#income system software

[radioconstructed]

⌖ In OTHER NEWS, fellow V*xtuber SCAMBAITER’S REVENGE got into some COUYON SCAMMER’S computer and made the scammer’s V*xtube account SUBSCRIBE TO MY CHANNEL -- before NUKING his entire operating system! A LEGEND! SIR! You have WHAT’S LEFT OF MY HEART!

[alwajeeztech]

Business Zakat Calculation in ALZERP Cloud ERP Software

Benefits of Using ALZERP for Zakat Calculation

ZATCA Compliant Software: ALZERP is designed to meet all ZATCA requirements, ensuring that Zakat calculations are accurate and compliant with Saudi tax regulations.

Efficient VAT Management: In addition to Zakat, ALZERP manages VAT reporting and compliance, providing an all-in-one solution for tax management.

Zakat Calculation Software: The built-in Zakat calculator simplifies the complex process of determining Zakat obligations, reducing errors and ensuring timely submissions.

Automated Tax Compliance: The software automates the tax compliance process, from calculation to submission, minimizing manual intervention and the risk of errors.

Zakat and Tax Automation: ALZERP integrates Zakat and tax processes, automating calculations, reporting, and compliance tasks.

Real-Time VAT Reporting KSA: The system offers real-time reporting, allowing businesses to stay up-to-date with their tax liabilities.

Saudi Tax Compliance Software: Tailored specifically for the Saudi market, ALZERP ensures businesses meet all local tax and Zakat obligations.

Tax Optimization Tool: By providing insights into Zakat and tax liabilities, ALZERP helps businesses optimize their financial strategies.

VAT Fraud Detection: The system includes features to detect and prevent VAT fraud, ensuring the integrity of financial transactions.

[mckinlily]

Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

[milksockets]

why scan?

scanning is something i've done for probably about 12 years now (i'm ancient, for this site), with varying degrees of regularity, intensity, etc. it has ratcheted up since the dawn of 2023, though, which begs the question: why? why put so much time into what could not-wrongly be considered a passive activity, hunched over a piece of clunky machinery with the express purpose of preserving others' creations? the answers are several, and fascinating (not really).

i am a [sober] drug addict. anything i pursue, consume, create--more often than not--ends up taking on addictive qualities. i'll eat the same specific food item for a month, then never want to see, let alone taste it, again. i'll listen to one song on repeat for days until i'd rather hear nails on a chalkboard than have it shuffle on and assault my ears. one of the reasons that my scanning has increased in volume recently is that i acquired library cards to the 3 nyc library systems: nypl, brooklyn, and queens. as soon as i was able to, i pillaged + plundered those fine centers of learning, leaving any given library with as many hefty scan-worthy books as i could [barely] carry. here, finally, was a *free* way of obtaining more + more + more visual media to consume.

2023 saw me get my first legal, full-time job. as such, my adjusting to that hellish reality resulted in a steep decline in my own personal creative output. collaging, writing, and rapping all fell to the wayside as i slowly acclimated to a life of work that almost everyone else my age has known for over a decade is generally unbearable + detrimental to the maintenance of outside pursuits. in times of famine within my own artistic harvest, scanning, archiving, and sharing others' work is a means of feeling as though i am still contributing to the global oeuvre.

there’s an element of losing my mental self in a series of physical motions that becomes almost automatic after some time. “zoning out” is not something endemic to my daily life; if anything, i’m almost always too zoned in. relief is necessary.  especially considering the shitshow this past year has been in terms of my personal life.

i am a product of capitalism’s cultivating a craving for constant consumption. 

it seems that visual content is only going to continue to get more + more uninspired. has everything been done? did social media ruin it all? in any case, i feel a need to document the past. to a degree, it’s my version of doomsday prepping. (god forbid books go extinct altogether.) 

i have always gravitated towards solitary activities. this topic could be a thesis in its own right.

i thrive on external validation. this reliance is something i’ve improved upon over the past several years, but it hasn’t been altogether extinguished. even though the materials i scan are not of my own creation, i nevertheless feel a vague pride in showcasing them. occasional appreciation thereof satisfies this fixation on others’ attention, albeit in a diluted form. 

i am fortunate to live in a city bursting to the gills with cultural institutions. i am also lucky enough to have some disposable income that can be directed toward fulfilling my ravenous desire for visual media. 

((i keep getting messages about the specifics of my scanner + "process":

i have a cheap ass hp envy 6055e and i just use the software it comes with.

there's nothing special or fancy happening here, and i could definitely invest in a better and/or a large format scanner, etc. but i really just don't care enough and it's not like i'm getting paid for this lmao))

[naamahdarling]

Maybe it isn't that I actually hate medical professionals? They just suck and are weird sometimes, and a lot of them shouldn't be practicing, but I don't hate them as a group, like, personally.

What I hate is their ability to make my life harder in ways that are often completely opaque to me, and a lot of the crap things they do are not really possible to challenge. And I hate the fact that holding them responsible fort dogshit behavior in any way that will actually benefit me is almost always impossible.

And I also hate the fact that they have to do stupid things sometimes because that's how the system is set up, and those things sometimes mean patients actually get harmed. They aren't fond of that part either! They don't want the system to be the way it is! But they don't have a choice, so sometimes people like me get forced by bureaucracy into doing things that are re-traumatizing. And I can't imagine that feels good for them at all, knowing that their patients are sometimes only "consenting" because that bureaucracy will not let them be helped in any other way. Which isn't consent at all. I imagine that must be pretty traumatizing for them, too, sometimes.

If it were easier to actually access medical care without tremendous delays in this country right now I would have much less trouble finding providers who are good at what they do and are not horrible people, and who have clinic staff who can do their fucking job.

Oh and I also don't appreciate how evasive and unwilling to commit they are out of fear of being held to an answer that turns out to be inaccurate, but I can't make an informed decision about my own care unless they give me at least some information about probabilities and trajectories and typicalities. Genuinely, how the fuck am I supposed to navigate that shit. I get that some patients are really fucking difficult, but I should be able to get a special stamp on my file or something that says I understand that sometimes medicine isn't an exact science and the best answers that my doctors can give may not always prove to be accurate in the long term. I know they don't like being in that situation either.

A lot of medical professionals are fucking assholes, and unfortunately the ones who are not are still hamstrung by a system set up to actively prevent people from getting care.

I miss my old doctor. He gave no shits about anything that wasn't the patient. He prescribed scheduled meds based on what the patient needed and not based on fear of consequences potentially being imposed on him by the punitive patient-hostile drugs-are-bad moral panic machine developed to force suffering people into buying more dangerous drugs off the street in order to prevent far fewer people from maybe getting high off of drugs that at least weren't laced with lethal substances. (The purpose of a system is what it does.) Did he get sanctioned and become locally unhireable? Unfortunately yes he did. Does he now provide concierge care to rich people? Yes he does. He found a way to make it work, God bless him.

Everything about the medical system in this country is fucked. Hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacies, pharmacists, pharmacy techs, phlebotomists, clinic administrative staff, insurance companies, medical schools and schooling, licensing boards, drug advertising to both providers and patients, pharmaceutical reps, researchers, research, publishing, medical trials, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers and distributors, medical equipment, charting software, billing and billing codes, diagnostic criteria, charity and low income services, accessible transportation, home care, the lack of independent individual patient advocates, dietitians and nutritionists, access to physical and occupational therapy and physical and occupational therapists, the massive bigotry of every kind rampant in every corner of the medical field, social work, senior care and assisted living, deprioritization of informed consent and harm reduction, disability applications, inaccessibility of medical records, especially psychiatric notes which are specifically allowed to be withheld from patients, lack of continuity of care for disadvantaged people, care that is equitably accessible to disabled people, telemedicine, patient portals, phone systems, clinic hours, every single aspect of inpatient and outpatient psychiatry, facility security, all sorts of things going on with therapists who are nevertheless probably the least malicious group of people in this entire charade, aaaaaand patients themselves.

Also hospital toilets that are too tall and make it literally physically impossible for me to poop while I'm there waiting for somebody to come out of surgery. I just needed to take a crap, guys. You didn't need to make the toilets so tall that my feet didn't even touch the floor. It is very clean but there is no shitting for short people at St Francis.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft pinky swears that THIS TIME they’ll make security a priority

One June 20, I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

As the old saying goes, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you." That goes double for Microsoft, especially when it comes to security promises.

Microsoft is, was, always has been, and always will be a rotten company. At every turn, throughout their history, they have learned the wrong lessons, over and over again.

That starts from the very earliest days, when the company was still called "Micro-Soft." Young Bill Gates was given a sweetheart deal to supply the operating system for IBM's PC, thanks to his mother's connection. The nepo-baby enlisted his pal, Paul Allen (whom he'd later rip off for billions) and together, they bought someone else's OS (and took credit for creating it – AKA, the "Musk gambit").

Microsoft then proceeded to make a fortune by monopolizing the OS market through illegal, collusive arrangements with the PC clone industry – an industry that only existed because they could source third-party PC ROMs from Phoenix:

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

Bill Gates didn't become one of the richest people on earth simply by emerging from a lucky orifice; he also owed his success to vigorous antitrust enforcement. The IBM PC was the company's first major initiative after it was targeted by the DOJ for a 12-year antitrust enforcement action. IBM tapped its vast monopoly profits to fight the DOJ, spending more on outside counsel to fight the DOJ antitrust division than the DOJ spent on all its antitrust lawyers, every year, for 12 years.

IBM's delaying tactic paid off. When Reagan took the White House, he let IBM off the hook. But the company was still seriously scarred by its ordeal, and when the PC project kicked off, the company kept the OS separate from the hardware (one of the DOJ's major issues with IBM's previous behavior was its vertical monopoly on hardware and software). IBM didn't hire Gates and Allen to provide it with DOS because it was incapable of writing a PC operating system: they did it to keep the DOJ from kicking down their door again.

