#how to get ios 14

[bibleofficial]

i just think it’s funny that raspberry pi seems to plan their releases around that of apple’s

[mokubetech]

Learn how to add your name on your iPhone lock screen with this simple tutorial. Personalize your device and make it easy to identify in case it gets lost!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Your car spies on you and rats you out to insurance companies

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Mar 13) in SAN FRANCISCO with ROBIN SLOAN, then Toronto, NYC, Anaheim, and more!

Another characteristically brilliant Kashmir Hill story for The New York Times reveals another characteristically terrible fact about modern life: your car secretly records fine-grained telemetry about your driving and sells it to data-brokers, who sell it to insurers, who use it as a pretext to gouge you on premiums:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html

Almost every car manufacturer does this: Hyundai, Nissan, Ford, Chrysler, etc etc:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2020/09/09/ford-state-farm-ford-metromile-honda-verisk-among-insurer-oem-telematics-connections/

This is true whether you own or lease the car, and it's separate from the "black box" your insurer might have offered to you in exchange for a discount on your premiums. In other words, even if you say no to the insurer's carrot – a surveillance-based discount – they've got a stick in reserve: buying your nonconsensually harvested data on the open market.

I've always hated that saying, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," the reason being that it posits decent treatment as a customer reward program, like the little ramekin warm nuts first class passengers get before takeoff. Companies don't treat you well when you pay them. Companies treat you well when they fear the consequences of treating you badly.

Take Apple. The company offers Ios users a one-tap opt-out from commercial surveillance, and more than 96% of users opted out. Presumably, the other 4% were either confused or on Facebook's payroll. Apple – and its army of cultists – insist that this proves that our world's woes can be traced to cheapskate "consumers" who expected to get something for nothing by using advertising-supported products.

But here's the kicker: right after Apple blocked all its rivals from spying on its customers, it began secretly spying on those customers! Apple has a rival surveillance ad network, and even if you opt out of commercial surveillance on your Iphone, Apple still secretly spies on you and uses the data to target you for ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product – provided the company can get away with treating you as the product. Apple can absolutely get away with treating you as the product, because it lacks the historical constraints that prevented Apple – and other companies – from treating you as the product.

As I described in my McLuhan lecture on enshittification, tech firms can be constrained by four forces:

I. Competition

II. Regulation

III. Self-help

IV. Labor

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

When companies have real competitors – when a sector is composed of dozens or hundreds of roughly evenly matched firms – they have to worry that a maltreated customer might move to a rival. 40 years of antitrust neglect means that corporations were able to buy their way to dominance with predatory mergers and pricing, producing today's inbred, Habsburg capitalism. Apple and Google are a mobile duopoly, Google is a search monopoly, etc. It's not just tech! Every sector looks like this:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Eliminating competition doesn't just deprive customers of alternatives, it also empowers corporations. Liberated from "wasteful competition," companies in concentrated industries can extract massive profits. Think of how both Apple and Google have "competitively" arrived at the same 30% app tax on app sales and transactions, a rate that's more than 1,000% higher than the transaction fees extracted by the (bloated, price-gouging) credit-card sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

But cartels' power goes beyond the size of their warchest. The real source of a cartel's power is the ease with which a small number of companies can arrive at – and stick to – a common lobbying position. That's where "regulatory capture" comes in: the mobile duopoly has an easier time of capturing its regulators because two companies have an easy time agreeing on how to spend their app-tax billions:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Apple – and Google, and Facebook, and your car company – can violate your privacy because they aren't constrained regulation, just as Uber can violate its drivers' labor rights and Amazon can violate your consumer rights. The tech cartels have captured their regulators and convinced them that the law doesn't apply if it's being broken via an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

In other words, Apple can spy on you because it's allowed to spy on you. America's last consumer privacy law was passed in 1988, and it bans video-store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history. Congress has taken no action on consumer privacy since the Reagan years:

https://www.eff.org/tags/video-privacy-protection-act

But tech has some special enshittification-resistant characteristics. The most important of these is interoperability: the fact that computers are universal digital machines that can run any program. HP can design a printer that rejects third-party ink and charge $10,000/gallon for its own colored water, but someone else can write a program that lets you jailbreak your printer so that it accepts any ink cartridge:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Tech companies that contemplated enshittifying their products always had to watch over their shoulders for a rival that might offer a disenshittification tool and use that as a wedge between the company and its customers. If you make your website's ads 20% more obnoxious in anticipation of a 2% increase in gross margins, you have to consider the possibility that 40% of your users will google "how do I block ads?" Because the revenue from a user who blocks ads doesn't stay at 100% of the current levels – it drops to zero, forever (no user ever googles "how do I stop blocking ads?").

The majority of web users are running an ad-blocker:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Web operators made them an offer ("free website in exchange for unlimited surveillance and unfettered intrusions") and they made a counteroffer ("how about 'nah'?"):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Here's the thing: reverse-engineering an app – or any other IP-encumbered technology – is a legal minefield. Just decompiling an app exposes you to felony prosecution: a five year sentence and a $500k fine for violating Section 1201 of the DMCA. But it's not just the DMCA – modern products are surrounded with high-tech tripwires that allow companies to invoke IP law to prevent competitors from augmenting, recongifuring or adapting their products. When a business says it has "IP," it means that it has arranged its legal affairs to allow it to invoke the power of the state to control its customers, critics and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

An "app" is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to add an ad-blocker to it. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model" and it's everywhere. When companies don't have to worry about users deploying self-help measures to disenshittify their products, they are freed from the constraint that prevents them indulging the impulse to shift value from their customers to themselves.

Apple owes its existence to interoperability – its ability to clone Microsoft Office's file formats for Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which saved the company in the early 2000s – and ever since, it has devoted its existence to making sure no one ever does to Apple what Apple did to Microsoft:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Regulatory capture cuts both ways: it's not just about powerful corporations being free to flout the law, it's also about their ability to enlist the law to punish competitors that might constrain their plans for exploiting their workers, customers, suppliers or other stakeholders.

The final historical constraint on tech companies was their own workers. Tech has very low union-density, but that's in part because individual tech workers enjoyed so much bargaining power due to their scarcity. This is why their bosses pampered them with whimsical campuses filled with gourmet cafeterias, fancy gyms and free massages: it allowed tech companies to convince tech workers to work like government mules by flattering them that they were partners on a mission to bring the world to its digital future:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

For tech bosses, this gambit worked well, but failed badly. On the one hand, they were able to get otherwise powerful workers to consent to being "extremely hardcore" by invoking Fobazi Ettarh's spirit of "vocational awe":

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

On the other hand, when you motivate your workers by appealing to their sense of mission, the downside is that they feel a sense of mission. That means that when you demand that a tech worker enshittifies something they missed their mother's funeral to deliver, they will experience a profound sense of moral injury and refuse, and that worker's bargaining power means that they can make it stick.

Or at least, it did. In this era of mass tech layoffs, when Google can fire 12,000 workers after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years, tech workers are learning that the answer to "I won't do this and you can't make me" is "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" (AKA "sharpen your blades boys"):

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/

With competition, regulation, self-help and labor cleared away, tech firms – and firms that have wrapped their products around the pluripotently malleable core of digital tech, including automotive makers – are no longer constrained from enshittifying their products.

And that's why your car manufacturer has chosen to spy on you and sell your private information to data-brokers and anyone else who wants it. Not because you didn't pay for the product, so you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

Cars are enshittified. The dozens of chips that auto makers have shoveled into their car design are only incidentally related to delivering a better product. The primary use for those chips is autoenshittification – access to legal strictures ("IP") that allows them to block modifications and repairs that would interfere with the unfettered abuse of their own customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

The fact that it's a felony to reverse-engineer and modify a car's software opens the floodgates to all kinds of shitty scams. Remember when Bay Staters were voting on a ballot measure to impose right-to-repair obligations on automakers in Massachusetts? The only reason they needed to have the law intervene to make right-to-repair viable is that Big Car has figured out that if it encrypts its diagnostic messages, it can felonize third-party diagnosis of a car, because decrypting the messages violates the DMCA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-consumers-crazy

Big Car figured out that VIN locking – DRM for engine components and subassemblies – can felonize the production and the installation of third-party spare parts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

The fact that you can't legally modify your car means that automakers can go back to their pre-2008 ways, when they transformed themselves into unregulated banks that incidentally manufactured the cars they sold subprime loans for. Subprime auto loans – over $1t worth! – absolutely relies on the fact that borrowers' cars can be remotely controlled by lenders. Miss a payment and your car's stereo turns itself on and blares threatening messages at top volume, which you can't turn off. Break the lease agreement that says you won't drive your car over the county line and it will immobilize itself. Try to change any of this software and you'll commit a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Tesla, naturally, has the most advanced anti-features. Long before BMW tried to rent you your seat-heater and Mercedes tried to sell you a monthly subscription to your accelerator pedal, Teslas were demon-haunted nightmare cars. Miss a Tesla payment and the car will immobilize itself and lock you out until the repo man arrives, then it will blare its horn and back itself out of its parking spot. If you "buy" the right to fully charge your car's battery or use the features it came with, you don't own them – they're repossessed when your car changes hands, meaning you get less money on the used market because your car's next owner has to buy these features all over again:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

And all this DRM allows your car maker to install spyware that you're not allowed to remove. They really tipped their hand on this when the R2R ballot measure was steaming towards an 80% victory, with wall-to-wall scare ads that revealed that your car collects so much information about you that allowing third parties to access it could lead to your murder (no, really!):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

That's why your car spies on you. Because it can. Because the company that made it lacks constraint, be it market-based, legal, technological or its own workforce's ethics.

One common critique of my enshittification hypothesis is that this is "kind of sensible and normal" because "there’s something off in the consumer mindset that we’ve come to believe that the internet should provide us with amazing products, which bring us joy and happiness and we spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return":

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-have-great-conversations/

What this criticism misses is that this isn't the companies bargaining to shift some value from us to them. Enshittification happens when a company can seize all that value, without having to bargain, exploiting law and technology and market power over buyers and sellers to unilaterally alter the way the products and services we rely on work.

