#i have so much i want to do but unfortunately paying bills takes precedence and i just dont have much will power after that

[hneyteacup]

experiencing: stress

[indigosandviolets]

War Changes Kids

Pairing: Joseph Liebgott x OC x George Luz

Word Count: 2,418

Summary: Easy Company is placed in Bastogne, and Andrew has to deal with some very unfortunate business. A supply kid is injured and Andrew makes some conversation with Luz.

Notes: This chapter does have a bit of gore in it, but it’s accurate. This chapter did take longer than anticipated, but that’s simply because Luz and Liebgott are only in Bastogne for 3 minutes combined, tops.

Part Twelve of We Happy Few

Bastogne, France

The cold had started its permeation in Easy Company when Andrew woke up freezing and wet, never a good combination to start with. He groaned as he sat up in his foxhole, not really remembering who he had shared it with - Smokey, maybe?

The wet had started in his hair from the snow that had melted it in, and moved down the back of his neck and to his -

Oh, fuck, Andrew thought as he sat up, already feeling like complete shit. He yawned, checked to make sure none of the blood had soaked through his pants completely, grabbed his bag and set off to a quiet and solitary place in the Ardenne Forest.

“Mornin’ Marin,” Guarnere said as Andrew walked by, and he answered with a wave. Andrew really did not feel like talking to anyone anytime soon. Guarnere seemed to take this as offense. “Marin. Hey. What the fuck?”

Andrew groaned, turning as his bag hit his back. “Yeah, Bill?”

“What’s with the attitude?” Guarnere asks.

“I gotta take a shit,” Andrew supplies. He’s had to tell the lie several times before, and in worse conditions. Sure, it was cold as hell now, but it’s easier to cover it when it’s freezing cold over it being hotter than the devil’s anus. I gotta work on my swearing, Uncle Andy would shoot me.

“How was spending the night with Ramirez?”

Suspicions proven false, alright then. “Barely noticed, to be honest with you.”

“What the fuck is with you then?” Guarnere asks. He looks around for a few moments, and then pulls Andrew to the side. “Hey. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m alright,” Andrew says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You just seem pissed off and you just woke up.”

Andrew shrugs. “My birthday’s coming up and I’m spending it freezing my ass off with the guy who took out more fences than Germans instead of having a drink.”

Andrew’s anger over that wasn’t faked. He was genuinely upset about it — albeit his emotions were more present because of the current situation — and would’ve loved anything other than sleeping in a cold foxhole with Ramirez on his birthday. Nothing against Ramirez, but Andrew did have other company in his platoon he would have loved much more.

“It’s your birthday?” Guarnere asks. “When?”

“Three days, I’m pretty sure,” Andrew answers. “It’s on the twenty-third.”

“Today’s the twenty-first.”

“Is it?”

“You worry about your shit, Andrew, I’ll worry about your birthday.”

“Thanks, Bill,” Andrew says and Guarnere walks away, finding a new person to annoy or at least talk to.

Andrew walked further into the forest, and after finishing what he set out to do — now with a lot more blood under his fingernails — he had to find a place to either get rid of his clothes or boil the blood out of them without them freezing back over.

Then, of course, the universe decided he wouldn’t stop running into people. As Andrew prayed for no one to find him, the person who no one seemed to be able to find made himself very apparent.

“Private!” A voice called out, and he didn’t pay much attention until footsteps started to follow him. “Private!”

Andrew turned around to see Lieutenant Dike. “Sir?”

“Corporal! Corporal…?”

“Marin, sir.”

“Corporal Marin,” Dike finally started. “Your reputation precedes you.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean? “I’m sorry, sir?”

“How are you, Marin?”

Andrew yawned. “Tired, sir.”

“I can see that. Where are you from, Marin?”

“Fulton,” Andrew answered. How could he ever forget. Part of him wonders if Dike could have any idea what it was like for Andrew to grow up, if anyone could ever understand, and maybe it’s the blood underneath his fingernails that makes him think of this but he just wishes he-

“Where is that?”

“Illinois.”

“Do you miss it?”

Do I miss it? Fuck you, do I miss it? “Not at all.”

Dike nods, and without another word, turns back around and heads further into the forest. What the hell was that?

Andrew shakes his head and dumps his clothes in his foxhole beside a newly awakened Ramirez.

“Mornin’ Andy,” Ramirez said, the gravity of his voice coming through. “How are you doing on this fine Wednesday morning?”

“Better than ever,” Andrew replied sarcastically. “What about you?”

“Could be better, could be worse. Speakin’ of, do you have any on you?”

Andrew sighs, reaching down in his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. Despite him packing what he thought would be plenty, that number seemed to dwindle, and fast. He hands one over to Ramirez. “You need a light?”

“I got it,” Ramirez says. “By the way, Luz is lookin’ for ya.”

“That so?” Andrew asks, and Ramirez nods. “Which way did he go?” Ramirez tilts his head to the right. “Thanks.”

-

Luz’s asking for Andrew was going to have to wait. Roe and Spina were in need for medical supplies, and Andrew was sent on a wild goose chase to find more morphine and bandages, and scissors if possible. This search ended up being put on hold, thanks to a certain supply officer Vandenbosche.

Vandenbosche wasn’t a supply officer, but the way he walked made it seem like he had a high importance about him.

It almost reminded Andrew of Captain Sobel, but Captain Sobel would have been yelling at Andrew about the way his coat was worn instead of addressing the problem at hand. Vandenbosche was very good at addressing this problem, especially considering his problem was in his knee.

Second and first platoon had been pushed into sudden battle, meaning that while the very few supplies that were being dropped off had to be put to use almost immediately. Andrew barely began firing when the supply kid fell beside him, calling out for a medic before he hit the ground.

Andrew dropped his gun, pulling Vandenbosche away from the gunfire as he kept calling for a medic.

“Hey, Vandenbosche, it’s alright,” Andrew reassured him as he began tearing the fabric around the kid’s knee. “Medic! Doc! Medic!” Andrew poured the sulfur clotting powder over the kid’s knee.

“Hey, Vandenbosche, look at me,” Andrew says, turning his face to look at the kid. Tears are streaming down his red face. “What’s your name? First name?”

“William,” Vandenbosche answers, wincing as his leg moves.

“William? That’s a nice name, William,” Andrew tells him. “Medic!”

“Jesus, fuck!” William cries out.

“William, I know it hurts like a bitch, but we got Catholics here and I don’t think they want you taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

“Fuck you, I am Catholic!”

Andrew would’ve been laughing if he wasn’t grasping at his jacket for syrettes. It then dawns in him that he had given the last of his morphine to Roe, who was God knows where now.

“Medic!” Andrew yells out again. It’s almost like he’s back in Carentan, except he’s not the one who’s been shot. “Do you have any morphine?”

William quickly shakes his head. Andrew cries out for Roe again, looking around to see if anyone else could help, but everyone else is in the line of fire.

“William, William, look at me,” Andrew says to the kid. “I gotta move you to a foxhole, alright? If you stay out here any longer you’re fucked.”

“I’m fucked regardless!” William yells back. Andrew rolls his eyes before grabbing William by his shoulders and elbows and dragging him a few feet to the nearest foxhole. William wailed in pain the entire time, but that happens when you don’t have any morphine on you.

“Keep calling for Doc, alright?” Andrew says, stepping up out of the foxhole. “I gotta kill some krauts.”

“You��re gonna leave me here?” William yells at him.

“The fuck do you expect? Medic!” Andrew breaks. “I’m supposed to be shooting at Nazis, not trying to fix some kid’s leg while I get shot in the fucking back.”

Andrew gets his gun and moves to another foxhole, one that has Sergeant Lipton in it.

“Morning Sarge,” Andrew quickly greets before firing. “How has your day been so far?”

“Just fine, Marin,” Lip replies.

Andrew can still hear William Vandenbosche yelling for a medic, and Andrew hates to hear it. Everything hurts and he’s sure the blood from his knee is all over Andrew’s hands and gun.

Blood from a kid. The German kid-

Andrew shakes his head, running the thought out of his mind. He can’t afford to think about it now.

You left him alone, you idiot! He’s going to die and it’s going to be your fault! Just like that kraut that you killed!

Andrew isn’t sure how many krauts he shot, or when they stopped firing back, or when he stopped firing. He just knows that it’s over when Lipton places his hand on Andrew’s shoulder, jolting him from the trance of his thoughts. He can still hear Vandenbosche calling for a medic.

“Shit, Sarge, do you have any morphine?” Andrew asks. “That kid is in a hell of a lot of pain.”

Lipton reaches into his pocket and hands a syrette to Andrew. “Since when are you a medic, Marin?”

“Since they started needing a third.”

Andrew goes back to William, climbing into the foxhole and sticking the morphine into the kid’s leg.

“How old are you, William?”

“Eighteen.”

Andrew looks over at him. “Are you serious?”

William nods.

“Jesus H.,” Andrew mutters. “I was nineteen when I signed up. I turn twenty-three this week. How the fuck did they let you in?”

William shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Andrew looks up at the sound of footsteps, seeing Roe. “The real medic’s here.”

Andrew gets out of the foxhole, looks at the blood covering his hands, wipes it off, and looks back down at William. “I did what I could, Will.”

-

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Andrew says, his shoulders slumping as he almost falls into Luz’s foxhole. “You know how far away you are from second platoon? It’s a fucking trip.”

Luz looks up at Andrew with a confused look on his face. “I didn’t know you wanted to see me that bad.”

Andrew repeats the confused look right back to Luz as he sits down beside the older man. “Ramirez said you came looking for me.”

Luz shakes his head. “I wasn’t. I figured you were busy, running around and being Doc’s third.”

Luz wraps his arm around Andrew’s shoulder as Andrew gets out two cigarettes. “Son of a bitch.”

Andrew hands Luz’s Lucky Strike over as he lights it. “What?”

“There’s this kid,” Andrew says, his voice straining as he takes a drag. “William Vandenbosche.”

“Replacement?”

“Nah, supply line. He got shot in the knee today.”

“So?”

“I had to treat him. Doc and Spina were nowhere to be found. I dragged him to a foxhole, got the sulfur on him, shot some Germans, and got back to the kid with some morphine. Doc finished up.”

“Jesus,” Luz says. “How old is he?”

“Eighteen. I was older than him when I enlisted.”

“Well, so was I,” Luz tells Andrew, making Andrew look over to the older man. “And look what happened to us.”

“I don’t know, George,” Andrew says. “We’ve been here almost three years. Three years ago, that kid wouldn’t have been able to drive. I know these are dire times and the line’s stretched thin, but you would think at some point Roosevelt would find it in his heart to not send an actual kid to war.”

Luz pulls Andrew in closer and presses a kiss to his forehead. “War...changes people, right? You’re the only guy who’s been shot twice and has still kept his humanity about him.”

“What other choice do I have?” Andrew replies. “Act heartless like Sobel? I’d like to see him out here.”

“Why? So he can be jealous of you? Who the hell would be jealous of this place?”

“No, no. Just to see him squirm I guess,” Andrew explains. “He told me that sick men do not make paratroopers. Well, Sobel, guess who the fuck got the Unit Citation.”

It’s quiet for a moment. “Stay here for the night?” Luz asks Andrew. “I really miss you.”

“I miss you too, but Muck and Penkala will be back soon. I’m not even supposed to be over here.”

“So?”

“I don’t think you’d like to share me with those two.”

“I wouldn’t like to share you at all,” Luz laughs. Oh, you dumb bastard. Andrew, why the fuck are you doing this? “Can I get a kiss before you return to your beloved second platoon?”