The post-antitrust, gunshy IBM kept delivering dividends for Microsoft. When IBM turned a blind eye to the cloned PC-ROM and allowed companies like Compaq, Dell and Gateway to compete directly with Big Blue, this produced a whole cohort of customers for Microsoft – customers Microsoft could play off on each other, ensuring that every PC sold generated income for Microsoft, creating a wide moat around the OS business that kept other OS vendors out of the market. Why invest in making an OS when every hardware company already had an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft?

The IBM PC story teaches us two things: stronger antitrust enforcement spurs innovation and opens markets for scrappy startups to grow to big, important firms; as do weaker IP protections.

Microsoft learned the opposite: monopolies are wildly profitable; expansive IP protects monopolies; you can violate antitrust laws so long as you have enough monopoly profits rolling in to outspend the government until a Republican bootlicker takes the White House (Microsoft's antitrust ordeal ended after GW Bush stole the 2000 election and dropped the charges against them). Microsoft embodies the idea that you either die a rebel hero or live long enough to become the evil emperor you dethroned.

From the first, Microsoft has pursued three goals:

Get too big to fail;

Get too big to jail;

Get too big to care.

It has succeeded on all three counts. Much of Microsoft's enduring power comes from succeeded IBM as the company that mediocre IT managers can safely buy from without being blamed for the poor quality of Microsoft's products: "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" is 2024's answer to "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Microsoft's secret sauce is impunity. The PC companies that bundle Windows with their hardware are held blameless for the glaring defects in Windows. The IT managers who buy company-wide Windows licenses are likewise insulated from the rage of the workers who have to use Windows and other Microsoft products.

Microsoft doesn't have to care if you hate it because, for the most part, it's not selling to you. It's selling to a few decision-makers who can be wined and dined and flattered. And since we all have to use its products, developers have to target its platform if they want to sell us their software.

This rarified position has afforded Microsoft enormous freedom to roll out harebrained "features" that made things briefly attractive for some group of developers it was hoping to tempt into its sticky-trap. Remember when it put a Turing-complete scripting environment into Microsoft Office and unleashed a plague of macro viruses that wiped out years worth of work for entire businesses?

https://web.archive.org/web/20060325224147/http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/newsinfo/collateral.aspx?cid=33338

It wasn't just Office; Microsoft's operating systems have harbored festering swamps of godawful defects that were weaponized by trolls, script kiddies, and nation-states:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

Microsoft blamed everyone except themselves for these defects, claiming that their poor code quality was no worse than others, insisting that the bulging arsenal of Windows-specific malware was the result of being the juiciest target and thus the subject of the most malicious attention.

Even if you take them at their word here, that's still no excuse. Microsoft didn't slip and accidentally become an operating system monopolist. They relentlessly, deliberately, illegally pursued the goal of extinguishing every OS except their own. It's completely foreseeable that this dominance would make their products the subject of continuous attacks.

There's an implicit bargain that every monopolist makes: allow me to dominate my market and I will be a benevolent dictator who spends his windfall profits on maintaining product quality and security. Indeed, if we permit "wasteful competition" to erode the margins of operating system vendors, who will have a surplus sufficient to meet the security investment demands of the digital world?

But monopolists always violate this bargain. When faced with the decision to either invest in quality and security, or hand billions of dollars to their shareholders, they'll always take the latter. Why wouldn't they? Once they have a monopoly, they don't have to worry about losing customers to a competitor, so why invest in customer satisfaction? That's how Google can piss away $80b on a stock buyback and fire 12,000 technical employees at the same time as its flagship search product (with a 90% market-share) is turning into an unusable pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Microsoft reneged on this bargain from day one, and they never stopped. When the company moved Office to the cloud, it added an "analytics" suite that lets bosses spy on and stack-rank their employees ("Sorry, fella, Office365 says you're the slowest typist in the company, so you're fired"). Microsoft will also sell you internal data on the Office365 usage of your industry competitors (they'll sell your data to your competitors, too, natch). But most of all, Microsoft harvest, analyzes and sells this data for its own purposes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Leave aside how creepy, gross and exploitative this is – it's also incredibly reckless. Microsoft is creating a two-way conduit into the majority of the world's businesses that insider threats, security services and hackers can exploit to spy on and wreck Microsoft's customers' business. You don't get more "too big to care" than this.

Or at least, not until now. Microsoft recently announced a product called "Recall" that would record every keystroke, click and screen element, nominally in the name of helping you figure out what you've done and either do it again, or go back and fix it. The problem here is that anyone who gains access to your system – your boss, a spy, a cop, a Microsoft insider, a stalker, an abusive partner or a hacker – now has access to everything, on a platter. Naturally, this system – which Microsoft billed as ultra-secure – was wildly insecure and after a series of blockbuster exploits, the company was forced to hit pause on the rollout:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/microsoft-delays-data-scraping-recall-feature-again-commits-to-public-beta-test/

For years, Microsoft waged a war on the single most important security practice in software development: transparency. This is the company that branded the GPL Free Software license a "virus" and called open source "a cancer." The company argued that allowing public scrutiny of code would be a disaster because bad guys would spot and weaponize defects.

This is "security through obscurity" and it's an idea that was discredited nearly 500 years ago with the advent of the scientific method. The crux of that method: we are so good at bullshiting ourselves into thinking that our experiment was successful that the only way to make sure we know anything is to tell our enemies what we think we've proved so they can try to tear us down.

Or, as Bruce Schneier puts it: "Anyone can design a security system that you yourself can't think of a way of breaking. That doesn't mean it works, it just means that it works against people stupider than you."

And yet, Microsoft – whose made more widely and consequentially exploited software than anyone else in the history of the human race – claimed that free and open code was insecure, and spent millions on deceptive PR campaigns intended to discredit the scientific method in favor of a kind of software alchemy, in which every coder toils in secret, assuring themselves that drinking mercury is the secret to eternal life.

Access to source code isn't sufficient to make software secure – nothing about access to code guarantees that anyone will review that code and repair its defects. Indeed, there've been some high profile examples of "supply chain attacks" in the free/open source software world:

https://www.securityweek.com/supply-chain-attack-major-linux-distributions-impacted-by-xz-utils-backdoor/

But there's no good argument that this code would have been more secure if it had been harder for the good guys to spot its bugs. When it comes to secure code, transparency is an essential, but it's not a sufficency.

The architects of that campaign are genuinely awful people, and yet they're revered as heroes by Microsoft's current leadership. There's Steve "Linux Is Cancer" Ballmer, star of Propublica's IRS Files, where he is shown to be the king of "tax loss harvesting":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

And also the most prominent example of the disgusting tax cheats practiced by rich sports-team owners:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Microsoft may give lip service to open source these days (mostly through buying, stripmining and enclosing Github) but Ballmer's legacy lives on within the company, through its wildly illegal tax-evasion tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

But Ballmer is an angel compared to his boss, Bill Gates, last seen some paragraphs above, stealing the credit for MS DOS from Tim Paterson and billions of dollars from his co-founder Paul Allen. Gates is an odious creep who made billions through corrupt tech industry practices, then used them to wield influence over the world's politics and policy. The Gates Foundation (and Gates personally) invented vaccine apartheid, helped kill access to AIDS vaccines in Sub-Saharan Africa, then repeated the trick to keep covid vaccines out of reach of the Global South:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation

The Gates Foundation wants us to think of it as malaria-fighting heroes, but they're also the leaders of the war against public education, and have been key to the replacement of public schools with charter schools, where the poorest kids in America serve as experimental subjects for the failed pet theories of billionaire dilettantes:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/millionaire-driven-education-reform-has-failed-heres-what-works

(On a personal level, Gates is also a serial sexual abuser who harassed multiple subordinates into having sexual affairs with him:)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/technology/microsoft-sexual-harassment-policy-review.html

The management culture of Microsoft started rotten and never improved. It's a company with corruption and monopoly in its blood, a firm that would always rather build market power to insulate itself from the consequences of making defective products than actually make good products. This is true of every division, from cloud computing:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/28/other-peoples-computers/#clouded-over

To gaming:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/27/convicted-monopolist/#microsquish

No one should ever trust Microsoft to do anything that benefits anyone except Microsoft. One of the low points in the otherwise wonderful surge of tech worker labor organizing was when the Communications Workers of America endorsed Microsoft's acquisition of Activision because Microsoft promised not to union-bust Activision employees. They lied:

https://80.lv/articles/qa-workers-contracted-by-microsoft-say-they-were-fired-for-trying-to-unionize/

Repeatedly:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/activision-fired-staff-using-strong-language-about-remote-work-policy-union-2023-03-01/

Why wouldn't they lie? They've never faced any consequences for lying in the past. Remember: the secret to Microsoft's billions is impunity.

Which brings me to Solarwinds. Solarwinds is an enterprise management tool that allows IT managers to see, patch and control the computers they oversee. Foreign spies hacked Solarwinds and accessed a variety of US federal agencies, including National Nuclear Security Administration (who oversee nuclear weapons stockpiles), the NIH, and the Treasury Department.

When the Solarwinds story broke, Microsoft strenuously denied that the Solarwinds hack relied on exploiting defects in Microsoft software. They said this to everyone: the press, the Pentagon, and Congress.

This was a lie. As Renee Dudley and Doris Burke reported for Propublica, the Solarwinds attack relied on defects in the SAML authentication system that Microsoft's own senior security staff had identified and repeatedly warned management about. Microsoft's leadership ignored these warnings, buried the research, prohibited anyone from warning Microsoft customers, and sidelined Andrew Harris, the researcher who discovered the defect:

https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers

The single most consequential cyberattack on the US government was only possible because Microsoft decided not to fix a profound and dangerous bug in its code, and declined to warn anyone who relied on this defective software.

Yesterday, Microsoft president Brad Smith testified about this to Congress, and promised that the company would henceforth prioritize security over gimmicks like AI:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/microsoft-in-damage-control-mode-says-it-will-prioritize-security-over-ai/

Despite all the reasons to mistrust this promise, the company is hoping Congress will believe it. More importantly, it's hoping that the Pentagon will believe it, because the Pentagon is about to award billions in free no-bid military contract profits to Microsoft:

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/17/pentagon-weighs-microsoft-licensing-upgrades

You know what? I bet they'll sell this lie. It won't be the first time they've convinced Serious People in charge of billions of dollars and/or lives to ignore that all-important maxim, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you."