A company that doesn't have to fear competitors, regulators, jailbreaking or workers' refusal to enshittify its products doesn't have to bargain, it can take. It's the first lesson they teach you in the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Your car spying on you isn't down to your belief that your carmaker "should provide you with amazing products, which brings your joy and happiness you spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return." It's not because you didn't pay for the product, so now you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

The consequences of this spying go much further than mere insurance premium hikes, too. Car telemetry sits at the top of the funnel that the unbelievably sleazy data broker industry uses to collect and sell our data. These are the same companies that sell the fact that you visited an abortion clinic to marketers, bounty hunters, advertisers, or vengeful family members pretending to be one of those:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

Decades of pro-monopoly policy led to widespread regulatory capture. Corporate cartels use the monopoly profits they extract from us to pay for regulatory inaction, allowing them to extract more profits.

But when it comes to privacy, that period of unchecked corporate power might be coming to an end. The lack of privacy regulation is at the root of so many problems that a pro-privacy movement has an unstoppable constituency working in its favor.

At EFF, we call this "privacy first." Whether you're worried about grifters targeting vulnerable people with conspiracy theories, or teens being targeted with media that harms their mental health, or Americans being spied on by foreign governments, or cops using commercial surveillance data to round up protesters, or your car selling your data to insurance companies, passing that long-overdue privacy legislation would turn off the taps for the data powering all these harms:

https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms

Traditional economics fails because it thinks about markets without thinking about power. Monopolies lead to more than market power: they produce regulatory capture, power over workers, and state capture, which felonizes competition through IP law. The story that our problems stem from the fact that we just don't spend enough money, or buy the wrong products, only makes sense if you willfully ignore the power that corporations exert over our lives. It's nice to think that you can shop your way out of a monopoly, because that's a lot easier than voting your way out of a monopoly, but no matter how many times you vote with your wallet, the cartels that control the market will always win:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

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/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[woesoftheirwretched-if]

death, life, is there a life after death?

WOES OF THEIR WRETCHED.

| “You will be getting your revenge, no matter what the cost is and whom you have to use..”

Main blog : @pearldvs || other if blogs : none....

LINKS :

DEV-LOGS || FAQ || WARNINGS || SECRET ROS & FLINGS || MASTERLIST || BUG REPORT || THE SEED verse 9:80

PLOT: a recommended 18+ interactive fiction (that contains disturbing/dark subject matter that is not for everyone)that takes place in a mix and alternate universe of ancient medieval times. Nothing in this story will be historically accurate. Woes of their wretched (wotw-if) is where you play as a consort of a cruel king, Leif. You are going to get your revenge for yourself and possibly for other reasons but you will play as a consort and a parent.

| 18+ themes such as described nudity, graphic depictions of blood and gore, depression, rape, abuse, forced Marriage, morally questionable behavior, toxic and unhealthy relationships, child abuse, and more(you can check out the full warnings down above)

note | you will not be able to pick the gender of your child, you will have a son. the main character will start off as a bad parent towards their son and later on the game, you can still be a bad parent or try to be a great, how you choose will affect your life, other characters, and your son's life.

| mc will get pregnant regardless of gender due to magic (if amab)

FEATURES

=Choose the person you wish to be, customize your name, gender, sex, sexual orientation and appearance, you can also choose what kind of parent you want to be; loving and caring or unloving and uncaring as well with choosing what kind of lover you wish to be; loving, lying, manipulative, toxic, healthy…

=Choose your endings and life : There are bad and happy endings for anyone. Yourself, Your Son. It's all up to you, what you can get.

=Build or break your relationship with characters such as ros(romance options) and your son. Even though you can help them, there is no way to make everyone happy but it’s your choice to pick who can be or not.

=Romance anyone of the eight romance interests and 6 secret romance interests(and a few that would be seen as conversational)��but some are not really romance options, a few might die, betray or reject you… will you pick the right ones and be possibly happy? ( 14 ros in total and 4 flings )

DEMO: Prologue —on itch io [0k words] : not yet completed / uploaded

| currently : working on prologue part one

NOTE; EVERYONE IS THE GAME IS MESSED UP, SICK AND THEY'RE AWARE, DO NOT BABY ANY CHARACTERS (-the kids ofc)

ALL 8 ROMANCE OPTIONS[ros] & OTHER NON-DATEABLE CHARACTERS BELOW

All romance in this story is optional and can be skipped all together if preferred. Still, the platonic relationships will be rewarding and deep on a different level. There are currently no options for poly relationships but I will think about it..

[MAIN CAST]

THE VOICE [unknown] , ?? - ◇

??? : the voice is something or someone that has been with you ever since your mother had died when you were ten years old.

?? : your mother had the voice inside of her mind for a long time when her father was killed, this voice seems to be from your mother's side and it says it is a demon.

| the voice and mc will have a complex relationship and throughout the game, the voice will be a bastard and judge you throughout the game and later on you can have a nickname for it.

#wretched : voice

MC 'DOVE' AUGUSTKINGS (ALCOTT) [genderselectable] , 21 - ☆

Backstory: You are a outcast as people would say, just in the shadows with the title of 'one of Leif's many consorts' as people would say...

📎 A person, with gold eyes and customize-able to your likings.

#wretched : mc

| customized-able looks except for eyes (gold)

° | mc will originally be a bad parent towards Emil(your child) due to trauma, its up to if you want to be a bad parent or a great parent... your child's faith will lay on your hands.

EMIL AUGUSTKINGS [male] , 7 - ♧

Backstory: your child, you had no interest in him, born out of force and no love for him, but you realize that you can take your revenge - a possible heir of the throne, your ticket to revenge.

📎 An young boy, he has light brown skin, he has violet eyes. He is short in height (4'0). His hair is dark green and short that reaches to his ears and it is neatly combed. His body is skinny and petitle.

#wretched : emil

| you are unable to name him but you can give him a nickname later on, if you wish so.

MIRSELL CONSTAN [female] , 67 - ◇

Backstory: A old woman that takes care of consorts' children, a nanny but she seems to take care of your child more. - A elderly woman, a nanny people would say. She calls herself, Emil's Mother. Not around you, obviously.

📎 An older woman, she has brown skin tone, she has black deep eyes, she is short in height (5'4) and her hair color is fully grey and white and it is shoulder length and tied in a bun. Her body is leaning towards chubby.

#wretched : mirsell

| you can choose her faith later on the game, she can die or live also she can hate or love you later on.

ARTHUR IOVMISE [male] , 47 - ○

Backstory: A man, he is an assistant of the king, he also helps the consorts - He is a strong man that is also seen scolding the consorts, his daughter was also a consort of the king but rumors say that he helped her flee.

📎 An man, he has a tan skin tone and he had dark blue eyes along with his height being tall(6'1) and his hair being dark green with some grey hairs(he has facial hair), it is short and reaches to his ears, his body type is lanky and tall.

#wretched : arthur

| depending on your choices, he can hate or love you as his own.

SONA(SOPHIA) BELLWON [male] , 25 - ☆

Backstory: A servant, he is having an affair with one of the consorts, a young woman named Emilia - He is a servant that is related to Lady Mirsell, his grandma, well not really but he says he is.

📎 An man with fair skin, he has hazel eyes and he is average in height(5'11) and he has a color that mixes of grey and blue, his hair is shoulder length and is tied in a low ponytail. His body type is lean and average.

#wretched : sona

| sona will either help you or betray you depending on a very important choice you will make and he will be important as well.

LEIF AUGUSTKINGS [male] , 56 - ♧

Backstory: He is a man that was raised by a cold mother and a ill father, he is cold as well - He is your husband, he wants a heir, a strong one. A son. Every daughter is ignored, you're lucky.

📎 An man who has two different colored green eyes with dark blue and brown skin, he is tall(6'4) and his hair color is purple and it is ear length along with his beard which is a stubble and his body is quite muscular.

#wretched : leif

| he will die in a lot of endings except the bad endings and he is one of the main problems with your life and trauma.

ESME DAWN-BALDASSARE [male] , 18 - ☆

Backstory: your brother, despite being younger, has taken care of you, he is your sweet brother and he love you and Emil. - your his only family left and he is yours, he doesn't do much but stays at king Leif's castle at your request.

📎 An man with olive skin that is your younger half brother, his eye color is ruby red, and his height is short(5'4) his hair color is purple but with natural highlights of ash blonde and it reaches up to his shoulder and often tied in a small pigtail. His body is lean.

#wretched : esme

| no matter what you do, esme will always be there for you.

MOTHER ALCOTT [female] , 29 - ☆

Backstory: your mother, none hardly used her name in the castle, she was like a curse - she had died when you were younger, around 8. Just taken away by your father and his guards.

📎 An woman whom you called your mother, she has gold eyes like yours, she is quite tall(5'12) and her hair color is black and unevenly cut, and it is left loose. Her body is thin and bony.

#wretched : mother

| no matter what you do, she will always hate you.

+ more *on codex in the game, more characters will appear on there once more chapters are released... i will make a separate codex for more characters since putting all of them in one would be too much. (Important characters only will show or who have more appearance than others)

[ROs] 8 known ros, 6 secret ros and 4 flings

(ros : 14 in total w/ 4 flings)

| one or more of those romance options(ros) can die, betray your or your child or even reject you. you can be healthy or toxic towards characters, romance options, and even your son.

| most ros will start with slow burn, flings, and towards you can confess your feelings where some might reject or accept you but some ros are not really ros, dont trust anyone. (some ros might not like your child and will try to convince you to get rid of him, everyone is a red flag including mc)

| note. one of the ros is legally your step-son but none of the consorts(leif's consorts) feel like family and one the flings is your cousin. again, its up to you, if you want to romance the ro or sleep with the fling. One of the ros is older and does know mc when they were younger(not really but they do know and see mc when they were a child meanwhile they were an adult) and it might be seen as uncomfortable, one fling is married just uses mc for pleasure. (Again, everyone is toxic and might not show their true colors)

×

MICELA LENN [female] , 25 - ☆

Backstory: a young woman who was hired to be a nanny for the children like Mirsell but just younger - she takes care of children, she seems fond of your son, Emil. She also takes care of you, when she can. Maybe she admires you.

