#cases de marketing

[casesdemarketing]

[nerdacious]

🔔 Chapter 11 is posted!

We have: Mayhem! Acrobatics! Extortion! Harry and Jean spend some quality time together.

[talentos]

On Courage and Marketing and Advertising

[batboyblog]

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2024

Happy 2024 all! its also Public Domain Day! a magical holiday here in America where things enter the public domain. Works published in the year 1928 (or 95 years ago!) have entered the public domain, which means they belong to us, all of us, the public!

Mickey's Back!

Yes! I'm sure you've heard, but Mickey Mouse (and Minnie Mouse too) is entering the Public Domain today. This has been news for a few years and indeed Disney's lobbying in the late 1990s is why our copy right term is SO long. So what exactly is now public domain?

Most people know about Mickey's first appearance Steamboat Willie, but a second short film, Plane Crazy was also released in 1928 so will also be public domain. So what's public? well these two films first of all, you're allowed to play them, upload them to YouTube or whatever without paying Disney. In theory you'll be allowed to cut and sample them, have them playing in the background of your movie etc. Likewise in theory the image of Mickey and Minnie as they appear (thats important) in these films will be free to use as well as Mickey's character as he appears in these works will be free to use. Now Mickey's later and more famous appearance

will still be protected. Famously the Conan Doyle Estate claimed that Sherlock Holmes couldn't be nice, smile, or not hate women in works because they still held the copyright on the short stories where he first did those things even though 90% of Sherlock Holmes stories were public domain. It's very likely Disney will assert similar claims over Mickey, claiming much of his personality first appeared in works still copyrighted.

Finally there's copyright vs trademark. Copyright is total ownership of a piece of media and all the ideas that appear in it, copyright has a limited set term and expires. Trademark is more limited and only applies to things used to market and sell a product. You can have a Coke branded vending machine in your movie if you want, but it couldn't appear anywhere in the trailer for your movie as thats you marketing your movie.

Where trademark ends and copyright begins and how trademarked something in the public domain is allowed to be are all unsettled areas of law and clearly Disney in the last few years as been aggressively pushing its trademark not just to Mickey in general but Steamboat Willie Mickey in particular

Ultimately the legal rights and wrongs of this might not matter so much since few people have the money and legal resources of the Walt Disney corporation so they might manage to maintain a de facto copyright on Mickey through legal intimidation, but maybe not?

And Tigger Too!

All the talk about Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie has sadly overshadowed other MAJOR things entering the public domain today. Most people are aware Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, but they might not realize his beloved friend Tigger didn't. Thats because Tigger didn't appear till A. A. Milne's second (and last) book of Pooh short stories, The House at Pooh Corner in 1928.

Much like Mickey Mouse only what appears in The House at Pooh Corner is public domain so the orange bouncy boy from the 1960s Disney cartoon is still on lock down. But the A. A. Milne original as illustrated by E. H. Shepard is free for you to use in fiction or art. His friend Winnie the Pooh has made a number of appearances since being freed, most notably in a horror movie, but also a Mint Mobile commercial so maybe Tigger too will have a lot of luck in the public domain.

Other works:

Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up

Peter Pan is a strange case, even though the play was first mounted in 1904, and the novelization (Peter and Wendy) was published in 1911, The script for the play was not published till 1928 (confusing!) meaning while the novel as been public domain for years the play (which came first) hasn't been, but now it is and people are welcome to mount productions of it.

Millions of Cats

The oldest picture book still in print, did you own a copy growing up? (I did)

Lady Chatterley's Lover

The iconic porn novel that was at the center of a number of groundbreaking obscenity cases in the 1960s and helped establish your right to free speech.

All Quiet on the Western Front and The Threepenny Opera in their original German (but you can translate them if you want), The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, and Orlando by Virginia Woolf will also be joining us in the public domain along with any and all plays, novels, and books published in 1928

for Films we have The Man Who Laughs who's iconic image inspired the Joker

Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, Buster Keaton's The Cameraman, Should Married Men Go Home? the first Laurel and Hardy movie, Lights of New York the first "all talking" movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Wind, as well as The Last Command and Street Angel the first films to win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively will all be entering public domain

For Musical Compositions (more on that in a moment) we've got

Mack the Knife by Bertolt Brecht, Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love) by Cole Porter, Sonny Boy by George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson, Empty Bed Blues by J. C. Johnson, and Makin’ Whoopee! by Gus Khan are some of the notables but any piece of music published in 1928 is covered

Any art work published in 1928, which might include works by Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alexej von Jawlensky, Edward Hopper, and André Kertész will enter the public domain, we are sure those that M. C. Escher's Tower of Babel will be in the public domain

Swan Song, Public Domain and recorded music

While most things are covered by the Copyright Act of 1976 as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, none of the copyright acts covered recordings you see when American copyright law was first written recordings did not exist and so through its many amendings no one fixed this problem, movies were treated like plays and artwork, but recorded sound wasn't covered by any federal law. So all sound recordings from before 1972 were governed by a confusing mess of state level laws making it basically impossible to say what was public and what was under copyright. In 2017 Congress managed to do something right and passed the Music Modernization Act. Under the act all recordings from 1922 and before would enter the public domain in 2022. After taking a break for 2023, all sound recordings made in 1923 have entered the public domain today on January 1st 2024, these include.

Charleston by James P. Johnson

Yes! We Have No Bananas (recorded by a lot artists that year)

Who’s Sorry Now by Lewis James

Down Hearted Blues by Bessie Smith

Lawdy, Lawdy Blues by Ida Cox

Southern Blues and Moonshine Blues by Ma Rainey

That American Boy of Mine and Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra

Dipper Mouth Blues and Froggie More by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong

Bambalina by Ray Miller Orchestra

Swingin’ Down the Lane by Isham Jones Orchestra

Enjoy your public domain works!

[gothhabiba]

The economy of Israel has benefited from the changes it has created within the economy of the Gaza Strip. The availability of a large pool of unskilled and semi-skilled workers has provided Israel with a reserve of labor that it can utilize or marginalize without great risk to its own economy. In periods of economic prosperity, for example, the availability of large resources of labor has had a stabilizing effect on wages inside Israel and in periods of recession has acted as a repository for surplus labor. Given the state's control over the economy of the occupied territories, wages paid to workers from these areas do not drain Israel's economic reserves since the consumption expenditure of Palestinian labor is directly tied into the Israeli economy.

The resulting state of dependency of the Palestinian labor market on the economy of Israel renders the former vulnerable to the political, social, and economic exigencies of the latter.

– 1987. Sara Roy, "The Gaza Strip: A Case of Economic De-Development." Journal of Palestine Studies 17.1, pp. 56-88.

[plush-rabbit]

Working for Mammon

A/N: I can't get this dumb spider clown out of my head oh my gosh. Also you're a singer here. Jack of all trades ig. enjoy!!

Fizzarolli was his money maker- compared to the other business and people Mammon invested in, they were nothing compared to the imp. The only one who ever came close to the clown’s revenue was you. You were a close second. There were moments where your sales would rival Fizzarolli’s and you were the starlight in the sin’s eyes, only to be replaced by someone that burned brighter than you ever could. Then, of course, the imp goes and quits and you’re bumped from being second place, to first. 

Being number one comes with a lot of responsibilities. Sales cannot falter. You cannot falter. Not even for a moment. Any grand gesture or event that there is must be perfect. You’re marketable. And because of that, the Sin of Greed treasures oh so much. You may be a lower class demon, but you belong to him. Leaving you alone can bring all sorts of trouble, trouble that he isn’t going to tolerate. He dresses you in fine clothes, adorns you in sweet things that came from your pay- you deserve to own something nice that you worked so hard for is what he tells you. You are protected and cared for, treated like porcelain and pressured into a diamond.  

Ever since the abrupt departure of the imp clown, it’s clear that the Sin of Greed has a bit of an attachment issue. He hardly likes to leave you unattended just in case people start to whisper to you about just how covetous he is. He lost quite a profit with Fizzarolli and the Sin would never say it out loud, nor even entertain the idea, but it left him rattled. He treated him better than the underlings, but that isn’t saying much. Maybe he was given too much freedom and became involved with Asmodeus, and that put some wicked ideas into his head, but it’s a mistake that will not happen again. You have guards that take care of you, and there’s hardly a moment when Greed isn’t seen with you in public. He likes to know where you are- always calling and messaging, appearing if you haven’t answered within five minutes. He always has this scared look in his eyes, and he hands always clasp around your biceps, and it’s silent, as if he’s trying to contain his anger, and trying to mask any worry that he had, but it’s always noticeable with the appearance of his many eyes and the frown that’s stitched onto his face. He’s consuming, taking and wanting, and it’s never enough.

It comes to no surprise that the Sin of Greed desires to be around you at all times and in doing so, he always has a hand on you. It was different in the beginning. It felt possessive, like a child gripping onto their blanket, held in a fisted hand that won’t let go no matter how hard it’s tugged at. You remember the sore feeling, the way you were dragged around like a dog and unable to go anyway without his approval and without him. Now, it’s different. He holds your hand softly, interlaced and pulling you closer to him. You can lead him around so long as you squeeze his hand. In public, he has you pulled close to him- hands around your shoulders as he whispers for you to not mess up the performance, an arm pulling you close to him as you walk through a crowded area. He can’t seem to let go of you.

Your attention has to be on him constantly. In public during a talk show, you sit beside him and you look up at him, your hand interlaced with his, another free hand on your knee- the benefits of having multiple arms. You have to talk about him, mention how wonderful he is, and not look away. It feels marketable, there’s no intimacy to it. It’s all for show. But then you go to his home, and he whines and grumbles about everything and nothing at all as his head lays in your lap. He only sighs and mumbles something barely comprehensible when you begin to scratch the crown of his head. Or he’ll pull you close to him in private, watching some random movie, all for an excuse to have you close to him, desperate to just touch you, his hands scratching lightly at your side and splayed over the top of your thigh. He’ll twist at your hair and trace shapes against your skin, and sometimes, you forget that he’s a Sin. 

No matter how you look at it, you have to be marketable. You have to sell plushies, prints, keychains, chips and sodas and endorse perfume and clothes. And you have to sell sexbots. It took time to convince you to agree to have your likeness placed onto something that was going to be used for lewd purposes. It took even longer to convince Asmodeus to create them. But it was all worth it. The profits that came in were amazing, better than he could have ever expected. However, you still belong to him, and it comes to his attention just how creepy fans could be. Were they like this with Fizzarolli as well? No, surely he would have noticed.You’re no different than the imp that you replaced. But when he sees a fan try to get a picture of you in your dressing room, he feels angry. Rageful, even. He sees how panicky you get, and he loves how you cling to him in fear and for protection, but he hates seeing you so sad. For a brief moment, he reconsiders recalling the sexbots, but then he gets a notification that the bots are out of stock. He tells you that he’ll hire more security for you with a kiss on the top of your head. 