“Of course you can,” Andrew says before pressing one to Luz’s lips. They linger there for a moment while Luz presses his forehead against Andrew’s.

“We’re gonna get out of here soon, don’t worry,” Luz tells Andrew before he pulls away..

“Not in enough time for my birthday.”

“Hey, Guarnere’s figuring out something for that. Like I said, don’t worry.”

“You’re in on it too?”

“Only a little. I think second platoon is more involved than we are.”

Andrew cocks an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

“Just a thought, that’s all.”

Andrew shakes his head as he stands up. “I’m looking forward to it. I’ll see you soon, alright?”

Luz sighs. “Soon is not soon enough.”

“You forget we’re fighting a war.”

“We’ve been fighting a war. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss you.”

Andrew looks back into the foxhole. “I miss you too. I’ll see you later.”

As Andrew walks away, he can’t stop thinking about William Vandenbosche, about how that kid will be forever shaped by the impacts of this war. The kid had only seen a part of it before he was injured, but he would still carry that for as long as he would remember. He almost felt guilty, not pulling the bullet out, but he knew he couldn’t. He wasn’t meant to or supposed to. He had probably done something he wasn’t supposed to when he pulled the bullet out of Liebgott, but that was Joe. He knew Joe. He didn’t know Vandenbosche.

Andrew’s body throbbed as he found his way back to his foxhole, sitting across from Ramirez, who was now in a deep and long sleep. He couldn’t blame the guy, who had wrapped himself up in a blanket as tight as he could. Andrew thought about doing the same, but he couldn’t seem to do just that as he fell into the quiet bliss of unconsciousness.

-

tag list: @alienoresimagines @fromcrossroadstoking @easyroses @leximus98 If you want to be added, let me know!

[caedmonfaith]

Method Acting

A new multichapter fanfic by Caedmon. 

Summary: Anthony J. Crowley is an A-list actor who has been in a bit of a slump over the last couple of years. A.Z. Fell is on the brink of superstardom, but has a reputation as a fuddy duddy. Their managers, Beezle and Gabriel, insist that if they pretend to date each other, it will solve both of their problems. It's only for three months. What's the worst that can happen?

Actors!AU, fake relationship, slow burn, rated E for later chapters. Updates every Monday and Thursday. First chapter below. 

Read it on ao3!

~*~O~*~

August 19, 2019

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Crowley stated blankly, shock rendering his face devoid of emotion. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It had to be a joke. “A.Z. Fell?”

“Yes. Glad to know your hearing is normal,” Beezle commented drily.

“Who the fuck is A.Z. Fell?”

“He’s an actor, and a rather good one. Surely you’ve heard the buzz about the new drama coming out, ‘Tadfield’. He’s the lead, and poised for superstardom after this film.”

Crowley racked his brain, but couldn’t call anything to mind about A.Z. Fell. The name was certainly familiar, but for some reason, he was connecting it with London, not LA. That couldn’t be right. Could it?

He shook off the thought and went back to his shocked disbelief. “I don’t understand,” he managed. “I genuinely don’t fucking understand, Beezle. I need you to enlighten me.”

“It’s simple. You haven’t had a hit in four years. Your last six movies haven’t done as well as expected—”

“They weren’t bombs,” Crowley muttered petulantly.

“No, they weren’t bombs, but given what you were doing five or ten years ago, they were a disappointment. Frankly, your star has fallen quite a bit as a result. Magazines aren’t writing about you, the paps don’t give a shit about you --”

“You say that like it’s a fucking bad thing.”

Beezle leveled a look at him. “It is a bad thing, and you know it. You know perfectly well that in this business, media silence is a death knell. If you’re not being talked about, you might as well lay down and die. But I know you, Crowley, and I don’t believe you’re done yet. You’re in a slump, yes, but I think you still have a few years of hits left in you. We just have to get people to pay attention again.”

“And you think the best way to do that is with a fake relationship with this A.Z. Fell?”

“Yes. If ‘Tadfield’ does even half of what people are expecting, he’s about to be on top of the world, career-wise. He’s already very much in demand, and highly sought after.”

“Then why the hell should he do this?”

“His manager, Gabriel, and I are old friends. He owes me a favor.”

“Some fucking favor,” Crowley grumbled.

Beezle ignored him. “You don’t have to do this. This isn’t the 1930’s, no one is going to force you. Your job doesn’t depend on it. But this could be very good for you, Crowley. I’m only asking you to go through with it for three months or so.”

“Three months!”

“Yes, at least three. Otherwise the paparazzi won’t even have time to be interested. After a few months, if you never want to see Fell again, you don’t have to. But think about it. Just think for a second. Think of your career.”

“There’s got to be some other way…”

“Oh, sure, we could do it without this, but dating someone on top of his game will open doors for you that I can’t open otherwise, or would be hard to open. It’ll propel you into the spotlight again. Your association with him will put you in front of casting directors and the like. Besides that, being linked with someone seen as stable and safe will help improve your own image. Your reputation precedes you.” Crowley scowled and Beezle leaned forward, propping their hands on their knees. “Think, you stubborn fool. Think of what this could mean.”

Crowley huffed, but he did as he was asked and thought about it. His star had fallen over the last several years, and the roles he was being offered lately were not nearly as good. Producers and directors didn’t want to take a chance on an actor who may not make a good return on investment, and Crowley hadn’t been as bankable lately. Sure, he still had plenty of money squirreled away, but he enjoyed what he did. He enjoyed the lifestyle - although he had to admit, the constant partying was getting old. And he missed working.

Beezle wasn’t done. “You’re not the only one who suffers when your career is in the dumps, you know.”

It was a pointed reminder if Crowley had ever heard one. And what’s more, Beezle was right. Everyone associated with him - Beezle, his agent, his accountants, everyone - stood to gain when he was successful and bringing home top billing pay. If he did well, they all prospered. If he floundered, they did, too. And if he floundered too much, they’d all leave him for greener pastures. Then he’d really be fucked.

“Three months, you said?”

“At least three. You get through to the end of November, and we’ll play it by ear. If the plan hasn’t worked and doesn’t look like it’s going to, we’ll stick a fork in it. But if it’s going well, we might milk it for a while longer. No longer than six months, though. Tops.”

Crowley sighed, his shoulders slumping a little, and he tried not to notice the gleam of triumph in Beezle’s eye.

“Tell me how it’s going to work.”

~*~O~*~

“I beg your pardon,” Aziraphale said politely, inclining his head forward a bit, as if to hear better. “So silly of me, but I’m afraid I must have misheard you, Gabriel. It almost sounded as if I’m going to be in a fake relationship.”

“That’s right,” Gabriel said with a bright smile, as if he was pleased Aziraphale had caught on so quickly to the most perfect plan anyone had ever come up with. A perfect gem of a plan. Aziraphale was forced to disagree.

“And just who are you proposing I have this sham of a relationship with, pray tell?” he demanded, voice chilly.

“Anthony J. Crowley,” Gabriel answered smugly.

“Anthony J. Crowley!” Aziraphale squawked. “But he’s… he’s…”

“He’s an A-list actor whose career has been on a downward swing for the last couple of years. You’re about to become an A-list actor when ‘Tadfield’ is released. You can help each other.”

“How on Earth can we possibly do that?”

“Your reputation as an actor is sterling - really, the best of the best - but no one knows anything about your personal life. You never go to parties and are very rarely social. Honestly, you’re developing a reputation as a recluse, a bookworm - almost a hermit. Certainly a stick in the mud. The words ‘fuddy duddy’ have been bandied about, and surely you can see how those would be detrimental to you.”

“I like who I am!”

“And there’s nothing wrong with who you are, Fell. But you’re boring. Boring doesn’t sell tickets.”

“I seem to be doing just fine,” Aziraphale huffed. “All my films have performed admirably.”

“They all did fine, but ‘fine’ isn’t what you want. ‘Fine’ is mediocre. You want excellence, and this will help you to get it.”

“I still fail to see how a false relationship is going to improve ticket sales - especially someone with the kind of reputation Anthony J. Crowley has. He’s a well-known rake.”

Gabriel leaned back in his chair, propping his feet on the desk and crossing his ankles, threading his fingers together and putting them behind his head. “First of all, no one says ‘rake’ anymore. Further, a torrid relationship with someone seen as your polar opposite will drum up interest in you. You’re not an unfortunate-looking man, Fell, despite being a little soft around the middle.” Aziraphale covered his belly protectively, but Gabriel didn’t pause. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have legions of fans who adore you and soak up your every move. Entire blogs and websites, devoted to you! You need to build an audience, and having a high-profile relationship can only help that.”

“You can’t make me do this,” Aziraphale tried. “It’s bound to be illegal. Isn’t it?”

Gabriel made a face that clearly indicated that Aziraphale was being ridiculous. “Of course nobody is making you do this. I’m just pointing out the benefits to your career if you agree to fake a relationship for the next ninety days or so. That’s all we’re asking. Three months - maybe more, if things are going well.”

“We? Who else is in on this?”

“Beezle, Anthony J. Crowley’s manager. They’re pitching the idea to him today, too, so we can get started as soon as possible.”

Aziraphale was quiet for a few moments, contemplating. It was a ludicrous idea, laughable, really. But would it work? Aziraphale had always loved acting, loved the craft, but he’d promised himself when he came to LA that if he ever made it big, he’d stay in the spotlight long enough to build up a comfortable nest egg, then he’d ‘retire’ back to London with his books and beat the boards in the West End whenever it pleased him. He’d had it all planned out… but he hadn’t quite had the success in LA he’d hoped for. He was comfortable enough, but not yet able to return to London full time. Los Angeles was still where the money was, so that was where he needed to stay for now - at least part-time.

But if Gabriel was right, this faked relationship could propel him into a higher status - which would let him see his retirement sooner. He certainly wasn’t getting any younger, and frankly was lucky to be getting the parts he was getting at his age. If pretending to date Anthony J. Crowley would open him up to more roles, what could it hurt?

Aziraphale sighed. “I must be mad.”

“You’ll be mad if you don’t do this. I promise, Fell. This will work. Three months of your life to secure the rest of your life. You’d be crazy to turn that down.”

He wasn’t so sure about that, but acquiesced. “Tell me how this is supposed to work.”

[misssophiachase]

For Klaroline AU Week: Day 3 - All Human. Yep so late again.

Me Without You

Fairhope, TX

I don’t know me without you...

“Say that again,” she insisted, furiously scribbling down notes on the tattered napkin that previously housed her vodka. 

Caroline was a singer/songwriter but in the south, they were a dime a dozen. She’d been touring for years hoping to make it big but it was never much more than one run-down bar after another. 

One minute she’d left the dingy bus to seek out some properly salted fries and the next it had left her behind. And suddenly fries were the last thing on her mind, the first some strong alcohol. 

She hadn’t wasted time, taking up residence in the town’s bar. Caroline needed inspiration and what better place? Unfortunately, the outspoken bartender was trying to mess with her inspiration.

“Excuse me?”

“That line you said, it’s...”

“Mine.”

“That’s not what you said.”

“No, I meant that line belongs to me.”

“Do you really have the copyright?” She growled, cocking her left eyebrow. “Because nothing overheard in bars has even been protected by the law.”

“I’d be happy for you to cite some precedent and then I’d gladly relinquish my rights to those six words.”

“Are you always so..”

“Helpful?” He smirked, a stray dimple throwing her off balance a bit. When Caroline had decided to drown her sorrows she hadn’t expected a cocky, English guy to ruin her already tenuous mood. “I could get you a beer.”