📎 An woman with brown skin and dark green eyes. She is short in height (5’4). Her hair is a deep shade of black, short and tied in a short messy bun. She has a lean body type . She has a gap between her two front teeth along with a small scar on her nose. Maria is seen mostly wearing her nanny’s outfit–a black dress with puffy sleeves and a white apron– but when she isn’t working, it would be a dress–a cool shade of blue dress, long that covers her knees and her arms, like an sundress– that her mother brought her before she left her home.

#wretched : micela

| she can be in-love with you or hate you in the first part of the game, depends on you.

LUCEYDELL RICHNESS [male] , 20 - ☆

Backstory: another consort of Leif, he is closer to you than any other consort, he seems fond of you. he is seen as feminine and often is dressed and he was originally a consort of a deity called "wraith". there are some rumors that he is the favorite.

📎 A male with light brown skin and pink eyes. He is around average in height (5’7). His hair is a very light shade of white, long that reaches his chest and tied in drill ringlets. He is average but leaning towards thin, he has beauty marks about everywhere on his face and a birthmark of something that seems like a fingerprint. Luce is seen mostly wearing his robes; it's completely white with gold undertones and has ribbons and many ties on it.

#wretched : luceydell

| he will be kind of a cock block during other routes and also toxic (more on the yandere side)

FAYETTE IRVINE [female] , 34 - ☆

Backstory: a dancer, a woman who has born and brought into a work of dancing and more, she is often brought by the king to perform - she often dances and has her own personal room despite her work, she is seen with kids. She cannot give birth to her own, she once said.

📎 A woman with light brown skin and dark green eyes. She is short in height (5’2). Her hair is auburn brown, long and tied in a low ponytail. She is thin in size and weight. She has a beauty mark under her eye and mouth. She mostly wears a long blue gown that is tied with many laces and noble french-wear; when not working as a dancer but is seen wearing a small dancer's wear.

#wretched : fayette

| this is the ro who knows and seen mc when they were a child but fayette never payed attention to young mc until present day(chapter one) and fayette doesn't remember them but can still be see as uncomfortable.

PANDORA AUGUSTKINGS [male] , 25 - ☆

Backstory: one of the king's children, they hate their father and is wanting to get the throne to avenge their mother - They are technically your step-child since marriage to the king but not really, none feels like family, they seem rude and often bothers you.

📎 A man with warm ochre skin and deep black eyes. He is tall in height (6’1). His hair is a deep shade of black like jet-black along with natural purple highlights, short that reaches up to his chin and left well-combed and slightly slicked-back with some strands in his face. He has an average built. He has two scars, one across his cheek to his other cheek, that goes across his nose and the second one on his neck. He is seen mostly wearing a royal suit–that is white and has blue undertones.

#wretched : pandora

| he is the stepson (legally by marriage) soo... also hates you but hey, hate-fuck/j

SALLY FIORISE [male] , 24 - ☆

Backstory: a baker and florist, he is a young parent like you - he is working at the castle since he is the town's delight and gets paid well!

📎 An man with peach skin and black-hole eyes. He is average in height (5'9). His hair is dirty blonde that reaches his ears and it is messy but yet noble looking. He has a lean; body type. He has one beauty mark under his eye. He has scars on his hands and fingers due to his job. He wears a white undershirt with a black apron with a white bandanna on his head, with black trousers and brown shoes.

#wretched : sally

| he has a daughter that is overprotective of him, depending on your choices, you can be happy or mad with sally.

EMMY GREENBRIAR [f/m] , 25 - ☆

Backstory: a knight, your personal knight ever since an attempted murder, the king has brought you a knight. - they are always near you. Visible or not. They will stand by your side.

📎 An person with tan skin and dark green eyes. They are very tall in height (6'2). Their hair is short black hair that reaches chin but bit above and is tied up in a small low ponytail. They have a musclar build and a strong body. They have more scars on their body that is scattered every where, face, neck, legs, back. They wear a knight's amour at all times and without it, is just wearing a loose black shirt with brown trousers.

#wretched : emmy

| regardless of gender, emmy will still be very tall and very strong since some people might like a strong woman with muscles!

ADEN BASTARD [f/m] , 23- ☆

Backstory: ironically by the last name, They are a bastard. Born out of incest, their parents both siblings, surprisingly no birth deflects well they were born with an illness - They are a noble and stays close to you after their castle was burnt down, they are soon to be betrothed to an other.

📎 An person with a fair skin tone with red eyes. They are around short and average in height(5'6). Their hair is a natural blue, it reaches their shoulders and it's tied in a low ponytail that lays across their shoulder. They have a skinny body type due to the illness. They easily bruise and often is seen with bruises on their skin. They wear a mix of a nightgown and that still scream nobility instead of sleepwear, it's completely white with some red undertones.

#wretched : aden

| you can help them from the unwanted marriage or not but depending on your choices, they will no longer be a ro if they do get taken away.

MARRYJOY WHITEFIELD [nonbinary] , 22 - ☆

Backstory: not much is known but they are quiet and mysterious, weirdly the king is very interested in marryjoy - they are a mage but a fortune teller, the king seems happy around marryjoy, they have a secret.

📎 An person with a brown skintone and has hazel eyes. They are average in height (5'8). Their hair is white and long that reaches their past their shoulder that is left loose. They have a average build; a mix of skinny yet some chubby-iness on them. They have eye bags on their face along with a circle birthmark on their forehead. They wear a mages robe almost all the times.

#wretched : marryjoy

| marryjoy will be a problem at the start and will be seen at chapter one but rarely.

woes of their wretched.

@interact-if | @pearldvs

[warningsine]

what is the best way to get safer/more anonymous online

Ok, security and anonymity are not the same thing, but when you combine them you can enhance your online privacy.

My question is: how tech literate are you and what is your aim? As in do you live in a country where your government would benefit from monitoring private (political) conversations or do you just want to degoogle? Because the latter is much easier for the average user.

Some general advice:

Leave Windows and Mac operating systems and switch to Linux distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu (both very user friendly). Switch from Microsoft Office or Pages/Numbers/Keynote (Mac) to LibreOffice.

You want to go more hardcore with a very privacy-focused operating system? There are Whonix and Tails (portable operating system).

Try to replace all your closed source apps with open source ones.

Now, when it comes to browsers, leave Chrome behind. Switch to Firefox (or Firefox Focus if you're on mobile). Want to go a step further? Use LibreWolf (a modified version of Firefox that increases protection against tracking), Brave (good for beginners but it has its controversies), DuckDuckGo or Bromite. You like ecofriendly alternatives? Check Ecosia out.

Are you, like, a journalist or political activist? Then you probably know Tor and other anonymous networks like i2p, freenet, Lokinet, Retroshare, IPFS and GNUnet.

For whistleblowers there are tools like SecureDrop (requires Tor), GlobaLeaks (alternative to SecureDrop), Haven (Android) and OnionShare.

Search engines?

There are Startpage (obtains Google's results but with more privacy), MetaGer (open source), DuckDuckGo (partially open source), Searx (open source). You can see the comparisons here.

Check libRedirect out. It redirects requests from popular socmed websites to privacy friendly frontends.

Alternatives to YouTube that value your privacy? Odysee, PeerTube and DTube.

Decentralized apps and social media? Mastodon (Twitter alternative), Friendica (Facebook alternative), diaspora* (Google+ RIP), PixelFed (Insta alternative), Aether (Reddit alternative).

Messaging?

I know we all use shit like Viber, Messenger, Telegram, Whatsup, Discord etc. but there are:

Signal (feels like Whatsup but it's secure and has end-to-end encryption)

Session (doesn't even require a phone or e-mail address to sign up)

Status (no phone or e-mail address again)

Threema (for mobile)

Delta Chat (you can chat with people if you know their e-mail without them having to use the app)

Team chatting?

Open source options:

Element (an alternative to Discord)

Rocket.chat (good for companies)

Revolt.chat (good for gamers and a good alternative to Discord)

Video/voice messaging?

Brave Talk (the one who creates the talk needs to use the browser but the others can join from any browser)

Jami

Linphone

Jitsi (no account required, video conferencing)

Then for Tor there are various options like Briar (good for activists), Speek! and Cwtch (user friendly).

Georestrictions? You don't want your Internet Provider to see what exactly what you're doing online?

As long as it's legal in your country, then you need to hide your IP with a VPN (authoritarian regimes tend to make them illegal for a reason), preferably one that has a no log policy, RAM servers, does not operate in one of the 14 eyes, supports OpenVPN (protocol), accepts cash payment and uses a strong encryption.

NordVPN (based in Panama)

ProtonVPN (Switzerland)

Cyberghost

Mullvad (Sweden)

Surfshark (Netherlands)

Private e-mails?

ProtonMail

StartMail

Tutamail

Mailbox (ecofriendly option)

Want to hide your real e-mail address to avoid spam etc.? SimpleLogin (open source)

E-mail clients?

Thunderbird

Canary Mail (for Android and iOS)

K-9 Mail (Android)

Too many complex passwords that you can't remember?

NordPass

BitWarden

LessPass

KeePassXC

Two Factor Authenticators?

2FAS

ente Authenticator

Aegis Authenticator

andOTP

Tofu (for iOS)

Want to encrypt your files? VeraCrypt (for your disk), GNU Privacy Guard (for your e-mail), Hat.sh (encryption in your browser), Picocrypt (Desktop encryption).

Want to encrypt your Dropbox, Google Drive etc.? Cryptomator.

Encrypted cloud storage?

NordLocker

MEGA

Proton Drive

Nextcloud

Filen

Encrypted photography storage?

ente

Cryptee

Piwigo

Want to remove metadata from your images and videos? ExifCleaner. For Android? ExifEraser. For iOS? Metapho.

Cloak your images to counter facial recognition? Fawkes.

Encrypted file sharing? Send.

Do you menstruate? Do you want an app that tracks your menstrual cycle but doesn't collect your data? drip.

What about your sexual health? Euki.

Want a fitness tracker without a closed source app and the need to transmit your personal data to the company's servers? Gadgetbridge.

[lixiesstorys]

Vent (?)

