offer. As economists would put it, the ability of viewers to make these counteroffers "shifted the equilibrium." If viewers had no defensive technology, they might tolerate more ads, but once they were able to enforce their preferences with technology, the industry couldn't enshittify its product to the liminal cusp of "so many ads that the viewer is right on the brink of turning off the TV (but not quite)."
This is the same equilibrium-shifting dynamic that we see on the open web, where more than 50% of users have installed an ad-blocker. The industry says, "Will you allow this many 'sign up to our mailing list' interrupters, pop ups, pop unders, autoplaying videos and other stuff that users hate but shareholders benefit from" and the ad-blocker makes a counteroffer: "How about 'nah?'":
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah
TV remotes, PVRs and ad-blockers are all examples of "adversarial interoperability" – a new product that plugs into an existing one, extending or modifying its functions without permission from (or even over the objections of) the original manufacturer:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability
Adversarial interop creates a powerful disciplining force on platform owners. Once a user grows so frustrated with a product's enshittification that they research, seek out, acquire and learn to use an adversarial interop tool, it's really game over. The printer owner who figures out where to get third-party ink is gone forever. Every time a company like HP raises its prices, they have to account for the number of customers who will finally figure out how to use generic ink and never, ever send another cent to HP.
This is where DMCA 1201 comes into play. Once a product is skinned with DRM, its manufacturers gain the right to prevent you from doing legal things, and can use the public's courts and law-enforcement apparatus to punish you for trying. Take HP: as soon as they started adding DRM to their cartridges, they gained the legal power to shut down companies that cloned, refilled or remanufactured their cartridges, and started raising the price of ink – which today sits at more than $10,000/gallon:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches
Using third party ink in your printer isn't illegal (it's your printer, right?). But making third party ink for your printer becomes illegal once you have to break DRM to do so, and so HP gets to transform tinted water into literally the most expensive fluid on Earth. The ink you use to print your kid's homework costs more than vintage Veuve Cliquot or sperm from a Kentucky Derby-winning thoroughbred.
Adversarial interoperability is a powerful tool for shifting the equilibrium between producers, intermediaries and buyers. DRM is an even more powerful way of wrenching that equilibrium back towards the intermediary, reducing the share that buyers and sellers are able to eke out of the transaction.
Prime Video, of course, is delivered via an app, which means it has DRM. That means that subscribers don't get to exercise the rights afforded to them by copyright – only the rights that Amazon permits them to have. There's no Tivo for Prime, because it would have to break the DRM to record the shows you stream from Prime. That allows Prime to pull all kinds of shady shit. For example, every year around this time, Amazon pulls popular Christmas movies from its free-to-watch tier and moves them into pay-per-view, only restoring them in the spring:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vudu/comments/1bpzanx/looks_like_amazon_removed_the_free_titles_from/
And of course, Prime sticks ads in its videos. You can't skip these ads – not because it's technically challenging to make a 30-second advance button for a video stream, and doing so wouldn't violate anyone's copyright – but because Amazon doesn't permit you to do so, and the fact that the video is wrapped in DRM makes it a felony to even try.
This means that Amazon gets to seek a different equilibrium than TV companies have had to accept since 1956 and the invention of the TV remote. Amazon doesn't have to limit the quantity, volume, and invasiveness of its ads to "less the amount that would drive our subscribers to install and use an ad-skipping plugin." Instead, they can shoot for the much more lucrative equilibrium of "so obnoxious that the viewer is almost ready to cancel their subscription (but not quite)."
That's pretty much exactly how Kelly Day, the Amazon exec in charge of Prime Video, put it to the Financial Times: they're increasing the number of ads because "we haven’t really seen a groundswell of people churning out or cancelling":
https://www.ft.com/content/f8112991-820c-4e09-bcf4-23b5e0f190a5
At this point, attentive readers might be asking themselves, "Doesn't Amazon have to worry about Prime viewers who watch in their browsers?" After all browsers are built on open standards, and anyone can make one, so there should be browsers that can auto-skip Prime ads, right?
Wrong, alas. Back in 2017, the W3C – the organization that makes the most important browser standards – caved to pressure from the entertainment industry and the largest browser companies and created "Encrypted Media Extensions" (EME), a "standard" for video DRM that blocks all adversarial interoperability:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership
This had the almost immediate effect of making it impossible to create an independent browser without licensing proprietary tech from Google – now a convicted monopolist! – who won't give you a license if you implement recording, ad-skipping, or any other legal (but dispreferred) feature:
https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/
This means that for Amazon, there's no way to shift value away from the platform to you. The company has locked you in, and has locked out anyone who might offer you a better deal. Companies that know you are technologically defenseless are endlessly inventive in finding ways to make things worse for you to make things better for them. Take Youtube, another DRM-video-serving platform that has jacked up the number of ads you have to sit through in order to watch a video – even as they slash payments to performers. They've got a new move: they're gonna start showing you ads while your video is paused:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/09/20/youtube-pause-ads-rollout/75306204007/
That is the kind of fuckery you only come up with when your victory condition is "a service that's almost so bad our customers quit (but not quite)."