The Sin of Greed likes to act like he’s in a romantic relationship with you. He plans your outfits to match with his. It doesn’t have to be a direct copy of what he wears- honestly, he has some semblance of tact- but he wants to coordinate with you. The colors have to bounce off each other, the theme of the outfits, the jewelry, and accessories. He wants to match with you. It’s easy for people to start rumors that the two of you are together, and he doesn’t stop them. If people think you belong to him in a romantic way, it doesn't matter. The rumors do encourage him to be more touchy with you, to hold you closer and have a reason to not let you be alone. Sometimes he’ll play it up, talking about how pretty you are, and how your singing voice is even better in person and people should really buy tickets for your next performance. He’ll even mention how in the next act, he’ll come in with some throwing knives- just a bit of a kick to add to your performance. 

When he books you at a more high-end event, he likes to have you sing ballads. You confess to  him that you don’t know where to look during those types of songs. The more energetic ones are easier because you’re constantly moving and performing, but ballads are softer, and you can’t just look at strangers. He’d never admit to anyone that it was just a way to get you to look at him as something more than a manager. He tells you to look at him- to sing to him. During those few minutes where you long for him and declare your love and how you’d wish to kiss him again and again, nothing else matters to him. You sing to him, not to the others. You care only for him during those minutes until the song pauses and a new one comes along and you sing to him again and again. And what is he but greed personified, and the desire to hear you tell him that you wish for him and no one else, keeps your nights busy until your throat is too sore to sing.

As a clown, he takes great satisfaction in knowing people are laughing because of him. It fills his pockets with green and it keeps the masses entertained enough to keep coming back. It didn't matter who was laughing, it just mattered that he was getting paid. But then he makes you laugh. And it’s nice, and loud, and it’s your laughter that has him pausing and feeling his face grow warm. It’s uncontrollable, and your smile is lovely. Ever since he found out he likes your laugh, he does his best to keep your laughter going. He wants to hear it, to drown in it, to memorize the sound and never let another soul hear it. 

Mammon is a manager first and a sort-of-romantic partner second. He pushes you to be better than perfect. You can't afford to lose money. But when you’re at your limit, when you’re too exhausted and irritable, there are few times where you actively fight back and grow resentful and it frightens him. You don't talk to him, you avoid anything of his, you detach yourself from him.. Even if he does hold your hand, he can feel how cold you are. He hates how you affect him so much. If he makes you upset, he makes up for it but it's always half-hearted. Mammon tells you that he didn't mean to push you so hard, but he wants you to be perfect. He cares for you so much, he knows that you can be better than the imp. So he sits beside you, grumbles something that isn't an apology and he looks so sad, you can't help but forgive him. He'll pull you close in private and tell you how you did such a good job, that you're his treasure and star and where would he be without you.

[reasonsforhope]

"While tourists visiting Mexican beaches complain about piles of smelly seaweed, one Mexican gardener reckoned it was something like a gift.

The governments in places like Cancun have been required to clear away as much as 40,000 tons of sargassum seaweed, which smells like rotten eggs, but Omar de Jesús Vazquez Sánchez is steering it away from the landfills and into a kiln, where he makes adobe-like blocks that pass regulation as a building material.

He started SargaBlock to market the bricks, which are being highlighted by the UN Development Program as a stroke of brilliance, and a sustainable solution to a current environmental problem.

His story begins back in 2015 when, like any experienced laborer, he found rich people were stuck with a job they didn’t want to do. In this case, it was cleaning up the sargassum on the beaches of the Riviera Maya.

Omar grew up in poverty, immigrated to the US as a child to become a day laborer, and eventually dropped out of school and became a substance abuser. The American dream never appealed to him as much as a “Mexican dream”—a mix of memories from his childhood and dreams of being a gardener back home, so he moved back.

His time feeling unwanted as an addict and immigrant gave him a unique perspective on the smelly seaweed.

“When you have problems with drugs or alcohol, you’re viewed as a problem for society. No one wants anything to do with you. They look away,” Omar told Christian Science Monitor in a translated interview.

“When sargassum started arriving, it created a similar reaction. Everyone was complaining, I wanted to mold something good out of something everyone saw as bad.”

The ecology and environment offices of Quintana Roo, the legislative area that includes the city of Cancun, approved the SargaBlocks for use, and similar organic-based blocks have been reckoned as being capable of enduring 120 years.

The UN Development Program selected Omar’s work to be featured in their Accelerator Lab global broadcast to alert the world of its value and ingenuity.

There are all kinds of naturally-occurring pollutants or burdens that could be used in construction, and the UNDP hoped that by sharing Omar’s vision of the future of the Caribbean’s sargassum problem, it would inspire others to act in similar ways.

Bricks and cement can be great sources to use up naturally-occurring material that’s dangerous or burdensome—like this Filippino community using the ash from volcanic eruptions to make bricks.

Omar has been fortunate enough to be able to donate 14 “Casas Angelitas,” or homes made of SargaBlock, to families in need, and seems to be exceedingly close to achieving his “Mexican dream.”"

-via Good News Network, 4/24/23

[spidybaby]

Hi♥️

Can we get a Gold Digger Part III?

Gold Digger | Part III

Summary: Feeling fearful and insecure about the future after a downfall is what kept you away.

Warnings: cursing.

A/N: I've been trying to finish this for a long time. Not able to find the inspiration. Buuuuut, after the Euros match, I totally find the guts to open my drafts and finish what I've been procrastinating. Hope you still find this interesting and read it. Love you all 💛 sorry about the time.

Part one | Part two

London - Seventeen months later

"I think you're ready to go back. The question here is if you feel ready"

"I am. I think I've been ready for a while now."

"And what's stopping you?"

"What if we don't work out?"

"Time is unpredictable."

"What if he realized that I'm not what he wants anymore?"

"You know that is not the case. You told me that."

"I'm scared."

"It's okay, it's going to be fine."

Paris - Eighteen months later

14:35 p.m.

"So, can we say you find the one?" Julien, your friend asks you. "Because I think you have."

"Yes, I found the one."

He clapped happily, popping the champagne he had for this special moment.

You were looking for an apartment. Returning to Paris after more months of being out, he helped you look for the perfect place to return to your parisian life.

"I want to make a toast, for the girl I love the most, and the one I know is ready to shine in all the meaning of the word."

"Je t'aime." You smile, giving him a hug. He was a big part of your return to France.

After graduating, you got an opportunity to go to London with the company that you always wanted to work for.

They were expanding their business and chose París to begin. Since you knew the language and had your whole education there, they naturally asked you to take over the company.

"Let's get this paperwork done with and you and I are going on a furniture hunt." You say, grabbing your pen, walking to the entrance while drinking your champagne.

Paris - Kylian therapist office

"Did you bring the letter I asked you to write?"

"Oui, I wrote my heart out."

"Okay, know follow my instructions. Go home, have a shower, have a nice dinner and some wine if you want to extra relax. You told me you have a fireplace so, turn it on and burn the letter."

"Don't you want to read it?"

"No, I'm not, but you can do a last reading before the burning. This will end a cicle, this means you understand that it happened."

"It happened." He nods.

Parc des princes

- 5:30 p.m. -

"Kyky" neymar shouts from the inside of the stadium. "Want to come with us tonight? Bruna and I are doing a special dinner with friends."

"I can go a little after dinner, I have to do something first."

"Do you have a date? Hmm?" Ney poke his stomach, making Kylian laugh and smack his hand away.

"No, just something I have to do tonight. But for that pasta Bruna makes I'm definitely having a cheat day." He laughs, giving Ney a hug while they exit to the field.

The training goes fine. He let his frustration on the field, turning it into magic while he moves the ball with his feet.

"I miss Sergio. I feel like a part of me is gone, " hakimi says, faking crying and making everyone laugh.

"You miss Sergio more than your ex." Neymar shouts from the other side of the field.

"That's it, Junior."

Kylian laughs at the two guys running around, having fun.

Fun is something he ultimately didn't have. The transfer market is happening. After the higher-ups decided to announce to the world that he didn't want to stay till the end of his contract. The whole internet was a mess.

His parents had long talks with him about his career. Telling him what to do. He's young, too young to be this worried about life.

But he knows that without the help of his parents, he wouldn't be where he is right now.

"Ethan, don't sleep. That ball was an easy catch."

"Who's the boss here? Luis or you?"

"Just do what I say." He says, hitting his head in a joking manner. "Do you want to come with me to Ney tonight?"

"Nah, mom wants to go get this couch she's been obsessed with for the last month. The store lady told her that they only had one in existence and she wants it."

"Okay." He says, continuing with the training.

- On the other side of France -

"I want another couch, like one for the bedroom. I saw a beautiful one on pinterest."

"Do you have an idea if there's a store that sells this here?" He asks, looking at the pictures.

"Yes, I actually called like an hour ago, and they told me they will have one in existence. But they're unpacking it, so it's going to be in exhibition in like an hour. Let's go."

Julien shrugs, grabbing his coat and walking behind you to the elevator. "The PSG has a game this Sunday."

"Nice." You say, ignoring his intentions. "I need a charger."

"Don't give me that attitude." He hits you with the newspaper on his hand. "You know why I say this."

"I know, but like I said. Everything has a time, and I need to find my time to do what I need to do."

"Okay, no biggie."

You call an Uber to take you both to the mall. The store is located in this mall that's a little far from your house.

When you arrived you both check stores and pick some things to decorate. Julien knows the vibe you want for this apartment.

"Hey, I'm going to check the couch to see if it's worth the price." You pat his shoulder. He was trying to find the perfect "dinner plates."

You check some emails while you walk there, not paying attention to anything else. Once you arrive, the lady who spoke with you told you the couch was just about to be ready.

Letting you walk to the store, you check other furniture that might be a good competition for this one.

You wanted something that you could relax without replacing the bed, but you also don't want to do work on the bed.

An "L" shaped couch picked your attention. It was in a dark brown color. The couch was beautiful, pretty similar to something that has your mind burning.

"Mademoiselle, we have the couch ready if you want to see it."

"Merci, I want to ask, do this couch come in a cream color?"