NOT A FANFIC

Trigger warnings: talking abt self harm and suicide, addiction (?) to pain killers, abuse of pain killers, eating disorders, mental health problems/illnesses/issues

Normally I don't do those posts, because I don't want anyone to trigger theirselves with it or that people worry about me (or because if I write something like that, I feel like a burden XD) but I have to get this off my chest. (I'm about sorry and please don't read to trigger yourself or if you're senitive about those topics!)

I'm the quiet friend that nevere belongs anywhere. I'm the quiet friend that is the side kick you can go to when no one else is there and that you can abonton, but it stays with you. That is what I am. nothing but an annoying side kick that is only needed for listening to problems.

No one ever cared about my feelings. How I feel about that, what problems I have.

You know what the problem is when you're a perfectionist? You're as good as possible and most times that is good. But as soon as you write a worse mark than normally and you are sad about it (maybe from 9 - 10 to 7 - 8) you make things up and are too sensitive. 'that aren't even real problems'. Maybe it isn't a really failed grade, but for me it's as much pain as if someone really fails a grade. It is the same pain, but no one understands it. Maybe I don't really have to fight for my education, but it feels like that. And my marks don't come from donig nothing. I can't count the nights I skipped, so I was able to study, but got only a 7 - 8 (in Germany it's the mark 2).

For most people it looks like I ahd the perfect childhood, but in real life I didn't even have one. My father abononed me and my mom when I was 1. I got bullied in school (from my teachers). When I was 11, I was able to think like an adult. That may sound cool, but that is only the result of growing up to fast. I also got anorexia. With 9 I had nothing else in my head then grades, marks and studying. With 12 I burned out and got depression and social anxiety. I never had real friends, only those who didn't care about me.

I also lie alot. I don't want to, but as soon as I don't know what to say or if I'm overwhelmed, I start to lie. Those aren't big, but something like 'yes, I ate something' makes me feel bad for the person that asked. Another (maybe more understandable) lie is about my age. I won't say my age here, but I can say, that I'm still a minor.

Back to my time-line: when I was 9 i also started to hurt myself. Not by c&tting, but by punching, biting and insulting myself. With 13 I was (nearly) addicted to pain killers. They made me feel numba nd the pain would go away. I got bulimia in that time too. With 14 Io started to cut myself and with 15 I tried to kill myself several times. Those are the worst parts of my life, but no, I don't have problems, if anyone asks. I'm fine, don't worry about me. I was changing between binge eating and starving myself.

With 15/16 my mom wanted that I go into a clinic, but we agreed on therapy. There we found out, that i have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), ADD, depression, burn out, obsessive-compulsive disorders, anxiety and social anxiety. With 16 I found out about littlespace ans a coping mechanism.

Sometimes I wonder if that all wouldn't have happened, if someone had really listen to me. If someone watched my smile fade away. Or am I such a great lier that no one noticed?

I'm still the quiet but 'happy' friend. I'm still the perfectionist no one understands and everyone is annoyed of. Nothing really changed except that I know why I am who I am. That I actually am non-binary trans masc (wich also can lead to depression if you don't know who you are).

But isn't it sad, that people have to harm themselves or even try to kill themselves? That people have littlespace as coping meschanism as reaction to trauma?

And another thing: why are mental health issues accepted (what is important of course!) as long as it's not gender dysphoria?

There we are again. I'm still a minor and so much happened in my life. And you know what is kinda sad? There are other people outside, that have the same problems like me. To everyone whos suffers: I officially tell you: I am here for you! Talk to me and I try to help you! (This is okay for me, since I told you I want to help you) But in every case: please, if you don't feel happy anymore, please search yourself help! It's never too early, only too late. It doesn't have to come that far, like with me, just because I didn't see that I needed help (I still don't see that, but I'm working on it. Please, just reach out for help and don't fear to talk about your problems. That is important! You are important!

[letomills]

Download: SFS / Mega

Smart-looking outfits for Melodie9 fat AF & EF (apparently I really like trenchcoats and mature fashion for this body shape). Credits go to @goatskickin and @serabiet for the wonderful textures.

All have fat morphs, the adults also have preg morphs, the polycounts are low, the recolors are BSOK'd. Previews and details under the cut.

For every outfit, you'll have to choose if you want the EF recolors to be standalone or repo'd to AF.

Goat Belted Coat Wide Pants

Categorized as outerwear. Polycount: 2,302.

Original outfits by @goatskickin (1-10 from here, 11-14 from here).

Melodie9 fat AF (afFat) ↓

Melodie9 fat EF (efFat) ↓

~

io Supervillain Outfit

Categorized as everyday & formal. Polycount: 2,263.

Original outfits by io / @serabiet.

Melodie9 fat AF (afFat) ↓

Melodie9 fat EF (efFat) ↓

~

Rollneck Flare Pants

Categorized as everyday. Polycount: 2,317.

Original sweaters and pants by @goatskickin. I omitted recolors 13 & 14 for elders because the elder slouch made it impossible to get the stripes to behave on the back.

Melodie9 fat AF (afFat) ↓

Melodie9 fat EF (efFat) ↓

Here you can kind of see how the stripes are "waving up" on the upper back (it looked much worse with recolor 13 and 14). They straighten back down when the sim performs pretty much any animation that isn't walking, so there's no way to fix them at all times.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

prince's gambit highlights & annotations

chapter 14

indented text is from the book. some quotes have commentary, some do not. some comments are serious, and some are definitely not. most of them will only make sense to people who have read the series. and, like, there are spoilers. so please read the books first if you're interested!

also: part of the reason i'm doing such a close reading is to study cs pacat's style, especially in terms of how she does romance and erotica. there are "craft notes" that might seem weird, like i'm being redundant or restating something rather than analyzing, but those are more things that i want to remember/take away from the writing!

i'm going to tag these longer posts with "sam reads capri" in case anyone wants to read them all at once.

this is a google doc i wrote with overall content warnings for the captive prince series. it's not perfect, but i do think it's important to include.

No Laurent. All signs of recent occupancy had been a handspan away from his own body, suggesting a night spent in close but not transgressive proximity: some kind of self-preservation had apparently prevented Damen from rolling inward during the night; from throwing his arm over Laurent’s torso and drawing them together to make the small tent seem larger than it was. As a result, Damen was in possession of all his limbs, and even had his clothing restored to him. Thank you, Laurent.

The embroidery came later, in the retelling, as the story was told again and again by the men, taking on its own character as it passed over camp. The Prince had ridden out, with only one soldier. Deep in the mountains, he had chased down the rats responsible for these killings. Had ripped them out of their hiding holes and fought them, thirty to one, at least. Had brought them back thrashed, lashed and subdued. That was their Prince for you, a twisty, vicious fiend who you should never, ever cross, unless you wanted your gullet handed to you on a platter. Why, he once rode a horse to death just to beat Torveld of Patras to the mark.

like how this ironic misunderstanding of the events is similar to how damen viewed laurent in book 1 and some of book 2. except now he gets the irony

He looked at Laurent’s tent of silks, the pennants unfurled in the breeze, their starbursts undulating. The distant voices of the men swelled briefly, then dropped away. It would not be like this. It would be a systematic campaign moving southwards towards Ios, building on the support he had from the kyroi factions. He would not be stealing out of camp at night to spin mad plans, to dress in unfamiliar clothes and forge alliances with rogue clans, or to fight alongside pony-riding warriors, capturing bandits improbably in the mountains. It would not be like this again.

:(

‘Keep the prisoners alive, keep the women on side, keep my men from the women,’ said Laurent, as though reciting from a checklist. ‘Come over here and talk geography.’ He came as he was bid, and took a seat opposite Laurent, across the map.

they’re so cute i can’t stand them. “come over here and talk geography” SHUT UP

Laurent did not tend to show any of the usual outward signs of fatigue. The control that he asserted and maintained over the troop was an extension of the control with which he ruled himself. A few tells existed. The words, perhaps.

“the words, perhaps” is such a funny line here. because like yeah no shit, but also how is damen supposed to know when laurent’s words actually reflect his true feelings?

Instinctively, Damen brought his hand up to squeeze Laurent’s shoulder gently—and then stopped. Laurent went very still, as Damen became aware of what he had just done, and that his grip was still on Laurent’s shoulder. He felt the locked muscles like hard wood beneath his hand. ‘Stiff?’ said Damen, casually. ‘A little,’ said Laurent, after a moment in which Damen’s heart knocked twice against the inside of his chest.

one thing i really appreciate about capri is the way that laurent is written, as a character with trauma/baggage who experiences intimacy in a way you wouldn’t expect from the love interest in a romance novel. he doesn’t make anything easy, for himself or for damen. his physical and mental reactions to things are very telling and consistent, and i appreciate pacat’s commitment to honoring that aspect of the character. that way it’s so much more rewarding when we finally see laurent let go of control and experience love that doesn’t hurt him.

i won’t do an official count for “laurent intimacy issues,” since it’s not nearly as clear-cut as “laurent leans,” but if there’s something that strikes this chord with me, i do want to make note of it. just… stuff that i personally appreciate, especially from a love interest in a romance novel, whose whole narrative job—one would expect—is to love the protagonist and have hot sex. but sensitive and traumatized people deserve love and intimacy, too, at their own pace and on their own terms. and laurent has a lot more going on than what damen perceives, or what the romance genre dictates. it’s nice to point out little moments where his issues affect his physical and emotional reactions, because it’s nice to know that those moments 1) exist and 2) don’t make him any less of a romantic lead.