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

[a-shade-of-blue]

New Gaza fundraiser asks I've received (26 August)

Ayman Sharif (@aymanelsharif): Ayman has 6 children. His child Mohammed (6) has a problem with his eyesight and is at risk of losing his vision if he doesn’t get surgery soon! However, since all the hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed, they will have to go to Egypt to get the surgery he needs. A lot of children children are also contracting hepatitis due to the unsanitary environment and they have all lost a lot of weight. Please help them evacuate! (https://gofund.me/0ff8b798) (#244 on the verified fundraiser list by el-shab-hussein and nabulsi.)

Jawad & Farouz (jawad236): Jawad and Farouz have two children: Muhammad (4) and Ahmed (10 months old). Their home has been destroyed, they have lost their source of income, and are now displaced. They are raising funds to buy daily basic necessities, medicine, shelter, evacuate and start a life in a new country. (https://gofund.me/bc231514) (#655 on the Butterfly Effect Project verified campaign list.) 

(@falestine-yousef)

Mohamad Smeer (@mohamadsmeer34): Mohamad is a palestinian medical student studying in Egypt right now. He has lost contact with his family since October 7 and his house has been bombed. He is trying to raise funds to cover his studying expenses. (https://gofund.me/db622b3a) (UNVETTED but seems legit. This is his Instagram: @mohamadsmeer and it has links to the same gfm campaign. His Instagram has been active since 2017 and he has posts that are geotagged in Gaza.) 

Rawan Shihada (@rawanshihada11): Rawan lives with her parents and 4 siblings. She is a renewable energy engineer, graduated in 2022 and already has a published paper. She dreams of doing a master’s degree. However now their home is destroyed and they have been displaced 6 times. Her brother Karam is a medical doctor, her sister Ruba is a software engineer, and her youngest sister Tala is 17, a secondary school student but the war has obstructed her education. They are trying to evacuate out of Gaza. (https://gofund.me/741d42ef) (UNVETTED but likely legit, see post here. @/catboymoses has managed to find Rawan on both LinkedIn and ResearchGate and has messaged her to confirm that this is her Tumblr account and fundraiser.)

Falestine (@falestine-yousef): Falestine has a 3-month-old son called Youssef that she gave birth to during this war. She cannot provide enough milk, medicine and other basic necessities for the baby. Due to the horrible conditions and the loss of their homes, her father suffered a stroke and her mother is suffering from chronic diseases and needs treatment. They are raising funds to evacuate out of Gaza and buy daily necessities. (https://gofund.me/77ca82d7) (shared by 90-ghost) (additional info on Falestine and her sisters)

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 13 July - 25 July.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 26 July -29 July.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 30 July - 1 August.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 2 August - 5 August.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 6 August - 10 August.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 11 August - 14 August.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 15 August - 18 August

Click here for my Masterlist for fundrasiers from 19 August - 21 August

Click here for my Masterlist for fundrasiers from 22 August - 24 August

How does vetting and verification work? See post here. (also read comments regarding 90-ghost and why we trust the campaigns he has shared)

Click here for my Google Doc with my complete masterlist of all the Palestinian gfm asks I've received, updated daily (along with other verified ways to send aid to Gaza).

Don't forget your Daily Clicks on Arab.org, it's free!!! and Every click made is registered in their system and generates donation from sponsors/advertisers.)

[chloes-awfully-soft]

Be warned horny tumblr users, incoming robot girl yuri smut. Contains some light consensual software manipulation. I’m new to this so go easy on me.

Stars

The twinkles of light reached her eyes through the three inch thick glass that made up the exterior windows of the shuttle. She sat completely still in her chair, silently observing the beauty of the universe, storing every image in her mission ready SSD to be extracted later and observed by astronomers back on earth. Her servos and joints spun softly to life as she got up from her seat. Taking a moment to stretch her artificial muscles and lubricate her artificial joints. She had been sitting for hours, and hours before that she’d been pacing aimlessly, before that, laying down. She was the only one out here, and now that she was on the back end of her mission, she had very little to do. It would only be few more days before re-entry, and she could finally get repairs, an oil bath maybe. She could see her girlfriend, the one who’d been taking up more and more of her ram the last couple days of being confined in the central cabin. The one who gave her such wonderful new software, those programs she’d make herself. The ones that limit her processing power, make her slow and submissive. Finally able to take a break from always thinking at such a high level because of her extremely highly rated processor. Silence, pleasure, love.

She snapped out of the incredibly vivid fantasy she was in and realized that she’d sat back down.

“How am I expected to get shit done around here!”

She threw herself from her chain and used every ounce of willpower she had to trudge to her computer terminal chair and once again take a seat. At least now it was a seat she could do her daily diagnostic in. She opened her computer and tapped her fingers impatiently on the desk as the terminal went through its laborious start up process. As soon as it was open she moved her mouse over to the shuttle functions display program, but before she could click something caught her eye. A message notification, on the closed NASA network? She thought to herself. She wasn’t supposed to receive anything until a day before re-entry. Cautiously she moved the mouse back across the screen to her messages and opened her inbox.

“oh fuck”

From: nasaacsesspoint800915 (err: no:location:notarized) errorcode-56-77-968104

To: shuttlepilot6100 (preferred name: Chip)

Hey chip,

I miss you so fucking much. I knew you were probably bored as hell up there since it’s the last week. I always get so sad when you talk about how depressed you are when your missions get to this point. So this time I bribed one of your co-workers into letting me into the system to send you something.

I, made something extra special to get you through, wish I could download it to you myself.

Love you, so much

yours forever,

Maggie

| attachment: 463mb. |

| :mags-program-for-chip: |

| -download- |

“I… I can’t I’m, on a mission, oh god I’m so bored though and I want it so bad.”

Chip squirmed restlessly in her chair, she knew it was highly unlikely that anyone would ever find out what she did if she chose to download whatever mag had made for her. Of course it was always fine to download whatever in her free time, but right now, she was the only person responsible for a billion dollar piece of equipment. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t…

she… she needed to, she had to, escape, stop thinking. Just for awhile

“Oh Maggie” she sighed.

Chip opened the USB stick hatch on her wrist and removed the small connector tethered to her body by a thin wire. She plugged it into the computer, a small flutter came over her. She selects the program mag sent her, sets the location to shuttlepilot6100 and clicks download.

“It feels nice, it’s, oh, oh it’s so good, it I mag I’m. I. Can I. An It’s over. I can

Relax

.

.

.

. . . . Ma. Gg ie. “

Thank you for reading. Please let me know if you liked it and would be interested in more of this from me in the future :3

[ryuichirou]

Replies

A couple of replies, a longer one about fandom.

hadesdancehall asked:

BOKU NO RISOU NO ROI DE POISON DE WA I'M LOSING MY MIND OVER TETTERE!ROOK

YESSSSS YES YES I AM SO HAPPY YOU GET IT LOL Rook and Tettere are the same, the idea of this crossover was driving me crazy, I had to draw it. Look at him go, singing about continuously loving every single person until he finds the one…

Fun fact about this sketch: we have no idea why I drew Alte-Rose!Malleus there. It’s been a while since I drew this sketch, and I completely forgot… I guess she had to deal with this Tettere too, so it kind of fits lol

Anonymous asked:

I know you aren't really type to give information just gorgeous art. But in your last reply post you said you do traditional art and just coloured them digitally.

So I'm wondering... How do you do it!?

Because everytime I try to do that it looks so weird. I can't seem to get the colors as vibrant as I can when I'm only doing digital.

Thank you for praising my art! But Anon, I do give information :c I wrote a reply about this exact topic just a couple of days ago which is filled to the brim with links about everything in my art process + have a guide about exactly this topic.

Your colours might seem off for a number of reasons, it’s hard to tell exactly why by just guessing. It can be related to your software/display or directly to your choice of colours.

Anonymous asked:

Ryu, your dissatisfaction with Twisted Wonderland's age rating is very understandable! The game is allegedly a joseimuke game aimed at adult women, especially in light of the fact that this is a gacha game and that adults—who earn a regular income—will be the true target market. It's a little frightening that adults who play these kinds of games have to be so careful about how we express our affection for the characters lest we be labelled as predators or worse, p*dos. Making adult gamers feel bad for enjoying these "children" who are clearly meant to be adults. They're fictional, and most of them definitely don't look or act like boys their age. Some characters appear so mature; this really struck me as being university attendee coded. It's not like the ensemble is exclusively comprised of children, you know? The game revolves around attractive anime boys who are intentionally created to appear older than they actually are. Unfortunately, despite the fact that i enjoy Twisted Wonderland, it is the first fandom where i experienced Ageism in a fandom.

Trey is, if my memory serves me correctly, one of the most well-liked characters in the Japanese fandom (i remember there used to be a JP poll asking which character in Twist was the most loved). Most likely due to his personality, which again makes sense given that the majority of Twist users are grownups and Trey's portrayal of a character who, despite being a young adult, is quite mature.

Furthermore, even though I realise I'm going to sound like Idia, I detest how the "Normies" entered Nerd/Geek spaces after gaining popularity and then pretended to be uncomfortable with what they saw. You came to OUR space, dude! What did they expect?!

Anon! Sorry for replying late, and thank you! You’ve made so many very good points.

It really is an obvious joseimuke in how the game is written, how the game operates (the gacha system, like you mentioned) + even the type of merch that exists for this game. If you think about it, this is probably the best way to determine the actual target audience of any piece of media: just like Prince of Tennis is technically a classic Shonen Jump series, but all the merch they have is clearly aimed at adult women (purses, perfume, etc).

So yeah, even if that wasn’t the case, calling people predators over shipping themselves with Azul would be a bad thing to do, but in this situation especially it’s absurd to call people out for interacting with TWST pretty much the way it was indented…

What you said about the characters’ age and Trey specifically is so true. To be fair, this could be said about any joseimuke-like title with a big ensemble of boys, Prince of Tennis included. All the characters there are 12-15 years old, but god some of them look over 30.