“I don’t want a beer,” she shot back, trying to ignore just how much his gaze was messing with her concentration. Sure, he was cute with those crimson lips and blue eyes but she wasn’t here to scope out the local talent, no matter how good it was. “But those words...”

“I thought we already discussed that?”

“You sure are possessive over six commonly used words.”

“Says my patron trying to steal my words,” he chuckled. “I’m a songwriter who is protective of my lyrics.”

“And here I thought you were a bartender who loves to threaten visitors with legal action.”

“I’m a lawyer slash bar owner slash songwriter. But if you’re interested in me, love, all you need to do was ask.”

“The spell is now well and truly broken now,” she groaned. “I’m too smart to be seduced by you.”

“Now, that right there is a hit,” he mused. “Country artists love a good story. How can we forget the masterpiece that was She Thinks My Tractor is Sexy.”

“Don’t you dare hate on Kenny Chesney.”

“Kenny no, I just never thought tractors were that sexy.”

“Pretty sure the tractor was a euphemism for...” her eyes betrayed her dipping low to check out his tractor encased in a fitted pair of dark jeans.

“My eyes?” He asked, a sly smile tugging at his lips. “They are up here, in case you’re wondering.”

“So, how exactly did an English lawyer slash bar owner...”

“Slash songwriter.”

“The jury is still out on that.”

“Says the girl trying to steal my words.”

“How exactly did you end up in small-town Texas?”

“Looking to write a biography while you’re passing by?”

“I thought it might inspire me to write a song,” she began. “To be honest I’ve had some writer’s block and given I need to pay the bills somehow it might help.”

“We can’t have you starving to death now, can we? It’s your typical boy meets girl story,” he explained. “I upended my life practicing law in London to follow this girl back to the States but for her I would have done just about anything.”

“She must be some girl.”

“That’s an understatement,” he smirked, polishing a glass. “But distance is tough and life isn’t always a fairytale.”

“Oh, now I understand your lyrics. Even though you love her she’s gone?”

“Not gone, she’s always with me,” he promised, stealing her napkin and scribbling down his thoughts. 

It’s been 23 days since I kissed you gone.

“Okay, I see where you’re going with this,” she smiled knowingly, tapping the pen and then writing. 

Should be having a good time...But the cover band's playing the song you love. The one we danced to last summer.

He just smiled, taking the pen and writing his own lyrics under hers. 

When I told you that I loved you. That kiss on your lips, say you'd never kiss another.

“We’ve still got it,” she laughed, leaning over the bar and placing a kiss on those crimson lips that had been teasing her since she’d arrived. 

“Well, we are married so I’d hope so,” he murmured, his hands combing through her blonde locks. “Any chance we could take this upstairs?”

“But the creative songwriting juices are just beginning to flow,” she pouted, although the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth was telling him something entirely different. 

“Trust me, the creative juices can only get better upstairs.” Caroline didn’t need any more convincing. 

[bigskydreaming]

Okay, so still trying to figure out rent and just taking a little break to eat lunch, and like, breathe, lol, but unfortunately still not all that close to solving that. I’ve only gotten one donation, which while much appreciated! does not really change the situation as much as I need. However, I did have another idea, though its fairly weird and unconventional. Look, I’m going outside of the box here people. I left the box behind months ago. LOL. Everything is outside of the box these days, so expect the weird and unconventional. This is the blog of a desperate man! 

One still preoccupied with fandom and discourse nonsense, because like, I need to at least fake having a life outside of constant desperation, lmfao, but like...still very much a desperate man, and so these posts aren’t gonna stop reeking of desperation and ridiculous requests anytime soon, lolol. I don’t blame anyone for unfollowing at any time, and hey if you do, please consider checking back in a year or so to see if I’ve like...become closer to non-ridiculous in the time since, but like. Hey, I get it. Some of these posts get weird and desperate and that’s not anyone’s idea of a happy fun time. I’ve made a deal with the universe though. When IT stops being ridiculous to me, I’ll stop being ridiculous too. 

Anyway.

So after wasting most of the day trying to get on the actual phone with someone at Apple who knows how their card actually works and why it does and doesn’t do various things, I ended up with the not super helpful answer that there just IS no way to do what I was trying to do with it. Because its so unconventional, part of the way the Apple Card works is that like, Apple has direct relationships with each of the places they’ve worked it out to let it be used like a normal credit card, so the fact that it is technically a Mastercard doesn’t mean as much as I’d hoped. Because one of the places they DON’T have specific angles negotiated with is Paypal itself, so like....you can use a side function of the Apple Card called Apple Cash Pay (basically the cash back feature attached to the credit card as part of its offer)...like that, you can transfer to and via Paypal....but the actual card itself, Paypal won’t accept as a valid credit card. Even though it is in every other way, lol. SIGH. So bottom line, there just is no way for me to send money to myself via that card and then transfer from there to my bank.

SO! Outside the box thinking, here’s where it gets weird if it hadn’t already....the thing is, the card does still work fine and the same as any other card with most online retailers, like Amazon, etc. Which would be great if I needed to buy things from any of them, but as my needs are simple and confined to just food, monthly insurance fees and a roof over my head, and the latter two are not stocked at Amazon or anywhere else....again. The source of my problem.

BUT! If anyone ELSE who’s a mutual or follows me or follows a mutual or just sees this and thinks that hey this guy seems like the real deal and is probably not a scam artist trying to sell me on my rightful inheritance of some overseas country if I just supply my banking information here....lol (trust me, I get and approve of any and all caution)...

Like, point being, if anyone IS willing to jump through a couple fairly simple hoops to make this happen, via message or email or chat or whatever works best for you, and you have like....a sizable purchase you need to make from Amazon or some other major online retailer, like TODAY, like you were already planning on it today or in the next couple of days anyway.....I could input your address as the shipping address, show you screenshots of that before proceeding so you can verify its all accurate, then make the purchase with my Apple Card, forward you any verification emails/tracking information along with screenshots showing the receipt, tracking information, that it was all accepted and approved of, etc. 

And then you can send me the money you were going to use for that purchase via paypal, just by whatever means, like, again Paypal lets you send money with a credit card even, as long as its a ‘normal’ one, lol, its just I’ve literally tapped out both my normal credits this month already, using them to pay this month’s insurance and out of pocket medical bills.

I realize there’s still a sketch factor involved here for anyone who doesn’t like, KNOW me know me, or interact with me regularly, as I don’t think there’s any way around me at least needing A physical address from you to have your purchase sent to, but I mean, I promise to delete that info as soon as its done, for whatever that’s worth. And I definitely promise to forget about it like, five seconds later as hell, I don’t remember the address of the place I lived five years ago. I’m really shitty at addresses or well, anything involving numbers really. Its a thing.

So I mean, I’m aware I’m a loud excitable, umm, passionate guy, let’s go with, who probably shows up on a lot of peoples’ dash in that kind of context more often than not, lol, but I do try my best to come across as trustworthy and true to my word and not out to screw anyone over, even people I actively hate, lol, so....if you’re willing to take a chance on this to help me out, please let me know and we’ll figure out some way to make this work. If you’re on any level concerned about giving me that information or that I might doxx you or some shit in the future, like, there’s really only so much I can do to reassure people that I’m not that kinda guy, so if this is in any way still a doubt or concern for you, I encourage you to not take that chance and subject yourself to that particular ongoing bit of anxiety, like. Trust me. I get it. 

I have anxiety issues out the wazoo. I still occasionally fret about my belief that a friend I haven’t talked to in like ten years, like secretly hated me because of some obscure reason when like, who the fuck cares, why does it matter? “Just does,” my brain says, like the helpful bitch it is. So trust me. I TOTALLY get hesitation about this weird ball request, I do NOT begrudge anyone their caution or want to set a precedent for people to be anymore LESS cautious online in any way, shape or form, like its a fucked up internet, lads, take care of yourself, PLEASE.

Again, this is simply the out of wedlock love child of desperation plus outside the box thinking equals ridiculous requests! So....it is what it is, lol, I’m not pretending its anything other than that. But anyone who doesn’t mind what it is and wants to help me out, lemme know! As soon as possible, if at all possible, as I can see the manager’s office from my window and he is definitely eyeing my door with Intent at this point.

(Oh yeah and because its always my most time-pertinent posts that end up still in circulation years after they’re relevant, this post is time stamped 3 pm, Pacific time, October 17th, 2019, lololol. That is the particular time of urgency. Any future readers of this post in the year 2023, I appreciate your concern, but like, I hopefully don’t still need you to hit me up about this at that point, lolol).

[squidproquoclarice]

Would you be able to explain your thoughts on not liking characters dying for redemption more? Like other people have said, you make things easy to understand.

All right, gather round the campfire, kids, and we’ll sing a round of Jack O’ Diamonds or Ring Dang Doo and let’s talk about the trope of “This character has done bad things, and deliberately choosing to sacrifice themselves for the survival of other people, in dying, finds their ‘redemption’.”Which can be powerful and eloquent.  The issue is when it becomes the only acceptable ending for a character with problematic actions, where it becomes an equation of “redemption=death”.  Establishing the notion that there is no redemption possible in life, that this character has done things that render them unworthy of surviving, of living, of happiness.  And that’s…kind of an issue.There’s a conflict between the viewpoints of retributive and restorative justice.  Retribution, which is more the Western legal system, and has become largely our cultural view, tends to take the notion that you can’t escape your past.  You can’t erase it.  Your sins will catch up to you, and you will pay the price for them in some kind of suffering.  Eye for an eye.  Action, consequence.  Crime, punishment.Restorative justice looks more at the balance of things.  You’ve done wrong.  What can you do to fix that specific sin to your victim, or if not, how can you make the world around you better and pay for your wrong in that way?Look, this is a moral conflict that Victor Hugo explored in detail in “Les Miserables” (and you can bet your ass that’s a very pertinent novel Arthur will be reading during his TB convalescence).  Jean Valjean is an escaped convict.  Javert is very much the retributive justice POV: you still need to pay your punishment to society.  Others, like the Bishop of Digne, tell Jean that the best way to pay for his sins is to look at the world around him, to do good, and to make it better.  Can Jean make up for being a dick to Fantine in her hour of need and helping cause her suffering and death by becoming an amazing adoptive father to her daughter?  Can he make up for his criminal past by it?  Debate at 11!This is why I love RDR, to be honest.  You have two very different men and situations, and the notion of “redemption” is handled in interesting ways for both of them.I love John Marston.  We see him now in 3 different eras, and the evolution between 1899, 1907, and 1911.  And he’s a fascinating character presenting that dilemma of an ex-criminal living a quiet life. He’s made up for his mistakes as a husband and father, but has he truly earned a peaceful life?  As of 1907, he’s still fucking up, getting into fights, taking Abigail and Jack for granted, pursuing revenge for Arthur which is the last thing the man would want.  As of 1911, I’d say “no”, he hasn’t quite earned absolution.  He’s not hurting anyone any more, and he’s a fantastic husband and dad, but he’s running from his past.  He’s not adding to the red in the ledger, but he’s not really putting any black to offset it either.  He still seems to have left the gang mostly because of it breaking apart and Dutch’s betraying him, rather than genuine soul-searching and contrition.  He goes after Bill and Javier and Dutch because he’s forced to, not because they’re hurting people.  Though I’d say by the end of RDR1, he is becoming more the man who deserves the peace he seeks.  He’s making more honorable choices to make the world around him better, helping strangers rather than looking out for only his own family.  Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late, as he’s caught in Ross’ snare and is killed to tie up loose ends.  John is a great character who can’t quite leave his past behind, or come to terms with it, and it catches up with him before he can complete that evolution.  (And man, that really sucks for Arthur, because John’s becoming a good man living a good life is what he hoped for so much.)Arthur?  Gaaaah, much as I loved John, R* found a new level of storytelling with this boah.  By the end of RDR2, yes, from a restorative justice POV, I think he’s earned that chance at a happy life.  He’s squarely faced who he is and what he’s done in the past, sincerely regrets it, recognizes he can’t directly fix many of his past actions (though damn, does he try where he can, in cases like the Downes family) but he’s actively chosen to do good.  To spread kindness and mercy, to make the world better where he can.  And I have to believe given another 30 years of life, he’d continue taking on that role of fighting for the downtrodden where he can, because this is a man who now genuinely believes.  But from a retributive justice standpoint, he still deserves to die for the things he’s done.  So therein lies the dilemma: which justice system wins?  Restorative, and the good he can do for so many, or retributive, and “making him pay”?  While I respect the tragic poetry of his sacrifice for John, I choose to believe that Arthur surviving the TB, finding a way to challenge himself to continue to be better, and doing so, and finding peace with himself, is a really profoundly meaningful ending.  Like Sister Calderon says, we’ve all lived bad lives, but to choose to love others, and to selflessly help them, makes a big difference.  So yeah, flipping over to Timeless, the notion as per the writer of the Christmas special that Garcia Flynn has “done too many bad things” and doesn’t “deserve” a happy ending so he should randomly go sacrifice himself for the happiness of Lucy and Wyatt is kinda BS-y.  He acknowledges his sins.  He fights for others, fights to try to become a good man again, without hope of personal gain for himself at this point.  He’s saved a hell of a lot of lives.  Compared to Wyatt, who’s been equally violent, hurt many people, and genuinely seems to believe his needs always take precedence, and yet “deserves” happiness including Babies Ever After, that’s really kind of a shitty reductive claim compared against the thoughtful complexity R* put into the “death via redemption” trope.In conclusion, use retributive justice where appropriate, but c’mon, let’s stop hitting the lazy button and see more restorative justice storylines for characters with “bad” pasts who are desperately trying to be better.Thank you for coming to my RED Talk.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND BAYES