He applied a gentle pressure with his thumbs. He said, ‘You brought me ice, last night.’ ‘This,’ said Laurent, ‘is a little more—’ It was a word of sharp points: ‘—intimate,’ he said, ‘than ice.’ ‘Too intimate?’ Damen said. Slowly, he was kneading Laurent’s shoulders. He did not usually think of himself as someone with suicidal impulses. Laurent did not relax at all, just stood unmoving. And then, at the apsis of his thumbs, a muscle shifted beneath pressure, unlocking a sequence all the way down Laurent’s back. Laurent said, unwillingly, ‘I . . . There.’ ‘Here?’ ‘Yes.’

a lot going on here! made even more complicated by damen’s pov!

damen takes physical intimacy much less seriously than laurent. prior to book 1, he has always enjoyed willing and enthusiastic partners (some of whom were conditioned into that enthusiasm, but we’ll deal with that later), and to him, sex is not a means of abuse or power. prior to book 1, intimacy was never used to disempower damen. laurent, obviously, is very different. pretty much all he knows of intimacy is abuse and disempowerment.

so, being aware of laurent’s trauma and also being fairly perceptive of the signs pointing towards it, i can see here that laurent is fighting a massive battle with himself. because, like, he does want this. but he doesn’t want to want this, because this is something he doesn’t have control over. the fact that he doesn’t throw damen off, and even explicitly asks him to massage a certain spot, is a demonstration of vulnerability that damen doesn't really understand.

which isn't bad or wrong of him, at all! if he did understand more about laurent’s trauma and responses, he’d almost certainly be less confident with initiating intimacy, which is something laurent needs from a partner. it's a lot harder when they're both completely terrified (which damen is, in a different way, but lesser so.) damen is afraid that laurent will bite his head off because he’s a bitch, not because he’s traumatized. and i think that’s a good place for them to be, at this stage of their relationship.

also, the “suicidal impulses” quip is great.

He felt Laurent subtly give himself up to his hands; yet as with a man closing his eyes on the edge of a cliff, it was an act of continuous tension, not surrender.

yeah

‘Like this?’ ‘Yes.’

“he likes that. do it harder.”

Laurent’s head had dropped forward a little. Damen had no idea what he was doing. He was distantly aware that he had had his hands on Laurent’s body once before, and couldn’t believe it, because it felt so impossible now; yet that moment felt connected to this one, even if only in contrast, his current caution against the unguarded way he had let his hands slide down over Laurent’s wet skin.

damen, meanwhile, has recently developed his own intimacy issues/trauma in book 1. these two are a mess

‘Is it so hard to relax?’ said Damen, quietly.

YEAH. IT IS.

‘You only have to walk outside to see what you’ve accomplished. Those men are yours.’ He didn’t pay attention to the signs, the slight stiffening. ‘Whatever happens tomorrow, you’ve done more than anyone could—’ ‘That’s enough,’ said Laurent, pushing himself away unexpectedly.

damen he’s not stressed bc of the war stuff, he’s stressed bc another human being is showing him physical affection and he actually wants it to be happening

When Laurent turned to face him, his eyes were dark. His lips were parted uncertainly. He had lifted his hand to his own shoulder, as though chasing a ghost touch there. He did not look exactly relaxed, but the movement did look a little easier. As if realising that, Laurent said, almost awkwardly, ‘Thank you.’ And then, in wry acknowledgement: ‘Getting tied up leaves an impression. I didn’t realise being captured was so uncomfortable.’

ohhhhh my god. oh my god. so fucking real, every line is so fucking real. the relief of no longer being touched, being back in control. the fuckin, phantom touch on the shoulder—an assessment of the massage, yes, but also… whose ghost is it? damen isn’t asking that question, but i am, and it’s sad. and then the awkward thanks, and the immediate snarky comment to follow up. it’s just so real.

‘I promise I’ll never tie you to the back of a horse,’ said Laurent. There was a pause in which Laurent’s mordant gaze was on him. ‘That’s right, I’m still captured,’ said Damen.

says the protagonist of the “captive prince” series

‘Your eyes say, “For now,”’ Laurent said. ‘Your eyes have always said, “For now.”’

ohhh this line is juicy. because like, yeah, there’s the melancholy yearning context of the last 10 or so chapters, but before? when they were enemies, when laurent was actively hurting and trying to disempower damen? even then, he never showed laurent submission. and laurent clearly noticed. they make me so crazyyyy

‘If you were a pet, I would have gifted you enough by now to buy out your contract, many times over.’

this is more a flaw in my understanding of the pet system, but is he saying that he’s done damen enough favors that if the favors were monetary he could afford to pay off his contract? that’s my best understanding of the line at this point.

‘I’d still be here,’ said Damen, ‘with you. I told you that I would see this border dispute through to its finish. Do you think I’d go back on my word?’ ‘No,’ said Laurent, almost as if he was realising it for the first time.

they drive me insane. the whole “suffering alone” theme—laurent is realizing that he hasn’t been suffering alone, lately, because damen is intentionally staying by his side. laurent may be great at strategic thinking, but he is so used to being manipulated and abused that he doesn’t even consider that someone could be genuinely devoted to him, as a person.

But I know you don’t like it. I remember how much it maddened you in the palace, to be bound and powerless. I felt yesterday how badly you wanted to hit someone.

another interesting re-contextualization of book 1! although it’s not quite an apology, bc i’m sure laurent was aware of the maddening and was probably like “good. this guy killed my brother”

Damen found he’d moved without realising it, his fingers lifting to touch the bruised edge of Laurent’s jaw. He said, ‘The man who did this to you.’ The words just came out. The warmth of skin under his fingers in that moment took all his attention, before he became aware that Laurent had jerked back and was staring at him, blue eyes huge with pupil. Damen was suddenly aware of how out of control he was—he felt—and called violently on his faculties to try to put a stop to—this. ‘I’m sorry. I . . . know better than that.’

“i know better than that” is an INSANE thing for him to say here, by the way. they’re both so compelled by each other and afraid of each other. the amount of work pacat has put into their arc/characterization so far means that scenes like these can have something going on between every single line. honestly i think there’s more going on here off the page, than there is on it

‘No. Wait. I . . . wait.’ Damen stopped, and turned. Laurent’s gaze was edged with indecipherable emotion, and his jaw was set at a new angle. The silence stretched out for such a long time that the words, when they came, were a shock. ‘What Govart said about my brother and I . . . it wasn’t true.’ ‘I never thought it was,’ said Damen, uneasily. ‘I mean that whatever . . . whatever taint exists in my family, Auguste was free of it.’ ‘Taint?’

fascinated by the possible reasons for laurent to say this, in this moment. he uses it on the page to then say that damen is a good and honorable person like auguste, so that’s the easy answer. but if he was just experiencing some ptsd flashbacks, i wonder if this is also something of a grounding statement for himself. because we know who he’s referring to, when he’s talking about bad people on his family tree. it’s almost like he’s trying to figure out how to frame this situation, more for himself than damen—laurent feels protected and cared for in this moment, and the last time he allowed himself to feel that way after auguste’s death, his uncle had taken advantage. so of course he’s picturing his uncle. but this statement, a reminder to himself that damen is more like auguste than the regent, and auguste would have never done anything with laurent in the way the regent had… augh. laurent your brain.

‘I wanted to tell you that, because you,’ said Laurent, as though he was forcing the words out, ‘You remind me of him. He was the best man I have ever known. You deserve to know that, as you deserve at least a fair . . . In Arles, I treated you with malice and cruelty. I will not insult you by attempting to atone for deeds with words, but I would not treat you that way again. I was angry. Angry, that isn’t the word.’ It was bitten off; a jagged silence followed.

this is a laurent apology! no “sorry” necessary. and he’s the closest to telling damen the truth as he’s ever been, but still he stops himself. i wonder if it’s partially out of shame, for how he treated damen. a refusal to make an excuse, because he understands the cruelty of his actions regardless. and of course he has cognitive dissonance to maintain and tactical reasons for keeping the lie going. but still, this is honest.

Then, with a return to his more usual tone, ‘And you don’t need to take watch,’ said Laurent. ‘You sleep prudently.’

of course he can’t just say, like, “sleep well” or “good night.” prudently means carefully, or in good judgment… so like, he’d wake up if something dangerous happened? laurent trusts that? i can’t tell if the statement is an observation or a command. it’s either, “[i want you to] sleep mindfully” or “you sleep mindfully [so you don’t need to stay awake on watch].” hmmm

Damen searched his face, but found nothing in it that he could read, which, he supposed, as he lifted his hands to the laces of his own jacket, was typical.

buddy there is so much subtext going on here it’s okay just get some rest

[deathlessathanasia]

Who would you put on a list of Zeus' favorite lovers?

How loosely are we applying the term lovers?

There is the list he himself gives in Iliad 14 of women he has desired: Dia, Danae, Europe, Semele, Alkmene, Demeter, Leto, Hera. Nonnos's Zeus offers a different list in the knockoff Dios Apate scene from Dionysiaca 32: Taigete, Niobe, Io, Aphrodite. We get another list earlier in the Dionysiaca (Book 5), of women he has presumably desired in the past but now rejects in favour of Persephone: Hera, Dione, Demeter, Themis, Leto.

There are various other lists of this sort, but these three specifically involve comparing (either explicitly or implicitly) a current object of desire to a select number of previous ones, which suggests that the chosen examples must stand out.

To the ones already mentioned by Homer and Nonnos I would add as contenders Mnemosyne (the only consort of his in the Theogony for whom Hesiod's Zeus is said to experience eros and someone he finds attractive enough to sleep with for nine consecutive nights), Ganymedes and possibly Maia (I actually think she is a better contender than her sister so if Taigete gets to be here why not her also?). I can't come up with a list of my own though; too many to choose from.

[omegaremix]

Finds For 2013.