I think it is important to keep in mind the intended age to a degree (= I dislike how the EN translation tries to dance around mentioning the boys’ age), and Twst does a good job at keeping these boys authentic when it matters, but it doesn’t mean that people won’t ship them with other characters or themselves. And no one questions it and no one finds it weird because it isn’t. It’s not that deep, it has nothing to do with how real teens look or act, this is a fantasy in people’s heads, it’s escapism, it so different and so far removed from the regular boring life it’s insane. It’s so difficult not to sound like Idia, SO I FEEL YOU ANON.  Someone called it the moe factor that some people just don’t get. So I guess it really is about people being normies sometimes lol I wish they would leave already.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I bought my coworker a wedding present after he asked me not to?

I (25NB, coworker thinks 25F since I'm not out as trans at work both to protect my career and because the country I live in does not have a conception of "NB" or gender neutral pronoun in the language) work my coworker R (25-30M) as software developers. I am in a more senior position and actually hired R as a sub-mimum wage intern (in a country/system where this is normal because he is also attending university, I did not have control over salary), because in the interview although he did not know much about the work, he was eager to learn, and also he was a refugee fleeing religious persecution who had been waiting over 3 years in immigration detention for a chance to work, so I though damn this guy deserves a job ASAP. I don't regret it at all; he's incredibly hardworking and kind and I have been helping him learn the ropes so after 1 year he can get a more permanent position, at which point he will be in a very stable position with a much better salary.

I am earning a bit less than 3x his wage at the moment - I support my disabled trans wife so I don't have a huge disposable income - but I am comfortable due to a very modest lifestyle. He invited me to his wedding, which is a pretty big deal, since I think only 1 other person in the office was invited, and very kind since I am autistic, socially awkward, I speak the native language of this country quite poorly, we have only known each other in work, and I have never met his finacée.

I immediately thanked him and asked for a gift registry. He said no gift is necessary. I pressed, remembering how at my wedding the gifts really helped improve our quality of life, and remembering how when I was in his position with a work-study job, money was really tight (monthly income of €1k only). He's having a fairly big wedding which looks expensive, and he's had a hard life with needing to flee his country and requalify professionally because his degree wasn't valid here (and needing to spend years "rotting", as he put it, waiting for his asylum application to be accepted and legally forced not to study nor work during some of the peak years of his life), so I would really like to contribute. He insisted no present.

At this point I am thinking of giving him a few hundred euros in a card, but I am worried this would come across as condescending or violate his boundaries. Also, my wife has never met this guy and is probably not going to be thrilled with this decision (we can afford it... but we don't spend money recklessly at all and very carefully budget), so it would probably come out of a few months of my "personal spending" allocation which I usually spend on books and chocolate and stuff (we practice total economic equiality although I am the bread-winner). I still want to do it but I am very worried about seeming like some kind of gracious rich person (I'm not) throwing breadcrumbs or something, or hurting his pride(?). I don't understand a lot of social stuff so this feels like it could go wrong in ways I could not predict.

WIBTA if I gave him a gift? YTA = no gift, respect his choices; NTA = give him the gift

What are these acronyms?

[alwajeeztech]

ZATCA VAT & Tax Return System in ALZERP Cloud ERP Software

The ALZERP Cloud ERP Software offers a comprehensive tax return system designed to facilitate the calculation, moderation, and finalization of VAT and tax returns. This system ensures businesses comply with the Saudi Arabian tax regulations set by the Zakat, Tax, and Customs Authority (ZATCA). By automating and streamlining the tax return process, ALZERP helps businesses achieve accuracy and…

[sunshinesmebdy]

Moon in Virgo: Tidy Up Your Biz and Harvest Financial Abundance

Astrologers, rejoice! Business gurus, unite! Because under the meticulous gaze of the Moon in Virgo, it's time to blend cosmic wisdom with practical strategy. Get ready for a potent mix of grounded energy, keen analysis, and a sprinkle of earthy magic ready to boost your business and finances.

Virgo's Virgo-ness: Picture a spotless spreadsheet, a perfectly balanced budget, and a to-do list so organized it whispers sweet satisfaction. That's Virgo's domain. When the Moon dances through this earth sign, it brings a laser focus on details, a knack for efficiency, and an urge to declutter both your physical and financial spaces.

Business Benefits:

Sharpened Skills: Hone your expertise, take that online course, or finally master that new software. Virgo's energy fuels learning and skill development, making you a powerhouse of knowledge and competence.

Channel your inner Hermione Granger under the Virgo Moon! Devour knowledge like polyjuice potion, mastering that new software with flick-of-the-wand ease. Whether it's an online course on astrological forecasting or the intricacies of blockchain technology, Virgo's studious energy makes you a sponge for information, transforming you into a confident, competence-wielding powerhouse ready to tackle any business challenge.

Streamlined Operations: Virgo loves a well-oiled machine. Use this lunar phase to audit your business processes, identify bottlenecks, and implement systems that save time and resources.

Don your efficiency hat, because under the meticulous Virgo Moon, streamlining your business becomes a cosmically ordained quest. Scrutinize processes like a celestial accountant, unearthing time-sucking bottlenecks and banishing them with automated spells (aka, handy new systems). Watch as email chains unfurl into streamlined communication channels, meetings morph into laser-focused action sessions, and your once-chaotic workflow hums like a perfectly tuned engine, freeing up precious time and resources for your entrepreneurial magic to truly shine.

Networking with Purpose: Quality over quantity is Virgo's motto. Connect with potential clients or collaborators who share your values and expertise. Think strategic partnerships, not random coffee chats.

Forget the business card bingo of generic gatherings – Virgo's discerning Moon demands quality connections. Seek out collaborators and clients who mirror your values and expertise, like kindred spirits drawn together by constellations of shared passion. Think chess match, not cocktail party. Craft targeted pitches that resonate with their specific needs, and cultivate strategic partnerships that feel like cosmically ordained alliances. This intentional networking isn't about collecting contacts, it's about igniting mutually beneficial collaborations that propel your business towards the stars.

Marketing Magic: Craft targeted campaigns that speak directly to your ideal customer's needs. Virgo's analytical prowess helps you understand your audience and deliver messaging that resonates.

Under the analytical gaze of the Virgo Moon, ditch the shotgun marketing blasts and unleash laser-focused campaigns that whisper sweet nothings to your ideal customer's soul. Virgo's eagle eye pinpoints their deepest desires and pain points, transforming you into a messaging maestro. Craft content that speaks their language, addresses their specific struggles, and showcases your solutions like the missing puzzle piece to their perfect life. Let go of generic pitches and embrace storytelling that resonates with their values, because under this lunar influence, targeted marketing isn't just effective, it's downright magical.

Financial Fortunes:

Budgeting Bliss: Break out the spreadsheets and get granular. Categorize expenses, track income, and create a budget that feels secure and sustainable. Virgo loves a balanced bottom line.

Spreadsheets sing and budgets balance under the Virgo Moon! Unleash your inner accounting alchemist and transform financial chaos into crystal-clear clarity. Categorize expenses with the precision of a cosmic librarian, track every penny like a moonbeam, and craft a budget that feels not like a restrictive cage, but a beautifully organized, secure haven for your financial future. Virgo craves equilibrium, so find that sweet spot where income and outgoings waltz in perfect harmony, leaving you feeling abundant and empowered, the maestro of your own financial orchestra.

Debt Disposal: Tackle outstanding debts with renewed determination. Negotiate better terms, make extra payments, and experience the liberation of financial freedom.

Ditch the debt demon and embrace the warrior spirit under the Virgo Moon! Channel your inner debt disposal dragon, breathing fire upon outstanding balances with renewed determination. Hone your negotiation skills like a celestial diplomat, securing lower interest rates and crafting repayment plans that fit your budget like a cosmic glove. Make extra payments with the fervor of a moonbeam illuminating a dark cave, watching those numbers shrink faster than a vampire in sunlight. Embrace the sweet liberation of financial freedom, feeling the weight of debt lift like a cosmic spell dissolving, leaving you empowered and ready to conquer your financial Everest.

Savvy Investments: Research, compare, analyze – Virgo's energy is perfect for making informed investment decisions. Seek advice from trusted professionals and prioritize long-term stability over short-term gains.

Transform into a celestial stockbroker under the Virgo Moon! Put on your research goggles and analyze potential investments like a cosmic detective, comparing, contrasting, and sniffing out hidden risks. Consult trusted financial oracles for guidance, but ultimately, let your own Virgo-honed discernment be your compass. Prioritize long-term stability over fleeting trends, building a portfolio that grows like a well-tended celestial garden, not a gambler's dice roll. Embrace the slow and steady path, for under Virgo's meticulous gaze, informed investments blossom into financial freedom, one calculated decision at a time.

Unexpected Windfalls: Keep an eye out for unexpected opportunities to increase your income. Virgo favors those who put in the work, so your dedication could be rewarded with a bonus, a new client, or a lucky windfall.

Keep your antennae tuned to cosmic whispers under the Virgo Moon, for fortune often favors the prepared! Your dedication and sharpened skills could attract unexpected boons like a bonus shimmering out of thin air, a new client drawn by your newfound expertise, or a windfall landing softly as a celestial feather in your lap. Remember, Virgo rewards hard work, so keep hustling, honing, and learning, and trust that the universe may just surprise you with a bonus chapter in your financial story.

Bonus Tip: Embrace the earthy magic of Virgo! Surround yourself with green spaces, incorporate crystals like citrine and jade into your workspace, and practice grounding exercises to channel the Moon's practical energy.

So, there you have it! The Moon in Virgo is your invitation to tidy up your biz, fine-tune your finances, and reap the rewards of your focused efforts. Remember, success is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself, celebrate the small wins, and trust that under Virgo's meticulous guidance, your business and finances will shine.

Now go forth and conquer, astrologically savvy entrepreneurs! Your financial stars are aligned.

[detachedminxsfics]

System Error

Characters: JD Richter x Detective F!Reader

Summary: You take on a homicide case and find that you're not as alone as you thought you were at the crime scene.