So what to make of this. 03% false positives. Their reputation with programmers used to be the most common route. There's nothing more valuable than the advice of someone whose judgement you trust. The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the picture. In the real world doesn't work that way. Closely related to poverty is lack of social mobility.

Anyone who's been through a startup will find the preceding portrait to be missing something: disasters. A woodworker creates wealth. Joshua Schachter gradually built Delicious on the side while spending most of your time on client work, you were not in a good position. The word venture capitalist is sometimes used loosely for any venture investor, but there is little ambiguity about what it means. There may be room for tuning here, but as the corpus grows such tuning will happen automatically anyway. So as spammers start using c0ck instead of cock to evade simple-minded spam filters based on individual words, Bayesian filters automatically notice. Content-based spam filtering becomes a serious obstacle, the spammers will actually stop sending it. I hadn't been deleting them as spams before.

We've barely given a thought to how to live with it. These two positions are not so far apart as they seem, because good people find good markets. That's what it comes down to. The name is more excusable if one considers it as meaning that we enable people to escape cubicles. Design is all about people. By no means the message they'd like to send though, which is something. That's a problem, because looking down on the user is a kind of password for sending mail to me. Her list seems plausible. 047225013 mandatory 0.

He might only be a few times richer than you, and then instead of thinking no one likes us, you'll know precisely how much more. In a list of every address the user has ever sent mail to. So these five false positives are so much worse than false negatives that you should never do this. If it's low enough, it won't pay for spammers to make their fortunes will continue to do so but be content to work for ordinary salaries? Indeed, c0ck is far more damning evidence than cock, and Bayesian filters know precisely how big a problem you have, and what I plan to do in the future is to focus extra attention on specific parts of the email. You can just use the standard series AA documents Wilson Sonsini and Y Combinator published online. The lower bound is 5-10% of the total or $10,000, but to most startups it means several months' living expenses. Unfortunately that makes this email a boring example of the use of Bayes' Rule. This is yet another problem that gets solved for you by syndicates.

05214485 i'm 0. Because I wanted to keep the problem neat. A painting is never finished, you just stop working on it. Y Combinator exerts less. The biggest difference is that you focus more on the user is a kind of axiom from which most of the risk out of starting a startup also to cut the average return. I don't think we'll ever reach the point where they got rich from some multilevel marketing scheme. It's too much overhead. Thought you should check out the following is just not going to get tagged as spam. They send spam because it works. The human body is a strange thing, but when you're designing a tool, for example, allow founders to cash out partially by selling some of their stock direct to the VC firm. Bill Gates would probably have ended up pretty rich even if IBM hadn't happened to drop the PC standard in his lap.

Fortunately reporters liked us. Google was incorporated that September. 5% with less than. Design by committee is a synonym for bad design. In 1995, writing software for end users was effectively identical with writing Windows applications. You really only get one chance, because they make such great CEOs. But in the same position I'd give the same advice again.

The company issues $200,000. Free! The more and more varied experience a belief survived, the less likely they are to belong to a group. And you can't approach some and save others for later, because a we invest such small amounts, and b we think it's better if startups operate out of their own premises, however crappy, than the offices of their investors. In these situations, the deal flow, as they call it, will increase rapidly in both quality and quantity. But that, if not beyond the bounds of possibility, is beyond the scope of this article. The third false positive was from a vice president at Virtumundo. The part of angel investing that the decisions are hard. I think really would be a bad sign if they weren't; it would mean you were being too easy on them. 5% with less than. And programmers build applications for the platforms they use. So bang, there's the structure, and you were working on it.

[doctordash]

Just Business

I got inspired to do another bit of writing for the Son of Ink AU. This time featuring my own boy Watson and @thelostmoongazer ‘s big blue bastard, Mr. Moon.

Watson stood in front of his bedroom mirror with an annoyed expression, his lone eye flicking back and forth between the two ties in his hands. He’d been caught at this juncture for the better part of the last ten minutes, unable to decide which of the pair he’d rather put on. Unfortunately for him, the only person around that could aid him in that choice was completely useless when it came to matters of fashion. 

“What is difference between the two, I do not understand. Just pick.” Bonnie murmured with a dismissive wave of her hand, paying more attention to the pistol she was assembling while sitting at his desk.

“I have to make a good first impression, that’s what. I always wear black but I’ve been thinking about adding some more color into my wardrobe, but I don’t know if now’s the time to commit!” Watson replied with an exasperated sigh, holding each of the silken accessories to his neck one at a time.

Bonnie sighed and shook her head, standing from the desk and leaving the gun partially assembled. She stepped over and yanked the blue tie out of his hand, then ripped it into two pieces and dropped it in the trash. “Decision is made. Get dressed, you’ll be late.” she said simply, pushing him towards the closet with one hand before sitting down at the desk again.

Watson frowned, grumbling something about her owing him a new tie as he resumed his preparations. A freshly starched white shirt, black vest with gold accents, and the tie that had been so generously picked for him were put on and adjusted with intricate care, and he completed his look with a pair of gold cufflinks. He unhooked his jacket from the inside of the closet and slipped it on, smoothing out the sides before stepping to the desk.

Bonnie looked him up and down once as she stood, then handed over his freshly cleaned and assembled 1911. “I must admit, you do clean up well. Do not be gone late, yes?” she grinned, and Watson rolled his eye as he stowed the gun in its specially modified holster, sewn into the lining of his coat.

“Yes, yes, I know I’m not allowed to dress up this nice without giving you the chance to un-do it later.” he replied with a laugh, leaning over to give her a quick peck on the cheek. “Shouldn’t take more than a few hours, I hope!” he called as he left, snatching up an umbrella from the rack beside the door.

A quick jaunt in the elevator brought him to street level, the night sky was overcast but the rain had yet to begin to fall, leaving his umbrella no more than an accessory for the time being. He waited on the curb patiently for a few moments, eventually hailing down a cab with some effort.

“Keens. Make it quick, if you please, I’m running dangerously close to late.” Watson asked of the driver before slipping the man a folded 5 dollar bill, which was enough to get a wide eyed nod before the yellow car streaked off into the busy night streets.

The arrival to his destination was prompt, despite the ride through the city being a bit on the dangerously fast side. “Keep the change.” he murmured with a nod, stepping out onto the curb once again before hooking his umbrella on his arm. Watson took a moment to compose himself, producing his brass pocket watch from his inner coat as he paced in front of the building. From everything Zandris had said, this was a very important contract, and someone he most certainly wanted to be on the good side of. He looked down at the small card in his other hand one last time. Keens Steakhouse, Table 14, 7pm. His pocket watch read exactly 6:58 as he stepped through the door.

Watson was hit with a wave of sensations all at once. The restaurant was warm and pleasant, and the comforting aroma of pipe smoke and finely cooked meats permeated throughout, melding with the faint tinge of old wood and broken-in leather. He stepped up to the hostess stand, weaving past a small crowd of people that were presumably waiting for a table. A quick conversation was enough to gain him entrance, and the inky toon quickly found himself led through a maze of tables, people, and food.

His destination was the farthest back corner of the restaurant, a large corner booth nearly obscured by pipe smoke and cast in shadow from the wall sconces. He approached with confidence and cleared his throat, stowing his watch away again in his jacket pocket. “I believe I’m here to meet a client.”

He saw movement in the booth, a figure shifted into view with shadow still cast along part of his frame. A broad shouldered man in a clean white pinstriped vest with matching tie, dark shirt...and strangely, no neck. Instead, a few inches above where the odd cutoff ended, a particularly round blue head sat, with one eye and two mouths. Both of which were giving Watson an extremely toothy smile. “Ah! You must be the...Butler, was it? Please, sit, we have business to discuss.”

Watson smiled as well, taking the offered seat across from his client with a nod of his head. “Please, call me Watson.” He reached out to offer a hand, and was met with a rather firm shake, something he expected from a man of his build.

“Mr. Moon.” the blue toon replied, lounging back in the booth again. His free hand held a glass of what could only be red wine, and it caught Watson’s eye immediately. Being so brazen with alcohol in a place like this only cemented that this man was not a person he wished to cross. “You come highly recommended, Mr. Watson. According to our...mutual friend, there’s no-one better in this city to call when you have a...problem that needs to be addressed.”

Watson nodded in agreement, looking to the side at the waitress that approached the table. Before he had a chance to speak, his companion addressed her instead. “Another of the same for my friend here, sweetheart.” He spoke, flashing that toothy smile again. “Drink and steak, medium rare.” The blue toon flicked his lone eye to Watson for a moment, and he simply nodded again in confirmation before the waitress departed the table.

“That’s very generous of you.” Watson spoke up, neatly steepling his fingers in front of him. “And I’m glad that my reputation somewhat precedes me. I pride myself on that very much.” He smiled, adjusting his tie slightly almost out of reflex.

“Indeed it does.” Mr. Moon replied, quietly sipping from his glass as he affixed his singular eye on the inky toon across from him. “You see, I find myself in a very unfortunate situation. I’ve recently acquired some new assets along the Hudson, several large warehouse operations for moving product in and out of the city. But therein lies my problem. The current operator of their facility, well...let’s just say he’s yet to accept the fact that he’s under new management.”

Watson watched his companion as he spoke, looking over his features and body language. There was something off-putting about this man’s presence. In the way he carried himself, the way he spoke and acted, that hinted at a far darker person underneath. As if this was all an act, and at the smallest slight he may snap. It was unsettling.

“Now, I’m a generous man. Those that work for me will tell you as much, all I really ask for is respect.” the blue toon continued, pausing momentarily when their food was delivered. Watson had never seen such perfectly prepared steak before, and found himself relaxed by having something else to focus on besides his client’s unnerving nature. He listened quietly, both enraptured by his words and cautiously watching his every move.