Killing Joke “Rapture”

Melvins, The “In The Freaktose The Bugs Are Dying”

Unsane “No Chance”

Dead Banana Ladies “1234”

Excepter “Kill People”

Death Grips “Guillotine”

Crystal Castles “Alice Practice”

Joy Division “Interzone”

How To Destroy Angels “The Loop Closes”

Z’ev “Shake, Rattle, And Roll”

Mika Miko “Capricoronations”

IAMX “I Am Terrified” (Alec Empire RMX)

Cold Cave “Confetti”

CX Kidtronik “Sky Is My Roof”

My Bloody Valentine “Who Sees You”

Killing Joke “Mass”

Captain Sensible & The Softies “Jet Boy Jet Girl”

Siouxie Sioux & The Banshees “Dear Prudence”

No Age “Every Artist Needs A Tragedy”

Ice “Flood”

Donny McCaslin “Alpha & Omega”

Death Grips “Takyon”

Fall, The “Mollusc In Tyrol” (live)

CX Kidtronik “Let’s Go Krazy” (Atari Teenage Riot RMX)

Sonic Youth “Tuck N’ Dar”

Slowdive “Catch The Breeze”

IO Echo “Carnation”

Prurient “There Are Still Secrets”

Tying Tiffany “Slow Motion” (Nic Endo RMX)

Head Of David “Newly Shaven Saint”

James Chance & The Contortionists “Bedroom Athelete”

Terawrizt “Don’t Forget”

Cut Hands “Black Mamba”

Alec Empire “New Man”

Mogwai “Letters To The Metro” (Zombi RMX)

Killing Joke Extremities, Dirt, And Various Repressed Emotions

Nujabes “Latitude” (RMX)

Laura Nyro “Buy And Sell”

Cut Hands “Stabbers Conspiracy”

Guitar Wolf “Jet Virus”

NxFxTxEx “Tanz Der Idioten”

Smiths, The “How Soon Is Now”

Damned, The “1 Of The 2”

Killing Joke “Jana” (Youth RMX)

Glass Candy “Warm In The Winter”

Bug, The “Catch A Fire”

Shonen Knife “When You Sleep”

Dot Allison “I Think I Love You”

Dead Boys, The “Sonic Reducer”

Christoph De Babalon “Traumspiel”

Consumer Electronics “Hand To Mouth (Barely Visible)”

Ramleh “Gibbering Wreck”

Les Ralizes Denudes “Dream” (live)

Skullflower “Diamond Bullet”

Tre Lux “Lever Let Me Down Again”

Ash Pool “Sin Of Life”

Laughing Hyenas “I Want You Right Now” (live)

Dead Banana Ladies “Girls Gone Wild”

Urbie Green “Mertensia”

This Will Destroy You “Little Smoke”

Prince Rama “Welcome To The Now Age”

Bug, The “Skeng”

NxFxTxEx “Some Stuff”

Killing Joke “Democracy”

Raveonettes, The “Ali Walk With Me” (Nic Endo RMX)

Bomb Squad “Riot Riot”

Sonic Youth “Santa Doesn’t Cop Out On Dope”

Merzbow “Silent Night”

Some Girls “He’s On Drugs Again”

Silver Daggers “Real Neat Flag”

Crystal Castles “Pap Smear”

Jesu “Christmas”

Atari Teenage Riot “Collapse Of History”

Avengers, The “We Are The One”

Babes In Toyland “Laugh My Head Off”

Gigi Masin “Clouds”

Small Black “Despicable Dogs” (Washed Out RMX)

Suicide “I Remember”

Black Tambourine “Black Car”

Martin Rev “Mari”

Nite Jewel “We Want Our Things”

Brothertiger “Turquoise (Skyline)”

Sea Oleena “Orion’s Eyes”

Chromatics “Tick Of The Clock”

New Bomb Turks “Dragstrip Riot”

Savages “Husbands”

Cold Cave “Oceans With No End”

125, Rue Monmartre “Revolter”

Wipers, The “Last Chance”

Crass “Shaved Women”

Depeche Mode “Soothe My Soul”

Fall, The “Victrola Time”

FFH “Worth Doing”

Phil Western “Bleak Night”

Gary Low “I Want You”

Babes In Toyland “Oh Yeah”

Heavens To Betsy “Get Out Of My Head”

Huggy Bear “February 14”

John Frusciante “The Real (Curtains)”

Suicide “See You Around”

Joy Division “Love Will Tear Us Apart”

Lapalux “Guuurl”

Les Rallizes Denudes “Reapers Of The Night” (live)

Mike Simonetti “Third Of The Storms”

Nitzer Ebb “Getting Closer”

Phil Western “Citrus Dream”

Savages “Flying To Berlin”

Farah “Gay Boy”

Bedflowers, The “My Ex-Lovers’ Address”

STRFCKR “Quality Time”

Alan Vega “Jukebox Babe”

John Frusicante “Remains”

Babes In Toyland “Bruise Violet”

Subhumans UK “The Day The Country Died”

Bratmobile “Shut Your Mouth”

Suicide “Cheree”

Telepathe “I Can’t Stand It”

Ceremony “Old”

Devotchkas, The “Live Fast Die Young”

Heavens To Betsy “Waitress Hell”

Bedflowers, The “In Love With 25 People”

Glass Candy “Digital Versicolor”

Computer Magic “Running”

Toll “Radio Moscow”

Twisted Wires “One Night At The Raw Deal”

Washed Out “Within And Without”

Golden Filter, The “Hide Me”

Desire “Mirror Mirror”

125, Rue Monmartre “Disco Hijack”

Boards Of Canada Tomorrow’s Harvest

Glass Candy “Redheads Feel More Pain”

Lee Ranaldo “The Bridge”

Mark Pritchard “Duppies”

Slowdive “Morningrise”

Primal Scream “City Slang”

Beach Fossils “Youth”

Classixx “All You’re Waiting For”

Dornik “Something About You”

Nine Inch Nails “Came Back Haunted”

Belle Game, The “River”

Com Truise In Decay

Fuck Buttons “The Red Wing”

Preatures, The “Is This How You Feel”

Drums, The “Money”

Gold Panda “You”

M.I.A. “Bring The Noize”

Mike Simonetti “The Magician”

Chvrches “Gun”

Disclosure “When A Fire Starts To Burn”

Ramallah Underground “Amputate (With The Unpeople)”

Appaloosa “Intimate”

Bibio “You”

Chvrches “Recover”

Killing Joke MMXII

Cigarettes, The “You Were So Young”

Cabaret Voltaire “Yashar”

A’Simetric “Refusal”

Big Business “Another Fourth Of July…Ruined”

Brought Low, The “The Kelly Rose”

Cabaret Voltaire “Sensoria (Razormaid)”

Sunburst “Mysterious Vibes”

Death Spiritual Mental Physical

S.M. Nurse “No Pop”

Dick Hyman “Give It Up Or Turn It Loose”

Minnie Riperton “Les Fleurs”

Anti-Nowhere League “For You”

Chick Carlton & Mesmeriah “One More Time With Feeling”

Death For The Whole World To See

Flora Purim “Angels”

Mantronix “Needle To The Groove”

Manzel “Midnight Theme”

Frank Ricotti “Vibes”

Giorgio Moroder “Midnight Express”

James Mason “I Want Your Love”

Killing Joke “Love Like Blood”

Francis Monkman “Getting Ready”

Mantronix “Bassline”

Blackbyrds, The “Love Is Love”

Herbie Hancock “Butterfly”

Merzbow “Action For Green 2”

Muslimgauze “Zion Under Islamic  Law”

Stars And Bars “Stars And Bars”

Tarika Blue “Dreamflower”

GG Allin & The Unseen “Murder For The Mission”

Big Barney “Whole Damn Thing, The”

Christoph De Babalon “Marble Stairs”

Akitsa “Redemption”

Jonwayne “404 Garbage”

Public Image Ltd. “Theme”

Silent Servant “Utopian Disaster (End)”

Tech Level 2 “Hard Times” (dub)

Nine Inch Nails “All Time Low”

Four Tet “Jupiters”

Death Grips “Feels Like A Wheel”

AIDS Wolf “Cities Of Glass”

Peanut Butter Wolf “Dopestyle”

Whitehouse “Guru”

Alberich “Open Warfare”

Akitsa “Prophetie Heretique”

Ostara “Darkness Over Eden”

Elliott Smith “Twilight”

Chvrches “Lies”

M.I.A. “Only 1 U”

Oneohtrix Point Never “Problem Areas”

Bathory “Reaper”

Death Grips “This Is Violence Now (Don’t Get Me Wrong)”

Crash Course In Science “Cardboard Lamb”

AIDS Wolf “Like PSHTS Of Aerosol”

My Bloody Valentine “Only Shallow”

Pale Sketcher “Show Me How”

Wild Nothing “Data World”

Marine Girls “In Love / Honey”

Gleitzeit “Ich Kommew Aus Der DDR”

Phil Western “We Have Come To Bless This House”

Evian Christ “Salt Carousel”

Boards of Canada “Nothing Is Real”

Chvrches “Now Is Not The Time”

Nancy Wilson “I’m In Love”

Ron Morelli “Radar Version”

Public Image Ltd. “Fodderstompf”

[walks-the-ages]

Literally anyone who hates book piracy should really take a moment to sit down in their room, stare at their bookshelf, and count how many books they've ever bought second-hand, or how many books they read each year from the library.

If you're against people reading books for free, you need to sit down and consider all of the ways you, personally, have read a book that didn't 'Explicitly support the author by buying a brand new individual copy from a authorized platform that pays royalties"

Like, literally.

Sit down and think about it.

What, functionally, is the difference between a book that you downloaded, and a book you bought or acquired Used?

How about a used book you got from your friend, or family?

A yardsale?

How about the Free bin outside a book shop or a library?

How about from A Little Free Library?

How about the books you borrow from the library and return so another hundred individuals can read that same book?

If a publisher gives hundreds of thousands of copies of their ebooks for free in one year, how can you then turn around and disparage those who got *their* free copies from another source a year later when that promotion ended?

If you legitimately think that book piracy robs authors, then by all rights you should also think that libraries and used bookstores should be illegal. You can't have it both ways. Either you can acknowledge that poor people who can't afford to buy brand new books exist, and that they still deserve to be able to read and have access to books, or you think that anybody who doesn't go out of their way to buy brand new copies of every single release directly from a publisher are somehow stealing from authors???

Almost every book I've ever owned has been a used copy from yard sales, flea markets, eBay, better World books, etc.

Now that I am an adult with disposable income, if I have a favored author that I discovered from those $1 used paperbacks, guess what! I will usually preorder their newest book if I can afford to do so-- but that is not a luxury everyone has, especially in 2025 and beyond!

And guess what? Even if I am going out of my way to preorder a new physical book from my favorite author for $20-$30 .... I still need a DRM free ebook to actually read it so I can increase the text size and contrast to avoid getting a massive headache from the small font sizes, or risk that prescious physical copy getting ruined if I want to be able to read anywhere away from home , or having to lug around an 800+ page hardcover with me if I want to read literally anywhere other than my home, which I still have to squint down at the page to do so.