Word count: 5.1K+

Warnings: NSFW - Vaginal sex, riding, drunk sex, mixing business with pleasure

A/N: I wrote this at 2am so I was too tired to check/revise for mistakes, so apologies to anybody who reads this lmao. Also I'm only on like ep 9 atm so I wrote him as best as I could. :)

Ten k. That was what someone was willing to pay to solve a homicide, and you'd be damned if you weren't gonna take that. Vee, your computer system responsible for receiving all jobs for the patrol special had come to life with the alert of an incoming job. A suspected homicide down fifth avenue, a man was found murdered in his own home. There was no way of telling whether it was gonna be a clean-cut case until you could see the crime scene for yourself, and with Vee's timer slowly chipping at your twenty seconds to make your decision you hurried off for your shoes and sighed.

"I accept."

The computer processed your response, and then the job was yours.

"Would you like a partner?"

You laughed a little, not that that would amuse the software.

"No, Vee. I never do."

You finalised zipping up your boots, standing up and making your over to where you'd strewn your jacket, throwing it over your shoulders.

"Sending crime scene location to your nav, please confirm receipt."

The screen lit up with a full address, and your eyes wandered over it for a moment.

"Confirm."

The criminal activity matrix hibernated once more, and that was it. That was your night planned out. The drive wasn't too long as the location wasn't awfully far, and before you knew it you were parked outside, staring over at the apartment block in front. There was a car parked relatively close to yours, a jeep positioned almost as though its driver had the same intentions as you, but you swept away the thought. This was a complex of many residents, albeit rich ones, and that could be any one of the resident's vehicles. Though you weren't sure why one of them would own such a vehicle, and a muddy, not so maintained one at that. You stepped out of your car and made your way into the building, bypassing the complex's security systems until you reached the floor you needed. Sixth, apartment number 154. Locating was the easiest part. After overriding the electronic lock system on the front door you pushed it open, gun raised vigilantly. It had happened a few times before, the culprit hangs around, or tries to make their way back to cover their tracks after the initial body discovery. Could never be too careful. You were cautious as to the volume of your steps, nevertheless, one creaky floorboard gave way to a whole load of ruckus in an entirely silent room. If anyone was here, they'd surely know your whereabouts by now.

"Don't move a muscle, hands up and drop it."

A man's voice sounded from behind you, your back to him as you kept your gun gripped in your hand, merely lowering your arm and looking straight ahead of you.

"I've done a lot of cases, but a murderer employing cop lingo is a first."

Something wasn't right, and you hoped that what you were implying was telling enough.

"You're a cop?" He questioned with a tinge of skepticism.

You turned to face him now, not entirely convinced that he would still shoot you. He seemed to tense a little once you did. Well, what a surprisingly pleasant sight to behold. He looked the middle-aged whiskey-drinking type, and the matte leather jacket did little to ease your idealised first impression.

"Patrol special, and you're on my crime scene."

You tucked your gun into your waistband as opposed to its usual holster and glanced up at him, he looked wildly offended, judging by the look of disbelief splayed across his face.

"Your crime scene? Not only was I here first, but this is most certainly my case."

Concurrently, you pulled your remote matrix systems from your pockets, eyes locked with one another as you unlocked your devices.

"11964, passkey buffalo jump." He muttered his security details.

"3273, passkey angel wings." You did the same.

Simultaneously, you turned the devices to face one another, the synchronously timed confusion etching across your features priceless. Both screens displayed the same job, everything down to the victim details and case ID, meaning the two of you were most certainly in the right place. Defeated, you both lowered your devices and tucked them back to where they belonged, and your newly appointed comrade lowered his gun.

"Must've been a system error, a malfunction, or something. You pick a partner?" He asked.

You shook your head.

"Nope, I don't work so well with others."

"Likewise."

A standoff. You had two choices. The first consisted of familiarising yourselves with one another, considering you were about to be partners in this case. The other? Race him. Bounty hunters had done it before, competing with one another for who would score the payout, and solve the case first. Though, he didn't seem like the competitive type.

"Truce, and I suppose we get the ten thousand each. If not? Five k split. Sound fair?" As generous an offer as you could give, and if he denied, honour be damned.

You extended your hand with a moderate amount of composure, and his brows furrowed as he worked the idea through his head. He mulled on it for a moment or two, and then his hand closed around yours, shaking hands as you established the grounds for your truce.

"JD Richter."

You tilted your head slightly, and a small smile spread across your lips.

"Cute." You muttered offhandedly, heading off towards the bedroom.

He followed after you.

"Not gonna give me your name?" JD pried.

You stepped into the master bedroom, surveying the room for anything misplaced or unusual, practically ignoring him.

"Need to know basis, or you can look me up. File's a little wild, but a guy like you might get a kick out of it."

You rounded the bed to discover the pool of blood staining the off-white carpet, bending down to get a closer look. Purposefully, you ignored the sounds of a scanner from behind you as he obviously looked you up, the repetitive beeping that subsequently ceased indicating that he had found it.

"You're a busy girl. A repeat offender for petty theft and battery, served some time. Then you went straight, did some time in the force. Now your solo as of four months ago. You get cold feet?"

You let a small giggle slip, still focusing your attention on the clue right under your nose.

"No, I got bored. Needed something a little more thrilling."

It was true. A position in generalised law enforcement just wasn't good enough for a thrill seeker such as yourself, not when you could be working with homicide cases and collecting mass payouts like this. Bounty hunting was where your heart lie. Your head wandered down to just beside the blood, careful not to contaminate the evidence, and pinched to gather something from the carpet. You raised and turned your hand over to look at your fingertip, seeing as you had collected some kind of paint chip. Or...

"Killer's female. Probably early to mid-twenties."

You rose to your feet with the nail polish chip still laid on your fingertip, careful not to drop it.

"What makes you so sure?"

You extended your hand to show him the speck of rouge varnish.

"Nail polish. Chips off sometimes, and the choice of colour just screams twenties. I have a knack for this sorta thing."

His brows were raised, and he seemed impressed.

"Okay, you're quick. Anything else?"

JD was willing to see how far he could push your investigative skills, and whether he could make you stutter. You wouldn't fold.

"The trail of sole indents in the carpet. Heels, judging by the dimension, stiletto. And a guy as rich as this? Louboutins, perhaps. He was probably well acquainted with his killer."

He smiled, a genuine and fascinated one.

"Well, alright. You suggestin' we got a femme fatale on our hands?"

You pulled your phone from your pocket to take a photo of the chip, making sure that you focused it so it would be clear enough that you could use it later.

"I am. They're my specialty." You finished your sentence by flicking the polish back onto the carpeted floor, your eyes boring into his as you silently urged him to detail the next move.

You knew, but it was his turn to be put on the spot.

"So, killer had to be close. We do some digging, social media, anything that could allude to a girlfriend or some lady friend of his, and then we narrow it down." When he stopped your brows raised expectantly, you hadn't expected him to finish his sentence so prematurely.

He looked bewildered by the way your expression urged him to continue, and you playfully rolled your eyes.

"Then, we make a house call. I'll see if I can find some matches for the polish, and we search for it. With varnish that old its probably wiped off with all the scrubbing she did to clean her hands of blood, so focusing on whoever has painted fingernails is pointless."

He nodded, feigning a sense of 'I knew that', and his facade of confidence brought a smile to your lips. Clearly, he was too confident to admit that he was out of his depth, and without you, this case would have been a whole lot harder.

"With that outta the way, how about drinks? My place, considering we're buddies an' all." JD mused with a grin of his own.

"A man after my own heart."

The two of you exited the crime scene, taking the elevator down to the lobby and making your way over to your car. You watched as JD split off to return to his vehicle, the jeep that you'd had suspicions of before. Your gut was as remarkable as usual, you hadn't lost your touch. Starting up your car you followed his vehicle, tailing him all the way to his place. Eventually, he pulled off the main road and onto a side road that led right out into a relatively private and modest one-floor home. Taking your keys from the ignition you pushed your car door open and stepped out, JD was already halfway up the steps to the porch as he had arrived a little before you by the time you made it to his front yard. He unlocked his front door and pushed it open, leaving it ajar so you could make your way inside. You did, shutting it behind you. For what it was worth his home seemed, simple. It was quaint, and looked as though it belonged to a person who was neither struggling to make ends meet nor rolling cash, he was just that middle ground of comfort.

"What's your poison?" He called out, and you made your way over to his sofa, slipping your jacket from your shoulders.

"Whiskey."

Truthfully, you didn't give a shit. Whatever got you waking up and not knowing anything that had happened the night before was your drink of choice, something to get you blacked out. He emerged from the kitchen holding two glasses and a bottle, setting them down on the coffee table. Then, he settled down beside you, twisting the cap as he readied himself to pour your drinks.

"So, JD, how'd you end up in this business?"

He poured the liquor from the bottle into each glass, the sound of running liquid filling your ears.

"Dishonourable discharge. This seemed like the next best thing, and it pays well enough."

You nodded taking the glass from the table after he slid it over to you. He took his own, nonchalantly holding it as he turned to face you. You did the same, apart from taking a rather generous swig of yours.

"Are you married?"

It was personal for someone you had known for an hour tops, but moving fast seemed to be the theme for this evening. His eyes grew a little solemn.

"Divorced. I like the crazy ones, I guess that's just my cross to bear." JD quipped.

You didn't smile until towards the end of his sentence, when even his eyes lit up a little. You threw the last of the liquor back and set down the empty glass.

"Figures."

Picking up the bottle you tipped it and filled your empty glass, if tonight didn't leave you with gaps in your memory you'd know you haven't done it right. JD seemed to pick up on what your intentions were, and he emptied the contents of his glass into his throat, setting it down and taking the bottle once you were done with it.

"What about you?"

You stalled for a moment, and then realised that he was referring to whether you were romantically entangled or not.

"No, not for me. I've had a few, partners, but the relationship's always strictly bedroom only."

A sip this time, fearing that emptying this glass would further the already present effects of this impromptu truth serum, and you'd spill far more than you intended to give away.

"Why don't you stay here for the night? We can start in the morning, and that way you don't get pulled over for a drink driving charge."