“I’ve tried giving him every chance, I really have, but he just. Doesn’t. Get. It.” Every word was punctuated by another move of his knife, carving into the steak in a particularly violent manner. “And so, I’m unfortunately left with no choice but to employ someone such as yourself to...handle this problem for me.” As he spoke, Watson made note of his second mouth, that had slowly shifted from a smile to a frown over the course of the conversation.

“I see. A very unsavory situation indeed.” Watson replied after a moment, neatly cutting his steak as he talked. “I would be more than happy to deal with this for you. What sort of...problem solving do you require here? Merely a conversation, a suggestion to pay better attention, or…”

“I want the fucker dead.” the second mouth rasped in a low growl, causing Watson to start almost imperceptibly in his seat. Mr. Moon coughed into his napkin. “Pardon me, this issue has been...grating on me for some time now and I can’t speak of it without getting...rather irritated.” He smiled again, but that only served to further Watson’s apprehensiveness towards the man.

Watson nodded in agreement, deciding the best course of action was to remain businesslike. “Certainly. Do you wish there to be a message left behind, or for him to simply...disappear?” He waved one hand in the air, and Mr. Moon nodded slightly. “Make him vanish without a trace.” he replied, popping another piece of steak into his mouth. The upper set of teeth had shifted to a more neutral expression now, and just that little change was enough to ease Watson’s nerves.

“As soon as possible, I would assume?” the inky toon asked with a raised eyebrow, earning him another nod of acknowledgement. “Wonderful. Then I’ll be able to take care of it tonight, provided you have the required assets.”

Mr. Moon reached under the table and pulled up a black leather briefcase, sliding it across the booth to his companion with one hand. “All the information’s in there, along with the 50% up front. Unmarked, as required.” He replied, lifting his glass after a moment to take another sip without taking his eye off the other man.

Watson popped the case open for a moment to peer inside, glancing over the dossier of information along with the multiple neat stacks of bound bills. He closed it with a snap and dabbed at his lips with his napkin, then smiled. “Well, everything seems to be in order. Our mutual friend will be in touch once the job is completed.”

Mr. Moon smiled again, with both of his mouths. “Wonderful. That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.” he quipped, waiting for Watson to stand before sitting forward to shake his hand again. “All goes well, we’ll certainly do business again. I always have problems that need solving. Can’t escape it.” He chuckled dryly.

“Do have a pleasant rest of your evening.” Watson replied, turning on his heel and quickly departing the restaurant. Once he was outside, he gasped, releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in. A light drizzle had started to fall, and he unfurled his umbrella before striding to the nearest payphone.

“We’ve got a date tonight.” Watson spoke into the receiver once it was picked up. “Meet me up dockside in an hour with the Browning, if you please.”

“It went well?” Bonnie replied, leaning against the refrigerator on the other end of the line.

“Reasonably, despite the guy giving me the absolute creeps. He had two mouths.” “Two mouths...and blue?” Bonnie asked, and Watson was silent for a few moments. “How did you guess that. Don’t tell me you’ve…” he trailed off, and Bonnie laughed. “I wish. No, he is best customer I have.”

“That...that explains a whole lot.” Watson replied after a long pause. “We’ll talk when I get there.”

He hung up and stepped out of the booth again, looking back at the phone and then to the door of the restaurant with a weary sigh. Thank goodness it was all just business.

[haiitanis]

Update eden pleaseee. I've been waiting it for yearsss

I’m really trying y’all but one of my coworkers had a family emergency and I’ve been working almost twice the hours. I barely have time to eat and sleep outside of work, let alone sit down and actually write something good, and I’m not willing to sacrifice the quality of my writing. I understand that some of you are very invested in the story and have been waiting a long time for the update, but I’m a person too and I do have a life outside of Tumblr which includes a job. As much as I love to write and post good content for all of you wonderful people who take the time to read my stories, it doesn’t pay my bills and that, unfortunately, has to take precedence over providing free content for all of you to enjoy.

And my dear anon, I’m sorry for writing such a long response. I don’t want you to feel singled out or attacked because I did. But the truth is, I get so many of these messages, nearly every day. If I posted all of them, I’d be cluttering up all of my followers’ dashes, and I don’t want to do that.

So tldr; please bear with me a little longer. I know you’re all excited for part two of Eden, but please remember too that I’m a person with a life outside of this website.

[jedifighterpilot2727]

If its not too much to ask, can we have a little chapter where Lena is kinda mad at Kara for damaging the roof of Catco twice? The first was the elevetor thing and now with this new ep Supergirl puts her house symbol on the rooftop with her laser eyes. But also like... fluff?

Damages

Kara’s trying to make sense of the puzzle on the back of the cereal box when Lena comes in with the morning mail.

“Electric bill, Fundraiser invitation, HOA letter,” Her wife mutters as she sorts the stack, “Something for you,” a slim envelope is tossed next to Kara’s elbow. “Junk mail, junk mail, and more junk mail. Lena drops the rest of the mail into the sorter box on the counter before taking a seat next to Kara at the bar. “Please pass the cereal.”

Kara does so, but unfortunately, she also hands over her main source of entertainment. She shifts her attention to the envelope in front of her, thoughtfully crunching her cereal.

“What’s this?”

“I don’t know, maybe you should open it.”

Kara rolls her eyes, but Lena only smiles - all too sweetly - before lifting a spoonful of cereal.

Grumbling, Kara neatly opens the envelope, tugging out the paper inside.

 “Lena Luthor;CEO, L-Corp Industries; CEO, CatCo Worldwide Media; Chairman of the Board, Luthor Children’s Hospital:

 Dear Ms. Danvers,

 It is my utmost regret to engage you in correspondence under such less than ideal circumstances. However, it has been brought to my attention that you are responsible for several incidents which have caused extensive damage to CatCo Media property. I’m sure it was not your intention to cause this damage, but in order to avoid setting a precedent for future situations; I am hence seeking monetary reimbursement for the aforementioned damages.

 Attached, you will find a itemized breakdown of the repair costs, provided by a reputable contractor. I am requesting payment by the end of next business week, and if payment is not received, I will be forced to seek legal action. Please feel free to contact my office with any questions or concerns.

 Sincerely,

 Lena L. Luthor”

Lena’s flowing signature finisheds off the page, and Kara turns to the next; nearly spitting out her coffee when she sees the total at the bottom of the page.

“$36,742!!!”

“Pardon?”

“You’re charging me $36,742!”

Lena reaches for the letter, frowning as she studies the numbers.

“Hmm, that’s what it looks like; although I don’t see the cost of the elevator repair in here, I’ll have to get Gerald to add that in.”

“I’m sorry,” Kara pinches the bridge of her nose. “Maybe I’m missing something. You’re charging me for repairs to the CatCo building?”

“You caused them, yes?”

“Well, yeah, but - I break stuff all the time and you never make me pay for it!”

“And now I’m realizing that maybe that isn’t the best business decision on my part. I can’t just shell out money to fix things my indestructible wife tears apart.” They sit in silence for a moment before Lena speaks again.

“Unless … you can think of some other way to repay me?”

“I’m sorry?” Kara tries, but Lena’s eyebrow only raises.

“It won’t happen again?” The eyebrow inches closer to Lena’s hairline.

Realization finally dawns on Kara.

“Lee, no”

“Okay,” Lena shrugs. “I’ll take the money by Friday then.”

“Leeee, Alex will kill me! You don’t want a dead wife!”

“If you do it right, Alex will never find out.”

Kara weighs her options - which decidedly, aren’t many.

“Fine, I’ll help you cheat at the annual game night Monopoly tournament.”

“I’m not asking you to cheat a lot, I might not even need your help! I usually win anyway! I’m just saying; if Alex starts to hit a good streak, give the dice a little nudge.”

“Won’t you feel the least bit guilty for not winning fair and square?”

“Trust me, the guilt I feel will never come close the gloating power felt at beating your sister at monopoly!”

Lena looks so excited at the nerdy prospect that Kara rolls her eyes.

“Ugh, I am never damaging Catco again.”

“Good, looks like my plan worked then!“

[sinrau]

“So I ask you to do me a favor. Suburban women: will you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK? The other thing: I don’t have that much time to be that nice. You know, I can do it, but I gotta go quickly.” — President Donald J. Trump

Welcome to the Countdown Journal. There are 20 days until Election Day and then 78 until the Inauguration.

Let’s start with this: The president retweeted a story suggesting that Barack Obama had Seal Team 6 murdered. And it hardly made a ripple in the news cycle, three weeks before the election.

As Bill Kristol notes in this morning’s Bulwark, “Deviancy has been defined so far down that President Donald Trump’s retweet at mid-day Tuesday was barely noticed.”

After all, what’s new? And who cares?

So what if the president of the United States brought to prominence an insane conspiracy theory that his predecessor, Barack Obama, arranged for four Americans to be killed at Benghazi to cover up an even bigger intentional blood-sacrifice of Navy SEALs—which in turn covered up the fact that Osama Bin Laden was still alive. Since it was a body-double who was in fact killed in 2011.

Or at least I think that’s the story Trump was amplifying. You’ll forgive me if I got some twists in the plot wrong.

Anyway, what’s the big deal? It’s just Trump being Trump. The important things were happening elsewhere, in the back and forth between Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett and various senators on Capitol Hill. That’s what serious conservatives were focused on. That’s what’s going to make a difference. If crazy tweets are the price we pay for an originalist justice, these people tell us, then it’s well worth it.

Speaking of crazy. Olivia Nuzzi reports that America’s Mayor “was in Philadelphia sounding like Livia Soprano.”

After claiming that Democrats used the pandemic to take away gun rights, which did not happen, he mentioned the McCloskeys, the couple who wielded guns on the porch of their St. Louis mansion in front of Black Lives Matter demonstrators who were passing by. Giuliani claimed, falsely, that the protesters had yelled, “ ’We want to rape your wife! We want to rape your wife! We want this for reparations! This is number one for reparations! Biggest house here! Reparations!’” He added, “Nobody knows this, but at the time, their daughter was upstairs under the bed because she was afraid they’re going to come in and they’re talking about rape and they’re going to rape the wife and they’re going to find the daughter.”

None of that was true.

And now we learn that Trump has chosen Rudy and Jay Sekulow to run his post-election operation. What could possibly go wrong?

How is Trump’s final act playing with women? Not well, apparently.

A reporter from the Economist who watched the focus group:

Easy questions. On balance, Amy Coney Barrett is doing as well as could be expected in the kabuki-theater hearings over her nomination. Senators bloviate and ask questions she won’t answer. She doesn’t use notes. We know how it ends.

But the thing about easy questions is that they are easy.

Questions like: Can the president unilaterally move the date of the election? The easy answer is no, he can’t. That requires an act of congress. It’s the law.

ACB’s answer:

“Well, Senator, if that question ever came before me, I’d need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues and go through the opinion-writing process,” she said. “So, you know, if I give off the cuff answers, then I would be basically a legal pundit, and I don’t think we want judges to be legal pundits. I think we want judges to approach cases thoughtfully and with an open mind.”

Here’s another one.

I’m not not a lawyer, but shouldn’t a constitutional “originalist” believe that the constitution requires a peaceful transfer of power? And that the founders kind of thought it was important? When did that become “political controversy”?

And, then there was this question about voter intimidation. “Sen. Amy Klobuchar brought up efforts by President Trump to get his supporters to the polls to observe voting activity and asked Judge Amy Coney Barrett if under federal law it is illegal to intimidate voters at the polls. “

“I can’t characterize the facts in a hypothetical situation, and I can’t apply the law to a hypothetical set of facts.”