While the lady shows the colors of the couch you were eying while you two walk over to the pinterest couch.

You turn your back to the other one. Even when you don't want to accept it. It reminds you of the one you had on the room you shared with him.

"I think I want the other one more."

"We have it in three colors. Shall we go to see the other options? We have them on our second floor."

"Oui." You nod smiling.

While you walk upstairs, there are two people walking in the store, two faces you know more than enough.

"Ethan, can you please put the phone down? I want your help."

"Fine, but after this you're taking me to eat."

Fayza laughs. "It would have been cheaper to come alone, I see."

"Having a daughter was also an option." He laughs, his mother hitting him on the back of the head.

They were scolted to the couch, and Fayza immediately loved it. Picturing it in the perfect space in her house.

While they get checked out, you were trying to decide between a light brown or a cream dirty white color.

"Okay, this one would be."

"Amazing, if you follow me back to the first floor to get everything settle, your address, the payment."

You texted Julien, finding he was waiting for you at this restaurant. Asking him to send you a picture of the menu so you can pick while paying.

You lift your head back to the room, finding a face looking at you curious. The way Ethan eyes light up when he confirms it's you.

- Kylian's House -

The music in the room is calm, a nice jazz to relax his muscles. The outfit is ready to go out. But he has to burn his past to prepare to start a new present.

But he can't let go of the envelope. He's holding it tight, holding it like his life dependent on it. Maybe because what's written on it made his life take a turn.

He sighs, leaving the letter on the couch. He was feeling ready when he spoke with his therapist, but now that he actually has to do it, it is like a burning sensation.

Does this mean he has to burn the feelings he has for you?

After all, it's been more than a year, and you haven't come back to him. He was working hard.

But his year wasn't the best, the club fighting with him, the press fighting with him and even Paris people mad at him.

All he wanted to do was go back to when you would be there for him after the long training hours, after the comments, after the thick and the thin.

But he can't, and he regrets it all the time.

- Neymar's house -

"Vamos Kyky, good thing you came, Bruna was asking about you"

"I bring her something."

"She's going to love it. Let's go inside."

The majority of the team was there. They were celebrating the news of Neymar and Bruna.

He was happy, even though Neymar and him had some shady times, he was friendly after all, for the sake of the team.

"Hakimi, stop with the potatoes, Luis is going to kill you, man."

"Shut it Mbappe, you were eating chocolate last week, and nobody told you shit."

They all laugh. He loves these times because that distracts him. That makes him feel less alone at home. Where no one was waiting, where no one was thinking about him.

The time with his teammates was good. He drank some cocktails. He was going to regret it tomorrow, but he needed them.

"How are the kids?" He asks Achraf, they were walking to their cars.

"They're with their mom. They are so big, I had to buy them everything again because they grew out of the clothes."

"In Spain?"

"Yes, I can't wait to see them, Hiba is bringing them here and they're staying a few days."

He's happy for his friend, after everything for him his kids were the most important thing.

"Dude, I really miss Verrati."

"I can't believe he's gone, he would have chug that bottle down and be fine tomorrow."

"I want to ask you something, Kicks." Achraf sighs. "How are you? I know you have been down, you know I'm here."

Was he okay? Was he bad? Was he sad? Or angry?

He's feeling everything and nothing at the same time. It's like this for time to time. Sometimes he's fine, happy. But then everything in him feels down, feels blue.

"Don't worry, I'm fine. It's just I guess the season."

"You know I'm here. Right?" Achraf repeats.

"I do, and I'm thankful for that."

- The furniture store - Hours prior

"When did you come back?" Ethan throws himself at you, who with open arms receives the hug. "This is such a surprise."

"Hello, roots."

"Mom, look who's here." He says, letting you go.

Fayza turns at the call of her name, her eyes illuminating at the sight of you. She can't deny how much she misses you.

"Ma belle." Same as Ethan, she hugs you tightly.

"Hello to you two, I've missed you so much."

"When did you come back?" Ethan repeats.

"I been here for a few days now." You confess. "I'm going to be working here."

"So you're back for good?"

"Yes, roots. I am." You hug him back again. "I'm so happy to find you, I missed you a lot."

"We missed you too. You look so good. I was so happy when you told me about your job opportunity."

Fayza and you were close. She went to your graduation, gave you a gift for your birthday, and texted you on Christmas day, on the new year. She was like a mother to you.

"I wanted to be stable here with everything before telling you."

"Oh I'm so happy you're here." Ethan jumps a little. "Even Melissa is going to be so happy."

You wanted them back, wanted your little family bond back, but first got to get the boy back.

"I hope to see you guys again, maybe for a coffee or a chocolate."

"Wait, let's go to dinner." Ethan suggests.

Thankfully, Fayza notices the way you don't want to disappoint Ethan. "Maybe later, we have to go home because you haven't done your homework."

"Oh no, roots go home and finish that homework." You joke, pinching him on the ribs. "We can meet some other time for chocolate or a coffee."

Your conversation was interrupted by the worker who handed Fayza her card. The other worker is waiting for you to complete the sale.

"You guys have the same number? If you do I'll text you and we can meet up, okay?"

They both agree with the plan, saying their goodbye, and with another round of hugs, they left the store.

It's undeniable that the Paris Saint German sucks. They have some good moments, and they have some bad. But the bad ones have lately been much more than the good ones.

The last matches were bad, barely even working as a team. It was like if eleven players were there doing their own thing. No union, nothing.

Some people will say "oh but then won the last two," but with the lack of technique they have, it was a big surprise.

The Clermont team was doing so much better. Leaving zero chances for the team. And it was obvious that they were lacking something because it was almost the end and no goals.

Twitter was crazy about the fact that "The Kylian Mbappe" didn't scored against Clermont.

But it's not on him. It's on the team. It's on everyone. Even the new coach. Galtier did so much shit that you can't change in a few days.

You turn the tv off, angry at the result. Stupid game, you thought. Even if it was a repetition, you were mad as if it was live.

Your phone vibrates, picking your attention. You opened the notification, and it was Ethan who sent you a reel about cookies in a new pâtisserie in Paris.

You needed to use your new oven to see if it was working properly. Also, you bought this chocolate that was really good with some butter cookies.

So you invite him to come over, wanting to release some stress and feel some normality again.

The match against Newcastle was bad. The team lost 4 to 1, and the team was struggling.

You notice how Kylian was down. He's not in good shape. Not physically but mentally. Something that makes you worry.

His knee was bothering him again. He had to leave the field because of the pain. Thing that worried you even more.

You wanted to pick up the phone and message him, telling him that whatever is crossing his mind is just there, in his mind.

"Y/n?" Julian says, waving his hand in front of your face. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, sorry. I got lost in my thoughts."

"Notice that." He laughs, he guessed what you were thinking but didn't say it.

"I wonder if he's okay. He looks tired."

"Text him." He shrugs. "I mean, you came back for a reason, do it."

You tap your nail to your phone. You wanted, but what if he has someone else with him already telling him all the things you should be telling him?

"Not yet." You say, getting up and walking to your fridge. "Ice cream?"

- Dressing room - Parc des princes -

"Guys, honestly, we have to keep going. Don't let this bring you down." Luis, tell the team.

The dressing room has this quiet aura. Everybody is thinking of those four goals that nobody stopped, Donaruma feeling bad, the defense guys feeling the same.

And Kylian, even worse. He's thinking of the shots he missed. The moment where he had opportunities and missed them.

His knee hurts. He's tired. He's not focused on the field. He's just not in his prime. That's obvious to everybody.

Especially to the press, printing his mistakes as the first pages, making his missing shots as their conversation on sports programs. Making the Twitter people feel confident about the shit storm they're giving him.

"Kylian, can I have a word with you?"

Luis Enrique and he walked to the corridor. The other team was happy, leaving. Saying their goodbye to the two of them.

"How is your knee?" He asks, he notice the faces he is doing while walking. "You sure you want to play next match? You still have the euros."

"I'm good, I promise sir."

"Promise me something. If you feel like you're overworking your knee, you're telling me. I prefer to sit you for one or two matches instead of you missing the season and euros."

"I promise."

After the talk, Luis advised him to take some recovery therapy. More therapy, he thought.

The drive home was felt long. His chauffeur was quiet, noticing his demeanor. He needs a hot shower and a good night sleep.

He slams the door of his room. Almost ripping this t-shirt, throwing it with all his force to the wall. He wants to scream but won't.

The shower was more than hot. It was burning. But it was all he needed. To feel something again.

He hated to do skin care, thinking all he wanted at night was to sleep, but you taught him to take care of his skin. Creating a night and morning routine.

Even when you're not there, he still did it.

While he stares at his reflection, on the big mirror above his bed, he doesn't know what weights more.

His regret or the ring that sits and collects dust in his nightstand.

That same ring he bought two days before that night.

The same one he was putting on your finger. Now, sure, he will have to throw it away.

Sure, he won't be having nobody next to him to reassure him everything was going to be alright.

Sure, he won't be thinking of raising children with anybody else.

Sure, he won't be thinking about buying a retirement house with a big backyard where to watch his grandkids playing.

Sure, there won't be anybody after you.

Unsure about you being his future.

"I need the last reports of the head office so I can start to organize everything and have it ready for the opening."

You were working on a meeting, having to multi-task and focus your attention between the meeting and what your co-workers were saying with the football game that's happening.

The Rennes game was better. They were winning. This was the last game before the Euros.

You wanted to see Kylian with the team of Les Bleus. They somehow cheer him up. They were like an energy drink for him.

Olivier, Antoine, even the coach. They were all like a family, and they were there for each other, no matter what.

Fayza invited you to the match, she knew you wanted to talk to him but didn't knew how. Ethan and her decided to keep your return a secret, letting you announced it on your own.

She sent you a jersey with his number on it. You try it on, smiling at the reflection. He loved seeing you in jerseys with his number on it.

And you loved to display your support for your boyfriend. Showing up at matches with his number on full display, showing the people you were his. And he was for sure yours.

You opennyour phone, going to instagram to see his page, you feel like a stalker. But it was the only thing you dare to do right now.

You turn the tv on, wanting to see something while working. And the first thing that pop up is a football news channel. They have Kylian picture on display.

"Kylian Mbappe leaves training to go to Bondy. The player suffered a family lost and asked his trainer Deschamps for permission to go back to his hometown to say his goodbyes."

You want to text Ethan, but you don't want to disrupt them. You wanted to know what was happening.

So you have two options. Achraf or Tchaga. Both will eventually tell Kylian you reach and asked about him. Both were only one call away.