If you were fancy enough in this modern world of technological advancement you could afford one of those self-driving automated cars, but you were not. Neither was JD. Staying here didn't seem like such a bad idea, especially not when your company was so handsome. God, how much have you had to drink?

"Okay, hotshot. I'll stay."

JD was smiling as he raised his glass, watching you as you too brought the rim of the glass to your lips. It was gonna be a long night.

Minutes turned into hours, and by the time you looked back to assess the amount of whiskey left, the bottle was near enough empty. You were screwed. Now both severely inebriated you were huddled pretty close to one another, your knee brushing his thigh as his arm rested on the top of the sofa, supporting your head.

"Okay, okay, what's the like most craziest shit you've ever seen on a case?" It sounded a lot more concise in your head, but you mumbled it once it came out of your mouth.

JD chuckled at your initial incoherence, even in spite of the fact that he could translate your drunken speech perfectly. His eyes veered off toward the ceiling as he sighed thoughtfully. A beat passed.

"There was this guy that just lost it and offed his whole family. The kids, the wife, all of 'em. Found him red-handed, blood everywhere, and the guy looked as though he didn't feel even the slightest bit of remorse. Definitely not the worst of the things I've seen, but that's what you get serving in kuwait." Though notably buzzed, he'd levelled his tone to a more serious note out of respect for what he was discussing.

You frowned, having not expected something so grim.

"Well, shit. I was gonna say something stupid like the perp I caught because she left her bra on the floor of the crime scene, and I'm pretty good at guessing bra sizes. Ended up tackling her in a bar." Your more witty and comedic story was quick to lighten the mood, and JD idly rested a hand on your thigh.

Through the haze of intoxication, his touch was electrifying. You attempted to repress your urge to faintly quiver from his contact, unsure whether you were successful or not.

"Why is it that all the good looking women are crazy?"

You scoffed with false offense, mockingly hovering a hand over your heart.

"I'm not crazy, just ambitious. And a little impulsive."

His face moved closer to yours, the hand beginning to trace your thigh, fingertips teasing the hem of your skirt. In his venture, his fingers lightly grazed over the handle of the gun you kept holstered beneath your skirt, and you supposed the firearm didn't exactly help you plead your case of complete sanity. The skirt was already hiked from the way you were sitting, the sight of your panties obscured only by the fact that your thighs were pressed together.

"Oh yeah, how so?"

JD was teasing you, crossing the usual line of a professional and formal partner dynamic. And in a way, the fact that you admitted to having such frequent casual sex was incredibly appealing.

"Like this."

You whispered as you leant in, looking into his eyes for a moment before you pressed your lips against his. It was slow, and he groaned as though he wasn't expecting it. Still stealing one another's breath you climbed onto his lap, bent knees resting on either side of his hips as you slipped your tongue into his mouth, and he accepted it without the slightest hesitation. Eventually, JD managed to gather enough control to pull himself back, his hands on either side of your face as he attempted to blink through the haze of intoxication.

"Okay, you're not thinking straight. And frankly, neither am I. You sure you wanna mix business with pleasure?"

You gave a sultry smile, slightly tilting your head as you reached down and palmed the bulge that had formed at his crotch.

"What, like you haven't before?"

You gave no time for a response as your mouth was on his again, and he drunkenly succumbed to your advances. It was a little messy, intentional and yet awkward movements as you wrestled off one another's clothes and allowed the discarded garments to form a pile on the floor. In time your panties were all that was left, and they didn't last much longer. JD had undone his pants and pushed everything down to his ankles, including his boxers, leaving him nude beneath you as you worked off your thin and lacy underwear. You tossed it aside once it dangled loosely from one of your ankles and placed your hands on JD's shoulders, supporting yourself as you hovered above him, your hair cascading over your face. Simply, he raised one of his hands to cup one side of your face whilst the other settled on your hip. He gently urged you to lean down to press your lips against his, lining himself up and pulling you down onto him just as your lips meet. Your rather surprised and immodest moan bled into your heated kiss, and you can feel the noticeable sensation of fullness once you're fully settled down onto him. It's incredible. You pull back just to catch your breath.

"Fuck, holy shit JD." Is all you can manage as he uses his remaining grip on your curvature to ease you up again, just enough, before bringing you back down onto him.

Your hands fall from his shoulders to slide down his bare and moderately hairy chest, and your mouth falls open as you feel all of him, again. JD all the while just seems rather amused, the liquid courage leaving him a little haughty.

"C'mon, you made the move. Show me how ambitious you really are, partner."

The challenge was enough for you to somewhat clear your head, and you narrowed your eyes slightly. Luckily for him, you were pretty determined, and quite the competitor. You lifted yourself before coming down pretty hard, gradually setting a relentless and gratifying pace that had both of you letting the most foul of sounds tumble from your mouths. Your half-lidded eyes were fixed on him as you rolled your hips, drinking in the stray strands of hair that hung from the way he'd neatly styled his hair, and the way his lips parted to let out small, shaky breaths. Teasingly, you feel JD's fingers dig into the top of one of your thighs, the other still caressing your hip. He wouldn't utter a word, but the way you looked bouncing on top of him like this? You were fucking beautiful. All he could do was silently thank the system for one of the best errors of his life, the light of his eyes the only indicator of the way he was appreciating you. Your moans grew louder, a string of crude and unrestrained whimpers that filled the air of his quiet, one-story home. Knowing you were close only urged him to move his own hips in time with yours, the added stimulation only worsening the pleasure brimming in the pit of your stomach. As you gave one final roll of your hips before collapsing on top of him JD followed shortly after, twitching beneath you as your head fell into the crook of his neck. His guttural groans resounded just beside your ear, a tune that told you that was a job well done, and your ambition was pretty clear. Inebriated, overstimulated, and with your mind seemingly unable to concentrate on anything other than the pitch black behind your eyelids, you were done for the night. Everything after that gets suitably fuzzy. Your vision's vivid at various different points, but from what you can gather judging by the way the ground suddenly grew farther away, and the feeling of overall weightlessness, JD carried you to bed.

The sun beamed over your face, a light seemingly unavoidable, even despite your blissfully closed eyelids.

"Rise and shine." Spoke an enthusiastic voice, and you peeked your eyes open to look at your talking and oddly human alarm clock.

Reluctantly, you opened your eyes all the way, momentarily shielding them from the harshness of the light and leaning up.

"God, this feels like shit."

Your head was pounding, temples seemingly throbbing as everything got a whole lot louder, and brighter. His understanding but partially taunting chuckle prompted him into offering you the only help that he could think of.

"Coffee? I'm on my second, we drank a lot."

"You're telling me. Yeah, whatever."

JD headed off towards the kitchen to fix you your hangover remedy, and you managed to haul yourself from the bed in search of your clothes. He'd already found his, and you walked out to the lounge to kneel on the floor and scramble to retrieve yours. Having recovered your underwear and your skirt you continued to search for the rest of it, completely ignoring the steps that had come from the kitchen and halted just in front of you. JD was watching you, hung over, nude, and crawling across his living room floor.

"I gotta say, you could stay like that. We just might not get much work done."

Your head snapped up to award him a warning glare, what you had managed to find of your clothes tucked under your arm.

"Behave." Blunt, but candid enough to rip off the band-aid with the realisation that you two didn't have time for this, and you were going to need to focus.

JD raised his free hand in surrender, and you proceeded to recover the rest of your garments, standing to your feet and throwing them on once successful. Meanwhile, he set the coffee mug down on the table and scurried off to do something else, and you sat down on the couch finally fully clothed. When JD returned he set his laptop down on the table and offhandedly gestured for you to open it, so you did. He sat down beside you with a cluster of papers in hand, leaning over and keying in his password when the device prompted him to do so.

"I'll leave the socials to you. I've got his phone records and transcripts here to go over. Gonna look for any abnormalities and calls that went out the night he died."

"Got it." You muttered offhandedly, already invested in the task at hand.

It took maybe an hour flat, and you'd pinned everything. Rich aristocrat types such as this guy were all too flashy, usually gaining online traction for their repeated bragging of all their financial assets, so he was hardly difficult to find. Then came another often flaunted asset, women. There were many, but a handful appeared more than once, and you had a hunch for this particular girl. You pieced together a list of your most notable suspects and then cross-referenced it with JD's list of frequent callers considering you'd already profiled most of the girls, including their mobile phone numbers.

"Her." You muttered, tapping your pencil on your personal favourite.

JD glanced at you with a considerable amount of apprehension, but the confidence in your eyes was persuasive and convincing.

"Okay, you got an address?"

You sure did. The next few minutes consisted of piling into JD's jeep, and you were pulling into the drive of your suspect's home before you knew it. Judging by the look of her home she was, comfortable. Not the kind of level of wealth of your entrepreneurial victim, but enough. Houses like these had good, advanced security systems, but detectives were able to bypass pretty much anything, especially in a case like this. Politely, you both stepped out of the car and made your way to the front door first, knocking and letting a beat pass. When you received no response it became pretty conclusive that she wasn't home, which was perfect, really. JD tampered with the security system and you were able to get her front door open with little to no fuss, you stepping in first to get a brief look at her place. You deduced the room most likely to be the bedroom and made a beeline for it, barely able to contain yourself in your desire to search for the infamous red polish. JD trailed behind you, his footsteps closely following yours as you stepped into the bedroom and began to survey her dresser. Eventually, your eyes landed on a slightly scattered heap of different nail varnish, your eyes settling on all of the red ones in particular. Whilst you sifted through the nail polish and attempted to match it with the sample on your phone JD discovered the shoe rack and began to look for any stiletto-heeled shoes, more to be busy with something more than anything. Finally, one particular shade of red came ablaze with the notification of a match.

"Bingo. Chanel too, classy girl."

You spun to face JD with a smile of triumph, and his own smile seemed to resemble a similar sense of premature victory.

"Perfect. Now time to go pay our little femme fatale a visit."

JD exited the bedroom to make his way back to the jeep, and you stuffed the nail polish in your pocket. It was evidence, and besides, red was your colour. Unexpectedly, JD had been waiting for you out in the hallway, and his features looked so serious. You approached him a little concerned, considering you had solved the case after all, and he'd been over the moon only a few seconds ago.