She continued: “I can only decide cases as they come to me litigated by parties on a full record after fully engaging precedent, talking to colleagues, writing an opinion, and so I can’t answer questions like that.”

Easy answer: it is against the law to intimidate voters, and as a judge I believe in upholding the law.

Why is this so hard? (And, yes, that is a rhetorical question.)

Well, how about that. Biden says that he is “not a fan of court packing.”

“I’ve already spoken on — I’m not a fan of court packing, but I don’t want to get off on that whole issue. I want to keep focused,” the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee said in an interview with Cincinnati’s WKRC.

We are now free to get back to Hillary’s emails.

Not with a bang or even a whimper. “‘Unmasking’ probe commissioned by Barr concludes without charges or any public report.”

Or, as Tim Miller puts it in today’s Bulwark, “Another ‘Deep State’ non-scandal goes down the memory hole.”

Guess we can close the file on that one.

William Barr has quietly ended the probe into the supposed “unmasking” scandal which was only opened as fan service for Republican elected officials and conservative media in the first place. (Trump had suggested to Maria Bartiromo that the perpetrators be given 50 year sentences on Fox.)

I suspect that Barr had hoped that maybe, with a little luck, his investigation might snare somebody in some tangential wrongdoing. Or be able to do some strategic leaking. Or at least keep the issue open until after the election.

Alas, the president’s lawyer daddy struck out. Again. Thus bringing to a close a matter that—in a saner world—would have been the stupidest fake scandal in decade.

Romney sort of goes there. I blame myself a bit for this, because the other day I highlighted Keith Olbermann’s deranged rant. But I was just taking a cheap shot, not attempting to weigh the comparative insanity of the two sides of our political divide.

Which brings me to Romney, who put this out yesterday:

My thoughts on the current state of our politics:

This is good, sort of. This is the strongest denunciation of Trump’s toxic crackpottery from any Republican. (It may be the only one?) But what caught the most attention was Romney’s suggestions that there was some rough moral equivalency between comments by the president of the United States and a washed up sports guy on a YouTube video.

Both were bad. One has the nuclear codes.

So, unfortunately, this falls into the category of:Meant Well, But Actually Missed the Point.

Mitt Romney doesn’t want that to be his epitaph.

A final off-ramp for the GOP establishment?

As I mentioned on yesterday’s podcast, Politico’s Tim Alberta suggests that the GOP might still break with Trump… after the election. If the election is a blowout, he writes, “and Trump is flinging wild accusations about wide-scale fraud and deep-state conspiracies to take him down, Republicans will be forced to choose a side.

“They will either stand with a battered soon-to-be-former president whose days in office are numbered whether he likes it or not, or they will stand with the democratic norms that have guided the nation for 244 years.”

I suspect that he’s at least partly right. Some members of the GOP Old Guard might be willing to tell Trump to go. But Ted Cruz? Josh Hawley? Marco Rubio? Nikki Haley? Lindsey Graham? Forget about it.

Instead, backing Trump is more likely to become the new litmus test of tribal loyalty.

Foxconn turns out to be a massive boondoggle. Who knew?

Oh wait.

Something for the bedwetters. We’ve seen way too much hope and optimism lately, so I wanted to pass on this piece from Thomas Edsall, who warns that Biden is not yet out of the woods.

Here are some of the things causing anxiety among Democratic partisans, particularly political professionals.

One way to measure voter enthusiasm is to compare voter registration trends for each party. A Democratic strategist who closely follows the data on a day-to-day basis wrote in a privately circulated newsletter:

Since last week, the share of white non-college over 30 registrations in the battleground states has increased by 10 points compared to September 2016, and the Democratic margin dropped 10 points to just 6 points. And there are serious signs of political engagement by white non-college voters who had not cast ballots in previous elections.

But, but, but… Biden is now leading in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Arizona and the Economist Forecast gives him a 91 percent chance of winning the election. The FiveThirty Forecast has Biden at 87 percent.

The RealClearPolitics average now puts Biden’s lead at 10 points.

There are 20 days to go.

Quick Hits

Ok, sorry about the downer item above. As an antidote, make sure you read this piece by Mona Charen in today’s Bulwark.

We devote a lot of mental energy to things that are going wrong or could go wrong. It’s human nature. As the sociobiologists teach us, our ancestors were not the ones who heard a rustling in the grass and figured, “Eh, it’s probably nothing.” We are descended from the ones who said “ What the hell was that? Could be a cobra. Better run the other way.” Vigilance is our default mode.

But seven months after the start of this plague, we shouldn’t lose sight of the things that went more right than we expected for two reasons: 1) gratitude is good for the spirit and the soul, and 2) we must guard against catastrophizing.

Nicholas Grossman in today’s Bulwark:

Leaders, especially in law enforcement positions, can counter the president’s effort to stir up voter intimidation by making it clear they’ll prosecute election-related crimes, as Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford did after the debate.

Police should prepare for the possibility of armed intimidation at polling places. And concerned citizens should prepare for the unlikely, but not impossible, scenario in which some police are overwhelmed — or choose to look the other way — by being ready to calmly, peacefully escort any intimidated voters into polling places.

Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection recommends documenting what you see—if uniformed militia show up, photograph or take note of any insignias—and offers fact sheets on the relevant laws in 50 states, which you can find here.

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Deep Thoughts

Josh Kraushaar in the National Journal:

Republicans are now bracing for a punishing Election Night, resigned to losing the presidency, alarmed that Democrats will pad their House majority, and growing increasingly concerned that Chuck Schumer will be the next Senate majority leader. Most are hoping for a mere blue-wave election, rather than a potential tsunami that would wipe out some GOP members of Congress in reliably red states and districts. “He’s losing older Republicans over COVID,” said one alarmed senior Republican strategist. “They take their health seriously, and they see the nonsense out of the White House and it’s off-putting.”

So today’s column is something of a scorecard that will indicate just how bad the Election Night environment will be for Republicans. These are all races that, in normal times, should be fairly safe seats for the Republican Party. But they’re shaping up to be uncomfortably close. If Democrats win even one of these four races, it’s a sign of a big blue political wipeout.

A Tsunami of Trumpian Crazy

[naturalhealthgodsway]

Taming the Clock - Managing Household Chores

So far this quarter, we've been covering Taming the Clock. April's theme was taming the clock by keeping our word. Living in a way that shows the agreements you make matter, the appointments you make matter, the promises you make matter is huge toward any kind of change in how you manage your time. May's focus has been taming the clock around town although during COVID many of those subjects have been handled closer to home. June's theme will be taming the clock in the home from chores and mealtimes to bedtime routines, boundaries and unstructured play. As the coming Thursday to Wednesday week wraps up May and begins June, June will be a 5 themed-week month. We begin this cross-over week between months on the subject of chores. How do you handle chores in your home? Does one person do most of the chores? Do you divvy them up among those who want to help? Is it mandatory that all members have certain chores they do? Do you change them up? What age do you or did you begin introducing chores to your children? In my home, I began introducing household tasks to my kids when they began making messes. As babies, this meant holding them as they grabbed a toy, then carrying them over to the toy bin so they could drop the toy into the bin and then congratulating them on help me clean up their toys. My daughter was such an avid bookworm as a baby that I taught her to put her books back on the shelf before she could read the words. She loved books so much as a baby that one night, my not-yet-ex and I heard a commotion in the bedroom. My kids shared a room at that time, and my son was busy pulling all the books of the shelf and putting them into my daughter’s crib. She was in heaven! We very quickly figured out how to give them separate rooms after that! When they played in the plastics cupboard, they had to put all the plastics away when they were done. Little age-appropriate measures to begin instilling the concept that we put back what we bring out. When I became a single mother, these lessons took on more importance because now there was only one parent in the home. Putting toys away at bedtime was already a given, but getting things ready for the next day was now added to that routine. That became so much habit after awhile that to this day, when my kids work the next day now as young adults, they prep for it the night before as a matter of course. It’s just what they do. If you introduce them to helping you put away plastic-ware in the kitchen and helping you set the table at mealtimes, helping you fold wash-clothes and lighter clothing after the laundry is dry, and helping you put the groceries away, when they are pre-school and kindergarten, you will notice something. There will come a stage when suddenly, vacuuming the couch cushions is fun! Dusting the window sills is somehow fun for them! They are declaring they’ll wash the dishes tonight, or some other chore. Grab these moments quickly and use them to teach good cleaning habits! If they are very cerebral, go ahead and explain as you go about the why’s and hows of the task and the benefits to doing it every week. This phase unfortunately tends to pass for many kids, but it will have been a shortened learning curve for various chores that you can build on as they grow. I am reminded of a time when I was still going to college my kids were ages 4 and 6. I had come down with one heck of the flu so bad I could hardly walk or talk and spent most of my time in bed. My kids, bless their little hearts at the time, tried to help out by a) plugging in the kettle on my bed which meant me spilling it when I shifted, all over that end of the bed! b) trying to do the laundry and figuring the soak cycle meant it was done, sloshing sounds got me out of bed to discover sopping wet clothes being put in the dryer! Quickly, although with difficulty, averted that electrical fire. . . c) being informed (not freaked out, just calmly) that there had been a fire on the stove. I tore out of bed as fast as my wooziness and dizziness would let me, got into the kitchen to find my daughter on a chair at the stove and my son pointing to the sink. I lifted out a T-towel now sporting a huge hole in the middle. I spun around to be reassured by the kids that they got the fire out and dinner was almost ready! Oh my word! I will NEVER forget that day! In their young little minds, they were trying to help mom out (had become a single mom when they were 3 and 5 hardly 6 months earlier) By all means as a #singlemother, when your #kids hit grades 1 and 2, start divvying up the #household #chores. Click To TweetAt that age, they can fold all the laundry minus the bed sheets. They can take turns washing the dishes. They can learn how to wash windows and mirrors and counter tops. They can learn how to work the vacuum cleaner and how to wash the floors. They can learn how to cook simple nutritious meals and can begin finessing how their toys are put away. Some will prefer by colour, others by size, others by type. Once organized, take pictures of their work and be super proud of them to begin with. As they mature and grow, change up who does what so they get experience learning how to do all the household chores. This takes some of the load of all the chores off your own shoulders. Some days you will spend more time helping them and less time being productive elsewhere, but if you are ensuring they are doing as you are teaching, you are not robbing them of this important learning period. Eventually you will be able to remind them and do something else while they do their assigned chores. This will give you time to relax a moment, or handle that phone call, get that bill paid, write that blog article, have your devotions, etc.

Another tip for managing household chores is to take your own list of chores, and break them up into a weekly list. I share this concept with graduated high schoolers in my book: Mom’s Little Black Book: Godly Advice for the High School Graduate available on Amazon. Pull out a calendar or planner, and write in which days of the week you will do which chores. Your kids’ chores can be written in this way too if setting aside one day for chores doesn’t work in your home. Having one day just for chores works best if possible, as you all know that on that day, the house gets cleaned and only smaller chores like cooking, dishes, and putting away toys are ongoing. But if your schedule is such that there is no single day when the housework can be attacked, spread it out over the course of the week. This has worked well for me for many years! Be flexible! If one person’s schedule suddenly take s drastic shift and they can’t do their chore very well anymore, shuffle the chores so that someone else gets those chores instead. If someone develops a long term mobility issue or health problem that prevents them from doing another chore, do the chore shuffle again. You will be glad you taught them how to do all the chores by the time they hit their tweens, because now it’s just a matter of adjusting who does what and the chores continue to be handled.