You go for the second option. Having a little more trust in this one. You search for his number on your contacts.

The phone rings until you hit the voice-mail. You block your phone again, questioning if you had to try again or maybe just wait and speak with Fayza or Ethan later.

You take the jersey off, changing back into your pajamas, ready to be comfy again.

The vibration of your phone alert you, thinking it was from work you walk slowly to the device. But once you're close, you notice the name in the screen "Tchaga"

"Hello"

"Hey, long time no see, how are you?"

You smile at the greetings. "I'm good, how are you, scissors?"

"Been better, have a cold. But you didn't call me to know that. Tell me, how can I help you?"

"I heard the news about Ky, and I don't want to bother him or his family. But I want to know if I can help."

"I'm actually planning on going to Bondy, would you like to come with me?"

You wanted to scream a yes. But you have to be rational and think if this is something that he would want.

"I don't want to be a bother."

"You will never be a bother, not to him or his family. Get ready and pack something to change just in case."

"What? Wait, what if he doesn't want me there?"

"Bébé, he's been in a shit whole without you, so get your pretty as to the closet, change into something, and send me your location. I'll be there in an hour." He says, hanging up the call.

You do as you were told. Sending him your location and the parking code.

Running to the bathroom to have a quick shower and get ready.

After that, you took a black legging, a white blouse with a little London eye on the side. You white sneakers. You add some blush and mascara, just to add something to your face.

You pack the basics and the clothes Tchaga told you to pack. Just to notice you were done in time. Tchaga texted you that he was in the basement waiting for you.

- Bondy - Later that day

Kylian was exhausted. He feels sad and tired. He feels like crying. But won't.

The room feels cold, barely any air. Of maybe it's just him having difficulty breathing. Maybe it's the last few, maybe it's the lost shot, maybe it's the team.

"Kyky"

Ethan was worried about him. He notices everything. How his brother has such prominent bags under his eyes and is losing a little weight.

How he chooses to sleep instead of doing the things he loves. How the whole "mbappe saga" destroyed a little his confidence.

"Want to tell me what's going on?"

Kylian scoffs, he can't believe that his little brother is the one worried and not the other way around.

"I'm supposed to be asking you that, Ethan."

"Well, if I'm worried about you, I'm going to ask and help.It's not like it's a crime being down."

"I just want this bad time to end."

"It will, don't worry, Ky, you're so strong."

He smiles, patting his brother on the shoulder. Ethan offers him a cookie. Knowing he likes them.

"Tchaga told me he was coming. He's probably about to be here." He sighs, not sure what else to do. "Let's play some fifa, I have the app on my phone."

He smiles, heartwarming with how much Ethan is doing to make him feel better. "If I win, you do the dishes."

"Deal."

While they got some distraction, you and Tchaga were stuck in traffic. You feel anxious. Maybe it was the drink you got at Starbucks, maybe the fact that after almost two years you and the man you love were reuniting.

"You need to stop with your leg, bébé." Tchaga says, putting his hand on your knee to stop it from moving. "The car is moving with you, and it's making me nauseous."

"Sorry, I'm just nervous."

"Okay, I want to know, let's get deep." He laughs, turning the car off and turning to you. "So you left after graduation, not blaming you tho, I would have done the same."

You smile at his rambling. You missed this so much. Maybe not the topic but the talk.

"The thing here is, you're back, but are you back for him? I know you came back to work. You just told me that."

"Get to the point." You laugh.

"My point is, don't rush me. We're not moving." He says sassy. "Are you taking him back? Are you sure you want to go back and take up every challenge you guys may face?"

You don't have to think your answer. You knew what you wanted way before stepping back into French territory.

"I wouldn't have come back if I wasn't sure that I wanted that."

-Bondy - 9:30 p.m. -

"Mom, I'm going back to the house, Tchaga is coming and Ethan is tired. Do you need anything else?"

"No, go and have a good sleep, baby."

He hugs his mom, kissing her cheek and leaving back to her house. Ethan and him walked over there. The night was calm.

"You know what I want?" Ethan asks.

"Yeah?"

"I want some chocolate with butter cookies." He says, caressing his tummy.

He nods, agreeing with how much a good chocolate and some good butter cookies will heal the day.

"Y/n used to make some amazing cookies. Never knew how to make them, but we can try doing them some other day."

Ethan was talking about other things, how he can't wait to see on the match against Netherlands.

When they got closer, he noticed the car of his friend. Tchaga went out, walking up to him and hugging him.

"Hey, Ethan, why don't you help me with something that's on the co-pilot side." He says with a smirk.

The teenager nods, not thinking about anything else walks to the door. He opens it, seeing you. He wanted to scream, but you shush him putting your finger over your lips.

"Hey, get inside, I will take care of this."

Both men nod to his words, walking inside while they talk, Tchaga was telling him about the crazy traffic and how a little trip turned into almost half a day one.

"What are you doing here?" He whispers while Tchaga walks into the house with his brother. "No that you aren't welcome but you surprise me."

"I wanted to make sure you guys are okay."

"Okay, sweet." He laughs, opening the door for you to get out. "I am, but I'm not if he is."

"I've been worried about him, his whole attitude, he not even being on the press conferences of les bleus."

"Yeah, my parents and I are worried. He won't open up to us." He sighs, tired of seeing his brother like this. "I just want him to go back to the happy Kylian."

"Hey, do you think you can give me some time alone with him? I want to talk."

"God, yes, let's go." He slams the door, grabbing your arm and practically running inside. "Stay here, I'm going to ask Tchaga to come see something so we can leave."

You nod, closing the door. He dissappear into the corridor. You open your bag to spray some mint scent into your mouth, take a small mirror to check that you look decent.

You hear two voices coming down. Tchaga and Ethan walked quickly to where you are. Excited about you and Kylian talking again.

"Okay, he's in the kitchen, go." Tchaga push you a little.

They both left the house. You stood there for a little while. Feeling the senses come back to you. You were about to meet up with him.

You walk slowly to the kitchen, hearing some music playing. You can't get cold feet right now. Not after spending hours in the car just to come see him.

His back is facing you. You run his whole figure with your eyes, smiling at the fact that you're matching without planning it.

You nock on the wood door that's at the entrance. He turns without looking, typing something on his phone.

"Hey E, I found a good recipe for those cookies."

"You can't bake even if your life depends on it." You laugh lightly.

He has to blink several times, scared this would be a fever dream and not you in front of him. With your rosey cheeks, you nice smile and the same shinning eyes he loves.

"I can write the recipe for you. That way, it's similar." You speak again. "But if you don't know how to use your oven the I don't think it will work."

He's still speechless, thing that worried you. He does the same thing you just did to him. Scan your whole figure.

"How?"

"I been on Paris for some time now." You confess, "I wanted to call you, I just felt so scared you weren't going to answer."

"Why wouldn't I?"

You shrug, not really feeling like explaining your insecurities to him. "Just, my mind playing games."

He wants to hug you, missing the feeling and warmth only you can give him. He wants to open his arms around you.

Fuck it, he thought.

Opening his arms while walking to you. You drop your bag to the floor, opening your arms to him.

The hug was like a band-aid. It was what your hearts needed. Like when you put something back together and it just fits so good you can't even see the damage.

"I miss you so much." He hides his face into your neck. Kissing it. "Please don't go, I can't take being away from you again."

You kissed his shoulder, feeling the moment you dreamed about it, the whole thing was better than your dreams.

"Can you look at me?"

He broke the hug, hands on your waist so you couldn't run. It's not like you're planning on doing it.

"If we're doing this again, I need you to really fucking trust me." You laugh, maybe out of nerves. "Babe, I would never be with you for your money. I am with you for your heart, for your soul, you're my fucking soul mate and I can't let you go. But if you fucking pull some shit like that I will make sure you are dead."

"I swear on everything I have, I swear on the kids we don't even have yet, that I won't pull nothing like that. Have all my money, have all my properties, what's mine is yours. I was stupid enough not to back you up, and that was the worst thing I ever did."

You shut him up with a kiss. The way his lips are just like you remember, as soft as before, as warm as before.

His hands on your back, pulling you as close as he can. While your hands are on his face. Not wanting to break the kiss.

When the air becomes a necessity, you both can't stop looking at your eyes. The eyes never lie. They tell our secrets. And if anybody sees the way your eyes look at each other, they will see heart shapes on them.

You hear someone clearing their throat. Making you both turn. "Well, hello, I didn't mean to interrupt. But I want to drop this off on the counter."

He let go of his hold, helping his mother with the box she had in her hands. "Oi, that smile was lost until today." She jokes. Making you blush. "Well, I'm going to sleep. Y/n, belle. This is your house. Make yourself conformable."

You nod, wishing her a good night. Once she's out of the kitchen view, you return to the arms of your love.

"By the way, please go to sleep, we have to get Kylian to training tomorrow."

Tou both laugh at her words. Not promising anything. Not after that long.

The game was good, Kylian just scored two goals. He was not only the captain but was the reason they won the game.

The crowd was crazy about it. people were sure he wasn't going scored the two goals that were sending them to the victory.

But oh boy, how wrong they were.

You walk with his mom and Ethan to the outside of the stadium. You were happy for him.

"You know, when he used to say you were his lucky charm, I was like, iugh disgusting. But I think you really are a lucky charm."

You laugh, hitting his arms. "I can go to your matches, maybe I can give you some of my luck."

"No need." Melissa interrupts, smirking. "He has his own lucky charm. Just a little shy to admit it."

"Oh shush." Ethan says, blushing like crazy.

Once you're on the basement of the stadium, where the private parking lot is. You all got into Kylians car.

"Hey, so you do like dudes with a car but without a license." E jokes, remembering the message you sent him.

"Careful kid," you warn jokingly. "You will be walking home if you keep with those unfunny jokes."

The whole trip was Ethan and Melossa fighting about something they saw on tik tok, making jokes about it and Fayza and you being confused.

When the time for Ky comes back home hits, Fayza, Ethan, and Melissa left. Letting him enjoy his night.

"Hey, handsome." You welcome him with a hug. "You did amazing, it was one of the best games you had this season."

"Another way of you telling me my club sucks."

"Shhh, just take the good part." You shush him with a kiss.

"Are we alone?"

You nod, kissing him again. You never had enough when you're with him. It was like a kiss with a candy. You love it and refuse to give in.

He picks you up, making his way upstairs. Almost falling, thing that made you laugh. It was like the beginning. And you loved new beginnings.

- Five months later -

"Ready?" You ask, putting on your seat belt.