"Look I uh, it's been nice with you. Working, with you." JD cleared his throat after his slight mishap in specifying the enjoyable part of his time with you, but your eyes drifted elsewhere, caught up with the movement over his shoulder.

"Duck!"

It took him a moment, but he eventually caught on and leaned over just as you did, narrowly missing the blade that was hurled toward his head. It passed over you both and embedded in the wall behind you, and you were quick to pull your pistol from the holster beneath your skirt and aim, reflexively squeezing the trigger and firing a shot into the woman's leg. It was the only reason you wore this damn thing, and it often came in handy. She cried out crumpling to the floor clutching her newly wounded knee, and you heaved a sigh of relief. You were still processing how quickly you had acted as JD made his way over to her and restrained her into handcuffs, affirming the capture of your killer. Some not-so-pleasant words were exchanged in the moments before the authorities came to collect her, but you hardly paid much attention when you received your payout of ten thousand dollars.

"You too?" You asked JD, who was also staring down at his matrix.

"Yep, ten thousand each, a pretty hefty sum for a job like this."

It was. But you were most definitely not going to complain, a system error meant a financial one, and you'd earned that money fair and square. The case was closed, and you both stood there for a moment or two, unsure who should make the first move.

"We should probably get going." You broke the silence, and JD nodded in agreement.

Foolishly, you almost hoped you two would have gotten to spend a little more time together. He was good company, an adequately competent partner, and from what you could remember, good in bed. Nevertheless, JD still had to drive you back to his since you'd left your car, and so you followed him out to the jeep. The drive was silent, almost in contemplation. You'd gone from avoiding a knife meant for the back of JD's head to the thought of driving home and getting into your bed, a significant turn of events. The contrast played havoc with your gradually subsiding adrenaline. Even through your intense thought, you did notice when the vehicle came to a stop. You unclipped your seatbelt and stepped out, and JD came around from the other side of the car. For a moment you dared think he was as disappointed about having to part ways as you were, but neither of you was the cooperative type.

"Well, thanks for, last night. And being such a great partner." You leaned forward and planted an intimate but casual kiss on his stubble-filled cheek, barely sparing the time to acknowledge his reaction afterwards as you made way for your car.

You'd made it one step when his arm reached out and carefully snatched you back, spinning you back to face him.

"Wait, you should take my number. Just in case."

You raised one brow, a smile playing on your lips from the tone of his request.

"In case of?"

He thought for a moment, lips forming his own impish smile.

"You never know, system errors."

Yeah, system errors. At least that was how you justified it when you exchanged numbers. Finally, it was time for you to take your leave. JD was halfway up the steps to his front porch when you rolled down the window and called out from your car, foot angled readily to bolt out of his driveway.

"I left my bra on your bed, by the way!"

You were gone before he could even spare you a glance.

[cyberpunkonline]

The Cyberpunk Genre: From Fiction to Reality

The Real-World Cyberpunk Narrative

In the realm of science fiction, the cyberpunk genre has long captivated audiences with its vision of a high-tech, low-life future. Cyberpunk, a subgenre that emerged in the early 1980s, combines advanced technology with a layer of dystopian elements, often exploring themes of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, corporate hegemony, and social decay. However, what once seemed a distant future is now becoming a striking reflection of our present reality.

The Cyberpunk Reality of Modern Corporations

As we delve into the corporate world, the parallels between cyberpunk narratives and current events become strikingly clear. This article examines the activities of major corporations like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, SpaceX, and OpenAI, highlighting instances that resonate with cyberpunk themes.

"Google: The Digital Panopticon"

Google, with its vast array of services, has created a digital ecosystem that closely resembles the omnipresent corporations in cyberpunk lore. The company's foray into various sectors, from search engines to smart home devices, has raised concerns about privacy invasion and data control, reminiscent of cyberpunk's surveillance-heavy societies.

"Microsoft: The Silicon Overlord"

Microsoft's dominance in the software industry, particularly with its Windows operating system and Office suite, mirrors the cyberpunk trope of a corporation wielding enormous power over everyday technology. The company's expansion into cloud computing and AI further cements its status as a tech giant with a reach that extends into the very fabric of digital life.

"Amazon: The Corporate Colossus"

Amazon's transformation from an online bookstore to a retail and technology behemoth aligns with cyberpunk's portrayal of mega-corporations that transcend traditional industry boundaries. The company's ventures into cloud computing, AI, and even space travel through its Blue Origin subsidiary evoke images of a corporation with almost limitless ambition and resources.

"SpaceX: Architects of the Starbound Future"

SpaceX, under the leadership of Elon Musk, brings to life the cyberpunk fascination with space exploration and privatization. The company's ambitious projects, including the colonization of Mars and satellite internet services, embody the cyberpunk vision of pushing humanity's boundaries, both technologically and geographically.

"OpenAI: The AI Enigma"

OpenAI, known for its groundbreaking work in AI, reflects cyberpunk's preoccupation with the potential and dangers of artificial intelligence. The development of advanced AI models and their applications in various fields raise questions about the future of human-AI interaction, a central theme in many cyberpunk narratives.

Industrial Espionage: A Cyberpunk Reality

The world of industrial espionage, a staple in cyberpunk plots, is no stranger to these tech giants. The competitive nature of the technology industry, driven by the race for innovation and market dominance, has led to numerous instances of data breaches, intellectual property theft, and corporate spying. These incidents underscore the darker aspects of the corporate world, mirroring the intrigue and deception often found in cyberpunk stories.

Cyberpunk Tropes in the Modern World

Several broad tropes characteristic of the cyberpunk genre are increasingly relevant today:

Technological Advancements vs. Societal Decay: The stark contrast between cutting-edge technology and societal challenges, such as income inequality and privacy concerns, is a recurring theme in both cyberpunk fiction and the modern world.

Corporate Power and Influence: The immense power wielded by mega-corporations, often at the expense of individual freedoms and government authority, is a reality in both the cyberpunk genre and today's corporate landscape.

Ethical Dilemmas of AI and Cybernetics: The ethical and philosophical questions surrounding artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and human enhancement are as pertinent in real life as they are in cyberpunk narratives.

Conclusion: Cyberpunk as a Now Genre

As we examine these parallels, it becomes evident that cyberpunk is no longer a genre fixated on a near future. The themes, concerns, and narratives central to cyberpunk are increasingly manifesting in our current reality. The once speculative fiction has transformed into a lens through which we can view and understand the complexities and challenges of our high-tech, corporate-dominated world. Cyber is no longer a near future genre. It's a now genre.

- Raz

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-Fi prompt from KemiKitty:

id enjoy hearing about concerts and ticket money if you want

Referencing my “how does this make money/how does this lose money” in this post.

Whoo! I actually really enjoy talking about money flow like this. Digging into examples like this helps with understanding the interconnectedness of the economic systems we inhabit, and with why things cost What They Do.

Disclaimer: I have not worked in this industry. I just majored in business, watch a lot of documentaries/video essays, and like to break down business and economic topics. When I got to performances, I try to figure these things out as an observer (dinner theater from watching Lindsey Sterling before she got super famous, more Traditional concerts at Staller Performing Arts center, Broadway shows) and asking questions of tour guides when at places like the Vienna Opera House.

Our Example: A moderately popular performer, in an enclosed performance space with a stage, fixed seating, and food service.

Let us consider a performer of middling popularity. They go on tours, but only in the lower 48 states, not yet internationally. They do single nights at an independent venue, which has either dinner tables or rows of audience seating. Let's say... 350 seats, in a middle-sized city, with $30/ticket on average, with wiggle room depending on seating, VIP passes, and discounts (groupons, senior, military, annual passes, etc).

So, who is getting paid, and who is paying?

Money coming into the venue, tied directly to this one event:

Tickets The people who came to this concert are paying for the tickets. 350 seats, at an average of $30/ticket, that's about $10,500. Most of this money does not go to the venue, but may pass through it, or leave a cut with it. (Depends on the ticketing software; we're saying this is an independent venue, not part of the ticketmaster situation, so it's a maybe.)

Food and drink The venue sells snacks, possibly full meals, if it's a dinner-and-show location. It may sell alcohol. It almost definitely sells drinks, maybe has vending machines if nothing else. If attendees cannot bring their own food and drink, and don't want to leave the building so they don't miss the show, then the venue can mark up the food they sell.

Merchandise Dependent on the type of merch and the venue, this may be a flat fee, where the performer puts down a few hundred dollars up front to set up a table for after the concert, or it might be taking a small cut of whatever is sold that night. They might not charge anything, but we'll include it as a likely avenue of income. I can see some kinder venues waiving the fee for newer, up-and-coming artists, but generally you can assume that the venue will take a cut.

Money flowing out of the venue, tied directly to this one event:

The Performer and their team The ticket costs will go primarily to the performer, their backup dancers/singers/band, their manager, and whatever fund they have for things other than wages, like a tour bus rental fee, the label, the driver, the night's post-concert laundry costs, and so on. The chances of all that money going to a single performer is very low; you can generally assume they have backup, management, additional costs, and someone pulling the strings. There are exceptions, like unaffiliated stand-up comedians or other, genuinely solo acts, but for the type of event I'm outlining, these are all contributing factors. Performers may bring their own lighting/sound techs. The venue also might provide their own. For a larger venue, I'd assume both are involved; one who knows the concert's program, and one who knows the venue's setup.

Venue staff The ushers, lighting/sound technicians, the bar staff, the cook, the janitor, security, and anyone else who is working night-of is getting paid. We can equate their pay to the money coming in from specifically the food and drink sales, along with tips for the waitstaff in particular. By this, I mean that the correlation is such that, should sales fall, the corresponding cut in costs is employee labor (the bar staff and cooks), rather than the performers (whose costs are calculated in relation to the money they bring in relating to the ticket sales).

Food and Drink Raw ingredients for the food, wholesale costs for the liquor, napkins, single-use straws, and so on.