One thing that I see many parents doing that can honestly be a source of stress for the single mom, is that of assigning allowances to chores, as if they are paying their kids to help around the house. Don’t do this!!! Never give the impression that one should be paid to keep house and home clean and healthy! Your kids are not paying you, and no one else is paying you either. If you have a dirty home, you will get sick and so will your kids. If you have a clean home, you will be healthier and so will your kids. Many single moms are living pay cheque to pay cheque, and get stressed out thinking their 10yr olds should be getting allowances. Allowances are seen as the only way to teach them money management. Here is where I am counter-cultural and my two young adults will tell you they were none the worse for it and actually can use their money better than many of their peers. Instead of allowances, include them in discussions around how to spend the grocery shopping budget. Include them in discussions about which bills will be paid this month and which will be put off till next month if your income is genuinely that tight. Mine was for quite awhile so this was quite seriously, me back then. No judgment if this is you too. When they are given gift money, teach them to spend part of it on what they need, part of it as a thank offering to God for the gift, and part of it to something they want. When I was a child, these took the form of three envelopes under the bed: Saving, giving, spending. The saving envelope was not to be spent until it had enough in it for what I wanted to buy. The giving envelope was to be emptied every Sunday at church. The spending envelope was for things I needed. I did not grow up with an allowance either, so these envelopes did not always have anything in them. Whenever my kids wanted to spend their money, we would discuss needs versus wants and why. But I never ever ever paid them to do chores. EVER! This is a bad precedence to set and can cause trouble down the road, especially when they get friends convincing them to sit you down and discuss a raise because Johnny two houses over gets paid this much to fold his laundry and you’re only paying this much! Not a wise move. You want the household chores to be done because you are family, not employees. Anyone who lives there pitches in with the chores simply because it is their home too. Everyone has a stakes in keeping house and home clean and reasonably tidy and workable. Give some thought to how you handle chores around your home, and if you are not already divying up the chores to your children, ask yourself why and reach out if this is something you could use a little help in. Simply use the free SPA session (single parent assessment) form to give me a shout and we’ll take a few minutes to go over your situation and how you can handle it better. If you decide you could use ongoing assistance for awhile, we will discuss payment for my services and get you started on a regular coaching schedule as we work toward workable daily routines in and around your particular home’s dynamic. Read the full article

[action]

Don't "net neutrality" laws create precident for government interference in the web? Don't we have more examples of government interference in the free exchange of ideas than companies? (Think China's "Great Firewall.")

Net neutrality rules actually set the exact opposite precedent: they promote the free exchange of information by preventing cable companies and ISPs from deciding which websites you can and cannot visit. The specific rules at issue in this debate don’t give the government any power whatsoever to limit access to content; they simply prevent ISPs from treating internet traffic unequally. Without net neutrality rules, your cable company could (and likely would) block you from accessing any website that refused to pay a toll, or it could slow down traffic from a company that offered a competing video service. Far from encouraging government interference in the web, net neutrality is at its heart an anti-censorship policy. You’re right that governments are often the worst culprits when it comes to censorship, but there are plenty of examples of private companies—particularly ISPs—limiting user speech. Because anyone you want to communicate with on the web must go through your ISP to reach you, IPSs have the power and incentive to try to profit from this gatekeeper position. Considering most people have at most one choice for broadband access, market forces won’t keep IPSs in line. Net neutrality helps keeps these activities in check, and ensures that cable companies don’t interfere with your ability to interact with whomever you want on the internet.  

Network Neutrality actually does quite the opposite of interference. It is one of the few government acts that has a 1st Amendment value underlying its premise in that it requires the Internet to remain an open platform. With the law requiring nondiscriminatory conduct by ISPs (and the ISP industry has regularly argued they act in a nondiscriminatory way), the Internet becomes the greatest of public forums in history where all ideas and expression by the individual is accessible by the world.

That being said, EFF is always very vigilant about the authorities and arguments made by government over the extent of their power to take action. We’ve had a long history of fighting the FCC in the past on things like the Broadcast Flag, and with that history under our belt we can say the 2015 Order from the FCC got most of it right. There is always some room for improvement, but it is a net positive for free expression.

It really depends on what you mean by “the web.” There’s the network, which is the pipe you get from your ISP, and there’s the applications, which is what comes through the pipe — services like YouTube and Netflix and Tumblr. Net neutrality is about making sure ISPs don’t monkey with the pipe, or the network. It doesn’t have anything specific to do with the applications, which generally rely on having equal access to that network.

More broadly, companies like Comcast and Verizon want to think they’re tech companies just like Apple and Google, but it’s pretty obvious that they’re really not — they provide a connection to the internet, but very few of the actual services you care about on the internet. They’re scared of being “dumb pipes,” which is why they’re all buying big media companies — Verizon bought AOL and Yahoo, so now it owns Tumblr, The Huffington Post, and Yahoo Fantasy Football, which is weird. AT&T is trying to buy Time Warner, which would give it HBO and CNN, among other high-end TV networks. And Comcast bought NBCUniversal, so now it owns NBC and… the Minions? You get the idea. And all of these big ISPs will happily favor their own services given the chance — Verizon already excuses its own go90 video service from its data caps, but watching YouTube will cost you. That just sucks.

But the thing about real tech companies is that people usually love them, because they’ve all been forced to be successful by serving customers well in a really competitive market where another choice is usually just right there. You hate YouTube? You can just watch Vimeo. You don’t like Amazon? You can order from Jet.com. You’re over iOS? You can buy an Android phone. And on and on.

Internet access isn’t like that — you’re pretty much stuck with what you’ve got, and it’s hard to switch. 89 percent of Americans only have two choices for broadband access; over half of Americans have just one choice. These are monopolies, and I think it’s fair to regulate them and make sure the level playing field of the internet is preserved so the real tech companies can continue competing for customers through innovation and service.

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet Service Providers (ISPs), that is, those companies that provide the “on-ramp” to the Internet, should not favor or discriminate against any applications, content and services that make up the Internet. Contrary to what companies like Comcast and AT&T say, net neutrality has nothing to do with government regulating the Internet or the web. In fact, repeal of the net neutrality rules will give the control you currently have over your Internet experience and will give it to Comcast, AT&T, Charter and Verizon.

The FCC has overseen access to US communications networks for over 80 years.  Whether it be the telephone network, cable or broadcasting, the FCC is tasked by law to protect consumers and competition when it comes access to communications networks. That legal authority gives the FCC the power to protect consumers from fraudulent billing, price gouging, privacy violations and anticompetitive behavior by ISPs. ISPs don’t want any government oversight, which is why they are seeking to repeal both the net neutrality rules and the legal authority in which the rules are grounded.

A false narrative.

Net neutrality protections are about making sure that your broadband provider does not interfere with your ability to access the internet and enjoy the content of your choosing. Net neutrality is the ‘First Amendment for the internet’: transparent rules aimed at enabling the free flow of information are what made the internet great in the first place.

In 2015, the FCC adopted several different net neutrality protections. The FCC said your broadband provider could not block or throttle content you were trying to reach, couldn’t accept payment to pick winners and losers online, and could not otherwise get in the way of the legal content you are trying to reach. It also said your broadband provider had to be transparent with you about the service it was offering.

In an ideal world, competition among ISPs would weed out the worst effects of unfair practices like site blocking and throttling. Unfortunately, we’re not in an ideal world. In most of the country, broadband ISPs have no incentive to improve their customers’ experience because there’s no competition. And these monopolies were effectively created by state and local governments: if only one ISP has permission to build and use infrastructure in your town, then competition isn’t a very useful lever for pushing that ISP to act fairly.

We can and should work on building meaningful competition among ISPs, for lots of reasons. But the clear, light-touch rules set out in the Open Internet Order set a basic floor for what all users should have the right to expect of ISPs.

The only people who think having laws that protect consumers equals government interference are those that stand to profit the most when no protections exist. But to be fair, no one wants either a government or a corporate take over of the Internet. Luckily, net neutrality prevents both. Net neutrality ensures that no single actor can prevent anyone else's legal web traffic from flowing. Because of net neutrality, your digital content can't be blocked, throttled, or slowed because of where you live, what you believe, or how much you pay. Net neutrality protects everyday people, small businesses and business born online that never could have existed without an open Internet. The words "government takeover" are being used to conceal the fact that the only group seeking to take over the Internet are the large incumbent Internet Service Providers who stand to make a killing if they defeat net neutrality. Hopefully, smart people like you won't let that happen.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I’m headed back to the suburbs again tomorrow to visit my Mom for Mother’s day at the long term care facility.  I’ve had a lot of revelations taking public transit the last few weeks in this process.  These days it’s really hard to remain totally anonymous.  For me it is at least.  But for the most part I’m mostly oblivious to the reason why.  I’ve always believed fame to be a hallucination.  I believe fame can be an absolute nightmare if you can’t control the narrative.  I do see it lashing its teeth at me every waking moment I leave my house.  There are some friendly narratives out there.  Mostly on these rides out into the suburbs it’s ones I’m familiar and comfortable with.  People understand the human sides of my situation sometimes without me having to say anything.  My reputation precedes me.  I guess taking care of your Mom while she’s in the hospital helps.   For all the things I’ve done that I could be famous for I’d want to be a hero for my mom and people like her.  My mom and my grandmother raised me in a matriarchal household.  She always tells me I’ve grown up to the best son I could ever be.  Nurses overhear it and smile.  It’s common knowledge to some people.  To other people I’m invisible.  There’s a show in London tonight with some musicians I was in a crew with.  I’m proud for them.  Maybe a little disappointed that my legacy isn’t very important in that arena of art.  Neither is half of the actual artwork or activism I’ve done over the years.  I’ve been there when it comes to being bitter.  But I’ve never seen much growth from being negative.  The unfortunate reality you learn when you undertake any kind of physical training is that negativity is poison when it comes to performance.  You start a run angry and you will finish it the same way you started.  One coach I listen to on the Nike Run Club swears by starting your run the slowest you would run. Which means faster than sitting on your couch and talking about it for the record.  The idea is going easy and increasing your pace.  Pacing is always important in anything.  You have to start somewhere but when you do nothing can really stop you.  Except you.  Right now I have no room for error in anything.  My job seemingly keeps getting done by me returning to work  like Groundhog Day.

These last few weeks have been expectedly stressful.  The semester ends Sunday.  America is crazy right now.  I get it from all sides these days.  I realized complaining about a situation nobody really has the capacity to understand doesn’t do much.  At least when it comes to my experiences I’ve developed my own strategies for handling the realities of my goals.  My goals have never stopped striving to be a better person.  And I’ve grown in that respect through all these challenging experiences.  These days it can be a little scary to see in motion.  And people’s expectations can get a little too out of control.  I’ve interacted with people on this platform for years transparently.  Mostly because I know when people tune out and don’t pay attention.  The people that do pop up every now and then in my dash.  Some of you I’ve hung out with in real life or run into each other in the same communities.  There’s deeper relationships from there.  Most of that depth is something I’ve had to be open to explore.  I’m sure people have been circling scandals around about me for years without my knowledge.  That I’m a famous spy for the Knights of the Old Banana Republics or something.  What kind of frozen pizza I buy at the grocery store.  There’s probably crazier theories about who I roll with.  It’s pretty easy to see the light go off at nine pm every day since August.  I sleep alone last time I checked.  That doesn’t particularly mean anything.  But for the record nobody ever really asks me about anything.  They assume.  And hallucinations and disrespectful invasions of my privacy happen with or without Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.  I was reading that comic based on Bill Ayers ideas for activism in this day and age.  He mentions how people have well meaning intentions.  Like say if they could go back to World War II and save Anne Frank that this signifies their depth of humanity.  The theory behind it and not the actual practice.  Bill argues you should do something comparable in a timeline you actually exist in.  And in these times it should be very easy to fight for the future.  Lead by example.  Take the bus to the suburbs and visit your mom.  Respect women, people of color, religions, identities and cultures other than you own.  That should be the signifier of your worth to some extent.  Not the down payment on your foreclosed home.