He nods, he was feeling anxious about this decision, but you made him understand that it was a necessity.

During the little drive, he told you about some plans Luis has with the team as they were going to the last games of the Ligue 1.

"I never asked you this, but do you ever get free Uber eats?" You ask, confused. He plays for the Uber eats Ligue.

"Why would I get free Uber eats?"

"Uber eats Ligue 1"

"Bébé, just no."

You laugh at his expression, but you had to ask. It was something that had your curiosity.

You park outside the house, Kylian quickly exit the car and run to your side. He was a passenger princess, but he was a gentleman.

"Thanks, Mister Mbappe." You kiss his cheek, taking his hands on yours.

"You're welcome, Miss fiancé."

You knock on the door. You can't help but deep the hold on his hands. It was something that was necessary, you repeat in your head.

The door is open by a woman. She happily lets you inside, offering you something to drink.

"We're okay, thank you."

"He's in the garden. He's reading."

He leads the way to the garden, opening the door and letting you step outside first. The Parisienne air is cold. Good think there's some sun after the cold cloudy winter.

"Père."

Wilfrid smiles, leaving his book on the little table. He was excited about meeting you. He wanted as much as everybody a new beginning.

"Hey, you need to put on a jacket, is cold outside." He warns his son, hugging him. "Hey, Y/n."

"Hi, sir."

"Can I give you a hug?" He asks, hopeful that you will allow him to. "Aftet all, you will be my daughter in law."

You hug him, you left all the pain and resentment in the past, that was hurting you even more.

"Sit, please."

You loved the way his garden looks, wanting to stole some ideas for the new place. "I love the roses."

"They are looking good today. The sun is helping them to look good." He cuts one that's close to the table. Giving it to you. "Tell me. You guys came for a reason."

Kylian looks at you. He wanted you to be the one to talk. He nods his head once you look at him. A sign of support.

"I want to leave all in the past. We want to start a clean new beginning. And we want you on it. You're his father, and we're going to be family. So I. Well, we want you to be there for us."

"I want that, I know I have a long way to you, but please, now that my heart is full with good intentions."

"We know, père." Kylian says. "That's why we wanted to do this."

You feel out of breath. But at the same time, lighter, like taking something off your shoulders. Your life was taking a good turn.

You chatted with his father for a while, sharing some wedding details. Your plan was to have a wedding once the season finishes. So you can have a honeymoon and some free time with him.

You grab the hand of your fiance, the ring he gave you shining. You knew that even if it was hard, you needed to leave the past in the past. Just lean about it.

🪷🪷🪷

🏷: @slayweirdosaway @voguebikini @ironmaiden1313 @magicalfundragon @nightlockcornucopia @christianpulisic10 @bellinghambby22 @noodle81937 @moonlightholland22 @germanapples @paniwiaderko @megannandrewss @unstablefemme @suzysface @nightlockcornucopia @ama1a2 @topguncultleader @lunamelona

[sexymemecoin]

The Expansive World of Altcoins: Exploring the Diversity Beyond Bitcoin

Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, has long dominated headlines and market discussions. However, the world of digital currencies is vast and diverse, with thousands of alternative coins, or altcoins, each offering unique features and value propositions. Altcoins encompass a broad range of projects, from utility tokens and stablecoins to meme coins and more. This article delves into the rich ecosystem of altcoins, highlighting their significance, various types, and the innovative projects that make up this vibrant space, including a mention of Sexy Meme Coin.

Understanding Altcoins

The term "altcoin" refers to any cryptocurrency that is not Bitcoin. These coins were developed to address various limitations of Bitcoin or to introduce new features and use cases. Altcoins have proliferated since the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, each aiming to offer something different, whether it be improved transaction speeds, enhanced privacy features, or specific utility within certain ecosystems.

Categories of Altcoins

Utility Tokens: Utility tokens provide users with access to a specific product or service within a blockchain ecosystem. Examples include Ethereum's Ether (ETH), which is used to power applications on the Ethereum network, and Chainlink's LINK, which is used to pay for services on the Chainlink decentralized oracle network.

Stablecoins: Stablecoins are designed to maintain a stable value by being pegged to a reserve of assets, such as fiat currency or commodities. Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) are popular stablecoins pegged to the US dollar, offering the benefits of cryptocurrency without the volatility.

Security Tokens: Security tokens represent ownership in a real-world asset, such as shares in a company or real estate. They are subject to regulatory oversight and are often seen as a bridge between traditional finance and the blockchain world.

Meme Coins: Meme coins are a playful and often humorous take on cryptocurrency, inspired by internet memes and cultural trends. While they may start as jokes, some have gained significant value and community support. Dogecoin is the most famous example, but many others, like Shiba Inu and Sexy Meme Coin, have also captured the public's imagination.

Privacy Coins: Privacy coins focus on providing enhanced privacy features for transactions. Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC) are notable examples, offering users the ability to transact anonymously and protect their financial privacy.

The Appeal of Altcoins

Altcoins offer several advantages over Bitcoin, including:

Innovation: Many altcoins introduce new technologies and features, driving innovation within the cryptocurrency space. For example, Ethereum introduced smart contracts, enabling decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.

Specialization: Altcoins often serve specific niches or industries, providing targeted solutions that Bitcoin cannot. For instance, Ripple (XRP) focuses on facilitating cross-border payments, while Filecoin (FIL) aims to create a decentralized storage network.

Investment Opportunities: The diverse range of altcoins presents numerous investment opportunities. Investors can diversify their portfolios by investing in projects with different use cases and growth potentials.

Notable Altcoins in the Market

Ethereum (ETH): Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and has become the backbone of the DeFi and NFT (Non-Fungible Token) ecosystems. Its smart contract functionality allows developers to create decentralized applications, leading to a thriving ecosystem of financial services, games, and more.

Cardano (ADA): Cardano is a blockchain platform focused on sustainability, scalability, and transparency. It uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which is more energy-efficient than Bitcoin's proof-of-work. Cardano aims to provide a more secure and scalable infrastructure for the development of decentralized applications.

Polkadot (DOT): Polkadot is designed to enable different blockchains to interoperate and share information. Its unique architecture allows for the creation of "parachains," which can operate independently while still benefiting from the security and connectivity of the Polkadot network.

Chainlink (LINK): Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that provides real-world data to smart contracts on the blockchain. This functionality is crucial for the operation of many DeFi applications, making Chainlink a vital component of the blockchain ecosystem.

Sexy Meme Coin: Among the meme coins, Sexy Meme Coin stands out for its combination of humor and innovative tokenomics. It offers a decentralized marketplace where users can buy, sell, and trade memes as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), rewarding creators for their originality. Learn more about Sexy Meme Coin at Sexy Meme Coin.

The Future of Altcoins

The future of altcoins looks promising, with continuous innovation and increasing adoption across various industries. As blockchain technology evolves, we can expect altcoins to introduce new solutions and disrupt traditional systems. However, the market is also highly competitive, and not all projects will succeed. Investors should conduct thorough research and due diligence before investing in any altcoin.

Conclusion

Altcoins represent a dynamic and diverse segment of the cryptocurrency market. From utility tokens and stablecoins to meme coins and privacy coins, each category offers unique features and potential benefits. Projects like Ethereum, Cardano, Polkadot, and Chainlink are leading the way in innovation, while niche coins like Sexy Meme Coin add a layer of cultural relevance and community engagement. As the cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to grow, altcoins will play a crucial role in shaping the future of digital finance and blockchain technology.

For those interested in the playful and innovative side of the altcoin market, Sexy Meme Coin offers a unique and entertaining platform. Visit Sexy Meme Coin to explore this exciting project and join the community.

[casesdemarketing]

[junedenim]

dance in my underpants

the consequences of destroying bras

warnings: smut, age gap, fucking & stuff

word count: 2.7k

It was a trip to the mall. Two people who are having fun. The guidelines of your relationship haven't been outlined yet. Neither of you have raised any complaints about it. I mean, how could you complain when he looks like that and he fucks like that. 

You had fucked in a bed finally. Like a proper fucking. A couple of times now actually. Usually at his place because it was gargantuan in size and he had no one living with him in that villa. You fucked at your place once, last night, when your roommate was away for the weekend. During foreplay before the aforementioned fucking, he ripped your bra. Now you're at the mall after a promise to replace it that you are making sure he upholds. 

"I don't know why you need a bra," Alex says. "You look much better without one. You don't even need a shirt." He's got his arm wound around your waist. Your body touches his side and you walk in sync without even noticing.

"You'd like for me to walk around topless all the time?" You question. The mall is mostly bare. It's a Wednesday before noon. Something Alex is deeply annoyed by but you've got plans later today and you don't need this guy ghosting you over a bra, especially when you've seen what his house looks like. You can milk this sucker for the prettiest, priciest bra imaginable.

"I think society would like you walking around topless all the time. You'd get the key to the city or something." He's dressed differently today. Most of the time he's got that suit jacket on that looks like he just came from investing in the stock market or fucking your mom. Now, he's got a leather jacket on that makes it look threatening and burns holes through you, especially when his hard exterior dissolves into a chuckle.

"I think I'd be put on a sex offender list if I did that." He laughs at that and tightens his grip on your waist. You like how hard he presses into your skin. Fingernails indents found on your thighs. He isn't only in this practice. A fair share of clawing at his back has been demonstrated.

"Isn't that like your First Amendment right to do that? It would be freedom of expression. Your boobs are like a special art form or something. Like the Venus de Milo or something." He's cute with his sunglasses, his admiring gaze peeking through, that smirk that threatens his lips, that chain that hangs from his neck.

Inside the store, his eyes dash around the room with wonder like he is a kid in a candy store. You let out a huff of laughter. "You look like you're about to make love to the bras. You sure you want me walking around topless?"

He leans and whispers close to your ear, "No, I'll just rip every single one off of you."

You snap around and look him in the eye. "You will not be ripping any more bras of mine."

He nods with a tight smirk. "Yeah. And who is buying the bra again?"

"You're replacing what you broke."

"In that case, I'll buy you as many as you want as long as I can tear them off you." You giggle to distract yourself from the heat that rises from your core and floods through your whole body. You walk over to the push-up bra section. 

Alex comes behind you holding up a red lace balconette bra. "Already found you a winner." He is talking in a hushed tone because he knows exactly what it does to you. Rings of fire flush your cheeks. He reaches around you and picks up another one, a black push-up number. "Ooh, this one too."

You accept the bra with a laugh. "What is this? Project Runway?"

He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. "Does that mean I get a fashion show?"