Printed Programs Someone has to print the little booklet that tells you who's performing tonight, who's performing for the next few months, and anything else you need to know. If it's a big-name cultural center, they may even include some interviews! But ink is expensive, and that's a lot of paper.

Money coming into the venue, not connected to the specific event:

Advertising Does the venue have posters around for local businesses? For insurance companies? For upcoming events? Someone is paying them for that. Does the venue intersperse the pre-show music over the speakers with the occasional ad spot? Someone is paying them for that. Does the venue have ads in the program booklet? Someone is paying them for that. For a really, really large venue, the kind with dozens or hundreds of employees and massive lighting/sound setups, they are liable to get most of their income from advertising.

Government Grants and Private Donations Depending on the venue, they may donations or grants. This is more likely to apply to a university/community performing arts center than a for-profit dinner theater, but it's a possibility.

Merchandise The venue may have merch that is unrelated to the performance of the night. A historic or novelty location is most likely to have success with this, selling beer glasses with their logo or a t-shirt with 'home of the [band from several decades ago]' printed across the front.

Money flowing out of the venue, not connected to the specific event:

Administrative/Overhead Employees Management, bookkeeping, legal, marketing, and so on.

Utilities Electricity, water, sewage, gas, telecomm, and so on.

Taxes, Licenses, Fees Sales tax, property tax, liquor license, etc.

Mortgage or lease The venue's business owner is not necessarily the one to own the property outright. They may pay rent to a property owner, or mortgage to the bank.

Maintenance - Building Codes Any large building is going to need plumbers, glass techs, electricians, roofers, and so on coming by with regularity. (This part, I actually do know; I used to do repairs dispatching, and you'd be amazed how frequently a big box store needs someone to come by about the toilets.)

Maintenance - Venue Codes There are certain things that an entertainment venue needs to do that other businesses... don't. Namely, fire safety. It's a huge deal. Staying up to code can be expensive, especially if you need to get your backstage/wing curtains chemically treated again, which can be anywhere from one to five years, or the next time someone spills water on it. (That's the main reason open containers of liquids aren't allowed backstage.)

Marketing Just like people pay the venue to advertise, the venue pays for others to advertise it. This could be in the local newspaper or online, but if a given performer isn't someone semi-famous on tour that has a following, then something else needs to draw in a regular paying crowd.

Miscellaneous Overhead There is a lot of overhead for any business of moderate size that has its costs spread out over the year. This includes hiring an accountant for tax season, purchasing uniforms for employees, replacing cutlery and plates and furniture as it wears out or gets lost, repainting the walls every few years, office supplies when the printer for the programs wears out, and so on.

Is this everything? Almost definitely not.

But, hopefully, I've untangled a few things that you may not have considered before.

Those tickets and drinks you bought cover a lot more than just the performer!

...unless it's through ticketmaster, in which case it's probably just the monopoly.

----

If you enjoyed this post, please support me on ko-fi! You can also prompt me for a business/econ topic of your choice here.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Hypothetical AI election disinformation risks vs real AI harms

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (Feb 27) in Portland at Powell's. Then, onto Phoenix (Changing Hands, Feb 29), Tucson (Mar 9-12), and more!

You can barely turn around these days without encountering a think-piece warning of the impending risk of AI disinformation in the coming elections. But a recent episode of This Machine Kills podcast reminds us that these are hypothetical risks, and there is no shortage of real AI harms:

https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod/311-selling-pickaxes-for-the-ai-gold-rush

The algorithmic decision-making systems that increasingly run the back-ends to our lives are really, truly very bad at doing their jobs, and worse, these systems constitute a form of "empiricism-washing": if the computer says it's true, it must be true. There's no such thing as racist math, you SJW snowflake!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/aoc-algorithms-racist-bias.html

Nearly 1,000 British postmasters were wrongly convicted of fraud by Horizon, the faulty AI fraud-hunting system that Fujitsu provided to the Royal Mail. They had their lives ruined by this faulty AI, many went to prison, and at least four of the AI's victims killed themselves:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

Tenants across America have seen their rents skyrocket thanks to Realpage's landlord price-fixing algorithm, which deployed the time-honored defense: "It's not a crime if we commit it with an app":

https://www.propublica.org/article/doj-backs-tenants-price-fixing-case-big-landlords-real-estate-tech

Housing, you'll recall, is pretty foundational in the human hierarchy of needs. Losing your home – or being forced to choose between paying rent or buying groceries or gas for your car or clothes for your kid – is a non-hypothetical, widespread, urgent problem that can be traced straight to AI.

Then there's predictive policing: cities across America and the world have bought systems that purport to tell the cops where to look for crime. Of course, these systems are trained on policing data from forces that are seeking to correct racial bias in their practices by using an algorithm to create "fairness." You feed this algorithm a data-set of where the police had detected crime in previous years, and it predicts where you'll find crime in the years to come.

But you only find crime where you look for it. If the cops only ever stop-and-frisk Black and brown kids, or pull over Black and brown drivers, then every knife, baggie or gun they find in someone's trunk or pockets will be found in a Black or brown person's trunk or pocket. A predictive policing algorithm will naively ingest this data and confidently assert that future crimes can be foiled by looking for more Black and brown people and searching them and pulling them over.

Obviously, this is bad for Black and brown people in low-income neighborhoods, whose baseline risk of an encounter with a cop turning violent or even lethal. But it's also bad for affluent people in affluent neighborhoods – because they are underpoliced as a result of these algorithmic biases. For example, domestic abuse that occurs in full detached single-family homes is systematically underrepresented in crime data, because the majority of domestic abuse calls originate with neighbors who can hear the abuse take place through a shared wall.

But the majority of algorithmic harms are inflicted on poor, racialized and/or working class people. Even if you escape a predictive policing algorithm, a facial recognition algorithm may wrongly accuse you of a crime, and even if you were far away from the site of the crime, the cops will still arrest you, because computers don't lie:

https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/texas-macys-sunglass-hut-facial-recognition-software-wrongful-arrest-sacramento-alibi/

Trying to get a low-waged service job? Be prepared for endless, nonsensical AI "personality tests" that make Scientology look like NASA:

https://futurism.com/mandatory-ai-hiring-tests

Service workers' schedules are at the mercy of shift-allocation algorithms that assign them hours that ensure that they fall just short of qualifying for health and other benefits. These algorithms push workers into "clopening" – where you close the store after midnight and then open it again the next morning before 5AM. And if you try to unionize, another algorithm – that spies on you and your fellow workers' social media activity – targets you for reprisals and your store for closure.

If you're driving an Amazon delivery van, algorithm watches your eyeballs and tells your boss that you're a bad driver if it doesn't like what it sees. If you're working in an Amazon warehouse, an algorithm decides if you've taken too many pee-breaks and automatically dings you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

If this disgusts you and you're hoping to use your ballot to elect lawmakers who will take up your cause, an algorithm stands in your way again. "AI" tools for purging voter rolls are especially harmful to racialized people – for example, they assume that two "Juan Gomez"es with a shared birthday in two different states must be the same person and remove one or both from the voter rolls:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eligible-voters-swept-up-conservative-activists-purge-voter-rolls/

Hoping to get a solid education, the sort that will keep you out of AI-supervised, precarious, low-waged work? Sorry, kiddo: the ed-tech system is riddled with algorithms. There's the grifty "remote invigilation" industry that watches you take tests via webcam and accuses you of cheating if your facial expressions fail its high-tech phrenology standards:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat

All of these are non-hypothetical, real risks from AI. The AI industry has proven itself incredibly adept at deflecting interest from real harms to hypothetical ones, like the "risk" that the spicy autocomplete will become conscious and take over the world in order to convert us all to paperclips:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

Whenever you hear AI bosses talking about how seriously they're taking a hypothetical risk, that's the moment when you should check in on whether they're doing anything about all these longstanding, real risks. And even as AI bosses promise to fight hypothetical election disinformation, they continue to downplay or ignore the non-hypothetical, here-and-now harms of AI.

There's something unseemly – and even perverse – about worrying so much about AI and election disinformation. It plays into the narrative that kicked off in earnest in 2016, that the reason the electorate votes for manifestly unqualified candidates who run on a platform of bald-faced lies is that they are gullible and easily led astray.

But there's another explanation: the reason people accept conspiratorial accounts of how our institutions are run is because the institutions that are supposed to be defending us are corrupt and captured by actual conspiracies:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

The party line on conspiratorial accounts is that these institutions are good, actually. Think of the rebuttal offered to anti-vaxxers who claimed that pharma giants were run by murderous sociopath billionaires who were in league with their regulators to kill us for a buck: "no, I think you'll find pharma companies are great and superbly regulated":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Institutions are profoundly important to a high-tech society. No one is capable of assessing all the life-or-death choices we make every day, from whether to trust the firmware in your car's anti-lock brakes, the alloys used in the structural members of your home, or the food-safety standards for the meal you're about to eat. We must rely on well-regulated experts to make these calls for us, and when the institutions fail us, we are thrown into a state of epistemological chaos. We must make decisions about whether to trust these technological systems, but we can't make informed choices because the one thing we're sure of is that our institutions aren't trustworthy.

Ironically, the long list of AI harms that we live with every day are the most important contributor to disinformation campaigns. It's these harms that provide the evidence for belief in conspiratorial accounts of the world, because each one is proof that the system can't be trusted. The election disinformation discourse focuses on the lies told – and not why those lies are credible.

That's because the subtext of election disinformation concerns is usually that the electorate is credulous, fools waiting to be suckered in. By refusing to contemplate the institutional failures that sit upstream of conspiracism, we can smugly locate the blame with the peddlers of lies and assume the mantle of paternalistic protectors of the easily gulled electorate.

But the group of people who are demonstrably being tricked by AI is the people who buy the horrifically flawed AI-based algorithmic systems and put them into use despite their manifest failures.

As I've written many times, "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, but we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job"

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

The most visible victims of AI disinformation are the people who are putting AI in charge of the life-chances of millions of the rest of us. Tackle that AI disinformation and its harms, and we'll make conspiratorial claims about our institutions being corrupt far less credible.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/27/ai-conspiracies/#epistemological-collapse

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

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