In Amazon's case, the math is even worse. After all, Youtube may have near-total market dominance over a certain segment of the video market, but Prime Video is bundled with Prime Delivery, which the vast majority of US households subscribe to. You have to give up a lot to cancel your Prime subscription – especially since Amazon's predatory pricing devastated the rest of the retail sector:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola
Amazon's founding principle was "customer obsession." Ex-Amazoners tell me that this was more than an empty platitude: arguments over product design were won or lost based on whether they could satisfy the "customer obsession" litmus test. Now, everyone falls short of their ideals, but sticking to your ideals isn't merely a matter of internal discipline, of willpower. Living up to your ideals is a matter of external discipline, too. When Amazon no longer had to contend with competitors or regulators, when it was able to use DRM to control its customers and use the law to prevent them from using its products in legal ways, it lost those external sources of discipline.
Amazon suppliers have long complained of the company's high-handed treatment of the vendors who supplied it with goods. Its workers have complained bitterly and loudly about the dangerous and oppressive conditions in its warehouses and delivery vans. But Amazon's customers have consistently given Amazon high marks on quality and trustworthiness.
The reason Amazon treated its workers and suppliers badly and its customers well wasn't that it liked customers and hated workers and suppliers. Amazon was engaged in a cold-blooded calculus: it understood that treating customers well would give it control over those customers, and that this would translate market power to retain suppliers even as it ripped them off and screwed them over.
But now, Amazon has clearly concluded that it no longer needs to keep customers happy in order to retain them. Instead, it's shooting for "keeping customers so angry that they're almost ready to take their business elsewhere (but not quite)." You see this in the steady decline of Amazon product search, which preferences the products that pay the biggest bribes for search placement over the best matches:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens
And you see it in the steady enshittification of Prime Video. Amazon's character never changed. The company always had a predatory side. But now that monopoly and IP law have insulated it from consequences for its actions, there's no longer any reason to keep the predator in check.
Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/03/mother-may-i/#minmax
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Capital is unsafe in Europe as the war drums beat louder by the day. Looming tariffs have many questioning if they will spread to precious metals and smart money has selected the USA as its safe haven. Moreover, gold is selling at a premium in the US leading to an uptick in arbitrage. Gold has been on the rise since the outbreak of the Ukrainian war and we’ve seen a 10% rise in the past year alone. Now, the Bank of England is working quickly to move a large portion of its gold reserves from London to New York.
Gold prices have been about $20 lower per troy oz in London compared to New York. J.P. Morgan, for example, moved $4 billion in gold reserves from London to NYC this February. The central bank is especially eager to send its reserves off to America. London’s largest gold reserve currently holds 310 tonnes of gold or 420,000 gold bars. England only owns 5.4% of its gold holdings with major banking institutions and foreign central banks accounting for the bulk.
The London Bullion Market Associated stated that 150 tonnes of gold were shipped out to the Big Apple in January alone, with 100 tonnes of that coming directly from the Bank of England’s massive vaults. Transporting tangible assets is no easy feat, even for a central bank. The Bank of England stockpiles massive gold bars weighing 400 troy oz each. New York’s gold exchange only accepts smaller ingots of 100 oz, so the bullion must be sent to Swiss refiners to be melted and recast.
There is a rush to get gold out amid war and geopolitical tensions. Swiss exports of gold to the US reached a 13-year high this January and has no signs of slowing. The risk of war in Europe is very real and that can take gold prices up dramatically. Banks are often severely restricted during times of war and it certainly would not be as simple to move precious metals across the Atlantic.
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Canadian indigenous housing construction discourse is circulating on Twitter again. Indigenous groups are using their indigenous land use rights over territory in Canadian cities to build large housing developments to rent out to Canadians.

This behavior by indigenous groups in Canada is unironically based, in both the right-wing and the left-wing sense.
It's also a sensible and pragmatic decision. They saw a great business opportunity that will provide a lot of value for society (it's even environmentally friendly, compared to sprawl), and they took it.
Great for them. We'll see how the implementation rolls out in practice, but so far, solid concept.
But why is Canadian land use policy so awful that an arbitrage opportunity the size of a small city existed to begin with?
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