You slap the bra in your hand on his chest playfully and turn away from him, the uncontrollable smile spreading on your face. You search through the store more. Alex, of course, has more suggestions and, well, if he's going to pay for it, who are you to deny trying them on?

When you head to the fitting rooms, Alex tells the employee working the section, "I'm gonna help her out."

Past the employee, you turn back to him with an accusing smile and an agape mouth. "You wanna fuck me in the changing room."

He pulls a shocked face as if it could be the most unaccepted thing ever. "You and your dirty mind. Shush."

You enter the fitting room with him following behind as he locks the door and rubs your hands over the fabric of the bras in your hand. It simulates a feeling in you. That one that's becoming familiar with him rubbing his hands all over you. Over your body. Over your breasts. Over your nipples. Your eyes stare at him, specifically his ass in those pants.

"You gonna make me?" You tease. He turns around to look at you. Quickly taking his sunglasses off, he looks at you smug. 

Alex is strange. An anomaly. He eyes you up and down, smirking the whole way, and then he sits on the little chair in the corner of the small room, crossing his legs. He could be Vito Corleone right now if he had a cat on his lap. A really hot young Vito Corleone, a young Marlon Brando. Or something or other, you're too horny-drunk to think of proper figures. He rubs his chin and says, "Maybe. Try on the black one first."

"Turn around," you joke.

His eyes widen and he lets a chuckle. "You know I've seen you naked before. Like fully nude, right?"

You nodded assuredly. "Oh, yeah, I know, but I'm afraid you'd get too turned on and cream your pants."

Alex gives a half-ass laugh because, yeah, you've turned him into a completely horny pervert that he is definitely going to cream in this fitting room but he's hoping it will be in you and not his trousers. "Shut up."

It's your turn to look smug. A flirty look with batting of your eyelashes is the quickest way to get him turned on. You undo the bra you were wearing and answer his request for the black bra first. It's cute, but not quite your style. However, it's definitely Alex's as he is practically drooling over himself. "I don't like it," you announce, reaching back to undo it.

"I fucking love it. Don't take it off yet."

You indulge him, standing there in your panties and bra. There wasn't much need to take off your pants but it will definitely quicken the process when he does fuck you. You furrow your brows and taunt him, "Weren't you supposed to be a cool older guy? You're more horny than my high school boyfriend."

"I fuck you better than your high school boyfriend." There's the smug bastard.

You huff and undo the bra. "You'd have the be a corpse to fuck worse than my high school boyfriend." 

"When was that? Last year?" 

"And you went to school when log cabins were a thing, right?"

He scoffs, "Funny." You both do that a lot. Tease the other about their age. The age gap isn't much of an issue because you're two adults and you're just fucking. Literally all the time fucking.

You slip on the red one, mainly because he picked it and you want to quicken the process and just have him fuck you already. Fingering, blowjob, penetration, you don't care, you just want him to get to it already. 

"I like this one." You fiddle with the straps. You're a temptress, snapping one strap back on your skin and letting the other one hang off your shoulder.

"I like this one too." He is, of course, staring at your boobs and not at you.

You hum. Staring into the mirror, you ask, "Are you sure it's not too sexy?" You're just waiting for his next move, trying everything to entice him. You look at him through his reflection in the mirror.

"I don't think too sexy is a thing." He is still sitting in that chair.

You sigh loudly, poking at the cups. "Then maybe it's not sexy enough."

"Not sexy enough is definitely not a thing."

You turn around. He's leaned back in the chair, showing no sign of movement. You're desperate and he is too, even if he isn't showing it now. "Prove it?" You request.

He wags his finger accusingly. "See, I knew you wanted to fuck in the fitting room."

You hold your hands up as acting defense."Whoops. You caught me. But you can't be looking arrogant in that leather jacket and not expect me to want to fuck you."

He's pleased by this, his grin growing into a shit-eating one. "Well," he stands up, "you are very hot in that bra. I just might have to."

You laugh. "Don't make it so procedural. Just get over here—"

With the go-ahead, he is pretty quick to interrupt with a hard kiss on the lips. "I'm worried you won't be able to be quiet though," he baits.

You rub your nose up against him, both breathing the same hot air. "I do have enough control over myself, unlike some other people."

"Shall we put it to a test?" No response is needed. He has his mouth on you in an instant. Like him admiring you in a bra but wanting you desperately naked, you push his leather jacket off in an instant. It splashes on the floor into a pile of black sludge. His boot kicks it back out of the way around where your clothes lie.

Hungry kisses on your neck and down to your chest. He devours every bit of your skin. Your belly, your thighs; his lips, his teeth. Every part of you is drawn to him, every inch waiting for his touch. When his fingers brush near the lacy edge of your underwear, you find yourself growing antsy, aching to be touched right there. To be touched by him and he's so close with one hand squeezing your ass and the other skimming your hemline but he just won't.

Suddenly he turns you around and the kissing doesn't stop there. Soft kisses over your ears, rough ones on your neck. You're helpless, unable to take control like you desperately want to—or pretend like you do. The feel of his weight on you and his hard-on pressed against your ass. Your breath comes in short bursts as he pushes you up against the wall. He's grinding against you and you're grinding against the wall, looking for some release.

Alex unhooks your bra and slips his hands under you. They're not cold, but you still shiver at the touch. The roughness of his grasp and the featherlike flick of his thumbs against your nipples. He murmurs into your ear, "Much better without the bra."

The throbbing between your thighs grows stronger as he pushes you against the wall, positioning himself at your knees. He slides your panties off, followed by his pants. He grabs your hips with one hand, pulling you up against his cock. You tremble, and you think he notices, because he teases, slowly rolling his hips against you, and you push back. He gets the hint and slips two fingers inside you, just barely, before pulling them out again. A frustrated gasp leaves your mouth, and you turn your head as if to say hurry the fuck up, but he just smirks and focuses his view on your pussy.

You're desperate and he knows it. He fucking enjoys it, keeping you in a holding pattern and grabbing your hips hard, like he's afraid you'll slip away, rubbing his cock against you like he's waiting for permission or really for you to beg. But you refuse to be the first to crumble and the next thing you know he's burying himself inside you, slowly but surely, like he wants you to feel every inch to the fullest. You gasp, just like he was hoping. A satisfied grunt leaves his lips, which not only gives you full satisfaction and pleasure of getting noise out of him but adds fuel to the fire and as he slowly pulls back out, you sway your hips a little, inviting him right back. His next thrust is harder and more brutal, but you're so ready for him that he pounds into you with ease.

"Oh, fuck," you moan and he is picking up the pace, trying to urge more out of you. You cover your mouth out of fear of capturing the employee—who is only a handful of feet away—and her attention. The aching becomes too much to bear, and you reach for your clit, but he slaps the hand away and holds it behind your back.

You whine, pushing against his thrusts, but he only slows down, murmuring into my ear, "You like that, don't you?"

"Yes," I whisper. "You're so—you're so fucking good."

"Uh-huh."

Once again you're left frustrated as he pulls out and flips you over. You arch your back against the wall as he expertly glides his hands around the curves of your body.

"A quickie is usually quick," you note.

He leans in closer, getting right in your face, gently raking his fingers through your hair. The look on his face is wanting, but soft. The slight part of his lips and his downturned eyes looking into yours. It's a jarring feeling, suddenly being the subject of his tender affection, but you're unable to look away or grab him and say we're here to fuck, not fondle. 

The taste of Alex's morning cigarette lingers on his lips. The tip of his nose bumps into yours as you allow yourself to sink into the kiss. His kisses are long and slow, matching the rhythm of your bodies as you begin to move again. You drink in all the groans and grunts you get out of him.

When he places his thumb just over your clit, the intensity catches you by surprise, but he steadies you. He holds his other hand over your mouth. Your moans muffled and hopefully quiet enough. He holds his thumb over your clit and you quiver at the touch. Your breath comes in shorter and shorter bursts. You're redder than ever, you're sure, and he looks so fucking pleased with himself, his arrogance driving you crazy in more ways than one. He picks up the speed a little, rolling his hips in rhythm with yours. The pressure on your clit and the throbbing of him inside you causes the sweat on his skin and your breath to shatter. As the orgasm overtakes you, you bite down on his shoulder, collapsing against him like you have no bones left in your body.

His chest rises and falls with yours, he holds you there until you detach. Before you can say anything, he holds you up in the air and fucks you, hard against the wall. His thrusting becomes erratic, unrelenting, and with a mess of strangled grunts and groans that he tries to hold inside.

"Wouldn't it be really funny if she knocked on the door now?" You joke.

Alex laughs causing his pattern to be even more fucked up. His smile drops as his breath develops heavier and warmer against your ear. He bites the lobe softly and whispers, "I'm gonna come in you, okay?"

You nod the best you can and his breath becomes strangled and choked-up. He lets out a noisy exhale before his cum floods into you. He nuzzles into your neck and he lets out a moan into your skin hoping to cover it. You stroke the back of his head, scratching your nails soothingly across the surface.

"Shall I try on the rest?" You whisper into his ear.

He lifts his head and chuckles, "Oh, fuck." He shakes his head, still out of breath, he says, "No, I'll buy all of them for you. I don't care if they don't fit. We need to go back to bed."

You giggle at how exhausted he looks. "I have plans."

His cock is still hanging in the air. He has done little to clean himself up, still staring at you. You feel him ooze out of you but you shockingly like the feeling. "Come over after. I'll fuck you in the hot tub."

*

a/n: submit your bald alex photos for more, well, bald alex (fucking in public, of course).