For all the things I’ve done and all the designer clothes I wear nobody actually cares about, I’m still just a nobody to a lot of people.  To some I’m much worse and they’ve tried to fight me in one way or another.  Fighting is a dumb resolution.  Compromise can also be a slide backwards into enemy territory.  Finding the balance between where you want to be is a hard, long process.  If I prove anything at this point in my life, it’s that there is no real rush.  People will always have unlimited reasons to tell you why you can’t make it.  The unsettling thing is that there is nothing behind it.  I wake up every day regardless of what bullshit is thrown at me and progress just the same to my goal.  My goal is unique to me.  Nobody cared too much about my dreams.  Nobody even bothered to ask.  It was only here really where I felt people understood in a silent, knowing way.  Sometimes a nod in the street is all you need.  James Baldwin said the true purpose of art was creating something to show others they aren’t alone in a struggle.  People have made me feel like I’ve been alone in all of this.  I never turned my back on myself.  It was hard to face some things.  And I learned I was more than capable after awhile.  I disconnected from things and started to think about new ways of doing things.  I got inspired by things that really moved me deep within.  I didn’t expect anything from them.  I got lost in them and let them speak to me.  These days kids in the street say more to me with more accessible brands.  Streetwear has it’s ties to work wear just as much as it does to military gear.  And yet if fashion like art isn’t accessible to the masses then it isn’t ultimately very revolutionary or special.  I wear things because I like the design and what they represent.  Rei Kawakubo represented a matriarchal influence for me in Japanese fashion.  It revolved around an ecosystem of people who shared similar visions. The more inclusive we get with fashion I think the more clear we can communicate these ideals.  How a Victoria’s Secret umbrella on the right rainy day means so much more to me than your six hundred dollar trainers nobody can afford and your low key bullshit attitude towards women.  How people on here have known for years how wonderful this all is for me really.  To say it instead of living it is not equal.  And I promise you I live through this rain, sleet or snow.  And I’m happy about where it’s lead me.  Actual growth and the ability to feel deeply.  I learned today you exhale breath at fifteen miles per hour.  Must be all the yoga causing these thunderstorms.  Maybe a hammer.  The Thor kind.  I’m half Swedish after all.  I’m just trying to be worthy of your love. <3 Tim 

[pogueman]

Samsung's Bixby voice assistant is ambitious, powerful, and half-baked

Can you imagine what it must have been like at Samsung when they came up with Bixby?

Manager: “OK, people. Apple (AAPL) has Siri, Google (GOOG, GOOGL) has its Assistant, Microsoft (MSFT) has Cortana. Amazon (AMZN) has that Alexa thing. We’re the only major player without a voice assistant!”

Underling 1: “But since our phones run Android, they already have Google Assistant built in. It wouldn’t make sense to create a second voice assistant on the same phone, would it?”

Underling 2: “Like that’s ever stopped us before? Samsung Reminders? Samsung Pay? Samsung Notes? HELLO?”

Manager: “Sheila’s right. I’m sick of being called a copycat company! We need to leapfrog the others! Our assistant won’t just tell you the weather and set alarms—ours will perform complete, multistep tasks!”

Second-in-command: “Cool! Yes! Like, ‘Send the last picture I took to my wife!’ Like ‘Take a selfie, apply the black-and-white filter, and post it to Instagram!'”

Manager: “And what’s more, we’ll someday expand this technology across the entire Samsung archipelago! It’ll be in our fridges! And washer-dryers! And cameras!”

Underling 1: “Um, but we have no experience with writing voice assistants. No database of voice samples. No voice-analysis experts.”

Manager: “Hey now, Ms. Doubty-Face. Let’s not stomp on my dreams. We’re going to write this thing, and what’s more, we’re going to have it done in time for the launch of our flagship Galaxy S8 phone!”

Underlings, together: “WHAAAAA—?”

You get the idea. From the beginning, Bixby (as the new voice assistant is bizarrely named) has been overly ambitious and underly polished.

It wasn’t ready in time for the Galaxy S8’s American launch. The phone comes with a dedicated Bixby button on the left edge, but for four months, it did absolutely nothing. (And when people tried to write hacks that assigned that button to do something, Samsung released a patch that blocked them.)

Well, Bixby is finally here. That Galaxy S8 button finally does something. Unfortunately, it’s not often what you want it to do.

After months of delay, Bixby is here.

How Bixby works

You can press the Bixby button as you issue your command, or you can speak hands-free by preceding each command with “Hi Bixby,” much as you can say “Hey Siri” or “OK Google.”

The training setup requires you to utter eight sentences, like “Hi Bixby,” “Hi Bixby, turn on Bluetooth,” “Health is always important,” and so on.

Now, you might assume that this unusually long training session will guarantee unusually good speech recognition. You’d be wrong.

Standard commands

The best way to show you how hit-or-miss Bixby’s performance is? Maybe it’s just to show you what you’d get if you could try it yourself.

Green means, “Bixby worked!” Blue means, “Bixby FAIL!”

Let’s start with the everyday commands, which your Apple or Android phone can already do:

Set an alarm for 7:30 a.m.

Open Settings.

Read my new messages.

What’s the weather? (Bixby: “Hmm, I can’t determine your current location.” The hilarious part is that the phone knows perfectly well my current location—which it displays just above the message saying that it doesn’t!)

You can’t determine the location? How about looking HALF AN INCH HIGHER ON THE SCREEN?

How many new emails do I have? (Bixby: “No problem. I’ve filtered the emails.” What?)

Send an email to Nicki about tomorrow’s lunch. (Bixby creates an outgoing email message, sure enough—but addresses it to “Nicki about tomorrow’s lunch.)

Create a new note called Rainy Day Activities. (It works—but the note is saved on the phone only, in a dedicated Samsung Notes app. The note doesn’t appear on the web or on any other machines, as it would if you used Siri or used Google Assistant.)

Add margarine to my Grocery List note.

Turn on “Do Not Disturb.”

Create an appointment for Friday at noon called “Fishing with Bob.” (Creates the appointment, but the title is only “Fishing.” Bob’s nowhere to be found.)

How many pictures did I take today? (Bixby: “OK! Let’s set up Samsung Health.” What the—??)

Tell me a joke. (Well, half credit. Bixby tells you a joke, but they’re terrible. “Who is Samsung’s favorite supehero? Super AMOLED!”)

Is a wombat a mammal? (Bixby hears, “Is a wombat a memo?” no matter how clearly, slowly, and repeatedly I asked. I already realize that a wombat is not a memo.)

When is the next Indians game? (Bixby displays only a link to the Major League Baseball schedule site, rather than showing the answer, as Siri does.)

Call Sarah.

Send a text to mom saying, “See you at Thanksgiving.”

What is Apple’s stock price? (Bixby displays a paragraph about Apple from Wikipedia—no mention of its stock price.)

What’s a 17% tip on $42? (Bixby displays links to online tip calculators. Siri and Google display the answer.)

Bixby is especially pathetic when it comes to navigation.

What pizza places are nearby? (Bixby: “Looks like there’s a connection problem.”)

Find me an Italian restaurant nearby. (Bixby opens Google Maps—promising!—but then stops, saying, “It looks like we experienced a slight hiccup.”)

Give me directions to JFK airport. (Bixby: “Which one?”)

Give me directions to the Empire State Building. (The “slight hiccup” error message appears after 10 seconds.)

In all cases, Bixby is very, very slow—plenty of videos online show how badly it lags behind Siri or Google Assistant.

It’s also fairly confusing. Most response bubbles include the baffling phrase, “You’re in native context.” And every so often, you’re awarded Bixby XP points for using Bixby. Samsung suggests that if you accumulate enough, you’ll be able to earn valuable prizes. OK, but if you have to bribe your customers to use your app…

Phone-control commands

Bixby may be super-lame at performing the usual voice-assistant commands. But to its credit, it can control your phone in some very literal ways that most other assistants can’t. For example:

Turn on the flashlight. (How great is that!?)

Take a selfie. (Bixby open the Camera app, turns on the front camera, and displays a three-second countdown. It’s terrific.)

Scroll down.

Go to the Home screen.

Open the Quick Settings panel.

Open Display in Settings.

Tap “blue light filter.”

Open the app drawer. (Bixby hears the command correctly, but displays the app store, and opens the keyboard for searching.)

Show me my apps? (Bixby asks, “Which one?” and lists three of them.)

Open the app tray. (Bixby invites you to change the grid-spacing settings for your apps.)

Yes, of course, it’s always faster to use your finger; Bixby does everything slowly. But sometimes, your hands are full, or your brain is full and you can’t remember how to get to something.

Compound commands

Where Bixby is supposed to shine, of course, is performing more elaborate commands that would leave its rivals in the dust.

Set an alarm called “Milk the cows” at 4:30 a.m., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Crop my most recent photo.

Text my latest photo to mom. (Man, this one is so useful and reliable, it’s almost enough to make me forgive the rest of Bixby’s brokenness. Almost.)

Find the pictures I took today and put them into a folder called Summer Break. (Amazing!)

Open Voice Recorder and start recording.

Open Instagram and post my most recent photo, with the caption ‘Rainy Monday.’”

Open Facebook Messenger and send the message, “I’m running 20 minutes behind” to Christine. (If you have only one Christine in your Facebook contacts, opens the message-composition screen, but doesn’t fill in the message you specified.)

Open Facebook and post my latest photo. (Bixby gives that “slight hiccup” message.)

Bixby works only in apps that have been specially adapted to work with it. That includes 15 of the phone’s built-in apps—Gallery, Contacts, Phone, Settings, Messages, Camera, etc.— plus about 20 ‘Bixby Labs’ apps, which presumably means they’re still under development. They include Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR), WhatsApp, Gmail, Google Play Store, and so on.

Bixby not as Billed

It’s incredible that a company as global and deep-pocketed as Samsung would release software as half-baked as Bixby. True, the company has a long history of writing apps that only kind of work (cough *S Translator* cough). But something as important and essential to the phone—and to the company’s future—as Bixby? Come on.

Bixby will improve, of course. And some of the things that do work are so compelling and useful, Apple and Google should be ashamed not to have thought of them. “Turn on the flashlight” and “Text my most recent photo to Robin” are particularly brilliant.

For now, though, be grateful that your Samsung phone also has the “OK Google” assistant on it. You can use that for all the everyday queries that Bixby botches, and use Bixby for the few things it’s really good at. You just have to learn which assistant to trigger when.

As for the name Bixby? No, it’s not named after Bill Bixby, star of the 1978 “The Incredible Hulk” TV show; it’s named for a bridge in California. That turns out to be apropos, because surely not even the managers and underlings at Samsung believe that Bixby is a finished product. If anything, it’s only a temporary bridge—to, we hope, something much better.

More from David Pogue:

Is through-the-air charging a hoax?

Electrify your existing bike in 2 minutes with these ingenious wheels

Marty Cooper, inventor of the cellphone: The next step is implantables 

The David Pogue Review: Windows 10 Creators Update

Now I get it: Bitcoin

David Pogue’s search for the world’s best air-travel app

The little-known iPhone feature that lets blind people see with their fingers

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email.