"Just buy the Kindle edition!" -- what, so Amazon can literally change what version of the book I have at any time, or revoke the licence because 'buying' a kindle book isn't actually owning it?? So I can't read the books I 'own' on an older device that doesn't support the official Kindle app, like the 14 year old Ipad I spent almost 6 hours to get it back into a usable state by rolling back the "latest ios update" that Apple put out to slow it to a snails pace and make it a buggy peice of shit??

There's a reason my favorite publishers are the ones who sell phyiscal copies and DRM free ebooks in bundles !

https://bookriot.com/book-pirates/

Surprisingly, pirates avidly buy books,” the survey shares. 14.4% of respondents admitted to engaging in book piracy. They are younger than the average survey population and more of them are men and people of color, but the most unifying trait they have is that book pirates are avid readers — and they buy more books than the average respondent: “Compared to the general survey population, a higher percentage of book pirates during COVID are buying more ebooks (38.7%), audiobooks (27.1%) and print books (33.7%).” They’re also much more likely than general survey respondents to buy books in multiple formats: 41.5% do! During the pandemic, book pirates also increased their purchasing of newspaper and magazine subscriptions. They also are more likely to be library power users. 77.2% own a library card, and they borrow more than the average survey population, including ebooks (30.1%), audiobooks (31.6%), and print books (28.5%). Book pirates often use the library for discovering books that they go on to purchase: “58.4% of pirates bought a book at the bookstore that they first discovered at a library. 54.3% of pirates bought a book online that they first found in a library (compared to 35.9% of the general survey population).” Many turn to pirating books when they aren’t available at the library, especially Gen Z respondents. Book pirates are almost twice as likely to read or download free books for marketing promotions, and they’re also more likely to post a book review on social media (59.9%) and more than twice as likely to read fan fiction (27.4% do, as compared to 12.2% of the general survey population). This suggests that book pirates are some of the most passionate readers online, actively promoting titles and fandoms. This isn’t the first survey to suggest that piracy isn’t a simple case of lost sales. In fact, a €360,000 ($430,000) study by the European Union in 2013 found that outside of new blockbuster movie releases, there was “no robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online piracy,” including across books, video games, and movies. In fact, they found it might even help video game sales.

Gee, it's almost as though every single study ever done on media piracy proves over and over again that people who care enough about a piece of media to pirate it are also the ones who spend the most money on that media??

Quite literally since time in memorial this is been proven over and over and over again.

There is a reason bands release their music for free on YouTube.

There is a reason many new authors post themselves reading their works for free as audiobooks on YouTube.

There's a reason publishers will give away thousands of free ebooks in advance of a new publication in a series.

Because they know, for a fact, That people will discover their work because it is free, or otherwise they would never have purchased an unknown.

Anyways.

TL;DR: Free access to ebooks does not mean people "won't buy books" , it will just mean people who can't afford to buy books *will be able to read books*, and even publishers know this and will give away an entire series for free to get people to read the newest release.

The exact same way as borrowing a book from the library or a friend or a community little free library doesn't directly support an author monetarily for each reader, but *does* get them exponentially more people reading their book, who are much more likely to go on and buy them when they release, and buy their own copies.

[arctic-space-penguin]

Ultimate Hope Sterling Thorne 'Character Card'

General Info:

Name: Hope Sterling Thorne Age: 14 (show) and 16 (movie) Best Friends: Leo, Ace, Mikey, Splinter, Cass, Draxum, Casey Jr Friends: Donnie, Raph Relationship(s): Leo Family: Mom (Irene), Dad (Bishop), older sister Dove Pets: Inari (fox) Loves: fighting, being outside, Leo, Draxum, Cass, Halloween, Inari, Mikey Likes: Irene, spars w/ Raph, Donnie, Raph Dislikes: Bishop, Dove, other people getting hurt, bikes Ethnicity: Japanese-American Songs to Represent her:

This or That Questions:

1. Playlists or podcasts? A: Podcasts 2. Shoes or slippers? A: Slippers 3. Pork or beef? A: Beef 4. Swimming pool or beach? A: Pool 5. Fruits or vegetables? A: Fruits 6. Cats or dogs? A: Cats 7. Summer or winter? A: Winter 8. Salt or pepper? A: Pepper 9. Cash or cards? A: Cash 10. Cookies or chips? A: Chips 11. Soda or juice? A: Soda 12. Farm or city? A: City 13. Text or call? A: Text 14. New phone or new clothes? A: ¿Por qué no los dos? 15. Black or white? A: White 16. Driver or passenger? A: Passenger 17. Laptop or tablet? A: Tablet 18. Comedy or Horror? A: Horror 19. Beer or wine? A: ¿Por qué no los dos? 20. Dine in or dine out? A: Dine in 21. Movies or TV shows? A: Movies 22. iOS or Android? A: iOS 23. Waffles or pancakes? A: Waffles 24. Rain or snow? A: Rain 25. Love or money? A: Love 26.Ice or fire? A: Fire 27. Curly or straight? A: Curly 28. Oranges or apples? A: Apples 29. Sweet or salty? A: Salty 30. Trucks or cars? A: Trucks 31. Lunch or dinner? A: Lunch 32. Weekends or weekdays? A: Weekends 33. Pizza or pasta? A: ¿Por qué no los dos? 34. Friends or family? A: Family 35. Boys or girls? A: ¿Por qué no los dos? 36. Fiction or non-fiction? A: Fiction 37. Skiing or snowboarding? A: Skiing 38. Red wine or white wine? A: ¿Por qué no los dos? 39. Singing in the shower or singing in the car? A: ¿Por qué no los dos? 40. Organized or messy? A: Organized chaos

Vine that represents her:

(she's the one with the knife btw)

Summary: (Up to end of movie)

Hope didn't have the best childhood growing up. She ended up running away from home because of it, joining the Foot after finding a (badly drawn) recruitment poster. She didn't like the girl who had also been recently recruited, Cassandra Jones, at first, but the fact that they matched each other's energy helped in becoming best friends. Despite being recruited at a younger age then most, Hope rose to a Captain role quickly. At thirteen, she, the Foot Brute, and Foot Lieutenant go in search of paper for more soldiers. There they meet the turtles, and, after having used her ninpo and lost the paper to them, goes home at the cost of Leo telling Splinter about her, therefore Leo learned about all the Hamato stuff early. Hope declined every time Leo pursued her to ask her to join her true family's side. Eventually though, she couldn't deny how she felt and started doing insider work. After the Shredder is beaten the first time and Big Mama sends him back into his dimension, Leo and Hope confess how they feel about the other and start dating. All of this leads to a heated confrontation in the Always Be Brownies episode. Then after the Shredder is defeated the second time for real, Hope moves into Draxum's apartment with bribery and begging. About four months after the end of the show and the start of the movie, Hope gets kidnapped by Big Mama, mutated into a cat, and forced to fight under the name 'Death Blow'. Five months after she gets rescued from that, she is ambushed by a group of four men that ended with a mutilation, necessary amputation of her left leg, and a Genius Built™ prosthetic. Three months after THAT, Hope and Leo take a camping trip that totally wasn't interrupted by Mikey. There, her prosthetic malfunctions, causing her to fall from a (low-ish) tree branch, which is how she met Inari for the first time. Three months after that (gosh so many months lol), she gets unhappily reunited with Dove and their ma. Five months after that (listen a lot can happen in 23 months and 4 weeks alright?), Hope and Leo drag Donnie into a new restaurant in the Hidden City where the softshell meets and soon enough starts a relationship with the only son of the owners, Ace Yarrow. During the movie, Hope remains with April and Splinter the majority of the time before needing to check on how her ma is doing. But also because seeing a future version of yourself is way too weird, man.

Good Future Summary:

Hope avoided Leo during his entire recovery as well to punish him for doing what he did and also because she didn't want to know how badly the Krang had beaten him. She eventually visited him after convincing from Sterling, but it took a while for her to get over what he had done (Good thing she had Ace as a friend to help). A year passes as NYC repairs itself. Draxum (kindly) tells her to leave his apartment and get her own when she turns nineteen. She ends up moving back into the lair in the spare room they have now while landing two part-time jobs as a sub at the high school where Draxum works and as a server in Ace's restaurant he had paid for a year earlier to pay for her own house (after about two years she's able to afford a mortgage). Leo asks her a year later if she would marry him (dated for about six years at this point; everyone couldn't be more proud of them, Sterling, Splinter, and Draxum especially). While they agreed to disagree on not having kids, they considered Inari their kid in a way. The day Splinter passed was hard on the whole family, some more than others. They all took three days off work if they had one to mourn. Couple weeks later, Inari disappears and returns with four kits, evenly split between girls and boys. Hope names the girls Finch and Flicker while Leo named the boys Falcon and Flint. It wasn't easy raising those four, but they managed.

Bad Future Summary:

While Hope was devastated at the destruction the Krang caused, she pushed through and fought with all she had. When Casey came into the family about five years into the apocalypse after his dad died, she couldn't have been happier. Especially when Cass adopted him. A year later Raph died and Hope put in upon herself to pick up the slack in leadership while Leo mourned through mourning too. It was worse when Donnie died eleven years after that, but Hope was nothing if not good at keeping her emotions in check in tough situations (she only broke down when no one else was watching). She took over caring for Casey with Leo when Cass died a year after Raph did. During the few years nearing year eighteen of the apocalypse, she and Leo came up with the plan to send Casey into the past to prevent everything that happened in their timeline, also deciding he couldn't go back alone and that Hope would go back as well to which she agreed. Leaving everyone behind wasn't going to be easy, she knew, but it would all be worth it in the end.