[probablyasocialecologist]

The World Food Summit of 1996 approached food security through the principles of ensuring there is enough safe and nutritious food that can be accessed daily to meet healthy dietary needs and food preferences. By definition, this is a desirable and worthy goal. However, in the years since, food security has developed into a paradigm which does not question the underlying power dynamics and the reproduction of material conditions that make food insecurity a permanent feature of the global order. At its core, the food security paradigm deals only with access to food, without challenging the political and economic structures that determine and control access, as well as distribution.  By failing to address the root causes of hunger and famine, the food security paradigm makes it impossible to end hunger globally. Of course, many people worldwide possess food security, but this is restricted to increasingly limited geographic pockets. In terms of the people localised in one area, food vulnerability is influenced and determined by class, race, gender and, of course, citizenship status. Globally, “underdevelopment” and “de-development” lead to widespread food insecurity across areas. Another problem with the food security paradigm is that it is easily co-opted to generate partial answers that pose no threat to the corporate food system, or worse, that even open up new profit opportunities. Accelerated by other crises, the food security paradigm becomes ever more dependent on aid, be it through direct food delivery, cash transfers or small development projects that cannot compete with the food giants and their price-setting powers. In practice, a “science of food security” emerges, one which takes as its focus calories and the output that is compatible with precision agriculture having the aim to increase crop yields and to assist management decisions using high technology sensor and analysis tools. This model tends to be reliant on “Green Revolution” technologies that rely on chemical fertilisers and pesticides and that are tied to colonial projects and corporations, in order to optimise resources in aid response and/or development projects.  In this rationale, food insecurity can be addressed by reaching optimum yields of certain crops that should meet the demand for fats, fibres and protein. All of this is carefully managed and data-driven. Precision farming is advocated by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the objective of optimising, “agricultural value chains […] critical in advancing food and nutrition sufficiency without increasing the size of land under cultivation.” The framing of food that reduces it only to “optimal input” relegates vital elements of food production and the culture of eating, like territory ownership, taste, heritage, care, well-being and connection as secondary. This reductionist approach has, though, proved useful to corporate agriculture, since it reinforces the case for genetically modified crops (GMOs), more efficient fertilisers, and the standardisation of food production for market purposes. Advocates of plant breeding technologies (including GMOs and hybrid seeds) argue that government overregulation is an obstacle to achieving food security. Overregulation, as the argument goes, denies populations the opportunity to grow crops that have increased nutrient use efficiency and are more resilient to climate shocks. 

[...]

The paradigm of food security is about optimising productivity. It’s true that productivity matters – after all, feeding the world requires enormous quantities of food. But if productivity is approached solely as a technological problem, it reinforces the tendency to fragment the quantitative and qualitative aspects of food production and consumption. On the quantitative side, production for food security is viewed as a challenge of multiplication. Whereas division, that is, distribution of food, is left to logistical planning. This ignores what Raj Patel identified in his influential 2007 book Stuffed and Starved, as the bottleneck of power that concentrates international food distribution among a small set of corporations. This bottleneck excludes the poor and small-scale food producers from decision-making. It also normalises worrying tendencies, such as an overreliance on industrial animal exploitation as a protein source, which has direct health implications, as well as longer term consequences like the proliferation of new viruses, greenhouse gas emissions and inefficient use of water and soil.

28 May 2024

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Honebon Debut: Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

The year is 1992, and Nintendo is making a hit sequel to the video game Super Mario Land for the Nintendo Game Boy. The previous two games in the Super Mario series, Super Mario Land and Super Mario World were both massive hits, and if you know anything about video games, it's obvious why: both had Skeletal Fish Enemies!

If Super Mario Land 2 was to have a chance of succeeding at all, they'd have to include a Skeletal Fish Enemy. But they couldn't just bring back Honen or Fish Bone, no. It was the '90s! We needed a hip, new skeletal fish for Cool Teens!

And so, Honebon was born! Isn't the miracle of childbirth amazing? Unfortunately, Honebon was born a skeleton, which is always a bad sign, because as it turns out, Honebon was dead on arrival...

Now don't get me wrong, Honebon has a few distinct traits to separate it from its Skeletal Siblings. Its attack pattern is unique, since it moves in a zigzag shape instead of a straight line, and according to Perfect Ban Mario Character Daijiten, while Fish Bone is the type to hold a grudge, Honebon has an amiable disposition! So if you're ever looking to befriend a skeletal fish, let that be your guide!

I also think Honebon's name is really funny. It's a portmanteau of hone, the Japanese word for "bone," and the English word "bone". And despite the fact its name doubles down on this being a skeleton, all the official material seems to describe it as a Cheep Cheep's gh-gh-gh-ghost!

But even with all of that, it's clear that Honebon's story as a Mario enemy ended as soon as it began. Honebon was competing for a niche that had already been filled multiple times over. It's a real Spike Eel situation over here! Clearly, Mario games didn't need any more skeletal fish enemies...

Name: Jean de Fillet Debut: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

But just because they didn't need another, that doesn't mean they didn't want another! I mean, come on! None of the previous skeletal fish had names that were dated pop culture references, so clearly there was an untapped market there!

You think there wouldn't be much ground to cover with another skeletal fish enemy... and you would be right! There is not all that much unique about Jean de Fillet. Much like Fish Bone and Honebon, it is described as a skeletal Cheep Cheep, despite none of the three really having Cheep Cheep anatomy at all, and much like Honen, its attack pattern involves jumping up to attack Yoshi. They can swim through lava I guess, but I'm not really convinced the other skeletal fish can't do that.

You see what happened? They ran the well dry, and all the fish that were living in the well for some reason died. Nintendo was just left with a bunch of fish skeletons, and all they could do at that point was put them in Yoshi's Island! Sad! Many such cases.

But due to Yoshi's Island going on to become a whole series of its own, Jean de Fillet would have a little more staying power than Honen or Honebon. Which is to say it appeared in Yoshi's New Island, where it even gets a boss variant named Furious Fred de Fillet!

Now it's kind of debatable whether or not Yoshi's Island is mainline, but if you include it, that's four mainline entries in a row that each introduced a completely new skeletal fish enemy! Super Mario Land and Super Mario World both did it, and so would their sequels.

Did this madness ever end?!

Name: Bonefin Debut: Super Mario Galaxy

Not before they could sneak in just one more skeletal fish enemy! It had been over a decade since Jean de Fillet, and in that time it had become the future! That meant their next skeletal fish had to be made of metal. Everything is chrome in the future! (Reference to "Bob")

And since they had a whole new dimension to play with, we were no longer starved of unique attack patterns! Bonefins lock onto Mario, and charge in that direction until they either hit him or hit a wall and explode. (Reference to "Bob")

Bonefins solely appear in the Bonefin Galaxy. They serve as mooks to Kingfin, a giant Bonefin that appears to be actually made of bone! This boss fight is kinda all that exists in Bonefin Galaxy, but at least they got a whole galaxy to themselves, right?

This would mark the end of an era however, as when Super Mario Galaxy 2 rolled around, there was no new skeletal fish enemy to be seen. In fact, Bonefin would only cameo as a skeleton, which is obviously and very intentionally meant to represent the fact that regular new skeletal fish enemies are a thing of the past, a product of a bygone age...

Since then, the series has standardized Fish Bone as their skeletal fish of choice, as they made their grand return in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and have been a series staple ever since. In the process, however, they gained Bonefin's homing attack, letting them do a little more than be Cheep Cheeps for ghost houses and castles!

Is the lack of new skeletal fish enemies another disappointing example of Mario Homogenization? Or did they make the right call, picking a skeletal fish and sticking to it? I dunno. I am completely neutral towards this development.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The paradox of choice screens

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

It's official: the DOJ has won its case, and Google is a convicted monopolist. Over the next six months, we're gonna move into the "remedy" phase, where we figure out what the court is going to order Google to do to address its illegal monopoly power:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

That's just the beginning, of course. Even if the court orders some big, muscular remedies, we can expect Google to appeal (they've already said they would) and that could drag out the case for years. But that can be a feature, not a bug: a years-long appeal will see Google on its very best behavior, with massive, attendant culture changes inside the company. A Google that's fighting for its life in the appeals court isn't going to be the kind of company that promotes a guy whose strategy for increasing revenue is to make Google Search deliberately worse, so that you will have to do more searches (and see more ads) to get the info you're seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

It's hard to overstate how much good stuff can emerge from a company that's mired itself in antitrust hell with extended appeals. In 1982, IBM wriggled off the antitrust hook after a 12-year fight that completely transformed the company's approach to business. After more than a decade of being micromanaged by lawyers who wanted to be sure that the company didn't screw up its appeal and anger antitrust enforcers, IBM's executives were totally transformed. When the company made its first PC, it decided to use commodity components (meaning anyone could build a similar PC by buying the same parts), and to buy its OS from an outside vendor called Micros-Soft (meaning competing PCs could use the same OS), and it turned a blind eye to the company that cloned the PC ROM, enabling companies like Dell, Compaq and Gateway to enter the market with "PC clones" that cost less and did more than the official IBM PC:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

The big question, of course, is whether the court will order Google to break up, say, by selling off Android, its ad-tech stack, and Chrome. That's a question I'll address on another day. For today, I want to think about how to de-monopolize browsers, the key portal to the internet. The world has two extremely dominant browsers, Safari and Chrome, and each of them are owned by an operating system vendor that pre-installs their own browser on their devices and pre-selects them as the default.

Defaults matter. That's a huge part of Judge Mehta's finding in the Google case, where the court saw evidence from Google's own internal research suggesting that people rarely change defaults, meaning that whatever the gadget does out of the box it will likely do forever. This puts a lie to Google's longstanding defense of its monopoly power: "choice is just a click away." Sure, it's just a click away – a click, you're pretty sure no one is ever going to make.

This means that any remedy to Google's browser dominance is going to involve a lot of wrangling about defaults. That's not a new wrangle, either. For many years, regulators and tech companies have tinkered with "choice screens" that were nominally designed to encourage users to try out different browsers and brake the inertia of the big two browsers that came bundled with OSes.

These choice screens have a mixed record. Google's 2019 Android setup choice screen for the European Mobile Application Distribution Agreement somehow managed to result in the vast majority of users sticking with Chrome. Microsoft had a similar experience in 2010 with BrowserChoice.eu, its response to the EU's 2000s-era antitrust action:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

Does this mean that choice screens don't work? Maybe. The idea of choice screens comes to us from the "choice architecture" world of "nudging," a technocratic pseudoscience that grew to prominence by offering the promise that regulators could make big changes without having to do any real regulating:

https://verfassungsblog.de/nudging-after-the-replication-crisis/

Nudge research is mired in the "replication crisis" (where foundational research findings turn out to be nonreplicable, due to bad research methodology, sloppy analysis, etc) and nudge researchers keep getting caught committing academic fraud:

https://www.ft.com/content/846cc7a5-12ee-4a44-830e-11ad00f224f9

When the first nudgers were caught committing fraud, more than a decade ago, they were assumed to be outliers in an otherwise honest and exciting field:

https://www.npr.org/2016/10/01/496093672/power-poses-co-author-i-do-not-believe-the-effects-are-real

Today, it's hard to find much to salvage from the field. To the extent the field is taken seriously today, it's often due to its critics repeating the claims of its boosters, a process Lee Vinsel calls "criti-hype":

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

For example, the term "dark patterns" lumps together really sneaky tactics with blunt acts of fraud. When you click an "opt out of cookies" button and get a screen that says "Success!" but which has a tiny little "confirm" button on it that you have to click to actually opt out, that's not a "dark pattern," it's just a scam:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/27/beware-of-the-leopard/#relentless

By ascribing widespread negative effects to subtle psychological manipulation ("dark patterns") rather than obvious and blatant fraud, we inadvertently elevate "nudging" to a real science, rather than a cult led by scammy fake scientists.

All this raises some empirical questions about choice screens: do they work (in the sense of getting people to break away from defaults), and if so, what's the best way to make them work?

This is an area with a pretty good literature, as it turns out, thanks in part due to some natural experiments, like when Russia forced Google to offer choice screens for Android in 2017, but didn't let Google design that screen. The Russian policy produced a significant switch away from Google's own apps to Russian versions, primarily made by Yandex:

https://cepr.org/publications/dp17779

In 2023, Mozilla Research published a detailed study in which 12,000 people from Germany, Spain and Poland set up simulated mobile and desktop devices with different kinds of choice screens, a project spurred on by the EU's Digital Markets Act, which is going to mandate choice screens starting this year:

https://research.mozilla.org/browser-competition/choicescreen/

I'm spending this week reviewing choice screen literature, and I've just read the Mozilla paper, which I found very interesting, albeit limited. The biggest limitation is that the researchers are getting users to simulate setting up a new device and then asking them how satisfied they are with the experience. That's certainly a question worth researching, but a far more important question is "How do users feel about the setup choices they made later, after living with them on the devices they use every day?" Unfortunately, that's a much more expensive and difficult question to answer, and beyond the scope of this paper.

With that limitation in mind, I'm going to break down the paper's findings here and draw some conclusions about what we should be looking for in any kind of choice screen remedy that comes out of the DOJ antitrust victory over Google.

The first thing note is that people report liking choice screens. When users get to choose their browsers, they expect to be happy with that choice; by contrast, users are skeptical that they'll like the default browser the vendor chose for them. Users don't consider choice screens to be burdensome, and adding a choice screen doesn't appreciably increase setup time.

There are some nuances to this. Users like choice screens during device setup but they don't like choice screens that pop up the first time they use a browser. That makes total sense: "choosing a browser" is colorably part of the "setting up your gadget" task. By contrast, the first time you open a browser on a new device, it's probably to get something else done (e.g. look up how to install a piece of software you used on your old device) and being interrupted with a choice screen at that moment is an unwelcome interruption. This is the psychology behind those obnoxious cookie-consent pop-ups that website bombard you with when you first visit them: you've clicked to that website because you need something it has, and being stuck with a privacy opt-out screen at that moment is predictably frustrating (which is why companies do it, and also why the DMA is going to punish companies that do).

The researchers experimented with different kinds of choice screens, varying the number of browsers on offer and the amount of information given on each. Again, users report that they prefer more choices and more information, and indeed, more choice and more info is correlated with choosing indie, non-default browsers, but this effect size is small (<10%), and no matter what kind of choice screen users get, most of them come away from the experience without absorbing any knowledge about indie browsers.

The order in which browsers are presented has a much larger effect than how many browsers or how much detail is present. People say they want lots of choices, but they usually choose one of the first four options. That said, users who get choice screens say it changes which browser they'd choose as a default.

Some of these contradictions appear to stem from users' fuzziness on what "default browser" means. For an OS vendor, "default browser" is the browser that pops up when you click a link in an email or social media. For most users, "default browser" means "the browser pinned to my home screen."

Where does all this leave us? I think it cashes out to this: choice screens will probably make a appreciable, but not massive, difference in browser dominance. They're cheap to implement, have no major downsides, and are easy to monitor. Choice screens might be needed to address Chrome's dominance even if the court orders Google to break off Chrome and stand it up as a separate business (we don't want any browser monopolies, even if they're not owned by a search monopolist!). So yeah, we should probably make a lot of noise to the effect that the court should order a choice screen, as part of a remedy.

That choice screen should be presented during device setup, with the choices presented in random order – with this caveat: Chrome should never appear in the top four choices.

All of that would help address the browser duopoly, even if it doesn't solve it. I would love to see more market-share for Firefox, which is the browser I've used every day for more than a decade, on my laptop and my phone. Of course, Mozilla has a role to play here. The company says it's going to refocus on browser quality, at the expense of the various side-hustles it's tried, which have ranged from uninteresting to catastrophically flawed:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91167564/mozilla-wants-you-to-love-firefox-again

For example, there was the tool to automatically remove your information from scummy data brokers, that they outsourced to a scummy data-broker:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/22/24109116/mozilla-ends-onerep-data-removal-partnership

And there's the "Privacy Preserving Attribution" tracking system that helps advertisers target you with surveillance advertising (in a way that's less invasive than existing techniques). Mozilla rolled this into Firefox on an opt out basis, and made opting out absurdly complicated, suggesting that it knew that it was imposing something on its users that they wouldn't freely choose:

https://blog.privacyguides.org/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/

They've been committing these kinds of unforced errors for more than a decade, seeking some kind of balance between monopolistic web companies and its users' desire to have a browser that protects them from invasive and unfair practices:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/firefox-closed-source-drm-video-browser-cory-doctorow

These compromises represent the fallacy that Mozilla's future depends on keeping bullying entertainment companies and Big Tech happy, so it can go on serving its users. At the same time, these compromises have alienated Mozilla's core users, the technical people who were its fiercest evangelists. Those core users are the authority on technical questions for the normies in their life, and they know exactly how cursed it is for Moz to be making these awful compromises.

Moz has hemorrhaged users over the past decade, meaning they have even less leverage over the corporations demanding that they make more compromises. This sets up a doom loop: make a bad compromise, lose users, become more vulnerable to demands for even worse compromises. "This capitulation puts us in a great position to make a stand in some hypothetical future where we don't instantly capitulate again" is a pretty unconvincing proposition.

After the past decade's heartbreaks, seeing Moz under new leadership makes me cautiously hopeful. Like I say, I am dependent on Firefox and want an independent, principled browser vendor that sees their role as producing a "user agent" that is faithful to its users' interests above all else:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Of course, Moz depends on Google's payment for default search placement for 90% of its revenue. If Google can't pay for this in the future, the org is going to have to find another source of revenue. Perhaps that will be the EU, or foundations, or users. In any of these cases, the org will find it much easier to raise funds if it is standing up for its users – not compromising on their interests.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/12/defaults-matter/#make-up-your-mind-already

Image: ICMA Photos (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/icma/3635981474/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[nothing-but-paisley]

Ways The Vampire Lestat is like an 18th century novel

slippage between "fact" and fiction. Early novels like Robinson Crusoe were often taken to be (and marketed as) true accounts since audiences were less familiar with long form narrative fiction. Lestat of course flips this concept on its head by publishing his life story as fiction.

Picaresque plot. Lestat is a lovable scamp who stumbles into a series of scrapes and episodic adventures, much like Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders or Henry Fielding's Tom Jones.

Also like Moll Flanders and Tom Jones, Lestat engages in a smidge of incest (though in his case it's not an accidental oopsie).

Lestat is a sentimental hero, an 18th century Man of Feeling--his many, many tearful breakdowns recall a common motif of heroes crying at moments of realization/climax/emotional significance (lookin' at you, Young Werther).

Overall, it has a real sense of abundance about it, that "more is more" feeling you often find in novels of the period--particularly in works with a satirical bent like Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Voltaire's Candide, and even the vicious, pitch-black fictions of the Marquis de Sade with horrors layered upon horrors until the effect becomes comic. You just do not know wtf is gonna happen from one page to the next.

Of course, it also has a lot of gothic novel DNA in there. The eroticized horror of Matthew Lewis's The Monk comes to mind.

It has first-person narration, as was common for early novels, which were often epistolary. (Side note: how fun would it be if TVL was a series of increasingly unhinged letters to Louis?)

I'm sure I could think of a few more examples if I really dug into the ol' bookshelf lol. Lestat is a man of his time, and the way he presents his story reflects that in some interesting ways!

[femmefatalevibe]

hello, gorgeous. im starting college soon and im on my way to become a femme fatale, so i have two questions for you

1. how can i incorporate the femme fatale way of being into academia?

2. what things/brands are affordable for a college student? i’d love to wear high-quality clothes like the ones you recommend, but i can’t afford them. are there any other products/services that i could add to my routine for a cheap price?

thank you so much in advance xx

Hi love! Congratulations on starting this new chapter of your life <3

Here are my thoughts:

1. how can i incorporate the femme fatale way of being into academia?

Understand the importance and power of:

Knowing how to learn, study, and get in the practice of regularly acquiring new information

Understanding how to work through concepts, set goals, and clearly communicate your thoughts to better articulate a concept or build a case/argument

Becoming a better writer, reader, and remaining focused/prioritized when it comes to your tasks and to-do list

Learning how to absorb information and apply this knowledge to different situations/areas of life through these acquired skill sets/methodology

Developing important self-presentation skills through presentations, written/verbal communication/networking

Refining your aptitude for pattern recognition, gaining more insight into human nature/what makes people tick, and learning how to persuade/seduce others through your words/insights

2. what things/brands are affordable for a college student? i’d love to wear high-quality clothes like the ones you recommend, but i can’t afford them. are there any other products/services that i could add to my routine for a cheap price?

Totally get it! Budgets are particularly tight for many college students.

For a service option, I would say I recommend Rent The Runway (I believe it's around $100/month for 10ish items rotated throughout the month).

For more affordable alternatives, I would say your best bet is to dig deep into the sale sections of department stores/The Outnet and similar e-commerce sites by utilizing all the filters you need (budget, size, colors, item type, etc.).

If you're searching for more affordable brands generally, I would say some of the highest quality affordable brands available are:

Express: The "Body Contour" line has amazing basics and I love their Editor High-Waisted Flare Trousers (these might be too professional for what you need right now), but I've heard they have very solid denim and shirting options, too!

Oak & Fort (I prefer them to Everlane/Abercrombie TBH)

Quince (for washable silks, cashmere and basics for $40-$70)

4th & Reckless (a lot of their items are on sale for $25-$50!)

Because of Alice (Outlet) – mostly under $70

Pixie Market (sale items are often around $50-70)

Banana Republic (especially the sale section)

Everlane/Abercrombie have their gems – some of the trouser/outerwear quality is iffy, though

Lioness/DISSH

Frankie Shop (in-house brand – on sale it's similar to Mango prices)

Maniere de Voir (mostly under/around $100, TOP quality for the price)

Shoprumored

Mango/COS (better than other fast fashion choices, IMO)

Hope this helps xx