Voice Claim:

[lottiematthewsdefender]

If anyone has the new ios update and iPhone 14 can someone tell me how it is? I don’t want my phone to get all buggy and stuff like how people say I really want that cute app edit thing :(

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The surveillance advertising to financial fraud pipeline

Monday (October 2), I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab. On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

Being watched sucks. Of all the parenting mistakes I've made, none haunt me more than the times my daughter caught me watching her while she was learning to do something, discovered she was being observed in a vulnerable moment, and abandoned her attempt:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/may/09/cybersecurity-begins-with-integrity-not-surveillance

It's hard to be your authentic self while you're under surveillance. For that reason alone, the rise and rise of the surveillance industry – an unholy public-private partnership between cops, spooks, and ad-tech scum – is a plague on humanity and a scourge on the Earth:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

But beyond the psychic damage surveillance metes out, there are immediate, concrete ways in which surveillance brings us to harm. Ad-tech follows us into abortion clinics and then sells the info to the cops back home in the forced birth states run by Handmaid's Tale LARPers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/29/no-i-in-uter-us/#egged-on

And even if you have the good fortune to live in a state whose motto isn't "There's no 'I" in uter-US," ad-tech also lets anti-abortion propagandists trick you into visiting fake "clinics" who defraud you into giving birth by running out the clock on terminating your pregnancy:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/paid-medical-disinformation/#crisis-pregnancy-centers

The commercial surveillance industry fuels SWATting, where sociopaths who don't like your internet opinions or are steamed because you beat them at Call of Duty trick the cops into thinking that there's an "active shooter" at your house, provoking the kind of American policing autoimmune reaction that can get you killed:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/14/us/swatting-sentence-casey-viner/index.html

There's just a lot of ways that compiling deep, nonconsensual, population-scale surveillance dossiers can bring safety and financial harm to the unwilling subjects of our experiment in digital spying. The wave of "business email compromises" (the infosec term for impersonating your boss to you and tricking you into cleaning out the company bank accounts)? They start with spear phishing, a phishing attack that uses personal information – bought from commercial sources or ganked from leaks – to craft a virtual Big Store con:

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/business-email-compromise

It's not just spear-phishers. There are plenty of financial predators who run petty grifts – stock swindles, identity theft, and other petty cons. These scams depend on commercial surveillance, both to target victims (e.g. buying Facebook ads targeting people struggling with medical debt and worried about losing their homes) and to run the con itself (by getting the information needed to pull of a successful identity theft).

In "Consumer Surveillance and Financial Fraud," a new National Bureau of Academic Research paper, a trio of business-school profs – Bo Bian (UBC), Michaela Pagel (WUSTL) and Huan Tang (Wharton) quantify the commercial surveillance industry's relationship to finance crimes:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31692

The authors take advantage of a time-series of ZIP-code-accurate fraud complaint data from the Consumer Finance Protection Board, supplemented by complaints from the FTC, along with Apple's rollout of App Tracking Transparency, a change to app-based tracking on Apple mobile devices that turned of third-party commercial surveillance unless users explicitly opted into being spied on. More than 96% of Apple users blocked spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

In other words, they were able to see, neighborhood by neighborhood, what happened to financial fraud when users were able to block commercial surveillance.

What happened is, fraud plunged. Deprived of the raw material for committing fraud, criminals were substantially hampered in their ability to steal from internet users.

While this is something that security professionals have understood for years, this study puts some empirical spine into the large corpus of qualitative accounts of the surveillance-to-fraud pipeline.

As the authors note in their conclusion, this analysis is timely. Google has just rolled out a new surveillance system, the deceptively named "Privacy Sandbox," that every Chrome user is being opted in to unless they find and untick three separate preference tickboxes. You should find and untick these boxes:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/how-turn-googles-privacy-sandbox-ad-tracking-and-why-you-should

Google has spun, lied and bullied Privacy Sandbox into existence; whenever this program draws enough fire, they rename it (it used to be called FLoC). But as the Apple example showed, no one wants to be spied on – that's why Google makes you find and untick three boxes to opt out of this new form of surveillance.

There is no consensual basis for mass commercial surveillance. The story that "people don't mind ads so long as they're relevant" is a lie. But even if it was true, it wouldn't be enough, because beyond the harms to being our authentic selves that come from the knowledge that we're being observed, surveillance data is a crucial ingredient for all kinds of crime, harassment, and deception.

We can't rely on companies to spy on us responsibly. Apple may have blocked third-party app spying, but they effect nonconsensual, continuous surveillance of every Apple mobile device user, and lie about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

That's why we should ban commercial surveillance. We should outlaw surveillance advertising. Period:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/ban-online-behavioral-advertising

Contrary to the claims of surveillance profiteers, this wouldn't reduce the income to ad-supported news and other media – it would increase their revenues, by letting them place ads without relying on the surveillance troves assembled by the Google/Meta ad-tech duopoly, who take the majority of ad-revenue:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

We're 30 years into the commercial surveillance pandemic and Congress still hasn't passed a federal privacy law with a private right of action. But other agencies aren't waiting for Congress. The FTC and DoJ Antitrust Divsision have proposed new merger guidelines that allow regulators to consider privacy harms when companies merge:

https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FTC-2023-0043-1569

Think here of how Google devoured Fitbit and claimed massive troves of extremely personal data, much of which was collected because employers required workers to wear biometric trackers to get the best deal on health care:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/google-fitbit-merger-would-cement-googles-data-empire

Companies can't be trusted to collect, retain or use our personal data wisely. The right "balance" here is to simply ban that collection, without an explicit opt-in. The way this should work is that companies can't collect private data unless users hunt down and untick three "don't spy on me" boxes. After all, that's the standard that Google has set.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/29/ban-surveillance-ads/#sucker-funnel

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[dejadoodles-101]

Hello everyone. I doubt anyone on here will take the time to read this, but I want to explain why I haven’t been posting on here nearly as much as I used to.

First off, posting here on tumblr is mentally exhausting for me. Having to do hashtags and everything is just so much for me to do for some reason.

Also, we haven’t gotten any Inside Out content since January and I’m currently on break from the fandom. I don’t know when I’ll return. It’s gonna be a long long while.

Another thing I want to explain is that ever since the beginning of the year this year, I noticed everything went downhill in my personal life. A really close friend of mine (who is actually in the IO fandom) abandoned me suddenly. I even had strong feelings towards this person and I finally confessed my feelings to them back in January, and this person rejected me. It hurt and broke me so much to the point where I shut everyone out and thought about doing harmful things to myself. I felt so empty and depressed inside. And I love and deeply care for this person. And to this day, I still love them and it hurts. Now, they’re ignoring me… 💔

I live in America and ever since Trump became president, he has done nothing but destroying this country. I’m terrified for myself and others. I hate seeing what’s on the news and shit because of it.

My cat also became really sick back in April and passed away in the beginning of May. I’ve had him for 14 years and I miss him so so much. It was a really great 14 years with him.

My mom’s long time best friend is currently battling with aggressive cancer and she’s not getting any better. She is going to pass away soon and it’s really sad because I never got to see much of her in my life and I’m never gonna see her again. My mom is really worried about her.

This has been the worst fucking year of my life. Probably a lot worse than 2017. I just want everything to go back to the way how it was last year when everything was just fine and when I was actually happy and had nothing to worry about.

Sorry for the rant, but I felt like I needed to say something. I might not really post on here much anymore. It’s just too much for me.

[mayalaen]

VPNs aren't just for pirates and company data anymore

A friend complained to me that they couldn't access pr0n anymore because the government is now requiring ID to verify age where they are, and due to data leaks and privacy issues, didn't want to share their ID even though they're of legal age.

Shit like this doesn't work on the intended target. It only frustrates people who are aren't tech savvy while a lot of kids have already found their way around it because that's what kids do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When I talk about VPNs (virtual private networks), non-tech savvy people's eyes glaze over 😂

It sounds like complicated, unknowable magic. It's not! And you don't even have to understand it to use it!

With the government and ISPs (internet service providers) invading privacy more and more and hackers breaking in and stealing user data from companies, VPNs are becoming necessary.

Some Things a VPN Does for You:

hides your data from others

can make your internet speeds faster if your ISP does speed throttling (purposely making your speed slower)

hides what you're doing from your ISP

keeps you safer from some malware, viruses, hackers, and trackers

allows you to access things that are either restricted in your area or not available in your area (such as content in other countries)

keeps you safer when you're out in public connected to wifi

Below is a basic infographic on how VPNs work. When you access the internet, a VPN encrypts your data - making it into a secret code that can't be read by anyone else including your ISP.

Tech companies, ISPs, etc. want you to think VPNs are complicated so that you won't use them.

When searching for a free VPN, please be aware that a lot of the free VPN services out there are malware or full of viruses and trackers.

Either do some research into which one to choose or use a paid VPN service. You can either pay monthly or yearly - the yearly is always cheaper in the long run.

Some of the Top Rated VPN Services:

ExpressVPN $7 - $13/month

NordVPN $3 - $13/month

Surfshark $2 - $14/month

PrivateInternetAccess $2 - $12/month

ProtonVPN (some sites block this one) $4 - $10/month

CyberGhost $2 - $13/month

I use ExpressVPN, so for the purposes of this post, I'm going to use screenshots from ExpressVPN.

Once you have an account, download the program from the website to your desktop/laptop or find the app on Android or iOS app stores.

Signing in requires a code that the VPN will email to you that unlocks all the features. Pay attention when the program installs because it'll ask you about preferences, and you can easily check yes on blocking pr0n when that's the reason you wanted a VPN in the first place 😂

When the program is open, you'll see this:

As you can see in the screenshot, not only do I have the program, but I have an ExpressVPN icon on my browser. The program installs this automatically, and when the program is running, the icon will have a green checkmark on it so you know it's working in your browser.

You'll notice I've recently connected using Japan. I did this so I could watch a series that isn't available outside of Japan.

The program automatically chooses a location near you, but if you want to access things that are restricted to you, make sure you click on the three dots to the right of the selected location (see screenshot below) and search for a state/country/place that your content will be available in.

Once your location is selected, click on the start/power button, and you'll get a popup notification from your computer that ExpressVPN is connected.

Go to the site you want to use and use it like you normally would.

Here's what it should look like when it's running correctly:

Keep in mind that if you leave a VPN running all the time (which is perfectly fine to do), search engines like Google will assume you live wherever ExpressVPN tells it you live, so searching for "stores near me" will give you results that aren't close to you.

When you're done using the VPN, just hit the power button again and it shuts off.

I use this on all my handheld devices, my desktop, and my laptop for business and personal reasons. I'm a pirate, and I've been using VPNs for a long time, yet none of the ISPs I've used have ever given me a warning about torrenting.

Good luck, and enjoy all the new things you can access!

BTW for anybody wondering, my desktop wallpaper is a map of the world's time zones. So pretty!! 😍